After Young Guns II, I was very popular with Morgan Creek. It grossed the same or maybe even a bit more than Young Guns, a rare feat amongst sequels, and was reviewed a lot better. They immediately offered me another picture at twice the fee. It was called Freejack and was a science fiction film based on Immortality Inc., a book by Robert Sheckley.
This looked pretty good to me. I had been a science fiction fan from way back. I had devoured the product of the late 1950s through to the 1970s that had poured onto the market at that time. Analog, Galaxy, If and many more Sci Fi magazines flooded the newsstands and second-hand book shops, and I was in the market for all of them. I read Isaac Asimov, AE van Vogt, Fredrik Pohl, Theodore Sturgeon, Ray Bradbury, Philip K Dick, Arthur C Clarke, Alfred Bester, John Wyndham, Robert A Heinlein and many others. Sheckley hadn’t been one of my favourites, but he wasn’t bad and Immortality Inc. was an interesting book.

Okay, now here was a guy from New Zealand who had already pulled off what might well have been regarded as close to impossible a few years earlier. He had made three films in a row, which were, in the New Zealand context, blockbuster hits. He had since travelled to Europe and worked with Helen Mirren and Max von Sydow, and then to Hollywood where he made a sequel to Young Guns with a bunch of young stars, which did as well as the original film. He is now being offered an even bigger project for twice the money and, although there are some difficulties apparent with this one, the guy can do anything. It is an age-old story: the story of a guy seduced by his own success. This guy has bought his own publicity. This means that he sees through a fog of unreality and ignores or distorts problems that he may not even see are approaching. He is convinced he has the talent to overcome any minor difficulties that are in the way.
Well, he doesn’t.

There were four main reasons for this. The first was that there were just too many of these so-called ‘minor’ difficulties. The second was that some of the so-called ‘minor’ difficulties turned out to be major difficulties. The third was that some of these difficulties were unforeseen. They were initially hidden from sight, but jumped out at you as you approached them. The fourth was probably the worst: this guy was just not as smart as he thought he was.
Anyway, back to the first person. The first problem I came across, even before negotiations began, was the script. Although the original story had interesting aspects, most of these had been purged from the script in an attempt to create a Schwarzenegger-type action script. Ever since the success of The Terminator, everyone in Hollywood wanted to make a Schwarzenegger-type action picture. Immortality Inc. was not such a beast. It had overtones and undertones, features usually lacking from Schwarzenegger-type action scripts. The original story suggested scientific discovery of proof of the existence of an afterlife had had a fundamental effect on society’s views on the sanctity of life. No sign of anything even remotely so philosophic had remained. The script had been written by Ron Shusett, who had done a similar job on Philip K Dick’s We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, turning it into Total Recall for an earlier Schwarzenegger film. On this occasion, a very complex storyline had been collapsed to banality with muscle-bulging subtlety. Now I was confronted by another example of such a ‘high-concept’ script.

I was never sure what ‘high-concept’ meant. It was a popular Hollywood expression at the time, which seemed to describe a script whose entire meaning could be expressed in one sentence. The shorter the sentence and the more monosyllabic the words, the higher the concept. Such a script was highly prized, and it was commonly held that this was the way to untold wealth through box-office returns. It may well be true. No one ever claimed that the movie business made sense. Part of the problem with Freejack was that no one could ever work out what this magic sentence was.
But, what the hell. If they wanted a Schwarzenegger-type film, I’d give them a Schwarzenegger-type film. It wasn’t the first time I had been asked, and it wouldn’t be the last. If only it were that simple. Schwarzenegger was not available, so they had signed Emilio Estevez to do the part. They had done this as a result of his extraordinary performance in Young Guns II, and indeed he was great in it. However, Emilio is not and will never be Arnold. That style of acting, or rather ‘non-acting’, is not part of Emilio’s repertoire. He can play the kid next door, or the psychopathic hoodlum, or the knock-about bloke around town, but not the relentless grunt that Arnold excels at. He’s not big enough for a start. There was little point in me drawing this to their attention; they had hired him already. If I wanted to do the picture, I would have to do it with Emilio.

I should have bailed out then and there.

