Cody shares a few more of the videos he has written for JoBlo YouTube channels.
I have been writing news articles and film reviews for ArrowintheHead.com for several years, and for the last couple years I have also been writing scripts for videos that are released through the site's YouTube channel JoBlo Horror Originals. Recently I started writing video scripts for the JoBlo Originals YouTube channel as well. I have previously shared the videos I wrote that covered
Three more videos that I have written the scripts for can be seen below, two for the JoBlo Horror Originals channel and one for JoBlo Originals.
For the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw series, I wrote about director Franck Khalfoun's 2007 Christmas chiller P2:
P2 script:
INTRO: What’s your idea of the perfect Christmas Eve? For parking garage security guard Thomas Barclay, it would be to spend the evening with his crush, businesswoman Angela Bridges. He has a nice dinner planned, he has a dress picked out for Angela, he has the chloroform to knock her out with, the chains to hold her in place, and his dog Rocky to keep them company. Of course, Angela does not like Thomas’s Christmas plans at all. The story of her struggle to get away from her twisted stalker and escape from the parking garage is told in the 2007 film P2, which happens to be the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw.
CREATORS / CAST: P2 marked the feature directorial debut of Franck Khalfoun, who first got into the entertainment industry as an actor. Underwhelmed with how his acting career was going, Khalfoun started directing as well, and had some success directing hip hop music videos. Along the way, he met fellow French filmmakers Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur. When they made the horror film High Tension, with Aja directing from a script he wrote with Levasseur, they put Khalfoun in the movie as an ill-fated gas station attendant. That movie was a major breakthrough for Aja and Levasseur, with a lot of viewers naming Aja as a director to keep an eye on. He could be the next big master of horror. High Tension got so much attention, Wes Craven even picked Aja to direct a remake of his film The Hills Have Eyes. Aja did, again working from a script he wrote with Levasseur, and that remake was even more well-received than High Tension was. Riding high on their back-to-back successes, Aja and Levasseur decided to get into producing and give their friend Khalfoun a chance to direct a feature.
The basic concept of P2 was ripped from the headlines. There had been reports about women being attacked in parking garages in Paris, and a parking garage struck Aja and Levasseur as being the perfect setting for a horror thriller. They approached Khalfoun with the idea, and the three of them crafted the story together. First, they had to figure out who the villain would be. They considered making him the mysterious, masked slasher type – but Khalfoun was more interested in the idea of the villain being a regular guy. Someone who’s good looking, a bit charming, and then turns out to be a total creep. That’s how the villain became Thomas Barclay, parking garage security guard, who is also an Elvis impersonator in his downtime. Thomas’s job is to sit in his office, accompanied only by his dog Rocky, and watch the security monitors. Day in and day out. As charming as he seems, Thomas has some serious issues, and spending all this time alone at work has only made his issues worse. While he’s been looking at the monitors in the subterranean parking garage, one particular person in the office building above has caught his eye. A businesswoman named Angela Bridges. A Maine farm girl who has worked her way up to drafting multi-million dollar contracts in New York City. Christmas is approaching, and on Christmas Eve the building is going to be closing down for three days. Thomas decides this is the time to make his move. Angela is going to spend the holiday break with him, whether she likes it or not.
Thomas really buys into the hope that Angela is going to fall for him, despite the fact that he has drugged her and chained her up. He thinks she’ll be appreciative when he murders the co-worker who made a drunken pass at her at a party, even though she has already accepted a heartfelt apology from the guy. And he definitely never imagined how hard Angela will fight to get away from him. Or how determined and crafty she is in her attempts to escape. Thomas repeatedly blames people for ruining his Christmas, not taking into account that he is ruining Christmas for others by abducting and murdering people. Angela definitely ruins his Christmas plans. He envisioned them having a romantic dinner together. Instead, their time together turns into an action-packed fight for survival.
Khalfoun and his collaborators did a great job of writing the Thomas and Angela characters. Then the perfect actors were chosen to bring them to life on the screen. Wes Bentley, best known for his roles in the Best Picture winner American Beauty and the hit TV series Yellowstone, was cast as Thomas, and Rachel Nichols, who had recently played a prominent role in the TV show Alias, was cast as Angela. Bentley and Nichols both did excellent work as these characters. Bentley is really entertaining to watch as Thomas, and Nichols turns Angela into a strong heroine we root for throughout. It was very important that these roles be flawlessly cast, because Thomas and Angela are the only two people on screen for the majority of the movie. Bentley and Nichols carry the film on their shoulders… and the story puts their characters through a really tough night.
BACKGROUND: P2 was a gruelling film for the cast and crew to work on, because it was actually shot in a real, functioning parking garage in Toronto. When the garage closed for the night, the filmmakers would move in and work there until the place re-opened in the morning. The production schedule called for twenty-five days of night shoots, which wore everyone down. Especially since they were working inside a dirty location that smelled like exhaust fumes. And the physicality of her role left Nichols battered and bruised. Many of the bruises we see on Angela aren’t makeup, those are bruises Nichols got while filming scenes. Her character goes from being clean and neat in business clothes to being soaking wet and covered with dirt and blood. Her own blood and the blood of others. She also undergoes a wardrobe change against her will. After using chloroform to knock her out, Thomas removes her business attire and puts her in a white dress, which shows a lot of cleavage.
