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Film Journal

"John Byrum Traverses 'The Razor's Edge"

Article by Wendy Weinstein

Published - September 1984

Novel Casting Takes Star From 'Meatballs' to Mysticism

Those familiar with W. Somerset Maugham's popular 1944 novel, The Razor's Edge, know that it's about a sensitive young American named Larry Darrell whose traumatic experiences in World War I propel him to find a deeper meaning in life. Ask them who starred as Larry in the 1946 Twentieth Century Fox film version of the story and they'll probably recall that it was Tyrone Power. But ask them to guess which box office dynamo will be portraying the role when Columbia Pictures bows its remake in October, and you'll be there all day.

It won't be William Hurt, Sean Penn or Christopher Reeve up there on the screen, traveling from the wealthy suburbs of Chicago to Europe to the snow-capped Himalayas, but that former Not Ready For Prime Time Player and everyone's favorite Ghostbuster er . . . Bill Murray-and it's not a joke. In his most daring career move yet, Murray is playing it straight, challenging his fans but mostly himself to go beyond the hip, comic persona that made Meatballs and Stripes such unexpected hits. He does, however, invest Larry-a fairly serious character in the book-with a zany sense of humor.

After Larry returns from the horrors of the front, Murray shows him listlessly wading in a swimming pool as he tells his fiancee that he wants to postpone their marriage so he can go to Paris and "loaf," as he puts it-that is, read and think. In response to her angry protests, he suddenly does a couple of seal imitations, shooting himself up onto the rim of the pool, arms pressed against his sides, head up. He gambles with the absurdity of these gestures to express his character's helplessness and confusion, striking a parallel with Dustin Hoffman's similarly battled poolside habitue in The Graduate, and partially because of its very strangeness, it works.

At the time, however, some of those connected with the picture were not so sure. "When the English editor and producer saw that," recalls the film's director, John Byrum (Inserts, Heart Beat), "they said that's terrible; you can't have someone doing that in a serious movie. But I said, I think you're wrong. That's what makes his character. It's his way of releasing some of the tension from the situation." Byrum pauses, then adds, "Perhaps it's because I've worked with Bill so long on this, but I can't think of anyone else in the part." Although they grew up a mile from one another in the suburbs of Chicago, Byrum and Murray first met in New York ten years ago. Around the same time, coincidentally, Byrum read The Razor's Edge and knew that he wanted to film it.

He even started a screenplay of the story, but didn't return to it until a couple of years ago, when the project finally got the green light from Columbia. Byrum, casually dressed in a blue shirt and faded jeans, has not forgotten how long he waited for that light to change. Assuming that Twentieth Century Fox still owned the rights to the story, he and his producer, Rob Cohen, approached Sherry Lansing, but, in the words of Cohen (who spoke with The Film Journal last January), "She wasn't interested in our being interested, essentially. She had too many other producers who were considering it." The pair soon discovered that the domestic remake and sequel rights had reverted to the Maugham estate, but by then the record industry executive Bob Marcucci had beaten them to it. Byrum promised to deliver a script for no fee for a 50-50 partnership and the right to direct, and a deal was struck.

It was not until Murray stepped aboard two years ago, however, that Byrum's dream became reality. Byrum, who had just driven Murray and his wife, Mickey, to the hospital to deliver their son ("Bill was too nervous to drive," he remembers), sent Mickey a copy of The Razor's Edge during her recovery. Recalls Byrum: "Bill read it and said that's the next film I want to do." After calling the director, Murray rang Shel Schrager at Columbia, who was encouraging. The studio, however, gave the nod only after it became clear that the only way they'd get Dan Aykroyd's promising new project, Ghostbusters, was to take on The Razor's Edge. As Cohen has remarked, "They just don't give you $12 million in Hollywood to do something that's a dream of yours, or to take a big comedic star and make him a dramatic actor. You have to fight to do that."

While legal arrangements were being ironed out between Twentieth Century Fox, Cohen, Byrum, Columbia and Marcucci (" All that lawyer stuff took six months," says Byrum), the director took off with his leading man to co-write the screenplay, simulating to some extent Larry Darrell's search. "It took Bill and I about a year and a half to write the script," recalls Byrum. "We went to northern California ashrams and nudist colonies, visited strange religious cults with aerobic classes. And we spent a lot of time in Colorado in the mountains - mountains are very important in Eastern religions as symbols of spiritual elevation. We also wrote in New Jersey bars because we wanted to meet Sophie (a troubled friend of Larry's in the book)." Although they travelled to locations as exotic as Paris and India (where much of the film was shot), he notes that, "We did a lot of our best writing in a car driving across Nebraska."

