The Bedroom Window (1987)
In the early 1980s, filmmaker Curtis Hanson had just come off of directing Losin’ It, a teen comedy about a group of young American men who travel to Tijuana, Mexico to lose their virginity. That film featured relatively unknown actors who would become big stars, Tom Cruise and Shelley Long. Although poorly distributed and not successful film’s second life on cable and video found him only being offered other teen-oriented flicks as a follow-up.
Hanson wasn’t interested, so he looked toward the kind of project he might find exciting. He recalled a relatively obscure 1971 mystery novel he’d read by English author Anne Holden called, “The Witnesses”. It seemed like something that could hearken back to the old Hitchcock and film noir flicks he loved. It was the kind of vehicle that could show his craftsmanship and story construction in his screenwriting. And if he could also direct it, he could show off his sense of style which could catapult him to do well-crafted films aimed at adults. He envisioned wet streets, skewed camera angles, and lots of rain, as characters quickly traversed from one location to another.
Holden’s story concerns Sylvia Mason, a married mother of two. Sylvia’s husband, while a financial success, lacks the excitement she craves in a romantic partner, so she engages in an extramarital affair with a divorced man named Terence. While at Terence’s flat dressing up to go home after their adulterous act, Sylvia looks out of his window overlooking the park square below and witnesses a man suddenly springing out of the shadows to assault a young woman walking along the footpath. Terence awakens from sleep when Sylvia screams out and the neighbors gather, saving the girl from further abuse as the perpetrator scampers away. However, due to her adulterous relationship, Sylvia keeps mum about identifying the culprit to the authorities.
When she reads the paper she discovers that another assault happened to a different girl in the same area that ended up dying, Sylvia is wracked with guilt for the next few days. It seems she is the only one who has seen what the murderer looks like. Exposing the truth would ruin her marriage and reputation, but if she describes the description of the man and his assault to Terence, he can go to the police and say he was the one who witnessed the incident in the hope he can be apprehended before another woman dies.
Hanson felt the story would make for a great noirish/Hitchcockian thriller genre flick. Unfortunately, he discovered after writing the spec script that Paramount Pictures possessed the rights to “The Witnesses” since the time of its publication. He consulted Paramount, with whom he’d worked for on a revision for 1982’s White Dog, if they’d like to use his script; he’d even direct it. Paramount considered, but wanted script changes and a more experienced director. Hanson suggested his friend, Don Siegel, which was acceptable. However, after Hanson’s script was reworked to their satisfaction, Siegel ended up declining during the salary negotiations, resulting in Paramount not being keen on proceeding with the picture. However, they were willing to work out a deal to relinquish the book rights in turnaround so they could shop the script elsewhere.
Screenwriter Robert Towne was at Paramount negotiating a proposed sequel to Chinatown when he stumbled across Hanson’s script. He’d met Hanson in the late 1960s when Hanson was a photojournalist taking pictures of Faye Dunaway that became instrumental in Warner Bros. accepting her as Bonnie in Bonnie and Clyde. Hanson visited the set where Towne was performing work as a script doctor. Towne called The Bedroom Window the best script he’d read in five years that he didn’t write himself and offered to help him get it set up elsewhere. Hanson’s condition was that the studio agree to let him also direct it. After an initial go-ahead at 20th Century Fox fell through, Towne took the script to independent film producer and studio head Dino De Laurentiis, who immediately accepted to turn it into an upcoming feature. Towne vouched for Hanson’s talent at the helm and agreed to continue working as a liaison between Dino and Hanson for the production. Towne would serve as the executive producer and guide Hanson through his script for what Dino wanted to achieve to sell the film to the public.
Using Towne as a sounding board, Hanson strayed from Holden’s novel significantly, shifting the focus from Sylvia to Terence (called Terry in his script), and the emphasis on Sylvia’s nervous breakdown was replaced by Terry’s growth. He also replaced the novel’s assault victim from a young girl to an earthy cocktail bar waitress who becomes a catalyst for Terry’s conversion, borrowing something he did for Susannah York’s character in his earlier thriller, The Silent Partner. Hanson liked the notion of the victim turning the tables on the assault to become the aggressor in the end.
