The previous version, made in 1946, starred Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney. According to an interview with director John Byrum published on August 8, 2006 in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, he had wanted to film an adaptation of Maugham's book in the early 1980s. The director brought a copy of the book to his friend Margaret "Mickey" Kelley who was in the hospital after giving birth. Byrum remembers getting a call the next day at four AM, "and it was Mickey's husband, Bill [Murray]. He said, 'This is Larry, Larry Darrell.'"
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| - The previous version, made in 1946, starred Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney. According to an interview with director John Byrum published on August 8, 2006 in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, he had wanted to film an adaptation of Maugham's book in the early 1980s. The director brought a copy of the book to his friend Margaret "Mickey" Kelley who was in the hospital after giving birth. Byrum remembers getting a call the next day at four AM, "and it was Mickey's husband, Bill [Murray]. He said, 'This is Larry, Larry Darrell.'"
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| - Theatrical release poster by Tom Jung
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| - The previous version, made in 1946, starred Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney. According to an interview with director John Byrum published on August 8, 2006 in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, he had wanted to film an adaptation of Maugham's book in the early 1980s. The director brought a copy of the book to his friend Margaret "Mickey" Kelley who was in the hospital after giving birth. Byrum remembers getting a call the next day at four AM, "and it was Mickey's husband, Bill [Murray]. He said, 'This is Larry, Larry Darrell.'" Byrum and Murray drove across America while writing the screenplay. What they had written did not resemble the previous film version. Murray included a farewell speech to his recently deceased friend John Belushi in the script; this appears as Larry Darrell's farewell speech to Piedmont, a fellow ambulance driver in World War I. While Murray was attached to the project, Byrum had trouble finding a studio to finance it. Dan Aykroyd suggested that Murray could appear in Ghostbusters for Columbia Pictures in exchange for the studio greenlighting The Razor's Edge. Murray agreed and a deal was made with Columbia. For the next year and half, cast and crew shot on location in France, Switzerland and India with a $12 million budget. After the last day of principal photography, Murray left to make Ghostbusters. This marked Murray's first starring role in a dramatic film, though Murray did inject some of his dry wit into the script. The film grossed $6.6 million at the box office; In this version, the book's epigraph is dramatized as advice given to Darrell by a Tibetan monk: "The path to salvation is narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor's edge."
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