MELTDOWN (Yves Simoneau, 1992/ John Dahl, 1994) (unproduced)

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Re: MELTDOWN (Yves Simoneau 1992 / John Dahl, 1994) (unprodu

Postby Jox on 05 Jun 2014, 18:25

WOW! Here is the complete original John Carpenter MELTDOWN screenplay! 8)
http://www.script-fix.com/produced-scre ... ltdown.pdf
(118 pages, PDF)

The Dolph version he was attached to (15 years later) had been revised and rewritten several times since then, notably by Robert Roy Pool (OUTBREAK, ARMAGEDDON), and John Dahl (KILL ME AGAIN, RED ROCK WEST) when he was hired direct...

Script coverage:
http://www.script-fix.com/screenwriting ... carpenter/

TITLE: Meltdown by John Carpenter (unproduced)
FORM/PAGES: Screenplay / 118 COVERAGE DATE: 10/23/13
DATE: READER: DB
GENRE: Disaster/Horror
CIRCA: 1951/1980

COVERAGE:

The script is masterfully written in many ways and a complete joy to read. The dramatic premise is intriguing. The characters, though certainly on the thin side, are sympathetic and real, and the dialogue created to express their points of view is effective throughout. The visuals, the action, the topography of the space… all are exceptionally well crafted.

The script is also very much a product of its time. While the Fukushima partial meltdown of 2+ years ago is still creating a sort of rolling disaster, it can’t be said that there is actually a great deal of public American fear, suspicion, anger, or even upset at the issue of nuclear power itself. While this script does present an interesting plot in and of itself, it’s undeniably a political polemic against nuclear power and against technology in general. It’s difficult to fully gauge how this subject matter would land in the culture of today given all the other things that the general public is concerned about, and the vast shift toward mechanization that’s happened in the 33 years since this story was written.

In order to make this script work, it would either require a commitment to present this nearly as-is, in the context of 1980 with only a minor shift towards stronger logic and emotional substantiation… or require virtually a page one rewrite placed today. To commit to it as it is, placing it still in 1980, in effect the film would become itself a time capsule, shining a light perhaps on what we should still be gravely concerned about but have forgotten in our shifting focus towards other fears. There are shades of (future) terrorism, climate change, and remote military murders in here. The connection to the story being relevant today could be made from the view of darkly ironic hindsight. Our current culture espouses much different fears now, but it’s not impossible to track them as a sort of offspring of the fears capitalized upon in this script. It could work as a sort of objectified view of every crime we’ve committed against our environment since then, including the Fukushima disaster. It’s not clear how well that would in terms of marketing but considering the source, this film would certainly gain a lot of interest.

The aspect of fear of technology would also have to be something to be looked at, as debating the usefulness or ubiquity of technology is no longer a powerful, persuasive argument. While this is secondary in many ways to the larger threat of the meltdown, it is fear (and misunderstanding/misuse) of technology that fuels that primary fear. Viewed from 2013, that 1980 suspicion of technology seems almost naïve or quaint. Yes – as we hear more about government spying and drone warfare, technology can seem just as invasive and destructive as a nuclear meltdown, but that fear doesn’t come from a place of innocence anymore. We’re far more aware of the assets and liabilities of technology, but indisputably we’re far more comfortable with its existence in our daily lives. It’s not clear how effective a film could really be in this modern culture that’s based on suspicion of technology from such a theoretical point of view.

If, however, the story is meant to take place now, this would obviously require a major rewrite, not necessarily in terms of plot, or even much of the dialogue, plot, etc., but to make it feel current in the more emotional/cerebral content. There are several relatively superficial adjustments that would have to be made. Including modern technology is the most fundamental of these shifts, but the dreaded fear of radioactive material and nuclear power in general is simply not the same thing in our culture anymore. It doesn’t carry nearly the weight that it did in the 1980s regardless of what’s still happening in Japan and the Pacific Ocean. That fear exists, but to have full impact, it would have to be substantiated. How nuclear power is generated, the effects of radiation, and the risks of widespread contamination would probably have to be explained to a much further degree in the script than it is in this draft. The demographic for this film, today, probably doesn’t know who Karen Silkwood is or why anyone would want her dead. There are tours of Chernobyl. That reality has to be accounted for now.

