Coffee's For Closers - Production

Production

David Mamet's play was first performed in 1983 at the Royal National Theatre, London, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. That same year, the play made its American debut in Chicago before moving to Broadway. Producer Jerry Tokofsky read the play on a trip to New York City in 1985 at the suggestion of director Irvin Kershner who wanted to make it into a film. Tokofsky saw the play on Broadway and contacted Mamet. Stanley R. Zupnik was a Washington D.C.-based producer of B movies that was looking for a more profitable project. Tokofsky had co-produced two previous Zupnik films. In 1986, he told Zupnik about Mamet’s play and he saw it on Broadway but found the plot confusing. Mamet wanted $500,000 for the film rights and another $500,000 to write the screenplay. Zupnik agreed to pay Mamet’s $1 million asking price, figuring that they could cut a deal with a cable company to bankroll the movie. Because of the uncompromising subject matter and abrasive language, no major studio wanted to finance it, even with movie stars attached. Financing came from cable and video companies, a German television station, an Australian movie theater chain, several banks, and New Line Cinema over the course of four years.

Al Pacino originally wanted to do the play on Broadway but was doing another Mamet production, American Buffalo, in London at the time. He expressed interest in appearing in the film adaptation. In 1989, Tokofsky asked Jack Lemmon to act in the movie. During this time, Kershner dropped out to make another movie as did Pacino. Alec Baldwin, who also attached, left the project over a contract disagreement. James Foley’s agent sent the film director Mamet’s screenplay in early 1991 but he was hesitant to direct because he “wanted great actors, people with movie charisma, to give it watchability, especially since the locations were so restricted”. Foley took the screenplay to Pacino with whom he had been trying to work on a film for years. Foley was hired to direct, only to leave the production as well. By March 1991, Tokofsky contacted Baldwin and begged him to reconsider doing the film. The producer remembers, “Alec said: ‘I’ve read 25 scripts and nothing is as good as this. OK. If you make it, I’ll do it”. The two men arranged an informal reading with Lemmon in Los Angeles. Subsequently, the three men organized readings with several other actors as Lemmon remembers, "Some of the best damn actors you're ever going to see came in and read and I'm talking about names". Tokofsky's lawyer, Jake Bloom, called a meeting at the Creative Artists Agency who represented many of the actors involved and asked for their help. CAA showed little interest, but two of their clients – Ed Harris and Kevin Spacey – soon joined the cast.

Because of the film’s modest budget, many of the actors took significant pay cuts. For example, Pacino cut his per-movie price from $6 million to $1.5 million, Lemmon was paid $1 million, Baldwin received $250,000, and so on. This did not stop other actors, like Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, Richard Gere and Joe Mantegna, from expressing interest in the film—Mantegna had been in the original Broadway cast and won a Tony Award in 1985 for his portrayal of Roma.

Once the film's cast was assembled, they spent three weeks in rehearsals. With a budget set at $12.5 million, filming began in August 1991 at the Kaufman Astoria Soundstage in Queens, New York and on location in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn over 39 days. Harris remembers, "There were five and six-page scenes we would shoot all at once. It was more like doing a play at times you'd get the continuity going". Alan Arkin said of the script, "What made it was the language and the rhythms, which are enormously difficult to absorb". During filming, members of the cast who were not required to be on the set certain days would show up anyway to watch the other actors' performances.

The film's director of photography, Juan Ruiz Anchía, relied on low lighting and shadows with a blues, greens and reds color scheme for the first part of the film. For the second half, he adhered to a monochromatic blue-grey color scheme. During the production, Tokofsky and Zupnik had a falling out over money and credit for the film. Tokofsky sued to strip Zupnik of his producer’s credit and share of the producer’s fee. Zupnik claimed that he personally put up $2 million of the film’s budget and countersued, claiming that Tokofsky was fired for embezzlement.

"Coffee is for closers" is a monologue written by David Mamet specifically for Alec Baldwin for inclusion in the film version—the scene is not part of Mamet's original play.