Karateka would be a natural, but Doug is apparently leaning toward choosing some older titles — Castles of Dr. Creep or Spelunker or Raid on Bungeling Bay or even Choplifter — instead.
I talked to Ed and Alan with great passion, trying to convince them. This is the first time in my life I’ve had to lobby so hard for something I desperately wanted, and it’s exquisitely frustrating. It’s so painful wanting something from someone, being reduced to wishing and hoping they’ll give it to me. I hate it.
If I’m going to be a screenwriter someday, guess I better get used to it.
January 23, 1987
Progress on Prince of Persia has slowed to a snail’s crawl. I’ve been drifting in to work around eleven or twelve, and between that, the Butchery and the Sport Court, my workday is about forty-five minutes long. Ed and Gene and Lauren keep checking in to see what new and exciting stuff I’ve got up on the screen, and they go away disappointed.
Instead, I’ve been spending my time playing with my new Mac, Radius screen, and Scriptor screenplay formatting software. Shiny new toys.
January 26, 1987
Got up early for a change and put in a full day’s work on the game.
Corey talked me into switching assemblers, operating systems, and disk media (from DOS 3.3, S-C Assembler, and 5 1/4” floppies to ProDos, Merlin, and SCSI hard drive). The change should take about a week, but I think it’ll pay for itself in the end.
January 29, 1987
Roland spent the whole morning helping me switch over to Merlin and ProDOS.
It was kind of a thrill to watch. Roland is a hacker of the old school. He’s polite and unprepossessing in his dress and demeanor, careful about money and contracts. He drives a Saab with license plate SNABBIL. But under that conservative surface is a demon – a guy who will put his day job on hold for 72 hours and sit down and reverse-engineer an Apple II conversion of Tetris, just for the pleasure of it.
Watching him do what he did for me today, I felt a little of the old joy come flooding back. I’d almost forgotten the most basic thing: programming is fun. I’ve grown middle-aged these past couple of years. Roland is 23 but he’s still young at heart.
January 31, 1987
Got to Broderbund around 8:30 and put in another solid eight hours. Converted BUILDER over to Merlin/Pro, but it’s not working. Give me another day or two to get all the bugs out.
Showed Ed the latest (Jan. 27) working version. He was gratifyingly thrilled about the 3-D box with scrolling borders.
February 9, 1987
“When do you think you’ll be finished with your game?” Lauren asked me on the way back from the Butchery.
“I’m shooting for August,” I said.
We agreed the important thing is to make it as good as possible, and that a few months earlier or later wouldn’t really make much difference.
Today, for the first time, I constructed a really large level and played around in it. It was the first time this game had ever given me the feeling of space. It was kind of thrilling. I think it’s going to be a winner. I’m going slowly this time, building on a solid foundation, and I think it’ll pay off big.
February 14, 1987
It’s great having David here. All the stuff I’d gotten jaded about suddenly seems cool when seen through my little brother’s eyes. Like having a car, being able to drive anywhere I want, a place of my own, a key to Broderbund, free video games in the lunchroom… stuff like that. I’ll miss him when he’s gone.
February 16, 1987
Rented a camcorder and spent the afternoon in and around Broderbund, shooting more footage of David for the game. There were lots of people there even though it was a holiday.
March 5, 1987
The powers that be at Broderbund have decreed that Sensei (Tomi, Steve, Loring, Eric, Mike, and Robert S.), David Snider, Corey and I are all to be packed off from our present comfortable offices to a rathole on the second floor of 47 Paul. Tomi, Corey and I went there yesterday to check the place out. I’m seriously considering working from home.
The vibe at work has been kind of odd lately anyway. Doug is wrapped up in taking the company public, and the new people he’s hiring have no interest in games – or in software, for that matter. There’s really no reason for me to go into the office any more, except for cameraderie. I could always visit if I get lonely.
March 8, 1987
“This is a BAD day for you not to be at Broderbund, believe me. ‘Bye.”
Not the message you want to find on your answering machine when you get home at 5 p.m. after having taken the day off to play hookey and explore Mt. Tam.
I called Corey back. He told me we’d been evicted from our office and our stuff transferred to the dingy, unpainted, windowless attic of 47 Paul Drive. Corey was at the bottom of the deepest depression I’d ever seen him, and was ready to move back home.
Tomi had a plan. “You’ve got to get the small room,” she said. “It’s got windows and ventilation. It’ll be much better.”
“Corey said he already asked Adaire about that and she said…”
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law. If I were you, I’d go into work early tomorrow morning and move both your desks and all your stuff into that room.”
I called Corey back and told him the plan. He was terrified, but we did it that night, feeling like a pair of burglars.
March 9, 1987
I arrived at work to find Adaire furious. It seems they’d been planning to paint the room that day, and Corey and I, by moving in our furniture, had made it impossible for the painters to work. So we moved it all into the middle of the room and threw a tarp over it. We had to buy the tarp ourselves at the local hardware store, because the painters didn’t have one.
The Attic
April 1, 1987
In the past three weeks I’ve put in the equivalent of maybe one full eight-hour day on Baghdad. I’m starting to feel guilty about it.
