Touchstone Plus-Or-Minus: Disorganized Crime

Like so many screenwriters since the dawn of Hollywood, Jim Kouf had aspirations to direct. In fact, by the time Stakeout became a huge hit for Touchstone in 1987, he’d already directed one feature: Miracles starring Teri Garr and Tom Conti. Unfortunately, Miracles sank without a trace during its 1986 release, attracting so little attention that I’m not sure it even qualifies as a cult movie. Perhaps the failure of Miracles had something to do with why Jeffrey Katzenberg was less than enthusiastic about letting Kouf direct his next Touchstone project, Disorganized Crime.

Kouf eventually talked Katzenberg into it but he wasn’t exactly handed a blank check. He was given a budget of just $5 million. John Badham had over $14 million on Stakeout and that movie had half as many characters as Disorganized Crime. If Kouf was going to pull this off, he was going to have to get creative.

To begin with, Kouf set his movie in the scenic and more affordable state of Montana. At the time, the Montana Film Commission was actively trying to attract film production. The state had recently hosted such productions as Amazing Grace And Chuck, Cold Feet, War Party and Steven Spielberg’s Always. They would soon be joined by movies like Far And Away, A River Runs Through It and many others. I lived in Montana back then and it definitely felt like there was a near-constant influx of Hollywood types. Many of them decided to stay, which is why Montana is nowhere near as affordable today as it was back then. But that’s a complaint for the next installment of Adam Jahnke’s Back In My Day.

Kouf also needed to assemble a relatively large ensemble cast. To do so economically, he focused on veteran character actors. None of the actors in Disorganized Crime were necessarily A-list movie stars. The biggest marquee names at the time were Corbin Bernsen from TV’s L.A. Law (last seen in this column in the atrocious Hello Again) and Lou Diamond Phillips. Phillips had appeared in several hits, including La Bamba, Stand And Deliver and Young Guns. Still, neither of them were proven box office commodities.