HOW UNIVERSAL
BROKE
PATRICK READ JOHNSON'S

By Andrew O. Thompson
for
Sci-Fi Universe Magazine

Universal Pictures' $60 million fantasy epic Dragonheart boasts many firsts. It's the first live-action film in which one of the protagonists is a computer-generated image: Draco, a dragon who runs a con-game against local villagers with the jaded knight Bowen (Dennis Quaid). Industrial Light and Magic's newest triumph towers at 46 feet with a 75-foot wingspan. He's composed of nearly three times the effects shots as the 59 required by the Jurassic Park dinosaurs. Draco also sports Sean Connery's singular Scottish brogue.

Dragonheart was also the first one of the first major American production to shoot on location in Slovakia, a nation carved out of the crumbled Czech Republic. Of the splendid Slovakian castles that have yet to surface on our silver screens, one, Cachtice, was once home to the Blood Countess. So christened after her habit of preying upon young peasant girls, and bathing in their blood. No doubt Dragonheart's lovely maiden Kara (Dina Meyer) awakened the thirst of the countess' ghost.

But all this aside, there's one characteristic that Dragonheart does share with other Hollywood films: one of its creators was removed from the project for refusing to compromise his artistic integrity.

Writer/director Patrick Read Johnson formulated the concept for Dragonheart -- "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with a knight and a talking dragon" -- some seven years ago while riding high on the promise of his directing debut Spaced Invaders. Originally titled Martians!!!, this $1.75 million independently produced sci-fi comedy grossed some $16 million when Disney acquired it for release in 1990.

Spaced Invaders catapulted the now 34-year-old Johnson into flavor-of-the-month status and led to a two-year first look deal with Universal Pictures. Johnson chose Universal out of the fact that he had forged a relationship with two individuals affiliated with the studio at the time: producer Rafaella De Laurentiis, and director Steven Spielberg, who had recommended Johnson's film to Disney.

Intrigued by Johnson's Dragonheart pitch, De Laurentiis optioned it in June 1989. The producer actually had her eyes on Johnson's 435-page script for Starsailor, a 23rd century coming-of- age tale that's "essentially Captain's Courageous in space. "

De Laurentiis didn't have enough funds to cover a first draft, so Johnson, and his Spaced Invaders writing partner, Scott Lawrence Alexander struck a makeshift deal with her. For a two-week trip to a hotel De Laurentiis owned in Bora Bora, and some "pocket change," the two would develop the script.

At that time, the tale was "a little bit funkier, a little bit more Monty Pythonesque." Striking that delicate balance between comedy and pathos proved problematic to Johnson and Lawrence's writing efforts. The lighthearted aspects of the script were clouding their efforts to get at the crux of the tale -- the guilt of the knight and dragon over having helped the evil King Einon (David Thewlis) assume the throne. After several stalled starts, Johnson realized that it might be best left to a screenwriter with some well-honed medieval sensibilities. That writer also had to be able to pull off both the "buddie picture" aspects of the Dragonheart script, and the somber tone that lay at its core

"I really didn't want this to become just a comedy or just an adventure, it's too easy," says Johnson. "You know medieval films have a tendency to not do very well in this country. Braveheart did very well because its damn funny and damn touching, not just guys hacking each other to pieces -- that's the danger of a movie like this. Legend was way too serious -- it was beautiful to look at, but just depressing.

"Americans don't have a lot of patience for pure European fantasy. That's not part of our background -- that's why Willow didn't do well. It's beautiful to look at, it's got some fun performances, great effects, its got all the trademark George Lucas stuff but its not a western, which is what Star Wars was. Our mythos is western, we also accept ghosts, witches, vampires, and Frankensteins, but we don't accept fairies, hobgoblins, dragons, and unicorns very often -- it’s not what we grew up with. So you have to add an extra element to these things."

With the first rights to produce Starsailor squared away, De Laurentiis brought the property to the attention of Universal executives, who were lukewarm at best. In Christmas of '89 Johnson, approached Charles Edward Pogue, an acquaintance with several genre films to his credit. Pogue had recently written an unproduced adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel of interplanetary swashbuckling, Princess of Mars, and was looking for a new project to suit his tastes.