The white dress was a compromise Nichols and the filmmakers were able to reach. In the original script, Angela was stripped down and wearing nothing but a negligee. Nichols refused to endure the parking garage action while wearing something so skimpy. So she chose the dress, which had a bra sewed into the top because Nichols didn’t want to run around without a bra for twenty-five days. She also made sure that it was in her contract that she would not do any nudity. That included making sure the white dress wouldn’t show anything when it gets wet. Shots of Angela wielding an axe while showing cleavage are popular images from the film. That image even made it onto the posters. But the actress made sure cleavage is all anyone would see. And it’s completely understandable, because Nichols definitely needed more coverage and clothing support to do everything Angela goes through. The action wasn’t easy, even in the bra-equipped dress.
As Nichols told Shock Till You Drop, “This was the most demanding job I ever had. … I was in a dress with bare feet and they made these weird pads for the bottom of my feet. My arms are bare, my legs are bare, I’m wearing handcuffs for most of it. The handcuffs were real throughout, even when I’m driving the car. The bruises were unbelievable. As hostile and angry as I was, and as much as I wanted to kill Franck, Alex, and Greg, I think it actually really ended up helping make the whole thing real for me.”
Aja passed the directing duties over to Khalfoun on this one, but he and Levasseur were very hands-on producers. They were on set throughout the production, shooting second unit. Working with Khalfoun and the cast. Helping the actors dig into the minds of their characters. And helping the director figure out how to stick to the schedule while getting everything they needed for the story. Aja guided P2 every step of the way, from script to screen. But this movie didn’t get as much attention, or have as much success, as his previous two films.
P2 was released by Summit Entertainment, a company that doesn’t even exist as a standalone distributor anymore. Summit was very supportive of the project – the company president loved the terrifying setting and the strength of the protagonist, who refuses to let herself be victimized. But Summit had a lot of trouble getting their films to catch on with audiences. Many of their releases were flops. They got lucky a couple times – Summit was the studio that brought the world the Twilight films and Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker, but by the time the last Twilight movie was released, Summit had been bought out by Lionsgate.
P2 was one of Summit’s flops. Made on a budget of three-point-five million, the movie earned just under eight million at the global box office. The release date was November 9th, which is reasonable for a movie that’s set on Christmas Eve. But since this Christmas movie also happens to be a horror story, maybe it would have done better if it had been released a few weeks earlier, during the Halloween season. It probably also could have used a better title. Because even though the marketing materials promised the film would take you to a new level of terror… P2 still doesn’t mean much to the average movie-goer. Unless they happened to park on the second level of a parking garage on their way to the theatre.
So few people turned out to see P2 on the big screen, it was a record-breaking bomb. Released on two thousand, one hundred and thirty-one screens, it had a per screen average of just nine hundred and seventy-seven dollars over its opening weekend. One of the all-time worst wide release failures. That’s not a distinction P2 deserved to have placed on it. It’s a well-crafted thriller that would have a much larger fan base if only it could catch the attention of more viewers.
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: When the movie was first announced, Aja told Fangoria that it was designed to be a “rollercoaster ride that lets you live inside Angela’s nightmare.” And Khalfoun did a great job of making the finished film come off like a thrill ride. As the director explained to Shock Till You Drop, “It was about making the rhythm right so you can start off calmly and end with the speed of a freight train. By the end this movie is non-stop action. It’s a horror film with tons of action and gags, a little comedy. It was my job to create valleys and ridges throughout the whole thing.”
P2 is exceptionally well paced. It starts out small. Thomas has Angela chained up in his office, and she spends several minutes trying to talk her way out of the situation. We watch the characters bounce well written, interesting dialogue off of each other for several minutes. Then things go completely off the rails. The tension builds, the feeling of suspense gets more intense, the violence escalates, Angela’s desperation grows. And Khalfoun, Aja, and Levasseur came up with a lot of ideas for set pieces that keep the situation exciting and engaging. The setting may not sound very interesting at first. How much can possibly be done in the open, concrete levels of an underground parking garage? But you may be surprised at how much the filmmakers were able to accomplish within those confined spaces. Including cat and mouse stalking sequences, chases, a scene with a flooding elevator, and even some vehicular smash-ups.
You’ll likely also be impressed by the performances delivered by Wes Bentley and Rachel Nichols. These two became friends off set, but once they stepped onto set and Bentley switched into character, Nichols found him to be legitimately scary. Some interviewers asked Bentley if he had drawn inspiration from classics like Psycho or The Shining when preparing for his role. He had to admit that he hadn’t even seen either of those movies yet. His performance as Thomas wasn’t based on anything he had seen before. He played it naturally, and it’s captivating to see him bring the different sides of the character to life. Thomas can be nice and charming. He can be intense and violent. He can throw screaming tantrums and self-pity parties. He can take a break to dance to some Elvis music. Nichols is also fully believable for every step of her character’s journey from proper businesswoman to a blood-splattered warrior smashing TVs and cameras with her axe.
