It’s one of the most unlikely cinematic pairings one could imagine. Twenty-five year-old film producer Peter Douglas, a neophyte in the movie industry, is tall, angular and lively. When he speaks, he gesticulates madly and flashes a bemused smile that conjures up visions of his actor father, Kirk Douglas.
Ray Bradbury, on the other hand, is quiet, precise, and ironically amusing. Topped by a mane of white hair, the legendary master of literary fantasy resembles a decidedly un-Hollywood scholarly type who is not at all above taking a verbal swipe or two at the motion picture industry when the spirit moves him.
Yet, on this day on the Walt Disney Studios lot in California, both men are smiling beatifically. They have good reason. Together, they have managed to film what many Hollywood insiders have considered the unfilmable... a $16 million production of Bradbury’s classic novel Something Wicked This Way Comes; a low-keyed, ominous pastiche of nightmares taking place in a small town during a visit by a most unusual carnival. The appearance of Something Wicked This Way Comes this Christmas, directed by Jack Clayton (The Great Gatsby, The Innocents), will mark the end of a twenty-four-year- old struggle by Bradbury to see his dreams on the screen.
Over the years, the property has passed through the hands of countless moviemakers-from Gene Kelly to Sam Peckinpah to Steven Spielberg – with no tangible results. Exactly what was it that clicked this time out?
“It was magic,” Peter Douglas beams. “Pure and simple. We were fated to make this movie.”
Bradbury seems to agree. He is nothing short of ecstatic when asked to comment on Wicked. “It is my book,” he states “You’re looking at a very happy writer. I’ve had a wonderful year. Any Friend of Nicholas Nicleby on PBS and The Electric Grandmother on NBC were very well done. And now, we have this”
For Bradbury to actually be excited about a screen adaptation of one of his works is downright, well, unusual. In the past, he has treated most cinematic stabs at his style with the kind of warmth usually reserved for IRS audits.
The writer is well aware of his reputation as a film critic. “After The Martian Chronicles on tv,” he shrugs, “I wanted to kill people. They promised me so much and delivered so little. Richard Matheson turned in a fine script but they chose to ignore a lot of it. The film is boring. If you listen to it, there’s very little wrong with it. But when you watch it! There’s no energy present. It’s like the director rolled out of bed every morning and decided that it was just another job for him. That’s no way to live.
“When I write a short story or a poem, it’s the most important thing that’s ever happened to me and it’s happening now. I’m at it. I tear the hell out of it. That’s the way you should direct a film. That’s what I demand from a director. Get out of bed every morning and say ‘WOW! I can hardly wait!’ If you can’t feel that way, then get the hell off the project. If you’re going to adapt a writer, for God’s sake pay attention to his dreams. Don’t let your ego get in the way. That’s not what filmmaking is about.”
For Bradbury, the making of Something Wicked proved an ideal combination of individual egos and talents ... the kind of collaborative effort he hoped for in 1958.
“I started pushing for this twenty-four years ago," he explains. “Gene Kelly invited me to see a film he had directed, Invitation to the Dance. I left the theater exhilarated. I turned to my wife and said ‘My God. I’d sell my soul to make a movie with him.’ I went home and pored through my files to see if I had any stories I could give him.
“I found one called The Black Ferris. It was first published in Weird Tales in 1948. I spent a week or two doing an outline for a screenplay I called Dark Carnival. I gave it to Gene. He loved it. He took it to Europe to raise financing and came back a short time later without a deal. No one was interested. By this time, I figured ‘Heck. I like this idea. I’m not going to waste it. I have an eighty-page outline here that would make a great novel.’ I spent the better part of two years writing what would eventually be called Something Wicked This Way Comes.”
Despite the fact that he was fashioning his project into a book, Bradbury never allowed his celluloid dreams to die. At that early stage, he showed the novel to a director friend... Jack Clayton. The two had met during the filming of Bradbury’s script, Moby Dick, for John Huston in the mid-1950's and stayed in touch.
“Every time Jack would come into town after that," recalls Bradbury, “I’d tell him about this novel I was working on. He actually read it before it was published. He was interested but, for one reason or another, we drifted off to different projects. Years went by. I kept pushing the book as a movie.
“I submitted it to the Disney studios in the early 1960's. I have a letter somewhere from Walt Disney saying that, although he liked it, he didn't think it was right for his studio at that time.
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