Emulsional Problems

(originally published in Movieline Magazine )      James Cameron looks much too relaxed for a man who has just made what may be the most expensive motion picture ever made. The fate of an entire major studio may rest on his shoulders, but he seems to shrug it off. Maybe he's just relieved the whole mammoth production ordeal is over. Maybe he's giddy over getting married next week to fellow director Katherine Bigelow. But he's probably in such a good mood because in two more years he gets to go to his twenty year high school reunion and casually mention that he turned a short story he wrote as a student into a $50 million sci-fi extravaganza. (And what have you done with your high school papers?)        The Abyss , which Cameron wrote and directed, was a massive undertaking. It's certainly the most complex underwater extravaganza ever filmed, and 20th Century Fox could have sunk a real oil rig for the same cost as m...

Hal Ashby was going to direct my screenplay of Tom Robbins' Another Roadside Attraction , starring Richard Dreyfuss, Robin Williams, Treat Williams, Brooke Adams, and Penelope Milford, with John Belushi as the Pope. I'd been making constant trips out to Malibu when one day he called me out to his house to discuss the script. "Did I ever tell you how I got to direct my first film?" he asked. He proceeded to tell me.   Norman Jewison was set to direct The Landlord . Right before shooting, he decided not to direct the picture. "Have my editor Hal direct the film" he told the money men. Hal had been his editor on The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!, The Thomas Crown Affair , and In the Heat of the Night , for which he won an Oscar. The producers were forced into a corner so they bit their lips and went with Hal, which turned out to be a wise choice. Hal did a great job, brought the film in on budget, and turned in an incredible...

Now that nobody's mentioned it, Karl Malden isn't the only one who made a seemingly whimsical decision that had profoundly negative reverberations in my life. Michael Nesmith gave me a shot, I give him that, I hit a bullseye, then he gave me another shot, I give him that, another bullseye, and he ended up calling not just one but both projects off, decisions I still don't understand, since it wasn't just me. MANY others would have been employed, a giant gang I grew to vastly admire. While it was happening, it was great. When I tell people I once had a TV show, produced by Michael Nesmith, I can now prove it by pointing to this segment from Overview that magically appeared on YouTube one day. Though I am grateful for being given the opportunity to make such a thing, my gratitude is tempered by the fact that if Nesmith had accepted NBC's offer to put it on after SNL , not only would dozens of talented people NOT have been put out of work, but I'd have...