Guest Column: Screenwriter Tom Benedek

A guest column from screenwriter Tom Benedek (Cocoon). This week: “TIME TRAVEL PROJECT BRINGS BACK MEMORIES: FINAL SCORE: GROUND HOG 10, RED ROOSTER 0”:

I have been sketching a time travel project for a while. It’s supposed to be a thriller, but I have been observing that the best time travel movies have been blue sky. Back to the Future, Groundhog Day. The darker ones I have been looking at — Deja Vu, Minority Report — are interesting films but the narratives are not as satisfying. Memento is wonderful but it doesn’t really apply to what I am doing. Are there films I am missing from my consideration? In my own mind, I have almost cracked the formula on my project but time will tell. Still some work to do. There is something very funny about the idea of time travel itself. I am working to let that seep into what I am writing.
 
 This leads me to a special shout out to one of of those time travel movies which is one of my favorite films of all time — Groundhog Day. And to some time travel of my own — to a whisper of a treasured professional screenwriting memory adjacent and still quite distant from that brilliant movie. It’s more like a ride on the Universal Studios Theme Park tour than anything approaching a war story.

Right before Harold Ramis directed Groundhog Day, he almost made a movie with Michael J. Fox form a script I worked on called Red Rooster. The project was a vehicle for Michael J. Fox — a Doc Hollywood/Secret of my Success kind of story which took place in Russia. I was brought in by Ray Stark to do a re-structuring of the script, supervised by Harold Ramis who was supposed to direct. There is no screenwriting lesson I can impart at this moment from the experience, because, unfortunately all my drafts of the script are in a format of Final Draft(pc 19??) that I can’t open. This is just about the externals of the job. I do remember that it was about an American corporate executive who is assigned to a collective farm in the Soviet Union. Yes, there was a Soviet Union when I did this assignment. I was well-paid. There was no input from the producers or the studio. I had fun writing the script, was inspired by working with Harold. However, from the onset, there was an understanding that once I finished, another writer would be brought in. A screenwriter named Dan Pyne was the guy who always polished Michael J. Fox’s scripts before production. So after I finished my draft, Dan was quickly hired. The entire enterprise was a departure from the norm for Harold. He was used to working with Bill Murray, Bill Murray, and Bill Murray at that time. With a little Dan Ayckroyd or Rodney Dangerfield thrown in, perhaps. Harold was just about to get on an airplane with Dan Pyne and head for Moscow to do a production rewrite when — Bill Murray committed to do another project he had in development — Groundhog Day. And so, he quickly dropped Red Rooster and went off to make his masterpiece.

And of course, hope springs eternal in the movie business. Russia, the other nations of the former Soviet Union are a huge territory for box office. They may be ready for some comedy nostalgia by now. Harold may be available. I know an executive at Universal. Red Rooster may yet get back into development. Time to send a couple of emails about this one, perhaps. Or write a blog post. Anybody have a way to open an .fdr drive for pc from 1990?

You have the opportunity to work with Tom, who has taught screenwriting at the University of Michigan and the University of Southern California’s MFA program. Starting July 23, Tom will be teaching Pages II: Rewriting Your Script. You can find out more here.

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