When last we looked in on Roger Corman, he was launching his
own bargain-basement version of Star
Wars. George Lucas’s original space opera didn’t cost much by today’s
standards: its budget is estimated at $11 million. Still, Roger’s 1980 attempt
to jump on the intergalactic bandwagon, Battle
Beyond the Stars, cost less than half as much—and it showed. Special
effects were something new in Cormanland, and the results were not always
convincing. But although Battle Beyond
the Stars lacked the polish of a big studio production, it launched the
careers of a surprising number of people who became Hollywood stalwarts.
The screenwriter of Battle
Beyond the Stars, John Sayles, was not brand-new to the wonderful world of
Corman. A successful writer of short fiction, he had been discovered in the
pages of Esquire by my good friend
Frances Doel, when Roger was looking for someone who could be converted into a
low-cost screenwriter. Sayles’ first Corman flick was Piranha, Roger’s 1978 attempt to ride on the coattails (or perhaps
the fishtails) of Jaws. He also wrote
a New World gangster opus, The Lady in
Red, and then put his earnings—as well as his growing understanding of
cinema—to work in a small film of his own, Return
of the Secaucus Seven. Sayles was the man responsible for finding a way to
set The Magnificent Seven in space,
on a Roger Corman budget. He would go on to become a well-paid Hollywood script
doctor, as well as an indie filmmaking legend.
The late James Horner (whom we sadly lost this year in an
airplane crash) was not new to Corman’s New World Pictures either. He had composed
the score for The Lady in Red, as
well as for a particularly schlocky Corman fish-tale, Humanoids from the Deep. Horner’s work on Battle Beyond the Stars so impressed Roger that he gave it his
highest accolade: over the next thirty years, Cormanites continually borrowed from
it to score other Corman movies. But Horner became much better known for Titanic.
For two other Corman protégés, Battle Beyond the Stars was truly life-changing. Gale Anne Hurd,
who had been one of Roger’s ace office assistants but wanted to move into
production, served as assistant production manager on the film. She found
working in Roger’s ramshackle Venice studio unforgettable. As she told me,
“Half the time it would be raining and the roof leaked, and there’d be four
inches of water on the ground, and people were using power tools while standing
in the water. Thank God OSHA never came by, and thank God nobody died.”
With work going on nearly ‘round the clock, death sometimes
seemed a distinct possibility. One day Hurd was going over costs and schedules
with James Cameron, the film’s new art director, when they heard a piercing
scream. It seems a crew member kneeling on the floor had stuck a matte knife in
his pocket, its blade protruding. A second man had tried to step over him, but
the unseen blade caught his leg, severing his femoral artery. Blood spurted
dramatically; he was convinced he was going to die. Hurd told me, “Jim had the
presence of mind to take his shirt off, make a tourniquet, tie it, and we both
drove him to the hospital.” Within hours, the wounded man was back on the set.
Cameron’s heroics obviously made an impression on Hurd. They eventually
married, and collaborated on such films as The
Terminator, which elevated them both into Hollywood royalty.
But who directed Battle
Beyond the Stars? Well, that’s another story.
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