Behind the Scenes: Firestarter (Lester, 1984) with Drew Barrymore and David Keith

Dino DiLaurentis called me after I made Class of 1984. It was very successful. And he said he wanted to make a picture with me. And I found this project, Year of the Dragon, that we developed. But then there was this movie that he offered me, Firestarter. And what had happened was John Carpenter was originally set to do it. And there was a script, actually, a John Carpenter script. But it had nothing to do with the book. He veered completely away from the book. And so DiLaurentis, he said, well, I have this project ready to go, Firestarter, instead of this Year of the Dragon we were developing, which he later made with himself later. And so this picture, he said the budget was $15 million. But Universal didn't want to spend $15 million. I said, how much do they have? He said $10 million. I said, oh, to me, that's three times the budget of my last film. I said, I'd be happy to do it. It'd be the biggest budget I've ever had. There's no problem. Well, how can you make this huge epic for that? I said, well, in a non-union state like North Carolina, without all the unions, we can make it. But we did a lot of scouting before that in Rome and in Texas and Mexico, a lot of places we scouted. And we ended up shooting in North Carolina. But that's how I originally got involved. I read the book. And it was a phenomenal book and very important subject. And I knew about the CIA experiments that led to deaths and so forth in the 60s that they had done in college campuses. So it was a fascinating project to me. And what happened was then I got, D. Laurent said, do you know a writer? And I had met Stanley Mann, who had written for me the sequel to Class of 84. And so I said, yeah, Stanley Mann would be great. And he had written 50, 60 movies by that point, including The Collector. And so we wrote the script. And we followed the book exactly. It was completely adapted from start to finish exactly as the book. So when Stanley Mann started the project, in three weeks, he had the entire script. Actually, less than three weeks. And it was like 300 pages. And then we went through. And it was the entire book. And we edited it down to 120 pages. And Stanley Mann said, we can't turn it in yet to the studio. Let's wait a little longer. Because if we give them the script in two and a half weeks, they're going to think it's no good. So we're finished. But let's just hold on to it for a little bit. So it looks like I spent more time. I said, OK. So we turned it in finally a week or so later. And the first thing Dino De Laurentiis said was, when I turned the script in, he called me in his office. And he said, this just follows the book exactly. And I go, well, I said, yes. How much did you pay for the book? He said, a million dollars. I said, well, that's right. That's why we used it. And then during the filming, before we started, Stephen King came down to the set. And there was a whole discussion with him of how to do these various things, The producer was Dino De Laurentiis. And he's a fantastic person. I learned so much. And he said, let's bring in a whole crew from Italy. So the DP and the gaffer and so forth, the whole crew, the art department, they came from Italy. And at that time, immigration was very easy to get permits. So we brought them all in into North Carolina, which I found. And he had not done before a non-union kind of movie. So I was very experienced in that. But we shot for 55 days. And he was great to work with. And he would call me in. I was at, we worked six days a week. And on the seventh day, De Laurentiis would call in the morning. He'd say, come over now. We got to discuss the next week's shooting. I go, oh, man, this is like my only day off. And De Laurentiis said, well, you're the general. He says, the generals during a war never get a day off. The George C. Scott wasn't budgeted for a big actor in that Rainbird part. And so he wanted to put George C. Scott in the movie. And he wanted all these Academy Award winning people in the movie. So he went back to the studio. And there was a meeting at Universal with Robert Ramey, who was the head of the studio at the time. And we all went in there for this meeting. And De Laurentiis, he was such a great salesman. He said, look, he said, George C. Scott won't, you know, we want to pay him a million dollars. We need the money from you. But it won't make, like, we can't promise it'll increase the box office. But he said, it'll give the movie a cachet of not just being like a low budget horror film. It'll look like, you know, if that prestigious actor wants to be in it, it'll look like a much more prestigious movie. Like The Shining was. Drew Barrymore, we interviewed many, many eight-year-olds to play that part, including the wonderful actress from Poltergeist, the little girl. And it was between her and Drew Barrymore, finally. But Drew Barrymore was always kind of like the person that everybody wanted. And she was, like, famous from E.T. And she read for the part and was fantastic. And she met with us, you know, numerous times. And she was always the person that, you know, we'd want for the part. And she did a fantastic job because there are not that many eight-year-old girls that can carry a whole movie like this and work for 55 days. And it was a very rough shoot for a girl to carry a whole movie like that. The whole fire thing, we actually rehearsed all of the wind machine and that on the set, you know, way before the shooting. She came down to North Carolina and we filmed her in all of that, test filmed her doing all of these things to get that just exactly right with the wind and the hair machine and all that. It was all pre-practiced, like, long before the shooting started. No, I think they thought I was a very eccentric and strange creature, very eccentric actor, I think. Something bizarre about me that seemed to appeal to the less well-informed, perhaps. So I did. I did quite a few strange films, I think. Yeah, mystical films. I suppose one leads on to another, really, when you're casting. I mean, very often it's about lending very similitude to situations which are so bizarre that they can't really