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David Pabian (Part 2) Go back to Part 1 of this long interview
"That’s Subspecies. That’s the one where he showed me the poster of the scantily clad woman being carried away by little green men, then said, ‘By the way, we can’t shoot this scene. You have to write the film around it but we can’t shoot this scene because we really can’t afford to do this kind of effect. So you have to figure out how to suggest this is going on so the poster will make sense, but you can’t actually write this scene’! So I did show the little green guys coming in the window, then I think we saw her arm disappearing out the door as she is dragged out. But ultimately he did shoot that scene. First it was done with Romanian guys in little green suits but it looked so ridiculous that he went back and hired David Allen after all to do some stop-motion." The irony is that that’s not the main thrust of the Subspecies films. It’s all vampires and Bloodstone and whatnot. "Right. That I made up. I hadn’t been able to come up with an idea and I was actually driving to the meeting to give him my idea. I had recently seen a production of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal and I said, ‘Let’s just reverse that story around a little bit. The search for the Holy Grail. Let’s see, it’s something that keeps the vampires alive. Okay, it’s this Bloodstone thing. All right, that’s what it is.’ So I went in and I pitched this idea based on Wagner’s Parsifal! Two vampire brothers, a good one and a bad one. I used a lot of the imagery from the original Nosferatu, and Herzog’s 1979 remake - and just came up with that story. Stefan the good guy, Radu the bad guy and these girls who were in Transylvania doing their thing. So I just came up with that Bloodstone story, using it as the Holy Grail." When Charlie just had the poster, was it intended to be a vampire film or just about the little green guys? "Initially it was to be a vampire film. It was explained to me that it had to be a vampire movie but those characters had to figure into it. He also at the time told me that he wanted it to be very adult. He wanted to use it to break away from his teenage boy audience. So when I first wrote it, I wrote this creepy thing where - get this - one of those little creatures actually crawled up into one of the girls! I think that after seeing that script he decided to go back for the 15 year-old boys! That whole idea of going grown-up for a theatrical release - which is also what he told me his plan was - it just didn’t happen. He wound up making it more like a Band thing. But that’s right; I had forgotten that when I began writing it was to be a vampire film but I had to work that in. He’d already had the posters so those characters had to come in. So it was how to put that together into a vampire story - and it doesn’t really work!" Did you work closely with Ted Nicolaou? "No, I didn’t. I would send Ted the scripts and we talked on the phone maybe five or six times. Because he didn’t get attached until the final draft had been sent in. We worked on some polish; I polished the script up a bit with Ted’s notes and really liked him. We talked only a bit but he was really a smart guy. When they got to Romania though, they found logistically things were so different from what they expected. This was actually, I’m told, the first US production to be shot in Romania. They do a lot now. They now create Los Angeles in Romania. But this was the first and it was so difficult when they got there, they basically just rewrote the script on the set. Ted did it with Jackson Barr, the guy I get the co-writing credit with. I never worked with him; he did the day-to-day rewrite kind of thing. When I first saw that film, I thought it bore no relation - except the names - to my script but when I read a synopsis of the film, I realised it was my story. It was very interesting; I thought it had been so changed but somehow when I read that synopsis, I said, ‘You know, it does look like they followed it.’ They just changed the order of things and added a couple of characters. But it was a nightmare apparently, according to Ted, it was just a nightmare. They had to wing the whole thing." Subspecies had three direct sequels and a spin-off in The Vampire Journals. Have you seen those? "I only saw the second one, Bloodstone. That’s the only other one I saw. There were comics also, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any of those. There were Puppet Master and Subspecies comic books, which are a rarity now. And cards, baseball cards." I’m guessing you didn’t see any residuals or credits for reuse of your characters. "Part of the deal with Charlie was, since they were not Writers Guild deals, there were no ancillary benefits at all. I will admit to a bit of cynicism about the films that were written after. In a way, I didn’t want to see just how far the stuff I had written had changed. Also by then I had become a member of the Writers Guild and I was off doing Disney projects and things. I just put it all as: that was the Charlie Band stuff and we’ve moved on."
