Hollywoodaholic

The Avengers movie opened this past weekend to buffo box office numbers more than 49 years after the original comic book appeared in 1963.

I had that comic book. In fact, I collected almost every comic book from that period from the early-to-mid sixties: Spider-man 1-50, Fantastic Four 1-100, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Mighty Thor, Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, Dr. Strange, X-Men 1-30. These were the original versions of these superhero comics that, if I had them and sold them today, could easily put my son through a Harvard education. X-Men number 1 alone is valued at almost  $100,000 in mint condition.

My mother used to pick me up after school and take me for an allergy shot every Tuesday, and my reward was a stop at the local Drug Fair to pick up all the latest issues of every Marvel comics at 10 or 12 cents a piece. I spent about a $1.20 for 10 at a time. I had a few subscriptions to Fantastic Four and others, where the comic would arrive FOLDED in a brown paper slip cover. I’m sure collectors today would shudder in horror at the thought. I remember quickly pressing them straight as soon as I got them because I wanted to preserve them as perfectly as possible, too.

I kept my comics in excellent condition, but I read them multiple times first. We didn’t have plastic comic bags back in those days, and we would have never thought of buying two copies of an issue to save one without opening it just for possible resale. But that’s why the comics from the 60s are worth thousands of dollars in their mint or near mint condition, and why the comics that came later in the 70s or 80s, when EVERYONE was collecting and preserving, are practically worthless. Rarity of a comic in great condition is what makes it valuable. Try finding a mint condition of an E.C. horror or science fiction comic from the even earlier 50s.

My comic collection, which ended up around 1,200 strong, earned value to the point where when I sold most of it when I went to college ten years later, it easily paid for a pair of 80 lb.ESS speakers with 15-inch woofers that I paid more than $300 for, and which I still use to this day. I like to say that I am still listening to my Marvel comic collection. But there are times I cringe a bit thinking just how much that total collection would be worth today. I thought I made a good deal when I got as much as $40 for individual titles in my collection. If you think about it, that’s still a 3200 percent profit markup from the price I paid for one. I can be satisfied with that.

What truly makes me sad, though, is that, at the time my life was devoted to reading and collecting Marvel comics, there were no such things as Marvel Superhero movies. We had a few lame attempts to create them in cartoons or on television, such as the Lou Ferrigno Hulk series in the 70s, but how could you film what would have been enormously expensive battle sequences and special effects back when Superman still had to fly by planking himself on a stationary post while a rear screen projection simulated the effect of clouds in the sky passing by? I suppose it’s better that we didn’t have a collection of the movies made back then and were stuck with our vivid imaginations instead.

The original Avengers line up was Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, Ant Man and Wasp Woman. The new version drops the two pipsqueak people and replaces them with Hawkeye and Black Widow or whatever her name is. Those two characters were never around in the original 60s line up. But I guess it’s hard to cast a big star masculine actor in today’s market to play … Ant Man; especially when people realize all his parts would have to be proportional.

I’ll go to the Avengers movie, but probably not to fight the crowds on opening weekend. And I’ll remember sitting in my basement room of the house in Maryland I grew up in savoring the latest stash of Marvel comics from the Drug Fair that easily transported me away from the lingering sting of an allergy shot.

And then I’ll crank my ESS speakers up really loud.

I can’t get worked up over CGI action. It just doesn’t do it for me. When there’s nothing resembling a human involved, no basis of recognizable physics, and no real damage at stake – it’s just pixels on a screen – why should I care?

Case in point:

This past weekend I saw John Carter in 3D on a huge Imax screen clocking in at more than two hours of mammoth battles of green, four-armed Tharks, flying ships broad siding in mid-air, and tattooed Heliumite humanoids locked in spectacular conflict for rule over the planet Mars.

A lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Yawn.

Why is it that I was thrilled about this stuff when I read it in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel A Princess of Mars more than 40 years ago, but watching it on the big screen didn’t even get my pulse going? No matter how much I tried to summon that inner 10-year old spirit of awe and wonder, the only thing my outer year-old was wondering was how much longer this would go on.

Is it just me? Am I incapable of being excited by action on the screen anymore?

Not at all.

The very next day I saw Act of Valor with my 15 year-old son about an elite Navy Seal team engaged in firefights and rescue missions across the globe and I felt real tension, an accelerated heartbeat, and action that gripped me.

What happened?

For starters, there were actual human beings involved: My species.

Well, to be honest, the cast were an actual Navy Seal team of emotionless, hyper-trained athletes, so it’s a stretch to include me in the same ‘species,’ but we still share a considerable portion of similar DNA. I’m closer to them than a guppy.

