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Mad Max, Lethal Weapon, Braveheart, and Bird on a Wire? Mel Gibson has made some heavy-hitting movies and movie series throughout his career, but what happened to 1990’s Bird on a Wire? It had a huge-name co-star, a reliably stellar supporting cast, and a director who knew how to make a movie. On top of that, it made a huge amount of money, finishing in the top 15 at the domestic box office for the year even though critics hated it.
Who was almost the male star of the film? What became the largest set ever built in Vancouver, Canada? And what was the ultimate perk that convinced Mel Gibson to make the movie in the first place? Let’s find out what happened to Bird on a Wire and whether it’s any good.
Bird on a Wire Was an Old-School Action Comedy
1990 was one of those fun transitional years when a movie could feel like it belonged to the previous decade. Movies from 1980 still had plenty of ’70s sensibilities, and movies from 2000 often felt like ’90s movies.
Bird on a Wire definitely feels like an ’80s buddy-cop movie, and contemporary reviews even called it an old school road movie in the tradition of the films Howard Hawks made in the 1930s and ’40s. Those movies eventually evolved into what we know as the buddy cop genre. With Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn as the leads, though, Bird on a Wire is less buddy cop and more It Happened One Night. Gibson and Hawn play off each other like Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, with the action built around a lost love story. The result is a movie that feels slightly out of step with its time. But how did it get that way?
The Bird on a Wire Screenplay
The screenplay was written by Louis Venosta, Eric Lerner, and David Seltzer. Venosta had previously written the wildly fun The Last Dragon, while Bird on a Wire was Lerner’s only major film screenplay. Seltzer was better known at the time, particularly to horror fans, as the writer of The Omen and the 1979 environmental horror movie Prophecy.
The three writers turned their screenplay over to director John Badham, a well-traveled filmmaker with an impressive and varied resume. Badham had directed Saturday Night Fever with John Travolta, Dracula with Frank Langella, WarGames with Matthew Broderick, Blue Thunder with Roy Scheider, and Drop Zone with Wesley Snipes.
Universal distributed the film, which also has a fun bit of movie history trivia attached to it: Bird on a Wire was the last movie to use Universal’s classic 1963 logo until Inglourious Basterds brought it back as a retro throwback.
Why Bird on a Wire Almost Didn’t Happen
The movie almost didn’t happen when it did. Producer Rob Cohen was working with Badham on another movie, The Hard Way, starring James Woods and a younger star who eventually dropped out. Cohen replaced him with Michael J. Fox, but Fox had a previous commitment to the back-to-back productions of Back to the Future Part II and Back to the Future Part III.
That meant Cohen had roughly a year and a half to wait. So he went digging through his drawer of random scripts, found one labeled “Need to Do,” and decided to use it as a filler project to make with Badham, who was available.
The scene that convinced Badham to direct the movie was the opening sequence in which Rick pretends to get crushed in a mechanic’s shop. Badham had never read a main character being introduced quite that way, and it was enough to make him want to sign on.
Kurt Russell Was Almost the Male Lead
The roles of witness protection lothario Richard “Rick” Jarmin and his long-lost love, lawyer Marianne Graves, were originally pitched to Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn. By 1990, the pair already had amazing chemistry on and off screen. Unfortunately, Russell was already committed to Tango & Cash with Sylvester Stallone. There are very few things I would have traded Tango & Cash for. Winter People? Yeah, we could lose that from the overall Kurt Russell filmography. But we need the gloriously stupid adventures of Kurt and Sly.
Russell recommended Mel Gibson, whom he had recently worked with on Tequila Sunrise alongside Michelle Pfeiffer and Raul Julia.
The first 30 pages of the Bird on a Wire screenplay were sent to both Hawn and Gibson, and that was all they needed to agree to join. Well, that and one more thing for Mel: Gibson negotiated the use of one of the producers’ homes so he could bring his family out for the summer and spend time with them.
