Take One (Oct 1976)

ous kinds of human beings, one of which are females, who are in very short supply, having been raped and murdered, as is gen erally the case after all wars. The dogs find . women for the boys, and this friendship between Vic and Blood is based on the ability of one to provide for the other. That’s the basic story. It’s not easy to do — from the git-go* you've got an R rating, that’s the best you can ever hope for, and probably an X if you really let all the stops out. About four-and-a-half years ago | suddenly, within one week, got five offers for a film based on this story. | was offered a staggering amount of money from Warner Bros., and was more than happy to let them do it — they wanted me to do the screenplay — until | went over to talk to the producer, who was the man who had done The Pawnbroker, and that was certainly a heavy credential. But when we began talking, he said things about what he wanted me to do with the story that did not really fit in with what | wanted to do with it. When he finally told me they were going to take the dog and make his mouth move, a la Francis The Talking Mule, | motored. My next bid was from Universal, an equally large amount of money, an equally stupid conversation. Then two or three independents, and | was getting confirmed in my mind that perhaps this was one of those stories that never would be made because no one really understood the simplicity of making it. All you need for telepathy is a voice-over, for Christ’s sake, with an echo chamber, but they seemed incapable of understanding that. One day | received a phone call from L.Q. Jones, who as most people know is one of the stock of character actors that Sam Peckinpah uses in his Westerns. L.Q. has made 165 movies | think, and has produced four films. The last one before this was called Brotherhood Of Satan. He’s an absolute total roaring madman. He makes Peckinpah look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. He wanted to meet with me, and | went down and was charmed by his irascibility and lunacy. | like mavericks. | like people who are indefatigable in retaining their skin and soul in whatever way they can. We Started talking about it and he began saying all of the right things, which is really peculiar coming out of this guy who looks like something off a John Ford set. However, the money was not there. | took very little money for the rights. He did want me to write the screenplay, and | said |’d do it. We agreed almost totally on what he wanted me to do. We did not agree on the sections that take place in the “downunder,” which was always to me a weak section in the story, because it was set up as a paper tiger anyhow — kind of a Walt Disney world. He had one view, | had another. Mine was very revolutionary, in the sense of the 1960s revolutionary — “Let's get the middle class motherfuckers and pull their coats a little.” L.Q. was like John Wayne in that he’s ruggedly individual and anarchistic and fascistic in that sense, ae IS hrs STE Se ee Gas Sie gL gs * Ellison’s expression for “trom the Start; from the word ‘go’.” 8 but he also hews to a right-wing reaction. So his idea was to lampoon them. It wasn’t that he was copping out, he firmly believed that | had satirized them too much. He may well have been right, | don’t know. In any case, | started work on the script. | did the first fourteen pages for the first fifteen minutes of the movie, and then a very peculiar and unfortunate thing happened to me. | went into a writing block, the first one in my twenty years as a writer. | didn’t even realize it at the time. Days and days and months and months went on in which | could not write. | was answering mail and writing a short story and doing my column every week, but essentially | couldn't write, meaning that | couldn’t do the major project that | was committed to doing. L.Q. had sunk a lot of money into it, most of it personal money that he had made off the other films, and he was incredibly patient with me for six months. Finally he could wait no longer, it was a matter of getting the damn show on the road, and at that point | felt | was morally obligated to let him do whatever he wanted to do because | had fucked him over, so he went ahead and wrote the screenplay. He’s a very self-determined man, an amazing human being. The two of us in a room is something not to be believed. Even | don’t believe it. You have to literally fight for breathing space in a room with L.Q. He is a very dominant personality. He’s a hell of a good guy if you’re firm in your convictions. He calls me up and says: ‘‘Hello dummy! Why don’t you write me the rest?” | said: “Because you've got no talent, you asshole! That’s why.” That was the beginning of all of our conversations, and then we got ‘into whatever business we had to take care of. | like him very much, as you can probably tell, and | have an enormous amount of respect for him. The film that he went out and produced he did on a budget which he has never disclosed to me but which | presume to be way below what the look of the movie would lead you to believe. If you look at that movie there’s a million five in it easy. I’m sure he | | Don Johnson and Susanne Benton, from A Boy and his Dog. (PELE APES BARAT LS LEE PE FP Se, Ce “L.Q. Jones makes Peckinpah look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.” (QR ES CRE BE did it for a hell of a lot less, cutting a lot of corners and using native ingenuity. Everything in that film is his. There are things in it | am not particularly happy with, that | would have done otherwise had | written it, but it is L.Q.’s film. | think the first half hour at least is absolutely inspired, as good as I’ve seen anywhere. It is brilliant direction — the first time that L.Q. has ever directed and ever written a script, which is an amazing thing. Other sections of it | think are up to that level or almost up to that level, but there’s a large section that takes place in the ‘“downunder’” that | find inconsistent and a little weak and perhaps muddled for the audience, but fascinating throughout. It’s one of those films that you cannot stop watching. I’m not speaking about it as the author of the story, because my financial interest in it is minimal. | hope you understand that | would never praise something that | didn't like, as evidenced by the fact that when | don't like something | take my name off it instantly and they get “Cordwainer Bird.” Cordwainer Bird did not fly on this film. He also did not poo-poo on this film. | recommend the picture with a great deal of sincerity. How did Jason Robards become involved in the project? | don’t know. | didn’t have anything to do with the shooting or production; | was off on other projects by then. The writing block broke after about a year — the most hellish year of my life — and as the year ended | started to come out of it and for the next six months | was kind of getting the motor started. L.Q. was busy doing all of the preproduction and financing and casting. He and Robards had been in Peckinpah’s The Ballad Of Cable Hogue together, and | suspect they became friends and he asked Robards to take a look at the script. | under