Larry Cohen

by Michael Doyle

  The Ambulance (1991)

  There have been several horror films and thrillers such as Duel, The Car, The Hearse and Christine that have centred on murderous vehicles. Were you consciously steering into this familiar territory with The Ambulance or were you drawing inspiration from someplace else?

  I was coming from somewhere else. As with It’s Alive and The Stuff, The Ambulance began with the concept of taking something that is thought of as being benign or benevolent, such as a baby, or ice cream, or anything else that has a safe and wholesome image, and turning it into an object of terror. I was again taking a positive and turning it into a negative, as I had also done in my script for Maniac Cop. A police officer is a symbol of justice that is meant to protect and save you from criminals, but in Maniac Cop the police officer turns out to be evil and kills you. I realized that when you hear or see an ambulance on the street, it’s usually considered to be something that is going to rescue you and take care of you, a vehicle of mercy. In this story, it’s actually a vehicle of murder. The whole idea of an ambulance that suddenly arrives from nowhere, picks people up, and takes them away to some dark place where they are never seen or heard of again was completely original and creepy. That was the basic idea of the movie, rather than a revisiting of the other car pictures you mentioned which were more concerned with the supernatural in some way. Those vehicles were possessed by some kind of spirit or entity and were driving around on their own. That was not what my movie was about. Personally, I didn’t like The Car at all, but I thought Christine was very good, although a little ridiculous. Of course, Steven Spielberg’s Duel was excellent.

  I understand that your script was at one time titled Into Thin Air.

  That’s right. The producers were of the opinion that The Ambulance was not a particularly classy and sophisticated title for a movie, so they wanted something else. I then came up with Into Thin Air, which I didn’t think was quite as strong but we needed something in there. The producers thought that a different title would attract a higher calibre of actor to the project, which could only be a good thing. They were concerned that a picture called The Ambulance would be perceived as an exploitation movie and nothing more. Ultimately, good sense prevailed and we went back to our original title. I thought that was the right thing to do, as The Ambulance was a more direct and intriguing title. Also, the image of the vehicle itself would be an effective one to use in the ads.

  Like It’s Alive, The Stuff, and Maniac Cop, The Ambulance also reasserts your suspicion of authorities and institutions, in this case the medical profession.

  Well, you must know that there are a lot of mistakes made in the name of medicine. People frequently enter hospitals, which are scary places at the best of times, and never come out alive. In America, there is a very high rate of patients going to the hospital for one thing and inadvertently catching some other disease whilst there due to the failure to exercise proper sanitary precautions. I mean, these patients are dying! There are also the operations that go wrong. Some surgeons are so busy — and are so committed to making money — they are performing three or four surgeries a day, perhaps more, one after the other. After a while, they must get physically tired and a little careless and that’s when mistakes are made. There is so much money to be made by putting somebody into surgery, what with the insurance in America and the overpricing of medical care. An operation here will cost you $500,000, more money than anybody’s got. Of course, the U.S. Government is paying for it through medical insurance, and so they rip everybody off. And yet people still come here from all over the world for their surgeries and procedures because American medicine is considered to be the best. So, yeah, I do have a suspicion of the medical profession. I’ve always said the reason that doctors wear masks is to prevent you from identifying them after the operation. They only wear gloves because they don’t want to leave any fingerprints behind! [Laughs] It’s true, you just don’t know who the hell is in there with you! When I was a kid, I remember seeing a British movie called Green for Danger. It starred Alistair Sim as a detective, who is investigating a murder that has taken place in an English hospital during the bombings of World War II. The killer was dressed in medical clothes and had a mask on, and I remember being terrified when I saw that figure standing in the corridor wearing the mask. I’m sure I carried the disturbing memory of that image with me when I was making The Ambulance.

  Did you specify a certain model of ambulance in the script?

  Yeah, I always wanted it to be an old-fashioned ambulance. The new ambulances are all square and resemble boxes on wheels. They didn’t look sleek or interesting and I was looking for something that was more photogenic and scary. Of course, I realized that was wholly inaccurate as those kinds of ambulances were no longer on the road anymore, but that’s what we used. There might have been one or two private ambulance services that were still using them, but that type of vehicle was probably in service during the 1960s and into the early 1970s.

  I suspect that — in your time-honored tradition — you stole more unauthorized shots on the New York streets for the opening sequence, where comic book artist Josh Baker [Eric Roberts] makes a play for Janine Turner’s character?

  Oh yeah, we stole a lot of shots on Fifth Avenue in front of large crowds of thousands of people during the lunch hour. We actually built a twenty-foot platform above the street that resembled some kind of construction site. We then put the camera up on the platform and covered it up with tarpaulin so that people couldn’t see it. We poked the camera out through the covering and used a long lens. We were then able to photograph right down the street and this allowed us to get some good shots without anybody realizing there was a camera crew up there. The actors just performed their dialogue and actions out on the street and it was a fun way to do the scene. We also shot the moments where Janine Turner collapses in the street in front of everybody and the ambulance pulls up at the side of the road and takes her away. This operation was not particularly difficult to co-ordinate, not for me anyway, as I was used to shooting that way. As a matter of fact, that is the same street corner where I filmed Fred Williamson getting shot and falling down in Black Caesar — right at that very same corner. For me, it was like revisiting one of my old locations again, the scene of the crime! [Chuckles] That whole sequence in The Ambulance only took a day to shoot. It would have probably taken a regular movie company a week to get.