The Supporting Cast
The rest of the cast included Stephen Tobolowsky, Bill Duke, David Carradine, Joan Severance, and John Pyper-Ferguson.
Tobolowsky was far removed from Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day or the easy mark he played in Sneakers. Here, he plays gun-toting corrupt FBI agent Albert “Weyburn,” who is working with Bill Duke and David Carradine’s corrupt DEA agents.
Carradine plays Sorenson, a man Rick helped put away for 15 years. Carradine may be best known to modern audiences as Bill from Kill Bill, but he had already been working for decades, with the uncanny ability to be great in something like Kung Fu and then show up in something like Future Force.
Duke, meanwhile, was an accomplished actor and director far beyond his roles with and against Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando and Predator.
It’s a fun supporting cast surrounding the main couple, and Duke and Carradine are endlessly cool-looking and entertaining as the villains.
Goldie Hawn Did Her Own Stunts
Mel Gibson was already known for action movies and doing much of his own stunt work thanks to the Lethal Weapon and Mad Max films. That wasn’t necessarily Goldie Hawn’s norm. Gibson convinced Hawn to do her own stunts, and she ended up being so proud of the experience that she kept her stunt jacket from the movie next to her Oscar statue.
Bird on a Wire certainly gives her plenty of opportunities to earn it. There are multiple car chases, an elaborate zoo sequence, and a particularly harrowing escape from a penthouse in which Rick and Marianne traverse the outside of a building. Production built a platform below them both for safety and to create the illusion that they were much higher off the ground than they actually were.
But the biggest production challenge was the zoo.
The Massive Bird on a Wire Zoo Set
Bird on a Wire was originally supposed to take place in New York, but the story moved to the Midwest, with Rick living in witness protection in several Midwestern cities. Despite that, the movie was almost entirely filmed in Canada. You can even spot flags from major Canadian cities during a scene in which Rick and Marianne walk through a mall.
The climactic zoo set was a massive undertaking. It measured 83 feet wide, 350 feet long, and nearly six stories high. At the time, it was the largest set ever built in Vancouver, and production designer Philip Harrison called it a once-in-a-lifetime undertaking. Director of photography Robert Primes needed two weeks just to light the entire area, and the production worked seven days a week for multiple weeks to finish the movie.
Three waterfalls were constructed for the zoo, including one nearly three stories high. They were also reportedly the first waterfalls ever built on a Canadian soundstage.
The set featured oversized manufactured leaves in the background and real plants in the foreground. Two major bridges had to be built across a nearly 60-foot crevasse. Both were more than three stories high and engineered to support up to 1,200 pounds of crew and equipment. Two full-time crews were needed to water the real plants around the clock.
Then there was the sand. Three different kinds were brought in to fill out the flooring. Sixteen truckloads came from Oregon, and the sand was mixed and sifted to remove any pieces of glass that could hurt the animals, or Hawn.
The flooring was ultimately raised four feet off the ground to prevent foot injuries. And after everything that went into building the zoo, the walls of the animal cages were made from simple plaster. The crew worried that an animal’s leg or arm could break through them.
Oh yeah. Then there were the animals.
Working With the Animals
Badham was fairly accepting of what it meant to work with animals. He explained that no animal was easy to direct because they can’t read the script and don’t really know why they’re on set. It was controlled chaos. You needed to be ready to capture the magic on camera, or get out of the way, because these were still animals and they could hurt you.
The animals used in the movie included a lion, a baboon, an iguana, a seven-foot monitor lizard, a 12-foot python, three jaguars, four alligators, six tigers, six chimpanzees, and 25 different types of parrots. Animal stunt coordinator Monty Cox brought in his own two male tigers, then had to search across Canada for a third. The baboon was apparently the only one in the world trained to perform in front of a camera.
Producer Rob Cohen later said the movie’s specialty was the zoo climax and the difficulty of shooting it. That massive, complicated set and all those animals were about to become the centerpiece of the movie.
