Touchstone Plus-Or-Minus: Big Business

Bette Midler hadn’t exactly been idle since beginning her association with Disney/Touchstone in 1986. She’d been in three movies, all of which had been popular. Some, like Ruthless People, had become legitimate blockbusters. But as busy and successful as she’d been over the last couple of years, 1988 would take her to the next level. Although it might not have seemed that way in June when Big Business, the first and most routine of the three Disney movies to feature Bette Midler in 1988, hit theatres.

The screenplay, a modern retelling of Shakespeare’s The Comedy Of Errors, was by Dori Pierson (who was and is married to Chris Carter, the future creator of The X-Files, not that that has anything to do with the movie but I found it interesting) and Marc Rubel, one of the writers of Xanadu (I don’t know who he’s married to, if anyone). Pierson and Rubel had collaborated on a few TV-movies, including Prince Of Bel Air with Mark Harmon (not to be confused with later, fresher princes of Bel-Air). They’d also produced a Disney TV-movie called Spot Marks The X starring one of Midler’s costars from Down And Out In Beverly Hills, Mike the Dog. Seriously, that’s how it was promoted. Mike the Dog was a big star back in ’86.