Instead, I asked whether they would consider a rewrite, with a view to crafting a script that would suit Emilio better. In fact, it seemed to me that it would be wrong if this ex-racing car driver on the run in the future, which the story described, was a muscle-bound juggernaut. He should be a trim, fit and smart, fast-moving guy. Emilio could do that. They agreed and seemed to like the idea.

And so I signed the contract and started work with a new writer on the re-vamped Freejack. Now I was to learn about the true nature of Hollywood politics at that level. As mentioned earlier, Morgan Creek’s Robin Hood with Kevin Costner had been a big production, shot in Europe with a big budget. It had become a huge box-office success, and had made the management of that company, especially Jim Robertson, delirious with joy. In my opinion it also convinced him — although he had always suspected it — that he was a genius. Most of the top executives of the company seemed to share this view about Jim, and about themselves. They were worse than me! It was impossible for them to be wrong. It was all cigars and Champagne for lunch at Morgan Creek at that time.

The problems started when I submitted the first draft of the amended script. It was a significant rewrite, and, although they had agreed that we were changing the lead role away from the Schwarzenegger prototype, the changes being resisted most were the very ones that effected this change. It began to look as though a Schwarzenegger film was what they wanted, and they would try for one with or without Arnie. This tug-of-war was to continue without resolution for the duration. The main problem was that there were certain items in the original script that Morgan Creek had accepted as contractually inviolate when they signed the deal with the writer. These conditions were written into their contract for the script. I had never heard of such a thing happening before, and I had not been informed that any such conditions existed when I signed my contract. I believed that my signing was conditional to a rewrite. Also, the work I had done so far had convinced me that getting a good movie out of all this was going to prove a lot more difficult than I had at first envisaged. Perhaps this would be a blessing in disguise? I might be able to get out of the contract. When I suggested this to the company, they were adamant that I was incorrect: nowhere was it mentioned in my contract that it was conditional to a rewrite. It seemed strange to me that they would be prepared to force the contract on a reluctant director — it didn’t seem the best way to create a good product.

It seemed to me that what I had overlooked was the fact that they were geniuses. This was power politics. They could use their power to enforce anything they wanted. My opinion wasn’t worth that much. They were the guys who had made Robin Hood. They were always right. It didn’t really matter whether I was happy with my contract or not. If I had any sense, I would see the light and just do as I was told. I was being paid well enough, why should I worry?
Well, as it turned out, I didn’t have any sense. I went to my attorney and discussed the matter with him. He examined my case thoroughly. It was his opinion that I could win this. There was a great deal of precedent for contracts being voided because of ‘creative differences’, and clearly this could be seen in this light. However, he pointed out that Morgan Creek had a reputation for being a very aggressive company. They had already indicated their intention to enforce the contract no matter what I did. It was likely that if the case came to court, they would put an injunction on me that would prevent me from taking any other work until the case was settled. The court system in Los Angeles for civil cases was very slow. He couldn’t see it going to court for at least a year. There was a possibility I would lose, in which case it would be very expensive. It seemed to him that I had a simple choice to make. Did I want to spend my time in Hollywood making movies or fighting court cases? He felt I could probably make the movie faster than the courts would take to hear the case, and then I could move on to something else.

I guess so.

It is my experience that if things start badly on a movie, they tend to get worse. So it was with Freejack. The next item of business was the hiring of a line producer. For some reason unknown to me, they insisted on hiring Stuart Oken, who had absolutely no experience of science fiction production. He was better known as a theatre producer, and had only produced three small films previously. In my opinion, it quickly became apparent that he was completely out of his depth. I didn’t like him, but, being something of a greenhorn in Hollywood myself, I knew of no other available producers I felt would be better. Further, since the contract disputes over the script, I was not in a strong bargaining position with management. Stuart immediately suggested we hire Joe Alves as the production designer. Now Joe was quite famous: he had done Jaws and Close Encounters for Spielberg, and had been nominated for an Oscar as designer on the second of the two. Landing Joe was seen as a bit of a coup for Stuart, and so I had no chance of talking them out of it. I had a problem with Joe. He behaved, in my view, as though he knew more about SF film design than any Johnny-come-lately bum from New Zealand. After all, he had worked for Spielberg! However, he was Stuart’s pick, and Stuart was Morgan Creek’s pick, so I often found myself being overruled in major design and creative decisions. I personally feel that these two had a negative effect on how Freejack turned out. They also reinforced my feeling that I was completely unsupported by the management during the course of the production.