exist, perhaps, or very strange. And it's a challenge. Better than playing a bloody solicitor for the whole of your career, you know. Firestarter. I must have been a child star when I played that because it's so long ago. What was it? 1980s, was it? That's about nearly 40 years. I don't know. I remember very little. Dino De Laurentiis, he was a producer. I'd worked with him once before. I can't remember what it was. But he built these studios in North Carolina, I remember. Something to do with very acquiescent unions and things. Nothing to do with me. I just heard things like that. Anyway, there were the studios, and he asked me if I'd do this part. Very strange piece it is. I was the only English actor, which is a bit strange. And I felt a bit vulnerable about the whole thing. And faces that you knew very well, brilliant people around you. From past films. And I had this quite long speech, I remember. And there on my right, I think, was George C. Scott scrutinizing me. And I had this longish speech. I thought, well, I'd better get this right first time. Anyway, I worked assiduously at trying to get something from it. I delivered it, and I think I did very well. It felt rhythmic, and hesitations. Unfortunately, which was not a very bright thing to do. I delivered the last, and I said, cut, print, next. And I thought, I wish I hadn't said that. It was startling as a story. And I wondered if it would carry, if people would really take to it. But marvellous, the lovely young actress then playing the lead. Which she did fearfully well, I thought. And a brilliant cast around me. Undoubtedly a very, very fine cast. So that made it all okay. But the business of bursting into flames. As I said earlier, I think that the great test of an actor, it seems to me, is when you're watching a ghost appear. Or when you're seeing somebody burst into flames. It needs all the energy and imagination you can conjure. I was one of the few actors that was hired to be one of the people that got burned. A G-man, so to speak. A government man. The FBI guys that were looking for this subversive group of people. But all the other actors around me were really stuntmen. That didn't have very many lines or whatever. They would do a full burn, body burn, or whatever the different things that you see happening in the film. So what I learned early on in the film is that these were stunt people that are now a member of our union and everything else. But at that time they weren't. And they're a different character, a different personality than just regular actors. They're like rodeo riders. There's a sense of danger and adventure that they kind of have. In fact, I would go out with them in North Carolina to these bars and I stopped doing that because they'd get into fights all the time. And I said, you don't understand. I get into a fight and my face gets all messed up. I said, I'm not going to work. So I'm with all these stuntmen, right? And they get paid so much per stunt. And they negotiate per stunt. With the producer, usually. So I got like an arm burn on me, right? Where they set a quarter of my body on fire. And the producer said, well, we're going to give you an extra $300, $400 to be able to do this and stuff. So I immediately said, oh, OK, good. OK, right. And I went over to the stunt guys and the coordinator and the others. And they were all sitting. They all kind of sat in a group. And I said, listen, the producers just come to me and they want me to do a stunt for them. And they want me to do an arm burn or whatever it was called. And they want to pay me this much money. And I said, is that a good price? And they all kind of looked at each other one way and the other way. And they said, oh, yeah, that's an OK price. And I knew they were not telling me the truth. I knew that they got more money for getting burned the way I was going to get burned. But they weren't going to tell me that. That was their own little secret society. Working with Glenn Randall Jr. was fantastic. He was such a professional stuntman. And he designed a lot of these stunts that were done with the men on fire and people flying on trampolines on fire. That had never been done before. And diving out of the way of these fireballs. And he was an expert with horses. So he trained these horses for a month to run out of the burning barn. And he did a fantastic job. George Wilbur and Gene Hartline are stunt guys that were all in the same stunt group, the Stuntman's Association. And so I had worked with those guys over the years in a lot of different jobs. Great people, good stunt guys. And, you know, that's the kind of people you want to have around you. When you're doing that stuff for safety or on safety for them if they're doing it. So it's a good atmosphere. All those special effects are done on the set. There's no CGI when we made this movie. So everything was done right on the set. So when you see those fireballs, they're on a wire that you light them up and they fly through the air. That's really happening right in the set. And the stunt people had to dive out of the way of the fireballs. You know, we built pipes through the ground. So the fire is moving through the ground and these flames. So there was a lot of very dangerous stunt work done in the movie. And a lot of people set on fire in special suits. And the whole special effects aspect of it was very complex. It felt safe, you know, which is not there wasn't chaos. I mean, I've been on sets where there was chaos. And I mean, I'm sure there were problems. Mark will tell you what problems he might have had, I'm sure, you know, but he somehow that was kept from us, or it was kind of insular. I remember a delightful, harmonious relationship with him. And, of course, that helped through all the problems that one had. They were terrific. Yeah, fine. And deserved the fame he got on the set. Yeah. What a cast. What's an amazing cast that they, you know, that they were able to put all those people together and that they weren't that they were available at, you know, that's usually, you know, forget that, you know, somebody's got the money to pay them, whatever their rate might be or whatever, right? That they could put everybody