“Transcript of a 6-Hour Interview With Jim Steinman § Pg4”, 2003 (; backlinks):
…I should do the collected wisdom of Meat Loaf, you know, I mean, ’cause there are a lot of them. I remember when I did Streets of Fire, this movie with him. It was classic. He did the whole movie as the music supervisor. He didn’t really know what he was doing. There was another thing where he said to me, “here I am, I’m a music supervisor for a big movie. Do you think this will get me the hundred million dollars? I don’t know, it seems like a movie’s the way to do it.” I said, “Could be, you know.”
Meanwhile, he didn’t know I knew the script because the title song, “Streets Of Fire”, is Bruce Springsteen, and John Landau was going to be my manager at that point. So I knew John and I knew the script. I saw it on his desk and I asked him about it, and he said, “oh it’s a piece of cr—p. They wanted to use Bruce’s song. We won’t give them it, no way. It’s a bad script”.
So I said, can I read it? He said, yeah. So I read the script. It was a terrible script. But I mentioned that and it was Joel Silver, a big movie producer’s first movie. So I met all these people for the first time, Joel Silver, who was a maniac. I was the one who, I was out in LA the whole time ’cause I was doing Footloose, too, two movies. Footloose I was sure was gonna be a disaster. I didn’t even care about it, and that was a hit. I thought Streets of Fire would be the biggest thing of all time.
And it was a big flop, even though it’s become a cult movie and it’s a cool movie to watch. It was cool because Steven Spielberg would come to the set everyday because he considered the director, Walter Hill, to be the best action director in the world. It has amazing action with motorcycles. But I learned a lot and one of the things that was interesting was Jimmy goes, “I don’t know what to do as a music supervisor but, you know, I think this is gonna be the way to get a hundred million dollars, I really do.”
I said, “but what about the script, Jimmy? You know, it really stinks.” He says, “the script? No, I don’t think that’s that important.” And Joel was there and he says, Joel “what do you think? Is the script any good?” [AS JOEL SILVER] “The script? I don’t know if the script’s any good. It’s not about that. It’s about the visuals. Wait ’til you see the action, the visuals. This movie is about visuals. It’s about excitement, it’s about thrills. Don’t worry about the script.”
I remember mentioning it to 6–7 people that the script was trashy and I always got the same answer. The script? I’m sure no one read the script. The script doesn’t matter. This movie is about visuals. It’s an action, it’s like a Spielberg movie. I say, all right, all right, all right. Then we go to the first edit, the first cut of the movie in the screening room and it’s [Jimmy] Iovine and me and Joel Silver. We’re all sitting there and we’re watching it. We’re all excited to see the first cut.
And it starts. I remember Joel Silver, who impressed me, Joel Silver goes, “here we go, the adventure begins”. It was we were like 3 little kids and Iovine goes, “yeah this is it. Hundred million dollars. Hundred million dollars, I know it.” And it starts, and about 20 minutes into the movie Jimmy turns to me and he goes, “Steinman, you know about art and that kind of stuff, movies, theater, right?” I said, “well yeah I know something.” He says, “this movie is really s—tty isn’t it? It’s really bad.”
[In the final film, the 20-minute mark is partway through the ‘recruiting the party’ longeur, featuring the sidekick character McCoy, another ex-soldier, who is for no particular reason played by an actress instead, Amy Madigan, making for some extremely awkward chemistry and an abortive love triangle. Like the protagonist as played by Michael Paré, she may be a fine actress but the role doesn’t work.]
I said, “yeah, it’s a really bad script. Why didn’t anyone notice that the script was bad? It stinks. I can’t even watch it. I’m never gonna make a hundred million dollars from this movie.” Joel’s on the other side going, “what am I gonna do next? There’s gotta be a next project…”, and they’re sitting there and there’s so many lessons I learned during that movie. It went $45.45$141984 million over budget [Steinman is misremembering, that’s the total budget], I think and I kept saying to Joel, “how are they allowing this?”
Because they kept screaming at us, it’s over the budget. I said, how, and they, you’ve gotta understand, they built [it] all, Walter Hill didn’t want to go to Chicago. The story took place in Chicago, so they built Chicago in LA. They built this enormous elevated train, the City of Chicago, and the biggest tarp ever to cover an outdoor area, two square miles of tarp to cover all of Chicago. I remember saying to Joel, how can they let you go $45.45$141984 million over budget?
Joel says, “you’ve got a lot to learn about Hollywood. You’ve got a lot to learn. Come over here. Let me show you something.” He goes to the tarp and he says, “two square miles tarp right?” I said, “yeah, the biggest tarp ever created. I read that”. He said, “take a look. Open that flap”. I open the flap. He says, “what does it say?” Property of Superior Hardware, California. “You know who owns Superior Hardware? Universal. Take a look at—”, and he took me all around the set.
Everything of course was owned by Universal, and they were paying extra rentals to the company that was financing the movie. It was a good lesson about Hollywood, why things go over budget, from Joel himself, the master of it. The funniest thing was they couldn’t use the Springsteen song in the end, “Streets of Fire”. So I had to write another song [“Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young”]. Jimmy ended up, he’s such a cool guy and such a master of what he does, that he blamed me for them not having the final song.
They were convinced they’d have the Springsteen song. I remember them saying, “we’re definitely gonna have the Springsteen song, right Jimmy?” He says, “yeah are you kidding? It’s a cinch. I’m that close with Bruce. I did Born To Run. I know John Landau. If I have to I’ll make a call to Walter Yetnikoff, the president. I know what to do. It’s about people, connections.” It’s like one week later. “Steinman, I’m screwed. Springsteen, what an idiot, he won’t give me ‘Streets of Fire’. We don’t have any ending for the movie. You’ve gotta come up with a song, like in two days.”
So I wrote this song that I loved and I sent it to them and he and Joel, I remember, left me a great message saying, “I hate you, you bastard, I love this song. We’re gonna have to do it. We’re gonna have to re-build the Wiltern Theater”, which they had taken down, it was a million dollars to re-do the ending, just the ending of Streets of Fire, ’cause they didn’t have the, they had already filmed Bruce Springsteen’s song.
They spent a million dollars and I felt all this hostility from Universal. A guy named Sean Daniels who was head of production, one day said to me, “well there is hostility because we understand you waited about 8 months to come up with that final song and you never did it”. I said, “where’d you hear that? I did it in two days”. He said, “Jimmy Iovine”. So I went to Jimmy Iovine and I said all that to him: “yeah it’s true, I know. I blamed you but you can’t be upset with me. I’m not like a writer. I’ve gotta make my way with these people. I had to have a scapegoat. I thought it was like honoring you to make you the scapegoat. You’re not really mad are you?” I said, I guess not. He says, “good yeah ’cause we’ve got a lot of work to do together.” [laugh] I didn’t mind it.