So, this is the first post in a series where I'm going to chat about different movies and TV shows that I've either written or re-written. Future entries will include MY BOYFRIEND'S BACK, MAJOR PAYNE, HAPPY GILMORE, GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE, NOTHING TO LOSE, MY WIFE AND KIDS, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT and more.

But, we begin at the beginning with FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 9: JASON GOES TO HELL, otherwise known as JGTH. I've written very few "R" rated movies (two, actually) and this is one of them. It absolutely deserves its "R" rating and, because some people have ventured to this blog from my young adult series NIGHTMARE ACADEMY, I will try to keep this post PG rated, even though the movie is definitely for adults.



During the years of 1985-1989, I studied filmmaking at NYU and, during that time, wrote a screenplay called JOHNNY ZOMBIE. It was a comedy about a high school kid who so desperately wanted to go to the prom with his dream girl that, even after being shot and killed in a convenience store robbery, he comes back from the dead to finish the date. Among the complications he faced were body rot and a terrible desire to eat people, even though he was a nice guy who was morally disgusted by the thought.

I’ll tell you more about the making of that movie (which was later re-titled MY BOYFRIEND’S BACK) in the next blog. What you need to know at this point is that a college friend of mine named Adam Marcus really liked that script and brought it to a producer he knew. The producer’s name was Sean Cunningham and, if you’ve heard of him, you know him because he directed FRIDAY THE 13TH (among other horror movies).

Sean read JOHNNY ZOMBIE, liked it and optioned it, offering me a multi-year deal to come to California and write movies for him as a sort of “staff writer”. This was the big break I’d been looking for. I packed up my stuff and drove from Hoboken, NJ to Los Angeles in a rented U-haul with Adam and his girlfriend at the time, who is now a very successful screenwriter and director. Also involved in the trip was Anton Salaks, another friend of mine from school. We dropped him off in New Orleans, where he got the first of his tattoos.

It turned out that Disney studios was interested in making JOHNNY ZOMBIE and, once in LA, I set to work doing the endless revisions that they asked for. During all of this, Adam had been hoping to get the opportunity to direct JOHNNY ZOMBIE but, ultimately, was not given the job. The consolation prize was the chance to direct FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 9: JASON GOES TO HELL (from here out referred to as JGTH).

While I toiled on my movie, he worked on his. He laid out a plot that involved Jason getting destroyed in the opening scenes and body-hopping throughout the second act, trying to get “reborn” into his original body. I had some concerns about this plot because I figured that people would want to see Jason the entire movie, not the bodies he hopped into. But, in truth, I didn't worry about that too much, because I was so pre-occupied with writing my movie for Disney.

A writer was hired for JGTH and the first draft finally arrived. It was not received warmly and panic set in. Here’s why – Sean had already started spending money on pre-production. Locations were scouted, sets were underway -- the money train was, in other words, rolling down the tracks. The problem was that New Line had not yet given the project a greenlight, so it was Sean’s (the producer's) personal cash on the line. The first draft arrived on a Thursday and New Line expected to see the script the following Monday. If they didn’t greenlight it, there were going to be serious financial repercussions.

So, that Thursday, Sean came into my office and told me that I needed to rewrite JGTH so that they could have a new script to give to New Line by Monday – which was only four days away. He wanted to know if I was up to the challenge. "Of course!" I said, eager to step up to the keyboard, prove my genius and save the day. This foolish, youthful arrogance was exactly what Sean was counting on.

So I started writing.

Certain things were set in stone: the body jumping, many of the locations, several major characters and a variety of action sequences. One of them was “The Diner Sequence,” which was going to be a huge fight in a diner with a tremendous amount of killing. Another was “The Police Station Sequence” which involved, you guessed it, more killing in a police station.

I worked on this draft with great zeal, even though I still didn’t really agree with the body-hopping premise. We delivered a script on Monday, which Michael DeLuca (the New Line exec in charge) thought was pretty bad, but they greenlit it anyway, maybe because they figured they couldn’t really lose money on it. In any event, another writer (Les Bohem) was brought in after me to do a rewrite and I went back to JOHNNY ZOMBIE.