Updating it would also mean updating it to some extent structurally. While it’s nearly perfect structure for 1980, the condensing that screenplays have gone through even in the past decade makes the script overly long, and the second act of this script feel slow and a bit soft. The major shift in the story, the first real murder, doesn’t happen until page 59. That’s terribly late for a modern film. While there’s a terrifically crafted sense of tension all through the second act, so little actually happens in terms of making progress towards the stated goal that there’s very little movement. The conflict of the rogue “figure” also takes rather too long to heighten, not just in terms of actual murders, but in terms of making it progressively and exponentially harder on the group of seven to accomplish anything that could be perceived as progress.

In terms of looking at the conflict, while obviously the big stakes are overall extremely high, there are not many personal stakes being explored or expressed here. While much of the character work is excellent, there is so little internal story happening for any of the characters that it’s hard to get a handle of what any of this means for them as people. There’s a great detail when Teresa sends in a message not to tell her mother what’s happening. It’s a terrific little moment. But it also stands out as being significantly more personal and specific than almost any other moment in the script. We know next to nothing about any of these people in terms of what skills, strengths and weaknesses any of them have. While the script is rather exciting and frightening in many ways, the lack of individual definition is undercutting the potential that the script could have to be equally valid as a character study in an intensely stressful crises situation.

There is only one real relationship in the story (between Kneale and Parks) and this is another place that the story could be strengthened, no matter when it takes place. These people are meant to have been working closely together for some time now. While the group of five co-workers is comprised of scientists, there is every reason to make them as human, relatable, and nuanced as possible. The best place to explore that is to dive more deeply in the relationships between them. To allow them to push each other’s buttons almost as much or more as the external forces working against them would be highly effective. There’s a great deal of room to play with here, and while it needn’t highjack the importance of the outside influences, the concept of “fighting the devil within” can be brought a little more close to home.

The last thing to really consider is the role of the “figure”. What he wants, why he wants it, what he’s hoping to actually accomplish, and how are all things that aren’t quite holding up at present, and would want to a look regardless of the time setting of the story. Some of how it’s being currently handled does seem in some ways to be a product of the time when the script was originally written. We still have single, insane “boogeymen” out there in the world and showing up as villains in our modern stories. And they’re just as driven by high ideals as they are in this story. But there’s a bit of a mixture of all different kinds of crazy in this story’s villain that don’t quite add up. Just as an example, the figure seems to kill people in many different ways. He sets some people on fire. Drops others in radioactive liquid. Attacks some with power tools. The killer has no consistent MO. The murders don’t say anything about him other than he’s a killer. There’s no signature.

Another element of the “figure” that’s not quite landing is all the messages and poetry he’s putting around the building. Since he’s planning on destroying the plant, who is he leaving this poetry for? It would only be communication if there were something left to show people, but his plan is to raze the whole power plant in a conflagration of total destruction. That poetry is going to disappear. That video will disappear. There’s really no reason even to go around and intentionally murder these seven people since they will die far more easily if simply locked inside the plant and left to their own devices. The group of seven walk into a situation when they enter the plant where the “figure” already completely has the upper hand, and there’s literally no way for them to do anything. They don’t know this at first, of course, but the whole course of the story is literally a lost cause from page 2.

Of course the plot is largely about seven to ten people getting picked off one by one, and that shouldn’t necessarily be removed because it’s illogical from an omniscient point of view. But it does mean that every effort should be made to make it logical. The poetry might be spooky and effective on some level, but it’s got to be distributed in a way that makes sense, and would reach the world in order to make a deliberate statement. The “figure” is trying to warn humanity of its hubris, but he’s simultaneously engaging in an act that will ensure that his message never reaches the world intact. The world would be left to interpret it however the owners of the plant deliver the narrative to the media. Again, none of these things are deal breakers in terms of the potential effectiveness of the story, but they need to be handled in a way so as not to raise more questions than answers in terms of motivation and follow-through.