The casting went fairly smoothly at first. There were not that many parts to cast, and I was still in my non-argumentative mode. First up was the leading lady, and, after a few casting calls, Linda Fiorentino was the front runner. Linda had appeared in Vision Quest, Gotcha!, and Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, and had a solid reputation. She is an acclaimed actress and has the sort of timeless looks that would allow her to play a 20-year-old and a 40-year-old in the same film. Further, it quickly became clear that she and Emilio generated the kind of on-screen chemistry that you really need between actors when filming romances such as this. She is beautiful, intelligent and quite feisty, and I had no trouble with any of that.

Mick Jagger and Anthony Hopkins were Morgan Creek picks. I had no objection to either. Hopkins was hot after his success in Silence of the Lambs, and Jagger was a classic piece of stunt casting. He was cast without regard for any reputation as an actor or suitability for the part. He was cast because he was famous. An Icon, no less. He would bring customers to the movie theatre. I found the idea of working with him intriguing. Mick was interested, but wanted to meet the director. As it turned out, the director also wanted to meet him.

And so it was that I found myself on the plane to London. I met with Mick in his apartment in London. He had watched Utu and liked it. We sat around and chatted over a drink for about half an hour, and established a fairly strong rapport. He seemed to decide to do the picture then and there.

Back in LA we cast David Johansen and David Rasche. David Johansen had made his name with seminal punk band the New York Dolls, and as the fictitious Buster Poindexter, a comic who had a band and did TV shows. David Rasche was the lead in the satirical TV series Sledge Hammer! I had seen Sledge Hammer! when it played in New Zealand, and had enjoyed its over-the-top absurdity. The show had not been a success in the United States, so Rasche was almost unknown there, but in New Zealand the series had been quite popular. He was rather surprised, then, upon getting a part in a commercial and travelling to New Zealand for the shoot, to discover that in this country he was a star and was constantly recognised in the street. He was also bemused to find that he had been cast in Freejack by a New Zealand director he had never heard of. He wasn’t a genius, but was accomplished enough, and I thought he had a good approach to the part.

My two main allies on the crew were my cameraman, Amir Mokri, and my editor, Dennis Virkler. Amir was a feisty Iranian and very talented. He figured things out at Morgan Creek the moment he arrived. He certainly worked out the lay of the land a lot quicker than I did. He knew Stuart from a previous production and was not impressed. However, the person who offended him the most was Joe Alves. He found Joe’s sets very difficult to light. I found Joe’s futuristic vehicle designs laughable, comparing them disparagingly with the sleek police cars in Blade Runner and the funky and imaginative jalopies in Mad Max.
We shot most of the picture in Atlanta, because, for the most part, New York was too difficult to shoot in. We moved there in the winter of 1991 and began to prepare for the shoot.

This was my first time in Atlanta; in fact it was my first time in any part of the Southern States. The city itself does not have a defined centre, but rather a series of high-rise districts threaded along Peachtree Road, the largest of which are Downtown, Midtown and Buckhead. At first it seems to be a thoroughly modern city, but after a time you become aware that a deep-rooted conservatism lurks here. When people in Atlanta talk about the war, they are usually referring to the American Civil War which happened over 130 years earlier. World Wars I and II, Vietnam and the rest, hardly seem to register on their consciousness. The white population still seems resentful that the Confederates lost, thus depriving them of the right to keep slaves and generally giving the black population, about 50 per cent of the total, a misguided impression of their place in the world. The black population, on the other hand, have noticed that, although segregation is now illegal and they are meant to have equal rights before the law, very little has changed in their economic standing or their constant harassment by the police. Racial profiling is alive and well, and, although research has shown that about half of drug users are white, more than 90 per cent of those convicted of drug use are black. They are resentful of this. It is as though in that epic battle for the soul of the country that occurred in the middle of the nineteenth century, there were no winners. Both sides lost.

