Review of Vice Squad (1982) by Anthony C — 11 Aug 2009

Gary Sherman on Vice Squad:

GS: Sure, especially having the head of the studio putting his arm around my shoulder and saying, â??Just keep doing what youâ??re doing.â?? VICE SQUAD was a very important picture to me. It was the first of its kind. No one had ever done a police drama like that before.

PG: Not to that degree, no.

GS: And the people that I heard fromâ??you know, John Milius called me and said, â??This is the best movie Iâ??ve ever seen. I just watched the movie last night with Steve Spielberg and he loved it!â?? And Marty Scorsese, and Walter Hill and I became great friends after that movie, and Jim Bridgesâ??he was really funny. You notice that I have a big gap in my life after VICE SQUAD. The movie made a lot of money. And I was in a very unhappy point in my lifeâ??my personal life was nowhere. And what happened with VICE SQUAD was that it was so controversial, a lot of people didnâ??t want to have anything to do with me. There was this attitude in Hollywood that I was a very angry person, and that I hated women. Neither of which were at all true. My feeling about VICE SQUAD was that I wanted the violence to be so ugly that it would put people off of violence. I wanted the violence against women to be so repulsiveâ??I didnâ??t want it to be titillating or exciting. I wanted it to be gruesome and ugly. And I think I achieved that, but I think in a way it was misunderstood by a lot of people. There was actually a public argument [over the film] between Dawn Steel (former president of Paramount and Columbia Pictures) and Martin Scorsese at a Paramount dinner. They were talking about the Oscars that year and who should be nominated, and Marty said, â??Well, the best film this year is a film that the Academy doesnâ??t have the guts to nominate for anything.â?? And Dawn Steel says, â??Whatâ??s that?â?? And Marty says, â??VICE SQUAD.â?? And Dawn starts screaming, â??Are you kidding? Thatâ??s the most misogynisticâ??â?? and they start screaming at each other. And (producer) John Fiedler has to jump in there and calm them down, because everyoneâ??s looking at them. Fiedler called me the next day and said, â??Boy, you wouldnâ??t believe what happened last night!â??