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A Life In Movies: David Morrell · All The Right Movies

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All the rent movies. Hi everyone, welcome to A Life
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in Movies, the interview show from All the Right Movies.
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My name is Luke. On the show, we talk to people
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in the industry about their career in movies.
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Today we're talking to an esteemed author of over 30 novel
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short stories and comics, including the creation of pop
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culture icon John Rambo. It's an honour to welcome David
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Morel to A Life in Movies. Thanks for coming on the shore,
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David, it's an absolute pleasure.
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How are you doing? I am doing well, thank you.
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Great. You're in Santa Fe right now, is
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that right? Yes, the Santa Fe, NM.
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A lot of movies are made here. People who are not familiar with
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northern New Mexico imagine it as being something like Phoenix
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or Tucson, which is a low desert environment, lots of cactus and
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very barren. But Santa Fe is more a ski area.
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I'm surrounded by mountains on in every direction.
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People who come here expecting something else are quite
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surprised in the variation of the landscape means that they
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can shoot a lot of scenes for different locales in a movie as
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if they've gone all over the place.
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But in fact, they're still in Santa Fe, right?
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It's kind of fun to see all the signs around town saying, you
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know, this, this is shooting here and that's shooting there.
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And John Wayne's The Cowboys was filmed here.
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And even before that, Glenn Ford's Cowboy was filmed here.
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And it's it's fun to see how the community grew up around those
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sites. So yeah, there's a distinctive
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rock formation in the Glenn Ford movie that's still here.
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But in those days it was there was nothing.
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And now a big casino is next to it, so.
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But you're from Canada originally as well, David.
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So when when did you make the move?
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I, I was born and raised in Southern Ontario in a twin city
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called Kitchener Waterloo, which at that time was perhaps 60,000
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people. And I think of it as a small
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town. I went to grade school and high
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school there and I there is a university, the University of
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Waterloo, which has AI was, I was raised a Roman Catholic.
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I don't practice, but I was raised in the religion and Saint
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Jerome's College, now a university was affiliated there.
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So I I went to school there and I had ambitions to study and
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teach American literature. Now, this is kind of crazy
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because there I am in Canada talking about American
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literature, and what we have to understand is Canada in 1966,
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when I was moving to the United States, Canada didn't have much
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of an identity in in some ways. They did think of themselves as
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being an adjunct to the United States.
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And in 1967, Canada celebrated its 100th anniversary and there
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was a huge Expo, they called it Exposition in Montreal, in which
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the celebration was so big and so many different aspects of
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Canadian history were involved that thereafter Canada became
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very Canadian conscious. So the joke is I went to the
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United States and 66, I got a master's and APHD there at Penn
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State, and then I applied. This is a joke.
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I applied to teach back to Canadian universities to teach
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American literature, and they wondered what planet I was on
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that I would actually think I could get a job doing that.
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So by process of elimination, I remained in the United States
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and was hired by the University of Iowa.
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So I think it's kind of interesting in terms of the way
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Canada and the United States are now perceiving each other.
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And anyhow, just to finish the story, I had ambitions to be a
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writer simultaneously. And and so at Penn State, I met
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a professional writer named Philip Class William 10, and he
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trained me. And basically, if I hadn't gone
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to the United States, I never would have had that opportunity
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and my life would have been different.
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Wow, Sliding doors moment. And so you've you've written
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across multiple genres in that time, thriller, horror, action.
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Was that a conscious decision to kind of diversify the genres, or
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did it just happen naturally based on what you were
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interested in? These days, editors and agents
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want you to brand yourself immediately.
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If you write, let us say, medical thrillers, you're
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expected to continue writing medical thrillers.
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And, and the consequence is there are exceptions, but the
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consequence is that for many authors who stay in the same
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area, their careers last approximately more or less 20
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years because the their readers get tired of what they do and
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they get tired of what they do. And it wasn't an intention of
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mine. My agent thought, you know,
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what's wrong with you? Why do you, you know, do I have
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attention deficit disorder that I kept switching around.
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But the frame of the career was that in the 70s I was writing
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outdoor action. In the 80s I was writing
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espionage. And then each decade had
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something different. And and in the in the 2010 era,
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I was writing Victorian mystery thrillers.
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So figure coming from Rambo and outdoor action to do Victorian
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mystery thrillers and I'll I'll add those books that in 185455
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London were the books that I most enjoyed writing.
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Really. So that was more recent, but at
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the start of your career you were balancing an academic life
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with your writing as well. How did you do that?
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I had to get the most out of both.
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I had an idea that there was a way to combine the serious
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literature that I've been reading and studying with a
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popular mode of writing. And to me, because thrillers are
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so popular and reach so many people that I thought, OK, I can
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use all of the things I'd learned, but hide them in my
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novels. And, and the nice is one of the
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nice things that people say to me is they come back and perhaps
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reread a book again or even again, and they'll say it's a
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different book. Because the plot, once I got
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used to the plot, all this other stuff you had in there rose to
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the surface. I would compare this to the jazz
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pianist Oscar Peterson. And I don't know if anybody
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talks about Oscar anymore, but at one time he was the guy.