Striving to get away from yet another film set in the Southern California suburbs, Hanson’s original script was set in Seattle, Washington, as the premise called for a smaller seaport city with gentrification projects, a mix of modern and historic buildings, and a bustling nightlife. However, De Laurentiis thought Seattle was unnecessarily costly. Interiors were to be shot at the De Laurentiis Group’s new studio in Wilmington, North Carolina, a right-to-work state that allowed them to avoid union fees and regulations. The object was to create a film as good as they could make in Hollywood but at half the cost. The city of the setting needed to contain certain aspects important to the story: it must be a midsized port town undergoing a lot of restoration projects where an architect like Syvlia’s husband could be rich and powerful. It also had to have a classic look for a film noir vibe, with an area that was run-down and seedy, and another that was sophisticated and cosmopolitan. After traveling up and down the east coast, Hanson made his decision on Baltimore after looking out of a window in an apartment building overlooking Mount Vernon Place, the city’s cultural and historic center. It also was cinematically underexploited as a locale, outside of a few Barry Levinson films. Two weeks of exteriors were set for Baltimore, especially the swanky, yuppie-populated “New Baltimore” area, followed by eight weeks at the Wilmington studio.
In the final version of the script, we follow Terry Lambert, a businessman in a high-rolling Baltimore architectural firm who is having an affair with his boss’s alluring French wife, Sylvia Wentworth. After their latest coupling, they’re startled by a scream from the courtyard outside. Rushing to the window, Sylvia shrieks as she sees an assault on a woman at the hands of a redheaded male with pale skin. However, she can’t report it, as she desperately doesn’t want her affair to become known by her wealthy husband, Collin. Terry thinks he’s doing the honorable thing by pretending that it was he who saw the actual assault, as he suspects that there may be a connection between it and the series of murders in the area. However, circumstances lead to Terry himself being implicated in the murder, and the only person willing to help is a cocktail waitress named Denise, the assault victim.
Guttenberg was not Hanson’s first choice, or even on his list of preferred actors. Steve Guttenberg’s agent, Toni Howard, got a copy of the script and encouraged him to read it. Guttenberg liked it – it was classy, and elegant, and kept him riveted to the end. All others at the William Morris agency thought it was a waste of time and that he should pursue more comedies offering bigger paychecks. De Laurentiis encouraged Hanson to use him after seeing his likable comic charisma in films like Police Academy and Cocoon. Dino felt that Guttenberg’s comedic personality could lure in audiences beyond thriller regulars. Hanson and Towne were skeptical but agreed to meet Guttenberg for dinner at Dino’s mansion to talk about the role’s requirements. Guttenberg loved the idea of playing against type and breaking him into leading-man roles. Plus, he already had a familiarity and enjoyment for shooting in Baltimore, having appeared in Diner for Barry Levinson. By the end of the meeting, Hanson came to a similar conclusion that the movie could use his enthusiasm and humor.
Elizabeth McGovern was Hanson’s only choice to play Denise, the assaulted waitress. After playing objects of desire in Once Upon a Time in America and Lovesick, Hanson felt she should play a role where her beauty was a secondary consideration. Terry finds her plain until he sees her in a different light. McGovern was excited to play a streetsmart and straightforward character she’d not played before and very different from her own personality. However, the script did call for her to perform a scene in the nude, something she was dead set on getting away from doing anymore in film. she loved the script and trusted Hanson to keep it tasteful, but it wasn’t until she discussed it with her parents that she said OK. Her mother reminded her that they’d already seen her raped in Once Upon a Time in America so this was nothing. Despite her protestations, her nude scene was never shot due to time and scheduling issues.
Although the character of Sylvia was written for an American when they were compiling a list of actresses that could deliver femme-fatale glamour, Isabelle Huppert’s name arose. Dubbed in America as the ‘Meryl Streep of France’, Huppert was relatively unknown in America, having only one significant role in a Hollywood film, Michael Cimino’s 1980 debacle, Heaven’s Gate.
