Bronson Pinchot at the premiere of Netflix's 'Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina' at the Hollywood ... [+]
December 2019 sees Beverly Hills Cop celebrate its 35th anniversary.
When it hit theaters on Wednesday, December 5, 1984, the acclaimed Martin Brest directed action comedy became an instant classic and a smash hit – it grossed $316.4 million at the worldwide box office against a budget of $13 million. It also changed the life of Bronson Pinchot, who played the iconic and deliciously camp gallery worker, Serge, overnight.
“I was living in what we used to call a flophouse. It must have been a nasty place when it was built in the 1920s, and it was certainly nasty when I was living there. It was falling apart,” he recalled. “When I lived there, the fights between the pimps and the prostitutes in the courtyard were so violent that I used to keep my pants, my wallet, and my keys draped over the doorknob so I could run out in case they shot through the window.”
“It was on Poinsettia between Sunset and Hollywood, about four or five blocks from a Ralphs grocery store. I was doing very poorly in life, and a friend sent me a voicemail and said, ‘You’re not going to believe what is in Newsweek, you have to read it for yourself.’ So I thought, ‘Well, I can’t afford Newsweek as I don’t have a pot to p**s in,’ and so I thought I’d just walk to Ralphs and read it there. I started to walk those four or five blocks, and a car pulled up on the sidewalk. I thought I was about to be killed, but they were screaming at me, ‘It’s him! It’s him!’. Beverly Hills Cop had been out in theaters for one day. That’s how I found it that it was a hit, how much people loved the movie, and how much they had taken to Serge.”
Pinchot added: “And then it never let up. I would go to the grocery store, and people would follow me up and down the aisles. Even now when I remember it, it seems unreal. The year before I had been in a relationship with a very well known soap star and people would step over me to get her autograph, so I had seen it happen close up, but to have it happen to me was something I was not expecting and was not ready for.”
However, he admitted that, like many in the industry, the reaction he got wasn’t always exactly the one he was looking for. He said: “Every actor has a funny story about this kind of stuff. I was reading an interview with Brenda Blethyn recently where she talked about people going crazy when they saw her and at the peak of their shrieking, they said, ‘We can’t believe it’s Alison Steadman.’ Sometimes these people go crazy, and they don’t even know who you are.”
Pinchot recalled: “Right around the time Beverly Hills Cop came out, I was standing in line at a restaurant. Somebody took me to this nice place in Santa Monica, and in front of me was a tall, very pale man who was turning around to look for someone. It was the director Mike Nichols. As he turned around, he saw me said, ‘Oh, my God, I adore your work.’ I thought I was going to lose it having Mike Nichols tell me he loved my work, and then he said, ‘...especially in Christine.’ I wasn’t in that movie.”
“25 or 30 years later, I played him in an off-Broadway production of a Neil Simon play, and people said my portrayal was pretty accurate. I then met him again sometime afterward, and he said, ‘I really admire you.’ So I asked him, ‘Especially in Christine?’ He was like, ‘Ah! I thought you’d forgotten that by now.’ We laughed about it.”
Beverly Hills Cop kickstarted a trilogy that went on to earn a combined $735.53 million at the worldwide box office and two Oscar nominations. To mark the first film’s 35th anniversary, all three movies have been remastered are being rereleased on digital and Blu-ray.
Pinchot’s standout performance as Serge in Beverly Hills Cop became iconic. What many might not realize is how different that classic character could have been.
“In the script, Serge was what you would consider to be a dated stereotype. As he was written, the character’s name was Jacques, and he wasn’t supposed to be French; he was American. There was this thing where, especially in the early to mid-80s, the gay character was just there to be bashed and made fun of,” the actor explained.
“I was certainly in no position to call any shots at that time, but when I did the audition and gave my interpretation of the character, Marty Brest said, ‘I don’t know where you came up with that, but I want it.’ By the time we get to the set, he said, ‘Here’s an outline of the scene. Just greet Axel Foley, offer him something to drink, tell him about the art in the gallery, and go with it. That scene in the movie lasted maybe about two minutes, but we shot it for two days and did at least 40 takes. Eddie and I just ran with it. We took it to the craziest places.”
Pinchot continued: “The script was skewed towards the core character coming in, there’s an effete, gay character in Beverly Hills and he’s just made fun of. Through the good graces of Marty, we turned that relationship into something else, this kind of camaraderie, and people loved it.”
The actor did not appear in Beverly Hills Cop II but reprised the role of Serge in Beverly Hills Cop III. After numerous unsuccessful attempts to continue or reboot the multimillion-dollar franchise on both the big and small screens, a fourth Beverly Hills Cop film, has been confirmed after Netflix bought the rights from Paramount Pictures.
We know that Eddie Murphy will be returning as Axel Foley, but does this mean we could also be in line for Pinchot to dish up another delicious slice of Serge?
“Oh, I have no idea. I have a long-standing agreement with my manager where if there’s a phone call and there’s an offer and they say, ‘This is the start date. Do you want to do that?’ then that’s great and I’m in,” he explained. “If there’s any other form of the conversation like checking availability or whatever, I want them to just leave me out of that because then you’re wondering if it is going to happen.”
With so many vivid memories of making Beverly Hills Cop and what came after, you might think that it might be a movie that Pinchot was keen to rewatch and relive. You’d be wrong.
“I have had a discipline for 35 years that I don’t watch myself. If I do a chat show and they talk about Beverly Hills Cop, there’s usually a clip. So I’ll sit on the couch and plug my ears and put my head in my lap, but sometimes they’ll play the clip before I can do that, and I’ll see a little bit,” he confessed.
“Interestingly, the first time I ever saw Beverly Hills Cop was when I was doing the video for Neutron Dance, which was on the movie soundtrack. I wasn’t playing Serge in the video, the studio didn’t want me to because they didn’t want to spoil it for anyone who hadn’t seen the film, so I played a silly movie theater usher character.”
“The Pointer Sisters had seen a rough cut of the movie, and they asked if I knew what was going to happen to me now, that I was going to be famous and it was going to happen very quickly. I honestly didn’t believe them. They were so sweet. They had a VHS of the movie and showed me the part that I was in. They were howling with laughter.”
He concluded: “So the first time I saw my performance as Serge was on the set of that music video, on a VHS, with a time code on it. And everything changed.”
Newly remastered and with a stack of new bonus features and never-before-seen deleted scenes, all three Beverly Hills Cop movies are being rereleased on digital in 4K Ultra HD with High Dynamic Range on Tuesday, December 17, 2019, and in a Blu-ray collection on Tuesday, January 14, 2020.
