6/12/23
Newsletter #365
The Crack of Dawn
When we last left our intrepid heroes, we were starving in a bungalow on McCadden St. in Hollywood. Scott had been so afraid to come out to L.A. that I had to go back to Detroit and accompany him. When I was back in Detroit, and though Scott was against it, we shut down the last office in Ferndale. We occupied those offices from 1981 to 1986, and a lot of movies were made there: Evil Dead (1983), Crimewave (aka, The XYZ Murders, 1985), Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except (1985), and Evil Dead 2 (1986). Upon reflection, it may have been the highlight of my life, but I didn’t know it then. And I don’t care now. These memories have a Godfather-like sepia tone.
So, miraculously, I got this writing deal for a tough cop script called Ball Breaker, that I had basically just pulled right out of my ass. I had initially been pitching a horror story. Although Scott wasn’t there for these early meetings, I always included him as my partner. I returned to the bungalow and informed Scott that we were saved from extinction. We would now have some money, food, rent, and we were to write a treatment called Ball Breaker, about a tough, old cop with a bad temper. I added the highly unoriginal idea of old cop/young cop (there was one in the theater at that moment, Stakeout [1987]), and Scott was fine with that. He was good with the whole thing. Life suddenly looked bright.
As I mentioned, Scott needn’t have worried about moving to Hollywood because he fit right in. In no time he and Quentin were talking about the worst movies of all time, all the time. And Quentin thought Scott was really cool because he had made the awesome, Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except, and co-written Evil Dead 2. In some sense — and I’m certainly not including myself — this was the mighty cauldron from wherein congealed a point of view that I now see as Meta-Modernism. The conversation went like this: “You think that’s bad, have you seen . . .?” I had to walk out of the bungalow a couple of times because I couldn’t stand it. They didn’t love movies; they hated them and took joy in ridiculing them.
Meanwhile, to better fit in, Scott let his hair grow out, then began spraying it with Sun-In, which is low-budget hair bleach.
I went to the movies with my friend Rick Sandford, and his good friend, Don Bachardy (whose portrait of me graces this newsletter), at the Cinerama Dome. I told Scott where I was going and he asked, “Can I come along, I want to meet Don Bachardy?” I was surprised. “Why do you want to meet Don?” Scott said, “He co-wrote Frankenstein: The True Story (1973),” and indeed he did, with Christopher Isherwood, and it’s not bad. It’s got a great cast, with James Mason, David McCallum, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud, on and on. So, Scott came with me to the Cinerama Dome. After the movie, outside in front of the theater, Rick, Don and I were talking about whatever movie we had just seen, and Scott was standing quietly off to the side. At an appropriate moment in the conversation, I said, “Don, I would like you to meet Scott Spiegel. He’s an admirer of yours’ and Chris’ script for Frankenstein: The True Story.” Don turned to Scott, shook his hand, received Scott’s praise, which was genuine, then Don told him the story of getting the film made. Rick and I spoke of other things. Finally, after a lengthy conversation, Don asked Scott, “Are you bleaching your hair?”
Scott froze. He was caught. He looked at each of us, ending with Don, and flatly said, “No.” Then he turned and walked away. I can see him perfectly walking across the enormous parking lot. Our bungalow was nearby, and he walked home.
Don turned to me and said, “Your friend. He’s a liar.” Don got in his car and left. Rick turned to me and said, “The moral of the story is: never lie to a homosexual about your hair color.”
All right, I’m going to pound my way through this ugly little affair because I started it.
Scott and I had been writing scripts together since 1980 when we made the short film, The Blind Waiter (1980). He co-wrote the script for TSNKE. We had co-written a half dozen other scripts. Although I did all of the typing, Scott was generally right over my shoulder. Not so with the Ball Breaker treatment. Scott and I took a three-hour walk around Hollywood and hashed out a whole story. Then I just wrote it without him, submitted it, and we got money.
We lived in a 400 square foot bungalow so I could not help but see what he was doing. Scott was having new front pages of our scripts made excluding my name and submitting them to agents. He recut our short film, Cleveland Smith Bounty Hunter, and removed the credits, which included my name as director.
We met in the living room of the bungalow and Scott informed me that he hated cop movies, particularly old cop/young cop, and would not participate in the writing of the script. Although we had accepted and cashed the check. It made no sense to me. “We have to write the script — we took the money.” Scott said, and if it’s not a quote, it’s close, “I hate cop movies. I didn’t come to Hollywood to write cop movies. I could have stayed in Detroit and worked in the grocery store.” There was no logic to this as far as I was concerned and I said, “But we took the money.”
I wrote the script without him. He got a co-story credit. We got the rest of the money.
But all the while, unbeknownst to me, he was writing The Rookie, the story of an old cop and a young cop, with Boaz Yakin, who hadn’t yet done anything. And the film got made, starring Clint Eastwood and Charlie Sheen.
The story isn’t quite over.
Nevertheless, it’s dawn.