Hanson debated the choice but concluded that Huppert offered sophistication as an older woman. She sought Terry for a fling and had no intention of leaving her comfortable life. He also thought she made for a fitting counterbalance to McGovern’s character, who he painted as a common woman of lower social standing, drawing out a comment on the choice for Terry between pursuing a fantasy or embracing reality, not dissimilar to Scotty’s dilemma between reconciling Madeleine Elster and Judy Barton in Vertigo. Terry placed so much value on obtaining a woman above his station, especially his boss’s wife, that he overlooked the qualities of true-blue, earnest women around him.
Huppert eagerly accepted the part, not only to make further inroads in American films, but it was a refreshingly fun and glamourous role after her string of playing depressed victims. She enjoyed the bitchy, femme fatale homage, channeling Lauren Bacall and Bette Davis for her portrayal. She viewed the character as externally driven but internally weak and selfish because she doesn’t want to give up the life of creature comforts that being married to a wealthy and powerful man afforded her. She serves as the allure to Terry to step further into the world of doing things for selfish reasons, something he later learns to regret.
Meanwhile, the role of Chris Henderson, the serial murderer, went to a stage actor from Richmond, Virginia, Brad Greenquist, who was also cast against type. Greenquist is known to be a very nice guy outside of the role but found his inner evil by studying various characters in plays by Shakespeare. He has only two lines in the script, so there wasn’t much to rehearse for how to play the part. However, he was able to steel his character through his silent scenes with help from Shakespeare’s Richard III and Edmund from “King Lear”. He acted more with his eyes and mouth to evoke what he was thinking.
The production was challenging for the cast and crew. The weather for the Baltimore shoot did prove unpredictable. Excessive wind and/or rain caused sudden rearrangements in the schedule. Actors and crew scrambled to prepare an interior scene on rainy days. Martha Schumacher, Dino’s wife, was the line producer, and both of them wanted to stay under the proposed $8 million budget and to work fast to stay on schedule. The first casualty was the camera crew, fired within the first week of filming and replaced De Laurentiis’s team from Rome. Unfortunately, they didn’t speak English and weren’t prepped with Hanson’s instructions. Adding further confusion, they worked from scripts Dino had translated into Italian.
Hanson, whose demeanor was always even-tempered, methodical, and patient, kept his composure throughout all changes except for one thing: he wanted to replace his Dino-assigned Italian cinematographer with Gil Taylor, someone Hanson worked with in his prior film, Losin’ It. Taylor was a veteran at the helm. Not only did he shoot big films like Star Wars and Dr. Strangelove, but he had experience in thrillers for Roman Polanski, including Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac, and also worked with Alfred Hitchcock himself for 1972’s Frenzy. Even detractors of The Bedroom Window concede that it’s handsomely photographed.
Nevertheless, Americans in the crew were constantly being replaced by Italians. Penny-pinching Dino also threatened to replace Hanson if the film fell behind schedule. The Americans used a sketch pad and hand gestures to communicate what was needed, at least until they developed some verbal shorthand. Eventually, the assistant director quit, causing Hanson and Guttenberg to perform his function until a new one could be brought in. Hanson alleviated the tension with humor and laughter.
Meanwhile, many dalliances began between members of the production, including Guttenberg, who had an affair with an equipment driver.
Although it contains the “innocent man accused” Hitchcock trope, Hanson emphasized that his protagonist isn’t so innocent. He wants to do the right thing but does it in all the wrong ways because he’s trying to cover up something of his own, and he’s even willing to break the law and lie under oath to stop the person he feels is responsible. Hanson felt it was foolish to try to one-up Hitchcock. He also wanted the picture to stand on its own rather than seem like a genre tribute, or worse, a rip-off. He despised films that exist only as a nostalgic nod to earlier films. In addition to nods to Hitchcock, there’s also an homage to the father of the American mystery, Edgar Allan Poe, who spent the latter part of his life in Baltimore. A fictitious neon-decorated brick mason bar named “Edgar’s” was created that featured his visage and quotes.
