Fletch (film)

Los Angeles Times undercover reporter Irwin M. "Fletch" Fletcher (who writes as "Jane Doe") is writing an article exposing drug trafficking on the beaches of Los Angeles. While posing as an addict, he is approached by Boyd Aviation executive vice president Alan Stanwyk, who assumes Fletch is a real junkie. Stanwyk claims to have bone cancer, with only months left to live, and wishes to avoid the suffering. Stanwyk offers $50,000 for Fletch to kill him at his mansion in a few days' time, stage the scene as a burglary, then flee to Rio de Janeiro.

Fletch, not completely convinced on the truth of Stanwyk's story, agrees to the plan. Along with his colleague Larry, he begins investigating Stanwyk instead of completing his drug exposé, much to the anger of his authoritarian editor Frank Walker. Disguised as a doctor, Fletch accesses Stanwyk's file at the hospital and learns he does not have cancer.

Fletch visits Stanwyk's wife Gail at her tennis club. Pretending to be a tennis instructor and Alan's friend, he flirts with her during a tennis lesson. Looking into Stanwyk's finances, Fletch finds that Gail recently converted $3 million of her personal stock in Boyd Aviation into cash for her husband, to buy a ranch in Provo, Utah. Fletch breaks into the realtor's office and discovers the sale price was only $3,000.

Meanwhile, LAPD Chief Jerry Karlin learns of Fletch's drug report. He warns Fletch that the article will jeopardize his undercover operation on the beach. Karlin threatens to kill Fletch unless he agrees to drop the investigation.

At the tennis club, Fletch witnesses arrogant club member Mr. Underhill, shouting at a waiter and decides as revenge to use Underhill's tab to treat Gail to an expensive lunch in her private cabana. Fletch reveals Alan's murder scheme to her and tells her the true price of the ranch.

Fletch watches Stanwyk making a suspicious briefcase exchange with Chief Karlin, but is unable to deduce the nature of their meeting. When he is chased by LAPD officers lying in wait at his apartment, Fletch goes into hiding, returning to Provo. Posing as an insurance investigator, he interviews Stanwyk's parents, learning that Stanwyk has been married to another woman for eight years; his bigamous marriage to Gail allowed him access to her vast wealth.

Fletch arrives at Stanwyk's mansion on the night of the planned murder, but finds Stanwyk waiting to kill him instead. Fletch reveals his discovery of Stanwyk's real plan to fake his own death by killing Fletch and burning his body beyond recognition, then escape to Brazil with his first wife and Gail's $3 million. Stanwyk was also using his private jet to smuggle drugs from South America to supply Chief Karlin, who blackmailed ex-convicts Fat Sam and Gummy to distribute it on the beaches. Karlin arrives unexpectedly; learning of Stanwyk's intention to flee with nearly $1 million of the Chief's drug money, he kills Stanwyk. Karlin and Fletch fight over the gun until Gail strikes Karlin from behind, rendering him unconscious.

Karlin is indicted after Fletch's article, with testimony from Fat Sam and Gummy. Fletch begins dating Gail, taking her to Rio on Stanwyk's tickets and using Underhill's tab.

• Chevy Chase as Irwin "Fletch" Fletcher
• Joe Don Baker as Chief Karlin
• Dana Wheeler-Nicholson as Gail Stanwyk
• Richard Libertini as Frank Walker
• Tim Matheson as Alan Stanwyk
• M. Emmet Walsh as Dr. Dolan
• George Wendt as Fat Sam
• Kenneth Mars as Stanton Boyd
• Geena Davis as Larry
• Bill Henderson as Speaker
• George Wyner as Marvin Gillet
• Larry "Flash" Jenkins as Gummy
• Ralph Seymour as druggie under the dock

The film makes numerous references to Fletch's favorite team, the Los Angeles Lakers, and includes appearances by Lakers player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and play-by-play announcer Chick Hearn, as themselves.

1. Stephanie Mills — "Bit by Bit (Theme from Fletch)" 3:38
2. Dan Hartman — "Fletch, Get Outta Town" 4:11
3. John Farnham — "Running for Love" 2:54
4. Dan Hartman — "Name of the Game" 6:02
5. Harold Faltermeyer — "Fletch Theme" 3:48
6. The Fixx — "A Letter to Both Sides" 3:20
7. Kim Wilde — "Is It Over" 3:52
8. Harold Faltermeyer — "Diggin' In" 2:44
9. Harold Faltermeyer — "Exotic Skates" 3:00
10. Harold Faltermeyer — "Running for Love" [instrumental] 2:44

The soundtrack was mastered by Greg Fulginiti at Artisan Sound Recorders.

