Fame & Fortune ‘A stunt in Con Air went wrong and cost us $1m’
Simon West, director of big budget blockbusters, tells John Wright why a plane had to be crashed into a hotel twice over – and why it cost so much
Simon West, 59, is the film director and producer who found fame in 1997 directing Con Air, followed by Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and The Expendables 2, among others. He is the only live action director whose first three films all grossed more than $100m at the US box office and his films in all have taken in more than $1bn worldwide. Today he lives in Burford, Oxfordshire, with his family.
HOW DID YOUR CHILDHOOD INFLUENCE YOUR ATTITUDE TO MONEY?
My father died when I was young. I grew up in suburban Letchworth, Hertfordshire, and my art teacher mum brought me and my two sisters up on her own. She didn’t have much money and always said: “Don’t go into the arts because you’ll never make money.”
At 12 I was obsessed with film. I saved for a Super 8 camera I saw for £5 and started making films. A roll of film cost twice as much as the albums my friends were buying. I got a paper round. After a summer job at 15 at the Cotswold Wildlife Park I’d made £200. I learnt to drive, bought a rusty Morris Minor and drove to London to seek my fortune.
WHAT WAS YOUR NEXT JOB?
I joined the BBC as a trainee assistant film editor at 18. I’d done A-levels, was trying for college but didn’t get the grades, then saw this advert. I was paid £4,000 a year at the BBC, where I set up my own under-the-radar film unit. By day I worked on Newsnight and Blue Peter and after hours made films with BBC equipment to make a showreel.
ARE YOU A SAVER OR A SPENDER? Spender, and always slightly more money than I have. I buy antique boats and with a friend bought a yacht in LA for $350,000. My worst behaviour is at auctions. At one, online, I accidentally bought a Lotus Elite because I kept pressing the “bid” button, and a clapped out Lotus Elite turned up on the drive.
HAVE YOU HAD TROUBLE PAYING YOUR BILLS?
Often in the film business you work for little or nothing to get established. You take risks like sleeping in the car. Now, with four children, I don’t: not just hanging out of helicopters with cameras, but financially. I had a postproduction company with a friend in the US that didn’t really make any money. I lost $400,000. I didn’t know what I was doing business-wise.
DOES MONEY MAKE YOU HAPPY? If you have enough to feed your family and have a roof over your head, happiness is up to you after that. Some billionaires I know are happy; some are very unhappy.
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR WORST FINANCIAL DECISION?
I bought Japanese yen the week Lehman Brothers crashed. I thought I could sell on Monday because it had lost 50pc of its value, not realising that over the weekend it kept tumbling. Between Friday and Monday I lost $200,000.
HAVE YOU MADE LUCRATIVE TV COMMERCIALS?
In 1995 I did Budweiser Beer commercials for the Super Bowl, one showing ants drinking out of a bottle. You get paid by the shoot day ($25,000) and it was done in one shot despite working on it for two months.
Then I did the “Budweiser Frogs” advert. Whenever they did press for Con Air they’d say “from the director of the Budweiser Frogs commercials”.
They were so successful that Auggie Busch IV [former head of AnheuserBusch, maker of Budweiser] flew to LA on his private jet to tell me they’d increased Budweiser sales by 30pc.
A rival beer paid me $250,000 to make commercials with ex-football players then decided against being associated with has-beens. So my most lucrative TV ad was never shown.
‘The boss of Budweiser told me my advert had lifted sales of the beer by 30pc’
HAVE YOU BEEN RIPPED OFF?
I first went to LA with $400. I started getting commercials and rented a small house in the Hollywood Hills. When the owner couldn’t pay his mortgage we bought it cheap at the bank’s auction. To make it bigger for our first child we hired a builder, stupidly giving him $80,000 upfront, then we went away working for three months.
A friend checking on it found it flattened and the builder and his family in our pool. Then he disappeared. Demolition subcontractors came for $70,000 he owed them, which I was liable for.
They put a lien on the house so you can’t sell or finance it until it’s cleared. So I had to pay them and hire a new contractor to rebuild the house, thus paying three times.
DO YOU RUN A TIGHT SHIP WITH BIG-BUDGET FILMS? There’s so much money involved. It costs $20,000 an hour just to be there.
One day an aeroplane part in Con Air broke and we couldn’t film. The grip responsible picks up his Makita drill and the battery’s flat.
The other grips get out screwdrivers to do it. I made them buy 50 cordless drills because it’s cheaper than wasting an hour. It’s now an industry standard: the Simon West Makita Rule!
WHAT WAS YOUR COSTLIEST STUNT?
A plane crashing into the Sands Hotel in Con Air cost $1m and it went wrong. We had to do it twice. (The hotel had closed and was to be demolished.) It was before CGI. A full-sized plane was on a giant ramp, a cable running from it through the hotel and winches to a 50-ton truck. Because it was a one-off event, I had 17 cameras on it and 200 stunt people. All day and night we set up and loaded cameras for the night shoot. People on the Vegas strip were watching and I’m shouting “Action, action!” We start the cameras. But the guy on the radio in the truck, who’s going to pull this cable to make the plane come down at 50mph and crash, had fallen asleep. When we shouted he woke up, accelerated jerkily and snapped the cable, just enough to move the aeroplane, but it only came down at 2mph, so undramatic. But if it tipped off, it would also crush itself and be a disaster. It teetered over the end of the ramp like the bus in The Italian Job and 10,000 people held their breath.
West’s latest film Skyfire is available on Blu-ray, DVD and on demand
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