A Die-Hard Dreamer

Bruce Willis gets as much as $20 million to star in a mainstream studio movie, and lately he’s starred in several: Disney’s “Armageddon,” Universal’s “Mercury Rising” and 20th Century Fox’s upcoming “The Siege,” just to name this year’s crop.

So why would Willis appear in a quirky film for next to no money?

Hollywood insiders are closely tracking the progress of just such a project: “Breakfast of Champions,” the movie adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s 1973 novel. The project is Willis’ baby. His company, Rational Packaging, bought the rights to the book. He, with the help of his agents at the William Morris Agency, raised the independent financing to make the film. He is working for--and betting on--himself, and it seems to agree with him.

“This film is kind of outside the Hollywood box,” admitted Willis, who invested a chunk of his own money in the project, budgeted in the $12-million range. “But every once in a while I’ve got to satisfy myself. I can count on one hand and not use my thumb the number of films in the last couple of years that I looked forward to going to work every day.”

Big stars have tried before to exercise more control over their work, usually by becoming directors of studio films. (Think Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson or Barbra Streisand.) Willis has gone a step further, omitting the studio altogether. He owns the negative of the film, so along with the movie’s writer-director--indie film veteran Alan Rudolph--he enjoys complete creative control. And when North American distribution rights go on the auction block later this month, Willis stands to make a killing.

“This sets a precedent,” said Arnold Rifkin, president of the William Morris Agency and Willis’ longtime agent, referring to the superstar’s central role in guaranteeing the movie’s unusual financing. While a few producers and directors have financed films this way, “no important American movie star has ever done this, putting his name on the line. . . . The risk is that we could be wrong. The bet is that we’re right.”

Timing will work in Willis’ favor. Particularly after the huge success of “Armageddon,” which has grossed $198 million domestically to date, movie studios want to solidify their relationships with Willis. Whether “Breakfast of Champions” is any good or not, said one observer, “people will pay up to be in the Bruce Willis art movie business so they can be in the Bruce Willis action business.”

He’s a Car Dealer at Very Loose Ends

In the film, which combines gallows humor and an oddball sensibility, Willis plays Dwayne Hoover, a wealthy Midwestern car dealer who is losing his mind. Nick Nolte plays Hoover’s associate, Harry LeSabre; Barbara Hershey plays Hoover’s wife; and Albert Finney plays Kilgore Trout, the unmotivated science-fiction writer (and recurring Vonnegut character) whose work helps drive Hoover mad. The movie is unlikely to open in theaters before next year.

Willis calls the film “some of my most bizarre work” and says he is proud of the cast, which also includes Omar Epps, Glenne Headly and Will Patton. All of them worked for scale, with several key players getting a percentage of the back-end profit as well.

“It’s one of the most baffling performances I’ve ever worked on. Everybody stretched themselves in really good ways,” said Willis, speaking from the Philadelphia set of Buena Vista Pictures’ “The Sixth Sense.” “Some films that are considered by studios more ‘literate’ in nature may not get the opportunity to be exposed to the public. I think this film needed to be made.”

The tale of how, exactly, “Breakfast of Champions” got made began long before the cast and crew gathered in Twin Falls, Idaho, an hour south of Willis’ private ranch, to start shooting last February.

Rudolph says he wrote the original script 20 years ago and has been tinkering with it ever since. As recently as 1993, Willis and Rudolph (who had made the 1991 film “Mortal Thoughts” and were eager to team up again) set out to try to get the film made. But a combination of scheduling, financing and script problems intervened.

“The people who financed these movies didn’t know what to make of it,” Rudolph said.

Then, last year, Willis put it to his agent, Rifkin: He wanted to do Vonnegut now, not later.

“The last action picture I did was ‘Mercury Rising,’ ” Willis said, explaining the frustration that led him to venture into the independent filmmaking world. “After I saw that film, my brother turned to me and said, ‘Every action sequence in that movie was derivative of at least three films you’ve already done.’ A bell rang in my head and I said, ‘I’ve got to do some movies without a gun in my hand.’ ”

Willis didn’t just want to act in “Breakfast of Champions” (as he had in previous non-action films like “In Country,” “Pulp Fiction” and “Nobody’s Fool”). He wanted to own it. And that’s where things got challenging.