Christianity thrives, however. There are churches everywhere, both black and white. Atlanta is in the middle of the Bible Belt. A strong puritanical streak runs through society. Despite this, strip clubs thrive. Now these are nothing like the common old garden strip clubs of my experience — those on K Road or Vivian Street, where a solitary stripper, often called something like ‘Noeline from Taihape’, bumps and grinds away to some worn-out tape. This is stripping on an industrial scale. One evening, I was taken to one of these clubs by the Freejack actors. I remember Emilio and David Johansen were there. I don’t recall whether there were black men there. I do remember that the girls were all white, and that there were a huge number of them. The room was large and well lit and had all the romantic atmosphere of a high-school gymnasium. There were dozens of tables laid out, with men sitting on chairs around them, drinking. Dancing on each table was a stripper. Well, I’m not sure that ‘stripper’ is the right word, as I don’t recall seeing any of them strip. They seemed to arrive already fully stripped, except for a garter-belt to hold their money. These girls seem to have dispensed with the formalities and got straight down to business. There were at least 40 or 50 of them, maybe more, all between the ages of 17 and about 25, and all pretty and with good figures. I guess they were working their way through college. They were dancing to the deafening music of a DJ on a small stage in the corner. Waitresses brought a continuous supply of drinks to the men, who sat there looking straight up the legs of the dancers who squirmed above them. The whole effect was extremely bizarre. There was no touching, of course, and I did notice burly-looking bouncers primed for trouble, but I never saw any of them in action.

There was one incident that might have seen me involved, though. We had been drinking even before we got to the club and were all fairly drunk. I was plonked down on a chair and expected to gaze up into the nether regions of what seemed to be an almost terminally bored naked teenager cavorting above me. I noticed after a time that Johansen seemed to have disappeared. Next thing, I hear a voice booming out over the PA system. ‘Geoffrey Murphy, take off your pants!’ it said. Hearing my name, I stood up and looked around. There was Johansen up on the stage with the DJ; he had grabbed the microphone. Anyway, orders are orders, so I dropped my pants. At this point, a pretty young stripper, who was passing by, popped a dollar bill into my shirt pocket. I was impressed. In my drunken haze, this struck me as a fine example of wit, or at least as fine an example as you would ever get in a place like this. I pulled up my pants and kept the dollar. The moment passed.

The only other occasion I remember being out on the town was when we took Mick to dinner at an Atlanta restaurant. The plan had been to take him and Jerry Hall to dinner, as she had been with him in Atlanta for some weeks. She was a breezy, smart, outgoing lady; good company and fun to be with. However, by the time I got around to arranging the dinner date, Jerry had been called back to Europe to look after her business interests there. She was into cosmetics and fashion, and evidently had quite a business empire. In the meantime, Mick had invited a French model to come and stay with him, and she finished up accompanying us to dinner. She was not a particularly friendly person. Well, she didn’t know us, and I figure she didn’t speak much English. At one stage I mentioned to Mick that she was somewhat taciturn. ‘Yes,’ he replied, smiling, ‘but she is very decorative.’ And indeed she was.

The most notable thing about the whole evening was the effect Mick had on the people of Atlanta. Here was this guy who was a pop singer, who hadn’t had a number one hit for probably 10 years, and yet he could still stop traffic in downtown Atlanta. I would have thought this was more Johnny Cash territory than Mick Jagger, but his effect on the street and in the restaurant was remarkable. People just stopped and stared. He didn’t have to do anything. He was Mick Jagger. That was enough.

Filming had hardly got underway before we started hearing grumbling noises from the company in Los Angeles. The film would be processed and we would see our dailies, and then they would be dispatched to Los Angeles for the company to see. The same had happened during Young Guns II, but I don’t recall any grumbling on that occasion. On Freejack, this grumbling grew in volume as the first few weeks passed. They didn’t like what they were seeing. Soon they began to focus on Linda Fiorentino. They didn’t like her, and Jim Robertson was of the opinion that she should be replaced.

Replacing a lead actor several weeks into a shoot is a very radical thing to do. There was no way I would agree to such a thing without at least editing a few of the sequences we had already shot of her to get a better idea of how her performances played. Not only was it disruptive and upsetting to the entire production, but it was very expensive. They would have to pay her entire fee for the film, then negotiate a fee, under some duress, for her replacement. We would then have to re-shoot everything we had done with her in it. The costs would be in the millions.

