|
 |
Find interviews by: | ||
| | |
Ed Naha (Part 2) Go back to Part 1 of this very long interview
"I was there three years. Then I decided that it was time.to see if I could make a living writing freelance. I had been writing. I had published a couple of novels that I wrote at night while I had my full-time job." Was this The Paradise Plot and The Suicide Plague? "Yes!" You see: I've done my research! Tell me a bit about those two novels. "Oh God! Well, actually The Paradise Plot was published because I was pissed off. Future Life were having a series on what life on a space station would be like, on an L5 colony. Everyone was writing these little articles: everything's going to be fine, everything's going to be perfect, we're all going to kiss and hug and play Donovan records. So when it came for me to do the chapter, I was wondering what would happen if you had a loose cannon up there, like Ed Gein. Well, I was called into the publisher's office and they skinned me alive. It was like: how dare I have such a jaded, cynical attitude, blah blah blah? So I figured, 'Ah!' "Then I went out one day with an editor from Bantam books who worked with Fred Pohl. I knew Fred, but I didn't know this lady, so we were just talking. We got lacquered and started complaining about attitudes: when people looked to the future, they were always expecting pie in the sky. I said people are people, so she said, 'Why don't you do up a little outline?' Now, at this point, apart from Sherlock Holmes, I had never read a mystery. So I went to a book store and I said, 'I'd like $30-worth of mystery novels'! They said, 'Do you want the good stuff, or The Crap That Sells?' so I said, 'Well, how about half and half?' I read a lot of crap, and then I fell in love with people I'd never read at that point in my life: Chandler, Hammett, and at that point Elmore Leonard wasn't known as a mystery writer but for his westerns. So someone said, 'You should check out Elmore Leonard. He's starting to write mysteries.' “So I read all that stuff and thought, 'Yes, this is cool.' So I handed in this outline and they bought the outline and I got the book out. And it did well enough - or they felt sorry for me enough; I'm not sure which - that I did the second one. [Although it meant nothing at the time of this interview, it has since become notable that the central character of these two novels is named Harry Potter - MJS] Then I felt cocky enough in 1980, because I had been a rock'n'roll writer as well, that I had enough freelance stuff going on that I could pay my rent. Then I wrote a book on Roger Corman. I figured, 'Well, I've been in New York for ten years. Gee, maybe I'll pack up my dogs and go to California.' So I came out here with no plans at all and walked into Roger Corman's office - by that time we knew each other - and said, 'You know, I think it's about time I wrote a movie for you.' So he just went, 'Okay.' I wrote a movie..." Which movie was that? "God! Eventually it wasn't so much released as let loose. It was called Oddballs. It was a grotesquely unfunny comedy; it has all the comedic timing of a major telethon. Then I did a fantasy adventure for him that was filmed in Argentina! That was hideous, called Wizard Wars. Again it did so well on tape that they had a sequel."
"No." I guess they must just film hundreds of wizard films in Argentina. [Wizard Wars was released as Wizards of the Lost Kingdom.] "As a matter of fact, this was filmed bad because 90% of the actors were speaking their lines in English phonetically. And they would just drop stuff. We had one entire speech, a pivotal speech dropped. And the line that the actor read was, 'Good! Good! Varrry good!' And I'm going, 'Holy Jeez...'! I wrote 400 loop-lines for this movie. By the time they cut together the usable footage, we had a 62-minute movie. So Roger, undaunted, went out and he assembled 20 minutes of footage from other sword and fantasy films that he had done. And that was both the prologue - that had nothing to do with the movie - and during the movie, three or four times, characters have flashbacks to other movies!" That's Roger Corman. That's what he does. "I know. At a certain point, I found myself behind a Moviola. I had never seen a Moviola, let alone worked on one. And I'm in an attic in Venice, California, and it's about 120 degrees, and I'm looking at bad footage from Argentina. And I just thought, 'You know, life doesn't get much better than this.'! "I'll just tell you this. We had a flying lion that was supposed to be in the movie. So they had a costume and the wings and they had a crane. Well, the director got fired after a day. So the lead actor and the Argentinian producer decided that they were going to direct the film themselves. So the first thing they did was cut out the lion. Now unfortunately, the lion was the sidekick. So they took off the wings. Now you had a guy in a lion suit, who looked like he was Nana the dog in a bad production of Peter Pan, the kind of production where you see a play and get a sandwich. So they said, 'Well, why don't we just stand him up?' So now there's a guy standing up in a lion suit!" All you need is a tin man and a scarecrow and you're there! "Oh no, it wasn't even like that. It looked like someone in seedy pyjamas. So they covered him in fur. Now they had something that looked like... something the cat threw up. So to really polish it off, they covered the fur with yak hair. So basically, in this movie the young wizard has a sidekick that looks like a six-foot-three hairball with bell-bottom legs." Like Cousin Itt grown up. "Yes, except it was white! I have no idea what this thing looked like. Mystery Science Theatre wouldn't touch this. It was really a mess. From there I went to working for Charles Band and met Stuart Gordon on a film. And then Stuart and I and the producer of one of our movies came up with the idea of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. From there I moved up - or down, depending on your point of view." This is bizarrely synchronous, because our next issue has got an interview with Stuart Gordon in it to tie in with Space Truckers. "Really? Oh cool." And the next issue has an interview with John Carl Buechler, who did Troll, which was one of yours. "I wouldn't even go into Troll, man! I wouldn't even go into that film! Suffice to say that it bankrupted Empire Pictures!" [The central character in Troll is also called Harry Potter! - MJS] What was your connection with it? "I wrote it and then hid. The nicest complement I ever got for Troll was that a whole bunch of us went to see it on opening night. At the time I was a tequila man, and somebody brought a bottle of tequila in their purse into the theatre. It didn't take me long to know I'd need it. So afterward we were holding a kind of wake for the film. Somebody from the studio was there and said to me, 'You know, if you closed your eyes, it sounded good'! Oh great; now I have a career in radio! If they bring back Inner Sanctum I can write! Stuart was okay, though. He's an amazing man, Stuart Gordon, he's brilliant."
