Producer Andy Vajna, the very model of a swaggering, cigar-smoking, Rolls Royce-owning, high-falutin’ producer during his ’80s and ’90s heyday, has passed at age 74. That’s kinda young to check out (was it the cigars?), but you can’t say the Hungarian-born Vajna didn’t live a full and robust life.

In a certain sense I “worked” for Vajna in ’85 as an employee of partnered publicists Bobby Zarem and Dick Delson. (We also worked for Sylvester Stallone). I was a bit surprised to learn that year that the bearded, barrel-chested Vajna, who looked like a guy in his early ’50s, was just shy of 40. He was nothing if not decisive, charming, tough, pugnacious. He was no pushover, and he never let you forget that he was Mr. King Shit.

As a distributor, producer or financier, Vajna (allied for a long period with Carolco partner Mario Kassar before starting Cinergi) enjoyed a 14-year flush period that began with First Blood in ’82 and ended with Evita in ’96. Vajna mostly made loud, high-impact audience movies, although he backed four prestige films — Evita, Jacob’s Ladder, Angel Heart and Nixon.

During the heyday Vajna produced or exec produced Rambo: First Blood Part II, Extreme Prejudice, Rambo III, Red Heat, Music Box, Total Recall, Air America,, Medicine Man, Tombstone, Renaissance Man, Color of Night, Die Hard with a Vengeance and Judge Dredd.

Here’s a tough article about Vajna and Kassar on Hungarian Spectrum.

Vajna quit Hollywood in 2010 to move back to Hungary, where “he took over the country’s moribund film industry and made Budapest a destination for international film crews.”

A 2016 USA Today story (“Big Hollywood producer reaches for the stars in Hungary”) reported that “much of the action in Hungary’s movie industry can be traced to Vajna’s influence. Vajna was claimed that “foreign film expenditures in Hungary grew from $5 million five years ago to $280 million now.” Which wasn’t an empty boast — Hungary really did bloom as a production center due to his stewardship.

Vajna and Kassar in ’82 or thereabouts, in the wake of the huge success of First Blood

Courtesy of CinnaJon, myself, Patrick Murtha, Spaceshiek, Jordan Ruimy and The Cinemaholic:

Cinnajon: “I had assumed Green Book was destined to be a Shawshank-like Best Picture also-ran, with middling box office, that takes on a second life when it hits cable. Now it sounds like the smear campaign may have provided an unexpected sympathy boost, which may buoy it to a much healthier first run than expected, if it remains in the driver’s seat. Wildly up-and-down trajectory to the finish line if this is how it actually plays out.

Jeffrey Wells: “Last night’s win was at least partly a sympathy vote after the vicious SJW attacks. I suggested a few weeks back that the industry should vote for Green Book in order to tell those odious lefty Stalinist bullies to go fuck themselves, and by golly that’s what partly happened! The p.c.-MOTIVATED haters started all the trouble, all the hate. Their post-GG takedown attempts amounted to pure viciousness and ugliness. Last night the PGA told them ‘nice try, assholes, but no sale.’ Thank you, Inkoo Kang! Thank you, David Ehrlich! Thank you, Indiewire p.c. comintern!

Patrick Murtha: “Not only is this exactly right, Jeff, but I also suspect that 2019 is going to be a year of MAJOR backlash against the PC / SJW / woke crowd. Are you sensing this also? People are just getting fed up. It is perfectly possible to continue loathing Trump & Co. while also rejecting the wokesters.”

Spacesheik: “I loved Green Book — screw the haters. The audience I saw it with loved it as well (this was in November in an AMC theater at Tysons Mall, before all the hype). They enthusiastically clapped at the end. The film is highly entertaining, with some great performances all around. I’d watch it again. I was shocked when Peter Farrelly‘s name came onscreen, its the complete antithesis of everything he’s done before – and for that he deserves credit. You can dismiss whatever you want, but you can see the film was made with a lot of love and compassion towards that era and history.”

Wells response: “Check but Green Book wasn’t made with love and compassion ‘towards’ that era as much as with a frank attitude and acknowledgment that this was what the realm of 1962 was unfortunately like.”

