Trivia / Nighthawks

• Creator Backlash:
  • Sylvester Stallone was really disappointed with the way Universal studio reedited the movie (despite the fact that he did his share of reediting on the movie prior to studio's interference). He was really upset because of the removal of his dramatic scenes with Lindsay Wagner, including an emotional scene between him and Wagner in a restaurant (only mentioned in the final version of the movie) where his character breaks down and cries after his ex-wife refuses to remarry him.
  • Rutger Hauer felt that the film was a missed opportunity and the issue of international terrorism could have been handled more accurately: "We had only to play tags–the written story was much more dangerous."
• Directed by Cast Member: When the original director, Gary Nelson, left the project, Bruce Malmuth took over production. When Malmuth couldn't make it on his first day to shoot the train chase, Stallone directed the chase himself to not miss a day of shooting. This caused trouble with the Director's Guild of America. Guild rules state that a DGA member cannot be fired so an actor can take over directing a film in which he is starring, so the producers asked for and received special permission for Stallone to direct the scene.
• Divorced Installment: The story was originally planned as The French Connection III by screenwriter David Shaber at 20th Century Fox, and would have seen Popeye Doyle team up with a wisecracking cop, to be possibly played by Richard Pryor. The main plot was the same, but when Gene Hackman showed reluctance to do a third movie as Doyle, the idea was scrapped and Universal acquired the rights to the storyline.
• Doing It for the Art:
  • Sylvester Stallone reportedly turned down several other big roles to do this film because he said the material resonated with him.
  • Rutger Hauer had been offered to act in Sphinx, which was a big-budget production, made by a major studio, and they were also offering him twice the salary he got for this film, against working with a well-known director with Franklin J. Schaffner to work with on Sphinx. But Hauer chose the Wulfgar role.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • In the scene where Stallone jumps onto a moving train and kicks out the wire-reinforced window, the window broke easily and knocked him off balance. Stallone has had a lifelong fear of heights and said about the helicopter stunt, "I've never been so scared in my life."
  • Rutger Hauer was injured twice while filming his death scene. In one instance, a squib meant to simulate a gunshot wound exploded on the wrong side and severely burned him. In the other, a cable that would yank him to simulate the force of being shot was pulled too hard, straining his back. Afterward, Hauer discovered that the cable was pulled with such force on Stallone's orders. This was the last straw for Hauer, who then threatened Stallone that he would "break [Stallone's] balls" if he ever did something like that again.
• Fake Brit: The saleswoman that Wulfgar encounters in London is played by Canadian actress Catherine Mary Stewart.
• Fake Nationality:
  • The German Heymar "Wulfgar" Reinhardt is played by Dutch actor Rutger Hauer.
  • Shakka turns out to be a Moroccan, played by the Indian actress Persis Khambatta.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • Although stories about their on-set fights are still talked about amongst fans of the film and both actors, Rutger Hauer has said in recent interviews that he actually didn't take his arguments with Sylvester Stallone personally and that the biggest problem during filming was that it was a very difficult film to make.
  • In a Q and A with Ain't It Cool, Stallone revealed that he fell out with Joe Spinell during filming:
  I love Joe Spinell and considered him a dear friend and would do anything for him. We had met when I had one or two lines in Farewell, My Lovely. He was truly one of a kind, but he had some very deep personal problems on the set of Nighthawks and became distant. It was around that time his mother also passed away, who he lived for and Joe was never the same.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The theatrical trailer shows three extended scenes: Wulfgar looking at a city map in a subway while being observed by a street cop, Wulfgar slowly moving towards the building which he is about to blow up, and Deke and Matt walking across the street searching for Wulfgar in disco bars.
• No Stunt Double: According to Nigel Davenport, Sylvester Stallone insisted on doing his own stunts. He performed the scene in which he was winched up to the Roosevelt Island Tramway without a double. About the film's stunts, he posted on the Ain't It Cool News website:
  The stunts in the film were pretty extraordinary because they were invented along the way. Running through the tunnels of an un-built subway station was very dangerous, but exciting and we were only given one hour to do it. So that made for an interesting evening. Hanging from the cable car was probably one of the more dangerous stunts I was asked to perform because it was untested and I was asked to hold a folding Gerber knife in my left hand so if the cable were to snap, and I survived the 230 foot fall into the East River with its ice cold 8 mile an hour current, I could cut myself free from the harness because the cable when stretched out weighed more than 300 lbs. I tell you this because it's so stupid to believe that I would survive hitting the water so to go beyond that is absurd. So I actually thought the smart move would be to commit hari-kari on the way down and let the cards fold as they may. P.S. Several years later this cable did snap while testing it on a 100lb bag of sand.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: Because of problems with Stallone's and the studio's interference in post-production, the film was heavily re-edited and was released a year after it was finished.
• Wag the Director: Stallone had a hand in re-editing the film. According to Frank Sanello's book, Stallone: A Rocky Life, two versions were shown to test audiences: one emphasizing Stallone's character and the other emphasizing Hauer's. Although the version emphasizing Hauer was better received by audiences, Stallone removed some of Hauer's scenes from the film's final version.
• Working Title: Attack and Hawks.

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