"Well, you know, it's interesting because we did Dolls together. He has children, and so does Brian Yuzna, who did Re-Animator and Dolls, and they wanted to do a movie that their kids could see. We all sat down and came up with this idea and I did a treatment, and Disney flipped out over it. My only regret about that whole episode, that whole time period in my life, is that Stuart did not get the chance to direct that movie. Because I know it would have been, not really that different, because we really went out of our way to do a traditional Disney film. But it would have been a little smarter, and it certainly would have been more coherent. Out of everything I've ever done, that's the only disappointment that I've had; not getting to have Stuart direct that." But the rest of it you're pretty pleased with? Even Troll? "What are you gonna do? When you put the words on paper, you have to hope that maybe three out of ten words survive. Which is the nice thing about Sinbad. It's really a nice experience to write something and then see it in dailies a month later. In film, that just doesn't happen." I believe you also did a few Tales from the Crypt. "Yes, I did Tales from the Cryptkeeper." The cartoon series. "That was really interesting because I had never dealt with a network before. And man, the things you have to go through! It basically depends on how much fibre the person you're dealing with has had that morning for breakfast. Because you're dealing with censors, you're dealing with children's watchdogs. To me it was amusing, because when I was little, the Catholic Church back East had something that they called the Legion of Decency. Now, in the Catholic newspaper they would print ratings for all the movies. Horror movies almost across the board were rated 'O' - 'objectionable in part for everybody'. So kids weren't allowed to see them. Fortunately, most of our movies were so obscure that they didn't make the list. "So my mom would make me call the arch-diocese of Newark and I'd get a little old lady on the phone: 'Yes, may I help you?' 'Yeah, I'd like to know the ratings for Circus of Horrors and A Bucket of Blood.' And she'd say, 'Oh no, you can't see those! Your mind will turn to tapioca!' So I'd hang up the phone: 'Thank you, lady.' And my mom would say, 'What did she say?' and I'd just go, 'Oh, she said they was fine'! So I'd go out and see these movies and I didn't become an axe-murderer. But apparently now, everyone's worried that if a child sees someone turn into a werewolf and attack someone that they're going to actually become a lycanthrope when they grow up. As opposed to watching the evening news, where the body count is in two or three digits. It's a very, very interesting retro time period in terms of morality. Everyone seems to think they have a lock on it." Do you think that's why clean-cut, nice things like Sinbad are so successful? "Well, I don't know that it's because they're clean-cut and/or nice. I think it's nice to sit down with a show and go to a movie, or even read a book, where there is a hero. And the hero basically isn't embarrassed to be a hero, and isn't embarrassed that he's working for the good guys. He's not a closet heroin addict, and he doesn't snort coke, and he doesn't come home and beat his children. It's just, 'I'm a hero. Hello! You're bad. I'll get ya.' "I think overall, in terms of the recent revival in fantasy action on television, that people kind of crave that. At the end of the day, you're in a job that you hate, or you're going to school and you're bored stiff, you have to pay the rent, you have to do this, or you have to do whatever, you're just burnt. And you can turn on a TV set and see someone who has problems that are slightly different and a lot more grotesque than yours. Which is worse: dealing with a teacher you hate or a sixty-foot cyclops who's carnivorous? Although oftentimes they feel the same. This guy just steps up to the plate and confronts evil. It's kind of a reassuring feeling that yes, there are people that still think this way."
