6/11/23
Newsletter #364
The Crack of Dawn
Having completed Evil Dead in 1981, it took until 1983 for the film to finally get released. The next film to go into production in 1984 was Thou Shalt Not Kill…Except (1985). Unlike any other film I’ve made since then, TSNKE got a national theatrical release. It didn’t set the world on fire, but it did some business, got a number of good reviews, and the folks who liked Evil Dead seemed to appreciate it. By then we had rented most of the second floor of that building. This was when Bruce, Sam and Rob closed up shop in Ferndale, packed up the truck and moved to Hollywood. That left only Scott and I in one office.
By 1985 I had already lived in Hollywood three times, so the idea of moving back was no big deal. In fact, now that I had a released feature film under my belt, I felt pretty good about it. Not to mention that Sam, Bruce and Rob would be there. I felt like the stars were starting to line up. Scott, on the other hand, had never been away from home. He lived with his mother, brother, and his niece, and was still in the same bedroom he’d been in his whole life.
And if I’m going to tell this story, I’ll tell the whole story.
Across the street from our offices was Sammy’s Deli, which was a good deli. They had sandwiches named after famous people, like Bob Hope and Jimmy Hoffa, and Sam Raimi decided that they had to name a sandwich after him. The sandwich was pastrami, chopped liver, and onion. A true gut-buster. Sammy the owner never acquiesced, but this was before Evil Dead came out. In any case, an attractive young waitress began working there named Jenny, and she and I started going out.
Scott and I would show up at the office and absolutely nothing was happening. Whatever might be happening was occurring in L.A. I said, “Scott, we have to go to L.A.” Scott said, “You go.” So I went to L.A., set up some screenings, made some contacts, arranged a few meetings with agents, and weeks went by, and Scott would not come out. I was bopping from couch to couch and wanted to get a place, and figured Scott and I would get a place together. But I couldn’t get him out to L.A. I finally had to go back to Detroit and escort him to L.A.
When I got back to Detroit, gosh darn almighty if Scott wasn’t dating Jenny the waitress. You know what? I didn’t care. After the initial shock, I just put it aside because he and I were storming Hollywood with our new movie and that was more important. But Scott was in love . . . with his best friend’s girl. Isn’t that cute?
Anyway, I did finally talk him into coming to L.A., and that’s when he and I rented a bungalow on McCadden St. near A&M Records (which was originally Charlie Chaplin Studios and is now Jim Henson Prods.). This was the infamous bungalow where Quentin Tarantino hung out, as well as Lawrence Bender, who would end up producing Quentin’s movies. And Bob Murowski, who has since won an Oscar for editing The Hurt Locker (2008). And Boaz Yakin, who would go on to make many movies, including Remember the Titans (2000), and Max (2015) with my other buddy, Sheldon Lettich, writing.
For all of Scott’s trepidation about coming out to L.A., he fit right in. He suddenly had a lot of friends, many of whom had irons in the fire all over town. And even though Scott didn’t have any irons in any fires, he was at least in with the in crowd, and had a new movie to show.
I actually put a writing deal together for Scott and me, which is not such an easy thing to do. Scott and I were to be paid to write a tough, low-budget cop movie, ala Dirty Harry, for some producers who were involved with the Halloween movies.
When I first met with these producers – I forget his name, but her name was Dhani Lipsius, and she was from Lompoc, California, which is where I ended up setting the story that I sold her. I met with her and her partner about making a horror movie, which didn’t interest me very much, and as it turned out, not them either (though they wrote another Halloween movie after that). Anyway, we’re at Jerry’s Deli on Ventura Blvd., having come to the mutual agreement that we didn’t want to make a horror movie, on the spur of the moment, I made up Ball Breaker, the story of the cop with the worst temper. His name was really Brubaker, but they called him Ball Breaker.
Dhani and her partner said yes. That sounds great. Write a treatment, and we’ll write an agreement. They were going to give us something like $2,500 up front. We didn’t have a box of corn flakes between us. $2,500 was a lot of money. Anyway, that’s a really happy Hollywood story. Thus was the beginning of the stillborn birth of Ball Breaker, which would ultimately cause other things to happen, and other movies to be made, specifically The Rookie (1990), with Clint Eastwood and Charlie Sheen. I don’t think that I’m being unfair or unkind to assert that of the 84 films that Clint Eastwood has made, The Rookie is the worst.
I’ll pick this up.
It’s an hour till sunrise.
Morning.