A great read, a truly great script in many regards. The fact that it would want a great deal of work to move forward into production is not a criticism of the piece as much as it is a commentary on how much the film industry and the world has changed in 33 years. It’s just not the same world. It feels rather absurd in the light of Fukushima to say that nuclear power just isn’t a deeply vital issue anymore, but truthfully, it simply isn’t. It’s still a scientific and political issue, but it’s not a cultural one in modern America. To the ordinary person, the expected demographic for a film of this size…sadly, it’s going to be a bit of an uphill battle to really engage the hearts and minds of middle America who are far more afraid of being jobless than they are of being poisoned by toxic waste.

STRONG CONSIDER.

Coverage written by DB, Script-Fix reader.
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Re: MELTDOWN (Yves Simoneau 1992 / John Dahl, 1994) (unprodu

Postby Jox on 21 Jun 2014, 23:43

Jox wrote:WOW! Here is the complete original John Carpenter MELTDOWN screenplay! 8)
http://www.script-fix.com/produced-scre ... ltdown.pdf
(118 pages, PDF)

The Dolph version he was attached to (15 years later) had been revised and rewritten several times since then, notably by Robert Roy Pool (OUTBREAK, ARMAGEDDON), and John Dahl (KILL ME AGAIN, RED ROCK WEST) when he was hired direct...

Indeed the original John Carpenter script (1978) seems very different from the version(s) Dolph had been attached later on. This was more of a suspense / horror thriller à la "HALLOWEEN in a nuclear plant (which would have worked well back then in the late 70s early 80s) than a "DIE-HARD in a nuclear plant".

And there was less of a lead character per say (more of team), though one who stands out is a "fish out of water" doctor involved in spite of himself. He's the one who was rewritten as a Navy Seal in what would have been the Dolph version (with a team of terrorists taking over the plant instead of one mysterious serial killer in the Carpenter version)...
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Re: MELTDOWN (Yves Simoneau, 1992/ John Dahl, 1994) (unprodu

Postby Jox on 14 Jul 2015, 11:52

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Re-write draft by John Dahl, Rick Dahl and Scott Chestnut, and revisions by Ate De Jong, 4/2/1995

Dolph had signed on to the project after UNIVERSAL SOLDIER in 1992, around the same time as JOSHUA TREE. Canadian director Yves Simoneau was to direct. It didn't get to production then so it got into turnaround until the project was relaunched in 1994 with John Dahl at the helm. Production got shut down in June 1994 only days before filming because of a big legal dispute between distributors Miramax, Trimark and August Entertainment.

This April 1995 draft is from after John Dahl dropped out of the director's chair since the legal issues and shortly before Dolph left as well. Dutch director Ate de Jong was then attached to direct (as he was in 1997 when they reannounced it with Dolph look-alike Casper Van Dien starring).
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Re: MELTDOWN (Yves Simoneau, 1992/ John Dahl, 1994) (unprodu

Postby Jox on 01 Oct 2016, 10:49

Rare early 1987 screenplay (revised by Michael Campus). This is 5 years before Dolph got attached to star in it.

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Re: MELTDOWN (Yves Simoneau, 1992/ John Dahl, 1994) (unprodu

Postby Jox on 12 Mar 2017, 23:27

Finding out that Joe Dante himself was once involved in the project in the 1980s 8)
http://blog.tvstoreonline.com/2014/04/i ... -made.html
I was also involved with John at the time on a script he was working on which eventually became THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT (1984). He was writing it for Avco Embassy but he only got about 25 pages in when the company started passing it around and offering it to other writers. I started working on the script for that and another for them called MELTDOWN, which was about a atomic power plant, but then Avco Embassy went under and it was sold to Norman Lear and he decided that he didn't want to make those kinds of movies so THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT ended up being made at New World Pictures. I worked on MELTDOWN for no money which left me less than enthusiastic when they went under. In fact, they also owed me my editing fee on THE HOWLING (1981) when they went under...I never got that either...laughing
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Re: MELTDOWN (Yves Simoneau, 1992/ John Dahl, 1994) (unprodu

Postby Jox on 19 May 2018, 20:15

My script collection of 4 different MELTDOWN drafts

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Re: MELTDOWN (Yves Simoneau, 1992/ John Dahl, 1994) (unprodu

Postby Jox on 04 Nov 2018, 22:01

8)
Super rare trade advert from the AFM late February 1992.

