Tales From Development Hell (20 page)

Not being the kind of writer to throw out the baby with the bathwater – even though it may result in the Writers Guild of America awarding a larger share of the writing credit, and thus residual payments – Goldman’s final rewrite did not differ significantly from Green’s. “We tweaked and tweaked and tweaked until we finally got it to the point where Paul was very happy with it, and they were ready to go ahead and make it,” the writer explains. “Some of it was that after trying things and trying things, Paul started to realise how good the Walon draft really was, so he kept the changes that were improvements and got rid of the ones that weren’t, pieced together the best parts of each draft, and we ended up with a draft that he was ready to make. I was very excited about it. Walon Green was also very happy with it. He thought the best parts of all his drafts had been chosen all along, which was Paul’s doing. Your horror as a writer, or your fear, is that someone’s going to ruin your work, but I’ve always been a very respectful rewriter, and Paul really is a creative rewriter-developer. He’s not into starting over.”

One of the more fundamental changes has Hagen and Emmich re-imagined as half-brothers, with the latter as the true heir of a Count, and Hagen as the illegitimate son of the same father (shades of Gloucester’s sons in
King Lear).
Not only does this add a suitably Biblical sibling rivalry to the relationship, but the Abbot who catches Hagen stealing also uses it to his own advantage: because he knows Hagen is legally entitled to half the estate of Emmich’s father, he agrees to sentence Hagen to death only if Emmich signs a quarter of
his
estate over to the Abbot. Goldman tones down the attack on the Jewish wedding party so that it is disrupted, not decimated, and Hagen saves the bride from being raped by Emmich and his men, rather than intervening too late.

Leila is also given something of a makeover. Instead of agreeing to the arranged marriage with a Muslim noble (named Duqaq in Goldman’s versions — though in reality ‘Duqaq’ is a rank, not a name — and with Djarvat demoted to a relatively minor presence), she rejects his proposal, forcing Duqaq to resort to nefarious means to ensnare the woman he loves. Furthermore, in Goldman’s version, Ibn Khaldun promises his daughter that in marriage her will is to be her own, to which Djarvat retorts that no woman’s will is her own – and further twists the situation to his advantage by suggesting that their faith faces desecration because of a woman’s pride. Another key device in Goldman’s revisions is that it is Hagen who attempts to broker the peace accord between the Christians and the Muslims, only to have Djarvat’s soldiers attack — thus, it appears that Hagen led the Christians into a trap.

Goldman’s greatest addition to the script is the spectacular ‘Shadow Warrior’ sequence, perhaps the most memorable scene in the entire 132-page enterprise. As Goldman envisaged it, in the middle of the climactic battle between the Crusader army and Djarvat’s Muslim horde, the setting sun projects a gigantic image of Hagen on horseback onto a wall of smoke, throwing the Muslims into a panic and inspiring the Crusader army to victory. The effect is increased when Hagen throws a sword at a Saracen horseman, who keels over dead with the sword arcing straight up like a triumphant cross, surrounded by a mystical aureole of sunlight. From this
point, the battle becomes a slaughter, with even Ibn Khaldun — who survives far longer in Goldman’s drafts — falling to Emmich, who drives his men to attack even as the Saracens lower their colours and attempt to surrender. As the surviving Muslims retreat to relative safety within the walls of Jerusalem, the Crusaders lay siege to the city, killing Jews and Muslims with equal vehemence. At the end, Hagen and Leila walk off into the sunset, leaving Ari to ponder which of the three religious faiths he will adopt this week, and the Crusaders to wonder where the true cross is hidden.

Appraising the draft dated 24 January 1993 for the Ain’t It Cool website, reviewer ‘Damien Thorn’ described it as “the greatest unproduced script of the decade... a brutal action epic laced with literate political dialogue and evil humour (what you’d expect for a slicing cavalier Paul Verhoeven flick), this is foremost a smashingly entertaining story that hurtles forward like all those severed limbs in
Starship Troopers.
Green is known for his ruthless sense of structure and here every scene is loaded with fascinating details that set up the following events with enormous payoff. The Arnold character, Hagen, is the ultimate part for him — iconic and shrouded in charismatic mystery that reveals a keen intelligence and the sort of presence you can believe would be at the center of an epic shite storm in the medieval Christian world.”