  Why did you decide to make Josh a comic book artist?

  I thought it was the kind of occupation people tend not to take seriously. I mean, there are those who might react with incredulity to this guy’s claims — that he witnessed these strange and disturbing events. They may even say, “Oh, you are making this whole thing up in your head because you’ve got a comic book mentality. All this stuff about a girl disappearing and an old-fashioned ambulance prowling the streets isn’t real.” I thought that by making him a comic book artist we would also give him the ability to draw pictures of this missing girl that he could show people. On top of all that, there are several references to the Archie Andrews comic book series in the film. [1] There’s a running gag about Jim Dixon’s character resembling Jughead, the jerky-looking guy who is Archie’s best friend in the comics. We also had the idea of having a girl in the story that looked like Veronica, another character from the Archie comics. We found an actress in Janine Turner, who did look something like Veronica. I was sitting in the Columbus Restaurant in New York, and Janine walked in with the ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, whom she was dating at the time. As soon as I saw her I said, “That’s the girl I want to play this part! She looks just like Veronica.” So, I had the manager of the restaurant call Baryshnikov and get her name. We then invited her to come in and gave her the job. Janine later starred with Sylvester Stallone in his mountain-climbing thriller, Cliffhanger, and had a TV series for a while. [2] So, she enjoyed some success afterwards. I also found another good actress in Megan Gallagher, who played the policewoman who befriends Joshua. Megan had
played the lead in the Broadway production of A Few Good Men. That play was later made into a movie with Demi Moore playing the part that Megan had originated on stage. Megan was very good. That whole cast was good, as a matter of fact.

  Again, as exemplified in earlier films, one of your consistent strengths is the casting. You almost never fail to assemble an eclectic and accomplished group of actors and The Ambulance is no exception.

  It’s such an important aspect of making a movie, but it’s something I occasionally do out of instinct. You just get a feeling for a particular actor. My approach to casting movies has always been about wanting to get the best possible actors that I’ve seen somewhere else, either on stage or in another film. The odd thing about The Ambulance is that when we were looking for a lead actor to play the comic book artist, I first considered John Travolta. At that time, Travolta was not enjoying a good moment in his career. He had dramatically fallen by the wayside as far as being a major movie star was concerned, but I still wanted him for the lead. The production company refused to let me hire Travolta and insisted that he’d made too many flops and unreleased pictures. They certainly did not want to make another failed John Travolta movie, so we ended up going with Eric Roberts. I was happy with that choice, as Eric is tremendously good in the part and was wonderful to work with. We did have a big bust-up before shooting began. Eric stormed out in a fury one day, and I half expected to get fired by the producers. Of course, he came back an hour later, apologized, and was just fabulous to work with after we’d cleared the air. But if it wasn’t for the objections of the company, Epic Pictures, who were making the film, we could have had Travolta playing Eric’s character. Just two years after The Ambulance was released, Travolta landed the starring role in Pulp Fiction and was suddenly a huge star again.

  Eric Roberts has had a varied career, but did you ever think he had the same potential as Travolta to become a major movie star?

  Oh, I’ve always believed that. I saw Eric just a few weeks ago at an Academy Awards luncheon and I actually told him then that I thought he was a great actor. I suggested he go back to Broadway and do a play and try to jumpstart his career. The only way to rejuvenate your career in Hollywood is to get out of Hollywood. You have to go back to New York and make a big hit on Broadway. The next thing you know, everybody wants you again. Unfortunately, Eric has been in so many straight-to-video pictures, and C-movies and D-movies, he has tarnished his career somewhat. People don’t think of him as an A-movie actor, but any film that Eric is in where he has a decent part he steals every scene. He was wonderful in movies like The Pope of Greenwich Village, Star 80, The Specialist, and The Dark Knight. There is never a scene that Eric is in where he doesn’t dominate it. He’s a very powerful actor with a commanding voice and presence. He really should be a star. Actually, he started out pretty close to being a star when he did The Pope of Greenwich Village and Star 80. Eric told me that the audience “never forgave him for killing a centerfold.” Those were his exact words. In Star 80, he played the psychopathic husband and murderer of Dorothy Stratton. He was so good in that part, so electrifying and authentic; people actually believed that character was really him. They thought he was some kind of crazy guy. Eric felt that after that film was released, people always had a certain image of him, meaning the only parts he was then offered were crazy people. He firmly believed that Star 80 had worked against his career and he may have been right.

