The Crack of Dawn

Volume #515

11/19/23

Newsletter #515

The Crack of Dawn

OK, I’ve been referring to the year 1982 in the previous two newsletters.  The time when Evil Dead was building steam, searching for a distribution deal, being liked and praised by Stephen King at Cannes, but given the thumbs down by both Siskel & Ebert (which was national coverage either way).  Meanwhile, I had been making terrific use of this incredible, free, talent pool of Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert and Scott Spiegel.  Or perhaps, Scott thought he was making use of me.  We were making these comedy shorts, and everybody liked them.  Sam amusingly, and somewhat snidely, began calling me, “Hey, King of Comedy.”  He, Bruce and Scott had only made comedies, and considered himself to be the King of Comedy.  But Sam had decided that the future was in horror movies.  Or, as I interpreted it with Stryker’s War, gory exploitation films.

But Scott was steadfastly attached to comedy.  I loved comedy, and both Sam and Bruce loved it, too, but now comedy was just fun and games.  The reality – the business – was blood and guts and monsters.  What’re you going to do?  Even in 1982 Sam was the Great and Powerful Oz.  I don’t exactly know why – sheer personality and intellect, no doubt – but he was.

Then a stray comment of Rob’s took hold and blossomed, absorbing and consuming more than a year of Scott’s and my lives.  Rob suggested to Scott and me, “Why don’t you use the movie, Cleveland Smith, Bounty Hunter, as your sales’ tool, and make a feature out of that?”  Scott and I considered it, then thought, “Let’s a write a feature script and see how it turns out.”

Contemporaneous to that time, slapstick comedy had come back to life with the 1980 release of Airplane.  Then there was Police Squad and Airplane II, etc.  Wacky comedy was a perfectly viable genre, if you could pull it off.  Well, we had Bruce as our secret weapon.  And though it’s not a proper, true Zen understanding of life, I do slightly regret that Cleveland Smith the feature didn’t fly.  It would have no doubt changed the trajectory of Bruce’s, Scott’s and my careers.

C’est la vie.

Writing the feature script, Scott and I used the basic approach of there had to be at least one joke per page, ala, Airplane, and every kind of humor were acceptable: verbal – puns, wordplay, rhymes, whatever – visual camera tricks, slapstick, smut if we could think of it (and we couldn’t).  I won’t dig out the script, but here are some examples: Cleveland Smith is poling his way up a crocodile infested river on a rickety bamboo raft with his low-key, greasy mechanic, sidekick, Kurt.   Kurt points at the river, “Look out, it’s Water Moccasins,” they see leather shoes floating past, then Kurt points and says, “It’s a whirlpool!” and an old clothes washer with a ringer floats past (it’s 1936).  We see the raft from the shore and on a tree in the foreground a poster reads, “Wanted: Deadeye Dick, $100 Reward,” then on another tree a sign reads, “Wanted: Whiskey Sam, $200 Reward,” then on the next tree the sign reads, “Wanted: 1935 car parts, call Bud.”  

As the two adventurers travel around the world in a bi-plane to save Cleveland’s love, Sally, who has been abducted, we keep cutting to shots of a line snaking across a map of the world. The line travels through countries like, Greece, then Greece II, then Chad, then Jeremy, then through, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, then Afghaniranistan, then through Bad-Gag (which is a montage of bad gags, and where they meet a man making a basket named Dennis the Weaver).  There is also an evil Nazi chasing after them, who travels in a zeppelin named the Hal Lindenburg.  The zeppelin springs a leak, alarms go off, red lights flash, and glass cabinets are smashed which contain tire repair kits.

When they arrive in Egypt, we see an old stock shot of Cairo, then the camera pulls back to reveal the tail end of an early 1930s car.  The title reads: Egypt, north of Sudan, west of the sedan.”

The end is particularly un-PC and unwoke, and I love it.  Cleveland finally finds Sally at an oasis, on her back and tied to stakes in the sand, while being accosted by evil Arabs.  Cleveland fires his pistol and scares the Arabs away.  He kneels down to the bound Sally, who says, “Oh, thank God, Cleveland, you’re here to save me.  I’ve been abused by Egyptians, mauled by Moroccans, groped by Algerians . . .”  Cleveland starts to take off his jacket and says, “Baby, this just isn’t your day.”

The cover of the script was easily found on the internet (maybe the whole script is available, too, I didn’t look).  The cover artist was Jeff Ginyard, who is also a talented special effects technician who worked on several of my films.

While Cleveland and Kurt are visiting Berlin they attend the blow-out, Nazi Party.  The host introduces Cleveland to a German with a tall coiffure, saying, “Herr Schmitt, I’d like you to meet Herr Doo.”  Herr Doo is drunk, raises his glass and asks Cleveland, “Care to join me in a glass of shampoo?”  Our heroes encounter Adolf Hitler.  Naturally, a pie fight breaks out.  Somehow a brick falls into the pie that hits Hitler in the face. Covered with pie, his nose smashed, Hitler leaves in a huff. On the way to his limo, he falls down a manhole.

Scott and I, with much assistance from Bruce, put together an extremely difficult budget.  There were many, many elements in the script: sets, props, costumes, period cars, a lot of process shots, miniatures, as well as a guest star.  This was when I contacted Paul Kohner, Vincent Price’s agent.  In any case, the lowest number that we could believably bring the budget down to was $750,000, which is a lot of money – more than Evil Dead, which topped out at about $500,000.

But we were young and intrepid.  Even though we had no money, people liked the project so much that they volunteered to help.  Soon we had three or four people at our office every day for the next fourteen months working on preproduction. 

And meanwhile, Scott and I went to one investor meeting after another after another . . .

A good day to one and all.