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Oscar was Canadian. And I saw him perform in jazz
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clubs in Toronto, which was near Kitchener Waterloo.
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And I remember watching him and, and then remembering also that
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he had started as a classical pianist.
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He had he was trained in Beethoven and and the other
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great, great composers. And I asked him, I had the
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opportunity once he he used to walk out after his sets and just
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introduce himself to members of the audience.
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I mean really, really cool. And I remember saying, you know,
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which do you like better? And and he said, well, I like
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them both, but one gave me the foundation for the other.
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And I, and without comparing myself to a great like Oscar
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Peterson, I felt that what I was writing in in my novels was a
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classically trained jazz person that, that I knew why I would, I
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never have any doubts why I'm doing what I'm doing in a story.
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And I know the effect. And then of course, there's that
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spontaneous whatever that, you know, that's inspiration.
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But that that for me the two worked very well together.
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And do you feel as though you wouldn't have been able to have
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that career as a writer if you didn't have the foundation that
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you had as a lecturer? Yes, right.
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I wouldn't have come in contact. For example, Joseph Campbell
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wrote a book called the hero with 1000 faces.
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Campbell it, it, it was a union who studied origin stories in
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various parts of the world and noted how often that those
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stories, which are extremely popular ancient stories in these
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various cultures with the same story.
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And so I mean different ways of approaching with the same story.
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And he had a theory that we were hardwired to admire certain
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stories over others. And it's hard to, it's hard to
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write a bad story about a cave, about a bridge, about a river,
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about a forest, about a mountain, about the great
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archetypal objects and, and people who are on the voyage to
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get over the obstacles there and then.
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And if you look at first blood, the big cave scene, you know,
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the, the mountains and, and it's not like I was doing it
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automatically, but can't, I never would have read.
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I never would have known about Joseph Campbell, who also
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inspired the Star Wars movies. George Lucas read that hero with
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1000 faces and then said, I know what to do in in Star Wars.
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It's been, it's been, it's a source, a book for a lot of
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writers who who realize, and you don't do A1 for one, but you
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realize what, that you're tapping into certain patterns
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and fascinations that everybody has.
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I never would have written First Blood if I hadn't read
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Campbell's The Hero with 1000 Faces.
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So an incredible basis for your for the for the rest of your
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career, I suppose. Absolutely.
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Yeah. I never forgot it.
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So talking about First Blood, you've created a load of iconic
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characters in your literature, but I suppose the most enduring
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is Rambo. Did you have any sense when
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writing First Blood that you were creating something that
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would have such a a cultural stay in power?
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I did not. And any writer who has had a
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success and says, oh, I planned it all along, don't believe
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them. And I'm sure Rambo is kindly
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been compared of novels into movies and then world
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consciousness for his blood has been compared to works by Sir
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Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes or or Edgar Rice
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Burroughs Tarzan or or Ian Fleming's James Bond.
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And it you know, it's it's flattering to be included.
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In fact, it is the case Rambo 50 years later is still being
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discussed as if it's it's a current phenomenon.
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And and again, I take that back to the to the Joseph Campbell
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influence in his theories. I worked on the novel for three
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years while I was in Graduate School.
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I'm, you know, trying to get my degree and I was married, still
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am same person and but we had a little little girl, a daughter.
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And I'm thinking, why are you screwing around on this?
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You should hurry through your through and get your degree,
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teach and support your family. But this thing kept nagging at
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me and nagging at me and I worked on it for three years.
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What made the difference for me was a movie by Sam Peckinpah
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called The Wild Bunch. The Wild Bunch changed the
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history of Western movies. Yeah.
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There had never been that degree of realism, particularly about
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violence in a Western. I was halfway through the novel
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when I saw The Wild Bunch. And I said, ah, now I know what
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I'm doing. And when I showed it to my
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agent, he said he wasn't sure he could sell it, that he thought
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probably it could be like a quick paperback.
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And he said, but I'll do what I can.
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And there was a hardback publisher at the time called M
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Evans and Company, and they had done a lot of still influential
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non fiction books, open marriage, body language and they
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were getting into fiction. My agent, his name was Henry
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Morrison, sold it six weeks. He thought it was going to be a
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long slog and we were all shocked.
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He sold it six weeks after he submitted it to to various
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publishers and and very quickly it it had a sale to a book club
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and then there was a sale to the movies before the the book was
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published. And I mean, it was all very
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bewildering, but no one could have predicted it.
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A lot of it had to do, I think with right time, right place.
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And it was in 1971 when this was happening.
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The book came out in 72. The Vietnam War was at at a
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moment when people were saying, what is this?
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How did we get in this? And there were enough returning
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veterans who were having the kinds of troubles that Rambo
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had. And I have been fascinated.
