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One day I get a call. Dino De Laurentiis's develop exec Mike Petzold is on the other end. They have an "aliens underwater picture" that they need re-written. Would I look at it and give them some feedback?
Are you kidding? A year out of film school and being offered a chance to rewrite a grade z schlocker? Life didn't get any better than that.
So they messenger the script over. I read it and call them right back, as requested and pitch them my take. They say, "Yeah, good ideas. Want to do it?" I say, "Well, yeah." They say, "Okay, do you have a passport?"
Because in one week, I had to be on the set in Madrid, Spain, to rewrite the script!
It gets better. I soon discover the director -- a true gentleman by the name of Juan Piquer Simon -- is the auteur behind such classics as Pieces (The poster's tag line: "It's Exactly What You Think It Is"), Slugs: The Movie, and many, many more direct-to-video fare.
Alas, Mr. Simon, though as congenial a host as one could desire, does not speak a word of English. And so, everything I write has to be loosely translated by an interpreter, and then back from him to me, etc. In fact, every conversation has to be this way. It proves to be a very strange working environment, but the company is delightful (the Spanish film industry is so underfunded that everyone involved is just happy to be getting a check) and Madrid -- when I could sneak away for a few hours at a time -- was beautiful.
A final note: I rewrite the script in about two and a half to three weeks, which includes the extensive outline we have to make pass "the Dino test" (which is, basically, having the Spanish-language version the director Mr. Simon has rewritten of my outline translated into Italian for Dino, his preferred "reading language," I am told). I am also told -- after I have delivered the outline -- that it is good Dino is so enthusiastic about the results. Because they have already spent, they tell me, $750,000 on the sets, and Dino has been threatening to pull the plug unless the script improves.
Since I cannot read what Dino is reading because it is a translation of a translation, I can only assume they did an okay job translating. Who knows, maybe they improved it. It wouldn't have been difficult given the vagaries of the process involved.