FILM · 1991 · USA
Hudson Hawk
50 archived facts 6 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
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Despite the shoot running late and the odd location of the chase scene on the Brooklyn Bridge, hundreds of New Yorkers strolled the bridge's pedestrian walkway to catch a glimpse of the action and, of course, of star Bruce Willis. The actor later appeared on local news to thank New Yorkers for their interest, their cooperation and, above all, their patience.
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When it came time to cast the film, everyone was in complete agreement about the actor they wanted for Tommy: "Five-Tone." Danny Aiello and Bruce Willis had known each other for many years, going back to a time when neither was known worldwide, and Aiello recalled, "Bruce and I had wanted to make a film together for three or four years." The actor was so eager to take on the role of Hawk's best friend and partner that he postponed the start of another film to join Willis and company on their globe-trotting adventures.
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Actor-writer Bruce Willis said of the film's story: "We took elements from a lot of different film genres throughout the development of the story. In a way, we wanted to make a film about an international cat burglar whose roots go back to films like To Catch a Thief (1955) and Topkapi (1964), but at the same time it's close to as absurd a comedy as anything I've ever done."
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Richard E. Grant said that right after he shot his scenes for this film, he was offered the chance to play the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), but the shoot was so chaotic that the director would not let him take the role and he had to be available for reshoots. The role went to Alan Rickman instead.
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The film's co-screenwriter, Robert Kraft, was a singer/songwriter and a personal friend of Bruce Willis. He co-produced and wrote the lyrics for several tracks on the soundtrack album, including "Hawk Swing." Kraft would eventually head the music department at Twentieth Century-Fox from the mid-to-late 1990s and hold that position for several years.
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This was the last film TriStar Pictures produced before merging with the similarly financially troubled Columbia Pictures. Because the film lost so much money, Sony had to rescue TriStar by buying the remaining shares and reorganizing the company as part of the recently formed Sony Pictures Entertainment. A memorable headline summed up the event: "HAWK cooks Tri-Star's goose." As with United Artists' acquisition by MGM, Columbia and Tri-Star were allowed to keep their own logos and continue making films under their own names.
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According to director Michael Lehmann in his audio commentary, for the most complex and ambitious scenes shot in New York City, the production was seen closing the exit side of the Brooklyn Bridge for five nights. From 10:00 p.m. until 5:00 a.m., the producers created their own rush hour; Bruce Willis dodged in and out of dangerous but meticulously choreographed traffic on a motorized, steerable, non-runaway hospital gurney.
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Producer Joel Silver and star Bruce Willis chose director Michael Lehmann to direct the film in a way that would blend all its elements. Although Lehmann had previously directed only two feature films, his directorial debut, the cult black comedy Heathers (1989), had caught the attention of both the star and the producer. Lehmann was excited to take on the project: "I was a Bruce Willis fan and it was easy to imagine Bruce in the role. I also felt there was something I could contribute to the film. Even though the material was very accessible, there was room for some funny little twists and turns that would lift it above the standard action-adventure comedy. Above all, it was very clear from the script that if done right, the film would be a lot of fun to watch. What more could you want from a film?"
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After three months in Italy, another location awaited the producers. At the Mafilm Studios on the outskirts of Budapest, Hungary, a four-month soundstage build produced the largest and most magnificent of the film's sets: "The Leonardo da Vinci Gold Machine." The set was actually divided into two parts: the machine and the adjoining Renaissance workshop of Leonardo da Vinci, where various diagrams, sketches and models of the artist's ideas were brought to life. In the 20th century, when Darwin Mayflower (Richard E. Grant) and Minerva Mayflower (Sandra Bernhard) seize the castle housing da Vinci's workshop, the room is turned into a museum displaying numerous models of da Vinci's work. Thousands of dollars' worth of real models were loaned to the production by the da Vinci museum in Milan, the capital of Italy's Lombardy region.
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When Hawk reassembles the reflective mirror device for the gold-making machine without one piece, it later causes the machine to malfunction and Minerva Mayflower to be splashed with molten metal. It's hard to tell in the film, but this metal is bronze. By removing the mirrored piece, Hawk had made the machine work exactly as Leonardo da Vinci intended.
