The Irish Way
1992-1993. "About a real-life Irish kung fu master. I was to produce with Barry Cooper."17
White Leopards
From 1992. To star Fabio Testi and Robert Mitchum. "White Leopards came from a book given to Fabio Testi by a friend. The screenplay was written by John Fonseca, who was Fabio's dialogue coach on China 9 and Iguana. He, like Fabio, has become a friend for life. Set in South Africa (diamond mines), it's based on a supposedly true story about an inside job scheme to rob De Beers of their payroll, or something like that. It's reminiscent of The Dirty Dozen and about a dozen other movies, but it's classic stuff."18
Strange Girls
1993. "Written and to be directed by Michael Laughlin. Barry Cooper and I were producing. We had it set up at Live, but Michael refused the deal. It's never been made. It would have been a follow up to Michael's Strange Behavior and Strange Invaders in title only: totally different from the other two."19
The Last Go-Round
From a novel by the late Ken Kesey. "It's about the beginnings of the Pendleton (Oregon) Rodeo, at the beginning of the twentieth century (around 1910), and about a great Native American cowboy, Jackson Sundown, and an African American cowboy, George Fletcher. I was working on this all of 1993 through at least March 1994. Katherine Wilson was the producer who brought me into this mess. She wrote a screenplay, which needed a page one re-write by a real writer. Charles Eastman was to be that writer. But Katherine only had a promise from Kesey that she could have the rights to the material, and she was never able to actually get the rights. She told us many times that she did, but she never did."20 According to Charles Eastman, "I have over the years been writing a very long screenplay on rodeo called sometimes Cowboy Christmas, sometimes Outside. Barry Cooper had once attempted to option this material, with me as director, a grandiosity that didn't come off. So when The Last Go-Round came up, I was in Barry's mind as an ideal person to do the screenplay. I would rather not have been involved, but once again I needed the money and had to play ball — I felt the material, while a period piece, was still too close to my cowboy story, and that I would steal from myself and weaken any chances I might have of ever seeing my own rodeo piece done. And finally, as we bickered about something — availability, money (I don't think they had the funds yet) — it became obvious to me that there might be problems with Kesey and the rights; and when I saw the published novel, it seemed that, if this was news to everybody (as it appeared to be), things had certainly fallen through, and that was the last I heard about this project."21
Nothing More Than Murder
An adaptation of Jim Thompson's 1959 noir classic (about an act of fraud perpetrated by the cynical owner of a small movie house) which Hellman worked on from 1993 to 1995.
Red Rain
From late 1993 onward, still active until late 1998. A prison story — set on Christmas day in San Quentin, and focussing on the friendship between white convict Snuff and black convict Rashad — that was to be produced by Barry Cooper and executive produced by Quentin Tarantino and Lawrence Bender. According to Hellman, the script of Red Rain "was sent to me by the author, D.B. Smith, who was an ex-convict. He wrote it in the margins of a Bible when he was in solitary. He was accepted into the graduate screenwriting program at UCLA before he was released from prison on the basis of this script. Normally with prison literature you just see the story, but Red Rain had all this background texture about survival that made it really live. Quentin read it in 1994, thought it was fantastic, and offered to help me. I met with Willem Dafoe to discuss his playing Snuff, and came close to getting it made, but finally abandoned this project in favor of somewhat easier sells."22
Silver City
From April 1995. Written by Jones Clark, who would become a regular collaborator: "He comes from a family of lawyers, and knows a lot about that world. Silver City is about a South-Western public defender living in a corrupt world, who sells out his half-breed client, then after spending six hours supposedly trying to find the piece of evidence to keep his client from being executed, comes back to confess that he's the evidence, and face his punishment."23
Ghost of a Chance
"A fantasy love story begun in 1995 by my wife, Emma Webster. It went through a number of revisions, until finally Jones joined Emma as co-writer."24 Set in contemporary London, the plot has Ambassador's wife Anna Knight and CIA operative Wes Mitchell dying on the same day, falling in love in the afterlife, and being allowed to return to life for 24 hours: "Most days I'm a devout atheist. But on no days do I believe in an afterlife. Ghost of a Chance is an allegory that expresses my beliefs about choice in the human condition, not to be taken as a literal depiction of death. Or maybe to be taken, if the audience chooses. I like the audience to make these choices."25
Freaky Deaky
An adaptation of Elmore Leonard's 1988 novel (once a Jim McBride project) about Police Sergeant Chris Mankowski and the attempt of two sixties radicals, Robin and Skip, to blackmail millionaire Woody Ricks. Hellman began working on this project, which he hoped to set up at Miramax, in July 1995. "In early 1996, Barry Cooper and I made a deal with the Japanese company Shochiku to make four pictures. Part of the deal was that Quentin Tarantino and Lawrence Bender would be executive producers on the pictures that I would direct, and that Quentin would write a remake of Ride in the Whirlwind. The three other pictures were Red Rain (which Quentin had agreed to exec produce two years earlier), Dark Passion and Freaky Deaky (in which we believed that Miramax was no longer interested). We had the rights to Red Rain, and we negotiated a deal with Paramount for Dark Passion and Talia Shire for Ride in the Whirlwind. Quentin was to obtain the rights to Freaky Deaky. Quentin and Lawrence and their agent, Mike Simpson, came to a meeting with Shochiku, and we made a verbal deal. Contracts were drawn, and we had a cast that included Vince Vaughn (as Chris), Cher (as Robin), Mickey Rourke (as Skip), Mike Starr (as Woody) and Don Cheadle (as Donnell, Woody's driver). Then, when Quentin went to Harvey Weinstein for the rights to Freaky Deaky, Harvey freaked, and wouldn't let Quentin make the deal, even though Quentin and Lawrence were non-exclusive as producers to Miramax. He asked what the bottom line was, and Quentin said he wanted to help me do Freaky. That's when Harvey said he would make it for me to direct. As Samuel Goldwyn once said: 'A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's printed on.' At any rate, the Shochiku deal fell through, I spent two more years working on the Freaky Deaky screenplay (with Emma), reluctantly incorporating Miramax executive Jack Lechner's suggestions in a limited way. This was followed by Miramax bringing in a new team of writers who really fucked it up. Essentially, what they wanted was to build up the 'love' story, and play down all the other characters. They wanted the camera always on Chris. Quentin refused to become involved, and between three executives at Band Apart, a total of three at Miramax, plus me, it became a committee system that was totally anathema to me, and we created a stew of a script that no one liked. Even Miramax realized the new script didn't work, but they also realized they didn't want to make Elmore Leonard's story."26