I had always loved the outdoors and, from my youth, was fascinated with wilderness survival. I tried to combine that interest with my filmmaking and subsequently wrote a screenplay about an Outward Bound–style wilderness survival school in which the students get in trouble deep in the woods. In my story, I contrasted two forms of survivalism: one rooted in fear and weaponry and the other based in teamwork and self-sufficiency.
A previous investor agreed to contribute a significant chunk of funding to help me make this film, which I was calling Survival Quest. I asked Roberto Quezada, my veteran collaborator from Phantasm and The Beastmaster, to join me on the project and work as producer on the film.
I had done pretty well in casting the leads of my previous films with Gregory Harrison, Michael Baldwin, Angus Scrimm, and Marc Singer. All of these talents had been significantly responsible for the success of each movie. A film lives or dies on its leads. A poor casting choice could immediately doom a film. But now with Survival Quest, I was struggling. Who could I find to play mountain man Hank Chambers, the survival school instructor and the lead of our film? I had an early flirtation with actor Patrick Swayze, who was a solid choice until his agent informed us of his unaffordable (for us) rate. Then Roberto mentioned an actor he had admired while working on the low-budget biker film Savage Dawn. Lance Henriksen was a rugged and intense actor known for playing heavies in a lot of smaller roles. He had recently hit the mainstream with a powerful turn in James Cameron’s Aliens, in which he portrayed an inscrutable android.
It is customary practice in Hollywood that once actors reach a certain level of success their agents will not allow them to audition for directors. They will take a meeting, but they will not read lines. From the actor’s perspective this is understandable. Most have paid their dues and feel it is demeaning that as a known actor they would need to prove they can act, over and over again. From the director’s perspective this can be especially frustrating as one must imagine what the actor might be like as the character. It frequently feels like you are being forced into buying the proverbial “pig in a poke.” Lance came in for a meeting and did what smart actors do. He came in character. He was dressed like a mountain man in a warm flannel shirt and hiking boots. He exuded the strength and compassion of the character. Even though he didn’t recite one line of dialog, it felt like I had just spent an hour with the hero of my film. Lance got the job.
Lance and I had a terrific relationship during the filming of Survival Quest. The intensity of his performance literally carried the film. Unlike most actors I had ever worked with, Lance had such a strong desire to see the film succeed that he wanted us to keep working together to refine the film even into postproduction. My bad experience on The Beastmaster made me gun-shy about giving anyone access to the editing room, and I think Lance was disappointed I excluded him. However, to this day I have nothing but the highest regard for Lance’s talent and still hope we can make another film together.
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Roberto and I were immediately overwhelmed trying to figure out the logistics of making this wilderness epic on a shoestring budget. We were in desperate need of assistance.
Our first task was to find some production assistants to help with all the details, hopefully for little or no money. Roberto mentioned two young production assistants he wanted me to meet. He said he had never met such dedicated workers, who would do literally anything to make the movie they were working on great.
Roberto had recently been working as chief lighting technician on an exercise video starring Dolph Lundgren, which had been shooting on a rather dirty section of Southern California beach. The sand was littered everywhere with dried dog droppings and the talent was complaining about stepping in it. The director of photography yelled at these two production assistants to solve the problem. Finding themselves without shovels, or even gloves, without hesitation these guys took it upon themselves to get it done and were on their hands and knees plucking the stuff up out of the sand with their bare hands. And worse, the crew had the audacity to laugh at them. Let me be clear: Roberto was not ridiculing them. He was in total awe that he was working with such eager young production assistants who were so dedicated to making this Dolph Lundgren workout video look good, they were willing to pick up dog shit with their bare hands.
Then one of these production assistants accidentally left some footprints on the pristine sand dune they were filming on. The director of photography again yelled at this PA and told him to fix it. Of course there was no rake. As Roberto told it, in order to fix the problem this eager young production assistant sacrificed his body and rolled down the sand hill so his rolling body would smooth out the sand. To produce Survival Quest we would be going into the wilderness, and our production would be a massive challenge and filled with hardship. I desperately needed some go-to PAs like this. I had to meet these two guys!
