Some time after this, in 1984 or 1985, Hellman came close to making a television commerciaclass="underline" "I bid on a job for Panasonic. I was given a script with the basic idea of a man 'driving' a piano (that is, playing it while it moved on wheels). I embellished the script using specific San Francisco locations, and Laurie Post had the idea of casting Ray Charles. Panasonic appropriated the idea of a blind man driving a piano, but gave the job to a French company whose bid was slightly lower. It's very difficult to copyright an idea. Even scripts are stolen every day in Hollywood. I don't know how many of our elements they actually used, since I never saw the commercial. Laurie's not sure, but thinks they used Ray Charles, even though he was asking $300,000."24 Whether or not Ray Charles appeared in the Panasonic advert, he certainly starred in a 1994 commercial for Peugeot (directed by Gerard Pires), which made use of a broadly similar idea: a blind man driving.
Of course, Hellman was also developing his own projects throughout this period: "I know all this must sound vague and sketchy, because it was. There was no clear demarcation between projects, and I was actually working on several at any given time. Shortly after finishing China 9, I got involved in another Jerry Harvey script (written with Dick Lochte) called Hot Bodies, a black comedy set in a cemetery. During the early eighties, I also was interested in a script called The Kollenstrom Project (that anticipated the kind of morphing used in Terminator 2, but before the technology existed). I then worked on Projections for Martin Poll (about out of body experiences, or OOBE), and two projects for Michael Gruskoff; Going Down and Falling. Gruskoff had a writer working on Falling who wasn't very good, so Rene Baker started writing behind him, and Gruskoff liked Rene's stuff, so Rene wound up doing the script. It was supposed to be about the MIA situation, but it was essentially a Hitchcockian-type thriller about a TV chef whose brother is a Vietnam vet. There's a scene where the hero is in a building which is being wrecked, and he's attacked by a wrecking ball. I can't remember if we got to the point of thinking about casting, Going Down was based on a novel called In Deep, the author of which I've forgotten. It was originally brought to me by Fred Roos, but I can't remember if he was still involved. Jerry Harvey did a draft of the screenplay, and Rene re-wrote it. It was about a diver who kept trying to dive deeper and deeper (to the point of endangering his life — depth narcosis interfering with judgment, etc.) in search of his own devils, mainly his relationship with his father. Sort of Hamlet as a spy thriller. Harry Dean Stanton was going to be a CIA agent. There was a sort of Harry Lime-type villain, as well as our hero the diver. And a love story. I can't remember any of the other casting ideas. It took place in Cuba originally, but we were planning to shoot in Puerto Rico. Then came War Games, later called Toy Soldiers, which I developed myself with Steve Gaydos and Rene. I spent several years trying to set this up, and came close with Paramount and a couple of others."25 As Steven Gaydos recalls, "Rene Baker and I wrote War Games, which led to our working on several projects for the studios. We gave Monte a free option for two years and he wasn't able to set it up. He killed a deal with Tony Garnett (Ken Loach's producer) which would have paid $75,000 — half to Monte, half to us — for Monte to executive produce and to be set up in the UK as a Euro-financed project with a UK director. He was totally broke and in deep debt. This project could have helped him. He said, 'If I don't direct, it doesn't do me any good/ Monte helped us tremendously in providing guidance on the script, but we wrote it. He would have made a great film. But no film was made. It was extremely dangerous material, as it was a powerful statement against the deployment of the Pershings, which was a centerpiece of the Reagan strategy to beat the Soviets. Guess what? Maybe Reagan was right!? He bankrupted the Soviets and the Pershings were part of it. But he risked World War III and the end of the world. Our script was extremely damning in its portrayal of all the loose nuclear weapons lying around Europe."26
Hellman then tried to set up Dark Passion, an adaptation of Lionel White's novel Obsession (already filmed by Godard as Pierrot le Fou), about a teenage girl and an older man: "I believe I was working on Dark Passion in 1982, for producer Bert Schneider at Paramount. I supervised one screenplay with Mark Peploe, a second with Charles Eastman, and finally wrote a third screenplay, using elements from Mark and Charles, myself, writing some new scenes and narration. I used Charles' structure, which was radically different from Mark's and from the book's. Rene Balcer wrote a couple of scenes near the end. As usual, I wrote the last line. I think I was involved on this project for a year and a half, before it fell apart, because of a misunderstanding between Bert Schneider and Barry Diller."27 According to Peter Biskind, "Bert refused to go to Barry's office, and Barry refused to come to his. Instead, Schneider sent Steve Blauner, who always did Bert's dirty work. Blauner walked into Diller's office, remonstrated, said, 'How could you do this? Come in now, after a year's work, say, 'Who cares about an older man with a younger woman?' So fine, we'll make it an older man with a younger boy! Now do you understand it?' Needless to say, after an exchange like this, the picture was never made."28 In 1987, an excerpt from the Dark Passion script was published in a Cahiers du Cinema special (edited by Wim Wonders) devoted to unrealized projects. In his introduction, Hellman notes, "I still hope I can make it some day, after the adventures occupying me right now."
In 1984, Hellman tried to set up a film of Paul Bowles' 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky (the second attempt he had made to adapt Bowles for the screen). Robert Aldrich, who owned the rights, had died the previous year: "It was Julie Corman who turned me on to The Sheltering Sky. I tried to get the William Morris Agency to help me get it to actors, but they never gave it to anyone — only said that they did. I finally got Jack Nicholson to help me get it to Daryl Hannah. I was trying to get actors attached before doing a screenplay, and Daryl was my first shot. I never even owned the rights, just thought I could get them from the estate of Robert Aldrich. I didn't realize how difficult they would be."29 Nicolas Roeg also dreamed of adapting The Sheltering Sky — his Bad Timing (1980) bears a few traces of this project, notably a scene in which Theresa Russell reads Bowles' book — but the film was eventually made by Bernardo Bertolucci (from a screenplay by Mark Peploe) in 1990: "I didn't like the Bertolucci film. He may have been right and I wrong, but that wasn't the way I saw the characters when I read the book."30