"I'm a guy who grew up on Errol Flynn. I mean that's my meat and potatoes. I said 'Sure, all you have to say is a knight and a dragon,'" says the 46-year old Pogue, a fantasy junkie who cites Flynn's Adventures of Robin Hood, Alexander Korda's Thief of Baghdad and Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts and Golden Voyages of Sinbad as among his favorite films of the genre.

Currently, Pogue has two other projects in the works for Universal: a Thief of Baghdad script, and an adaptation of Robert E. Howard's King Kull (starring Hercules' Kevin Sorbo). On the strength of his unproduced Kull script, the Howard estate offered Pogue the rights to another of its property's: the 16th century globe- trotting Puritan, Soloman Kane.

A veteran of regional dinner theater, Pogue relocated to Los Angeles from Texas in 1978. Prior to that, the 1972 University of Kentucky graduate had been performing Shakespeare amidst "oiler roughnecks, armadillos, and tumbleweeds" at the Globe of the Great Southwest. When Pogue scored an option with his first script, the sword-and-sorcery piece Greystone, he made an impromptu career jump. Next came Pogue's highly honored adaptations of Sherlock Holmes's Hound of the Baskervilles and Sign of Four released theatrically in Europe. His big break came with what would become David Cronenberg's The Fly, followed by Psycho III and a remake of D.O.A. (starring Dennis Quaid). Pogue says that that film's time-driven best represents a motif underlying all his work.

"[I]n that you're watching basically a burnt-out individual, a man trying to cling to his to passion, or to reclaim his passion, his desire, his idealism. [D.O.A.] punches that up in that he finally learns how to live in the last days of his life. A major theme in all my work is trying to maintain one's humanity and idealism and dreams in a crappy kind of world," says Pogue, who infused that cynicism in Bowen the Knight as a longing for the ideals of Camelot.

"Our knight is sort of hangover from those old days. He's trying to embrace the code of honor and chivalry and things of that sort which in this specific time frame has died out. He's like an anachronism in his own time dreaming of the good old days when Arthur ruled."

With Pogue involved, Universal gave them approval to start on the script. Pogue fashioned the screenplay from a scene-by-scene synopsis he had fleshed out with Johnson. Universal executives were so pleased with Pogue's first draft (completed in August of '90) that Dragonheart was immediately given the go-ahead. Johnson, then slated as the film's director, left with De Laurentiis to scout locations in Spain in the first months of 1991.

The film's budget at that time was considerably less than its current $60 million pricetag. A computer-generated dragon was still a technical impossibility but Universal knew of its imminent arrival since Jurassic Park was in its planning stages. Johnson's extensive special effects background gave him the know-how to acquire opticals that were both polished and cost effective.

Sixteen years ago, Johnson moved to Los Angeles from his hometown of Wadsworth, Illinois, and at the age of 18 began model-making for Brick Price Movie Miniatures (TVs Project Bluebook). He soon scored gigs with Boss Films, Showscan, as well as effects wizards Douglas Trumbull and Richard Yuricich. Ironically, he supported his model-making career through screenwriting.

Johnson's 1981 pitch for Fortress, which he describes as "a dark Close Encounters meets Aliens on Earth," earned him a development deal with 20th Century Fox. That script, and the number of others Johnson wrote over the years remained unproduced. In 1987, he started writing Martians!!!, which began filming two years later -- on the 50th anniversary of Orson Wells' War of the World broadcast. Johnson was able to do some 200 visual effects for Spaced Invaders for a mere $180,000. He wanted to duplicate that frugality on Dragonheart.

"My whole mission was to do Dragonheart basically for $15 million. I had wanted to do it for under 25 but the studio mandate was "Get it down to 15 and we'll do it with you'. This is $15 million with a 45-foot talking dragon through 90 percent of it," emphasizes Johnson. "This is not like a character that they go see occasionally on a mountain top, he's walking and talking and picking his teeth. In this first draft, he's practically in every scene of the movie. But I thought, ‘You know what I did a little miracle with Spaced Invaders, I should try and do a little miracle with Dragonheart,’ because if you can do a movie like that for $15 million you're golden."

To keep within the budget's constraints, Johnson had turned to the Jim Henson Creature Shop in late 1990. Johnson directed a 1991 episode of the ABC television series Dinosaurs for Brian Henson, and forged an exclusive writer/director deal with the Henson Company in '93. At the shop's London headquarters, construction had begun on the dragon, which was envisioned as a combination of full-scale and miniature puppetry. Johnson was adamant that Draco's on-screen realization be accomplished "in camera".