Also, I was at a loss to know what the problem was. She seemed to be doing a fine job, and the edited sequences confirmed this. At this point, Jim Robertson, David Nicksay and a number of other executives flew into Atlanta, together with Rene Russo, who they had decided would be Linda’s replacement, and it became clear that they were determined to fire Linda.
They set up a meeting between Rene and me at her hotel in Atlanta. I presumed this meeting was meant to convince me that Rene would be a far superior person to play Julie Redlund in Freejack than Linda Fiorentino. Well, it didn’t. However, they didn’t give a damn whether I agreed with them or not. The purpose of the meeting was to comply with the DGA rules that the director has to be consulted before creative changes were made. Well, I had been consulted. I had even met with the proposed replacement. They were covered.

Although Rene was a good-looking and vivacious woman, she looked older than Linda and I couldn’t see her playing the young Julie at the beginning of the film. She would have to pass as 18 or 19. Linda could do this, just, with the help of sympathetic lighting and lens choices. Rene had no problems with the older Julie in the second part of the film, but playing the younger Julie was too much of a stretch for her. Amir tried everything to make her look younger, and he came close, but never quite managed.

I could not understand why they found Linda so objectionable, and asked Jim to explain his position. He replied, ‘She doesn’t give me a hard-on.’ Well, it seemed to me that his next hard-on was going to cost him plenty. I also wondered why it had taken him so long to come to this conclusion. I would have thought he would have noticed this during the casting sessions: all he had to do was look between his legs. I never ever agreed to make the change, so they were forced to instruct me to do it. This left me with no choice.

While they were at it, they also fired David Rasche. They didn’t like him, either. In many ways this is more revealing than Jim’s inability to get a hard-on. I think they fired him because everything David does has an air of absurdity about it. Now to my mind, the whole ethos of Freejack had an air of absurdity about it, and taking the story too seriously would inevitably be a disaster. The best approach was to overlay the action with an element of farce. Nothing too obvious, just a hint that this should not be taken too seriously. Strangely enough, I thought Morgan Creek understood this. Certainly, David Nicksay, one of the executive producers, seemed to. It was he who had suggested Mick Jagger as Vacendak, and had approved Jonathan Banks and Amanda Plummer. All of these fit into the profile of a film that has within it elements of self-parody. Mick had an instinctive understanding that the film had ironic elements. It was he who suggested the ‘Hickledy pickledy one . . .’ countdown to give Furlong a head start as he tries to escape. Jim clearly didn’t like this concept. What he really wanted was a Schwarzenegger-type action picture. No self-parody, just smash. There was no place for David Rasche in such a picture. Mind you, there was no place for Mick Jagger, Jonathan Banks and Amanda Plummer, nor even David Johansen for that matter, but this fact seemed to be lost on him.

After their devastating visit to Atlanta, the executives returned to LA, leaving us to pick up the pieces. The worst effect of it all was on morale. Emilio and Linda had established a strong working relationship, and had worked at developing their character arcs and all that stuff that actors do. Suddenly she was gone and Emilio found himself at a loss. Being a thorough professional, he immediately set out to make this new on-screen relationship work. Part of the problem was that Rene didn’t quite fit the part of Julie Redlund, and Emilio struggled for the rest of the shoot. For my part, I realised that my position of authority as director on this project was illusory. I began to struggle to understand just what this movie we were making was all about. Clearly, the management had a different idea than I did, and would not be slow to inflict their concept, whatever it was, on the film at any time they felt we were straying. Nevertheless, we soldiered on and completed the Atlanta section of the shoot and moved on to New York.

New York was New York. Magnificent, sprawling, brawling and chaotic. You can feel the buzz of the place just standing in the street. I remember one set-up in particular. We were over by the East River at night, and it was a big set-up. There were lights everywhere, and the effects guys were laying cables. It was an ambush scene, where Furlong (Emilio) is about to escape from New York, being smuggled in a fast motor-cruiser moored and waiting for him. As he approaches it, with Vacendak hard on his heels, the boat explodes in a tremendous fireball, with debris raining everywhere. I had four or five camera crews, and had used the occasion to hire my mate Rory O’Shea who was working as a freelance cameraman in New York at that time. I had known Rory for many years, so it was a bit of a reunion. We were standing there, overlooking all this frenetic activity, when I turned to Rory and gestured grandly at the whole kerfuffle. ‘Look at this,’ I said. ‘This is the big time.’ We both laughed. Well, I guess it was true. Here was the kid from Highbury directing a film with Mick Jagger in New York with hundreds of people doing his bidding. Not that I was that carried away. I realised that with it came all the stress, the politics and interference that I had been experiencing up to that time. The big time is not necessarily what it’s cracked up to be.