together. I thought it was a darn good movie. You know, Martin Sheen, Scott, all of them, David Keith, Drew, everybody was great. And I thought Drew did an exceptional job for just a child, you know, and she's just wonderful. I used to go in Drew's, the classroom, the trailer that she had classroom in, you know, I used to go in there once in a while and sit and talk with her. And I asked her one day, I said, Drew, I said, give me an autographed picture. She, well, and her dad, I mean, her mom rather, got the picture and Drew autographed the picture for me. And as you can see, it's printed, but it was so sweet. I just thought it was marvelous. And, you know, the music helped in a lot of the scenes in Tangerine Dream that they had done Sorcerer and they were, you know, quite famous group at the time from Germany. So, you know, they were hired to do the soundtrack. And it's interesting, they did the whole score in Berlin and then they sent, you know, all of the music. But normally the music is geared to each individual scene. But what they did, I said, wait a minute, when it came in, I called them and said, well, this music, there's no numbering or coding where it all goes. And they said, well, just put it anywhere. It works in any scene, any place you want to put it. And that was true. So that wherever you tried this music, it worked throughout the movie in any scene. It was the most amazing thing with a score I'd ever heard of, that he just delivered like that. When I had found an access to the scenes, for example, we're talking about the Firestarter here, about motifs or themes that fit Charlie the Kid, I could just sit down, either take a piano-like sound or work on the synth and find the composition through the kind of improvisation to the picture. I also did notation and so on. So that the interaction between the picture and what I felt in real time was very direct, which I always had a lot of fun with. Of course, there was only one problem. If I had something and I wasn't allowed to forget it, that was one thing. And the second thing is, if I didn't have time to write it down, I had to record it very quickly. And that's how Christoph and Edgar came into play, who partly also operated the machines, so that when the three of us were there, we had to record what we had in real time in our fingers immediately on a tape recorder, otherwise we would have lost it. We didn't have computers like today, where you just play and remember it. You can store it, you can take sounds from huge libraries. That wasn't the case yet. So if we had something, it had to be recorded immediately on tape. I have to admit that I don't remember having such exact information about how we worked with Mark Lester, which was definitely the case, and that was the case with almost all film musicians, that we worked very closely with the music editors, who were sometimes in Spandau for two or three weeks and worked with us on the music, which we taught and had exact instructions with the director in Los Angeles on how the music had to be. And in this case I can still very well remember the producer Dino De Laurentiis, who came to Spandau, to Christoph's studio, and you can tell his professionalism. He actually only wanted to have played two musics, one of which was Für Wahr, and it's still so present in my head. I always have to smile when I think about it. We're sitting in Spandau, preparing everything, the music is almost ready, and the door opens and we actually expected Dino De Laurentiis, and two bodyguards come in. That was actually incredible for us at the time, because we didn't really know how Hollywood worked. Of course he was there, but it was only the bodyguards who came in, so to speak, briefly checked if everything was clean in the studio, and then he came in, sat down at our desk and, surprisingly, but you can tell how professional these people are, of course, he only wanted to listen to two songs. One was, of course, we were very excited to see if everything would work out, and when he heard those two songs, he said, okay, fine, he's heard everything, he doesn't need anything else. Then the question came up, where in the state is the best pasta? And we thought, that's probably not possible, we've been working here for weeks and he listens to two songs and then he just wants the best pasta. So Edgar accompanied him to the KDW, I think, and there he got the best pasta in Berlin. We looked at him and knew he wanted everything from us that we had so far, so to speak, in the bandwidth, in the pipeline. He requires enormous sound worlds to simplify Andrew McGee's skills, for example, or, of course, Charlie's ability to simplify the fire. At the same time, we were absolutely clear that we had to find themes, we had to find sound colors that fit this ten-year-old girl and couldn't just go in there brutally. I know that we were pretty exhausted at the time, because it really required us in the tiniest of details to cover this bandwidth of all these things musically. And I don't think I would be able to talk neutrally about this film, because if you see the main actors for three or four weeks, if you live with them, if you see what they go through, and Charlie the Kid is completely desperate on the one hand. On the other hand, she loves her parents, her father, and yet she has this talent that she doesn't want at all, simplifying fire, pyrokinesis. And if you experience all of this for three or four weeks, you have no way of watching this film neutrally and judging it like someone who may not even know how it all came about and who sits in the cinema and says, oh, or so, or yes, good or not, or so. When I saw the finished film 40-something years ago, I don't remember, I remember it being very extravagant. Mind you, as a writer, he is extravagant, isn't he? People bursting into flames and things makes demands upon the viewer's imagination, it seems to me. And I think that's what I felt. A bit like one or two other films I've been in, you have to trust the punters, the audience, to contribute. I mean, it's part of their duty to contribute to a piece of play or whatever, and they become part of it or should become part of it. If they're not, then you've failed.