The wild, untold sto­ry of The Good Life

It sounds too improb­a­ble to be true: an inde­pen­dent film shot in Mia­mi 20 years ago star­ring Den­nis Hop­per and fea­tur­ing Sylvester Stal­lone and a who’s who of char­ac­ter actors best known for appear­ing in gang­ster films. But even if you could trav­el back to the dusty racks of a mom and pop video rental store, you’ll nev­er find a copy of The Good Life. You won’t find any­thing writ­ten about the film online either – not even IMDb has any real info on it. After a per­fect storm of pro­duc­tion issues, The Good Life made it to com­ple­tion only to be shelved for two decades and counting.

It was meant to be the next step in the careers of pro­duc­er sib­lings Alan and Diane Mehrez. In the ear­ly ​’90s, they pro­duced suc­cess­ful low-bud­get films, includ­ing sequels to the 1988 cult clas­sic Blood­sport. The screen­play fol­lows three life­long friends who are also golf afi­ciona­dos. Each has issues stem­ming from their involve­ment in organ­ised crime, includ­ing unfin­ished busi­ness with one pow­er­ful fig­ure, Mr B (Den­nis Hop­per). Many involved with the film describe its mix of dra­ma and com­e­dy as a fore­run­ner to The Sopra­nos with more humour – in par­tic­u­lar, the colour­ful lan­guage that per­me­ates the screen­play (the film opens with a humor­ous dis­claimer about the fre­quent use of four-let­ter words).

Among the prin­ci­pal cast is Frank Stal­lone, Sly’s younger broth­er. Although a musi­cian by trade, Frank had pre­vi­ous­ly appeared in sev­er­al of his brother’s films, includ­ing the first three Rocky movies. The Good Life was sup­posed to be his break­out role. Frank also served as a pro­duc­er on the film, and those involved in the pro­duc­tion describe it as his pas­sion project.

The Good Life also boast­ed an impres­sive sup­port­ing cast that includ­ed Andrew Dice Clay, Peter Dob­son, David Car­ra­dine, Bev­er­ly D’Angelo, Frank Vin­cent, Tony Siri­co, Burt Young and mid­dleweight box­ing cham­pi­on Vin­ny Pazien­za (sub­ject of the 2016 film Bleed for This). Most notably, Sylvester Stal­lone agreed to appear in a brief but promi­nent cameo as a favour to his broth­er. While Sly’s par­tic­i­pa­tion guar­an­teed that the film would stand out from the glut of buzz­wor­thy indie fea­tures that were being released around the same time, it ulti­mate­ly spelled big trou­ble for the production.

Around the mid-’90s, Mia­mi was fast becom­ing a major film­mak­ing loca­tion, with The Body­guard, Bad Boys and The Bird­cage all shot there. The Good Life was grant­ed per­mis­sion to shoot at the famed Doral Coun­try Club – now known as Trump Nation­al Doral Mia­mi – though pro­duc­tion was restrict­ed to the Blue Mon­ster cham­pi­onship golf course as the resort was under­go­ing main­te­nance else­where. Film­ing began in late Octo­ber ​’96 and was sched­uled to run for 36 days on a $5m budget.

The tim­ing and loca­tion were par­tic­u­lar­ly con­ve­nient for Sylvester Stal­lone. At the time he owned an estate in Mia­mi less than 15 miles away from the Doral Coun­try Club (com­plete with a sol­id bronze Rocky stat­ue over­look­ing the pool). Stal­lone is also an avid golfer, and in return for a day’s work he was report­ed­ly giv­en two sets of cus­tom-made Ken­neth Smith clubs. Even more telling­ly, accord­ing to claims in Stallone’s lat­er law­suit against The Good Life, he also received an agree­ment that lim­it­ed the use of his name and like­ness in pub­lic­i­ty materials.