"The only alternatives were stop-motion, which I didn't think would sell anymore -- I didn't think that people would accept it. Dragonslayer was about as good as that was going to get. That was a good dragon for its time -- and still is -- but the thing is that it doesn't have a personality," says Johnson who was looking for the unique quality offered by such Henson creations as The Muppet Show, The Dark Crystal and the Star Wars trilogy's Yoda. Puppetry so imbued with character that the viewer would overlook any of its aesthetic misgivings.

"The thing about the Henson Creature Shop is they start with a character and build a puppet around it, most places start with a design and try to fit a character into it -- this is a talking dragon," says Johnson. "Sean Connery had already expressed interest in being the voice, and I did not want him to have to lip-sync to a stop- motion animated dragon, or have his character essentially flattened by the lack of expression available in traditional stop motion."

The Henson's shop spent nine weeks constructing dragon pieces -- including a gigantic full-on head and neck "about the size of a Volkswagon" -- out of urethane foam, fiberglass and silicone. Having this "lifesize" mock-up would allow the creature to be shot in real time, as opposed to being filmed at lower frames and sped up subsequently. But Johnson wanted this test (shot in spring '91) to be more than just a showpiece; the dragon had to interact in scripted situations.

"Brian Henson had told me to just take the head, stick it through some black cloth, and have it perform some routine. I just imagined all the executives at Universal watching that and going 'What is this vaudeville?!' So I decided to make it a little movie."

The shop transformed one of their small green sets into a tree-covered valley through the use of hanging foreground miniatures. A third scale puppet was placed in the foreground to establish the creature's dimensions in long shots.




In the close-ups, a local actor, clad him in medieval clothing, played opposite the head and neck pieces.

For the dragon's voice, De Laurentiis solicited the authoritative tone of Star Trek's Patrick Stewart, who had worked with her on Dune.

"For what it was, nine weeks worth of work, and hastily put together, it showed a character and showed it could work, although Tom Pollack called it the 'fakest dragon' he ever saw. Well, the problem was for that for $17 or so million that was the most realistic dragon the guy was ever going to see," says Johnson, who now says he would've been wise to heed Brian Henson's advice. "But in making the movie I probably didn't concentrate enough in just selling the dragon. It almost became a directing test, which was mistake because we had no money and no time,and when the execs at Universal saw that it was part of the excuse that was used to essentially pay-or-play me off the picture."

Johnson had already passed on a few directing offers, one of which was "a giant John Hughes movie" (not 1993's Dennis the Menace) while waiting for a finalized production date on Dragonheart. Meanwhile, he was well on his way to assembling a production team. His buddie Liam Neeson was eager to be considered as Bowen, and composer Jerry Goldsmith (Star Trek - The Motion Picture) had expressed his interest in scoring the film. It's Johnson's belief that the studio was somewhat concerned about his ability to manage a $15 million budget. He had yet to helm the $12 million bittersweet comedy Angus (1995) and Hughes' $50 million adventure Baby's Day Out (1994). It was when Universal executives realized that CGI was a very real possibility for Dragonheart that Johnson felt the director's chair begin to slip away.

"Universal had dreams of Steven Spielberg or Frank Marshall or Richard Donner directing it, and I was getting more and more upset because I could feel them trying to push it in a thematic direction that it shouldn't go. They wanted it to be more of a comedy."

Much to Johnson's chagrin, casting considerations became more and more artistically inappropriate: Whoopi Goldberg was suggested as the voice of the dragon; and Arnold Schwarzenegger became a candidate for Bowen, and then Tom Hanks, to whom the studio sent the script without Johnson's knowledge. Livid at this point, Johnson tried to sway Universal back to his line of thinking. He asked the executives to consider a burgeoning British actor/director: Kenneth Branagh. "To which," says Johnson, "Tom Pollack replied 'I don't want Henry V with a dragon.' Well I actually did. I thought that's what it should've been. Henry V with a little more humor and a lot more dragon."

