by David Hughes
Scholermann gave terrific notes, and the 250 GTO remodel slowly took shape over the course of several months in the spring of 2005, mostly involving fine-tuning existing scenes and ‘punching up’ the main characters. When Herbie: Fully Loaded opened ‘soft’ — i.e., below expectations — in June of that year, my agents suggested that we wait until the opening of “the next car movie” before sending out the script. We didn’t have to wait long: when The Dukes of Hazzard was released to a $30 million weekend in August, my agents let it be known that the script for the next big car movie was available to read.
Several studio representatives requested the script; one or two even requested ‘coverage’ on it — the process by which executives avoid reading scripts for themselves, sending it out to ‘readers’ who will describe the pros and cons of the project, and recommend whether to bid on it or pass. One producer who liked the script was Neil Moritz, but with sequels to The Fast and the Furious and xXx on his slate, he felt it might be “one car picture too many,” and ultimately passed. For now, 250 GTO was in limbo — at least, until the next “car picture” hit big, and Hollywood came calling again.
In fact, the script delivered a new opportunity: to go in and pitch to the head of development at Morgan Creek, the company behind numerous good films, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The executive in question, Beth Babyak, had read and liked 250 GTO. To my surprise, this apparently qualified me to rewrite a prequel to one of the most respected, successful, controversial and genuinely terrifying horror films in history: The Exorcist. At that time, Morgan Creek was wondering what to do with writer-director Paul Schrader’s Exorcist: The Beginning, which dealt with Father Merrin’s first encounter with evil. On paper, it had looked good: Schrader had written Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The Last Temptation of Christ, and directed several well-received films, notably Affliction. His script for the Exorcist prequel, set in the 1940s, sees Merrin fighting personal demons in Africa — including a rejection of his faith brought on by a Nazi atrocity in which he was forced to participate — when archaeologists unearth a long-buried Satanic church, unleashing the Devil, or a close relation. So far, so good. Best of all, Schrader had cast Stellan Skarsgard, a dead ringer for the original film’s Max Von Sydow, in the lead.
The trouble, according to the studio, was that Schrader had delivered a $40 million film with a major flaw; one which, while problematic for a regular horror film, was disastrous for an Exorcist movie: It wasn’t scary. “Paul’s version was very cerebral,” Morgan Creek boss Jim Robinson told Entertainment Weekly at the time. “I had concerns as to how well it would play to the mass audience.” What could be done? Well, the producers reasoned, Paul Schrader could be fired, for a start. (Check.) (“I’ve been living in a world of righteous paranoia [ever since],” he commented later.) Next, director Renny Harlin — best known for Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger, and whose contribution to the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise had its moments — could be drafted in to direct re-shoots that would hopefully ‘bring the scary’. (Check.) You could then bring in an untried screenwriter with no experience of horror films except a lifelong obsession with them — yours truly. (Check.) What they needed, they said, was a whole new ending — and maybe a few small scenes to sprinkle throughout the film to crank up the fear. I sat down and began to read...
Roughly fifty pages into the 100-page script, the fear set in. Pages turned with increasing speed. Nails were bitten down. Sweat broke out on my forehead. Not because it was scary — although, if directed and edited properly, it should have been — but because it was good. What were they thinking, I wondered? How was I supposed to fix something that wasn’t broken? Then — thank God — I got to page seventy-five, at which point the story fell apart so quickly it was as though the script had been passed through a shredder. Schrader had dropped the ball — proving, yet again, that the best writers in the world are rubbish when it comes to endings. I immediately knew what to do. How to fix it. How to save it. How to, in essence, cast out its demons — whatever had possessed Schrader to ruin his own film. By way of research, I rented The Exorcist (exceptional), Exorcist II: The Heretic (excrement) and Exorcist III (excellent), watched them back to back, and sat down to write my notes.