Bird on a Wire Was a Box-Office Success
Bird on a Wire landed in theaters on May 18, 1990, and was a surprising financial success. The movie made approximately $138.7 million worldwide against a $20 million budget and finished among the top 15 domestic box-office movies of the year. The year happened to include mega-hits such as Home Alone, Pretty Woman, Ghost, and Total Recall, which kept Bird on a Wire out of the top 10.
The movie currently sits at 26% on Rotten Tomatoes, with contemporary criticism often describing it as bloated, excessive, noisy, vacant, and unfunny. Another common complaint was its 1-hour-and-50-minute running time, although the movie could have been even longer. The original shooting script contained more scenes establishing Rick, Marianne, and their doomed friend Jaime before Rick entered witness protection.
The score by multiple Academy Award winner Hans Zimmer was one aspect that received praise, but the soundtrack was never released. Zimmer later explained that the recording was simply too expensive because it used a 103-person orchestra rather than cheaper synthesizers.
So… how is the movie?
Is Bird on a Wire Any Good?
I had watched Bird on a Wire once before, and it didn’t really hit me at the time. So I’d be crazy to say I couldn’t understand why some audiences and critics didn’t vibe with it when it came out. But watching it again was a different experience. The score and soundtrack are great, and my only real issue is that the movie does feel a little long. I’m glad some of the additional flashbacks were removed.
The movie opens with one last look at the Universal logo I grew up loving, which may give me a little bias. Then we get a fun song choice and a barefoot David Carradine getting picked up by the effortlessly cool Bill Duke. I think this is my second-favorite role of Duke’s after the incredibly painful-looking shave enthusiast Mac from Predator.
Duke and Carradine initially look like a couple of cool dudes, but they’re menacing for most of the rest of the movie and are responsible for getting innocent people killed. I suspect the barefoot business and the vulture scene at the very end are callbacks to Carradine’s work on Kung Fu. Once he cuts his hair, puts on sunglasses at night, and grabs a shotgun, though, he means business.
Hawn plays a rich and powerful lawyer who doesn’t seem to put up with anything from anyone. She has the penthouse, the upper-class food, the cashmere clothes, the successful boyfriend. Then she sees Rick. He’s the one who got away. Rick notices her, too, and tries to play it off, even though seeing Marianne rattles him enough to call his FBI contact and request a transfer.
One of the fun things about Rick is that he’s a jack of all trades and generally well-liked. He had a good thing going in Michigan, where he was asked to take over a repair shop. We later learn that he had been close to marrying a veterinarian and had even built a collection of unique plans for her to use in her office.
Unfortunately for Rick, his FBI contact is gone, and he gets paired with Agent Wayburn, played by Tobolowsky. It’s a fun role for Tobolowsky because he gets to use his trademark wit while also playing a villain, something we didn’t see from him nearly as often. His performance fits the movie’s general blending of action and comedy.
Rick and Marianne Go on the Run
Weyburn contacts Sorenson and Diggs, then erases the evidence that Rick is alive and supposed to be protected. They kill the poor old shop owner who intended to leave the business to Rick and frame Rick’s new identity for the murder. Marianne saves him, and the two go on the run.
There are car chases, foot chases, a helicopter attack, and plenty of arguing between Rick and Marianne as they gradually rekindle the love they had for each other.
The movie doesn’t have an especially high body count, with fewer than 10 deaths, but the action is solid. The tone can change remarkably quickly, moving from light comedy and a lost-love story to Rick dodging shotgun blasts and escaping an exploding gas station. Rick gets shot in the butt, a plot point that lasts much longer than you might expect, and the action is never far away.
The movie keeps its two leads moving almost constantly, either through action sequences or witty dialogue. There’s even a dick joke that pays off at the very end.