By this time the stress was beginning to show, and Mick became concerned. He approached me one day and asked whether I got a break when the shooting was over. I told him I did, as it would take a couple of weeks for the editor to get an assembly together. At this, he invited me to take over his house on Mustique in the Virgin Islands for those two weeks. He would be in London, but the servants would be there to look after us. I was quite taken aback. I felt his offer was just too generous, especially since during the shoot I had been so busy that I had had hardly any time to spend socialising with him. But Mick wasn’t one to take no for an answer. He went to my trailer and put it to Merata. She felt no such reluctance and immediately agreed. Thus it was that when the shoot finished, Merata, Hepi and I flew into Mustique to stay at the Jagger residence. We were met by Quentin, his butler, and were immediately made welcome.

The house was a Japanese-style villa with a central building surrounded by smaller rooms all linked by wooden walkways and large open verandahs. It was pretty grand, as you would expect. The whole was surrounded by large, broad-leaved palm trees, completing the effect of a tropical paradise. Quentin was a Caribbean islander who had been trained as a butler in London and spoke with a very correct English accent. His manners and dress were impeccable, and each evening he served us dinner, complete with folded linen napkins and wine, on one of the large verandahs which served as a dining room. He also was the opening batsman for the local cricket team, and was pretty good. We watched him play one day and he scored about 50. The servants on Mustique had their own network, and Quentin arranged through them for us to look at some of the notable mansions on the island while their owners were absent. One of these was David Bowie’s place, which was full of Balinese sculptures and sprawling pools with waterfalls connecting them. It was all stunning and totally indulgent.

For some reason, I decided to take my oil paints with me to Mustique, and while I was there I painted a couple of pictures. These were the first pictures I had painted for about 15 years and they turned out rather well. One was of a gnarled tree on the beach in front of Mick’s place. It was so distorted by the effects of the wind that it was like a sculpture, and seemed to beg me to paint it. The other painting was of Hepi and Merata watching television in the entertainment room. When it came time to leave, the paint on these two pictures was still wet, so I decided to leave them for Mick to do what he wanted with them. It was a gesture, a way of saying thanks. For all I knew, he would throw them out. However, about 10 years later Merata came across Mick in the street at the Sundance Film Festival. He told her that he had had them framed and they were still hanging in his house.

And so, after an idyllic sojourn on Mustique, I returned to the harsh realities of Hollywood for the editing.
My editor, Dennis Virkler, was an Academy Award nominee for his work on the film Red October. He was similar to Amir Mokri, in as much as he was feisty, aggressive and utterly loyal. Now he came into his own as the two of us hunkered down in the editing room and tried to cut this beast called Freejack.

It was no easy task. The film was broken down into about 12 10-minute reels, and we would cut a reel at a time. At the end of each reel, we would run it to see how we were doing. It seemed to be coming along nicely. Each reel looked really good. When we had cut all 12 reels, we booked a theatre and ran the whole film without breaks. It looked terrible.
How could this be? Clearly, there was a problem with the overall shape, the structure and the pacing. We would go back to the editing room and repeat the process. The results would be the same. The DGA rules allow 10 weeks for the director to cut his picture, then he has to hand it over to the company. The company then organises a test screening and, from here on out, it all becomes a committee process, the committee being made up of ‘geniuses’ from the company. We had failed to solve the key problem by the time of the test screening, and the scores at the screening were bad. Now we were barraged with notes on how to fix this film. Dennis and I would sit in the editing room waiting for the notes to arrive, amusing ourselves by trying to guess what these notes would say. We would dream up the most ridiculous scenarios — but, no matter how hard we tried, we could never match the nonsense that arrived.

The ‘creative committee’ decided that some of the scenes in Freejack needed to be re-shot. This, these creative experts thought, would require about three weeks. I asked them what scenes they wanted re-shot and they didn’t know. They were still thinking about it. How they knew the re-shoot would take three weeks when they didn’t even know what they were re-shooting was beyond me. They had decided to get the original writer, Ron Shusett, to turn in some pages.