In addition to the production problems, there were a few snags for the actors to play certain scenes. Here’s where it helped to have Towne oversee the project; he stepped in as writer to smooth out the rougher parts of the script so the actors could get through it. Hanson enjoyed Guttenberg’s intuitive approach to acting, going all in on what he felt would work at the moment. Huppert and McGovern are more methodical, preferring that their motivations and actions be planned out prior to each scene. Dino, though, kept urging Guttenberg to be as funny and upbeat as he seemed in the Police Academy movies because he seemed too serious. Even though it was a thriller, Dino wanted to sell the movie, which meant a charming lead performance.
The release date was postponed from November to January because DEG felt they’d play longer in better theaters without getting muscled out by big Christmas releases. Instead of getting squeezed out of theaters in two weeks, it could play for six or seven. Meanwhile, they weren’t sure yet how it might be perceived first – as a comedy, thriller, or romance. They performed test screenings and so many of the preview cards mentioned loved the Hitchcockian plot, so they emphasized Hitchcock in their ads.
Unfortunately, the gamble didn’t quite pay off, as The Bedroom Window finished in seventh place on its opening weekend, struggling against surprisingly popular Christmas releases, falling out of most theaters after a month, earning just over $12 million. Reviews were mixed, but female critics lauded the female character for taking control of her situation.
This early Curtis Hanson attempt to rekindle the Hitchcockian thriller works well, even without vaunted Hitchcock stars like Cary Grant or Ingrid Bergman to elevate it. Steve Guttenberg, known primarily for lowbrow comedies, acquits himself quite well in a straight dramatic role. While you won’t see anything in his performance to suggest an Oscar-worthy talent, he does manage to exude a sense of charm and romantic hero that translates well into a more subtle performance, and we identify with his plight. Unlike other imitators. Hanson doesn’t copy Hitchcock’s stylish camerawork so much as tap into the “innocent man accused” storylines Hitchcock employed throughout his career.
It falters somewhat in the second half, beginning its slide with a meeting in an opera house that is contrived and absurd. The romantic consummation between Terry and Denise feels abbreviated and forced and lacks requisite passion. The film’s final act, in which Denise exposes the killer to the cops, strains credibility and wouldn’t actually exonerate Terry from suspicion. De Palma did better with this plot device in Blowout, another Hitchcockian homage that actually builds on being more, rather than being content in just rehashing for genre fans.
The Bedroom Window may have flaws, but it doesn’t lose your attention, even when it dips in plausibility. In addition to the aforementioned surprising turn by Guttenberg, it features alluring performances by a younger Isabelle Huppert as the French mistress, and an earthy, but still sexy companion played well by McGovern. While it may never remotely come close to rivaling Hitchcock, for a more modern twist on a classic formula, The Bedroom Window is worth looking into.
- In 2009, Kevin Williamson announced he was scripting a remake of The Bedroom Window to be released between the fourth and fifth Scream movies for Outerbanks Entertainment. Williamson wanted to incorporate more from the Anne Holden novel that Hanson left out of his version. It languished in development secrecy until 2014 when it was announced that Kaley Cuoco would be playing Denise and Christian Nicolae as Terry.
- In 2017, a gender-reversed thriller of a similar vein was released called Never Here. Its writer-director admitted to seeing the Hanson film as a kid and that it subconsciously may have inspired her film, but not intentionally.
- In 2019, Studiocanal and Blumhouse announced The Bedroom Window in development, with Ben Young writing and directing.
- In 2021, Studiocanal collaborated with The Picture Company to develop The Bedroom Window from a script by Abby Ajayi. Ajayi said her take would be female-driven and look at issues like gender dynamics and male aggression.
Qwipster’s rating: B
MPAA Rated: R for nudity, sexuality, violence, and language
Running time: 112 min.
Cast: Steve Guttenberg, Elizabeth McGovern, Isabelle Huppert, Paul Shenar, Carl Lumbly, Wallace Shawn, Frederick Coffin, Brad Greenquist, Maury Chaykin
Director: Curtis Hanson
Screenplay: Curtis Hanson (based on the novel, “The Witnesses”, by Anne Holden)