"Yes, although that also got very changed from the script I had written. Albert Pyun the director is a pretty sharp guy, I really liked him, Again, it got changed. I like my script better than what was shot but I really liked that film. I think it’s clever, it’s fast, it is one of the best ones I think that Charlie has done. I don’t know how far he went with that, how many others he made after that." There’s only really one other Dollman film which is Dollman vs Demonic Toys although the character turns up very briefly right at the end of a really terrible film called Bad Channels. What sort of brief were you given for Dollman? "They wanted it in an urban setting. Dollman had to be twelve inches tall initially. In fact I remember going out and looking for a GI Joe or something and at that time they had become very politically incorrect and you could not find boy dolls any more. I think they’re all out there again now but I couldn’t find one. I almost bought a Ken doll because I wanted to have something in front of me to imagine moving around and doing stuff. I think I eventually found an old GI Joe at a garage sale. Charlie wanted him to be twelve inches tall and he wanted him to fight crime in an urban setting. Again, he wanted it to be very gritty with drug users and a really dark, nasty urban sprawl. I think I probably overdid it in the script and they softened that. Because I had pretty rough stuff going on. I thought I was writing a film that would be looked at by grown-ups. But what he came up with ultimately I think is really better. Certainly I am also surprised that it didn’t go on. I really don’t know why not because it is one of the best things he ever did." Did you come up with the prologue on an alien world and the other sci-fi elements? "No I didn’t. That was all Pyun I believe. That alien world, there was very little background on that in my draft and that’s the way Charlie wanted it. He really wanted to start this thing in Chicago, which is where we had it initially, and to delve a very little bit, he didn’t want more than a page or two on back story. So that was all another writer. It was Albert Pyun who worked on that. Albert was a really good writer and he just invented so much. I almost didn’t recognise that film when I saw it. It doesn’t represent my writing nearly as much as Puppet Master II or Subspecies. And Crash and Burn, although I don’t get the credit for that, is page-for-page what I wrote. I cringe at some of it when I see it now but it is what I wrote. Dollman is about the best and yet it’s the least me." Did you work on any other stuff for Charlie? "Not for Charlie, no. But I had a great affection for that group of people. Did your credits on the Full Moon films help your career? "Yes they did but not an awful lot. I had so many scripts of my own that by the time I was out pounding the pavements and going to the majors, and I had a good agent and I had joined the Writers Guild, I had other material to show them and other material I was getting hired from. But having those credits, having produced credits, even Band video produced credits, even the straight to video stuff, is always a help. More doors open simply because you’ve had produced credits. You make the comment on the website - and I really appreciate it and it is true - you can have really good, long-lasting careers in that town where you’re writing and writing but very little gets made. You’re getting assignments and getting paid for them but there’s very little to show as far as produced credits go. Or for various reasons you have to write things that you know your name is not going to be on, there’s Guild-contractual things involved in that. "Certain percentages of structure changes have to be met before a different writer will get a credit and very often producers will say, ‘Don’t go over the forty per cent structural change rule because we’re going to use the original writer’s name. They do that because they don’t want to get into the whole, sometimes very long, arbitration process in deciding who gets what kind of credit. Those produced films are great on the resume but most of my later jobs came from other writing samples that they saw and other written things that I’d done." Are you allowed to say anything else that you’ve worked on? "I can’t claim credit for the things that are credited to others. There was a Disney feature called Dragons which never got made. A Disney feature called Minotaur, based on the Greek myth, which never got made. And doctoring jobs that I’ve done but will shy from naming." Is it frustrating seeing that work and not getting a credit? Would you like to get something else out there with your name on it? "Certainly, and I’m working on something now., I’ve been commissioned to write something. It’s an assignment and oh, absolutely, it does kind of drive me nuts. I said to my agent, ‘Look, I don’t even want to share a credit with a director. It’s not going to be A Film By. I want A Film By with my name on it too.’ They laughed at that. That’s actually a huge bone of contention at the Writers Guild now and one of the reasons that we’re all going on strike as of Monday, because of this proprietary credit that directors are taking, A Film By. The writers are saying, ‘Wait a minute, I want my name up there too.’ "That‘s another thing, a bit of an aside. When Puppet Master II was finished and there was going to be a viewing of it, David Allen called me up to very gently break the news and prepare me for the fact that Charlie didn’t give me a separate card in the opening credits with my name on it as script but put me on the same card with his name: ‘Story by Charles Band, script by David Pabian.’ I couldn’t care less. I didn’t care at all about that, it didn’t bother me. What I did think was it was kind of sweet that David called me up, really thinking I’d be worried and he wanted to prepare me for that. He told me he had argued with Charlie about that. That’s what David was like, he was a real sweetheart. Too nice in some ways, really too nice. I will say in closing that I look back on those years with great affection and even some for Charlie and Debra his wife. I enjoyed it.” Go back to Part 1 of this very long interview where David Pabian discusses Crash and Burn and Puppet Master II. | ||
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The other film you did for Charlie was my favourite Full Moon film - and Charlie told me it was one of his favourites too - which was