Despite his intervention, I wrote the story I had pitched. Ultimately, he didn't end up directing the movie. Michael Schroeder, the replacement director, helped polish my script and make it visually stunning. Everyone lived happily ever after, right?
That could have happened.
The actor, Ray Sharkey ("Idol Maker," "Wiseguy"), who they pulled in at the last minute to play the bad guy, was someone who I respected and admired. The first words out of his mouth were less than reassuring.
SHARKEY: This is some of the worst shit writing I have ever seen. Who fucking talks like this?
As our relationship progressed from bad to worse, I soon understood why Sharkey was such a convincing bad guy: He was an asshole. He turned the filming of "Relentless II" into a nightmare of petulant rants.
I also learned a hard lesson. In the low-budget world, you only work with actors like Sharkey when they are on the downside of their career. By then, they are usually pretty grumpy fucks who hate the fact that they are doing a $2.5 million genre flick instead of a $100 million studio film. There are a lot of them.
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MONTAGE of SCENES
Cinetel and I proved to be a good match. Around town its creative director, Catalaine Knell, was called the Queen of B's. I was emerging as the King of Roman numerals. After "Relentless II" Cat and I collaborated on six more films, five of which were sequels. I was so busy at one time that I was working for two companies on three scripts, finishing one, starting another and polishing a third.
The movies were fast, fun and financially rewarding. Plus, the "B" moviemakers would take chances that studios would never dare. It was hard, sometimes frustrating work, and I was always proud -- until I saw the finished product, which most times made me cringe. Most times the movies I wrote made me cringe. There was always an excuse: bad director, alcoholic actors, no budget. But in the back of my mind I thought maybe I'm just not a very good writer.
But I had a good time, I made money and I didn't think about the future much. Eventually I developed a sense of humor and a fatalism about the whole process. How else do you cope with the following experiences:
I was commissioned to write the fourth in a series of "Ghoulies" pictures, but (a rather big but) Cinetel couldn't afford the actual Ghoulie puppets. That meant that I couldn't use any of the scenery-chewing title characters in the script. Imagine doing "Jurassic Park" without dinosaurs. ("Did you see that giant lizard?" "Where?" "Right there!" "Where?") I actually produced a pretty good script for "G4" that was then brutally rewritten by the lead actor and director into the biggest mess I have ever seen -- and, unfortunately, my name was the only one to make it to the credits.
Corey Haim and Corey Feldman are probably nice, normal guys now (or not). Back in the late '80s the teen heartthrobs did a few films together, including "Dream a Little Dream." Cinetel bought the rights to "Dream a Little Dream 2" and asked me for a story line. At the time, both boys were turning into, shall I say, adventurous young men. I was told by Cinetel to keep one of the Coreys (I don't remember which one) in jail throughout the film because his personal habits were a little wild and Cinetel needed to maintain control over his performances. Then the other Corey got into even more trouble and I was asked to make him the one who had to spend time in jail. Why, exactly, was I working my ass off again?
Image Organization, another successful low-budget film house known for doing all the "Scanner" films, "Deep Cover" and other slick and professionally crafted "B" movies, bought one script from me and hired me to write a sequel. For "Scanners: The Showdown," I wrote what I considered a moody, thoughtful science fiction-horror film -- my tribute to David Cronenberg, who years before had written and directed the first "Scanners," a sci-fi classic. My script was enthusiastically embraced by all the executives at Image except, unfortunately, the man who was paying me. I was told to write an entirely new script in one week or I would be fired. I apparently didn't understand the rules of this sub-genre: Each "Scanner" film (five at last count) must include two heads blowing up. I slammed out a new script in only five days and it was, of course, monstrously inadequate. But it was approved: It featured two exploding heads.
"Mistress" is a funny and sad film about a writer who has to continually rework his film to accommodate a revolving cadre of "film producers" who are porking empty-headed and talentless actresses with big tits. I thought it was fiction until I was put into the same position on not one, but four different projects. I don't want to name names here because some of those involved are nice people (and they might sue me), but for example: A certain film company that I worked for purchased one of my scripts specifically to feature the producer's girlfriend, whom he hoped to turn into an action star. To be fair, she did the fighting shit well and was very attractive in all those skin-tight, cleavage-enhancing outfits. Unfortunately, there were actually portions of the script where she had to, you know, talk.
And so on for seven years with dozens of assignments, hundreds of story meetings and 12 produced films. I was getting just a little burned out and beginning to think that I was relegated to writing sub-par, genre scripts that paid the bills but in no way helped move me forward either careerwise or, more important, creatively.
