Year1987
Decade1980s
DirectorJohn Flynn
CinematographerFred Murphy
Genre Action
Keywords1980s action
StudioOrion; Hemdale Films
Aspect Ratio1.85
Format – 35mm with spherical lenses

The Movie
A cop turned true crime novelist (Brian Dennehy) suffering from writer’s block reluctantly agrees to pen a hit man’s memoir. Based on a script by Larry Cohen – a master of the high concept genre film who ventures into Michael Mann thin-line-between-cop-and-crook territory here. It’s a rare chance to see Dennehy in a lead role and a not-so-rare chance to see James Woods play an intense psychopath as the assassin. Not quite on par with director John Flynn’s best work in the 1970s – namely The Outfit and Rolling Thunder – but Flynn is always good for a taut set piece, with Best Seller‘s highlight coming in the opening scene as robbers adorned in Nixon masks knock over a Los Angeles police evidence depository.

Here’s Flynn on the film, from Harvey F. Chartrand’s interview with the director in the Fall 2005 issue of Shock Cinema:

“I rewrote the script. The Writers Guild adjudicated against me and I received no credit, as they decided I hadn’t written at least 51% of the script. Once Larry Cohen and I overcame that conflict, we became good friends and he sent me other scripts over the years.

The original story was called Hard Cover. We changed the title to Best Seller in post-production, as Hard Cover didn’t test well with preview audiences. Then a woman sued us all – me, Larry Cohen, James Woods and producer Carter DeHaven. This woman claimed we had stolen the plot of a book she wrote called Best Seller. We went on to prove that this could not be the case, because Larry Cohen had submitted a treatment to Columbia prior to the copyright of (her) book. It’s amazing, though, because there were plot similarities. Her book was about a killer who writes a best seller incriminating the people who hired him. Turns out this lady didn’t want money. She asked for a three-picture deal with Hemdale Films. (laughs)”

And here’s Cohen, from Michael Doyle’s 2016 book Larry Cohen: The Stuff of Gods and Monsters:

“I thought it was partially successful as a movie. Best Seller took about seven or eight years to finally get made. The project kept moving from one company to another without getting produced, which was very frustrating as I thought it was a good script. Then, Orion Pictures eventually bought it and made the film. Best Seller was an idea I had about a police detective, who writes a book that becomes hugely successful. Unfortunately, he is afflicted with writer’s block and can’t follow up his initial success with another book. He is desperate to find something to write about and satisfy his publishers when he is approached by a professional killer who wants his life-story as a paid assassin to be written. The cop and the hitman then form an uneasy alliance, and in that regard, I thought Best Seller shared certain similarities with Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. In both of those movies you have two men who come to some kind of dangerous arrangement. I initially thought that Best Seller would make a terrific project for Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, that’s who I really had in mind when I first wrote it. Despite that, we ended up with a good cast anyway. Brian Dennehy played the cop and James Woods played the hitman, and I thought they were both good. I certainly had no complaints about those guys. The picture itself turned out to be pretty good with one glaring exception: the ending. Everything was going along great but then, in the last five minutes, they fucked up the whole movie. That is what I mean when I say it was only partially successful.”


Frame Group #1


Frame Group #2


Frame Group #3


Frame Group #4 (*****SPOILERS*****)


Scene Breakdowns

The aforementioned opening heist scene.

Runtime – 5:27
Shots – 106
Avg. Shot Length – 3.1 seconds


In Best Seller’s second scene, Dennehy and a fellow cop chase down a pair of diamond smugglers on the docks in L.A.

Runtime – 3:26
Shots – 88
Avg. Shot Length – 2.3 seconds


Posters


Leave a comment