The Bird on a Wire Zoo Showdown
As producer Rob Cohen said, though, the movie is ultimately known for its epic zoo showdown. Rick and Marianne survive multiple attempts to capture them before finally finding Rick’s old handler. Unfortunately, the man has been forced to retire because he has become senile. But he knows his zoo, and he knows Rick, giving us one last wink at the character’s seemingly endless ability to survive.
Then that enormous zoo set finally becomes the center of the movie. Rick and Marianne break in with the three main villains right behind them. The zoo is impressive to look at, and Rick clearly knows his way around the place. Unfortunately, Marianne does everything possible to accidentally trip him up.
Rick gets shot at, dropped from high places, soaked, nearly eaten, and almost electrocuted while three highly trained gunmen chase him. Well, two highly trained gunmen and Stephen Tobolowsky.
Rick and Marianne turn on the lights, water, and sounds of the zoo. The villains have real guns, while Rick is stuck with a tranquilizer gun.
What I find especially cool about the movie is that Mel Gibson plays Rick as an everyman. He isn’t an Australian post-apocalyptic warrior or a suicidal Vietnam veteran cop with nothing to lose. He’s just a smart guy who knows how to do things. And he takes down these guys without firing a single bullet.
Diggs is tricked into entering a leopard cage when Rick throws his voice and creates the illusion of an argument. He’s promptly eaten by a much bigger and nastier animal. Next comes Weyburn, who foolishly keeps Rick alive so Sorenson can kill him. I still laugh at Stephen Freaking Tobolowsky thinking he stands a chance in a fight with Gibson. Weyburn is eventually kicked into a pond full of piranhas.
Finally, Sorenson grabs Marianne and holds her hostage to lure Rick out. Rick takes the bait. The two men end up falling with a collapsing bridge that connects to an electric fence. Rick sacrifices himself in an attempt to kill Sorenson and ultimately manages to use the electrical current to finish him off.
It even ends the way it began, with Rick and Marianne back at the gas station. Rick pretends not to recognize her before they ride off… or sail off… into the sunset.
Why Was Bird on a Wire Forgotten?
Bird on a Wire should have been beloved. Critics compared it unfavorably to movies like It Happened One Night and other screwball comedies, but that influence is actually one of the things that makes the movie work.
A decade later, this type of movie would have felt right at home, with a Matthew McConaughey-style male lead and Goldie Hawn even acting alongside her daughter Kate Hudson in a later generation of romantic comedies.
The two leads are silly together and individually while still having genuine chemistry. Gibson was known as a prankster on his movie sets, and apparently that behavior continued with the cast and crew of Bird on a Wire.
Why the movie isn’t more fondly remembered is difficult to say. Even as a huge Kurt Russell fan, I’m not going to pretend Russell would necessarily have been better here. We got a couple of movies featuring Hollywood’s favorite forever-unmarried couple, and if anything, I’m sad we didn’t get more movies starring Hawn and Gibson. They proved perfectly capable of playing believable love interests, had great chemistry, and both put in the work when it came to the action.
Bird on a Wire Deserves to Be Rediscovered
Thirty-six years later, Bird on a Wire is sadly a forgotten piece of action comedy gold. It has a competent director, a solid if not especially original story, two leads who carry the movie, and a supporting cast that does exactly what a supporting cast should do: support the action.
I disliked the movie (or, more accurately, I was bored by it) the first time I watched it. This second viewing was different. I miss this type of movie. It isn’t a sequel or a remake. It isn’t based on a comic book or video game. It’s simply a story about love lost and found, mixed with action, comedy, car chases, villains, animals, and one absolutely enormous zoo set. We don’t get many movies like this anymore.
If you want to revisit Bird on a Wire, it’s worth hunting down the Kino Lorber Blu-ray, which features a gorgeous 2K master transfer and entertaining commentary from director John Badham.
The movie may have been lost in the shuffle in the early ’90s, but 36 years later, Bird on a Wire is worth finding again.
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