Jordan Ruimy: “The fact of the matter is that Green Book is a crowd-pleaser like no other. All three times I saw it the audience applauded during the credits, which almost never happens. It has an 8.3 IMDB score, by far the highest of 2018 contenders and a much-coveted A CinemaScore. It has struck a chord with Joe and Jane Popcorn. The fact that it’ll spread into an additional 1000 theatres next week could make the case for it louder and clearer.”

The Cinemaholic: “I love Green Book but the PGA win is actually going to do more harm to film’s chances than good. The woke crowd is going to tear the film to pieces. I am waiting for Oscar nominations to see how it does there. If Farrelly and Vallelonga get nominated, you know that all the p.c. journalists will have a big meltdown again. Anyway, all this is so much fun. And yes, A Star Is Born is over. Roma will win Best Picture (as I have been maintaining since September).”

CinnaJon: “It seems like it’s already run the gauntlet of being torn to pieces, and is now emerging on the other side stronger and more embraceable than when it first entered the fray. The film could be the beneficiary of people reaching an exhaustion point with outrage culture. Voting GB is a pushback to all that.”

HE commenters “RossoVeneziano” and “Mr. F.,” myself, Mark David Chapman and Variety editor Steven Gaydos on the crash-and-burn scenario of Bradley Cooper‘s A Star Is Born, a justly admired and relentlessly promoted Warner Bros. release film that is now completely finished as a Best Picture contender, and the key role that Variety‘s Kris Tapley may have arguably played in helping to bring about its demise (i.e., in a water-poisoning, long-game sense).

RossoVeneziano: “ASIB officially being out of the BP race even before nominations are announced is something no one saw coming. Whatever you think of the movie I feel sorry for Cooper — biggest loser of the season.”

Mr. F.: “Warners is now frantically working through the weekend to finish drawing up their ‘DO IT FOR BRADLEY’ campaign.”

Jeffrey Wells: “A Star Is Born’s loss is Hollywood Elsewhere’s joy, partly because many in the industry listened to (or agreed with) my sensible advice that you can’t hand a Best Picture Oscar to a well-handled but formulaic remake of a remake of a remake. Good film, made lots of money, and that was enough.

“If you ask me the other big loser in this morning-after realm is Variety’s Kris Tapley, whose ‘stand back because here comes a big multi-Oscar nominee!’ drumbeat article that ran before Toronto…if you ask me that piece poisoned the water with an aura of arrogance and entitlement — a Tapley trumpeting (WB publicists have shown me this knockout film early and I’ve been given permission to pass along the wonderful news) that proclaimed Bradley Cooper as the new king.

“Not so fast, Kris!

“HE was the only site anywhere that stood up to the WB hype machine with a piece that was bluntly headlined ‘Due Respect But ASIB Must Be Stopped.” Bobby Peru huffed and puffed, but thank God the industry mostly agreed with my view of things. Sometimes (not often but sometimes) things work out for the better.”

Steven Gaydos: “OK, let’s put this one to rest once for all. (I know, I know, in the obsessive-compulsive world of Jeff ‘Roma Man’ Wells, that never happens, but I’ll forge on anyway.) Here’s what my Variety colleague Kris Tapley ACTUALLY wrote a month before A Star is Born opened in theaters:

“‘Including best picture and director, where are we now? Nine nominations? A Star Is Born is an across-the-board Oscar contender. More than that, and assuming this is even still possible in the modern era, it has the muscle to achieve what only three films in movie history ever have: Win all five major Academy Awards (picture, director, actor, actress, and screenplay.’

“If you read his observations on Awards Season, which you, like Mark Chapman studying ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ and winding up in front of the Dakota, you clearly do, Kris clearly loves Roma as much as you do and he also loves Star is Born and he loves First Man and he loves Minding the Gap, etc.

“So he does what you’ve said a thousand times here that you believe should be done: he doesn’t mask his enthusiasm for the films he’s passionate about. But he also does something you should consider matching: he generally checks that passion at the door when it comes time for wisely, fairly and accurately surveying the Awards Season scene.