1990’s Bird on a Wire – On Chemistry and The Best Action Scene You’ve Never Seen
Chemistry
Roger Ebert, in his review for director John Badham’s Bird on a Wire, said any spectacle therein was an affectation, an unearned reward because we don’t believe the characters. Now with many decades of hindsight, he may have underestimated the chemistry between leads Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn.
On his two leading stars, Badham said, “They were perfect together the moment they were in the same room.”
Chemistry will get you far in cinema. And yet today filmmakers seem to underestimate the requirements of leads, both romantic and not, to have it. It’s also a safe bet that the great screen duos have chemistry of the natural variety – that is, by Badham’s own admission, “All I had to do was stay out of their way and enjoy the fireworks. Easiest job I ever had.” If a director is doing their job right, the hard work is done in casting, and the rest is staying out of their way.
Mel Gibson is something of a lightning rod for his co-stars, able to bring out a type of rapid, lived-in performance from his peers as if they’ve known each other for years rather than weeks. As often as the Lethal Weapon formula has been rehashed ad nauseam, what is always missing is the chemistry between its co-stars. Bad imitations of such relationships always feel like the characters are strangers playing friends, an invisible distance so obvious that even a willing audience can’t suspend its disbelief. We’re left alone and stranded, aware of the sad facade.
Bird on a Wire has some ludicrous moments (even by early 90s standards) but when Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn are together, everything somehow is more acceptable, even when it isn’t. Hawn plays an uber-successful lawyer who is horribly reduced to a clueless damsel in distress so swiftly, you actually forget she is supposed to be a outstanding legal professional. She so quickly descends into the type of screaming companion, whose key trait is the complain on the absence of her common luxuries, that one forgets she’s could probably solve all their financial problems with a single phone call. And yet – amazingly – with all her stereotypical gender baggage to carry, she still managers to craft an incredibly likable, fun and aloof character. She’s playful in such a self-aware way, its impossible not to see her full understanding of the type of movie she is in – she’s way ahead in knowing that her character is silly, so she plays the music impeccably as it is written.
On the other hand, Mel Gibson is so natural an on-screen presence that even if character Rick Jarmin is a walking action hero cliché, Gibson fits the role so well the bumbling screenplay can’t contain his charisma. And so together, Hawn and Gibson just sizzle in a way we rarely see today. Their interpersonal heat is so in sync, they even manage to elevate this story to a quality it doesn’t even deserve – in their one sex scene in a crummy motel, it’s almost a relief to see them sleep together, whereas in other formulaic copies, the sex is simply a dull signpost on the way to the credits. But in Bird on a Wire, the sex scene is almost an ending on itself.
Reading the reviews of it in 1990 are fun – it was NOT well received. Owen Gleiberman at EW said, “It would be hard to name another movie at once so proficient and so dull.” LA Times said “If they were actual humans, we might be forced to wince at their pain. As it is, we just wince at the movie.” Now with many decades hindsight, I’ll try and defend the movie somewhat. I feel there’s a place to remember fondly this mediocre, action comedy solely because it is elevated significantly the chemistry of it’s leads and because it contains one of the best action set-pieces of the 1990s.
It has the type of chemistry so sorely missing from modern action-comedy equivalents. I’m looking at a movie like Jungle Cruise and bemoaning its staggering lack of connection between it’s two actors (or Dwayne Johnson with anyone). The scale is there, the visuals are there, but a lack of genuine human spark leaves the experience oh so hollow. We watch, distracted by jokes, explosions, set-pieces and cameos, but we instinctively know something is missing, the one thing that brings separate scenes of chaos together. I feel Bird on a Wire is almost a litmus test for how chemistry can make a movie better than it has any right to be – and it’s the director’s job to get out of the way of that magic relationship.
I would go as far to say the Jungle Cruise script is structured better than Bird on a Wire, whose script is whiny and full of gender cliches worthy of a good eye roll. Take the scene where Gibson and Hawn’s characters travel to meet an old flame of Gibson’s at a veterinary farm (the world’s cleanest veterinarian farm mind you) and Hawn’s character rages with jealously and faints at the slightest sign of blood – it’s all a typical, rich-city-girl can’t handle the ruff and tumble life of the country bit. Yawn. The movie all but forgets her clear intelligence for a scene of cheap laughs – and yet, Goldie Hawn is still intensely likeable. She is objectified multiple times in the movie, and yet she can’t ever be reduced to just a sex-object.
The movie was even so aware of the marketability of its chemistry that the poster billed them as Mel & Goldie. Now it’s hard to imagine a modern movie studio choosing such a strategy for an original action film. Even when drowning in mediocrity, chemistry will take you far.
The Best Action Scene You’ve Never Seen
The only other possible defense for Bird on a Wire is its third act, which has an outstanding action set-piece worthy of any 90s classic. Set in a zoo, it’s gives Rick Jarmin (Gibson) a chance to finally dispatch the antagonists in suitably creative ways – Tigers! Lion! Piranhas! Electrocution! It helps that the zoo is one of the most irresponsibly designed zoos imaginable – instead of a normal outdoor space of holding pens, we are treated to a completely indoor space that doesn’t seem to have any dividing walls at all. It feels so much like a movie set that it never remotely feels like a real zoo, the whole space designed by Philip Harrison to give you that ‘wow’ factor a normal zoo never could.
Whilst in the Zoo control room, Jarmin turns on the indoor lights, and we’re treated to a wide-shot of the entire space as the walk-ways and African-sunrise backdrop light up in such a way you can’t help but be excited at the prospect of a gun fight taking place. Part of you thinks, what an incredible looking set, and the other part thinks, this would be the worst zoo to visit. Variety called the set ‘hog wild’ and they’re not kidding. In what must be a career high for Harrison, Bird on a Wire’s zoo scene feels like Jurassic Park mixed with Rear Window’s apartment set – ladders, rocks and staircases everywhere, ample space for big cats to vertically climb, an impressive tropical waterfall, a hidden Piranha pool (how irresponsible!), and free flying birds everywhere. Once the guns start shooting, it becomes Hollywood fantasy at its best. The whole sequence is so unique it’s at odds with the rest of the movie. It’s as if Bird on a Wire’s producers decided to break the forth wall and yell, “Look! We’re making a movie!”
And yet the scene is great fun because of this excess. As Gibson is shot at, as Hawn is chased by tigers, the use of real animals and practical effects keeps the sensation of action in your guts. Seeing the great Bill Duke realize there’s a female Lion in his path is a fear you feel immediately.
Production designer Philip Harrison said building the set was ‘a once-in-a-lifetime’ project.
The impressive set itself was built on a sound stage in Vancouver at a cost of $1.5 million. The New York Times quoted Hawn saying “I've had more than one nightmare about being eaten by a tiger.” And when watching the scene you can see why, as it’s one of the most impressive action scenes involving big cats, since so many shots contain both the lead actress and the animals in the same frame. The article also mentions that Mel Gibson entertained the crew with magic tricks between set ups and that even a group of electricians built a ‘beach club’ in the stage parking lot, complete with sand and a small pool for cast and crew to enjoy when off duty. It seems an awful lot of that enjoyment translated on screen, somehow changing cheap thrills into a thoroughly engrossing watch.