They were also involved in action I could reasonably believe in, knowing the world we live in today. The guns were real. I read somewhere even the ammo was real. And though I assume the blood-splattering injuries weren’t – the depictions of what high velocity automatic weapon fire can do to a human – which is mess you up big time – was realistic. There were real and plausible consequences to the action, even if the story was entirely fictionalized.

There is nothing plausible to me about CGI action anymore.

I’ve seen a real train wreck on the news and in historical films. I studied train wrecks for a screenplay I was heavily researching. The train wreck in Super 8 had nothing remotely to do with physics or reality. It might has well have been featured in a Road Runner cartoon.

The train wreck in The Fugitive used a real train, and cost more than $1 million. It may not have flown three hundred feet in the air when it crashed off the rails, but that sound you heard, and the thud you felt and the images you saw were reality-based. Maybe they jacked up the sound, sped up the image, utilized multiple cuts to draw out the action, but it all came from a real stunt.

And now, for many films, they’ve gone and replaced the most sacred action sequence of all with fake action; the car chase. Inexcusable. Why should I ever care about a car chase without real drivers or real cars that defies all physics and where nothing real is at stake? If I wanted that I can  play Grand Prix 5 on Xbox.

Stunt drivers trained for years and risked their lives to create fantastic chase sequences in films such as The French Connection, Bullit, Ronin, and The Italian Job (1969 version). The screech of the tires, the flying hubcaps, the ripping metal, the danger to the driver – was all very real and palpable to the audience. You felt it through the screen.

I completely understand a studio trying to cut costs and yet still deliver a thrill ride to customers by substituting computer-generated images for real stunts.

And it works for me sometimes when the movie has wizards in a stylized universe with extra powers, such as Harry Potter.

But when you are using CGI for action that involves everyday things and dynamics we are familiar with such as humans, cars, and guns, there’s just no substitute for real stunts.

What does it say when the only place you see a real stunt anymore is on a lame reality show like Fear Factor?

We used to see films about oversized monsters like Godzilla chewing up the scenery, and our inner or outer 10-year old was thrilled. We weren’t that savvy about Hollywood techniques and could be dazzled by primitive special effects. When they weren’t just created on a keyboard, there was something innovative and truly ‘special’ about them.

Today’s movies have a different green monster swallowing up all natural reactions from an actor and chewing the scenery up with fake images: It’s called a green screen.

(P.S. – I realize it’s a silly complaint – all movie action is essentially phony, but you know what I mean. If it can be done by real people as real stunts, let’s keep some of them employed, too.)

I had meetings with Cannon Films back in the 80s to adapt Colin Wilson’s popular science fiction novel, Space Vampires, into a feature. That film eventually became the cult movie Lifeforce, written and directed by Tobe Hooper of Texas Chainsaws Massacre fame.

Instead, I was hired to script another film Cannon was developing and very excited about called Space Bounty Hunter. This film was very important to them because it was using a new technology called “Wonder-Vision” that was going to relaunch a 3-D revolution in film. What a crazy idea, right? 3-D movies hadn’t been popular since the mid 1950s, when they were first introduced as a gimmick to pull viewers away from this new thing called television.

It turns out another space bounty hunter movie was already in development, so the entire concept of the picture changed to a mythological El Cid-style chariot race action adventure on another planet. The new title was called Escape From Beyond, and the film was promoted with posters and pre-sold for international distribution at the Cannes Film Festival in France.

But a funny thing happened on the way to building the sets in Mexico and training the chariot stunt crews … chariot races are really expensive. Go ask Cecil B. DeMille, the director of Ben Hur (oops, too late, he was dead). The preproduction and film were eventually abandoned when they realized the costs were far beyond what they collected up front to distribute the film internationally (which was Cannon’s business model).

So the world never got to see the amazing relaunch of 3-D technology with a science fiction epic. Sigh. Too bad, huh?

But they did see the poster art at Cannes and in the Hollywood Reporter. (Don’t ask me who those other two additional names under Screenplay By are; they didn’t write the script – I think they came up with that cheesy title and controlled the press releases)

I went through seven drafts of that script, including one where the President of the company calmly told me, “Ve haf Charles Bronson.” I didn’t know what to make of that other than the fact they had a big success with is vigilante film Death Wish and two sequels. Was I supposed to suddenly turn this into Death Wish in Space? And if the movie was expensive enough with chariot races, what was Charles Bronson’s fee going to add to the cost?