Thorn also pointed to a few problems — some “ordinary” action sequences, and a third act which was somewhat “perfunctory”. He felt that the script might benefit from more political scenes, à
la Ben Hur
or
Spartacus,
and a punchier ending, but concluded that with its play on church politics, mass schizophrenia and sense of entire civilizations out to exterminate each other, it was a worthy and timely event film, “Verhoeven’s answer to
Alexander Nevsky, Lawrence of Arabia”.
It might not make back its production cost, and would, he felt, certainly antagonise “every known special interest group on the planet,” but was nevertheless the film that Schwarzenegger and Verhoeven “were born to make.” Another Ain’t It Cool script reviewer thought the draft somewhat muddled.
“Crusade
doesn’t want to take a religious stand, although it does seem to indicate at one point that Hagen has had a Christian vision,” the anonymous poster opined. “The result is that we watch three religiously-motivated armies (Christian, Jewish, and Muslim) fight over Jerusalem and its Holy Shrine, and we don’t really care about any of them. Truth be told, I found the character of Ari (Hagen’s little con man sidekick) far more interesting and complex. It’s all terribly violent, even for Verhoeven,” the unnamed critic concluded, “but at least there’s a creative escape from prison.”

Carolco put the film into pre-production in early 1993, with Schwarzenegger being joined by Robert Duvall as Adhémar of Le Puy, John Turturro (though some sources say his brother, Nicholas) as Ari, Christopher McDonald
(Thelma and Louise)
as the evil Emmich. Verhoeven recalls screen testing a number of actresses for the role of Leila, before finally deciding upon Jennifer Connelly, a future Academy Award winner for
A Beautiful Mind.
“I only knew Jennifer from this Disney movie where she flies
[The Rocketeer],
but since then I have asked her several times for other movies —
Starship Troopers
and
Hollow Man
— but she felt they were not good enough, or not her kind of movie.” With shooting scheduled to begin in the summer of 1994, however, Carolco began to feel the aftershocks of its production profligacy, with expensive misfires such as Richard Attenborough’s
Chaplin
presaging a general downturn in the company’s fortunes, despite the strong box office performance of such high-profile pictures as
Total Recall, Basic Instinct
and
Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

“We couldn’t quite figure out where the money went,” says Goldman, “but by that time it had gone.
Crusade
was a giant movie, and the company didn’t trust the numbers that were being thrown around. They felt that the movie was going to end up costing a lot more than Paul and [producer] Alan Marshall said — which is odd because Paul and Alan are probably the two least political film-makers on that level. Paul is ideologically honest; he takes pride in defining himself as a person who will give you the brutal truth, and expect you to handle it. So he doesn’t really lie about budgeting, which is a mistake because there’s no way to get these movies made without lying. People won’t ever admit up front that they’re willing to make the movie for that amount — you have to get them slightly pregnant, or they’ll never have the guts to bite, because they’ll be held accountable on these decisions.”

Verhoeven, who holds a PhD in mathematics, agrees. “I was too honest. I was stupid. I should have said that we could do it for a hundred million. We started out with seventy-five or eighty or something, but we didn’t really get the budget lower than ninety-five or a hundred because it was too complex.” As a result, Carolco began to lose confidence that it could be brought in on budget, and despite the millions of dollars spent getting to this point — including a ‘pay or play’ deal with Schwarzenegger, which meant that he was owed his full salary whether the movie was made or not — the film was scrapped at the eleventh hour. “We were already building [sets] in Spain,” says Verhoeven. “We had to break it all off, and the whole pre-production cost of the not-made movie was about $10 million. Despite the hefty write-down, Carolco’s backers likely saw it as a saving of $90 million – possibly more.