Les did a good job, clarified some things that needed clarifying and the movie went into production. Like I said, I never liked the body hopping premise, but I DID like what I had done with some of the characters.

I had invented the character of Creighton Duke (originally called Anderson Duke, but we weren't allowed to use that name for some reason). He was a veteran Jason Vorhees bounty hunter who conveniently made his first appearance in the eighth sequel of the series. I liked him because he was quirky and had a strange and dark sense of humor.



I also gave our female lead an infant, which ultimately was the vessel that Jason required to reclaim his body. I thought that a mother fighting to protect her baby would really up the stakes and elevate the movie. This was a stupid idea and, to Adam’s (the director's) credit, he always resisted it. The truth is, no one going to see a FRIDAY THE 13TH movie has any interest in the plight of a mother and her newborn. Adam felt it made her less sexy and, therefore, less appealing to the core audience. He was right and, frankly, a mother protecting her child was just a cheap gimmick that had no business being in that movie, but I thought I was a genius at the time.

Finally, the script was done and casting was completed.

Some of the choices I understood. Some baffled me.

Billy Greenbush had been hired to play the sheriff who was also the love interest of Erin Grey. I liked him as an actor but he appeared old enough to have played Erin’s father, if not grandfather. There was, to put it mildly, a remarkable lack of chemistry between them. I was thrilled with the casting of Erin Grey, however, who I'd had a crush on since I was a kid, watching her on TV every week in BUCK ROGERS. 



Finally, shooting started.

I could probably fill a novel with anecdotes from the set, but Adam and I did a commentary for the DVD a while ago and covered a bunch of them -- many of them "R" rated -- so I’ll try not to repeat them here. One quick note about that DVD commentary -- Adam and I recorded it at a sound studio in Los Angeles called "Margarita Mix", named for the beverage they kept bringing you during the session, which is why the end of the commentary is slightly more "relaxed" than the beginning...

Anyway, one of the anecdotes that got edited from the DVD involved shooting the opening sequence. An attractive woman (who turns out to be an FBI agent) drives to a remote house in the woods. Here she is, with Jason:



As you can see, she was awfully pretty and I was a geeky 23 year old kid who was eager to impress. They needed a car for her to drive and the production asked if they could use mine. It was a black Toyota Celica convertible -- the first car I had ever bought myself. I really thought it made me look cool.

We did a couple takes of the actress driving down a winding, wooded road. When we were done, she got out of the car, walked up to me and said -- loudly -- “Your car sucks. It has no pick-up.”

This was crushing.

Public humiliation from the incredibly hot stunt-woman was not what I was hoping for. But she was right -- the car had terrible pick up.

The production was rocky.

John D. LeMay was cast as the male lead. Adam was upset that he wasn’t more aggressive and manly in the movie. This led to a shouting match between Adam and I. Adam wanted to know why I hadn’t written John more tough guy lines, like Bruce Willis had in DIE HARD. I shouted back that I would be happy to write lines like that, but that John -- who was a nice guy and a good actor -- was no more Bruce Willis in DIE HARD than Richard Dreyfuss was Arnold Schwarzenegger in THE TERMINATOR. Ultimately, Sean, the producer, intervened and this got resolved. Movies are pressure-cookers and it’s easy to lose sight of reality.

I had always enjoyed acting and, for my sins, I got the opportunity to play the small role of the Assistant Coroner who gets killed by Jason.



Shooting that scene was terrifying and gave me new respect for the difficulties of being an actor. First of all, I was so nervous that I couldn’t remember my lines, so I made up new ones. This was tolerated because, after all, I had written the lines to begin with.

At one point, the Coroner (Jason) lifts me in the air and slams my head through a surgical grate. It was a weird, somewhat technical setup with me on a camera dolly. As he slammed me down, I never put out my hands to try and prevent myself from hitting the grate and, to this day, it bugs me to see it in the movie -- putting out your hands to stop a fall is one of the most basic human reactions on the planet and I still kick myself for not doing it.

But that small role led to one of the biggest discoveries of my young life.