The studio Hemdale was the one behind the 1984 TERMINATOR, and the attached director was the Canadian Yves Simoneau, before John Dahl took over 2 years later with a new studio...

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Re: MELTDOWN (Yves Simoneau, 1992/ John Dahl, 1994) (unprodu

Postby Jox on 22 May 2019, 13:45

25 years ago in Cannes, Dolph spoke on French TV about MELTDOWN, that was supposed to start filming a few weeks later. He also talked about JOHNNY MNEMONIC that he had just wrapped on, and THE SHOOTER which was originally set to take place and be filmed in Paris (the attraction of international productions for Prague like MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE made it be relocated);

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Re: MELTDOWN (Yves Simoneau, 1992/ John Dahl, 1994) (unprodu

Postby Jox on 15 Oct 2020, 12:26

Jox wrote:8)
Super rare trade advert from the AFM late February 1992.

The studio Hemdale was the one behind the 1984 TERMINATOR, and the attached director was the Canadian Yves Simoneau, before John Dahl took over 2 years later with a new studio...

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Re: MELTDOWN (Yves Simoneau, 1992/ John Dahl, 1994) (unprodu

Postby Jox on 03 Feb 2021, 23:21

April 8, 1994, Variety
DAHL IS IN PRE-PRODUCTION on his first departure from the genre, “Meltdown,” an action thriller set in a nuclear power plant in upstate New York that will be shot in Vienna this summer. “But I’m trying to give it a dark slant,” he adds.

https://variety.com/1994/voices/columns ... ve-120024/
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Re: MELTDOWN - John Dahl

Postby Jox on 05 Apr 2023, 20:07

Jox wrote:HunterTarantino, from the awesome B Action Movie Thread (more than 1000000 views, 50000 posts, 1000 pages since 2006) on CHUD, found this ad for MELTDOWN, probably dating from 15 years before Dolph was attached.

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Color version of the ad which dates from about 1979:

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Re: MELTDOWN (Yves Simoneau, 1992/ John Dahl, 1994) (unprodu

Postby Jox on 04 Jan 2024, 13:12

I believe this is the power plant near Vienna (Austria) where they were supposed to shoot. This plant was built but never activated...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwentendo ... ower_Plant

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Re: MELTDOWN (Yves Simoneau, 1992/ John Dahl, 1994) (unprodu

Postby Jox on 12 Jan 2024, 20:54

Past auction of an original draft:
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/ ... -502755784


John Carpenter on THE PROMETHEUS CRISIS (the original title for MELTDOWN):

From Starburst in 1980
https://archive.org/details/Starburst_M ... 7/mode/2up

PROMETHEUS CRISIS

(1979). Written, scored and directed by John Carpenter for producers George G. Braunstein and Ron Hamady and Chelsea Pictures. No casting announced at present time.

John Carpenter: All of us liked the original idea: what happens when a nuclear plant melts down. It melts into the earth, releasing giant clouds of radioactive steam. While nuclear reactors are sobering topics of conversation these days, this does not produce a film on the subject being thrilling, suspenseful. The unique combination of horror and special-effects ensure a high-quality film, an extremely commercial piece of sheer entertainment.

Co-producer George G. Braunstein: I got John involved in March last year. He's known for kinda entertaining, scary horror films... I told him: This is one of the scariest subjects there is. Instead of making it as a disaster movie, let's make it like a technological horror story. Rather than a tarantula or a mummy... It's going to be about a nuclear plant. I'm not really political or an anti-nuke activist, I don't want a message movie or an environmental movie — just a horror story.