At Aja’s suggestion, the musical duo of tomandandy were hired to compose the score. Khalfoun wanted a classic thriller score, and tomandandy provided just that. Their music compliments the scenes nicely, and helps build up the thrills. Cinematographer Maxime Alexandre and the set decorators also did an incredible job of keeping the parking garage setting visually interesting, and even managed to give the movie a very Christmasy feel. Even though it was filmed in the summer and so much of it takes place in concrete tunnels.
BEST SCENE(S): For fans of dialogue, the scene where Angela first wakes up in Thomas’s office is a holiday treat. They’re both trying to keep the situation calm at this point. Thomas is trying to get Angela to enjoy her time with him, while being chained to a table. She tries to talk her way out of his office in any way she can. He forces her to cancel plans she had with her family in New Jersey. She struggles to sound normal during this call, when she’s actually scared and crying. It’s a great showcase of Nichols and Bentley’s acting abilities… and then things get violent for the first time.
There is plenty of violence throughout P2. One of the most intense sequences for both Angela and the actress playing her is the one where Thomas sets loose his dog Rocky. Rocky was actually played by a few different Rottweilers, and Bentley had no problem bonding with them. But Nichols is afraid of dogs, and remained afraid of the Rottweilers during their time on set. So when you see Angela being chased through the parking garage by Rocky, or wrestling with the dog in a parked car, the fear Nichols is showing was real.
PARTING SHOT: A lot of movie fans like to watch the same movies around the holidays. A Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Black Christmas, the list goes on and on… but one movie that doesn’t get listed often enough is P2. All these years after it came and went at the box office, the movie still hasn’t received enough recognition. And it’s about time we turn that around. More movie fans need to add P2 to their annual viewing lists. It’s worth revisiting every December for some chills and thrills. So head down into that parking garage and spend some time with Thomas and Angela. You won’t have a blue Christmas if you add P2 to your holiday celebrations.
For the non-horror Revisited series, I wrote about one of the best action sequels ever made, 1989's Lethal Weapon 2 (which, like every film in the Lethal Weapon franchise, was directed by Richard Donner):
Lethal Weapon 2 script:
INTRO: Warner Bros. and director Richard Donner captured magic on film when they paired Mel Gibson and Danny Glover for the 1987 action movie Lethal Weapon. So of course they had to try to recapture it as quickly as possible with a sequel. A follow-up that features bigger stunts, detestable villains, and a crowd-pleasing new comic relief character. The magic was back in Lethal Weapon 2 – and it’s time for this sequel to be Revisited!
SET-UP: Made on a budget of fifteen million dollars, Lethal Weapon earned one hundred and twenty million at the global box office. So the decision to get a sequel into theatres two years later was a no-brainer. And while the first film had been released in March, Lethal Weapon 2 was going to be a summer event film. It was scheduled to reach theatres right after the Fourth of July holiday, on July 7th, 1989. Mel Gibson and Danny Glover would be reprising the roles of Los Angeles police sergeants Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh. The supporting cast would be returning to play their characters, including Darlene Love as Murtaugh’s wife Trish and Traci Wolfe as their daughter Rianne. Steve Kahan as police captain Ed Murphy. Mary Ellen Trainor as police psychologist Stephanie Woods. And the same creative team came back together to try to replicate the success they had the first time around. Richard Donner would be directing the sequel, with Joel Silver producing.
Writing the screenplay for Lethal Weapon had provided Shane Black with his big break. So of course he was asked to write Lethal Weapon 2 as well… but this assignment ended up putting intense pressure on him at a time when he was already in a negative mental state. The success of the first film had left him feeling insecure and undeserving. He doubted his own writing abilities, and questioned why he had done so well so easily when many other writers struggle in their careers. The fact that his girlfriend, his first great love, had just left him also didn’t improve his mood. But even though he was, as he told the Los Angeles Times, “horrified by the prospect of having to live up to the success” of Lethal Weapon, he dove into working on the sequel. This time he brought in a friend to write the script with him, pulp fiction novelist Warren Murphy. Co-creator of the Remo Williams character. Black said writing this script was very difficult, but after six months they turned in their draft. Rather than call it Lethal Weapon 2, the title they chose was Play Dirty.
Black and Murphy had crafted a dark, serious script that dug into the ideas of courage and heroics. Riggs, Murtaugh, and other police officers discover that the minister of diplomatic affairs at the South African consulate in L.A. is running a drug trafficking scheme. And they can’t seem to do anything about it because he’s able to hide behind diplomatic immunity. This gives foreign government officials legal immunity from the country they’re working in. As the police start to figure out exactly how the drug trafficking works, the South African diplomat and his henchmen strike back. Several police officers are murdered by the villains – and in Black and Murphy’s script, these murders were especially brutal. One female officer was even tortured to death. That didn’t make it into the movie, and neither did a large action sequence that involved the destruction of a plane with a cargo hold full of cocaine. The cocaine from this plane would have fallen over the city of Los Angeles like snow. That’s an image Black had tried to work into the first movie, where his script had a tanker truck full of heroin crashing in the Hollywood hills. The drugs from that truck drifted over the city like snow. In the first movie, a car crash had filled the air of just one city block with heroin. And clearly that hadn’t been enough drug snow imagery to satisfy Black. There isn’t any of that in the final version of Lethal Weapon 2, but you do get money falling through the air like confetti.
