10/27/22
Newletter140
The Crack of Dawn
I spent a lot of time in the Francis Howard Goldwyn (Sam’s wife) Hollywood Library. The library had a big movie section. Unlike Harry Truman who by the age of 14 had read every book in the Independence, Missouri library; I was determined to at least read all of the movie books in the Hollywood Library. I was doing a pretty good job, too. Then in 1988 there were suddenly about a hundred new movie books, all of which had stamped on the first page, “From the library of Colin Higgins.” Colin Higgins was from Australia and attended UCLA film school in the late-sixties. Higgins took his master’s thesis screenplay, rewrote it, and sold it to Paramount where it was made as Harold and Maude (1971). After crapping around in the film business writing low-budget junk and trying unsuccessfully to get a director gig for a couple of years, Harold and Maude was translated into French and adapted into a play by Jean-Claude Carrière (a tremendously interesting, talented, prolific screenwriter who co-wrote six of Luis Bunuel’s films). The play was a big success in France and ran for seven years. Then Higgins wrote Silver Streak (1976), which was a huge success and the first pairing of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. This gave Colin Higgins the clout to make his first writer-director deal, Foul Play (1978), which was another big success. His next film was 9 to 5 (1980) with Jane Fonda, Lilly Tomlin and Dolly Parton, and that too was a hit. Well, nine years of good luck in Hollywood is incredible, but when it ends you may as well have never been there. The old Hollywood adage of, “You’re only as good as your last picture,” is absolutely true. Colin Higgins next film, now as a writer-producer-director, was The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), very possibly the biggest bomb and most critically shit-upon film of the year. Higgins never got another feature made and after Rock Hudson, was the next famous movie person to die of AIDS at the age of 47. And then all of his movie books showed up at the Hollywood Library.is next film was 9 to 5H
I’m one degree of separation from Orson Welles. In my film Alien Apocalypse, the former President of the United States is played by Peter Jason. Peter is a wonderfully talented, ubiquitous character actor. Given half a chance, he’ll steal the scene, and I love actors like that. Scene-stealers put all of the other actors on their toes. You’ve seen him. On IMDb he has 271 credits. Peter is a recurring character in Deadwood.
After a bunch of TV shows, Peter’s first feature film was Rio Lobo (1970) with John Wayne. Peter got involved with Orson Welles and his horribly troubled film, The Other Side of the Wind (2018), that began shooting in 1970 and didn’t come out until four years ago (finally pieced together by Sam Raimi’s editor, Bob Murawski, who won an Oscar for Hurt Locker (2008). Bob’s a terrific guy, and from Bad Axe, Michigan). At a point, Welles owed Peter so much money that Peter stole Welles’s 1959 Cadillac and never gave it back. Anyway, The Other Side of the Wind is so abysmally awful words cannot describe it. But Orson Welles and I missed each other by just that much. One degree.
And that’s the rest of the story.