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This is my generation. There was a cowboy actor named
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Audi Murphy AUD i.e. And Audi was America's most
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decorated soldier of World War 2.
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And the citation for his Medal of Honor makes anything Rambo
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did in the movie seem playful. This was, and he was like 1819
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years old, a little guy. And it's scary what he what he
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did. And when he came back to
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civilian life, he wanted, he he wrote a book called the
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Hellenbach. Whether he wrote it or had help
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doesn't matter, called the Hellenbach.
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And then he had he plans for another book, which would be
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about the difficulty of adjusting to peacetime.
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And he had what we call PTSD, slept with a gun under his
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pillow, woke up from nightmares shooting and things like that.
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And so he was my model for the character.
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And you know, so the a lot of it was in the air suddenly in 1971
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and 72. Looking back and not having
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experience of that time, it seemed to me quite prescient
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that you wrote that based on returning vets PTSD, as you
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said, because that only seemed to become apparent in in popular
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culture after the war. But you wrote this as the war
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was ongoing. Actually, I think we can we can
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date it more. I mean, the concept was was
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there after the Vietnam War. But when Rambo First Blood Part
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2 appeared as a movie in the summer of 1985, I was on several
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radio and television shows and what have you promoting the
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film. And I was on a panel with other
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people and some of them were vets for the OR the, the
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surviving relatives of veterans from from Vietnam.
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And they began talking about PTSDI Have a feeling there's no
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way to document this, but I have of the the sense that post
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traumatic stress disorder became a term in our culture that
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summer as of 85 and that it it's because of the Rambo movies.
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It persisted. Again, you can't prove any of
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this, but I just anecdotally, I'm convinced this is the case,
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just as I had the sense that when the Vietnam Veterans
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returned from Vietnam, they were treated with contempt.
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Many of them at least they they were literally spat on at at
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airports and things like that. It was, it was disgraceful.
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And one thing I think the Rambo movies of the 1980s did was to
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make people able to distinguish between politicians.
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There's a line in the fourth movie that never got credit but
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really, really deserves to be repeated.
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Wars, old men start them, young men fight them, nobody wins.
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And that was sort of the sense that I think people acquired in
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the 1980s and that persisted, so that the movies had a big
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cultural significance, I think. As I've mentioned to you off the
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mics, we have covered the making of First Blood on a podcast.
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If my memory serves me right it went through quite a time to get
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to screen once you would sold the rights so to go through
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various different guises before it got to where it was with
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Sylvester Stallone. It was yes.
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And and I maybe later we'll talk about it, but there's a a new
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book by Nat Segal off called The Rambo Report, and he goes into
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this. The rights were purchased by
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Columbia Pictures in 1972 as the book was being published.
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And Richard Brooks was assigned to write and direct it.
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And whatever happened there, Columbia Pictures sold the
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property after a year to Warner Brothers.
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And there I heard that Martin Ritt was going to direct it with
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Paul Newman. Britt and Newman had worked
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together. I can't prove any of this.
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However, that package worked. There was definitely a package
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with Steve McQueen as Rambo and Sydney Pollack directing.
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And, and these are two of my my guys, right?
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And I admire McQueen as a movie actor.
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In fact, Richard Creno once said to me that in his long career
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and he'd been a child actor and, and, you know, and then, you
18:05
know, an adult. And he said the two guys he
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worked with, he did. We're not talking about female
18:10
actors. Now, the two guys he worked with
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who knew best what they were doing in front of a camera,
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where Steve McQueen and Sylvester Stallone are largely
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because of their eyes and knowing what to do with props
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and less is more kind of thing. But McQueen was in his 40s.
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He wanted to do the motorcycle stuff, but he was in his 40s.
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And before they started shooting, they realized there
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were no 40 year old Vietnam Veterans in 1975 when this
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picture would have been shot. That was a young person's war.
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They were 18/19/20 years old. So it never happened.
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And then they were, it's, it's a saga really as to the number of
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people who were associated with it, both as director and as
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actor and eventually two film distributors who'd been working
18:58
in the Orient. I I got to know them well, Andy
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Vanya and Mario Kasahar. They wanted to get in the movie
19:06
making business and they had heard about First Blood, who by
19:10
then had 26 scripts and had been through three studios or
19:14
something. And they were Caraco pitches.
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Is that right? Yes, they owned a company called
19:19
Caraco. It's it's hard.
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I never know. I knew these guys all the for
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years. I never knew it was Caraco or
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Caraco. I always say.
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Caraco, it's the best guess for me.
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And, and they went to Ted Kotcheff.
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They had an understanding with Ted, who worked on a version of
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First Blood at Warner Brothers. And Ted had a script that he
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liked that had been done by by two writers there, William
19:43
Sakheim. And oh, darn, I'm going to
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forget the other person. Forgive me.
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That's correct. Thank you so much.