Despite Miami’s emerg­ing film indus­try, almost no locals were employed oth­er than a 19-year-old aspir­ing film­mak­er named Jason Dudek. The Mia­mi native had got­ten his start the pre­vi­ous year as an intern on the Jack Nichol­son and Jen­nifer Lopez vehi­cle Blood and Wine. Dudek recalls, ​“What I bought to the table is that pret­ty much every­one else was flown in – there real­ly weren’t any oth­er Mia­mi locals, and the fact that I was born and raised there real­ly made me the guy who knew the short­cuts and knew my way around the town.”

Dudek was assigned to the Assis­tant Direc­tor depart­ment and was even­tu­al­ly pro­mot­ed to Sec­ond AD. He says that the pro­duc­tion ran into trou­ble as ear­ly as day two. ​“I don’t want to dis­par­age any­one in the pro­duc­tion or the team, because every­one was doing the best they could, but it just seemed like we had bad luck. We were plagued by prob­lems that real­ly shouldn’t have been there.” Com­mu­ni­ca­tion issues led to con­fu­sion regard­ing call times. Then there was the small mat­ter of the dis­ap­pear­ance of three sets of Ken­neth Smith golf clubs (worth $3000 a pop). In spite of every­thing, Stal­lone worked from 7am right through to 5pm – longer than any of the leads that day.

Yet still pro­duc­tion issues con­tin­ued. The actors were all stay­ing at a hotel in South Beach – a fair dis­tance from Doral and the oth­er film­ing loca­tions – and though the call sheets were expect­ed to be slid under the doors of their rooms a rook­ie pro­duc­tion assis­tant went home one night ear­ly on in the shoot with­out doing so. When the crew arrived on the set the next day, the entire prin­ci­pal cast was miss­ing. It took three hours to get every­one to set. For a low-bud­get film, los­ing that much time was a dis­as­ter and dimin­ished the cast’s con­fi­dence in the pro­duc­tion team.

Prob­lems with the crew led to rapid changes of per­son­nel, but mishaps aside, every­one involved speaks high­ly of the footage that was cap­tured. ​“Even when the oper­a­tions were not up to expec­ta­tions and indus­try stan­dards, the con­tent and the qual­i­ty was,” recalls one crew mem­ber who would pre­fer to remain anony­mous. ​“We were cap­tur­ing great stuff on the cam­era and the dailies were great. All of the actors were nail­ing their per­for­mances, and it was real­ly authentic.”

Then, on 15 Novem­ber, 1996 – just 15 days into the shoot – pro­duc­tion on The Good Life was shut down under pres­sure from local union groups, who had vehe­ment­ly protest­ed the film’s pre­dom­i­nant­ly non-union crew. Sources esti­mate that about 80 per cent of the bud­get had already been eat­en up with a lit­tle over half of the film left to shoot. With the pro­duc­tion at an impasse, Alan Mehrez reached out to anoth­er pro­duc­er, Alan Amiel, for assistance.

Amiel, an Israeli-born pro­duc­er, had utilised his mar­tial arts back­ground in var­i­ous roles in the film indus­try, from stunt coor­di­na­tor to mar­tial arts coor­di­na­tor, actor and even­tu­al­ly pro­duc­er, to cre­ate low-bud­get nin­ja films like 1981’s Enter the Nin­ja. (Amiel’s influ­ence on the mar­tial arts genre is such that he claims a 1993 film which he pro­duced called Shoot­fight­er: Fight to the Death inspired the for­ma­tion of the Ulti­mate Fight­ing Cham­pi­onship organ­i­sa­tion, as well as the icon­ic octa­gon fight­ing cage.)

Due to an ongo­ing dis­pute with local union reps, Amiel was brought in to scout new film­ing loca­tions. Nego­ti­a­tions to shoot in near­by Broward Coun­ty – where some scenes had already been shot at Diplo­mat Coun­try Club – fell through. Amiel con­sid­ered mov­ing the entire pro­duc­tion to Jamaica, but a suit­able golf course could not be found. Then he turned to Ixta­pa, Mex­i­co, where the 1987 Steven Lis­berg­er film Hot Pur­suit was made.