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One of Bruce Willis's ideas was for Hawk to own a pet monkey named Little Eddie that he would be excited to see again after leaving prison. Screenwriter Daniel Waters wrote that someone hits the monkey and that it is killed while Hawk is in prison, giving him another reason to be angry, in order to shorten the monkey's backstory. There was a newspaper headline about the mob shooting the monkey. In a deleted fight scene near the end, Kaplan (James Coburn) confesses to killing the monkey, Hawk shoots a picture of Little Eddie into Kaplan's forehead, says "Say hello to Little Eddie, motherf*cker!" and throws him off a cliff. Because of this, when Kaplan gets into the limousine, a photo of a monkey can be seen on his forehead if you look closely.
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The toll booth gag is a joke that resonated with veteran toll takers of the day. An "amateur" always stops to put the coin in the basket, whereas an ordinary commuter knows how fast to approach the booth to pass through without stopping and from what distance to toss the coin. This is especially funny for people living in Chicago and New York, where toll road traffic is very fast and very frantic.
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Minerva Mayflower was not in the original drafts. This was because there was initially meant to be a single villain intended for a male actor, but Michael Lehmann suggested casting Audrey Hepburn in the film, and the villain was subsequently rewritten as a woman so that Hepburn could play the role. Negotiations between the producers and Hepburn fell through, but Bruce Willis suggested taking the two villains from earlier drafts and making them a couple.
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In the film, Leonardo da Vinci's most ambitious project is a machine that can turn lead into gold using solar energy and alchemical salts. It is called "The da Vinci Gold Machine" or "The Leonardo da Vinci Gold Machine." Although there is no historical evidence that da Vinci worked with alchemy, the machine imagined by production designer Jackson De Govia might have impressed the man who inspired it. De Govia said: "In producing the gold machine, I managed to combine and adapt mechanical principles and devices that came directly from Leonardo da Vinci's mind and pen."
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The Mayflowers' elaborate corporate boardroom and the room in the Vatican Art Museum housing Leonardo da Vinci's "Codex" were built at Cinecittà Studios in Rome, Italy. One of the complex security devices Eddie Hawkins must overcome to steal the book is a unique chandelier that automatically lowers when the light beams surrounding the display case are broken, turning itself into an impenetrable cage.
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In the middle of the Rome shooting schedule, the film company regrouped and headed north for ten days and ten nights of shooting near the town of Rimini, the capital of Emilia-Romagna. A few minutes from the seaside resort, the crew found itself in the village of San Leo. As Dante Alighieri noted in his "Divine Comedy" (c. 1308-1320), San Leo has a magnificent 15th-century castle that serves a dual purpose. Its first appearance in the film is as the setting for Leonardo da Vinci's workshop in the 16th century. Its second appearance in the film is as the present-day residence of Darwin and Minerva Mayflower.
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This was the late Michael Kamen's seventh consecutive film score assignment for producer Joel Silver. His other films include Lethal Weapon (1987), Action Jackson (1988) with Herbie Hancock, Die Hard (1988), Lethal Weapon 2 (1989) and Road House (1989). Die Hard 2 (1990) and this film were in early 1991, and he worked with Silver again later that year on The Last Boy Scout, and during the 1990s he worked with Silver only three more times, scoring both Lethal Weapon 3 and 4 in 1992 and 1998, and his music was replaced in Assassins and Fair Game in 1995. The latter featured Kamen's friend and jazz saxophonist David Sanborn. He worked with him on four Lethal Weapon films.
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Principal photography began on July 9, 1990; the cast and crew gathered in front of a reformatory to shoot the scenes of Hawk's first release from prison. The film company moved from there to the New York City area. Over the following three weeks, the streets of the metropolis as well as many New Jersey and Brooklyn locations formed the backdrop of the production.
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Production wrapped in New York City at 6 a.m. on July 31, 1990, and a few hours later the cast and crew boarded a plane to begin the second leg of their international adventure. After a single day of preparation, filming resumed in Rome, Italy, directly opposite the Colosseum, one of the world's most famous landmarks. Many well-known locations in and around Rome were used for the picture, among them Piazza Navona, the Roman Forum, and the 16th-century Villa Farnese near Caprarola, an old town and comune in the province of Viterbo in the Lazio region of central Italy.
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It was the last film released by Tri-Star Pictures before the studio was acquired by Sony Corporation (which later merged Tri-Star with Columbia Pictures). The film's failure at the box office contributed badly to the acquisition; it now summed up a famous headline story: "HAWK cooks Tri-Star's goose."
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