American executive, entrepreneur and film producer Adam Fields is an active and well-known figure in Hollywood for nearly 4 decades now. During his long remarkable career, Fields has fulfilled a number of roles for almost all major production houses like Sony, Miramax, 20th Century Fox, Universal, Warner Bros and so on.
From executive to music supervisor, to executive producer, writer and producer, Fields has been in almost every shoe in the world of film production, and has made some of the most memorable movies of all time.
Best known for critically acclaimed Donnie Darko, and the multi-platinum soundtracks for Flashdance and Endless Love., Fields has been associated with a number of other fascinating films such as Limitless, Ali, and Great Balls of Fire. And the list goes on!
Speaking of his most admired projects, Great Balls of Fire starring Dennis Quaid, Winona Ryder (who won the best young artist award for the movie) and Alec Baldwin was his earliest and finest of works. After much deliberation, it was produced under his own production house – Adam Fields Production that he founded in 1984 within just 3 years of beginning his film-making career.
But the film, which was going to be a biopic of the infamous and sensational musician Jerry Lee Lewis wasn’t going to be easy after all. Nick named as “the killer”, Jerry was regarded as the first wild man of rockabilly and arguable the greatest pianist of 2oth century. Yet film studios were not willing to undertake the project due to the controversial and scandalous life and career of the protagonist. Coz as much as Jerry was admired for his god-gifted talent in music and his impeccable piano skills, he was equally hated by the public for his immoral 3rd wedding with his very own 13 year old cousin Myra Gale Brown. This was a major blow to Jerry’s public image, career and popularity which he never recovered from instead it was further compromised when two of his former wives were found dead under mysterious circumstances.
Thus, Fields was strongly intrigued with the idea of bringing Jerry’s life especially the peek years of his heyday to big screen at any cost. It was an article published in LA Times, named “Jerry Lee Lewis on the Comeback Trail” that Fields had read and the subsequent visit that he had made to Jerry’s show which inspired him to do the movie in the first place.
It was during these frequent visits when a friend of his clicked a photo of Dennis Quaid and Jerry Lee Lewis together. The shot was so perfect that Fields wasted no time in sending it to his friend at the Premier Magazine to get it published. And that’s how the project which was initially rejected by all went official and became a hot deal.
Upon its release in 1989, Great Balls of Fire was face to face with Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman which was already doing exceptionally well in box office beating other promising movies in its wake. While Great Balls of Fire certainly took the heat in terms of box office collections, it did extremely well in terms of finding the right audience and fanbase especially from the rock community.
To this day, the movie is regarded as one of the best musical dramas on life of the wild and charismatic Jerry Lee Lewis.
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