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Because it's so important to give these people credit.
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Absolutely. And and anyhow, they Ted said
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this what I want to do. And they said, cool.
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And then the question was who to get.
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Now, Sly had never been in a hit movie other than Rocky.
20:05
He'd been in movies. They knew overseas distribution
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and they knew that Sly was popular overseas.
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And and they said we can't, we can make this work.
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And and and slide for years. I don't know if he still says
20:18
it, but for years he would say that first blood was the most
20:22
important picture he made because he proved he could have
20:24
a hit apart from Rocky. Yeah, he had a hand in doing
20:29
rewrites on the screenplay as well, if if my memory serves me
20:32
rights. That that's correct.
20:35
My understanding is I told him I cannot relate to as a movie
20:40
star, but I can relate to you as a writer, as a writer.
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So whenever we talk, we talk on that level.
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He likes to to find ways to take a project and internalize it
20:52
somehow make it parallel to aspects of his life.
20:57
And however he saw this, I don't know, but I can tell you that
21:01
the knife, for example, getting back to the Steve McQueen, you
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know, Richard Chronic, that thing, the knife did not exist
21:09
in any previous versions or in my novel.
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And this was what Sly's knows. He has to do stuff in front of
21:16
the camera. And and so he said, I want to do
21:19
the knife. And he had a friend named Jimmy
21:21
Lyle who made knives and he said, Jimmy, you know, make me a
21:24
knife for this movie. So the the contributions and
21:28
also it was Sly's idea to have him not talk so much and which
21:31
turned out to be an advantage because they didn't need Andy
21:35
and Mario didn't need to spend a lot of money on dubbing in
21:39
foreign languages. And with all the mistakes that
21:43
occur. Anyhow, yes, I made a tremendous
21:45
contribution to the script. And there are quite a few
21:49
changes or differences from your novel to have it translated on
21:53
screen. The ending was different.
21:55
Rambo died in your book. Sheriff Teasel.
21:58
He's more of a sympathetic character in your book, I
22:00
believe. So how do you feel about the
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changes that were made from your vision for for this story to how
22:07
we came across on screen? I'm a member of the Writers
22:10
Guild and have been since 1979. The Writers Guild in the United
22:13
States is the Screenwriters and Television Writers Organization,
22:17
and I worked on many, many, many movies.
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And then when the dust settled, what my contribution is, either
22:26
either the picture didn't get made, which is often the case,
22:29
or else for whatever reason, I didn't get the credit.
22:32
But I have a lot of experience in the movie business.
22:36
What matters is what's on the screen.
22:38
By definition, a movie is an interpretation of a novel.
22:42
You can be slavish to the novel, which might or may not be a good
22:45
novel, but it might be a dead movie.
22:48
You know, The question is what comes alive on the screen.
22:51
So I've worked with a lot of writers and and, and producers
22:56
and, and what matters isn't the changes, it's whether they work.
23:00
And the character in my novel is furious at himself, at the war
23:04
and at his country for what war thought about him, about
23:08
himself. That's kind of negative.
23:11
They a lot of the reason the picture didn't get made was they
23:13
went with that interpretation and Rambo just was not on the
23:17
screen appealing. So what Sly was looking at is
23:21
say, how do we make this guy more acceptable given how Sly
23:26
wanted to do it? So the big scene, which is not
23:29
in the novel is when Rambo goes to this house next to a lake and
23:36
there's a woman hanging out laundry.
23:38
And Sly says, I'm here, you know, I'm I'm here to see my
23:41
friend. And the woman says, well, he
23:43
died from Agent Orange. And then and then Rambo, like he
23:48
doesn't really, but internally he collapses.
23:51
Well, that's a significant change.
23:54
Now, I'm not saying it's better or worse than my book, because
23:58
my book stands on its own for the character.
24:01
I was a very angry man And and in some ways people thought the
24:06
the police chief was the main character of the novel.
24:10
And as you say, there's a lot of sympathy for the police chief.
24:14
So once they did that, once they made him like sly with those
24:19
sympathetic eyes of the deer almost.
24:22
He's so he feels so sorry for him very much.
24:25
You can't kill him. So, so they and they did film
24:30
and a part of the ending where he did die, but audiences really
24:34
hated it. And, and Ted Kotcheff had filmed
24:37
an alternate ending, and that was the one they used.
24:41
You know, I sometimes say the novel and the and the movie are
24:44
in different train tracks, The, the, the, the, the, the train,
24:47
but they're on different train tracks.
24:49
But it works, and that's what matters.
24:52
Just to remember in a quote and I can paraphrase it, I can't say
24:55
it word for word from a novelist.
24:56
He's called Irvin Welsh. He's a Scottish novelist.
24:59
He wrote Trainspotting. Don't know if you if you're
25:01
aware, but he said the benefit of having your material adapted
25:05
for the big screen is either if it's great, you can say that you
25:09
can take the credit because it was, it was your ID in the 1st
25:11
place. Or if it's a, if it's a Turkey,
25:14
you can say, well, it's not my novel.
