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“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
—George Lucas,
during the making of STAR WARS, 1976
FADE IN:
The endless expanse of black space,
dotted here and there by the immaculate
whiteness of stars.
Simple white lettering passes rapidly
across the screen, almost like a plane
in flight:
ONCE UPON A TIME, ON THE BOUNDARIES OF
UNKNOWN SPACE . . .
Luigi sat at the bar, wondering what the hell he was doing here. As a filmmaker and a distributor in Italy, he’d been in bizarre situations before, but this one was truly surreal.
Nannerini sat next to him, downing vodka and laying the reassurance on thick that everything was going to work out fine. But he was just as nervous as Luigi. Probably more. This deal would mean a lot of money for both of them, and so far they’d had a rough ride that had proven anything but fruitful. Nannerini had spent the last twenty years doing cloak-and-dagger deals in the film business and he knew when to jump in and swim for the gold or grab whatever you could and run like hell. He was a big, intimidating 60-year-old Italian native who looked tough like a Sicilian gangster and talked fast like a used car salesman. He was a stone-cold maverick who took the money, made a movie, and jumped ship in a big hurry, with as much of the cash still stuffed into his pockets as he could swim away with. He’d been working with another infamous fellow for many years, and the last few projects they’d put together had been uphill climbs against nearly impossible odds. And here he was with this wide-eyed young director, waiting to find out if they’d be involved in another one.
Luigi was well aware of the notorious reps these two guys had carved out for themselves in the film industry. He’d been warned by his contemporaries in no uncertain terms that he should steer clear of such shady circles. A few people had claimed that Nannerini himself was a straight-out crook and that he would be wiser stepping in front of a speeding subway train than to do business with the guy.
But sometimes good business was where you found it.
Especially in Italy.
Here, a young filmmaker such as Luigi found himself lucky if anything was offered to him, much less the opportunity to make a big-budget adventure movie. Even with all his contacts, credits and relative fame in Rome, Luigi still was very far from the dreams he’d had as a child: to make the magic of science fiction in the cinema and be praised the world over for his genius. He’d made three feature films, one of which was still playing in Roman theatres as a number one box-office attraction, but he would see not one dime of the film’s profits. His name was all over Italy on marquees and he was even the host of a popular TV show, but nobody really knew who he was internationally. He ran a successful independent movie distribution firm which had made him money and earned him respect . . . but the Bigger And Better Deal was still eluding him.
He was still The Phantom Director.
He looked down into his drink and sighed:
“You know, I think this one’s gonna die, too. I’ve got a bad feeling.” “I don’t blame you,” Nannerini said, knocking back another shot. “But we’ve gotta think big, Luigi. Nat is a reasonable guy. If you did what he wanted, everything will be fine.”
“That’s just it. I don’t even really know what the guy wants. I never even saw Star Wars before, and I hated The Land That Time Forgot!”
“Yeah, but you did good. I read the treatment—it’s fantastic!”
This wasn’t very reassuring to a guy who’d spent the past several months trying to get a science fiction movie off the ground, only to have the door slammed in his face by everyone he’d submitted it to—including the guy they were waiting for right now. Nannerini’s partner hated science fiction movies. He’d once screamed that he’d rather disembowel himself with a spoon than be involved in “such trash.” But something recently had changed his mind, and now, not only did he want to make a science fiction picture, but he wanted dinosaurs in it too! These people were crazy, there was no doubt about that. They were also probably crooks, Luigi knew that too.
But they might be his only hope.
Nannerini put a hand on his shoulder. “You worry too much. This is a business, Luigi, and you have to go with what Nat wants to do. I’m telling you, he can get this movie made.”
But would he want to?
Luigi had only just met Nat Waschberger in person. That was an hour ago in the lobby of the Roman Hilton. He’d turned out to be a short, rotund little fellow with liver spots, evil eyes and black hair shot through with streaks of gray. The splitting image of Peter Lorre, in fact. That wasn’t a very good sign, was it? Nat was as charming as the devil himself as he took Luigi’s 70-page screen treatment from him and said he would meet the two of them later in the hotel bar, after he’d had a chance to read the thing in his room. Luigi had written the treatment in less than a week on invitation from this rather sinister-looking old man, with the following guidelines: it had to be bigger-than-life space opera with laser guns and plenty of giant scaly beasties tromping around, and it had to be in theatres yesterday. Luigi should have—and did—smell a rat in the house. But what did he have to lose? He was already somewhat wealthy from his ventures into film distribution, and all he really wanted was to get his feet wet on an international film production that somebody across the ocean might actually see. The money wasn’t so important to him.
It was June of 1977, and Star Wars had just conquered America. The film was on its way to becoming a bonifide pop culture phenomenon and was outgrossing even Steven Spielberg’s massive horror hit Jaws, which itself had outshined Coppola’s The Godfather in 1975 and proven that genre films were not just big business for Hollywood—but the biggest business EVER for Hollywood. As it had happened (and was still happening) with Jaws, there were now copycat Star Wars imitations in production or already in theatres across the world. Movies with dinosaurs in them hadn’t been doing so badly either in recent years. Up until this time, Waschberger never would have given Luigi Cozzi the time of day.
Luigi ordered another drink—a rum and Coke, easy on the Coke and no ice—and went back to worrying. He was short and handsome, if a little round in the waist, with dark European features and a quiet, polite voice. He was well-traveled in his home country, self-educated and flirtatious with the ladies. He had survived in all walks of life by his instincts and was, by his own admission, one of the most obsessive science fiction geeks Italy had ever seen. He was thirty-two years old.
“Hey, Luigi,” Nannerini suddenly said, his voice catching on an excited note. “I think our worries are over.”
Luigi looked up to see Nat Waschberger coming towards them with a big smile on his face and wide-open arms. Nannerini knew this could only mean they were in business. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and let out a huge sigh of relief, as Nat embraced Luigi with a hearty laugh and a pat on the back.
“Wonderful!” he said in perfect Italian. Then he said it again. And again and again. This was Nat’s trademark when he was trying to make someone happy or seperate them from their money. Nannerini once played a mental game with himself during a meeting with Roger Corman to see if he could keep track of how many “wonderfuls” would leave Nat’s mouth before a deal was closed.
The old man planted his hands on the young director’s shoulders and looked him in the eyes like a proud father.
“Ahh, Luigi Cozzi! We are going to make your picture! It will be the biggest hit I have ever produced! We will make millions together! And . . .”
He looked to the sky, as if studying an invisible marquee.
“ . . . I have the perfect title for you!”
What was he talking about? They already had a title. Empire Of The Stars. Luigi had come up with it a week ago, and Nat himself had officially wonderfuled the idea on the phone.
“Umm . . . what title?”
Nat’s eyes lit up, and he pointed right at Luigi, as if to say, I Give You . . .
“STARCRASH!”
Luigi looked away and scratched his head.
What the fuck?
There wasn’t a mention of any star crash in his treatment. There wasn’t anything even remotely resembling a star crash in his treatment. But as he stood there gaping at Nat Waschberger, who was now rubbing his hands together and seeing dollar signs, he realized that this was most likely a point on which the old man was unmovable. It was probably a pre-sold title idea Nat had used on a deal he’d already done with someone to get some movie—any movie—off the ground. He needed someone to step in and actually make a film called STARCRASH now, and who better than Luigi, who had written such an imaginative adventure story, replete with giant monsters, buxom babes, laser swords and plenty of thundering explosions in the vacuum of space.
And who had no idea what kind of grim galactic odyssey he was about to sign on for.