Well, Ron was not only quick, he was prolific. Just over a week later I received about 15 scenes written for the re-shoot. Most were new scenes, and most were so bad as to be unshootable, and most were action scenes of a type normally associated with Schwarzenegger films. Heroes crashed through skylights onto fully armed mercenaries and destroyed them with their bare hands — that type of stuff. I made an appointment to see Nicksay, who seemed to have become the spokesman for the ‘creative committee’. I psyched myself up. I was going to go in there and tell him that these pages were terrible and would not advance the movie one iota. There was no way I was going to listen to any bullshit from him. And so I did just that.
To my surprise, he agreed with almost everything I said. I didn’t need to convince him that the new script was not up to it; he had already worked that out. He still believed that a re-shoot was necessary, but not using those pages. We would hire another writer. I was at a disadvantage here. I had no idea what sort of scenes would be required to save this picture. Nor did Nicksay, but he was going to try to find out.

It was about this time that Robinson decided that what was needed was a rock and roll soundtrack. This would solve all our problems in one hit. He contacted Mark Isham, who was a highly regarded film composer, trumpeter and electronic music guy with whom we had done a deal to do the film. Jim asked him to take our rough cut and put rock and roll to about 20 minutes of it. Mark rang me in a panic; I had no idea what he was talking about, as no one had mentioned a rock and roll track to me. He had been given a couple of weeks to do this, and didn’t think he could do it justice. Further, he didn’t think rock and roll would work as the score for the film. Nor did I. It was a futuristic SF film: it needed mysterious and haunting themes, and a score that would support action. Mark set to work and delivered his 20 minutes of rock and roll. I never got to hear the result. Jim didn’t like it. Nor did Mark. Mark’s contract was terminated. I was not consulted. I could have filed a grievance with the DGA. Instead, I approached David Nicksay and suggested that they fire me.

There was a certain amount of logic in this. Since I had a pay-or-play deal, they would have to pay me my entire fee if they fired me. If I resigned, I could be sued for breaking my contract. I pointed out to him that I was no longer in control of the movie, and that, since Jim was calling the shots anyway, they could hire any cheap director who would do as he was told and finish the film. They would be better off. Nicksay wouldn’t hear of it.

And so I was stuck with the re-shoot. We went back to Atlanta and shot new script pages from a new writer. Some of them were pretty good and definite improvements, but most were simply different. These new scenes were never going to save the picture, because the problem was that there was some basic flaw in the original story and the editing structure.

To add insult to injury they asked me what my preferences were for a new composer. I had not wanted to fire the last one, so I found the request difficult, insulting really. I offered them a few names. A few days later I was informed that they had hired Trevor Jones, an Englishman of Indian extraction. They had ignored my suggestions. They then insisted that Trevor uproot himself from his London studio, complete with various synthesisers and thousands of sound samples, and come to work in Los Angeles. He was distressed. The whole process of hiring and firing composers had eaten up a lot of time. There was now not long for Trevor to write and record the music before the sound mix. Moving all his stuff from England would erode this even more, and then he would have to work in unfamiliar surroundings to get the job done. He complained long and bitterly; his complaints fell on deaf ears.

Back in Los Angeles, we had only a few weeks to massage the new material into the film and sort out the structural problems. While we were doing this, Jim was still active. He hired a title company to do the main titles, which was normal, except that such things are usually done in consultation with the director.

Nicksay had the ‘mind meld’ sequence in his sights. The mega-billionaire villain McCandless (Anthony Hopkins) has died of some terminal disease, but his mind, with all its idiosyncrasies, memories and prejudices, still exists in a vast computer known as The Spiritual Switchboard. His plan is to infuse his intelligence into Furlong’s body, race off with his girlfriend, and live happily ever after in his newly acquired healthy young body. The material from which to craft this transferral sequence was a scene shot on The Spiritual Switchboard set with Furlong locked into the terminal. Opposite him, as he struggles to resist the intrusion of McCandless’s mind, was a hologram of McCandless. This was the base image over which were various moments from the film leading up to this point. I had assembled a sequence, using all of the old-fashioned techniques at my disposal, such as double exposure, multiple exposure, dissolves, super-imposition, cutting, altered speed, etc. For most of it there were at least two different things happening at once, and it built up to a crescendo of multiple images to a point where Julie, who is a spectator to all of this, snatches a gun from one of the guards and shoots the crystal which dominates the whole proceeding. This causes the process to judder to a halt as it drops offline. The whole thing was overlaid with electrical arcing and other such effects. There was one particular moment that I really liked. We had a shot of a dummy (Furlong) falling from the Williamsburg Bridge into the East River. The shot was taken from above, so the dummy fell away from camera. When it hit the water, we dissolved to a close shot of Furlong in the throes of the mind transfer. He was screaming and looking extremely distressed. The splash of the body hitting the water seemed to explode out of his mouth. It seemed to tell the story quite well. I rather liked it.

