At the height of his powers in Hollywood in the early 2000s, Will Smith made a change.
After gaining fame as a Grammy-winning hip-hop artist in the late 1980s, Smith added TV star and then movie star to his résumé with the iconic 1990s series “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and a string of box-office hits like “Bad Boys” (1995), “Independence Day,” (1996) and “Men in Black” (1997).
After receiving mixed reaction to his 2004 release “I, Robot,” Smith recalibrated by turning to a genre he’d never done before: the romantic comedy.
With a cast that also included “The King of Queens” star Kevin James and Eva Mendes, and director Andy Tennant fresh off another successful rom-com, 2002’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” the movie that would become “Hitch” had the makings of a hit. The story of Alex “Hitch” Hitchens (Smith), who helps men land dates with the women of their dreams, debuted over Valentine’s Day weekend in 2005 with the biggest opening weekend ever for a rom-com at the time. It would go on to earn over $371 million worldwide.
Still, the movie’s path to becoming a beloved rom-com was far bumpier than it appeared, the film’s director said. Tennant told Business Insider that creative battles behind the scenes defined his working relationship with Smith.
“I didn’t want cheap jokes, but he didn’t trust me,” Tennant recalled. While a few on-set headaches ended up yielding some of the movie’s best moments — one iconic scene was written on the spot at Smith’s last-minute request — Tennant left filming feeling defeated.
“I swear to god, when we wrapped that movie, I called my wife and said, ‘I’ve just ruined my career, and I’ve ruined Will Smith’s career,'” he said.
Reps for Smith did not respond to requests for comment from BI.
When he returned from a much-needed vacation, Tennant was surprised to learn that the movie was indeed workable — and maybe even good.
“I turned on my phone expecting a disaster and literally my editors, my brilliant editors who I’ve worked with for 30 years, they said, ‘You’re not going to believe this, this movie is hilarious,'” Tennant said. “I think I started crying.”
For the movie’s 20th anniversary, Tennant broke down the rocky road to making “Hitch,” from how they saved the movie’s Ellis Island scene to how Smith pulled some strings to ensure songs from Usher and Heavy D made it into the film.
Tennant thought he was going to be fired before filming began, and he said Will Smith almost pulled out of shooting
Did you have something lined up after the hit film, “Sweet Home Alabama”?
I was developing a movie, and I had just heard that Jennifer Aniston had passed. I was heartbroken. I thought, I can’t get a movie made even after “Sweet Home.” I went to the gym, and I ran into Teddy Zee, who was an executive at Columbia at the time. He was bummed out because he just lost a director on a movie called “The Last First Kiss.”
So he and I were commiserating, and he said, “I’m going to send you a script tonight. Read it tonight.” I read it, and the next day, I went to meet with Will. That was the beginning of “Hitch.” But, like a lot of scripts, it needed a whole lot of work, but the concept was great.
Were you curious why Will wanted to do a rom-com?
He’s an incredible businessman, and he knew that there were places around the world where he wanted to open up his brand and do more. I think one of the reasons Will did the movie was because when we were making it in 2004 the studio said to him that romantic comedies with Black leads don’t travel well overseas. That was the reason why Will wanted to do it. He wanted to break that barrier.
What was it like evolving the Hitch character alongside Will?
The original script was a date doctor. “No matter who, what, when, a man can sweep any woman off her feet; he just needs the right broom.” I think that was the one line that we kept. Not to take anything away from Kevin Bisch — he wrote a solid movie that they decided to spend millions and millions of dollars making. So that in of itself, and the fact that he got sole credit, is because the idea was so strong.
I think my main contribution to the early conversations with Will was about Hitch not being a misogynist. That whole line about, “Hit it and quit it, that’s not me.”
But we had our difficulties. The movie I wanted to make and the movie Will wanted to make neither one of those movies is as good as the movie we made together. It was a battle. [Smith’s wife] Jada [Pinkett Smith] was a big help. She kind of seconded some of my instincts. There was a time during prep when I was pushing back. A lot of crazy shit that was happening.
What is “crazy shit”?
Crazy story ideas. There was a draft that Will brought in that I was not a fan of. I finally told the studio that I was more afraid of Will making that version of the movie than I was about them firing me. Because I knew they were right on the edge of firing me before we even began shooting. And to Will’s credit, we didn’t go with that draft. I don’t think I was ever in anyone’s favor.
Did you wake up every day thinking this could be your last day on the movie?
No. This was all in prep. I think there was a lot of fear doing a big, expensive romantic comedy with Will. It was fraught with peril. Will tried to back out three days before we started shooting. He wanted to shut down and work on it some more. It was madness.
Once we started filming, it was a bunch of good creative people doing the best they could. There were some debates but there were things that turned out really funny. You keep all the really fun stuff you have a good movie, but it was a wild ride.
The doorstep scene between Will Smith and Kevin James was a last-minute addition filmed at Sarah Jessica Parker’s brownstone
How did the scene come together of Hitch showing Albert how to walk a woman to her door?
That scene was written by me and one of the producers that day — all day. And the reason was because the scene on that street was originally just three of four lines. We were then going to do a company move somewhere else.
That scene originally had Will and Kevin looking at the newspaper, “Tell me what this is?” “Oh, that’s just a little me being me.” “No, that’s a little you being something I never want to see again.” That was it.
But Will said, on the day we were shooting, “This is a great street. We should be doing something here.” So that starts at 6:30, 7 in the morning. Now, he’s right, but it’s also, “Uh-oh, there goes the schedule.” The chairman of Sony, Amy Pascal, was flying in to have dinner with us that night. Now we’re off the rails and we have to come up with something.
