As you know, Phone Booth is about a man who is trapped on the phone in a booth. Cellular is concerned with a female victim being held captive, who manages to get a stranger on the phone and he becomes her lifeline. Throughout the whole picture, he stays on the line with her and attempts to find her and stop her child from being kidnapped. Finally, he is responsible for saving her and — in the last shot of the movie — he at last gets to meet her face to face. So, it was a rather clever screenplay, much different to Phone Booth, although they definitely make good companion pieces. Cellular was actually remade by Warner Bros. China as Connected.
Or Bo chi tung wah to give the film its Chinese title.
Right. I believe that basically translates as “Connected” in English. As a matter of fact, the Chinese version of Cellular is in some ways superior to the American version. I urge people to see it if they can.
Your script for Cellular was rewritten by Chris Morgan. What did you make of his contributions?
I thought Chris did a good job and I told him that. I felt he actually improved my script. Basically, what he did was to make the characters younger and he also wrote a lot of the small talk between the lead character and his girlfriend, and his friends on the pier. It was a lot of superfluous material that doesn’t really matter that much, but it was good stuff. I find these dialogue changes rather amusing because in the Chinese version of Cellular, these alterations don’t really matter. Naturally, the dialogue was all changed into Chinese in Connected, but the story, the structure, the twists, and all the action remained the same. So, it hardly makes a difference. Although Chris rewrote my dialogue, he did also add a few touches that were good. I was very complimentary to him and when we had the premiere of Cellular here in Hollywood, we both walked down the red carpet together and did all the interviews together. We said some nice things about one another and I tried to treat him the way I would have liked to have been treated if I’d come in to do a rewrite on somebody’s else’s script. He did a great job and I wanted to acknowledge that, and I continue to do so. Chris made the script better than it was, so I have no complaints.
Around the same time Cellular was purchased, you also sold a screenplay entitled Cast of Characters. This project proved to be rather controversial and resulted in a lawsuit. What can you tell me about it?
Cast of Characters was optioned, but it wasn’t produced. It was a big, sprawling epic featuring some of the most celebrated public domain characters in literature. There were different versions of it, including one that had Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, and Jack the Ripper. Then we had Dorian Gray from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Mowgli from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, along with Dracula and Frankenstein. Everybody was in the movie and the unique thing about it was all these characters were in there for a reason. It wasn’t like they were all just slopped together without any thought or consideration. Everything paid off and there was a definite logic to the story and a plot twist that integrated all of these literary creations. Cast of Characters was a lot of fun. We actually optioned it a number of times and then, basically, the whole thing — we claimed — was stolen and turned into a movie at 20th Century Fox called The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. [7] We sued them for plagiarism and it was settled. Amicably settled. I’m not allowed to say what the settlement was, but I must say that we were very pleased with it.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was released in 2003 and is based on Alan Moore’s 1999 graphic novel. How could it be claimed that Moore had got the original idea for his graphic novel from your unproduced screenplay?
Well, the producer of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was the same person who had earlier produced From Hell, which was a movie about Jack the Ripper that was based on another graphic novel by Alan Moore. It was our contention that this same producer, who had read Cast of Characters over at Fox, must have mentioned the idea to Moore and convinced him to write a graphic novel based on this concept of mixing all these public domain characters together. So, that was our contention and the facts supported it, too. That’s why we had an amicable settlement. I don’t think Alan Moore realized that the idea that was being given to him was stolen from somebody else’s script. Moore acted in good faith and nobody was thinking that he willingly went out and pirated my idea. However, even Moore stated in his testimony — he gave a deposition — that in writing comic books and graphic novels there is a great deal of borrowing of ideas by the writers.
When I first read about the lawsuit, I was wondering what the connection was between yourself and Alan Moore, the world’s pre-eminent comic book writer, who lives and works in Northampton, England.
