"Had a story adapted for TV, film? No? Don't be jealous."

Recorded and transcribed by Paul Tomlinson, from a panel featuring Harry Harrison, Steve Gallagher, Clive Barker, and Introduced by Kim Newman.

Conspiracy '87: The World Science Fiction Convention. 2.00pm Sunday 30th August I987 Third Programme: Hall 4, Metropole Exhibition Centre

This panel covered the experiences of Steve Gallagher in adapting his novel Valley of Lights for a film screenplay, and Clive Barker's experiences directing Hellraiser, and having the movies Rawhead Rex and Underworld adapted from his work, but this is not the place to print these anecdotes, we turn our attention exclusively to Harry Harrison's experiences of the filming of Soylent Green, though Clive Barker does appear here as guest interviewer.

Moderator Kim Newman opened by asking Harry to tell his Soylent Green horror story.

Harry Harrison: It's not a horror story... Soylent Green cost a lot of money and had some really good actors in it, and a director who'd directed Doctor Doolittle, which we all know and love... [Audience Laughter]...he also made the most expensive home movie of all time: Tora! Tora! Tora! -- 1500 million dollars, you know! Some actors of note, some really good actors of note, some fine designers... set designers. It was the last film shot on MGM's back set -- they burned it down and it's now all high-rise apartments... flats.

And it's made from a fine book, I must say... a really very good book, called Make Room! Make Room! And there's really only one thing wrong with the whole concoction, and that was the script! It was written by a guy, who shall remain nameless because I don't want you all to go off and assassinate Stanley Greenberg [Covers his mouth and looks guiltily at the laughing audiences... ]

As far as I know it came up out of the blue, but apparently as far as they were concerned -- I talked to the producer's secretary who's the one you should talk to -- they'd had it for about two years. Both the producer and Chuck Heston, they liked the theme of overpopulation, and they wanted to get the film made by MGM, with MGM's backing. They never told me about this... and they couldn't sell it. MGM's voice of authority said: Overpopulation? Nobody cares about that! So they got Stanley Greenberg to write a variation of the script - and he had the idea 'We'll use cannibalism, they'll eat that up!' [Groans from the audience]... Never mind!.. MGM bought it as a cannibalism movie... which tells you right away about the powers that be in Hollywood!

Anyway, I'd better be brief, I can go on for anything up to four hours depending on the time I have!

It was a very happy set, in the sense that it was a closed set and there were no visitors... just the grips and carpenters etc. who are invisible to the audience. I was there most of the time they were shooting, I passed out copies of the book... and kept talking to various actors and people to try and influence them... because there was nothing in the script.

I was there when Eddie Robinson was talking to the director, Richard Fleischer, and he said 'I was looking at the script and I've no idea what I'm supposed to be doing in this thing.' For the simple reason that there was no direction to what he was talking about. And I went up to him, trembling and shaking -- as you can imagine going up to the great Eddie Robinson -- and I said very firmly, "Mr. Robinson..?" [In a high voice, squeaky with fear] "I wrote this book and I can tell you who you are".

And we had a sandwich in his dressing room. He was only working short hours because he had terminal cancer and nobody knew it. He'd decided to do one last film instead of stay at home and look at the wall... which is what actors should do, I guess. And I said: "In the book and in the screenplay, you are the only person who lived in the world of plenty, who is now living in the world of want. You are the bridge. You knew the good life, now you're living in this crappy world where everything's green, and there's no food and there's no clean air..." and he thought about it. And a lot of the good stuff in that film was created on camera.

There was a key scene where they were talking about how the world got that way, and Heston, believe it or not, once in a while can act - the old stone face cracks occasionally -- and acting with an actor like Robinson he rose to the heights of maybe a foot-and-a-half or something, I don't know! [Laughter]... and they sat at the dinner table, eating soylent crackers or something, and Heston was going... Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm [Mimes someone eating happily]... This is good... and Robinson was going... Eeegh! [Unhappily eating!] remembering the old days. It isn't in the script, they created it... And at the end of this long scene -- they did some inserts too -- and when they cut, all the grips and handymen and carpenters who sit there for five days with a hammer doing nothing, they all started clapping. It was really created on camera.

What was good about this film, I can happily say, was that the pros who did it, not the screenwriter, did a really professional job. If you look at the screenplay, and then at the film itself, you'll realise that the strength it has is 'background as foreground' which is what science fiction does - that dumb body eating story in the foreground is of no importance. That area and the people who lived in it and died in it is important - the mess we'll get into if we don't do something, that's the message...

[Question on the differences between Hollywood and the publishing industry.]

HH: In my many years in publishing and many books published, the usual thing is your agent and you meet the publisher and there's a verbal agreement, and that - in my experience -- has always been honoured. The contract is to set what price and argue the differences about where and how and which way you get paid, but I've never had anyone back down on a verbal agreement... just a handshake and 'We'll do it.'

In my years in Hollywood I've written six screenplays. All paid for. All commissioned. And I've dealt with hundreds of options - and not one agreement signed ever came through!

CLIVE BARKER: Did the movie of Make Room! Make Room! sell more copies of Make Room! Make Room? Even though it was a...

HH: It would have if the publisher had had any brains. MGM worked with the publicity department of Berkley books, they had a fine illustration... At that time there were many publishers who were honest, but they were honest morons. What you should do with a paperback as soon as they sign the option, before they even start shooting the picture, is say Soon To Be A Major Film. And the week it's released the book is there waiting with Now A Major Film...

Anyway, everything was worked out, and the book was finally reissued six months after the opening of the film!