Nicksay didn’t. It was too old-fashioned; it was not ‘sexy’ enough. It needed some cutting-edge technology, something to wow the kids in the audience. This was a standard requirement of American films. They tend to be in your face, and come after you. This is in contrast to European films, where they invite you in; their objective is to seduce the audience.

This was 1991, and Nicksay had been made aware of a new technology where they could scan 35mm film at a very fine resolution and make a digital file of it, which could be manipulated in a computer. You could distort the picture, stretch it, fold it in on itself — you could do all sorts of ‘sexy’ stuff. At this stage, the process was very slow: if you wanted to manipulate a couple of minutes of film, the process of scanning it then printing it back onto film took many days. It was also very expensive. Nevertheless it was the creative committee’s opinion that the ‘mind meld’ should go into the computer, and so it did. We didn’t really have enough time to get this right. It was all new, and even the technicians were still struggling with it. Also, neither of us had any idea of how to apply this all-new ‘sexy’ technology. We fumbled about with it for several days and eventually came up with a sequence that seemed to satisfy Nicksay. It didn’t satisfy me. I preferred the original, old-fashioned version. I thought it told the story better and had more power. However, by this stage of the proceedings I had lost control. My opinion wasn’t worth a pinch of shit. We were hurtling into the last days of editing, a time when many key decisions are made that have a crucial effect on the movie. And yet it seemed to me that the whole decision-making process had broken down, and by now all key creative decisions were being made by a former car salesman.
Meanwhile, I was busy in the editing room with Dennis. We would cut and re-arrange frantically, then screen the whole movie to see how it played. It was time-consuming, but it was the only way we could see of doing it. I had about two weeks to finish the cut and hand it over, as it was booked at the negative matchers. Our last cut was definitive. We purged the film of anything that was not strictly on the spine of the narrative. Some good stuff hit the floor, but a film was beginning to emerge from it. Our final, and best, version was only about 95 minutes long.

It goes without saying that Jim hated it. But, as always, he had the answer: he would cut it himself. As it had to be at the negative cutter by Monday, he would do it over the weekend. He hired another couple of editors, and would move from room to room as they cut, making all the editing decisions as he went. I was allowed to watch this fiasco if I liked (this came under the heading of consultation). If I didn’t want to, that was okay, too. I didn’t.

Well, Jim’s re-cut mostly comprised of putting back in what we had cut out. His final length was 110 minutes. It was packed off to the negative cutter; he had not watched it. There probably wasn’t time.

With that, I was finished. Well, I still had one thing to do. I went to my agent and asked him to make sure that the possessory credit he had painstakingly negotiated for me before the film started was removed. A possessory credit is one that appears right at the beginning. It says ‘A Geoff Murphy Film’. Freejack was not ‘A Geoff Murphy Film’. It was nothing like ‘A Geoff Murphy Film’. I still had the ‘directed by’ credit, because, although it is possible to have that removed, too, it is difficult as it requires legal action. If a director removes his director’s credit, the DGA insists that the film is credited to ‘Alan Smithy’, so if you ever see this credit it means that the real director had his name removed.
Freejack was not a box-office success, and it received mostly bad reviews. This meant that my agent was going to find it harder to get me a big-budget theatrical feature. I was still being asked to read smaller, independent scripts and cable features, so it wasn’t as though my career was over. Also, I had paid off my tax debt in New Zealand, so I could now think about returning home. The reality was that it was still almost impossible to get a film up and running in New Zealand, however, and I was still getting good offers in the US.