Fletch was released on May 31, 1985, in 1,225 theaters, debuting at second place behind Rambo: First Blood Part II with a gross of $7 million. It went on to make $50.6 million in North America and $9 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $59.6 million.[16] The film performed well on home video, earning $24.4 million in rentals.[17]

Fletch received generally positive reviews and has a 77% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 30 critics with the consensus: "Quotably funny – and fast-paced enough to smooth over the jokes that don't land – Fletch is one of the best big-screen vehicles for Chevy Chase's brand of smug silliness".[18] Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "The problem is, Chase's performance tends to reduce all the scenes to the same level, at least as far as he is concerned. He projects such an inflexible mask of cool detachment, of ironic running commentary, that we're prevented from identifying with him ... Fletch needed an actor more interested in playing the character than in playing himself."[19] Vincent Canby in his review for The New York Times praised Chase's performance, writing, "He manages simultaneously to act the material with a good deal of nonchalance and to float above it, as if he wanted us to know that he knows that the whole enterprise is somewhat less than transcendental."[20] Time magazine's Richard Schickel wrote, "In Fletch, the quick, smartly paced, gags somehow read as signs of vulnerability. Incidentally, they add greatly to the movie's suspense. Every minute you expect the hero's loose lip to be turned into a fat one."[21] In his review for the Chicago Reader, Dave Kehr wrote, "Chase and Ritchie make a strong, natural combination: the union of their two flip, sarcastic personalities produces a fairly definitive example of the comic style of the 80s, grounded in detachment, underreaction, and cool contempt for rhetorically overblown authority figures."[22]

Fletch became a cult film.[5] In an interview for the New York Post, Bergman tried to explain its appeal: "It's so bizarre, but Fletch strikes a chord. There's a group of movies like that in the '80s, like Caddyshack, too, that captured a certain wise-ass thing."[6] In particular, the film appeals to college students who have asked Chase to talk about it at film classes.[6] The actor has said that the appeal of the character is "the cheekiness of the guy ... everybody at that age would like to be as quick-witted as Fletch, and as uncaring about what others think."[6] Chase has said that this film is his favorite to date because "it allowed me to be myself. Fletch was the first one with me really winging it. Even though there was a script, the director allowed me to just go, and in many ways, I was directing the comedy."[23] Perhaps the most meaningful praise comes from Mcdonald himself: "I watched it recently, and I think Chevy and Michael Ritchie did a good job with it."[3] The film was voted as the 23rd best film set in Los Angeles in the last 25 years by a group of Los Angeles Times writers and editors with two criteria: "The movie had to communicate some inherent truth about the L.A. experience, and only one film per director was allowed on the list." The 2005 animated feature Hoodwinked! depicted the Big Bad Wolf (from Little Red Riding Hood) as a sarcastic investigative reporter in a direct parody of Fletch, right up to the Lakers shirt, disguises, and a version of Fletch's theme playing during his scenes.[24]

The film was followed by a 1989 sequel, Fletch Lives.

A follow-up to Fletch Lives had been discussed in the 1990s at Universal Studios. During his association with Universal after the production of Mallrats (this was because Gramercy Pictures, which released Mallrats, was co-owned by Universal), Kevin Smith expressed interest in doing a third "Fletch" film as a sequel starring Chevy Chase but it never came to fruition. In June 2000, it was announced that Kevin Smith was set to write and direct a Fletch film at Miramax Films, after the rights to the books, which Universal Studios had owned, reverted.[27] At the time, Miramax co-head Harvey Weinstein expressed the hope that a new Fletch series would be "Miramax Films' first-ever series."

After a disagreement between Chase and Smith in regard to differing levels of priority for the sequel project, Smith settled on adapting Fletch Won, which follows Fletch in his early years as newspaper junior reporter. Smith intended to follow the novel's plot and characters much more closely than earlier Fletch films had. Filming the prequel/origin story would have allowed Smith to make the movie without Chase while still leaving the door open for him to appear in a cameo role in framing scenes and/or as narrator. Around this time, Smith mentioned Jason Lee and Ben Affleck as possible choices to play Fletch.[28]

In August 2003, it was reported that the film was set to start shooting in January, with Smith still at the helm. Though Smith insisted on casting Lee in the lead role, Miramax head Harvey Weinstein refused to take a chance on Lee, citing the general inability of his films to gross more than $30 million at the box office. The role of Fletch remained uncast, with Smith considering a list of actors including Affleck, Brad Pitt, and Jimmy Fallon.[28] Though Smith considered compromising and casting Zach Braff in the role, he eventually left the project in October 2005.

Smith was replaced as writer/director by Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence, in what would have been his directorial debut. He had enthused, "Not only can I recite the original Fletch movie line for line, I actually read all the Greg Mcdonald books as a kid. Consider me obsessed — I'm going to try as hard as I can not to screw this up."[29] Lawrence was signed to direct both Fletch Won and a sequel.[29] Scrubs star Zach Braff was rumored to be in talks for the lead role,[29] and in January 2007, Braff posted on his web site that "Bill Lawrence is writing and directing Fletch in the spring and he wants me to play young Fletch, but no firm plans are in place yet. He is still writing the script."[30] In April 2007, Braff announced that he had dropped out of the film to work on his own film, a remake of Open Hearts.[31] In June 2007, it was announced that Lawrence was off the project and had been replaced by Steve Pink.

In 2011, rights to the project were purchased by Warner Brothers, who requested screenplays from several writers that turned out to be unsuitable. In 2013, David List, who represents the Mcdonald estate, stepped in with his own draft which proved attractive enough to engage Jason Sudeikis in the title role. The studio signed off on the screenplay, described as more of a "gritty action comedy with heart", and has begun looking for a director.[32]

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