I never met Alan Moore, and he never knew that I, or the screenplay of Cast of Characters, ever existed. All he knew what that this producer, who had worked on a previous Alan Moore project had, as I say, put the idea in his head of taking the public domain characters and putting them together in a graphic novel. So, he went ahead and did, that’s all. That’s what came out and it wasn’t Moore’s fault. He certainly wasn’t a thief or anything — nobody was accusing him of that. When 20th Century Fox realized what had happened, they immediately settled the case. I don’t think Fox knew what was happening, but the producer knew what he was doing. He had read the script and was familiar with its contents. After putting the idea into Alan Moore’s head to copy this idea as a graphic novel, he took this property to Fox. The studio then bought it and made it into a feature. That is what happened, and it wasn’t Fox’s fault, really. It was an employee of Fox that did it, but the studio had to take responsibility for what he had done. I don’t think they consciously stole my material. I think they were unfortunately a party to it without knowing. But, on the other hand, Fox were also aware of my script because Cast of Characters had been submitted over there. Meetings had been taken and there were several script analyses written by development people at Fox. When the idea for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen came across their desk, it would have been proper for them to call me up on the phone. They could have said, “Larry, we’re working with you on Phone Booth and have a great relationship, but we’ve just started to develop an idea which is similar to something you submitted to us. We wanted you to know that this isn’t your idea, it came from Alan Moore over in England.” If they had said that to me up front, I would have probably understood and would never have known how the idea was put into Moore’s head by this producer. But Fox knew about the conflict and they should have advised me of it and come clean at the beginning. When you try to hide things, you make it appear that you are somehow complicit.
Let’s discuss the 2007 film, Captivity, which is based on your script. I already know that you are no great admirer of it.
That’s an understatement! [Sighs] Oh, what a fucking disaster that was. Captivity was a really good script, a lovely script. It was brimming with my style of writing, humanity, and humour. My original screenplay was about the same thing as the finished film, but it didn’t involve all of that torture and brutality. It was supposed to be about two people — a man and a woman — who are mysteriously imprisoned together in a cellar. They eventually fall in love, but we later discover that it’s all an elaborate set-up as this guy and his brother are actually the ones behind the kidnapping and imprisonment in the first place. They have done this before with other females they have murdered and that was the big twist, and it was a good one, too. The first half hour of my script had a gentle, comical aspect to it and was a lot of fun. It was not humourless and disgusting and the final picture they made was certainly humourless and disgusting.
What do you think happened to Captivity?
What happened was the filmmakers just went out of their way to make the movie repellent and nauseating. It wasn’t even entirely the fault of the director, because Captivity was taken away from him. [8] There were other scenes shot that the director had nothing to do with and were not part of the original story. These scenes were then arbitrarily inserted into the film to m
ake it more overtly horrific. That was all done by some very, very second-rate talent. I’m talking about truly amateurish people here, who consider themselves to be filmmakers, but really aren’t. They should be out of the business. They don’t deserve to be making pictures as they are simply garbage-makers. They made a concerted effort to continually and systematically ruin the picture and they succeeded. Actually, I must say that Captivity wasn’t really that good when it was originally finished either, before the movie was tampered with.
The film was shot in Russia, right?
That’s right. Can you believe that? I mean, the story takes place in New York and it was somebody’s great idea to shoot the picture in Russia, and that’s what they did! They spent fifty days or more shooting something that all takes place in this cellar. I would have been able to shoot Captivity in two or three weeks, but it took them fifty days! Of all the people to have shot the movie, the director of photography was Daniel Pearl, the cameraman on many of my films. He said that the crew was drunk half of the time and were very, very slow. I don’t know if Daniel ever voiced his opinions or not, but one day somebody dropped a pipe on his head from a catwalk that was above him. Maybe this person didn’t like Daniel very much and was trying to inflict some damage on him. I don’t know. Daniel was incapacitated for a few days after this incident, but he did manage to finish the picture. That just makes the whole movie seem even more sickening to me. Captivity took forever to make and it really wasn’t great. I should also add that the casting was second-rate, too.
