The Six-Million Dollar Men

HARRISON FORD

Frankly, if Paramount's new capo Brandon Tartikoff is willing to give Indy $9 million for Patriot Games and, presumably, a similar amount for the next two Tom Clancy adaptations, so am I. Tartikoff may have lamentable notions of what constitutes big-screen entertainment (All I Want For Christmas, Wayne's World), but he falls on the commendable Scrooge side of current studio strategies. He's chosen to stiff lesser stars in lesser films that may or may not turn out to be Paramount's The Hand That Rocks the Cradle on the hunch that Harrison Ford will guarantee him a decent opening in the U.S., an overseas audience and rich cable and video proceeds, at the very least. Ford got bankable in the non-thinking-person's action picture series, and has since had various successes, failures and stand-offs in thinking-person's dramas, so he can be expected to do well enough in a supposed thinking-person's action picture. A guy who got even the unimpressive $43 million worth of seat-warmers to pay for a movie as plainly awful, if not downright demented, as Regarding Henry --and it was Harrison, not you, Mr. Nichols, who pulled the suckers in--is worth overpaying when the picture is actually of theoretical entertainment value.

TOM CRUISE

If you're going to pay anybody too much to star in the movie you're spending too much to make, pay Tom Cruise. He's the only bona fide movie star of his generation. Cruise has massive appeal that, while it can only do so much damage control on a movie as badly conceived and arrogantly out-of-control as Days of Thunder, can bring in huge profits for something like the idiotic but precisely targeted Cocktail. Who but Tom could have lured $70 million worth of dupes to sit through the muddled histrionics of Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July? And how much of the astonishing $173 million Rain Man took in do you think Oscar-winner Dustin Hoffman drew? With Cruise getting a shocking $12 million-plus each for Far and Away and the upcoming courtroom drama A Few Good Men, neither one had better fail, and at least one had better go through the roof, or Tom will drop a few mil on his W-2. The new pseudo-prudent Hollywood can only justify so many movies a year that risk the kind of budget that any film paying its star $12 million does. Nothing is that sure a thing, as the former Paramount exec who greenlighted Days of Thunder, Frank Mancuso, can tell you. For the time being, though, Cruise remains one of the few stars who can provoke a studio to go nuts in this way. (Then again, if I were paying Cruise $12 mil for a courtroom drama, I'd rather not be paying Jack Nicholson $8 mil on top of it, not to mention the sums Demi Moore, Kiefer Sutherland and director Rob Reiner must be commanding.)

CHEVY CHASE

His rich Warner Bros, deal--$24 million for four films-- appears to be money well spent, for there's been a built-in market, worldwide, for physical humor since the beginning of films (none of those pesky problems translating verbal gags). Plus, because Chase, like Steven Seagal, is the only costly element in his films, the budgets never get out of hand. Chase is about as certain a thing as you can find in contemporary Hollywood when he is doing the slapstick-styled comedy that he's now grown understandably weary of. For those Vacation films, Caddyshack movies and Fletch flicks, he's worth his $6 million. (And remember, even beyond the initial box-office take, this silly stuff has a boffo shelf life at the video store.) Chase so desires to escape pratfalls and display his chops with other kinds of humor--as he did in the less successful Funny Farm and Memoirs of an Invisible Man --that it's not really so surprising he decided to try his hand at hosting a TV talk show in the fall of '93. Regardless of what happens there, he'll still be able to command $6 million for movies he doesn't want to make.

SEAN CONNERY

The skinniest flints in the business (Disney, or rather, Hollywood Pictures) went against their principles to give Sean Connery $10 million for Medicine Man last year and got exactly what they deserved--his worst performance in years. But, given a leading lady with the charisma of a car alarm you can't shut off, a director who shot the jungle location as if it were a parking lot, and a shockingly dumb script, Connery was still by far the best thing in the movie--without bothering to act. And he was still the reason Disney will end up making back its money on this gangrenous turkey--he proved an expensive but effective hedge against box-office oblivion. This is better than a stick in the eye, but when paying $10 million to a star, you're looking to them to get you into the $100 million club, not merely to break even. Since gathering cachet with his Oscar for The Untouchables, Connery has been an opening draw in the U.S., even in as powerful a soporific as The Russia House, and he's boffo overseas and on video, but his $10 million in compensation for Medicine Man reflected a hysterical pay raise after the blockbuster success of The Hunt for Red October (for which he was paid $4 million). A pay cut would seem to be in order. Connery is still worth $6 million, and in pinpoint casting, which the upcoming Rising Sun appears to be, he's worth more. (Then again, what Michael Crichton novel has ever been the basis for an authentic box-office blockbuster?)