But the heated differences between Universal executives and Johnson over the tone of the film, as well his unwillingness to acquiesce to their wishes, took their toll. Dragonheart lost its first director in spring of 1991. "After getting to lots of arguments about the way this movie was going, the studio felt the need, and the ability at this point to call me intractable and take me off the movie. They also used the excuse that they didn't like the test"

Johnson's frustration was far from over. He thought that had a right to remain on the project as one of the producers, along with De Laurentiis. It was he who had conceived the Dragonheart property and brought it to her attention. De Laurentiis, however, refused his request. Through prior contractual negotiations, Johnson was left with the "executive producer" and "story by" credits for Dragonheart. Looking back on it, Johnson still puts the interests of the picture foremost. "I was bitter that she didn't have my back," he says, "but I admire her tenacity in getting the picture made."

Pogue remained with the project, and gave it his full support, even spending several weeks on location at Koliba Studios in Bratislava, Slovakia. But he nevertheless laments the loss of Johnson. "They got very nervous about a young untried director pursuing what they thought was a going to be a big-budget movie, which, unfortunately, was a death-knell for Patrick. They said 'Nah, we're not going to take a chance on this,' which was a shame for me because he and I saw exactly on the same movie," says the screenwriter.

"It was the first time I'd ever worked from the genesis of an idea with the director when we were a very good match and just fed off each other very well. So a big problem was just trying to find a director more than anything. . .a director who got the material, who'd do the movie we saw and the movie we'd wanted. We played around with a lot of guys."

The film was then offered to a number of directors including Jon Avnet and Ridley Scott. After the success of Dead Again, Branagh was reconsidered briefly but the studio was unwilling to cough up his fee, which was reported in Variety to be $5 million.

Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon, Ladyhawke) was attached to Dragonheart for quite some time before the project made its way to Rob Cohen (Dragon). He was the first director to ask ILM to do a conceptual test with the computer-generated effects, using a speaking Jurassic Park dinosaur. Such a high-profile director, however, needed big-name talent that was hard-to-draw. The project was once again at a standstill.

Says Pogue, "They were only going to go with Donner if they could get a star and they could never get a star, we couldn't get a lot guys to go with it [including Mel Gibson and Harrison Ford], which was fine. Dennis [Quaid] is great in it -- I really am pleased with his work in the movie. I was always felt it was movie that didn't need a huge star. It's like Star Wars -- the whole concept was a star, something so unique and original that you didn't need power players as a cachet into this material."

Artistic differences with Donner are nothing new for both Pogue and Johnson. In 1993, Johnson along with Jonathan Lau penned a "cyberpunk, Akira-like dark punk-rock version" of the on-hiatus Speed Racer flick for producers Donner and Joel Silver. But the producers were more interested in the kitsch of the Japanese cartoon than in a world swallowed by software smuggling corporate conglomerates. Johnson bowed gracefully out of that project. Pogue had once drafted a page one rewrite of an adaptation of Anne Rice's 900-page tome The Witching Hour for Donner. Anne Rice loved his script, but conflicts with the director over Pogue's liberated portrayal of female sexuality led to the project's stasis.

Wanting to put the Dragonheart drama well behind him, Johnson is concentrating on the future, and for that matter, the past. He just completed Sinbad at the Edge of the World, a racially and religiously accurate, monster-filled Persian epic he plans to direct for Columbia Pictures later this year. "It certainly in no way betrays the spirit of the Harryhausen films, but it's told with the historical underpinnings of a Raiders of the Lost Ark where Sinbad is the doubting Thomas." He's also searching for someone to direct Starsailor, which he now plans to produce himself.

Johnson did recently view the Dragonheart trailer for the first time, and with mixed emotions. Though saddened that his original vision for the film remains unrealized, Johnson says he felt "an incredible familiarity with every shot I saw. It was like someone had reached into my head, pulled out the movie I had always wanted to get made, and put it on the screen.

"The truth is had I made that movie at $15 million at that time with Sean Connery and Liam Neeson I think it would've been successful -- there's almost no way it couldn't have been with those two guys at that price. But it would've been a radically different kind of movie. It would've been much more serious, probably darker, and it certainly wouldn't have the patina of high-gloss finish that this is going to get with 170 gorgeous ILM shots.

"We couldn't have delivered that, we would've delivered something which felt more like Time Bandits or Jabberwocky because one of the things I love about Terry Gilliam is his ability to do in-camera work, and miniature work. It's a dying art and [I think that] my administration of Dragonheart was one of the last gasping attempts to do something like that."

The former assistant editor of American Cinematographer, Andrew O. Thompson is now editor of the International Cinematographers Guild magazine. This article originally appeared in the Spring 1996 issue of Sci-Fi Universe.