Ever since it came and went from theaters in the summer of 1980, the urban thriller “Night of the Juggler” has been as beloved by learned cinephiles as it is difficult to see. Sean Baker is a vocal fan and Quentin Tarantino has his own 35mm print, but unless you’re among the lucky few who was able to catch the film at Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema or one of its other repertory screenings, it’s likely you’ve never experienced “Night of the Juggler,” if you’ve heard of it at all.
“From the day we started shooting I loved this movie and was so disappointed at its lack of distribution,” lead actor James Brolin told IndieWire during a recent interview. “It was amazing how it disappeared. In those days to have a film in theaters for only one week was pretty rare. They’d let them cook for a while and they might catch on.”
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“Night of the Juggler” boasts some of cinematographer Victor J. Kemper’s best New York street photography (no small achievement, given that Kemper also shot “Dog Day Afternoon” and John Cassavetes’ “Husbands”), a lead performance of incredible force and intensity by Brolin, and one of the best extended chase sequences in the history of movies. Yet its studio unceremoniously dumped it and never released it on DVD or Blu-ray, leaving it to languish in obscurity for decades.
Thankfully, Kino Lorber has now restored “Night of the Juggler” in 4K and is giving the movie a theatrical release at theaters around the country this September, kicking things off with a Cinematic Void screening at the American Cinematheque on September 4 with Brolin in attendance for a Q&A. Kino will also be releasing special edition 4K UHD and Blu-ray editions of the film on September 16.
“Night of the Juggler” is essentially a 110-minute chase that begins when, in a variation on the premise of Akira Kurosawa’s “High and Low” and its recent Spike Lee remake, a kidnapper (Cliff Gorman) abducts the wrong child. He thinks he’s got the offspring of a wealthy real estate developer, but he’s actually snatched truck driver Brolin’s daughter Kathy (Abby Bluestone). When Sean Boyd (Brolin) sees his daughter get grabbed and pulled into a car, he springs into action, relentlessly pursuing the kidnapper through the mean streets of 1980 New York (presented at its seediest by Kemper and production designer Stuart Wurtzel).
Although television veteran Robert Butler is the credited director, Brolin says the visual style of “Night of the Juggler” was established by “The Ipcress File” auteur Sidney J. Furie before he quit the film under mysterious circumstances. “The stuff Bob has done in television is pretty darn good, but he’s more like a basketball coach than a director,” Brolin said. “He doesn’t have an understanding of actors and what they may need and what makes each one unique. It was a lot different than Sidney, who nurtured you.”
Before Furie left the movie, he shot its most extraordinary sequence, a car chase through busy New York streets that was all done practically, with Brolin visibly performing many of his own stunts. It’s an extended set piece that ranks alongside the bank robbery in Michael Mann’s “Heat” as an epic example of location-based action choreography; like Mann, Furie brilliantly lays out the geography and stages the action in a manner that’s kinetic and chaotic but completely clear in its intentions and effects.
According to Brolin, the scene’s clarity and emotional power came from Furie’s decision to shoot the first 25 minutes of the movie in continuity, building the sequence step by chronological step and shooting it with long lenses that allowed him to capture the life of the city. The lenses were so long and the cameras so far back, in fact, that on occasion the local police mistook the film’s action for the real thing. “We were blowing out the windows, and people would show up and go, ‘Whoa!’ We had several cops come running from a block away,” he said.
Toward the end of shooting the car chase, Brolin broke his foot and production had to be shut down for a few weeks, during which Furie left the project. “Basically, he thought he was making a flop that was going to end his career,” Brolin said. “Maybe he thought my foot breaking was an omen.” Regardless, Brolin said that Furie and Kemper had the shoot so well mapped out that essentially Butler just followed their template. “Vic understood what Sidney wanted, and so did the AD that stayed on, so Bob Butler couldn’t really modify or minimize it.”
Working with Kemper was a particular pleasure for Brolin, a photography buff who began his career intending to work behind the camera, not in front of it. “As a kid, I couldn’t get up in front of people,” Brolin said. “I’d sit down shaking during a book report.” Brolin spent his teenage years shooting film and dreaming of becoming a director, but life took an unexpected turn when he was walking around Westwood Village and a stranger stopped him to ask if he’d like to be in a commercial.
“They said, ‘We want you to drive this Dodge truck,’” Brolin said. “I said, ‘I wouldn’t have to talk, would I?’ I was dead serious. But no, it was just me in a cowboy hat and a cowboy shirt driving a Dodge truck.” That commercial led to more advertising work and a Screen Actors Guild card. “That started to change my thinking a bit. I got a job as Brando’s son in ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ and went to Tahiti, but my role was cut. I came back and started parking cars at Lawry’s on La Cienega and Dino’s on the Strip.”
Eventually, 20th Century Fox signed Brolin to a contract at $93 a week — “More money than I had ever heard of,” said Brolin — and he stayed at the studio for seven years without gaining any real momentum. Then he left to go over to Universal where, within three months, he got the second lead in a television series (“Marcus Welby, M.D.”) and became, in his words, “an overnight success 10 years later,” winning an Emmy for his work on the show.
Brolin never really let go of his directing aspirations, however, and used his time on “Night of the Juggler” to absorb what Furie and Kemper were doing. “I’d watch Vic and I’d watch Sidney and the little wheels were turning in my head,” Brolin said. “I was going, ‘I’m gonna do this one day.’” At the time, Brolin had decided he was done with television, having had some success in film as the star of “The Amityville Horror” — yet it was TV that would ultimately help him realize his dream.
When Aaron Spelling came to Brolin in 1983 with an offer to star in the series “Hotel,” Brolin saw an opportunity. “I said, if I’m going to do ‘Hotel’ and get out of the movie business, I want to direct,” Brolin said. “Now I’ve been in the DGA for over 40 years.” When Brolin got all of the footage he needed and sent everyone home at 3 p.m. on his first day, “They went, ‘This kid’s gotta be the worst director in history.’” But Brolin had spent time observing not only the directors on movies and TV shows he was acting in, but Clint Eastwood, whose decisiveness made an impression on Brolin.
“I learned a lot from Clint and Sidney and all those years doing my own shooting,” Brolin said, adding that his experience on “Marcus Welby” was invaluable as well. “Instead of relaxing at lunch, I’d go into dailies and see what we just shot. I’d see the difference between what I thought happened and what really happened on screen. The mind starts to go, ‘Oh, you don’t need that.’”
Brolin still plans to direct more and has a few movies in the works, but he knows the industry is in a state of transition. “Whether I’m too old for that to affect me or not, I don’t know,” he said. “But I still have hope and I work out three times a week with the toughest guy I ever met. I lift weights, I swim in the ocean, I jog, so I’ve still got the energy. Except when I’m not working. Then I love the couch.”
