The Unmaking of Hudson Hawk by David Hughes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Before I can really review this book, I need to offer some back story.
I am part of the minority of people who truly enjoyed Hudson Hawk. When it came out in 1991, I saw it in the theater at least half a dozen times along with a few friends of mine who either also loved it or pretended to for my sake. Since then, however, it’s been hard to find people who appreciate the farce. In fact, it often seems to land on the “worst movies ever” lists.
BUT I’ve noticed, particularly over the past few years, that it does get the occasional shout-out of love on social media. The other day, I noticed someone on Threads say that it was truly underrated. This pushed me to say: “One of my favorite things about social media’s mere existence is finding out that I’m not the only human in the world who liked Hudson Hawk.”
That throwaway comment that I made early Monday morning, has since garnered over 6,000 likes and 927 comments — more than any post I’ve ever had on any social media. Maybe more than all of them combined.
But in all those comments, I found someone mention a recently released book on the making of Hudson Hawk, called “The Unmaking of Hudson Hawk.” I tracked it down and bought an EPUB version. (find it here)
While I may have been a fan of Hudson Hawk, I was, apparently, not a scholar of the movie because I learned SO much from David Hughes’ book. I didn’t know that Richard E. Grant hated the movie, for example. I didn’t know that Andie MacDowell was brought in at the last second. And I had no knowledge about the friendship between Bruce Willis and Robert Kraft (not the New England Patriots owner) that was essentially responsible for the movie.
Hughes starts at the beginning and weaves a tale of how the movie that we know (and I love) came to be. There are numerous side quests and dozens of little tidbits to keep things moving along.
While the book suffers from a smattering of typos, I’ll forgive Hughes and his editing team (assuming there was one), because the book was so damn enjoyable.
If you happen to be a fan of Hudson Hawk, you NEED to read this book.
View all my reviews