Some critics have grouped Captivity with other “torture porn” [9] films such as Saw, Hostel, and The Devil’s Rejects that depict the most heinous and explicit acts of physical violence onscreen.
I haven’t seen any of those pictures and I wouldn’t — even if I was warmly invited to. I don’t go to see “torture porn” movies that parade these countless acts of brutal torture and then pass them off as entertainment. In the case of Captivity, I thought it was a shame to take this rather clever script that was a lot of fun and transform it into an irredeemable piece of sadistic garbage. At one time, we actually did a one-off stage-play of Captivity back here in Los Angeles — just for fun. This was before the picture was made and was done at a theater belonging to The Milton Katselas Acting School. I must say that production was a far more satisfying experience for me. As a matter of fact, it hurts my head just thinking about that movie. Let’s move on.
Your next produced screenplay was the 2009 TV movie, The Gambler, the Girl, and the Gunslinger. This production marked your return to the Western genre that you had served so well in previous years.
Oh, that was another awful picture! It was made up in Canada for The Hallmark Channel. Apparently, Hallmark have made a lot of movies up in Canada. Unfortunately, the film was miserably cast and was made by a woman director. [10] She didn’t know what she was doing, frankly. All I can say is that I’m glad somebody finally bought that screenplay after thirty-six years! Honestly, that script had been around for more than three and a half decades before it was finally purchased. The Gambler, the Girl and the Gunslinger was originally entitled The Hostiles and was written by myself and a friend of mine named Bob Barbash. [11] After completing it, we sent The Hostiles out to Clint Eastwood and he optioned it. Actually, Clint optioned it twice: once over at Universal and then later on he optioned it again at Warner Bros. through his own company, Malpaso. Clint was going to direct the picture and he wanted to make it with John Wayne starring opposite him.
That could have potentially been quite some project, bringing together the two most popular and iconic Western stars.
It could have been. The Hostiles was a Western about two guys, an older cowboy and a younger cowboy, so Clint sent it to John Wayne, thinking they could both play the leads. But Wayne rejected it, and so Clint then sent it to him a second time, only for Wayne to reject it once again. Clint was very disappointed that Wayne did not want to do the picture. He did not want to make The Hostiles with anybody else but The Duke. Clint’s option eventually ran out, and Michael Wayne, who was John Wayne’s son, approached me about optioning the property. I said, “Michael, if I do that Clint will have a fit! You guys have been obstructing this project for years and now you suddenly want to option it?” Michael said, “Let me just show the script to my father. We are going out on the boat at Newport for the weekend. He’ll have nothing to do and I’ll get him to read it again.” The following week, I got Michael on the phone and asked him what had happened. He said, “Well, Dad was sitting on the boat and I handed him the script. He looked at it for a few minutes and then said, ‘This piece of shit again!’ And then he threw it overboard.” I quietly thought to myself, “Oh, there goes my beautiful script, slowly sinking beneath the blue Pacific along with the hopes and dreams of Clint Eastwood and Bob Barbash!” A few years later, I ran into Clint and said, “Hey, what about The Hostiles? Why don’t we still do it?” Clint said, “I guess I’d have to play the old guy now, wouldn’t I?” We both laughed and that was it.
What was Eastwood and Wayne’s relationship like? Were they friends?
There was no relationship. They had no friendship. But Clint really did want to work with John Wayne. Apparently, John Wayne was not that anxious to work with Clint Eastwood.
How did The Hostiles eventually devolve into The Gambler, the Girl and the Gunslinger?
Well, I had been wanting to get it made for several years, and at one point Elliot Kastner was trying to do it with Marlon Brando playing John Wayne’s part. Of course, that never came off, but I was still hopeful that it one day would. Then, the phone rang one day and this producer said, “You know that script you gave me nine years ago? Well, I think I’ve actually got it sold over at Hallmark.” So, we took $200,000 for it, but by this time Bob Barbash had died. I really only sold the script so I could send $100,000 to Bob’s widow and family. They certainly weren’t expecting that money.