My reluctance to actually sit down in the new office and work on the damn game is so strong, I’ve been procrastinating by doing everything else under the sun I’ve been putting off since 1986. Even my taxes.
April 2, 1987
It’s probably a good thing I didn’t get into work until three, because sometime early this morning they had a little accident at the Fairchild plant next door to Broderbund and spilled some hydrochloric acid. They evacuated the whole industrial park for a few hours. They were going to shut down the freeway, but luckily the wind was blowing in the other direction – ours. My lungs actually do feel kind of irritated.
April 23, 1987
Sensei moved in yesterday. Six desks: Eric, Loring, Tomi, Steve, Mike and Ty now occupy the big outer room. Overnight, the place has been transformed from an attic into an office. Seeing it gave me this incredible urge to tidy up the small room – the one Corey, Cathryn Mataga and I share – but I stifled it. Instead, I put in my first real day of work in weeks, and maybe my second since Corey and I got kicked out of our old office.
May 3, 1987
I’m back in work mode. Whatever the reasons, the long dry spell that began with Corey’s and my exile to the attic ended the day Sensei moved in with us. I got a hell of lot done this week, and I’m actually starting to look forward to arriving at work every morning, sitting down at the Apple to make things happen.
May 4, 1987
BIG NEWS. Virginia Giritlian of Leading Artists called to say she loved my script. She’s given it to her boss Jim Berkus to read and will get back to me in the next couple of days.
May 5, 1987
Jim and Virginia called back the next morning. He’d read Birthstone, loved it and asked if I have other movie ideas and if I am available for rewrite work?
So I’m flying to L.A. on Monday for a meeting with Leading A
rtists. This is ridiculous, dreams-come-true stuff. If I saw it in a movie I would never buy it.
May 11, 1987
Sat in a big room with leather couches with Virginia, two of the partners (Jim Berkus and Gary Cosay), and another agent, Anne Dollard.
(“They’re just guys,” Tomi coached me before I flew down. “Pretend you’re going into a meeting with Doug and Gene Portwood.”)
They all listened in attentive silence while I pitched my high-school-narc script idea. Finally Jim Berkus broke in, gently. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “But…”
Whereupon they all informed me that there are about three feature films involving undercover cops in high school already in development. Plus a TV series called 21 Jump Street, which I would have known if I ever watched TV, or looked at a TV Guide. I felt like an idiot. Awkward moment. The meeting broke up soon after.
They still want to take me on as a client, though.
“Try to think of some other movie ideas,” Virginia suggested. She gave me about nine scripts to take home, Xerox and send back to her. Screenplays of films actually in production. She also let me pore through her “red book” for a couple of hours while she went to lunch with a guy from UA. It was terrifically exciting.
The “red book” contained a capsule description of every feature film currently in development anywhere, with notations like “Status: Needs Director” or “Needs Major Star” or “Needs Script.” The descriptions were “Like Alien underwater” or “Remake of The Hit only funnier.” Bizarre.
May 22, 1987
Virginia called me at work to say that Curtis Hanson (writer/director of The Bedroom Window) had read the script and wants to talk to me about it. I called him at home.
“I’ve been reading a lot of thrillers lately,” he said, “obviously, because of Bedroom Window. Most of them are boring and bad. Yours was interesting and unusual. I had some ideas on how you might improve it.” We talked for an hour.
□ □ □
Don Daglow, who just came over from Electronic Arts, wants Broderbund to do Karateka II. We sat in his office and chatted while Ed Badasov sat there, eyes darting nervously back and forth between us. Don offered a 3% royalty. They both wanted me to say yes. I didn’t.
June 10, 1987
I told Virginia my Anasazi and secret-society movie ideas. I think she was sort of bemused that they were so incomplete. She said a 14-year-old lead is a hard sell, and anything to do with Indians is a hard sell.
“I have faith that you’ll work these into something good,” she said. “But it would be good if you could do that within the next week or so.”
June 22, 1987
I finished the rewrite and sent it to Virginia and Curtis Hanson this morning.
Virginia says she showed the first draft to a lot of people and everybody is all excited. “The word ‘genius’ has been thrown around,” she said. (In what context, I wonder: “Who’s the GENIUS who made me waste my time reading this #$@#! crap?!?”)
But the big news is that Larry Turman, big-name producer (The Graduate; more recently, Short Circuit) wants to make Birthstone. We talked for about an hour Saturday about the changes he’d like to see. He’s going to Europe for three weeks. I told him I’d do another rewrite while he’s away, then we can talk when he gets back.
Virginia apologized for not getting me any money to do the rewrites.
I told her not to worry, I don’t feel like I’m being exploited. “The way I see it, I’m getting the benefit of these guys’ talent and experience for free. And even if nothing happens, I end up with a better script for my trouble.”
There was a long pause, then she said: “I think you’re going to do very well here.”
July 1, 1987
Curtis Hanson called back. He liked the rewrite and wants to “attach himself” to the project.
