Caffeinated Clint : Dear Paramount

Dear Paramount Pictures/Lorenzo di Bonaventura/Brett Ratner/Michael Brandt/Derek Haas,

There’s one thing (yeah, just one thing… the rest of it was a fuckin’ car wreck!) John Landis’s insalubrious shit-sandwich “Beverly Hills Cop III” got right: It had Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) in it.

And as far as I’m concerned, any “Cop” film that doesn’t has lost the glue to hold its planks together.

And I know you “Beverly Hills Cop” fans agree.

It was revealed last week that the next sequel, tentatively titled “Beverly Hills Cop 2009”, would kill off the beloved Rosewood character within its first five minutes.

Big mistake! Big bloody mistake!

Go back and watch the first two films in the series and I’m sure you’ll agree.

Reinhold’s dimish cop character is just as important to this franchise as Axel Foley is (Taggatt too – but he was suddenly “unavailable” when “Beverly Hills Cop III” came around so they wrote out Rosewood’s long-time partner. He’s apparently ‘’chasing golf balls’’ in Phoenix somewhere). In some respects, you’re happier to see Billy’s smiling face than you are Axel’s each time. Its just one of those timeless characters you love catching up with.

In some respects, Reinhold’s the only guy in that whole series – including Murphy – who seems to know his character. Foley seems to evolve, or change, or be played differently (the Foley of “Beverly Hills Cop” would never have done the fuckin’ okey-dokey shuffle, for gods sake!) in each film. Reinhold’s performance of Billy has been consistent from Marty Brest’s original. Even in “Cop 3”, he was good – he wasn’t as histrionic as the rest of the cast, he just played Billy… as best he could in an overflowing urinal.

t worked – or at least, it would have if they’d written it better – for Todd, Foley’s stern boss in Detroit, to be killed at the start of the last movie. It also worked for his L.A cop pal, Lt. Andy Bogomil, to be shot in “Cop 2”. They’re not exactly the lovable, goofy sidekick characters you need to have around – – and having them as victims can for all intents and purposes move the story forward.

I don’t think anyone will get over Rosewood being killed. It’s too harsh a beat. That character is so sweet, and so damn lovable that you’ll be aching to see through the whole movie – knowing all the time that you won’t because Reinhold was replaced by a mannequin in a lumber sarcophagus for this latest instalment.

I can’t help but think they’re killing off the character because – and don’t give us the ‘we need a reason for Axel to be back in Beverly Hills’; why not have him frickin’ transferred there!? He spends enough god-damn time there! – Judge Reinhold isn’t exactly the marquee name he was in 1987.

They’re right. He’s not. But he’s still as good as he ever was. And unlike a lot of actors from his generation, the man’s hardly aged a day. He looks great.

I guess I’m a closet Reinhold fan – I think he’s terrific. Everything he’s done, be it his minute role in “Gremlins”, his love-struck fast-food clerk of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”, his ‘Fred Savage in Dad’s Body’ in “Vice Versa”, his luckless kidnapper in the highly-underrated “Ruthless People”, even his insanely-jealous and ultimately lethal husband in the soft-porn/thriller “Zandalee”, has always had some degree of effort, oomph and congenial magnetism in it.

Billy Rosewood is undoubtedly Reinhold’s signature character. And it’s the one he knows the best.

Reinhold worked on my friend David Mickey Evans’ “Beethoven” sequels. I’ve heard nothing but good about the guy. He’s apparently one of the hardest working and most giving actors in town. He is that nice guy off-screen that he is on. But that’s beside the point… Don’t you think the world needs a little Judge/Billy right now? Wouldn’t it just make Brett Ratner’s “Cop 4” that little bit more special knowing it was old buds Axel and Billy teaming up again to take down the killer of – you name it : Taggatt (if it has to be; Ashton probably wouldn’t return anyway; though personally, I’d love for the old son-of-a-bitch to come back as well), Serge (Bronson Pinchot – it might save us from another 15 minutes of improvised vomit again), or even Bogomil (Ronny Cox)?. It doesn’t need to be Billy in that casket – so fix it. And fix it quickly – its detrimental to the film.

The IMDB message board is lit up with posts from unhappy punters:

“Rosewood getting killed = NO MONEY FROM ME!!!”, writes one. “Jesus! How about a better idea, huh? How about having Axel now living in and working in Beverly Hills, since he comes there so often and has been successfull. That makes sense. Rosewood and Taggart need to be in this. They aren’t too old, and it’s not like they were that athletic in the others. This sounds bad. REALLY BAD.”

‘’Killing off Rosewood? What the heck?’’, says another. ‘’Could it have a more depressing start? And it’s a pretty cheap idea too, considering how he was almost killed at the end of the last one. And Eddie isn’t going to be funny? What’s wrong with the film-makers? Why not just stick with the original formula, and the original team? This will just be a very bad movie. I didn’t think they could come up with something worse than no. 3, but they did.’’

Another says it’s a cheap move killing the character. ‘’How cool would it be if the whole movie is Axel and Rosewood solving the crime, with Taggart working another skill from a secret location, which eventually Axel and Rosewood will be led to. Maybe Taggart is captured. Or maybe he is out of the police force, but does something else to help out, and at the end he finally shows up and kicks ass’’.

‘’…leaving his Billy Rosewood character out of the franchise, would be a bad decision!”, says another poster.

So there you have it, nobody wants to see Edward Ernest Reinhold, Jr chauffeured around in a hearse in “Beverly Hills Cop 4”.

I think you’ll find you’d be killing the franchise (and remember, this is the same franchise that survived having Axel dress up as a fuckin’ amusement park character) if you do.

Judge Reinhold is one of the best character actors over of his generation – still is. He deserves more respect. But maybe even more so, so do the fans of “Beverly Hills Cop”.

Power up the paddles and hit Rosewood’s corpse NOW!

Good luck with it.