JACK NICHOLSON

Ask yourself, is he worth the $1 million-a-day salary he reportedly pulled in for A Few Good Men? Well, if anyone is, it's Nicholson. Nicholson is without a doubt the best-liked star of his time. Trouble is, his presence in a film is no guarantee that it will "open," as the corpses of The Two Jakes and Ironweed, among others, attest. Even the perceived hit The Witches of Eastwick was hardly a classic blockbuster at $64 million domestic. In other words, the phenomenon of Batman --which indeed owes much of its success to Nicholson--was a one-time thing. If, for some of us, there is no question that Nicholson's not the actor he once was, it doesn't matter--there's no fighting the fact that he is Peck's Bad Boy incarnate, and he's highly paid for that very reason. So, if you're sure you've got the next Batman, go ahead and pay Jack. But if you're looking for the old Nicholson (and wouldn't it be nice to have him back?), you'll lose your shirt if you pay the new prices. Pay Jack what he wants only if you want him to overact.

SYLVESTER STALLONE

Though it seems his days as a sure thing are over here in the U.S.--even those "can't miss" Rocky and Rambo flicks don't pull 'em in like they used to--when Sly's cast correctly (i.e., with his hands in boxing gloves or on a gun) he still packs a wallop everywhere else, which is why he reportedly commanded $ 15 million upfront--and another $10 million on the back end--for Rocky V. Stallone's recent "comic" turns (Oscar, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot) tried, and dismally failed, to put a happy face on the sheer desperation of his struggle to stay on top. If this were vaudeville, Sly would have gotten the hook, never to be seen again after these two grievous embarrassments. But this is Hollywood, so instead he's been scrambling to go back to the action pictures that the comedies were meant to be a way out of. For his attempt to climb back up the mountain with Cliffhanger, he's reportedly pulled in a cool $12 million (double his up-front salary for Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot). It might just be the last time he sees anything like two digits before the zeros on his paycheck, since the aptly titled Cliffhanger is being made by the financially strapped Carolco and may therefore have a rough road to the kind of costly launch that would set Stallone up for a comeback, if any such resurrection is possible anyway. But then, who knows? Carolco's trying to come up with funds for another Rambo flick, and if, somehow, they do, look for Sly to ask for the moon--and get it.

KEVIN COSTNER

It may sound ridiculous to say that a man who got $7 million up-front for a film appears to be the model of reasonableness in contemporary Hollywood, but Kevin Costner looks both reasonable and savvy for the salary-plus-percentage deal he took on JFK. Having picked up $8 million for his trudge through blockbusting Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, on the heels of Dances With Wolves, he could have commanded many more millions for another big action spectacle. Going instead for Oliver Stone's ego spectacle, he played the thankfully calm center of that crackpot pinwheel of a movie, a decision that suggests both that he's a taker of considered risks and that he has his greed held in check by a sane career-building mentality. Costner had a long time to hone his box-office instincts and weigh his own particular assets before hitting it big, which may explain how he has translated his limited range to a fairly diverse slate of films. (Next up is the interracial love story The Bodyguard, with Whitney Houston.) Costner will continue to demand salaries beyond $6 million, but he--as a man with faith in his own choices and a strategy of choosing in favor of longevity--will be looking for his real money on the back end, which is about as honest as anybody gets in Hollywood. The only reason a pay cut would be in order for Costner is if his appearance does not improve--or, God forbid, deteriorates--from the phlegmatic skinhead look he sported at the Oscars.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER

Sure, he's numero uno these days, and box-office accounting buffs are likely to remember Schwarzenegger forever: Who can ever hope to top, or even equal, his back-to-back-to-back-to-back grand slam, Twins ($112 million) followed by Total Recall ($119 million) followed by Kindergarten Cop ($91 million) followed by T2 ($205 million)? It makes the question of whether he's worth what he gets paid (it reportedly ranges from $10 million to $30 million a picture) unnecessary, and now that that's out of the way, here's a word to the wise: Hard though it may now be to recollect, Charles Bronson was once our top international action star. (Who?) He was followed by Clint Eastwood (remember him?) and then Chuck Norris (best recalled as sort of the Jean-Claude Van Damme of his day). Whether--like Bronson and Eastwood--one gets sidetracked into improbable projects with co-starring roles for wives and lovers, or not, all of Hollywood's biggest action lads have only a certain amount of time in the sun before they're gently nudged back into the shade. But for now, Arnold is a force of nature and has managed to build a comic persona on top of his action hero image to further justify Hollywood's investment in him. In the Action Hall of Fame, Schwarzenegger is destined to be the undisputed box-office king for some time. (Clint Eastwood will have to settle for the critic's accolades.)

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