The script had posited the idea that the demonic church had been built in Derati, Africa, on the spot where Lucifer himself was rumoured to have landed when he was cast out of Heaven. My idea was to take this a step further — to make it not only the location of the Devil’s descent, but of his mortal remains: the bones of the very Devil himself! Not only would this explain the various manifestations and possessions which were occurring as the church was excavated, but it would also tie in nicely to the prologue of The Exorcist, in which Merrin’s face grows ashen as he looks at a small idol carved in the image of the demon Pazuzu. We could, I suggested, add a line of dialogue explaining the African tradition (of my own devising) by which certain tribes carve idols from one of the bones of their dead, in order to keep the spirit of a lost loved one closer to the tribe, setting up the idea that one of the Devil’s bones has been carved into an idol.
This would also serve to create a more powerful ending: in order to defeat the Devil, who has possessed Merrin’s lover, Sarah, he must not only regain his faith (as in Schrader’s draft), but also give Lucifer’s bones a proper Christian burial. This becomes the key element of the film’s climax, and puts Merrin firmly in the driving seat: not only must he perform an exorcism on Sarah while she is possessed, he must also perform a burial ceremony to consecrate the Devil’s mortal remains. Except, of course, that one of the bones is missing... This could, I reasoned, be discovered as he begins the burial ceremony, setting up a new ending whereby the Devil’s skeleton — complete with vestigial tail bones and, of course, skeletal wings like those of a bat — comes temporarily back to life, re-animating and screaming hideously as it first grows flesh and muscle and leathery skin, and is ultimately destroyed, crumbling to dust as Merrin performs the last rites upon it. When the Devil’s bones are re-animated, Merrin will realise that there is a bone missing — and we can presume he spent the next twenty-four years (between the events of Exorcist: The Beginning and The Exorcist) searching for the missing bone, which has been carved into the form of an idol.
I knew the new ending would be expensive. But I also knew that Renny Harlin was looking for a kick-ass climax with plenty of action and special effects. What could be more climactic than a final showdown between Father Merrin and the Devil himself? But I also had a coup de théâtre up my sleeve: a nifty coda that would serve to undercut the relatively “happy” ending.
After the putative ending, I suggested, we would fade to black for a few moments... but then fade up to dawn in the desert, much like the beginning of both The Exorcist and Exorcist: The Beginning. The audience would assume they were still in the past — until a Hummer pulls into shot, stopping in the middle of what has now become an oil field. A big oil company man (a Joe Don Baker type, I casually suggested, in a ten gallon hat) gets out of the giant car, mad as hell because the drilling has been shut down. The oil man is told that this has occurred because workers have made a find of great archaeological and religious significance — a church dating back to the sixth century, possibly older (as per the events of the film thus far). He curses, spits, and says, “Here we go again,” presumably a reference to other occasions when his company’s oil exploration has been frustrated by one thing or another. But the audience would also know that the drilling has probably disturbed the Devil’s remains, and that the next sequel in the series will be set in the present day. Exorcist: The Next Generation anyone?
I had the weekend to work out the details: my follow-up meeting was on Monday morning. I pitched my notes to Beth Babyak, who showed much enthusiasm for my ideas, thanked me for my efforts, and told me she would pass the ideas on to Mr Harlin. Although they ultimately passed on my ‘take’, and none of my ideas made it into the finished film, they liked my work enough to invite me to
pitch on other projects, one of which was a supernatural thriller in the Exorcist vein. It was another year before Harlin’s Exorcist: The Beginning hit cinemas, grossing just $44 million and prompting critics to wonder what had possessed Morgan Creek to make it in the first place. Meanwhile, Schrader kept fighting to get his movie seen, eventually convincing Warner Bros to release the film in cinemas — the same weekend as Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. “Not everyone can go see Star Wars,” reasoned Morgan Creek’s Jim Robinson. Unfortunately, everybody did.
By this time, I was getting regular offers to rewrite other people’s projects, only one of which — two drafts and a ‘polish’ of the Brit-com I Want Candy — ever saw the light of a projector. At the same time, I pursued my own ideas, including a science fiction comedy, Last Man in Space; a superhero comedy, Really Super Heroes; a gory horror film, Spores, based on a strange fungus that attacks the central nervous system; and finally, my first attempt at a serious drama: the story of a woman emerging from an abusive relationship, entitled The Bends and described by my old friend Darren Aronofsky as a “challenging and disturbing piece of work... very upsetting and moving, [with] a great dark tone, a la Secretary or something Lynch would do. I think it needs to be made,” he added, helpfully. Needless to say, it never has been.