[Talk turned from the movie tie-in to movie merchandising, prompting Mrs. Harrison to call from the audience: "Can I remind Harry of what happened when Soylent Green opened in San Diego...]

HH: Oh, yes! MGM never played many pre-releases, they advertised it, but no hype, no Hollywood Boulevard and arc lamps... Soylent Green opened in 40,000 theatres at the same time!

Imagine: I was living in San Diego... gave seats to my friends... and no one had seen the film in San Diego. And it being California, they had the usual popcorn and coke, and because it was a hot climate there they had cold slushy. They had orange slushy and lime slushy. But since they're showing Soylent Green, the manager paints over lime slushy and puts 'Soylent Green Slushy' [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]... The audience is going in drinking it, and coming out... [Mimes throwing up...loud applause and laughter].

[The subject of money inevitably came up:]

HH: Soylent Green never made any profit. MGM loaned the money to the producers... it makes interest every year. Every year the returns come in and Chuck Heston draws on the gross. He'd made $5½ million and that was 10-15 years ago. Which means that when MGM take their interest off the net, which is very small at this point, there's no profit!

CLIVE BARKER: Did you make money, eventually?

HH: No, not a cent!... I'm suing still!

CLIVE BARKER: The lawyers make money!

HH: I have points on the profit and there's no profit! It's the only film MGM made money on that year - that was the year of a movie called The Great Wall... The Great Wall sank into oblivion like that! And this film has been shown in the states, shown all over the world, translated and dubbed into French and German, and never made any profit...

It's like we said earlier, Hollywood really is run by the banks... by the people who supply money. Films are made by morons who can get access to money. And they make profits for the bank by creative book-keeping, and make money for the morons who set it up.

And if a film struggles through of any quality, I'd be very surprised. Good movies do make money, which may explain why Britain is still making decent films like Chariots Of Fire, made in their own way in their own time.

The cash is there, the makers are there, the techniques are there. There are also some techniques ignored, there was a rotten movie called TRON, what they did was spent a fortune, at least a fortune in computing terms, five, six, seven million, nothing -- nothing in film terms -- to get the software written for a big computer at Crays... this computer simulation stuff, which is gorgeous...

[Talking about an idea selling a movie:]

HH: Roger Corman called me and said 'Harry, I've got a great idea for a film -- it's called Wheelworld.' Familiar title, but not my Wheelworld... 'I'd like you to do a screen play.' I said: Okay, fine. What's it about? 'A planet out there that humans have settled, aliens are a crystal life-form of some kind.' And I thought, that's pretty good, a good beginning, I can see that. 'The human beings go through this world on wheels made out of wood thirty or forty feet high. They stand in them and they go through the jungle that way.'

Which I'm sure is a practical way of going through the jungle! I liked the idea, and said I'd do it, can we write the wheels out? He said: 'The money man likes the wheels.' [LAUGHTER]. So I did the screenplay in about a week; a week, a week-and-a-half And I turned it in. And he said: 'Well, Harry. I'll pay you the full fee, but we got to kill the film.' I said: Why? 'There's a kid making a film with a lot of money that's going to kill us... it's a thing called Star Wars or something...! After that you had to have a decent budget to look like Star Wars...

[Question: How do film makers know to bring out pictures in a batch of similar ones?... It must take some time to make the films after the initial success...]

HH: Star Wars came along, no one was doing science fiction then, then a million imitations were scheduled within weeks... there's an attrition rate, they're coming in and dropping out... then the first one comes out and it'll be something like Battlestar Galactica and you look at that -YEACGH! Everyone stops production!

Then maybe ten years later someone makes another science fiction movie and they all go BAA BAA BAA [Sheep noises over audience laughter and applause.]

HH: Norman Spinrad isn't here, so I'll tell his story. Star Trek started out very good, there was no money involved... then it got popular, and they hired vice presidents, assistant directors, script editors... and Norman did a screenplay for one of the Star Treks. Under the contract they were allowed to alter a certain amount; they went away and the vice president worked on it, they did rewrites on it, changes - Norman gets it back and they said 'We've got a problem with the screenplay. He said, Well, what's that? 'We did a few rewrites.' He said, I can see that, what's the problem? 'Somewhere along the line we lost the ending!' [Laughter]. He said: Under my contract I can do a rewrite for $17,000. I'll take care of it, don't worry. They said thank you very much. Norman took the thing, looked at it, dropped it in the waste basket, went to his file and took the first screenplay and gave them that! [Laughter and applause].

[Talk then turned to other problems associated with films...]

HH: What we're really talking about here is who releases those films? [This in response to someone saying that Hollywood no longer controls the monopoly in film making... There are many independent companies making films]... It used to be four or five big studios with big morons, now its fifteen or twenty little ones with little moron-crooks.

It's a problem trying to get a film released rather than have it sit on the shelf. Do you know how many films go through all this crap and are finally made and sit on the shelf? 80%... something like that. My agent was talking to me about being commissioned to write screenplays, he said don't even think about it. For every script commissioned and paid for, one out of five hundred are made. For every screenplay written, not commissioned, one in 42,000 are made.

The talent is there... I took my wife to see Rambo, which had really fantastic camera-work in the opening scene. What cameramen can do now, you couldn't do that ten years ago. Actors are there. Writers are there as we all know! Directors are there... but between the talent and you the viewer is a bottleneck of the morons with access to the money.

[Final question from the audience: Can the panel think of one book successfully transferred to the screen?]

HH: Gorky Park.