An action scene that was in both Black and Murphy’s Play Dirty script and in the finished film is the destruction of the South Africans’ base of operations. A fancy house that’s set up on stilts. Riggs uses his pickup truck to pull the house down, and it cost more than five hundred thousand dollars to bring that stunt to the screen. In the first draft of the script, the collapsing house starts a brush fire on the hill – and the diplomat’s right hand man runs off into the smoke and flames. This character was described as being extremely dangerous, Riggs’ arch-nemesis and worst nightmare. The final showdown between these two was meant to take place on the burning hill… and was written to end with both of them dead. Riggs kills the villain, but slowly bleeds to death from a knife wound he sustains in the fight.
Mourning the death of his wife in a car accident, Riggs had been out of control and suicidal in the first movie. The friendship he formed with Murtaugh, the acceptance and love he received from Murtaugh’s family, had saved his life. So Black felt the logical step for the sequel to take would be to have Riggs sacrifice himself to protect the Murtaugh family. No one else involved with the project thought that was the way to go. How would there ever be a Lethal Weapon 3 if Riggs was killed off in Lethal Weapon 2? The darkness and violence in the script was also an issue – which is no surprise, because Donner had issues with the darkness and violence in Black’s script for the first movie as well. But when Black heard they weren’t going to be moving forward with his Play Dirty script, he took it hard. Speaking with Creative Screenwriting, he said his reaction was to think, “Oh, I’ve failed everybody, I screwed up, I blew it. My writing sucks.” He even told his agent he wanted to give back the money he had been paid to write the script. One hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. His agent talked him out of it, saying, “You don’t give the money back. People write shit and they get paid millions of dollars. This is fine.” Years later, Black would look at the Play Dirty script and realize it was the best thing he had ever written. But at the time, he was so discouraged that he stopped writing for a while. He would later attempt to work out his issues by writing about a very flawed detective character. Which turned out to be the lead character in his script The Last Boy Scout, a script that was purchased by Warner Bros. and Joel Silver for just under two million dollars.
The broad strokes of the story Black and Murphy had provided would work for Lethal Weapon 2. But the script needed to be rewritten. So Donner turned to The Lost Boys writer Jeffrey Boam, who had also done the revisions that lightened up the script for the previous film. Boam wrote a draft of Lethal Weapon 2 that leaned into action, and another draft that played up the comedy. Donner asked him to do a third draft that would be a mixture of the two approaches. Donner’s feeling was that Riggs had been saved by the Murtaughs already. His problems were mostly resolved. Suicide ideation was behind him. So this time the movie could just focus on how entertaining and amusing the interactions between Riggs and Murtaugh are. The sequel could be more fun than its predecessor. And Boam brought more comedy into the script by greatly expanding the role of a character from Black and Murphy’s script. A banker named Leo Getz, who handled the money laundering side of the drug smuggling business. This character only had one scene and a few lines in the Play Dirty script. Boam made him a sidekick to Riggs and Murtaugh. He’s a federal witness they’re ordered to protect. But they take him with them while they investigate the South African criminals, putting him in dangerous situations.
Joe Pantoliano, Danny DeVito, and Gary Burghoff of M*A*S*H* were considered for the role of Leo. Joe Pesci ended up playing him, and delivered such a funny, endearing performance that he was brought back for further sequels. A personal touch Pesci brought to the fast-talking character was his habit of saying the word “Okay” multiple times. He took this from a kid he had asked for directions at Disneyland. As he told Empire magazine, “The first word out of this kid’s mouth was, ‘Okay!’ Then he hit me with about twelve more: ‘No, no! Okay, okay, okay!’ We thought it was really funny.”
Boam continued working on the script throughout production. Adding humor, revising the Riggs and Murtaugh side of the story. Another writer was brought in to work on the material involving the South African villains. That was Robert Mark Kamen, who is best known for creating the Karate Kid film series. He has gone on to write several action movies for Luc Besson, including Taken and The Transporter. Kamen wasn’t credited on Lethal Weapon 2, but this wouldn’t be his last time contributing to the franchise.
Joss Ackland was cast as drug smuggling diplomat Arjen Rudd. And did a great job of making the character come off as slimy and detestable. A guy who can stir up disgust in the viewer just by saying, “Diplomatic immunity!” Derrick O’Connor plays Rudd’s right hand man Pieter Vorstedt. A killer who has a connection to Riggs’ past. Vorstedt reveals that he had been assigned to kill Riggs four years earlier, when he was working narcotics and was close to discovering what Rudd was up to. He ran Riggs’ car off the road… and didn’t realize until after the crash that Riggs wasn’t driving. He had mistakenly killed Riggs’ wife. So that gives Riggs extra reason to want to destroy this guy by the end of the movie. Brigitte Nielsen was up for the role of Rudd’s secretary Rika van den Haas, who becomes a love interest for Riggs as the story plays out. But the role went to actress-slash-pop singer Patsy Kensit, and a song by her band Eighth Wonder is also heard in the film. Mark Rolston has a small but memorable role as an unlucky henchman who makes the mistake of losing Rudd’s shipment of krugerrands. And the even bigger mistake of sticking around after noticing that the floor of his boss’s office has been covered with a sheet of plastic.