25:15
I didn't have anything to do with it.
25:17
Yeah, well, I didn't. Fortunately, I didn't have to do
25:20
that. And I have.
25:21
I have talked. I've introduced the movie in
25:24
theaters, written very favorably about it in in many
25:27
circumstances, And I mean it. It's everything about it is
25:30
good. Now.
25:31
Andy and Mario got the talent to do things and.
25:34
And if nothing else, Jerry Goldsmith's score, you know,
25:38
makes in a way makes the movie. Yeah.
25:41
That movies are collaboration. So the success of First Blood
25:45
obviously inevitably led to a sequel, David, but this time
25:49
there was no source novel. So how involved in you were the
25:52
creative process of Ramble First Blood Part 2?
25:55
And not a whole lot. The now in the first movie, Andy
25:59
Vanya, who was really smart, producers never do this, the
26:02
novelist said. In the area in the United
26:04
States, Kentucky, he said, we're planning to shoot this in Canada
26:09
for money reasons, for financial reasons that that, that we can
26:13
get a good deal up there and say that it's the Pacific Northwest
26:16
in the United States. And is there a reason why this
26:19
story won't work if we translate it to the Pacific Northwest?
26:23
Now that's a smart man. You know, before they put all
26:27
the money in it. Are we dealing with a, a serious
26:30
problem? I said, no, there's no reason at
26:32
all. I mean, you might lose a little
26:34
local color, you know, big deal. And so for the second movie,
26:39
it's a fascinating process. I by contract and the only
26:44
person who can write novels about Rambo.
26:47
And in fact, I'm having an issue with somebody who's been writing
26:51
fan novels and says that I've, I've told him, yeah, it's fine,
26:55
go ahead and do it. And I've told him, no, don't do
26:57
it, don't do it. But he anyhow, another story.
27:00
And, and those days there were things called novelizations,
27:05
paperback versions of the shooting script of the movie.
27:11
Basically, these are photocopies.
27:13
I called it photocopying. I mean, you describe some stuff.
27:17
You said what the characters were thinking.
27:19
It said a little bit about their emotions, but you couldn't.
27:23
That was the story. You could not change that.
27:26
And I said, I, this isn't for me that Andy called me and he said
27:30
we'd like to do a novelization for the movie.
27:34
In those days, there were many, many big bookstores in American
27:37
malls. And so the books would be in the
27:41
windows if there were enough of them.
27:44
And people, it's free advertising.
27:46
And they might even, you know, have some success with the book.
27:49
And so they really wanted this to happen.
27:52
And I said, they sent me the script and the script, Rambo
27:56
jumps up and shoots this guy. Rambo jumps up and shoots the
28:00
other guy. Those were the stage directions
28:03
and, and I said, Andy, I, I cannot do anything with this.
28:07
I mean, rather it's just so thin.
28:09
I said, do you have anything else?
28:11
And he said offhandedly, well, there's the James Cameron script
28:19
and now this. This was before Titanic and
28:23
Terminator 2 and, and the, and the rest of it.
28:27
I had seen the first Terminator, yes.
28:30
And I knew that he'd worked for Roger Corman making, you know,
28:34
piranha and all that. And, and I immediately I was
28:37
interested and I said, can you send me that script which they
28:41
owned? So he sent me the script.
28:44
Oh my God, it was wonderful. Oh really?
28:46
God, Oh, it began with Troutman getting out of a military
28:51
vehicle and going into a mental institution.
28:54
And he goes through, he passes various rooms where people are
28:58
staring at screens or they're, or they're knitting or, and he
29:03
goes downstairs. They, we get on into the
29:05
dungeon, as it were, And he goes along this bleak hallway and
29:08
there's a guy with a gun outside this barred door.
29:12
I just love it. And it, and it, it's dark behind
29:15
the barred, the barred window, right.
29:17
And Chapman walks up to him and the guard says he smashed the
29:20
light again. He thinks he's the fucking
29:22
Prince of Darkness. Well, I fell in love, so.
29:29
So I went back. There were problems.
29:31
There was a sidekick who would have been played by John
29:33
Travolta probably and. I read that and.
29:37
There were it was not good. So you could see why Sly had
29:42
rewritten the Cameron script to get rid of this.
29:45
And also, as Andy said, we can't have Rambo in an insane asylum.
29:51
You know, the whole idea is that he's supposed to.
29:53
We had this problem with the first movie.
29:55
He's not. Yeah, yeah.
29:56
So, so he couldn't use it, but we did use elements.
29:58
So I said, all right, this is what's going to happen.
30:01
I'm going to use 1/3 camera and I'm going to use 1/3 shooting
30:04
script. And I'm going to use and Cameron
30:06
does get Co credit on the film and I'm going to use 1/3 me
30:11
because neither script here's Rambo going back to the POW camp
30:15
from which he escaped. And there's no psychological
30:18
reaction. You know, he might as well be
30:20
going to Disneyland. So so I said no, no, we've got
30:24
to I have to make a big deal about this.