In the meantime, I had written two further films to order. Firstly, an adaptation of an unpublished novel (two words to strike fear into anyone’s heart) entitled Vengeance from the Deep, a preposterous and probably unpublishable doorstop in which an ‘Indiana Jones type’ teams up with a ‘Lara Croft type’ to battle a megalodon (prehistoric shark) menacing holidaymakers on the South African coast. Secondly, two drafts of an ingenious and highly entertaining whodunit, based on Donald McCormick’s out-of-print novel yarn Hell Fire Club, in which Benjamin Franklin, on a visit to England in the 1750s, uses the latest scientific techniques to investigate a series of murders at the notorious occultists’ society. Although I was paid in each case, both projects went precisely nowhere. They did, however, allow me time to work on my next original script, one which I felt might finally break the deadlock.
The idea was a post-9/11 thriller entitled Airborne, in which the passengers of a commercial airliner flying between London and Los Angeles are struck by an outbreak of a rare and deadly Ebola-like virus. With the contagion spreading, one airport after another refuses permission for the stricken plane to land, while time — and fuel — begins to run short. The hero, a morally compromised family doctor who is on board with his lover, must work with the cabin crew to try to arrest the spread of the virulent disease, while the pilot and co-pilot attempt to land the plane — before Homeland Security decides to shoot them down.
Inspired, ironically, by a throwaway line in Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone — “A hot virus from the rain forest lives within a 24-hour plane flight from every city on earth” — it was pitched either as “Outbreak meets Airport,” or “Outbreak on an airplane”, just the kind of high concept Hollywood loves. By now, I was being represented by the UK branch of the William Morris Agency, and the first potential producer my British agents, Tamara and Lucinda, managed to interest was the BBC, where Paul Greengrass, acclaimed director of Bloody Sunday (2002) and The Bourne Supremacy (2004), became intrigued by the possibility of using the project as the basis of a new kind of television event.
Instead of a two-hour film, Greengrass proposed that the central idea could be split into eight separate one-hour episodes, each telling the story — still essentially “Outbreak on an airplane” — from a different perspective (like Rashomon), and a different, yet partly overlapping timeline (like Pulp Fiction). Thus, Episode 1 would be the germ of the story, as two ordinary employees of a Los Angeles copy shop are made privy to terrorist plans for an Airborne Toxic Event which has nothing to do with the indie rock band of that name; Episode 2 would unfold at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention as experts assess the implications of the stricken airliner; Episode 3 details communications between the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security, where secret plans are drawn up to shoot down the aircraft where the airborne toxins on board can do the least harm; Episode 4 takes place in the crucible of the terrorist action — the terrorist cell itself; Episode 5 at Number 10 Downing Street; and so on.
As a linking device, each episode would begin with a tantalising pre-credit sequence showing what’s happening aboard the aircraft, building tension and suspense towards the climactic events of Episode 8 which, everyone would know, would be set aboard the aircraft itself and provide a devastating denouement.
Perhaps best of all, once the entire series had been shown on television in its non-linear original format, with each episode from a new perspective, it could then be re-edited — for inclusion on the DVD — as one massive eight-hour blockbuster, now presented in chronological order, with traditional inter-cutting. It was, to my mind, the kind of thinking that made Paul Greengrass the most exciting British director to emerge from television since Martin Campbell. I couldn’t wait to set to work on the outline, and then what was likely to be an epic 500-page script.
It took the best part of a week — and the worst parts as well — to draft the outline, which broke the basic storyline into eight disparate parts, and split the characters, key events and interlocking timelines into their respective episodes — crucially, in a way that would allow them to be put back together at some point (much like Memento was re-edited to play chronologically as an ‘Easter egg’ on the UK DVD). Each episode stood on its own merits while dovetailing perfectly with the non-linear timeline, and the differing perspectives added to, and drove, the story in compelling ways, building to the climax aboard the plane. By the time the final episode, entitled ‘The Eleventh Hour’, was due to broadcast, the tension would be unbearable, and — if all went to plan — the entire country would tune in for the finale. With a director as white-hot as Paul Greengrass on board, we were as good as green lit at the BBC. Unfortunately, I hadn’t reckoned on the one man who might reject his audacious, ground-breaking and entirely brilliant idea: Paul Greengrass himself.
