7/24/2025
Newsletter #783
The Crack of Dawn
In 1988 Bruce Campbell took me by the production office of Maniac Cop (1988). Bruce had been cast in one of the leads. They hadn’t started production yet, so the office was entirely empty. The only two people there were Bill Lustig, the director, and Larry Cohen, the writer-producer. This was the first time I met them. Larry was a fascinating guy, probably best-known as the writer-director of It’s Alive! (1974) and Q: The Winged Serpent (1982). Larry also had big TV credits going back to the early 1960s. He created one of my favorite shows as a kid, “The Invaders” (1967-68) with Roy Thinnes. Wonderfully, I think, Larry, who was a New York Jew, was an important contributor to Blaxploitation movies. Larry wrote, produced and directed Black Caesar, starring Fred Wiliamson, as well as the sequel, Hell Up in Harlem (both in 1973), which were both big hits. Anyway, Larry was a funny, acerbic, bright guy.
So, me, Bruce, Larry and Bill were sitting in the big empty production office of Maniac Cop. Bill Lustig was a big guy, like 300 pounds. I just looked him up and he’s still a big guy, but not as big as he used to be. At 70, Bill’s four years older than me, but I would have guessed that he was older. Bill made a name for himself with the movie, Maniac (1980), which was the brainchild of he and Joe Spinell. I think that Joe Spinell was great. He played Willi Cicci in The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), and he was Rocky’s boss in Rocky (1976) and Travis Bickle’s boss in Taxi Driver (1976).
Meanwhile, both Bill and Larry were absolutely giddy at having gotten the green light on Maniac Cop. Bill was holding Larry’s script, opening it randomly and admiring it. Whatever else might be said of that script—like it was a piece of shit—it had gotten them the money to make the movie. Bill thinks he’s a tough guy because he’s from the Bronx, and he’s big. Bill waved the script at Larry and said, “This script is so good, it’s actor-proof.”
Bruce was aghast. He was not only offended for himself; he was offended for all actors everywhere. By the time we got out into the parking lot, Bruce he was fuming. Bruce turned back toward the building and snarled, “That piece of shit script is actor-proof? No, it’s not! It’s audience-proof!”
Well, Bruce proved to be wrong about that. Maniac Cop did well enough to spawn two sequels.
Bill was having his Hollywood moment in the sun right then. He was on a hot streak. He was not only about to shoot a movie, and he already had the financing arranged for his next film, “Hell to Pay.”
But Bill was dissatisfied with the script of “Hell to Pay.” So he hired me and my writing partner at that time, Scott Spiegel, to rewrite it. Bill was absolutely correct that the script was terrible. At our first script meeting, Scott asked Bill, “Is this story about a haunted hairpiece?” Bill, in his tough guy, crotchety, impatient, manner, said, “What the fuck do you mean?” Scott smiled and said, “It’s called, Hell to Pay. That’s why I thought it was about a haunted hairpiece. The hell toupee.” I laughed, even though I’d already heard it. Bill blanched. When next we met, the title page had been replaced—without any writer’s names—and it was now entitled, Hit List.
I logically asked, “So, Bill, how would you like us to work in the idea of a hit list?”
Bill said, “Fuck the hit list. I don’t need a hit list.”
Okay, no hit list. When we received the script as Hell to Pay, the story was about two hitmen who come to kill a guy and his family, for some reason, but mistakenly go to the house next door, for some reason. For some reason, the father of the family next door is on the roof and watches as his family is massacred. The father then goes after the hitmen, which isn’t a bad idea. For some reason the father is able to expertly handle ten kinds of complicated weapons and is both deadlier and more cunning than the hitmen. This was followed by 70-pages of dull routine derring-do chases and shoot-outs that all come to nothing.
Scott and I began by addressing the most blatant issues. Why did the hitmen mistakenly go to the house next door? Scott and I immediately both thought of the Three Stooges. When the front door of the house next door is slammed, it causes the 9 in the address to come loose, swing around and become a 6. Problem solved. Why was the father fortuitously on the roof, where he can see his family killed, but not get killed himself? Answer: he’s fixing the roof. Who is this guy anyway? Well, if he has a lot of tools on his professional-looking belt, he must be a carpenter, which would make him skillful and strong. How does he know how to use all of these weapons? And why is he so cunning and deadly? Though it was an overused, cliched explanation, since we couldn’t think of anything better, we made him a Vietnam vet. We felt that a cliched explanation was better than none at all.
Bill read our draft of the script and hated everything.
I haven’t finished telling the story, so I’ll pick it back up in the next episode.
[Note to reader: Substack denied me the ability to use italics halfway into this thing, which is why some titles are italicized, and some aren’t].
What gives this film any significance whatsoever is that this script was actually made into a movie—Hit List (1989)—and get this cast: Jan-Michael Vincent, Lance Henrikson and Rip Torn. I was impressed.
We need a Hell Toupee movie!
Very nice one Josh, as usual. Have a good day!