“Carolco went through a terrible time,” Verhoeven recalls. “They had two big movies in development at the same time,” referring to
Crusade
and
Cutthroat Island,
the pirate epic which ultimately sank the company in a sea of red ink. “Ultimately they realised that, in the circumstances they were in financially, they could not do both. In my opinion, they made the wrong choice because they thought Michael Douglas would be in
Cutthroat Island,
but he backed off, and instead of rotating around to
Crusade,
they continued along that track, and got Matthew Modine.” When
Cutthroat Island
flopped, Carolco went into bankruptcy, still owing Schwarzenegger his full salary for
Crusade.
“I think there was some anger over it,” says Goldman. “In any case, they couldn’t or didn’t pay him, but they’d had a long relationship, and to pay someone twelve or fifteen million dollars for a film they don’t make... well, it’s a lot of money.” Eventually, Schwarzenegger reached a settlement with the producers that was mutually agreeable: the actor would take over all rights to the screenplay of
Crusade,
without any of the negative costs accrued against it, in return for forfeiting his payday.

Free to shop the script around, Schwarzenegger was soon developing it through his company, Oak Productions, hoping that Verhoeven would remain on board as he tried to set it up at Sony-owned Columbia Pictures, where the actor had made
Last Action Hero.
Unfortunately, rather than being the biggest hit of 1993 as expected,
Last Action Hero
grossed just $50 million in the US, leading to Mark Canton’s exit from the studio and a cool reception to the actor’s Crusade project. Although
True Lies
(1994) recovered some of Schwarzenegger’s box office clout, it was followed by a string of under-performers, including
Junior, Eraser
(written by Walon Green),
Batman & Robin
and
End of Days,
temporarily arresting the rise of the Schwarzenegger machine. Meanwhile, Verhoeven was busy making another costly flop,
Showgirls,
followed by
Starship Troopers,
neither of which repeated the success of his earlier Hollywood films. As Goldman explains, “All of a sudden neither of them were that ‘hot’ — and it just isn’t possible to make a movie of that size with people who aren’t hot, because it wasn’t an obviously commercial idea anyway.”

Another factor working against the film was the fact that, at the time, the historical epic was a moribund genre; rather than reviving it,
Braveheart
(1995) was seen as the exception that proved the rule. Nevertheless, in February 1999,
Variety
announced that Schwarzenegger was in “serious talks” to revive
Crusade
with producer-financier Arnon Milchan – the man behind such hits as
Pretty Woman, Under Siege, Falling Down, LA Confidential
and some
fifty other films – under his company’s deal with 20th Century Fox. “Long considered one of the best unproduced scripts of recent years,”
Variety
noted, “the Walon Green-penned
Crusade
has a fascinating history that ended up with Schwarzenegger himself owning the project. Schwarzenegger long has been expected to play the hero, Hagen, a reluctant warrior who begins the film as a prisoner set to die... It’s unclear who Schwarzenegger and Milchan would choose to direct,” the report went on, “though Paul Verhoeven is interested, five years after he nearly directed Schwarzenegger when the film was to be financed by Carolco.” A year later, during publicity duties for
The 6th Day,
Schwarzenegger confirmed that
Crusade
was still in active development, and that he hoped Verhoeven — then busy making
Hollow Man
— might shoot it sometime in 2001.

Then came the events of September 11: an attack by Islamic fundamentalists against a Judeo-Christian economic stronghold, to which the US government reacted by targeting two Islamic nations with spurious links to the attacks, Afghanistan and Iraq. As Verhoeven pointed out to
DVD Monthly,
“Even the
word
‘crusade’, which was used by George W. Bush in the beginning... when he said, ‘This is a crusade against terrorism.’ He had to take the word ‘crusade’ out of the speeches, because [the Arabs remembered it] and the slaughterhouse that the Crusades were. Of course,” he adds, “Bush, not knowing what happened in the year 1100, thought the Crusades were something great, and that’s why he used it at the beginning of his campaign. But somebody in the government, to my great astonishment, knew a little bit more and decided that it wasn’t the greatest way to approach the Arab world.” Nevertheless, in November 2001, the staunchly Republican Schwarzenegger told
Cinescape
’s Beth Laski that he was still pursuing the project: “We have to bring it up to date, which means rewriting and then finding the right studio, someone who believes in it. We’re negotiating with Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer,” he added, “and we’re very well on our way.”