July 8, 1987
I told Virginia I’m no good at “pitching” and would rather write the secret-society idea as a “spec” screenplay. She said that in that case, it might be a good idea for me to go into these meetings and talk about kinds of movies I like, “so you don’t appear tongue-tied.”
Oliver North is testifying on TV as a sort of running background to everything.
(Game? What game?)
July 9, 1987
Working at home is not working out. I need to find a way to start splitting my time between screenwriting and the game. It would be ideal if I could finish the game, achieve some kind of closure on that, before I move to L.A. and devote myself 100% to screenwriting.
July 29, 1987
A day of meetings set up by Virginia. One was with Hal Lieberman at Disney. Just being on the Disney lot was quite a thrill.
August 25, 1987
Gary Cosay called to tell me that Virginia is leaving the agency. I need to sit down and think about this.
Had lunch Tuesday with Ed Badasov. I told him I’ll be done with the screenplay rewrite in a month, then we can sit down and work out a new timetable for Prince of Persia.
Ed tried to talk me into staying with video games as a career. He said I have an extraordinary talent and ability, possessed by only a few people, to actually conceive, design and execute a game all by myself. I felt like he was talking about somebody else. All I could do was stare at him and nod politely.
I have no idea what will happen now with Prince of Persia. Maybe I can hire someone else to finish it? Or sell it to Broderbund as it stands, as a work-in-progress? I can’t think about it. I’ll think about it a month from now.
September 4, 1987
Gary Cosay encouraged me to write my secret society script on spec, if I have the inclination and the financial freedom to do so.
“You’re in a good position right now,” he said, “in that Larry Turman is waiting for a script from you that stands a very good chance of going. If this movie gets made, whatever you write next will automatically have a lot of interest, and potentially be worth a lot of money.”
He also said: “If you write a couple more scripts on spec, and if they’re good, you’ll be in a position to do more than just write. You’re carving out a road for yourself. You can drive your car down it any time you want.”
I want Birthstone to get made so bad… I can’t let myself think about it.
September 21, 1987
Lunch at the Skywalker Ranch with Mary Ann Braubach and Steve Arnold. GEORGE LUCAS HIMSELF came over and sat down and Steve introduced us. I just had to enter this momentous event in the record, for the sake of my 18-year-old self.
Steve Arnold, for some reason, is dying to hire me. For what, I have no idea. He asked me what I know about interactive video. I said: absolutely nothing. He said if I don’t want a job, he’d be willing to hire me as a consultant or as a freelancer – basically, on whatever basis I want.
Oh well, enough excitement. Back to work.
September 24, 1987
Virginia said Gary is “sweet” and “one of the best minds in the agency business in Hollywood,” but he can be easily talked in and out of things, and he doesn’t like to fight, so it’ll always be Jim who calls the shots. She thinks Jim will probably try to frustrate Larry off the project so he can replace him with one of his “boys’ club” buddies.
My new agent will be Toby Jaffe.
October 1, 1987
Gary loved the rewrite. Larry’s response was more mixed. Curtis said straight out he was disappointed.
October 5, 1987
Don Daglow said: “When are you going to leave F. Scott Fitzgerald emulation mode and finish Prince of Persia so we can publish it?” whereupon Gary [Carlston] said: “I take a more low-key approach, based on the possibility that F. Scott Fitzgerald mode might actually work out.”
Broderbund is really hurting for games. Last night
Gary and Doug and Bill McDonagh were talking about third-quarter sales. Doug turned to me and asked “Can you have it ready by tomorrow?”
October 19, 1987
Larry Turman called. “You did really good work – I think it’s the absolute best yet.” He still has a few suggestions, but he wants to go ahead with this version. He asked one curious question: “Is Leading Artists your official agent – have you signed contracts with them?” I told him I had.
“Congratulations,” he said. “We’ll go out into the world!”
The stock market crashed. A 500-point drop in one day.
October 20, 1987
Larry called me to find out what’s going on. He hasn’t heard from my agents or anyone and is getting antsy. Is Curtis in or out? I didn’t know what to tell him.
October 30, 1987
Curtis is out. No hard feelings.
November 17, 1987
My long-postponed lunch with Ed Badasov. I levelled with him. I told him everything that’s been happening with the screenplay, and (Tomi’s suggestion) asked for his advice.
Ed thought about it gravely, admitted he could see my dilemma. We left it that I’ll try coming in a few days a week and see how much I can get done.
Basically, I’ve done no work on POP for six months.
November 18, 1987
The Yale Alumni Magazine came in today’s mail. The Class of ’85 notes had an entire paragraph about Yalies in film. David Kipen is living in L.A., writing a screenplay about Yale “the themes of which are suicide and murder”; Mandy Silver is going to USC film school; David Lee is shooting a movie in New York; Bob Simonds is doing deals in Hollywood. These are my classmates – how come I’m not with them? What am I doing in an industrial park in Northern California hanging out with people in their thirties?
OK. I’m calm now. Whew.
November 20, 1987
Yesterday I went in to work for the first time since I can’t remember when. I booted up the game and looked at it. It was deeply depressing.
The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993 Page 3