Rifkin not only wanted to oblige Willis, his client of 15 years, but he also saw a chance to build William Morris’ reputation as a full-service agency. He assigned his independent film division, now called WMA Independent, to make Willis’ dreams come true. Neil Friedman, then an agent there, was chosen to design a plan to bankroll the project.

Friedman is a whiz at international film financing, having raised the money to make 15 movies during his five years as the chief operating officer at the Edward R. Pressman Film Corp. He devised a way to sell the film’s foreign distribution rights in advance to Summit Entertainment, covering that commitment with a loan from Imperial Bank. The deal fully financed the film while leaving Willis and his collaborators with control of North American distribution rights.

Typically when a movie studio makes a film, at least 50% of any profits go to the studio for its role as the movie’s financier, with the remaining back-end monies being shared by only those stars and directors who have enough clout to demand a cut. Under Friedman’s financing blueprint, the cast, director and producers of “Breakfast of Champions” would share in 100% of the spoils. There would be no equity partner to pay.

The deal included another unusual detail: Even before the bank note closed, Imperial put up money to pay for location scouting, hiring a production designer and opening an office--the kinds of expenses that usually are covered by a studio.

“Based on the high caliber of people involved in this project, we were comfortable putting up pre-production money,” said Jared Underwood, the bank’s senior vice president.

Friedman, who has since left the agency and opened his own management firm, Menemsha Entertainment, called the deal “the optimum situation: 100% creative and financial control to the filmmakers. We financed it by selling half the world. When the other half of the world is sold, it’ll put the movie in profit from the get-go. That’s very unique.”

Rudolph said the financing arrangement allowed he and Willis to “set a new standard: Making a film to our satisfaction first, and then seeing who is interested [in buying it]. This is the future. If Bruce Willis or whoever else is in his league--Mel Gibson, Tom Hanks--want to make a movie, it may behoove them now to snap their fingers and own it.”

David Blocker, Rudolph’s longtime producing partner, agreed.

“It’s a bold attempt by an agency to allow its stars to do what they want to do,” he said. “There’s never been a more independent film made.”

Some Advantages of Independence

Independence has a lot of advantages, several of which have yet to be exercised. For example, if more than one buyer bids for the North American rights, Willis will be able to influence how the movie is marketed by selling to the studio whose campaign he likes best.

“This movie is outside the conventional wisdom,” Willis said. “It’s going to take a studio that has a little

bit more farsightedness to say, ‘We need a different kind of marketing than what you normally see.’ ”

While the buzz on the film is good (Nolte particularly is said to be superb), some studio executives are scratching their heads about William Morris’ decision to unveil the film in England. Cassian Elwes, the head of WMA Independent and the agency’s expert on auctioning indies, has arranged for “Breakfast of Champions” to screen for the first time on Oct. 29 during the so-called London Screenings, an informal film market that rarely draws the studios’ top brass.

If You Show It, They Will Come

“It’s foolish to show this picture in London,” said one executive. “Given that you have a star with whom all studios have or want to have a relationship, you want to screen it for [studio chiefs] Joe Roth, Sherry Lansing, Bill Mechanic, John Calley. And they won’t be there.”

Elwes flatly disagrees, saying that the last thing he wanted was to show the film to a few executives at a time.

“I want everyone to see this at once,” Elwes said. “I believe this film is such a success that you could show it in Timbuktu and it would be a major event.”

Willis agrees, saying that the London screening “kind of levels the playing field. Whoever really likes this movie is going to get it.”

Whatever the reaction to “Breakfast of Champions,” Willis said, he is determined to make more films under his own banner.

“I had a great time making this film,” he said, adding that Rudolph is currently writing another script that he’d love to produce. Rudolph said he has warned Willis that the idea may not be easy to sell to a studio.

Willis’ reply, according to Rudolph: “Don’t worry about that.”