The Crack of Dawn

Volume #412

7/30/23

Newsletter #412

The Crack of Dawn

In 1989 when we made Lunatics: A Love Story, I had this wild and wacky, slightly edgy, if you will, idea of have a black rap trio appear in the apartment of Hank, the crazy lead character, then beat the hell out of him while they sang a rap song.  One rapper shoved Hank’s face down on the record to make the scratching noises.  I wrote the lyrics set to Run DMC’s song, It’s Like That and That’s the Way It Is.  I then gave the lyrics to Joe LoDuca, the film’s composer, and he went through them and fixed my proper English, adding things like, “Yo man.”  Here’s the first verse: The core in your brain is cherry red/There’s a crack in the reactor inside your head/When your fission and fusion do the wild thing instead/Yo man, you’re having a nervous meltdown.

We shot the scene, and it turned out fine.  Then I began having doubts – what if rap was out of style by the time we finished the film?  Well, it took a couple of years to get the film out (Leonard Maltin dates it as 1992), and rap was still in style.  Thank goodness for that, except . . . it’s still in style.  Here we are 35 years later and rap/hip-hop is the number one form of music.  I would never have guessed back there in 1989-90 that rock and roll would die, and rap/hip-hop would persist . . . like a pounding, unchanging beat. Here’s the second verse of my rap song: The spiders have your room under attack/They grow to be the size of a Cadillac/If they don’t go away, yo man, your skull’s gonna crack/You’re having a nervous meltdown.

For a while I was working with the bigshot entertainment attorney here in Detroit, Howard Hertz, who had already worked with Sam, Bruce and Rob.  Howard’s a great guy.  He may still represent M&M and Kid Rock.  Howard’s office is literally at the end of my street.  Anyway, when you walk into the waiting room of his office, there is a poster for the movie, 8 Mile.  Written large in silver Sharpie, in a looping hand, is: “Howard, Thanks for keeping me out of jail, (signed) Marshall.”

I’ve had this particular mistake happen to me twice.  I directed a script entitled, Hercules in the Labyrinth of the Minotaur.  During post-production labyrinth was changed to maze, which was presented to me as, “You’re going to hate this.”  I not only didn’t hate it, I think maze makes for better alliteration, and it’s two syllables shorter, which is better.  When the film came out on DVD, even though the title on the film itself says, Hercules in the Maze of the Minotaur, the box said, Hercules and the Maze of the Minotaur.  In makes more sense than and, but whatever.  However, I made a documentary called, Battle the Big Tuna.  That’s what the fishermen in the movie do, they battle big tunas.  On the VHS and DVD covers it says, Battle of the Big Tuna.  To me, that sounds like big tunas are fighting each other.

I am put in mind of Taxi Driver (1976).  In the senator’s political office, Albert Brooks holds a button that says, “We Are the People,” and is on the phone and says (and I improvise), “The button says, ‘We Are the People,’ and it’s supposed to say, ‘We Are the People.’”  . . . I think there’s a difference.  Let’s not fight. How about, we don’t pay for the buttons, we throw them out.”

The brilliant script for Taxi Driver was written by Paul Schrader, who is from Grand Rapids, Michigan.  When I went to Eastern Michigan University in 1975, I became friends with the knowledgeable head of the cinema department, Bob Holkeboer.  Bob grew up in Grand Rapids, and as a kid was good buddies was Paul Schrader.  Both of them were brought up strict Calvanists and weren’t allowed to see movies. When they finally did, at 18, they both went nuts. But here’s what’s sort of interesting, perhaps, is that Taxi Driver hadn’t come out yet.  At that precise moment I was at EMU Paul Schrader, and his brother, Leonard, were famous for having made a killing on a script called The Yakuza (1975).  They’d gotten something like $500,000, which was unheard of at the time.  The film had recently been released to tepid reviews and no box office.  Still, I really wanted The Yakuza to be good, and it really sucked.  Schrader’s overpriced script was crap. But I heard it was put through the Hollywood dissection machine, which isn’t surprising.

The next year, 1976, Paul Schrader had two movies come out: Taxi Driver and Rolling Thunder, and I really like both of them.  Rolling Thunder was the film where Tommy Lee Jones was first noticed.  Tommy Lee Jones has a line in that movie that I stole for my movie, Thou Shalt Kill…Except.  William Devane, who was forced to watch his wife and son be murdered while his hand was ground off in garbage disposal, causing him to get a hook that he has since sharpened, tells his Vietnam War comrade, Tommy Lee Jones, who has a serious case of PTSD, “I’ve found the men who killed my son.”  Jones replies emotionlessly, “Let’s go clean ‘em up.” He goes straight to the closet where he has an array of M-16s.

“Let’s go clean ‘em up.”

I’d say Rolling Thunder was the single biggest influence on me and my film, TSNKE.  When I saw Rolling Thunder the first time at the Tel-Ex Theater here in Detroit, I was the only person in the audience.  I knew that if I was going to get a handle on this film, I would have to come back and see it again within the week because it was going to be gone by Friday – it was doing no business.  I did see it again, and the theater was empty again, and it was gone by Friday.

I’ve quoted before from White Mischief (1988), and I will again, because it’s a good movie.  In a dark bedroom, Sarah Miles gets up out of bed completely naked, opens the huge drapes revealing the shockingly bright, beautiful and noisy jungle of Kenya, and says with deep weariness, “Oh my God, not another beautiful fucking day.”

G’day.