12/17/22
Newsletter #191
The Crack of Dawn
Throughout the 1990s, as we made Hercules and Xena, my good buddy, Rob, the executive producer of these shows, would invite me over for dinner, generally a couple of times a week. Rob is also an avid fisherman and always had an enormous amount of fish he’d cook up in many different ways. Rob drops wonderful, useful pearls of wisdom about the film business all the time, but never remembers them, and I always do. He said offhandedly once, “If you’re not in a lawsuit – either being sued or suing someone else – you’re not really in the film business.”
Another one I’ve thought of a thousand times is, “If someone wants to say yes to you, they’ll find you, even if they don’t have your phone number. If you have to keep calling and pestering them, you are just pestering them for a no.” One time we were driving up Hollywood Blvd. and I spotted an absolutely gorgeous hooker. I said, “That’s a really beautiful girl.” Rob glanced over and said, “If it’s too good to be true, it’s not true.”
Rob was constantly pitching me Hercules and Xena story ideas just to see if they sounded any good. A couple of times I was able to add a dramatic twist or conclusion, then I received a story credit and some money. So, Rob was pitching me a Hercules story about slaves that didn’t really make sense and my eyes glazed over. I flashed on the movie, Walk Like a Dragon (1960), written, produced and directed by James Clavell, who would later write Shogun. In the film, which is set in the 1870s, a western gunman played by a very young Jack Lord is walking through San Francisco and enters Chinatown. He hears a ruckus down an alley, investigates, and finds a slave auction going on. Jack Lord says to a nearby Chinese man, “Slavery is illegal in America. We just fought a war to end it.” The Chinese man says, “But not for Chinese people.”
Right then a stunningly beautiful Chinese girl (Nobu McCarthy) is put up for sale. We see a very handsome young Chinese man (James Shegita) in chains, about to be sold, looking frantic. Clearly, he’s the pretty girl’s boyfriend or husband. Jack Lord buys the pretty slave girl. James Shegita sees this and hatred burns in his eyes. Once Lord has the pretty girl he tries to free her, but she won’t leave; she doesn’t understand freedom. As it turns out – I love this – Jack Lord the gunslinger lives with his mother. This is where the connection in my head happened because Hercules lives with his mother. So, Lord brings the pretty slave girl home and his mother immediately loves her and thinks she would be the perfect wife for her single son. Meanwhile, James Shegita escapes his bondage, gets a six-gun and teaches himself to shoot. He’s going to get his girl back. I think it’s a great story. So, as Rob was pitching me some other story, I stopped him and pitched Walk Like a Dragon with Hercules in the lead. Rob’s eyes got wider and wider. At the end he said, “That’s a great story, you just thought that up?” For a second I considered lying, then told him about Walk Like a Dragon. Rob told the story to the writers, they wrote it just like I pitched it, and it became an episode. The pretty slave girl was played by Lucy Liu in one of her first parts.
When the episode went into production, Rob called me and asked, “Do you want a story credit?” That would mean being paid, but it would also be tangible proof of my thievery, not that anyone would ever recognize the story, nor had anyone on Earth but me ever seen Walk Like a Dragon. Nevertheless, I turned down the credit, thus saving my mortal soul from perdition.
And a fine day to everybody.
I hope Rob wasn't referring to his beautiful wife.