"Omega Doom is this strange movie that Rutger Hauer stars in, and Albert Pyun directed it. The only time I ever met Albert was about 15 years ago, and the reason we remembered each other, is we both wear Hawaiian shirts. I had worked with the producer on the film, prior to this, and they needed a re-write - a drastic re-write, four weeks before production. So I thought, 'Yes, here's a really good idea.' So I did a re-write and it's a very, very stylised post-apocalyptic movie about basically a loner who's almost like an avenging angel. But he's an android." An android? In an Albert Pyun movie? No way! "It's a stretch, but we thought it's about time he made that leap!" I don't know if that's out over here yet. Videos come out all the time under odd names, and we go, 'What the hell is this?' "I know!" And they're usually by Albert Pyun! No, I'm a sucker for his stuff. The sign of a good film is killer androids or giant ants. If it hasn't got either of those, I'm not interested. "That's why I was so disappointed with the last Meryl Streep film." I think they edited them out after its first run. Anyway, it says here, 'ABC and Disney have chosen him to write Babes in Toyland'. Babes in Toyland? "Well, yes. But not the drecky version. I am a total, total, total Laurel and Hardy fan. My company is called A Fine Mess Incorporated. My house, right now I have run out of wall-space. As I speak right now, six feet away from me are life-size cut-outs of the boys, next to Laurel and Hardy clocks. These guys just saved my butt at a time in my life when I just needed levity, there they were. And they did Babes in Toyland, and it's a very twisted movie, it's kind of creepy. "And like a lot of Laurel and Hardy's pictures that had music in it, it was almost completely terrible except for Laurel and Hardy. It's a trap that some comedians fell into, like the Marx Brothers. You'd love the Marx Brothers, but then you had to sit through Zeppo crooning a tune: 'Oh God.' So I came up with an idea about two guys, but they're not Laurel and Hardy. There's a lot more physical comedy, and it skews much more towards traditional comedy than Frankie Avalon and Annette and Ed Wynn running around the Disney lot being cute. We'll see. That's in the development stages, so it might or might not happen." The other thing that's got us all excited is To Serve Man. Is this going to get made? "To Serve Man, I just dropped out of. And it's something that I wanted to do for the last five years. The producer was wonderful, and he tracked me down, and I signed to do it. Then basically what happened is that Sinbad turned into my life. So I didn't want to do a bad job or a perfunctory pass at it, because I really love Damon Knight. But they are developing it at CBS in the States as a television film." How are they going to pad it out to two hours? It just builds up to that one great joke at the end. "The thing is, I don't know whether they'll persue this idea, but I came up with something that basically that punchline is the end of the first hour. The second hour is, if you take that and spin it forward, set it aboard the spaceship. That's when the fun begins. Whether or not they'll go forward in that direction, I don't know." The Encyclopaedia of SF says there are 13 books in the Traveller series by DB Drumm. It says that you definitely wrote the first one, but they think that most of the rest were written by John Shirley. "No. John is... Were there 13 books in the Traveller series?" It lists 13. "Jeez! Do they combine Traveller and The Marauders?" I don't know. It goes up as far as #13: Ghost Dancers. "Oh yes. I did all of them, except for... I don't have the list in front of me. I didn't do, I think, three of them. Whenever you see ones that have large animals, like a Buddhist monk riding on a 15-foot rat, that's John. Mine were more spaghetti western hardcore stuff. Then I did a series of books as Michael McGann: The Marauders. I don't know how many of those I did. They were post-apocalyptic, swashbuckling, guns'n'ammo books that won the accolade of the mercenary crowd! 'Hey! You like guns? I like guns!' I'm thinking of moving to the Republic of Texas." Finally, I have your bio in the press notes, which I suspect you wrote yourself... "Yes." 'As a plumber', it says 'you haven't accomplished a hell of a lot.' Are you getting better at being a plumber? "Yes, actually, I can do something. When the toilet runs, I can do something more than just jiggle the knob. I actually know how to screw around with that little chain inside the tank that really is the all-important link to the flush chain." If the writing collapses, you've got a second career. "And if my plumbing continues like that, I would like to get in touch with Jim Cameron, because I think for $200 million I think we probably could film a scintillating film about my toilet. We would have to use a few thousand CGI shots." Or you could get back with Stuart Gordon and do Honey I Flushed the Kids Away. "I was thinking more along the lines of the Titanic. One thing I did want to tell you in terms of Zen, because I can't say enough about this guy. He's the nicest guy in the world, and just an incredible trooper. One thing that might be interesting is that he actually was the assistant fight director at the Royal Opera House. He earned an advanced certificate from the Society of British Fight Directors, and he went to school and the London Academy. He went to the Summer programme on Shakespeare." The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, LAMDA. That's one of the really big ones. "And he wound up doing fight scenes. That's kind of a lost art in itself, especially in television. There's a lot of jumping and running and leaping, but not a lot of actual swordplay." So does he do all his own fight sequences? "Yes. He missed out a couple of days. He actually got the chicken pox. And the way he got it was typical. He had all these schoolkids come to the set. And one of the kids had the chicken pox, and he had never had the chicken pox when he was a kid. He continued this episode, it was the samurai episode, he continued until he physically he couldn't move. He would not leave. They had so much pancake on him, he was sweating through it. They put different lenses on so he didn't look like a George Romero film festival. This guy is just amazing. I'm not going to say the first season was easy because it really was not. We had everything going against us, and he just pulled everyone together. So I would like to tip my hat to him.” Go back to Part 1 of this very long interview where Ed Naha discusses The Adventures on Sinbad and founding Fangoria magazine | ||
| | |
