I was tempted to start this review by saying that, if you’ve seen The Bonfire of The Vanities and you wanted to know how such a film filled with so much talent could have been such a misfire, you need to read Julie Salomon’s The Devil’s Candy. First published in 1992, the book follows the making of The Bonfire of Vanities, from casting to pre-production to filming to post-production to box office failure. The Devil’s Candy is considered to be a classic of behind-the-scenes Hollywood reporting.
But you know what? If you watched The Bonfire of the Vanities recently, you probably did so because you read Salomon’s book. This is a good example where the making-of book has actually had a longer pop cultural shelf life than the movie itself. As a movie, The Bonfire of the Vanities is one of those things that you start to forget even while you’re watching it. But I can guarantee that anyone who has read The Devil’s Candy can remember the moment when Bruce Willis felt that a scene was moving too slowly and he proceeded to usurp Brian De Palma’s role as director.
If you’ve read the book, you undoubtedly remembering everyone feeling that Uma Thurman was the perfect choice for the role of Maria, with the exception of Tom Hanks who felt their chemistry at the audition was off. For that matter, you probably also remember that Hanks read with Lena Olin and Lolita Davidovich before Melanie Griffith was given the role.
If you’ve read the book, you remember how frustrated Brian De Palma got with having to try to keep both the studios and the neighborhood activists happy. You remember costume designer Ann Roth’s frustration with extras who didn’t show up properly dressed. You remember the streetwise New York Judge Burton Roberts auditioning for the role of a character that was based on him, just for the character to then be so massively rewritten that the role ended up going to Morgan Freeman. You remember Geraldo Rivera showing up to shoot a cameo and acting like a diva. You remember the studio execs showing up on set and getting in the way. You remember the struggle to get the perfect shot of an airplane landing. You remember poor Beth Broderick, dating De Palma and trying to retain some semblance of dignity while doing take-after-take of the film’s most gratuitous scene. You remember Steven Spielberg showing up and worrying that De Palma’s film is too sharp in its satire….
(Of course, in the end, the main problem with the film version of The Bonfire of the Vanities is that the satire isn’t sharp at all.)
Indeed, the book is full of famous people, few of whom come across particularly well. Bruce Willis, in particular, is portrayed as being full of himself and Salomon’s comments about him do occasionally feel as if they’ve crossed the line from reporting to some sort of personal animosity. (That said, it should be noted that Salomon does point out that a lot of Willis’s attitude was the result of suddenly becoming a star and no longer knowing who he could trust.) Tom Hanks comes across as being genuinely nice but also genuinely in over his head. The book’s most tragic figure is Brian De Palma, the natural-born rebel who found himself suddenly working for a studio that feared even the least bit of subversion. De Palma starts the book needing a hit and, regardless of the many mistakes that De Palma makes while directing The Bonfire of the Vanities, it’s hard not to feel bad that the book ended with De Palma not getting that hit. If De Palma other flops were at least films that stayed true to his vision, De Palma’s most infamous flop was the one in which he allowed the studio too much control.
Reading the book, one gets the feeling that everyone understood that they were making a fatally compromised film from the beginning. If you’ve ever wondered how a bad film can be made by talented people, this is the book to read.
Through the Shattered Lens 