Look­ing back, Amiel is par­tic­u­lar­ly proud of how quick­ly he got The Good Life back under­way. ​“The biggest chal­lenge was being able to move every­body from Mia­mi to Mex­i­co and start shoot­ing with­in a week. It was a super mess to change coun­tries and to be up and run­ning in one week with all the obsta­cles we faced.” Much of the Mia­mi crew did not make the move to Mex­i­co, how­ev­er, includ­ing Dudek, who instead went to work as a pro­duc­tion assis­tant on Wild Things. Direc­tor Bar­ry Sam­son was also dis­missed. Mehrez offi­cial­ly direct­ed the Mex­i­co shoot, but Amiel cred­its First Assis­tant Direc­tor Eddie Ziv for shoot­ing a good por­tion of the footage. Sev­er­al actors even recall being direct­ed, at times, by Frank Stal­lone himself.

But the new loca­tion brought its own chal­lenges. Much of the Mexico’s film­mak­ing resources were being used up by James Cameron’s Titan­ic. One actor refused to fly south of the bor­der, which led to a great deal of coor­di­na­tion of trains, bus­es and pri­vate cars to bring him in from Cal­i­for­nia. Cast and crew feared kid­nap­pers and one lead actor was briefly fired by Amiel for refus­ing to report to the set (the issues were resolved and the actor was prompt­ly rehired). To top it all, the ponds on the golf course in Ixta­pa were infest­ed with croc­o­diles, and the cast and crew were instruct­ed to avoid going too close to the water.

Sev­er­al weeks lat­er pro­duc­tion on The Good Life wrapped, with pro­duc­ers trim­ming the sched­ule by six days to bring it back with­in bud­get. An ini­tial cut was com­plet­ed by mid-’97, and a screen­ing was put on for poten­tial buy­ers. But by July the rela­tion­ship between Frank Stal­lone and the Mehrezes had bro­ken down. The bad blood between them alleged­ly inten­si­fied after a pro­mo­tion­al reel fea­tur­ing clips from Sylvester Stallone’s scene was created.

On 24 July, 1997, Stallone’s celebri­ty lawyer, Mar­tin Singer, filed a $20m law­suit (four times the film’s orig­i­nal bud­get) against the Mehrezes and their pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies. Less than a month lat­er, Frank Stal­lone filed his own law­suit against the same par­ties, only for the Mehrezes to coun­ter­sue the broth­ers for a com­bined $50m. As if there wasn’t already enough star pow­er involved in the suit, Christo­pher Dar­d­en – the pros­e­cu­tor in the OJ Simp­son mur­der tri­al – joined the Mehrez team in Jan­u­ary, 1999. On 12 July, the sides came to an agree­ment, with Singer telling Vari­ety, ​“There was an ami­ca­ble set­tle­ment among the par­ties.” Terms of the set­tle­ment were not disclosed.

Law­suits are par for the course for Hol­ly­wood, but unlike oth­er trou­bled pro­duc­tions that limp to com­ple­tion and even­tu­al­ly receive a lim­it­ed the­atri­cal run, The Good Life has nev­er been seen by the pub­lic. It is not avail­able any­where, even after the deaths of two of the film’s stars – Car­ra­dine in 2009 and Hop­per in 2010 – and the recent career revivals of both Sylvester Stal­lone and Andrew Dice Clay. Sources close to the pro­duc­tion believe that the issues which pre­vent­ed the film’s release can still be resolved, but there’s cur­rent­ly no time­line for when that could happen.

‘Lost’ films have long been a source of obses­sion among film fans, from for­got­ten silent era clas­sics to Orson Welles’ numer­ous aban­doned projects. Yet even with its high-pro­file cast and the unwa­ver­ing per­se­ver­ance of its crew, The Good Life stands as a mod­ern exam­ple of how a film can be lost in an entire­ly dif­fer­ent way. It exists as a cau­tion­ary tale of inde­pen­dent film­mak­ing, with no sign that it will one day final­ly be allowed to tell its own story.