That was a very nice gesture.
It was but, unfortunately, they didn’t ever once say thank you or anything. It’s funny, but you do something nice for people and sometimes you don’t receive any kind of acknowledgement or response at all. If somebody called me up and said they were sending me $100,000, I would be very much grateful for it. I mean, that would be the equivalent of money falling out of the sky.
I must say it again: it certainly would have been wonderful to have seen Wayne and Eastwood together in a Western.
Oh, are you kidding me? It was one of the great disappointments of my career! My two biggest career disappointments were Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, when Universal told me that Hitchcock had suddenly changed his mind about doing the picture, and The Hostiles falling apart with Eastwood and Wayne playing the leads. I mean, we already had Clint and, okay, suppose he didn’t do the picture with John Wayne: what if he did it with say George C. Scott or Burt Lancaster or some other big actor? It could have still been great. But again, Clint did not want to do The Hostiles with anyone else except John Wayne. The failure of those two projects to happen in their early incarnations were both heartbreakers for me — huge heartbreakers.
I understand that another heartbreaker for you was the recent thriller, Messages Deleted, which was released — illegally — in 2010. How are you recovering from that disappointment?
Well, that was another blow. The producer was looking for distribution on Messages Deleted but, in the meantime, somebody stole the picture and put it out on the Internet for free. That ruined all opportunities for us to get the movie out there, and, inevitably, the company went bankrupt. It was just a devastating situation to find yourself in, but what can you say? This is the kind of despicable thing that happens in our business. You just have to accept these things when they happen and there’s very little you can do about it. Messages Deleted was shot in Canada and was the third part of my “telephone trilogy” along with Phone Booth and Cellular. Again, we have a telephone as a central element of the story, but each one uses the device in a new and interes
ting way. That was the idea anyway. Messages Deleted was a thriller about a screenwriting teacher, who is implicated in a series of mysterious murders that resemble those described in his screenplays. It was another clever script with some interesting moments in it, but the whole movie has been stolen. Messages Deleted was not a great film — it was awful compared to my script — but that’s not the point. The poor producer lost a fortune, but I still got paid for my script. That doesn’t mean I’m not sour about the whole thing. I am. In fact, that’s another movie that really hurts my head when I think about it. Let’s not talk about it anymore, okay?
Masters of Horror: Pick Me Up (2005)
It’s safe to assume that you were one of the original attendees of the infamous Masters of Horror dinners that have been held in Los Angeles since 2002.
Oh, I’ve been to almost every one of them. I actually attended a dinner just two weeks ago. They are one of the most pleasant events you could possibly imagine. Usually most of the guys are there — John Landis, Joe Dante, Tobe Hooper, and of course Mick Garris, who actually arranges these meetings. Then, you have people like John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo Del Toro, and others, who come by and we always have a great time. I mean, collectively, we may all be responsible for some of the scariest horror films ever made, but you couldn’t find a nicer, more civilised bunch of guys anywhere. Basically, all of us directors get together at a reasonably priced restaurant, where we are usually given a private room. Everybody then moves around the table and talks to everybody else. We ask each other what projects we are currently working on and what’s going on in our lives and careers. We relay all our problems and disappointments about trying to get movies made, and discuss the trepidations and tragedies of distribution. For example, John Landis made Burke & Hare in England, a comedy-horror film about the two famous body snatchers, and he’s been unable to get distribution for it here in the United States. Joe Dante also shot a movie in 3D recently and he can’t get it distributed [1], and these are two guys with great track records who have made very successful movies. Of course, I have my own nightmare stories to share, too, like the unfortunate situation we had with Messages Deleted. So, everybody has their tales of woe and despair. Even the guys who have made successful pictures have their tales to tell. During one dinner, we all got to hear Tarantino tell some of his stories from Inglorious Basterds, the movie he made over in Germany, and that was great fun.
Larry Cohen Page 61