The cops who are wiped out by the South African villains are played by the likes of Dean Norris, Juney Smith, Jenette Goldstein, and – in a confusing bit of casting – Grand L. Bush. Bush had one scene as Detective Boyette in the first Lethal Weapon, but in the sequel he plays a different character, Collins. That’s a lucky break for Boyette, because things don’t go well for Collins. Goldstein’s character Shapiro is the one who was tortured to death in Black and Murphy’s script. In the film, she’s blown up on her swimming pool diving board.
REVIEW: Making the villain a South African diplomat – and having his henchmen also be protected by diplomatic immunity – was a very clever idea. It makes for an interesting story, and it really draws the viewer into the situation with Riggs and Murtaugh. Because we share their frustration. We know these people are cold-blooded criminals, but they’re untouchable. There’s never any doubt that Riggs and Murtaugh going to find a way to bring them to justice, though. We’re just waiting to see how they’re going to make it happen. It should be noted that the South Africa of 1989 was quite different from the South Africa of today. Authoritarian politicians had put a system of racial segregation called apartheid in place. The status of citizens was based on their race, with the white minority dominating the country and black Africans being at the bottom of the social ranking. So Rudd and his lackeys are the representatives of an awful government. This is why they’re always using racial slurs when talking about Murtaugh. And why Riggs is always comparing them to Nazis.
Donner prided himself on drawing attention to social issues in the Lethal Weapon movies. For example, in Lethal Weapon 2 the Murtaughs are boycotting tuna because the fishermen kill the dolphins that get caught in tuna nets. Another example of this is a sticker that can be seen on the Murtaugh family’s refrigerator in the first movie. It says “Free South Africa. End Apartheid.” A bit of unexpected foreshadowing for the second film.
The action is bigger in Lethal Weapon 2 than in its predecessor because Donner had twice the budget to work with. He had thirty million dollars to put to use this time. The movie drops the viewer into the action from the start, catching up with Riggs and Murtaugh when they’re in the middle of a car chase through Los Angeles. This extended sequence includes explosions, gunfire, a helicopter, and a Riggs who’s so hyped that he even attempts to pursue a car on foot. It also gives us the first taste of the film’s enhanced sense of humor, as Murtaugh is driving his wife’s station wagon. And desperately but unsuccessfully trying to keep the car from being damaged. The chase isn’t just the first scene in the movie, it was also the first thing shot for the movie, at the end of November 1988. It’s an awesome way to get things started. And immediately gets across the idea that our reunion with Riggs and Murtaugh is meant to be a joyous occasion.
This sequel does have a lighter tone than the previous movie, which caused Shane Black to dismissively refer to it as a feel-good version of a cop movie. There’s a strong comedic element to most of the character interactions. It’s always fun to watch Riggs and Murtaugh bounce dialogue off of each other. And this time they have the very talkative Leo Getz to deal with in a lot of scenes as well. Leo has some hilarious lines, with his most popular moment being a scene where he rants about bad service at fast food drive-thrus. We don’t spend a lot of time with the Murtaugh family in this one, but their main contribution is a comedic scene. Where it’s revealed that Rianne has made her screen acting debut in a condom commercial. The production received ten thousand dollars for making it a commercial for Ramses brand condoms. A good deal for the movie, but not such a good deal for Murtaugh. Who has to deal with the other cops playing pranks on him, and guys like Leo lusting after his daughter.
The comedy is also present in most of the action beats. Like the opening chase, and another vehicular action sequence that ends with a death by surfboard. You know a movie isn’t playing it too seriously when a standout moment involves one of the leads getting stuck on a toilet because there’s a bomb wired to the seat. And this comedic tone is possible because Riggs has lightened up substantially since he met Murtaugh. He has been welcomed into the family. He does his laundry at their house. He cooks chili for them – his special recipe, with crumbled Oreo in it. The fact that he even pursues a relationship with Rika shows that he’s in a much better head space these days. They really only have a few hours together, but he seems to genuinely care for her.
And then the movie gets dark. The comedic angle never affects the scenes with the villains. They are always scumbags, and they are always dangerous. They bust into Murtaugh’s house and threaten him. They put a bomb on his toilet. They assassinate multiple police officers. They do plenty to make sure the audience hates them. But they really push Riggs over the edge when they try to kill him. When Vorstedt tells Riggs he was responsible for the death of his wife. And when they kill Rika simply because she got close to Riggs. To avenge Rika, his wife, and his fellow officers, Riggs shifts into full raging lethal weapon mode for the last twenty minutes of the movie. And we’re right there with him, rooting for him and Murtaugh to take down the bad guys.
The death of Rika is something that was added to the script in the midst of production. Donner wanted to give Riggs more reason to hate the villains, so Rika had to go. The original intention had been for the character to survive the movie. In fact, the last scene would have shown Riggs and Rika having Thanksgiving dinner with the Murtaugh family. Much like Riggs being invited in for Christmas dinner at the end of the first movie. The Thanksgiving scene was even filmed before Donner decided that Rika shouldn’t make it to the end credits.