30:26
Yes. And also the relationship
30:28
between him and the Vietnam woman Co where there's a hint of
30:32
a possible romance, even kisses her.
30:35
And I thought, you know, many returned Vietnam Veterans with
30:40
PTSD were not capable of sexual relations.
30:44
And, and I mean, and that was something to explore.
30:47
So what would be his? How close would he allow him to
30:51
get to somebody? So I wanted to explore that sort
30:54
of thing. And so the whole thing came
30:56
together. And it's generally a recognized
30:59
as a, one of the novelizations that sort of advanced what a
31:04
novelization could be. There are others by other
31:06
authors, but but this, this one has a place.
31:09
And the big trick, of course, was that Rambo dies at the end
31:13
of my novel. So how, how am I writing about
31:15
him being alive in the second one?
31:18
And there's a friend of mine, Max Allen Collins, who had who's
31:22
associated with the Dick Tracy. And he did, he did a lot of the
31:26
Dick Tracy cartoon in, in newspapers and also the graphic
31:31
novel that became a wonderful movie with Paul Newman called
31:34
The Road to Perdition. And, and, and at that time I was
31:38
living in Iowa and, and he lived there too.
31:41
And I told him my problem. And he said, well, it's not a
31:43
problem at all. All you do is put a note at the
31:46
beginning that says, in my novel First Blood, Rambo dies.
31:50
In the movies, he lives. So I thought, all right, that's
31:55
as good as anything. And nobody's ever, very few
31:58
people have ever complained. They understand, you know, that
32:01
this again, talking about our earlier remarks about different
32:04
train tracks. They understand that the novel
32:07
and these and the novelizations are are different train tracks,
32:10
too. Yeah.
32:11
It's very weird, huh? I mean that that all of this is
32:14
is I sometimes say I'm Rambo's father because he grew up and I
32:18
have no control over the guy. So, so in that regard, how did
32:22
you feel about the direction that the character took from the
32:27
sequel onwards? You said in the script it says
32:30
Rambo stands up and shoots that guy and shoots that guy.
32:34
It it is a different approach to what First Blood was.
32:37
So how did you feel? The direction, it's very
32:40
different. We could say that the first
32:43
movie is an anti hero and the second one he's a superhero and
32:47
and but again, you know, the proof is does it work?
32:51
And Rambo First Blood Part 2 is an immensely entertaining film
32:55
for what it is. It's a combination of like
32:59
Saturday afternoon serials where at the end of every 15 minutes,
33:04
and you'd have to come back next week to see what happened.
33:07
You know, the hero falls off a Cliff or he gets stomped by
33:10
horses or something. And, and I, I compared it to a
33:13
Western that, that instead of having the fight on the
33:16
Stagecoach, you have the fight inside the helicopter.
33:20
And I, I, I, I called it a Rambo of the jungle was my, was my, my
33:25
gag line for it, just as the third one was my Rambo of Arabia
33:29
was, was my gag line for that. And it's, it's, it's very
33:33
entertaining. I mean parts of it are are
33:35
ludicrous. Rambo is in a helicopter that
33:38
he's pretending is in trouble and is, is hovering over this
33:42
Creek and this this huge gunship comes to shoot him down.
33:46
And the last minute Rambo raises a anti tank rocket and and
33:51
shoots it through the canopy and blows the helicopter apart.
33:55
And the only problem is the back blast from the rocket would have
33:59
killed all the prisoners of war he just rescued that were in the
34:03
back of his helicopter. And people in the military
34:05
laughed and laughed and laughed. They thought that was so funny.
34:08
But what difference did it make 'cause it's not a real, you
34:11
know, we're talking about a cartoon here.
34:13
It's almost like a live cartoon. And on that level, it's a
34:17
scream. I showed it to my my grandkids.
34:20
I gradually introduced them to the idea that I created Rambo.
34:23
And finally I thought one day, OK, let's watch Rambo 2.
34:26
And they thought it was hilarious.
34:28
They, you know, they really got it that it was, that it was
34:31
funny as opposed to the first one being very serious.
34:34
Yeah, very much. And, and it became this huge
34:37
phenomenon in 1985, the box office receipts, the character
34:42
just exploded and became part of the of the zeitgeist.
34:46
Yes. And then by the time 1988 comes
34:50
around, there's a Rambo 3 and you were on set for for the film
34:54
and of that, is that right, David?
34:56
No, I was on the set in two places.
34:58
I was on the set in Israel near a lot for a week and I was on
35:03
the set in Yuma, AZ. That movie wound up having an
35:08
out of control budget for reasons largely to do with
35:11
filming overseas. And they they shot the climax in
35:15
Yuma. So I went there for I think I
35:18
was there for three days. I saw a lot of it, although
35:22
watching a movie being made is a tedious process.
