Andy Vajna, who
has died aged 74, was a Hungarian-born film producer who – via his companies
Carolco and Cinergi – oversaw several of modern Hollywood’s biggest
blockbusters and flops. Teaming with flamboyant Lebanese-Italian business
partner Mario Kassar on the Rambo
trilogy (1982-88), the avuncular, bearded Vajna transformed Carolco from a
modest six-person operation into a movie powerhouse at once illustrious and
profligate. A 2004 profile recalled
how an executive bounded into the company’s offices one morning in the late
1980s to ask whether his colleagues were aware of any outstanding payments. A
cheque for $5 million had just arrived by registered delivery, and no-one had the
least idea what it might be for.
A different form
of escapism defined Vajna’s early years. Born András György Vajna in Budapest
on August 1, 1944, he fled the Hungarian Revolution aged 12, arriving in Canada
alone and unable to speak a word of English. He was eventually reunited with
his parents some years later in Los Angeles, where he studied and taught
cinematography at UCLA before setting up a photography studio. His route into moving
images would be circuitous, however. After a skiing accident left him unable to
work for nine months, Vajna teamed up with hairdresser and fellow émigré Gábor
Koltai to design high-end wigs. Exports to Hong Kong were so lucrative that
Vajna launched his own hairpiece company, Gilda Fashion, in the Far East.
It was during this
Asian spell that he first entered the industry, using the profits from selling Gilda
in 1973 to buy two cinemas and found the production-distribution company
Panasia Films. He scored encouraging worldwide sales with an English redub of Deadly China Doll (1973), a vehicle for local
chopsocky star Angela Mao, and by the mid-Seventies, he’d become a regular face
at the Cannes festival’s markets. It was here, in 1975, that he first met
Kassar. Right from the off, the pair proved a money-spinning combination,
securing international rights for the justly forgotten Roger Moore thriller The Sicilian Cross (1976) for $130,000 before
selling the title on to Asian distributors for $220,000.
That first sale
established Carolco’s modus operandi:
savvy negotiation, quick turnarounds, and an internationalism that both
distinguished the company from smaller-minded rivals and presaged today’s
globalised event-movie business. As director Alan Parker, who worked with Vajna
on Angel Heart (1987) and Evita (1996), spotted: “They figured out
that 60 percent of a film’s revenue comes from outside the US. Andy and Mario
personally knew all the local
independent distributors.” Nevertheless, it took time to gain traction upon
Vajna’s return to Hollywood. Carolco occupied a small Melrose Avenue office,
recruiting wives and girlfriends as secretaries, and using sales of starry yet
subpar titles like The Changeling
(1980) and Escape to Victory (1981)
to maintain a revenue flow.
Their breakthrough
was Ted Kotcheff’s First Blood (1982),
the still-potent potboiler that introduced Sylvester Stallone’s John Rambo. Test
audiences hated its doomy, ambiguous tone, but recuts and the star’s presence reassured
buyers: all international rights were sold within five minutes. The flagwaving
fantasy of Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985),
reworked by Stallone from a James Cameron script, provoked President Reagan to warn
potential hostage takers: “I saw Rambo
last night… next time I’ll know what to do.” By 1988’s third instalment, a
business model had been affirmed: find exploitable material, then pump it until
it gave out. Unabashedly populist, Vajna shrugged: “I was never the artist. I
was always the audience.”
In Carolco’s case,
this often meant doubling down on violent pulp: Vajna backed Walter Hill’s Extreme Prejudice (1987), Arnold
Schwarzenegger actioner Red Heat
(1988) and Mickey Rourke as Johnny
Handsome (1989). Sometimes the money financed more ambitious projects, such
as Angel Heart and Adrian Lyne’s Jacob’s Ladder (1990). Yet by the time
the latter reached cinemas, the Vajna-Kassar relationship, tested by sudden,
easy money, had definitively frayed. While Kassar was gifting Schwarzenegger a
Gulfstream jet to ensure his participation in Terminator II (1991), the marginally more circumspect Vajna sold
his 32% share in their company for an estimated $100m.
Formed in 1989, Cinergi
mixed blockbuster fare with prestige ventures like Evita and Oliver Stone’s Nixon
(1995). Yet successive high-profile flops all but torpedoed Vajna’s American
career. Joyless Stallone vehicle Judge
Dredd (1995) was followed by the misconceived The Scarlet Letter (1995) with Demi Moore as Hester Prynne, and Burn Hollywood Burn! (1997), a dud
satire centred on the tradition whereby directors removed before final cut can adopt
the pseudonymous credit “Alan Smithee”; infamously, a post-production dispute
saw director Arthur Hiller quit, so the final product itself bore the Smithee
credit. Vajna had other distractions: the IRS’s “Hollywood Task Force” began
pursuing Carolco for $109.7m in back taxes. (The case was settled in 2001, with
Vajna paying $6.5m.)
There was a
surprisingly effective reunion with Kassar on Terminator 3 (2003), but Basic
Instinct 2 (2006) and Terminator:
Salvation (2009) served as examples of the limitations of Vajna’s relentless
franchising. He fared better upon returning to Hungary, earning a huge local
hit with the Ray Cooney-derived Out of
Order (1997) and respectful reviews with Children of Glory (2006), which revisited the events of 1956 from
the perspective of the national water polo team. He forged close links with PM
Viktor Orbán, and despite protests by cineastes Béla Tarr and Miklós Jancsó, he
was appointed Commissioner for Film in 2011, in which guise he set up the
National Film Fund that backed Son of
Saul (2015). He also maintained two casinos, ever-alert to the romance –
and possible rewards – of the big gamble.
He is survived by
Timea Palacsik, the director of Miss Universe Hungary, whom he married in 2013.
Andy Vajna, born August 1, 1944,
died January 20, 2019.
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