Byrum credits Murray with some of the film's best-written scenes, many of which the actor did not appear in. "Bill didn't know much about structure," he says, "but he'd have these huge bursts of inspiration. He wrote every word of Sophie's monologue, when she's in the hospital recovering from the accident that killed her husband and child. Bill's also well versed in Eastern religions. He's very gifted."Murray also wrote the unsentimental eulogy Larry gives when his friend (played by Murray's older brother, Brian Doyle-Murray) is killed trying to save his life in the first World War. According to Byrum, that came directly from Murray's experience at a gathering at Dan Aykroyd's house the night before John Belushi (who partially inspired the Doyle-Murray character) was to be buried. "Everybody was really depressed," says Byrum, "and Bill had read that the Iranians, when someone dies, tell the worst stories they can think of about the person. Well, Bill started doing that, and by the end of the night everybody was feeling better. You know, stories like, he borrowed $100 bucks from me and never paid it back, or he once ate my dinner when I was in the bathroom. Bill was steeling himself, like Larry in the film."

Before directing Murray, Byrum visited the set of Stripes. "(lvan) Reitman would do 20 takes and let Bill go," he says, "and I used that approach here." One of Murray's improvisations was the seal act. He's funny off stage too, says Byrum, "but his humor is based on things that are not funny. They come from a sense of outrage. He'll see someone who's dishonest and he'll confront them, but in a funny way." He can be abrasive, however, the director admits, noting how Murray gives the studio executives a hard time. "But they love it," he adds. "He'll be out to lunch with them and say to one, 'Nice shirt but it's a little shiny,' and he'll throw catsup all over it, and they laugh and poke their wives. They eat it up."

On a less humorous note, Byrum recalls the hardships of filming in Europe and India. "You have to kill yourself to film such an expansive story on a $12 million budget," he exclaims. "It's time you worry about." They fell behind schedule lensing the war sequences, when Larry first discovers the tragedy of life. Byrum: "To set up an explosion takes time. Then the wind might shift and destroy the shot, and you have to rewire all the explosives and organize the extras. Filming those scenes was like being in a war yourself." Although neither the book nor the 1946 movie visualized Larry's war experience (it was simply referred to), Byrum felt the scenes were essential to illustrate the hero's radical reassessment of life. He wanted to avoid presenting Larry as an idealized, enigmatic figure (which is also why he approved of Murray's comic touches).

After a month in Paris, the company spent three tough weeks in India, and the crew, says Byrum, was showing the strain. There was an attempted suicide, others developed drinking problems so severe they had to be sent home, and many, including Byrum, contracted food poisoning (he lost 12 pounds and had to be fed intravenously). To top it off, filming at 15,000 feet in Ladakh, amidst the Himalayas (where Larry has a spiritual experience), many were afflicted with altitude sickness. The set's physician, Dr. Krishna (who also served on Gandhi), had his hands full. Murray was the only one to escape it all. "He has a cast-iron stomach," says Byrum. "He's indestructible."

Byrum admits that Edmund Goulding's 1946 film, with its stellar cast including (in addition to Power) Gene Tierney, Anne Baxter, Clifton Webb and Herbert Marshall, is a hard act to follow. (Byrum's film co-stars upcoming actors Theresa Russell, Catherine Hicks, Denholm Elliott and James Keach.) But he believes his version, with its location shooting, is actually truer to the book, despite its omission of the narrator-author character originally played by Marshall. "Who would we get to play that part now," he asks. "Rodney Dangerfield?" He also feels that the film examines an aspect of the novel that Maugham neglected. "I saw the story as a bunch of friends coming from the upper middle class Chicago world I grew up in," he says, "who've spent 20 years falling apart and coming together again. I identified with that experience; it's been about 20 years now since I've graduated high school. I felt the book didn't fully explore those relationships."

Although set primarily in the '20s and '30s, Byrum thinks the story is extremely pertinent to these unsettling times. The studio initially suggested moving up the time frame, making Larry a Vietnam vet perhaps, but the director insisted that by keeping the film in period, "it could say a lot more about what's going on now."
Byrum is now convinced that this summer's release of Ghostbusters will help his film, but at first he had his doubts. "We were supposed to come out before Ghostbusters," he explains, "but they finished sooner than expected. I was really upset at the time. But now I'm feeling it can help us, because the critics really love Bill in it, and some have said they'd like to sec him do something meatier. He couldn't be hotter."

But hot enough to ignite The Razor's Edge in his first dramatic role? Critics and audiences can judge for themselves come October.