Tales From Development Hell (43 page)

I began work on the script under the tutelage of Wainwright and his producing partners, Danny Bigel and Michael Mailer (son of the legendary Norman Mailer), producers of such smart indie fare as
Two Girls and a Guy
and
Black and White.
Originally titled
Killing the Gods,
the script evolved over multiple drafts, sometimes edging closer to the tone of
The Wicker Man,
other times towards
The Mosquito Coast,
but always improving. By 2005, the project had attracted part-financing from Wainwright’s
Stigmata
backers MGM, before billionaire backer Bob Yari agreed to finance the entire film, as long as we could find a star of sufficient stature.

Having written the film with Nick Nolte in mind, I was surprised to learn that the first actor to whom the script had been offered was John Cusack — but it was Matthew McConaughey who finally stepped up to play the enviable leading role of Tom Weaver, someone who, in the words of the pitch notes, “has to become a god in order to learn how to be a man.” Alas, with barely a month before the film was due to go before the cameras somewhere in the Aegean Sea, McConaughey jumped ship, preferring to take $2 million to co-star with Al Pacino in
Two for the Money
(2005) than be paid scale for the lead in
After the Gods.
Yari agreed to honour his financing offer if the producers could find a star of equivalent stature, but weather conditions in the Aegean meant that filming would have to begin by October at the latest or be postponed until the following year, and without a suitable leading man,
After the Gods
was washed up.

By this time, I had written two further scripts for the Bigel-Mailer partnership:
The Ego Makers,
adapted from the novel by real estate mogul Donald Everett Askin, and
Nothing to Declare,
based on the memoir by millionaire playboy and
The Spectator
society columnist Taki Theodoracopulos. Both were adaptations of books they had optioned, and which they had sent me with a covering letter more or less asking me to “make them into movie scripts.”

Although the former disappeared in a falling out between the novelist and producers, the latter — the true-life tale of Taki’s incarceration in Pentonville Prison following his conviction for trying to fly into Heathrow Airport a bag of cocaine so large customs could not believe it was for personal use — soon attracted not only a promising director, Malcolm Venville, but also an Oscar-nominated actor with a reputation for edgy, pitch-perfect performances. At the time, Robert Downey Jr. was years away from his comeback box office hits,
Iron Man
and
Sherlock Holmes,
and better known for making headlines with his troubled personal life than headlining major motion pictures. Although
Nothing to Declare
would be an inexpensive film, would-be financiers evidently felt the thrill of seeing Downey Jr. inside a fictional prison did not merit the threat of having their leading actor thrown in an
actual
prison halfway through filming if he should fall off the wagon. Incredible though it may seem now that he has not one but
two
giant franchises to his name, Downey Jr. was then uninsurable, making
Nothing to Declare
non-viable. With
The Ego Makers,
the script of which I had retitled
High Rise,
I was now 0 for 3. The only way was up.

Having written or adapted three scripts for third parties, I now felt it was time to write something for myself. Screenwriters often keep files of notes, newspaper and magazine cuttings, one-line pitches and sketchy synopses, in the way that a page torn out of
New Scientist
might one day become the next
Jurassic Park,
or an article on ‘humanized’ chimpanzee Nim Chimpsky inspired
Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
²
One of my cuttings was a tiny story from a local newspaper, possibly dating back to the 1980s, about a rare and nearly priceless Ferrari that had been destroyed by, of all things, a runaway milk float. What struck me about the story was the fact that the classic car’s destruction had had the knock-on effect of increasing the value of the few other surviving examples of the same car by about £1 million. This got me thinking: if you were a car collector in possession of the
second
most valuable automobile in the world, what might you do to nobble the competition? Might you persuade a pair of hapless parking valets, for example, who had accidentally crashed your Lamborghini while taking it for a joy ride, to track down, steal and destroy the world’s most priceless automobile — say, a Le Mans race-winning 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO — in order to put your own rare Ferrari in pole position? Especially if the individual in possession of the rarest car was your ex-wife, who had received said vehicle in a divorce settlement, and was about to rub your face in it by donating it to the Ferrari motor museum in Turin?

It took the best part of six months to write the action-comedy-caper script that became
250 GTO
(alternative titles included
Petrolheads, Grease Monkeys, GTO
and — if one dunder-headed producer had had his way —
The Ultimate Ride),
in which the two unlucky joy-riders are given the only-in-a-movie mission to steal the Ferrari and drive it from Miami to Malibu — a distance of
roughly 2,400 miles — in under twenty-four hours, requiring an average speed of 100 miles per hour. Naturally, there are complications — ranging from a dogged insurance adjuster, mercenaries with rocket launchers, mechanical failures, a sexy hitch-hiker, incompetent cops, a rampaging motorcycle gang, and more — enough, I hoped, to make a high-concept script sale. To ensure authenticity, and perhaps inspire a scene or two, I even made the 2,400-mile road trip myself. As I wrote the first draft, a process driven forward by a 1/24th scale model of a bright red Ferrari 250 GTO I kept on my desk, I hoped that some day — if the script should sell for a million bucks, for example — to swap it for a real one. Or, at least, a good replica.

Largely through my own efforts rather than any agent’s, several producers circled the project. One of them flirted with a rights offer but, instead, commissioned me to write a pilot (for his friend and business associate Geena Davis) for a television drama about a female boxing manager — a project which fell apart when (a) Ms Davis became pregnant, and (b) Meg Ryan signed up to play a female boxing manager on film. Another interested party, my former associate Danny Bigel, bit the bullet and took an option out on
250 GTO,
for the princely sum of one dollar. In compliance with Hollywood custom, I didn’t even get the cash. At least I could have framed it, for posterity. Bigel and I spent several months on the script, undertaking a major re-engineering of the story and characters, and tinkering under the hood, until it was ready to roll out on to the forecourt and offer for sale. Bigel even managed to attach a director who seemed ideally suited to the job: Marc Schölermann, Germany’s pre-eminent maker of car commercials.

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.