His problem, now that he had seen it all mapped out, was that he didn’t think viewers would tune in, week after week, when the point-of-view would keep changing. “They’ll just get into one set of characters,” he reasoned, “and when they tune in the following week, there’ll be a whole different bunch of people in a different setting, in a different country.” “Exactly!” I enthused, amazed by the genius of the whole thing. “And each week, the pre-credits sequence will give them a horrifying glimpse of what’s going on aboard Flight 401, while the rest of the episode details the CDC’s attempts to save them, or Homeland Security’s plot to shoot them down, or the British government’s efforts to land them safely...” But Greengrass was firm: although he liked the movie-set-on-an-airplane idea — his next film was United 93 — the multiple-angle angle was a deal breaker: as far as this director was concerned, Airborne was grounded.
Undeterred by this setback, I immediately set about re-imagining Airborne not as a gargantuan television event, but a stripped-down ‘bottle show’ — that is, a film or TV movie set primarily in a single location — which represented the most ‘makeable’ version of the story. Out went the multiple perspectives, vast cast of characters, and globe-trotting storyline — all that would have to wait for the surer hand of Steven Soderbergh, some years later. Instead, over one hundred tightly scripted pages, I boiled the story down to its essence, beginning with (what I hoped the critics would call) a virtuoso single-take meet-the-passengers scene at Heathrow Airport, closely followed by takeoff and the first passenger getting sick. This time, the entire story would take place inside the plane itself, only cutting outside the plane for the first and final shots of the film. Not only would this give the audience the same sense of claustrophobia as the passengers, it would — more pertinently, for a screenwriter with my scant connections — make it much easier to finance, since almost the entire film would be set ins
ide a specially constructed (and possibly borrowed) airliner set, such as the one built for Flight Plan, which came out in 2005, stealing a little — but not all — of Airborne’s thunder.
Once again, prolific producer Neal Moritz (I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Fast and the Furious) was among the first to bite. Unfortunately, his right hand man felt that, with the events of 9/11 still relatively fresh in audiences’ memories, and wish-fulfilment payback playing out on episodes of 24 and the newly jingoistic nightly news, Airborne needed a villain. Like a good lawyer, I would have cited precedent, “Hollywood vs J.V. Hart,” The Hot Zone [See Chapter 10], attempting to convince the executive in question that the virus was the villain. “Well, what if the villain was a terrorist?” he countered. “What if a terrorist had brought the virus on board — or, better still, they were flying the virus somewhere and it accidentally got loose on the plane.” In an effort to sidestep such an obviously signposted banana skin, I decided to gauge the seriousness of Moritz’s number two by suggesting that he pay me to rewrite the script to order. “It’s just that I’ve got to do a paid rewrite on another project,” I lied. “It’s forty thousand dollars I can’t afford to turn down.” “So you’re saying,” the executive reasoned, the cogs turning almost visibly, “if I pay you forty thousand dollars you could start rewriting Airborne immediately, and we’d own the project?” “Well, I suppose...” I deadpanned. “That’s great!” he enthused. I never heard from them again.
By this point, I had figured that the best way to get a movie made might be to write a micro-budget movie so absurdly cheap it could be made for next to nothing. Through the filmmaking community Shooting People, I learned that a group of film students at York University had been offered the use of the campus during the summer break and were looking for an ultra-low budget feature film to make as their class project. Their story was fiendishly simple: two groups of volunteers are sequestered away in a remote laboratory (closely resembling the campus of York University) for six months, in order to test the theory or effects of something-or-other (in my version, the possibility of a manned trip to Mars), only to emerge and find the outside world overrun with feral creatures, closely modelled on the ‘running zombies’ of 28 Days Later and the Day of the Dead remake.