Roberto attempted to set up a meeting and invite these two PAs to join us, but he received an unexpected response. The two production assistants, Roger Avary and Quentin Tarantino (the one who rolled down that sand hill), had smartly decided they wanted to be filmmakers of their own and not production assistants for somebody else anymore. They had decided to dedicate themselves to getting their own films made. Obviously this was a good move. You can learn some things on a film working as a production assistant, but it’s not a smart place to linger if your desire is to make your own movies. So Roger and Quentin very kindly introduced us to a couple of their best student filmmaker pals, Scott Magill and Rand Vossler, who came on board and became significant contributors in the making of Survival Quest.
What I really admired about all these guys is that they had created a tight-knit pack of student filmmaker friends based in the South Bay area of coastal Los Angeles. There were about a dozen of them, and they would all work together on each other’s film projects. They would screen each other’s movies and read and comment on each other’s writing. With Quentin employed at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, they had access to a stellar movie collection to study.
It is so very hard to make a film on your own that to have a dedicated and loyal team of friends to back you up is just invaluable. Roberto and I enlisted a bunch of them to help out on Survival Quest, including Scott, Rand, Dov Schwartz, Alan Sanborn, and King Wilder. We referred to them as the South Bay Film Pack.
Our first hire was Scott Magill, an eighteen-year-old who became our first office assistant. During some downtime Scott offered to show me one of his student films. It was entitled Portrait and was a moody tone poem, shot in stark black-and-white Super 8 mm, featuring a troubled teenage girl. What most impressed me was that the finale of the film was a simple close-up of the actress as she stared out into the ocean. I think it was something like three minutes long, lingering on this actress’s face. It was like the best early work of François Truffaut. Really impressive. Scott was one courageous filmmaker and these South Bay Film Pack guys really knew how to shoot film! I immediately gave Scott a promotion and he ended up working closely with me as my assistant editor. We spent almost a year in the editing room solving the puzzle of Survival Quest.
Despite the fact that Roger and Quentin had declined our invitation to work on Survival Quest, I got to know Roger well since he and Scott were writing partners. In the mideighties personal computers were not exactly ubiquitous, but we just happened to have a brand-new one at our office/editing facility. So after work, Scott would invite Roger over to use our office computer for their writing projects. I think during the editing of Survival Quest, Roger and Scott wrote something like three or four full screenplays on that computer. The two of them also assisted Quentin in filming his notorious early film My Best Friend’s Birthday. Over the months of shooting they would trade off cinematography duties and Scott, Rand, Roger, and even Roberto were all ultimately credited as cinematographers on that film.
During the editing process Rand told me he and Quentin were making progress on one of their projects. I invited them over to the office one day and we walked down to Greenblatt’s Deli on Sunset and I bought them pastrami sandwiches for lunch. They had a line on some money to fund Quentin’s script Natural Born Killers and Rand would produce. My understanding was that there were these twin bodybuilder twins, who billed themselves as the Barbarian Brothers, with a large chunk of money to invest in their project. Rand and Quentin needed to find cast and wanted me to give them a personal introduction to Lance Henriksen. Quentin told me in exacting detail how he was hoping to put his story on film. Even back then Quentin had a highly energetic and captivating way of telling a story and it sounded like it would make for a very cool movie. He wanted Lance to play the transgressive role of Detective Scagnetti, who was both a cop and a psychopath. I was happy to help but was up front with them that Lance and I had some disagreements at the end of Survival Quest. I couldn’t really guarantee anything.
After they went home I left the first of several messages on Lance’s voice mail telling him that I knew these great young filmmakers who wanted him to star in their first movie. After about a week with no response I really felt bad. I wanted to help these guys out and Rand had really worked hard on Survival Quest. So I called Lance’s agent. I told him about these two great young filmmakers with an edgy script that I really liked and how Lance could do a lot worse than to at least meet with them. In typical fashion the agent was noncommittal, offering an “I’ll get back to you.” About a week later I called the agent again. And again. The agent refused to take my phone call! I called Rand and Quentin and gave them the bad news.
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They never did get that version of Natural Born Killers off the ground. A year or so later I received a call from Rand, who told me that financing had just come through for another of Quentin’s projects, Reservoir Dogs. Natural Born Killers was on hold and Rand told me Quentin had basically given the script over to him. Rand asked me if I would like to help him produce it with Rand himself directing. I was really busy at the time with other projects and had no choice but to decline. Later, somehow, Rand was maneuvered out of the project and ultimately replaced as director by Oliver Stone, who finally made the film. And of course, Reservoir Dogs launched Quentin’s career into the stratosphere. Lance, I wish you would have called me back!