35:25
It's fun for a day, but after that it's you know that they're
35:28
working and it's set up after setup.
35:31
And my recollection of the Rambo three shoot was a particularly
35:35
in Yuma. So I was doing a big act, the
35:38
big action scene at the end with all the horsemen and, and the,
35:43
the Soviet tanks and all that. And he's an expert rider.
35:49
He's a polo, polo rider. And, and one of the things
35:52
takeaways was I saw him on horseback for hours.
35:56
Anybody who's a rider knows the amount of physical energy that's
36:00
required to be and his posture, he is, he looks like a writer.
36:06
He is a writer. You need that straight back.
36:08
And, and if you're not used to it, it's achingly hard.
36:13
And I, I just was so impressed by him all day.
36:16
And at one point the script calls for him to be, to be
36:20
charging with a, a Molotov cocktail and flames on the, the
36:25
bottle filled with flammable fluid and a Wick that's burning.
36:28
And, and when as he, as he rode holding up and it was, the
36:32
flames were coming back. And so I know that it burned his
36:36
arm. And then later he was required
36:38
to fall off a horse and, you know, return fire for whatever.
36:43
I forget the specifics of the scene.
36:45
And of course you have to do that again and again and again.
36:48
And I remember thinking, and I wasn't far from, I was probably
36:51
40 feet away from behind the camera and I remember thinking,
36:55
God, that blood is really, that looks realistic.
36:58
But well, there was a reason for it because every time he fell
37:01
off the horse, he was, he was injuring himself.
37:05
That was real blood. That was so it was, it was
37:10
interesting to to he. He is.
37:12
He's a hard worker. I mean, that comes across only
37:16
in his performances. You can see no matter what film
37:18
he's in, you can see that he gives it his all.
37:20
Oh yeah. Full Blooded and you rounded off
37:23
the original trilogy of Rambo by writing the novelization for
37:27
Rebel 3 as well. A nice full circle moment.
37:30
Did you enjoy diving back into the character?
37:33
Yeah, by then I knew what what was involved and, and in that
37:37
case, and this is again, because you know, you're you're
37:40
interested in movies, how movies, some movies get made.
37:44
So the first script I received was excellent.
37:48
It was, I thought there's not much more to be done here.
37:51
It was big. That's why I referred earlier to
37:54
Rambo of Arabia. It had Rambo, I mean, as he
37:58
entered the country with his Afghan guide, there was a huge
38:03
sandstorm. So there was this big scene
38:05
involving and he and the guide, you know, buried themselves and
38:09
the horses. And then after that there were
38:12
other things that went on and the plot had war orphans who
38:17
were being cared for by a 40 ish European female doctor.
38:22
I believe she was Dutch. I'd have to go back and look at
38:24
the sources. There wasn't any hint of any
38:27
romance. This was just two professionals.
38:30
I like the film a lot. It's gorgeous looking.
38:33
It's so well made. But if you look at the
38:35
structure, it's flawed. Troutman is kidnapped.
38:39
Rambo tries to to rescue Troutman and fails.
38:42
Rambo tries to rescue Troutman and succeeds.
38:46
Those are the three acts. Well the the original script
38:50
Rambo rescued him in the second act, and the third act was
38:55
Troutman and Rambo and the war orphans and the Dutch doctor
39:01
going over a mountain range pursued by the Soviets.
39:05
Oh, that would. Be it was wonderful.
39:08
It was wonderful. And little by little these
39:12
things got dropped. The war orphans disappeared, The
39:15
Dutch doctor that disappeared because they had, they had
39:19
serious budget problems of the first director hadn't worked out
39:22
and the, and the, they thought they were getting usable film
39:27
production studios. And it turned out not to be the
39:29
case. And it, it, there was a lot,
39:31
there was just a lot of things that went wrong.
39:33
So for purely practical reasons, they had to cut back.
39:37
So I began getting every week a new script.
39:42
I'd, I'd started writing the novelization, then I'd get a new
39:44
script. But wait a minute.
39:45
Where'd this character go? Then another, Oh my God, the
39:48
orphans are gone. Oh my God, the doctor's gone.
39:50
Oh my God. And then finally I, I had about
39:53
12 of these. And finally I phoned Andy and I
39:55
said, I can't write this. You're changing it.
39:58
I, I mean, I three months from now I'm supposed to deliver this
40:01
novel. It's impossible.
40:03
I said, so are you, will you allow me to take the first
40:08
script, the one I admire and use that as the model?
40:12
And he said, we don't have a choice if we're going to have
40:14
the book in production so that it comes out at the same time
40:18
in, in for advertising for the movie.
40:20
So. And then because I had more
40:22
freedom, I thought, you know, one could think of Afghanistan
40:26
is the Soviet, the USSR still existed as the Soviet version of
40:31
their Vietnam. So I thought, OK, I'm I'm going
40:35
to explore that. And so the book is half shooting
40:39
script and half what I had initially been given.