Another character who almost didn’t make it to the end credits is Riggs himself. Although Black and Murphy received negative feedback when they killed Riggs in the Play Dirty script, Donner did toy with the idea of killing the character after all. Riggs sustains knife and bullet wounds in the climactic sequence, and Donner shot two different versions of the ending. One in which Riggs succumbs to his wounds, and one where he lives. Lethal Weapon composers Michael Kamen, Eric Clapton, and David Sanborn returned to provide more great music for this sequel. And Clapton and Sanborn recorded a cover of the Bob Dylan song “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” with Randy Crawford for the soundtrack. This was meant to play over the moments of Riggs dying. The two different versions of the ending were screened for test audiences – and it’s no shock that the version where Riggs lived scored higher. So that’s what Donner went with. But if you want to see the version where Riggs died… well, it’s still basically in the movie. “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” is on the soundtrack, but in a different place. It plays as Murtaugh goes to check on his badly injured friend. Donner showed the death of Riggs with a helicopter shot that rises up from the image of Murtaugh holding his friend’s body on the villains’ cargo ship. The shot drifts out over the water and looks at the city as the sun rises. That remains the final shot of the movie. If Riggs had died, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” would be playing over it. Since he lived, the end credits song is the George Harrison and Tom Petty collaboration “Cheer Down”.
Filming on Lethal Weapon 2 wrapped on March 24, 1989. But there was so much uncertainty about how the film should end, the cargo ship and pier set remained on the Warner Bros. backlot until June. A month before the movie was released. Just in case Donner would have to reshoot elements of the climax. Riggs dying may have been fitting for the Play Dirty script, but it never would have worked for Lethal Weapon 2. The tone of the overall movie is too light for that. Even though it gets darker toward the end, Riggs dying would have been such a bummer that it would have brought the whole movie down. Much of the film feels like a victory lap done to celebrate everything that worked about Lethal Weapon. That celebration couldn’t end with a loss.
LEGACY/NOW: Keeping Riggs alive was proven to be the right choice, because there was more to celebrate when Lethal Weapon 2 reached theatres. Just like the first movie, this one went over well with critics and audiences alike. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of A Plus. And it did even better at the box office than its predecessor. Domestically it was the most successful entry in the franchise, with a total haul of just over one hundred and forty-seven million. That’s eighty-two million more than the first movie. International numbers boosted it to two hundred and twenty-seven million. That’s a number that would be bested by the sequels this one’s success opened the door for. But it’s over a hundred million more than the first movie’s total. In the end, Lethal Weapon 2 was the third highest grossing film of 1989, coming in behind Tim Burton’s Batman and Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. And that Indiana Jones sequel had also been written by Jeffrey Boam.
The South African consul-general in Los Angeles, the person who had Arjen Rudd’s diplomatic job in the real world, described Lethal Weapon 2 as an ugly film. But surprisingly, despite how critical the film was of the South African government, it still received a theatrical release in the country. And it was a big hit there as well. The criticism of apartheid did earn the filmmakers some death threats. But apartheid didn’t last much longer. The system was dismantled over the next couple years. And in 1994, Nelson Mandela – an anti-apartheid activist who had served almost thirty years in prison for the actions he took against the government – was elected President of South Africa. To mark the occasion, an unscheduled showing of Lethal Weapon 2 was broadcast on Australian television.
Lethal Weapon 2 was also a success on home video, and Warner Bros. would eventually release what they called a director’s cut of the film, just as they had done for the first movie. These are really extended cuts rather than director’s cuts, Donner didn’t even like the extended cut of part 1. But if you want to see a few more minutes of footage that don’t add anything to the plot, they are available.
Donner and Warner Bros. wanted to recapture the magic they had stumbled upon with the first Lethal Weapon. And they managed to pull it off, delivering an excellent follow-up with plenty of action and an interesting, engaging story. A film that is often ranked as one of the best sequels ever made. A Lethal Weapon movie would never work quite this well again. But they kept making them, because audiences welcomed the chance to watch Gibson and Glover continue playing Riggs and Murtaugh. Why wouldn’t they? Visiting with these guys was always a blast.
And, going back to the Best Horror Movie You Never saw series, I tried to direct more attention toward Adam Green's 2010 survival thriller Frozen:
Frozen script:
INTRO: Disney’s Frozen tells of the adventure Princess Anna goes on to save her kingdom from the curse of an infinite winter that was accidentally caused by her sister, Queen Elsa. But everybody knows that story. The movie made over a billion dollars. So today we’re going to talk about the other Frozen. The one that was released before Disney introduced viewers to Sven the reindeer and Olaf the snowman. This one is a harrowing thriller about three people struggling to survive while stranded in the winter elements. And it happens to be the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw.