While watching the dailies of my performance, I realized I was going bald. One setup involved a high angle shot of me walking down a hallway. As I saw myself onscreen, I could clearly see that I had no hair on the top of my head. This was an unbelievable shock because, in the mirror, I could never see the very top of my head and so I never realized that there was no hair there. I remember turning to my friend, Noel, and saying, "did you know I was going bald?" And he replied "didn't you?"

Luckily, this impending baldness did not prevent me from meeting my future wife. Her name was Elizabeth Hill and she worked in the art department on the movie. I thought she was really hot and I was blown away to discover that she knew the entire FRIDAY THE 13th series intimately – she’d seen them all and was a big fan... but not of me. In fact, she spent much of the movie really mad at me.

Here's why:

I would often get a call to come to the set to rewrite something or other. Usually, I would go over during lunch, so at least I could get some free food. The problem was that parking was limited and I didn’t have my own parking spot, which made me crazy. So, I would often just take the first free spot I saw, which was usually reserved for the art department runner.

In other words, Elizabeth’s spot.

The runners are given spots close to the stage because they constantly have to run out, pick up props and then get back to the set ASAP (in fact, she was the one that picked up the surgical grate that my head was smashed through as the Assistant Coroner). Apparently, it made Elizabeth insane that I kept taking her spot, although I didn't know that at the time.

Eventually, during the wrap party, I asked her out and we had a terrible first date. The top of my convertible was broken and I couldn't raise it. Even though this was LA, it was still winter and pretty chilly out, which meant we were freezing as we drove around. Also, at the time I wore prescription glasses, but I'd lost my regular pair and only had prescription sunglasses, which I had to put on so I could drive -- which made me look absolutely ridiculous.

Finally, I took her to see the director's cut of BLADE RUNNER -- which was not her favorite movie -- and I put my arm around her in the theater. Unfortunately, my arm fell asleep and I couldn't move it, which was a real problem after the movie as I tried to snake it into my jacket sleeve without looking like a moron.

Even though the date was rocky, we already had tickets to see the play CATS in a couple days. We both went to it somewhat grudgingly and ended up having a great time because we were utterly mystified by the plot. So, everyone’s a cat… and there’s a spaceship… and the cats are singing and… what’s happening here? We bonded over our bafflement and ultimately got married.

Still are.

But back to the movie. After a period of editing, we tested a cut of JGTH and it tested pretty badly. I don’t remember the actual grade it got but I know you could not have graduated from any school in the country with a score that low. The most common complaint – where are the naked campers?

So we wrote a naked camper scene and shot that, as well as some additional footage of Creighton Duke in a jail cell trying to explain the truly insane rules of the movie, which had something to do with Jason trying to be "reborn" through the blood of a Vorhees while not being killed with the “magic dagger” -- which also conveniently made its first appearance in the eighth sequel of the series.

So... the movie finally came out and made a couple bucks, although it was by no means a smash. The critics were not kind, and they had no right to be. I look back on it now with some amusement – it’s the work of such a young guy.

The female lead with the baby -- what was I thinking?

The set of rules so complex you needed a decoder ring to understand them – what was I thinking?

Long, dull passages of exposition; a Jason movie without Jason; the “magic dagger” – what, on God’s great, green earth, was I thinking?!

And yet, to this day, I still like Creighton Duke being interviewed at his "secret" compound (which was actually just the back of the stage) and that he often thinks of “a little girl in a pink dress, sticking a hot dog through a donut.”

I still don’t know what that bit of nonsense means, but it makes me laugh.

And I like that I met my wife, the mother of my two kids, on this screwy production. JGTH may not be good movie, but some good did come out of it. Some FRIDAY fans really hate it, but some really like it and I've learned that, once you finish a movie, it sort of takes on a life of its own, regardless of what you think about it -- which is almost always colored by the experience of making it.

The experience of making JGTH was a good one.

The next blog entry will be about the making of the movie MY BOYFRIEND'S BACK.

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MONSTER MADNESS, the next book in the NIGHTMARE ACADEMY series is now available for pre-order from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.



The reissue of book one, now subtitled MONSTER HUNTERS, is also available for pre-order from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.