40:42
Plus, you know what I added? So these are very experimental
40:46
books in terms of what a novel can do in order to to amplify,
40:51
let us say, the the movie. A little anecdote of my own and
40:55
not as exciting as as yours of course David, but I went on a
40:58
family holiday in the late 80s. My brother bought your Rambo 3
41:02
novel at the airport on the way, and I can vividly remember
41:05
reading this when when I was away with my family.
41:08
And never in a million years could I have thought that I'd be
41:11
speaking to the author of that book.
41:12
Many, many. Years oh, you're very kind,
41:14
which shows you how everything comes around and you know the.
41:17
Book. The couple of years ago, the
41:19
books are still alive. A couple of years ago, special
41:22
editions were published with a whole lot of textures.
41:25
And as we speak there's a company called Vinegar Syndrome,
41:29
which is a home video distribution company, very high
41:34
respected. They do.
41:35
They do really great disks and they now have a publishing
41:39
division. And so a few weeks ago, new
41:42
paperbacks of my novelizations for Rambo First Blood Part 2 and
41:47
Rambo Three were released with gorgeous new covers.
41:50
And I wrote introductions for them.
41:52
And, and, you know, so it's funny, you know, who would have
41:55
predicted? I keep thinking about my, my
41:57
agent at the time saying I don't know if, if this can find
42:01
anything. And then what we wind up with
42:03
is, you know, all these years later, they're still alive.
42:06
But it's it's unreal. That's unbelievable.
42:08
And so are those in print now? Oh yeah, yeah, they're they.
42:11
Just they were just released. You go to vinegarsyndrome.com
42:15
and also they've bundled Rambo 2 and three together with I Can't
42:20
Stop Laughing with a vinegar syndrome headband so you can get
42:28
the whole. Package.
42:30
Now you've you've lived. Fantastic.
42:33
And you mentioned another book as well that is covering the the
42:38
whole series and you did the forward for?
42:40
That that was not Segaloff's book, The Rambo Report, five
42:44
films, three books, 1 legend. And it's a full version of some
42:49
of the stuff we've been talking about.
42:52
And all the different ways that, you know, that came together to
42:56
make the movies happen and the novelizations happen and, and
43:00
the merchandising, you know, the knives and, and the, the other
43:04
things that are associated with the, with the phenomenon.
43:07
There's even a Saturday morning cartoon with Rambo stalking the
43:14
animals in the forest. It's very strange.
43:17
And and and also a a film called Son of Rambo.
43:21
That and in Rambo is spelled RA MB OW and and it's two kids
43:26
making Rambo movies in their fantasy world because their home
43:29
life is terrible. Yes.
43:31
Really, it's a it's a wonderful film.
43:34
Yeah. It's really, really great.
43:35
And all because of your creation, David, an incredible
43:39
mark that you've created in the the cultural world.
43:42
Well, you're, you're very kind. And as we discussed, no one
43:45
could have predicted this. We do not worship at altars in
43:49
our house. Well, Sly and I once said we
43:52
were talking about something to do with Rambo and it'd been
43:54
something in the in newspapers or something.
43:56
And, and, and, and we both said we reacted as if Rambo was a
44:01
third party, that this was a cultural, it's like Tarzan or
44:05
James Bond and then said, well, wait a minute, that's us, that,
44:09
you know, this happened because we made this happen.
44:12
And so it, it's fun to be part of something like this that I
44:17
can appreciate from my professor's point of view that
44:19
I, I am, after all of my other life, a literature professor.
44:23
And I see this as I look at it as a cultural phenomenon and
44:27
I'm, I enjoy talking about it from that point of view.
44:31
And I, I could see one day that there might be a, a film course
44:36
that would, that would of course, not just be about the
44:39
Rambo movies and, and the novels, but it would be about
44:42
how movies are made and the decisions that are made.
44:44
And there are very few books such as Gnats that examine the
44:51
tales of how a movie comes about.
44:54
There are people who make these and decisions that are made and
44:58
obstacles that are over common. So I I as you can tell, I enjoy
45:02
talking about it. Absolutely, yeah.
45:05
And then it's been a thrill to have you on.
45:07
David, thank you so much for coming on the show, talking
45:09
about your amazing career, giving us a peek behind the
45:11
scenes. Our audience, I'm sure, will
45:13
love it. So thank you so much for that.
45:16
Thank you. A huge thanks to David Morel for
45:25
his time and sharing some amazing stories.
45:27
What a career. Be sure to check out that book
45:30
as well. The Rambo Report. 5 films, three
45:33
books, 1 Legend by Nat Segaloff. As for all the right movies, our
45:37
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45:45
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Thank you for tuning in everyone.
46:47
We hope you enjoyed the interview with David Morrell.
46:50
Come back next week for the big one, Amadeus.
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See you soon.