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Cutter's Way is a 1981 American neo-noir thriller film directed by Ivan Passer, and starring Jeff Bridges, John Heard, and Lisa Eichhorn. It is adapted by Jeffrey Alan Fiskin from…
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Cutter's Way (originally titled Cutter and Bone) is a 1981 American neo-noir thriller film directed by Ivan Passer, and starring Jeff Bridges, John Heard, and Lisa Eichhorn. It is adapted by Jeffrey Alan Fiskin from the 1976 novel Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg.
Cutter's Way is a 1981 American neo-noir thriller film directed by Ivan Passer, and starring Jeff Bridges, John Heard, and Lisa Eichhorn. It is adapted by Jeffrey Alan Fiskin from the 1976 novel Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg. The musical score was written by Jack Nitzsche. In the film, Vietnam veteran Alex Cutter and his friend Richard Bone are embroiled in a murder investigation, after Cutter suspects that Bone was a witness.
Cutter's Way (originally titled Cutter and Bone) is a 1981 American neo-noir thriller film directed by Ivan Passer, and starring Jeff Bridges, John Heard, and Lisa Eichhorn. It is adapted by Jeffrey Alan Fiskin from the 1976 novel Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg. The musical score was written by Jack Nitzsche. In the film, Vietnam veteran Alex Cutter and his friend Richard Bone are embroiled in a murder investigation, after Cutter suspects that Bone was a witness.
The film was released by United Artists on March 20, 1981. Despite widespread positive reviews, the film was a commercial failure, with Passer blaming the studio for failing to adequately promote it. In the years since, Cutter's Way has developed a cult following.
One rainy night in Santa Barbara, California, after leaving the El Encanto Hotel, Richard Bone's car breaks down on a side road. He sees a large car draw up a little way behind him. A man throws something into a garbage can. At first, Bone thinks nothing of it and proceeds to meet his best friend, Vietnam veteran Alex Cutter, at a bar. The following day, a young girl is found murdered in a garbage can, and Bone becomes a suspect.
At Santa Barbara's “Old Spanish Days” parade, Bone sees local tycoon J.J. Cord, whom he believes is the man he saw at the garbage can. Cutter begins to take an interest in the case. His interest soon becomes a conspiracy theory that develops into an investigation with a skeptical Bone and Valerie, the dead girl's sister, along for the ride. After Cutter attempts to blackmail Cord as a way of making Cord incriminate himself, Cutter's house mysteriously burns down with his wife, Mo, inside.
After the fire destroys Cutter's house, he becomes convinced that Cord had been trying to kill Bone. George, who considers Cord a friend and mentor, warns Bone that Cutter is putting himself in danger and should leave Cord alone. Now homeless, Cutter stays in George's guesthouse, where he researches Cord. He concludes that Cord was responsible for the death of George's father years earlier in order to gain control of the marina, and that Cord later paid for George's education and helped establish his business to maintain influence over him.
Source: Cutter's Way (CC BY-SA)
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Cutter takes an invitation George received to a party at Cord's house and gets Bone to drive him there. When Cutter tells Bone that he plans to kill Cord and heads toward the house, Bone follows him in an attempt to stop him. After being chased by security guards, Bone winds up in Cord's office. Cord suggests that Cutter's war experience has made him paranoid. After stealing one of Cord's horses, Cutter suddenly crashes through the window on horseback. As Cutter lies dying from his injuries, Bone accuses Cord of killing the girl, and Cord responds ambiguously. Bone steadies Cutter's gun in Cutter's hand and fires as the film cuts to black.
Credits from the AFI Catalog of Feature Films.
A friend of Jeffrey Alan Fiskin had Fiskin send a screenplay to Paul Gurian, a would-be film producer. Gurian eventually informed Fiskin that he had bought the rights to the novel Cutter and Bone, and wanted to meet with Fiskin in Los Angeles. Fiskin, who had little money, stole a copy of the book to read. In a 1981 interview, he said of the novel "The set-up's great, the characters are fine. But the last half of the book is an instant replay of Easy Rider. You cannot make a film out of this." Gurian agreed and hired Fiskin to write the screenplay. Gurian arranged for the studio EMI to back the film financially, with Robert Mulligan to direct and Dustin Hoffman to play Alex Cutter. A scheduling conflict forced Hoffman to leave the project, that prompted Mulligan to leave as well and EMI to pull its money.
Gurian took the film to United Artists, where the studio's vice president, David Field, became interested in backing it. Gurian gave Fiskin a list of directors; Ivan Passer's name was the only one the screenwriter did not recognize. Fiskin and United Artists executives screened Passer's Intimate Lighting and agreed he was the man to direct Cutter and Bone. Passer was involved with another film, but after reading Fiskin's script, chose to do Cutter and Bone instead .
The initial budget was $3.3 million, but Field learned that United Artists would produce the movie only if the budget was $3 million and a star joined the cast. The studio liked Jeff Bridges' work in the dailies for Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate and insisted on him for Cutter and Bone. Passer cast John Heard after seeing him in a Joseph Papp Shakespeare in the Park production of Othello. The studio wanted a star, but the director insisted on Heard. Lisa Eichhorn was cast as Mo after she auditioned with Bridges.
United Artists did not like the ambiguity in what was then titled Cutter and Bone. When UA executives David Field and Claire Townsend, the film's biggest supporters, left for 20th Century Fox, the studio felt that they would get no credit if the film succeeded and no responsibility if it failed and so there was no interest in it. Cutter and Bone became a victim of internal politics. UA senior domestic sales and marketing vice president Jerry Esbin saw the film and decided that it did not have any commercial possibilities. Passer did not see his film with a paying audience until the Houston International Film Festival many weeks later. He said in an interview, "They didn't do any research. I was supposed to have two previews with a paying audience. It was in my contract."
United Artists spent a meager $63,000 on promotion for the film's release in New York City in late March 1981. The three daily papers and the three major network critics gave Cutter and Bone negative reviews. Vincent Canby in The New York Times wrote "[I]t's the sort of picture that never wants to concede what it's about. It is, however, enchanted by the sound of its own dialogue, which is vivid without being informative or even amusing on any level." The studio was so shocked by the negative reviews th
