6/13/23
Newsletter #366
The Crack of Dawn
As I wrote the screenplay for Ball Breaker by myself, for which Scott had received half the money; he and Boaz wrote The Rookie for Clint Eastwood. Scott was starting to get hot, and got another film going, The Nutty Nut (which ended up as The Nutt House [1992], directed by Adam Rifkin). I don’t really know the details of how he put this film together, but he got Sam, Ivan and Bruce to help write the script, then all of them used pseudonyms on the film. Scott was the original director but got fired. Adam Rifkin replaced Scott, then had some kind of nervous breakdown at Cannes, or something. The film was never really released (it escaped). But I’ve gotten ahead of myself.
The only TV in that ridiculous little bungalow – where Quentin Tarantino and other up-and-comers were watching shitty movies on VHS tape – was my orange plastic, 12” black & white TV. Dhani, the producer of Ball Breaker (that, incidentally, never got made), loaned me her extra color TV, and I put it in the living room. It had a remote control, and everything.
Our bungalow of joy became a bungalow of animosity. Scott and I living together in 400 sq. ft. was impossible. We never actually came to blows, but during an argument Scott gave me a push. I clenched my fists, walked straight into him, and quickly had him backed into a corner with my fist in his face. That’s when I decided to move out.
I found a cheap little shithole nearby and packed all of stuff in one box. As I took the box out to my car, Scott hollered at me from the doorway, “The Nutt House is going to open in 600 theaters!” (Alas, it went straight-to-video). I said, “Scott, we were friends for a lot longer than we were enemies. Maybe we’ll be friends again.” I then went back into the house and took Dhani’s color TV set, which several guys were watching (one of whom might even have been QT!), and I received a big groan. Scott said, “You can’t take the TV.” I said, “I have to, it’s not mine. But I won’t leave you without a TV, I’ll leave the orange one.”
As I recently recounted, I got the job writing Lunatics for Sam and Rob in their creaky trailer on the Universal lot. I was paid a lump sum, then I was getting another payment for each draft. After five drafts, with which they were both very happy, they informed me that there was no more money. They both felt strongly that it was a good idea, that it could be produced cheaply, that the script was good, but not to where they felt it needed to be, so they couldn’t really shop it around. Like most movie deals, this one was about to die during gestation, long before there were cameras involved. So, I said, “I’ll finance the writing process. I’ll move back to Detroit, get a job, and keeping rewriting the script based on your notes until you’re satisfied.” I believe that they both found this a bold proposition. And since it didn’t cost them anything, they took the deal. Thus, the deal didn’t die, and the picture got made.
Dhani’s color TV was all I had in that shitty, hot little apartment on Hudson St., but thank God I had it. I can now date this exactly because that’s where I watched the 1987-88 NBA Championship games between the LA Lakers and the Detroit Pistons (the Bad Boys) – June 1988. This was the most exciting sporting event that I have ever witnessed. The Lakers had Magic and Kareem; the Pistons had the original Bad Boys with Adrian Dantley, Isiah Thomas, Bill Laimbeer, Joe Dumars, Dennis Rodman, and Vinnie Johnson. I watched the games in that hot empty apartment with Michelle Poulick, who was the art director on my films, TSNKE and would soon do Lunatics. Michelle and I went insane watching those seven games. Isiah injured his ankle at the last second of the seventh game, and the fucking Lakers won. Oh my God! Losing this one was more exciting than winning the next one.
So, I packed up my box of shit, put it in my car, gave Dhani her color TV back, called Scott, with whom I hadn’t spoken in a year, and said, “Hey, Scott, can I have my orange TV back?” And Scott said, “I gave it away.” I’d had that TV for years. “You gave it away?” I asked. He said, “Yeah,” and we hung up. He gave my TV away.
Dissolve to two years later. It was near the end of 1990. Sam and Rob’s company, Renaissance Pictures, had been kicked off the universal lot, just as they had three films go into production at the same time: Lunatics, Darkman and Hard Target. Renaissance Pictures moved to Hollywood Blvd. and Las Palmas St., where there used to be a wonderful, big newsstand and a bookstore. I loved that corner. And that was a fun office, with Sam and Rob, me, John Woo and his producer, Terrance Chang. The late Ruth Jessup was the head secretary, and very funny.
Anyway, that’s when Clint Eastwood’s The Rookie opened. It didn’t open well. There was a movie theater kitty-cornered from the office, across from the newsstand – The Las Palmas Theater – that had been on Hollywood Blvd. since 1927. When The Rookie showed it went out of business. The Rookie was its last marquee. Over the next several months, when we showed up to work, we could see from the office window as letters dropped off the marquee, one by one. One day it was, “Th ookie,” and a week later it was, “Th ook.”
Sam Raimi and I were standing at the copier in that office, from whence the vacant Las Palmas Theater could be seen, its dead marquee reading, “ook.” Sam turned to me and said, “How could you make such an awful movie, The Rookie?” I was aghast, “Me? I didn’t make The Rookie.” Sam said, “Uh, if you hadn’t written Ball Breaker, then Scott and Boaz couldn’t have written The Rookie, therefore it’s your fault.”
Ah-ha! A golden pink in the clouds. It will be a fine day.