CREATORS / CAST: The Frozen not made by Disney came from Adam Green, the filmmaker best known for masterminding the Hatchet slasher franchise. Green was watching a weather report on the news in Los Angeles when an image of the Big Bear Mountain ski resort showed up on screen. It was early in the morning and the resort was closed at the time. And while watching the lift chairs sway in the wind, Green was reminded of his own skiing experiences in New England. He would go to places that would only be open from Friday through Sunday, and he remembered being on the last run on Sunday nights. Hearing the lift stop. Having the fear that the place had closed for the week without making sure there weren’t still skiiers there. The fear that he was going to be stuck in the snowy wilderness all week. And that’s when the idea for Frozen hit him.
Grace, a living dead baby movie Green produced, was filming at that time. So while on the set of Grace, Green would go off into a quiet area and work on the script for Frozen. Crafting a story about three people – longtime best friends Dan Walker and Joe Lynch, and Dan’s girlfriend Parker O’Neil – getting stuck on a ski lift chair when a resort closes down for the week. Dangling fifty feet off the ground for days, dealing with the cold and snow, the subzero wind chill, trying to figure out a way to survive this ordeal, how to safely get down to the ground, and how to escape from the wolves that gather below them.
Green was hoping to get Frozen into production as quickly as possible. But most companies he talked to about the project wanted to hold off for a while. Some of them demanded that he make changes to the script. Then the project caught the attention of former Lionsgate executive Peter Block, who had just launched his own production company, A Bigger Boat. Block was happy with the script and was willing to put Frozen on the fast track. So Green closed a deal with him. A Bigger Boat decided to make Frozen in late October of 2008, and by early December Green was looking for the perfect shooting location. Filming would begin in February of 2009.
The actors cast in the roles of Dan, Lynch, and Parker along the way were Kevin Zegers, Shawn Ashmore, and Emma Bell. And just like their characters, Zegers and Ashmore had been friends for a long time, so they were able to bring their natural camaraderie to the screen. Bell’s character Parker is someone who just recently entered the picture, and Lynch isn’t very happy that Dan has brought her along on their ski day.
Most of the film is carried on the shoulders of Dan, Lynch, and Parker. Other characters don’t have a whole lot of screen time. But there were a few roles to fill. Green’s then-girlfriend Rileah Vanderbilt was cast as Shannon, a skiier who catches Lynch’s attention before things go terribly wrong. Ed Ackerman plays ski lift operator Jason. Adam Johnson plays Rifkin, another resort employee. Green and his fellow filmmaker Joe Lynch – who the character was named after – have cameos. You might hear the voice of Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider in there. And stunt coordinator Kane Hodder, who plays the homicidal Victor Crowley in the Hatchet movies, appears as a resort employee named Cody.
BACKGROUND: Most filmmakers probably would have shot Frozen in the safety of a stage. Put the actors on a chair that looks like it’s high up, but is actually only a couple feet off the ground, hang a green screen behind it, surround it with some evergreen trees and fake snow, shoot the movie in comfort. But that wasn’t Green’s approach. He wanted to make Frozen out in the elements, feeling the audience would know if the setting was artificial, with the actors sitting on a lift chair that was really fifty feet off the ground. As Green has said, “It’s all shot practically. There is no sound stage, no green screen, no CGI. The actors are all actually in the air. The weather is real. All the things that threaten them are real.” Of course, this made the production incredibly challenging.
Although set on the fictional Mount Holliston in Vermont, Frozen was filmed at the Snow Basin Ski Resort in Ogden, Utah during the coldest time of year. Green rode the ski lift looking for the perfect spot to have Dan, Lynch, and Parker get stranded. And when the lift reached that point, he suddenly blurted out, “This is where they die!” Not “This is where they get stuck” or “This is where we should shoot the movie”. “This is where they die”… and he couldn’t even tell you why he said that. But he did, and as soon as the words were out of his mouth, the lift stopped. It started moving again after a few minutes, but for a little while Green was stuck in the same spot where he was going to stick his characters. And his actors.
To shoot in this spot, Green and his cast and crew had to contend with snowfall, sixty mile per hour winds, wind chill that dropped as low as thirty degrees below zero, and long rides on the ski lift. The people and the equipment had to be moved to the location on snowmobiles and snowcats, a quarter mile journey up the mountain. Scenes of the cast members sitting on the stationary chair were shot with a crane. For scenes where the chair is moving, a camera couldn’t be placed on the chair with the actors, and the next chair down the line was too far away for the camera to be placed on that. So a bucket contraption was hung from the cable between the two chairs for Green and cinematographer Will Barratt to ride in with the camera. Then there was the issue of the wolves. As Green told The Harvard Crimson, “All the wolves are real. We had six weeks of training with a pack of wolves with the wolf man. This was the same wolf man who trained the wolves in Dances with Wolves. They are wild animals. They are unpredictable. At any moment, they could snap.” Thankfully, there were no problems with the wolves. And for one moment where we actually see a wolf take a character down, a border collie was used as a stand-in for the wolf.
The Frozen filming conditions were so uncomfortable, it wouldn’t be surprising if someone were to question if the movie was worth the trouble. But the experience Green had when the film made its debut at the Sundance festival proved that it was. All five screenings of Frozen were sold out within forty-eight hours of tickets going on sale. There was a wait list of people hoping to get in anyway. An audience member fainted during the first screening. Two viewers vomited during the second screening. At all five screenings, people said they had to step outside because the movie was so intense. It was a very promising start for the film… but sadly, it didn’t get much of a release after that.
