Blake Edwards — who originally wrote the script under the title Kansas City Jazz in the 1970s — was attached to direct City Heat, only to be fired during pre-production and replaced by actor-turned-director Richard Benjamin. Edwards negotiated to keep a writing credit, but under the pseudonym Sam O. Brown (a pointed S.O.B. reference to his earlier satire), signaling how acrimonious the split was. The dismissal was no quiet creative shift: Edwards publicly described the whole experience as “such a horrendous experience, it could have come right out of S.O.B.,” and later said it inspired him to draft a follow-up he caustically dubbed S.O.B. 2. The fallout was more than personal: co-star Burt Reynolds admitted the firing “hurt him badly” and suggested it derailed the chemistry and direction the project had originally promised. Warner Bros. executives’ insistence on proceeding without Edwards and the visible bitterness from a veteran writer-director turned what might have been a starry 1930s pastiche into a public case study in studio-level meddling and mismatched creative visions.
Preparing the daily feature…
AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1980s
Blake Edwards Gets Dismissed from His Own Kansas City Jazz — A Bitter Creative Firing that Spilled Into the Press
City Heat (Blake Edwards / Richard Benjamin) / 1980s
Blake Edwards — who originally wrote the script under the title Kansas City Jazz in the 1970s — was attached to direct City Heat, only to be fired during pre-production and replaced by actor-turned-director Richard Benjamin. Edwards negotiated to keep a writing credit, but under the pseudonym Sam O. Brown (a pointed S.O.B. reference to his earlier satire), signaling how acrimonious the split was. The dismissal was no quiet creative shift: Edwards publicly described the whole experience as “such a horrendous experience, it could have come right out of S.O.B.,” and later said it inspired him to draft a follow-up he caustically dubbed S.O.B. 2. The fallout was more than personal: co-star Burt Reynolds admitted the firing “hurt him badly” and suggested it derailed the chemistry and direction the project had originally promised. Warner Bros. executives’ insistence on proceeding without Edwards and the visible bitterness from a veteran writer-director turned what might have been a starry 1930s pastiche into a public case study in studio-level meddling and mismatched creative visions.
The daily feature is taking an intermission. There’s still an entire archive to explore.