  Another dominating presence in The Ambulance is James Earl Jones, who plays Lt. Frank Spencer, the cop Josh tries to convince of the young woman’s disappearance. How did you secure his services?

  James came to me through Eric, as they were both good friends. One day I asked Eric, “What do you think about James Earl Jones playing the part of the cop?” Eric said, “Well, why don’t I call him up and ask him.” So, Eric got James to read the script, and James said he would do the film. He then came in and we both hit it off immediately. We had a great time together and I just loved working with him. James is one of my favorite actors of all time. I saw him in The Great White Hope [3] when it first opened on Broadway. I also saw him in Fences [4], which is a play he did just before The Ambulance. I actually saw Fences three or four times, he was so fabulous in it. James is such a brilliant actor, and I was thrilled to get him in our picture. One of the things his character is always doing in the film is chewing gum, so he and I improvised a little moment after the cop is run over by the ambulance. When the cop falls into the street, he keeps chewing his gum until the moment he dies. I remember saying to James as he lay on the sidewalk, dying, “Just keep chewing and when you stop working your jaw, we’ll know that you’re dead!” So, James just lay there, staring up and quietly chewing his gum into oblivion. When James was later in a Broadway production of On Golden Pond, I went backstage to see him after the performance. He knew I was coming, and when I stepped into the stage door, this booming voice suddenly came swirling down the stairs from above. It was the voice of Darth Vader himself, calling out: “Larry Cohen, have you brought me some chewing gum?” [Laughs] I just thought that was great. I hadn’t seen James in a couple of years at this point, but the memory of shooting his death scene was still endearing to him. I went back to see James again when he was playing Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof — again on Broadway — and this time I remembered to bring him a bag of chewing gum.

  However amusing it may have seemed, do you think that moment with the dying cop chewing his gum robs some of the tension and pathos from the scene?

  No, I don’t think so. I mean, yes, it could have, but this was a Larry Cohen movie! Nothing is ever too much!

  Red Buttons, who plays the elderly wisecracking reporter Elias Zacharias, also provides a humorous, lighter touch to the proceedings.

  Yeah. I felt that character was exactly what the picture needed to balance it out. Red had appeared in a number of big movies such as The Poseidon Adventure and had won an Academy Award playing opposite Marlon Brando in Sayonara. I felt Red would fit the role of the newspaper reporter perfectly. I didn’t write that part for him, but I thought he was as good a choice as we could find. Eric wasn’t acquainted with Red and he was actually pushing for Mickey Rooney to play that part. Eric was complaining to me about my choice, and I said, “Look, just get hold of a video of Sayonara and watch Red performing with Brando.” The very next day, Eric called me up and said, “You are absolutely right. He’s a wonderful actor and I’d love to work with him.” Red’s performance in The Ambulance seemed to really embody the fast-talking, wisecracking reporter, particularly those that came out of the old newspaper movies that were made in the 1930s and ‘40s with Edward G. Robinson, Lee Tracy, and Pat O’Brien. Those films were all based on the famous play, The Front Page, by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. It was made into a movie and formed the prototype for all those newspaper pictures that featured the rapid-fire reporter or newspaper editor. If Lee Tracy or Pat O’Brien, who starred in the first theater play and movie adaptations of The Front Page respectively, had been around when I was making my film, it certainly would have been nice to have had one of them take a shot at Red’s part. Unfortunately, by that time, I don’t think either of them was alive.

  Did you get on well with Buttons?

  Oh, we got on great. In fact, Red became one of my best friends. Many years earlier, when I was trying to break into television as a kid, I tried to get a job writing for Red’s TV show on NBC. I didn’t succeed, but I found it rather ironic that, all these years later, we were working together on a movie. Red was good during the improvisations we did. We would improvise various jokes and ideas that gave his character a little more meat on his bones. Each and every day, Red and I would make up some new piece of business, and I think we had a mutual respect and appreciation for how easy our working relationship was. At one point, Red said, “Larry, I wish you had been around when I was doing my TV show. [5] I could have done with a guy like you.” I said, “Red, I was around when you were doing your TV show but I could
n’t get a job!” [Chuckles] It’s funny how life sometimes throws up these odd little coincidences. I just felt fortunate to get a chance to work with Red Buttons, even if it was nearly thirty years after I first went looking for it.

  Did Stan Lee’s cameo in The Ambulance come about as a result of your working on the unmade Doctor Strange project?

  By the time the Doctor Strange movie died, Stan and I had already cemented our friendship. One day, we were hanging out and I said, “Stan, one of these days I’m going to write a part for you in one of my movies.” When I decided to make Eric’s character a comic book artist, the natural thing was to have Stan Lee come in and play himself in the film. So, he did, and Stan did a very nice job for me. Usually Stan is only given a walk-on in the Spider-Man and Hulk movies. He gets to utter one line, or appears briefly onscreen, and is gone. In The Ambulance, at least he had some dialogue and could perform a little. I must say that I don’t think he was very believable as Stan Lee. Personally, I felt he was all wrong for the part!