So we start talking, and somehow the conversation turns to, “In New York City, do you say goodbye to somebody at the bottom of the stairs, or do you walk someone to their door if it’s a brownstone?” That became a conversation, and then Will started saying stuff about the 90 and 10: a man goes 90% of the way, and the woman goes 10% on a first kiss. So we messed with that for a bit, and then someone came up with the keys jingling. Then Kevin was riffing on some stuff. It was all just an idea. And we didn’t have a location to shoot this. We didn’t have permission. We had nothing.
Will and I went to a brownstone we liked, walked up to the door, knocked on the door to see if we could get permission to shoot there, and it turned out to be Sarah Jessica Parker’s house. So she was like, “Hi!” And we were like, “Hi, can we shoot on your doorstep?” And she was like, “Ah, yeah.”
I wrote that scene with one of the producers three or four times, and at around 4 in the afternoon, Will was still worried about the scene. Kevin James told him, “It’s really funny. It’s going to be a good scene.” And thank god for Kevin, because he got Will to shoot it.
That scene is five and a half pages long, written on that day. It’s one of the best scenes in the movie. We shot a five-and-a-half-page scene in three hours and then went to dinner with Amy Pascal.
Will Smith needed some convincing to do the scene on Ellis Island
Was the Ellis Island sequence hard to come up with?
Oh my god. I should have taken a Xanax before this interview.
My writing partner Rick Parks and I wrote the Ellis Island scene because friends of mine who live in New York had never been out to Ellis Island. So we did the date at Ellis Island, the Jet Ski, the whole thing.
Will didn’t want to do it because he said Black people didn’t come through Ellis Island. I begged him to come out to Ellis Island so I could at least pitch it. It was me, Will, some of the production people, and Will’s producing partner, James Lassiter, who is his best friend. So I’m trying to save the sequence, and lo and behold, we find out that James’ family came through Ellis Island. So that’s why that scene is in the movie.
The way Rick and I wrote it was as a romantic scene. But Susannah Grant [who was hired on the movie as a script doctor] was in town on a day we were talking about the scene, and she was the one who said it should go horribly wrong. We started riffing on Hitch kicking Sara in the head and the Butcher of Cádiz, that all came from a fun afternoon lunch riff of what else we could do with that scene.
The other thing everyone was worried about was that Will can’t swim, so they didn’t want to put a $20 million movie star in the water. And Will was like, “No, just give me the life vest.”
My favorite bit about that whole thing is it’s almost like Eva pauses midair after Will kicks her before she hits the water. I have watched that scene a thousand times. I don’t understand how she was able to pause before going into the water.
Kevin James improvised all his moves during the dance sequence
How about Hitch teaching Albert how to dance? What do you remember from that?
That’s all Will. This was when we were on the same page about stuff. He and I went to Amy Pascal’s house with a new approach to some of the stuff we were thinking of doing. Will got up in front of Amy, and as we’re pitching all the new cool stuff that’s in the draft. Will got up and basically did the entire dance scene, but he had no idea what Kevin was going to do. So the day we shot the scene, that’s all Kevin.
You can see Will holding the remote over his mouth, trying not to laugh. He didn’t know what Kevin was going to do. None of us did. We couldn’t believe it. Kevin talking about “Making the pizza,” and then Will saying, “Don’t need no pizza, they got food there,” that was all ad-libbed.
The cherry on top of that sequence is the Usher song, “Yeah!”
Will is the only reason we got it. My editors put that music in, and then Will called Usher and got him to let us use the song.
The wedding ending was made up on the day
What do you recall from the wedding scene ending?
We knew we were going to do a wedding scene, but we didn’t have a scene. We had a bunch of extras and nothing. So I was asked to write something, and I laid down with a migraine, which I never had in my life. I was just out of ideas. And then I came up with it. I yelled out to the AD, “I need an 85-year-old woman!” And they found this wonderful extra and I wrote the scene of her choking to help Sara’s friend Casey find a man.
Then, the dancing was just letting everyone go loose. We just turned the camera on and let them go. Like Kevin sliding between Will’s legs and then doing the splits, that was all them. We started playing Heavy D’s “Now That We’ve Found Love.” Will called Heavy D to clear that for us, and they just kept coming up with shit, and we just did jump cut after jump cut of the best.
There could be a “Hitch” sequel, but Tennant isn’t involved
So, by the end of filming, had you and Will patched things up?
The last thing we shot were the flashback scenes. Will shaved his goatee; he loved it. He wanted to look like Steve Urkel. When we wrapped Will walked off the set, didn’t say goodbye to me, didn’t say anything, he just left. I think he felt the same way I did. He thought this movie is a disaster. We wrapped and it was depressing.
When we saw it for the first time, it was with a test screening in Vegas, and I had Will Smith to my left and Amy Pascal to my right, which was a horrifying place to be. The movie ends and the audience has completely embraced the movie. People were cheering when the movie ended.
Amy Pascal turned to me, and I’ll never forget this: she said, “You’re done. Box it and ship it.” That was our first and last test screening. We tested higher than any other movie they had at the time. It was nuts.
Was there ever talk of a sequel?
Oh yeah. I submitted a proposal for a sequel, which was quite fun, but I guess Will is developing a Hitch sequel without me. I just found out about it three months ago. I had a really good idea for a sequel, and I was talking to an executive at Sony, and he said Will’s production company is developing a sequel. Hey, that’s Hollywood.
I don’t have anything against Will. He hired me to make this movie. It was not an easy job for anybody, but we went around the world with the movie. Even the hard times he’d always say, “Wait until the junket. We’re gonna go around the world with this” — and we did, and it was great. It was the most amazing trip I had ever been on.
And when it was over, my time with Will was over. That was it. And I have never heard from him since.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Read the full article here
