The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) on Netflix
Wall Street bond trader Sherman McCoy drives back from the airport with his mistress, Maria Ruskin. In the South Bronx, two young men approach the car. Maria hits one and speeds away.
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Trailer
Plot summary
Sherman McCoy, a Wall Street bond trader, is riding back from JFK Airport with Maria Ruskin, his mistress. Their route goes wrong and leaves them in the South Bronx, where Sherman gets out to shift a tire lying in the road. Two young men, Henry Lamb and Roland Auburn, walk up to the car. Sherman climbs back inside, Maria reverses hard, and the car knocks Henry down before they leave the scene. Sherman is ready to call the police; Maria argues him out of it, afraid their affair will come out. Peter Fallow, a journalist with a drinking problem who needs a story, takes up the hit-and-run. He carries it to Abe Weiss, the Bronx District Attorney, who is running for re-election and wants a white defendant.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Mike Nichols, originally attached to direct, wanted Steve Martin for Sherman McCoy, but the studio thought him too old; Tom Wolfe wanted Chevy Chase, and Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise and Christopher Reeve were considered. De Palma offered Peter Fallow to Jack Nicholson and John Cleese, who declined, so the studio forced him to cast Bruce Willis.
- Walter Matthau was offered the role of Judge Myron Kovitsky but demanded a fee of $1 million, so the producers signed Alan Arkin for a modest $150,000. Arkin was then replaced by Morgan Freeman when the studio changed the judge's ethnicity from Jewish to African American, renaming him Leonard White.
- Second unit director Eric Schwab calculated the time and day when a runway at JFK Airport would line up exactly with the Empire State Building and the setting sun, then hired a Concorde from Air France and filmed it landing in the single 30-second window when this occurs each year. The five-camera shot cost $80,000 and lasted 10 seconds.
- F. Murray Abraham, who had a significant part in the film, chose not to be credited because of a contract dispute: when he was denied the billing above the title that he had requested, he took his name off the picture.
- De Palma said the initial concept was incorrect: the film needed to be a lot darker and more cynical, but because it was so expensive they tried to humanize the unlikable Sherman McCoy - possible on a low-budget movie, not a studio movie with Tom Hanks in it.
- A book on the production describes how De Palma had a difficult relationship with Willis, who in Salamon's words "was generally disliked by most of the cast and crew". During a scene in which Alan King's character Arthur Raskin dies, Willis challenged the crew to move faster, allegedly because it was very hot.
