Brewster's Millions

You have 30 days in which to spend 30 million bucks. If you can do it, you get 300 million.

You have to spend the 30 million, but after 30 days, you're not allowed to own any assets.

No houses, no cars, no jewelry, nothing but the shirt on your back...

... you can hire anybody you want, but you gotta get value for their services. You can donate 5% to charity and gamble another 5% away, but you can't give this money away. That includes buyin' the Hope Diamond for some bimbo as a birthday present.

Oh, I know what you're thinking, Brewster - you'll buy yourself a dozen Picassos and use them for firewood, right? WRONG! You must not destroy what is inherently valuable - that's instant disqualification.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot - you're not allowed to tell anybody why you have to spend this money...

You can have a million dollars right now and forget the whole thing, or you can go for the big one, Brewster - the 300 million. But if you fail you don't get diddly!

Caught BREWSTER'S MILLIONS on the cable recently. Surprisingly watchable. Didn't realize that there've been a bunch of different versions of this story over the years including a stage play somewhere. Richard Pryor does a good job. There's a humanity that he brings to the role that is really unique. There's a running subplot where he's hired a decorator to make over a room over and over again, tasking the woman to create a room that he'd like to die in. Toward the end, she shows him her latest reinvention of the space, and he's tapped of money and takes a look around the room, and says quite simply, "This is a room I'd like to die in..."—and the way he delivers the line is so genuine and heartfelt...

But all of that is neither here nor there...

It seems like it would be really easy to blow $30M in 30 days. Even given all the restrictions—and the movie has some holes in the logic of its own rules, too.

You'd want to get rid of 10% to charity and gambling off the bat: that would be easy.

For the rest, you could just hire people and pay them excessively for a month. And/or rent a bunch of expensive hotel rooms for a month. Even bumping the amount to $100M, I'll bet a person could blow all of it without breaking a sweat. I know it's a movie but really, come on now...

As a movie, it ends wayyy too abruptly. Give us one shot of Richard Pryor and John Candy basking in the prize of $300M. Or even just a scene with Pryor revealing to Candy that he's been doing all of this to get to a $300M jackpot. But I guess Walter Hill was in a hurry for the movie to be over.

Audio interview with co-writer Herschel Weingrod, if you've got the time. If you can't be bothered, an interesting note is that the pic was originally conceived as a vehicle for Bill Murray... who's WHITE!!!