‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High’ star Judge Reinhold sees revived career after an ‘executive murder plot’
Vanity Fair profile, an “executive murder plot” killed the movie and nearly took his career out with it.“Vice Versa” was a body-swap movie that starred Reinhold and Fred Savage playing the part of his son. It was released in 1988, and although the actor had appeared in a number of successful movies prior to this one, the movie did not perform at the box office.According to Reinhold, that was because of several things that went down behind the scenes.He explained that David Puttnam, a producer of “Chariots of Fire,” became the CEO of Columbia Pictures in 1986, and “he wanted to bring the price of lead actors down, but make the backend profits real.”Reinhold believed in his ideas, but “he wasn’t, unfortunately, around long enough to prove that formula” because of what he called an “executive murder plot” by higher-ups in the industry.He said that Puttnam “went public with his disdain for how high the salaries were and what he wanted to do, and he pissed a lot of people off.