We had to fight like mad to get our budget of 7-million dollars-close to a million on special effects alone, to show the intense heat of, say, one of the command console safety doors simply melting... John is setting up our own special effects unit. We're not farming it out to another company or studio. He's going to use, possibly, the Dark Star people: Dan O'Bannon and one of the top men at Universal. John has also — and I'm really, genuinely excited by this — found a way to combine the effects and the really horrific story in a unique manner. That's why we have a red Top Secret sign on the script. Nobody has read it! The actors we're talking to (Kris Kristofferson. Gene Hackman, Jon Voigt, Roy Scheider) only get to see their parts.

How did you meet up with John?
Initially through Dark Star and he used to teach screenwriting at the University of Southern California. I liked Dark Star a lot. I knew Assault on Precinct 13 was soft in America, but in London I s^w it with lines around the block. I've lived in London three years and while in some ways California is ahead of time, I think in many ways, London is, too. I had this funny hunch that maybe John was going to suddenly take off. I knew he was good, but he didn't have the muscle. And it was fortunate, the timing. We got together, made the agreement, then he did a TV show. Someone's Watching Me at Warners, which was really well received. Then Halloween came out, which was gigantic, and then he did Elvis.

I'll tell you a funny story... John and Adrienne were over at my house for dinner the night before Elvis showed. We saw another Dick Clark tv show about the history of rock 'n' roll, we had a really nice time but he was nervous all evening. The next night, Elvis was playing against Gone With the Wind and Cuckoo's Nest — giants in the industry. John was sure his movie would come in last which would not do him much good. Well, you know what happened - an unbelievable sweep of people watched his show...

Kurt Russell (Carpenter's Elvis): We didn't know it was going to happen. All three networks had just put so much money into that night. We were coming home from a party, and we noticed there wasn't too much traffic that night.

Season Hubley (Mrs Russell and Carpenter's Priscilla Presley): There wasn't any traffic. It was amazing!

George Braunstein: After that night, John had gotten the attention of all the big majors with their big cigars and their big cheque-books, wooing him in a way I could never woo him.

I just don't have that kinda power and prestige.

You could have lost him, you mean?
No, he's such a straight guy. I was there when he was there, not when he and the personality and the money-making was there. We have a good relationship with John. Not just me, everything I say relates to my business partner, Ron Hamady, too. He knows that Ron and I have invested a lot of our personal money to keep this project alive. For months we had no further to look than each other to write another cheque. What makes John so special in the media and everywhere else, is that he's a straightforward craftsman. He's serious. He's not a dilettante. He wants to make good movies and he does it reasonably. He doesn't want
some giant mansion. He lives like we live. He lives in a small, little house in the hills, and his love and desire is to make movies that people will want to go see. He's a hard worker. I was on the set of The Fog and he was very serious and intense. His main desire is to entertain people.

But can you ever sign him up again?
No, not now. Thanks to your EMI. You've got him locked up for about three years.

Well, we discovered him.
Well, I tell you, he'll deliver for you, too. He really makes good products.




From Cinefantastique in 1980
https://archive.org/stream/cinefantasti ... 9_djvu.txt
PROMETHEUS CRISIS is out then?

For me. I wrote a script [based on the best-selling novel, by Thomas N. Scortiand, Frank M. Robinson, about a nuclear accident], but the producers [George C. Braunstein and Ron Hamady of Chelsea Pictures] flubbed up on the financial end. Also I couldn't figure out how to make an entertaining movie out of something that grim. But I hear they’re still try ing to get someone for it.

The subject matter wasn’t salvageable?

THE CHINA SYNDROME came out; Three Mile Island happened. It would have been a cheap shot, making a horror movie about something that awful. There was a way to do it—make a musical out of it. But they would never have let me do it.

That sounds really off the wall.

If there’s something frightening about a nuclear plant in itself, you don't just go play that, because it ’s too easy. You’ve got to play against it—like humor in a horror movie. It’s important to come up with something that surprises the audience.
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