The movie Jeff Bridges is proudest of: “It was filled with all kinds of emotions”
When an actor puts their heart and soul into a passion project, but it isn’t received how they’d like, it can be pretty devastating. Just ask Jeff Bridges, who was heartbroken when the first movie he produced vanished without a trace.
After first coming to stardom in the 1970s, Bridges spent most of the ‘80s making movies that later became cult hits, but didn’t exactly set the box office on fire, and films that were outright duds. However, by the end of the decade, lady luck finally shone on him, and in 1989, he starred in The Fabulous Baker Boys, which was nominated for four Academy Awards. Two years later, he was the co-lead in Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King, which the Academy also loved. Crucially, though, it also hit the culture, becoming Gilliam’s biggest commercial success up to that point.
Even though it was Robin Williams who emerged from that film with an Oscar nod, Bridges still came out smelling of roses. So much so, in fact, that he finally had the clout to bring a story he truly cared about to the screen from the ground up, and to this day, it’s one of his proudest achievements.
“I’m really proud of that movie,” he told Cigar Aficionado of 1992’s American Heart. “It was the first film I produced, and it was wonderful taking it through the full arc from beginning to end.”
These days, fans mostly know Bridges as the lovable stoner known as The Dude in The Big Lebowski and the hilariously ornery US Marshal Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. However, I’d wager very few have much conception of what American Heart is, let alone what it’s about. Indeed, when even the most die-hard Dude-head looks at the poster for the movie, which shows a shirtless Bridges staring soulfully at the ground, his boxer’s physique and long hair making him look like a leaner, meaner Eddie Vedder from the early Pearl Jam days, their sole reaction will be, “Huh?!”
In these fans’ defence, according to Bridges, it’s not their fault that the movie left such little impression on the masses. “The company that put up the money to make the film went bankrupt just as our film came out,” Bridges revealed, the pain obvious in his voice. “So, we had the experience of having our movie in the theatre with no money for prints or ads.”
Obviously, this made American Heart’s theatrical run an uphill battle from the get-go, as people need to know about something before it hits cinemas, otherwise it will come and go in a flash. “It was very, very tough,” Bridges confessed. “The result was that not too many people saw it.”
Over the years, Bridges could at least cling to the fact that more viewers caught on to American Heart when it hit VHS, but he acknowledged he was still “filled with all kinds of emotions and a lot of heartbreak” after the bungled release. It cut deep because he had believed that playing ex-con Jack Kelson, a man who initially rejects the burden of caring for the 14-year-old son he abandoned when he went inside, would resonate with audiences, especially as Kelson is redeemed over time by building a true bond with the boy.
The project was Bridges’ baby from the start, as he championed the script, which was heavily inspired by a real relationship in the documentary Streetwise, and even hired the same director, Martin Bell, to make the film. On top of that, he worked out like a demon to convincingly replicate the physique of a prisoner, and conducted intensive research with real-life criminal-turned-Hollywood advisor Edward Bunker, who would later star in Reservoir Dogs as Mr Blue.
In the end, these efforts paid off in the sense that the film received glowing reviews, but after the debacle of the release, when Janet Maslin of The New York Times crowned Bridges “the most underappreciated great actor of his generation”, it was little more than cold comfort.