At its widest release in North America, Frozen was only showing at one hundred and six theatres. So it had an opening weekend of just over one hundred thousand dollars and sputtered out from there. Thankfully, the worldwide totals were able to boost the numbers a bit. But Frozen only made a total of two-point-seven million at the box office. The reviews were decent, but it just didn’t reach enough of an audience. Distributor Anchor Bay then gave it a special edition release on DVD and Blu-ray that was packed with featurettes and commentaries. Sadly, the movie never caught on with genre fans the way Hatchet did. Thirteen years after its release, it still doesn’t have as large of a following as it deserves. And Disney’s Frozen was so huge, few remember a movie had the same title just a few years earlier. It’s a shame this Frozen has faded from memories, because it might just be the best movie Adam Green has made to date.
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: It starts with the foundation of a solid script. This is a very dialogue-driven movie, with a lot of time spent on conversations between the three leads. At first it’s just fun, everyday life banter. This gives us a chance to get to know Dan, Lynch, and Parker. To understand what’s going on with each one of them. To start liking them. Then, just twenty-two minutes into the film’s ninety-three minute running time, the chair lift they’re on stops moving. Up to that point, Frozen has been a buddy skiing movie where either the girlfriend who joined two friends on their ski trip is the third wheel. Or her presence has made Lynch the third wheel on the sort of ski trip he has previously enjoyed with Dan. When it was just the two of them. When the lift stops, the movie shifts fully into survival thriller mode. But there’s still a lot of exceptionally well-written dialogue. As the characters have to try to talk their way through the situation they’re in. And occasionally take a break for chit-chat to try to distract themselves from the terror they feel.
Green found the perfect three actors to speak his dialogue and bring the characters to life. A lot of actors showed up to audition for Frozen. And when they found out what the filming conditions were going to be like, seventy percent of them took themselves out of the running. Of the remaining thirty percent, Zegers, Ashmore, and Bell were the right choices to go with. And Green said that not only were they willing to work in the elements, they were even excited to do it. All three of them delivered great performances out there in the cold and snow. They made their characters completely believable. And were really able to sell the fear and desperation their characters feel.
Frozen is also effective because Green dropped his characters into a scary but relatable situation. Of course, the scenario will connect most with viewers who have actually been to ski resorts and ridden on the chair lifts. As Green has said, “I think anyone who has ever been skiing has had that fear. That chair lift always, undoubtedly stops for some reason, usually because somebody fell getting on or off of it. But there’s this collective fear of everyone on the chair lift wondering ‘If the lift doesn’t start again, how are we going to get down?’”
But even if you’ve never been to a ski resort, even if you’ll never find yourself on a chair lift, you can still imagine what it would be like to be stuck fifty feet off the ground in brutal weather conditions. And while you watch the film’s characters try to figure out how to survive… the viewer also starts pondering what they would do in the situation. Sure, some people might imagine themselves becoming Spider-Man and getting out of the predicament with ease. But Green does a good job of showing it wouldn’t be so easy to get out of the chair safely. What can you do? Jump off the chair and hope the fifty foot fall won’t be so bad? Try to climb the cable? Green shows the danger of every option. And while Frozen is a very different sort of movie than Hatchet, the fact that Green also made Hatchet gives this one an extra edge. Because we don’t want to see Dan, Lynch, and Parker get hurt too badly, and we know Green isn’t afraid of messing his characters up.
BEST SCENE(S): Terrible things do happen in Frozen. But the best moments come in between the bursts of shock and horror. They’re the character moments that are perfectly played by the cast. The moments when we see the doomed trio banter with each other. When we watch Parker and Lynch finally start to bond, under awful circumstances. When we listen to Lynch reminisce about a humiliating experience. Or see how worried Parker is about the dog waiting for her at home.
PARTING SHOT: Frozen is a great survival thriller with wonderful dramatic moments. The Hatchet movies are fun and we would be glad to see that franchise go on forever. But between the Victor Crowley killing sprees, the genre would greatly benefit from Adam Green making more movies along the lines of Frozen. More grounded, relatable films about interesting characters dealing with terrifying situations. Green did such an awesome job with this one, we’re left wanting to see him craft some more legitimately unnerving thrillers. In the meantime, more viewers need to seek out Green’s Frozen and give the film a chance. It deserves to be seen by more people. To be referenced more often. To have a much larger fan following than it has.
If you’re still not sold on Frozen, here’s one last quote from Adam Green that might seal the deal. Speaking with Screen Rant, the filmmaker described Frozen as “a horror movie that will scare and disturb audiences not with the typical conventions of violence, gore, or torture… but in the overall sense of dread that keeps reminding you ‘this could really happen.’ Even those who have never skied will be able to relate to the fear of heights and fear of freezing to death that this film will terrify the audience with.” Now, doesn’t that sound like the ideal viewing experience?
More video scripts have been written, so another batch of videos will be shared here on Life Between Frames eventually. In the meantime, keep an eye on JoBlo Horror Originals and JoBlo Originals!
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