Stirling Silliphant: The Fingers of God (27 page)

Face-Off.
Screenplay, May 25, 1973. No further information.

The Falcon of Siam.
Treatment by Axel Aylwen and Stirling Silliphant from Aylwen’s novel set in Siam (Thailand) in the late seventeenth century about an English trade merchant rising to power in his adopted and beloved country. Dated April, 1995.

Fall of Saigon
(1987, announced 1989). 266-page treatment for six-hour mini-series for producer David L. Wolper (
Roots
) and Warner Bros. drawn from the photojournalistic accounts of David Butler. Combining actual historical people with fictional characters as they are caught in the last gasp of the American war and the helter-skelter evacuation. 
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“This script was and always will be one of my favorites — a really outstanding piece of work if I alone say it — but we got caught in three changes of long-form bosses at ABC over the course of our developing and my writing this — and there we were — too many cooks. Pity!”

Forbidden Diary
(Lilac Productions, 1982). eighty-one-page original screenplay/teleplay set in the Philippines in 1941 following the Crouter family during the Japanese occupation. His producing partner was
Naked City
actress Nancy Malone.

Forbidden Planet
(1992). Scripted a proposed remake of the 1956 science fiction classic, which itself was based on Shakespeare’s
The Tempest.
For producer Lindsay Parsons.

Great Smoky River Marathon, The.
First draft screenplay, January 29, 1982.

Groundswell
(July 6, 1965 treatment). A Viet Cong group comes to the United States, kidnaps the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hides out on Fire Island and, using satellite communication, puts the General on trial for the Vietnam war citing the tenets of the Nuremburg trial on genocide. Silliphant wrote it for producer Herbert Brodkin well before the emergence of America’s anti-war movement, but Brodkin (producer of TV’s
The Defenders
) said it would be a tough sell because it was “soapboxing.” “I was alarmed by Washington’s attitude toward the Vietnamese as far back as 1954 when the brass seriously considered nuking the Viets to save the French colonial regime there. A decade later I had become so disturbed by our replacing the French in Indochina that I had to write something. Every studio in Hollywood turned this one down within forty-eight hours. I was widely accused of being a Communist for even daring to write it.” Silliphant had furtive discussions with Frank Sinatra based on Sinatra’s earlier success with
The Manchurian Candidate,
but it never came about. 
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In 1968, Brodkin tried reviving it but, by then, Silliphant said he didn’t have the time to rewrite it.

Hanta Yo.
Six-hour adaptation of Ruth Beebe Hill’s novel following three generations of two families of the Mahto band of the Teton Sioux. Hill spent thirty years researching and writing the mammoth novel that was said to do for Indians what
Roots
did for blacks. Stan Margulies was to produce for David L. Wolper, and Silliphant did a huge (434 page) treatment and step outline. “In the language of the Lakota Indian, which we call the Sioux, it means ‘clear the way.’ It’s a battle cry. It’s Wolper’s Indian
Roots
for ABC. I went to the San Juan Islands to live for the three months it took me to write this one so I could be close to the novelist and have daily access to her Sioux companion/adviser. Ultimately ABC discarded my script, which faithfully followed the novel, and opted instead to bring in another writer to take only a fraction of the novel and dramatize it into the ill-fated four-hour mini ABC called
The Mystic Warrior.
”

Haven’t I Seen You Somewhere Before?
(1966). Proposed half-hour TV series cowritten by Silliphant and Richard Collins, who collaborated on a pilot script.

Hiero’s Journey
(Columbia, 1975). A futuristic fantasy film written in a poetic style. Full screenplay. “It’s the name of a character. It takes place on another planet in another time, and everything is different. But it
seems
the same — almost. What is fun about it is that there are rules for this kind of a script. In other words, it’s whatever I want to create that makes sense in a different place, within the laws of the universe. The fascinating thing is, water, as we know it, runs in a certain direction. Well, it might not on a different planet. Rain might not be the same. You could be killed by a giant abalone, a univalve. Why not?” 
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“A change of management sent this one into the scrap heap.” (Alt. title:
Earthrise.
)

Ho Chi Minh
(1989). Untitled “epic screenplay” announced. “I first visited Hanoi in late 1987 to research the possibilities of doing a film about Uncle Ho in the tradition of
Gandhi.
I knew it would be an uphill struggle and that forces beyond my comprehension would do everything they could to abort and defeat the effort. I have collected some incredible material… but somehow I seem to lack the strength to tackle this film. Either that or I’m waiting for divine intervention.” He also reported that, while in Hanoi, he was asked by the Foreign Minister, “When do you think the Americans will recognize us?” to which he replied, “Forget the Americans. When the business opportunities are correct, they [the government] will be here. But they will never he here out of conscience. They will only come out of money and out of business.” 
[323]

The Inheritors
(Avco-Embassy, 1969). Based on Harold Robbins’s novel, for Joe Levine. Never produced.

Islands in the Stream
(Paramount, 1977). Adapted from the novel by Ernest Hemingway. Director Franklin Schaffner used a subsequent script by Denne Bart Petitclerc.

“Juvenile Delinquent” 1956. Polish on existing teleplay that may have been produced under a different title. No further information.

Khaki Mafia, The
(1971). To be directed by Jules Dassin, an original script about corruption among the U.S. Army in Vietnam. Financing fell through after the research trip to Southeast Asia but before the writing began.

Last Man at Wagon Hound
(1956). Screenplay and polish assignment for film to star Clark Gable for United Artists release (via Ruse-Field, Inc.) to be directed by Raoul Walsh.

The Long Goodbye
(UA, 1974). Adapted Raymond Chandler’s novel for director Robert Altman, who rejected it in favor of one by Leigh Brackett. “I think my script is far better than the one he shot,” Silliphant said, allowing that he still likes Bob Altman. 
[324]
Altman favored Brackett’s glossy adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s 1953 novel over Silliphant’s more faithful one. In 1944 Brackett had, with William Faulkner and Jules Furthman, adapted Chandler’s
The Big Sleep
(1946) for Howard Hawks. The Altman/Brackett Marlowe is a man rooted in the 1950s but living in the 1970s, baffled by modern realities. The Chandler/Silliphant Marlowe is intensely loyal and operates on a code of chivalry that, despite the reprobates he deals with, pulls him through. A discussion of Silliphant’s process and a comparison may be found in
Raymond Chandler on Screen: His Novels Into Film
by Stephen Pendo (Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1976).

The Looking Glass
(1980 and 1983). Partnered with producer Lin Bolen and written (first at six hours, then cut by Bolen to two hours) for ABC chief Brandon Stoddard about the “new frontier of sex.” 
[325]
“I wrote it. Turned it in. I happened to be in Hawaii when Brandon called. ‘Damn you,’ he said. ‘I read
The Looking Glass
and threw it across the office.’ ‘That bad?’ I asked. ‘No,’ he said, ‘That good, but there’s no way we can ever put this script on TV.’ And he didn’t. The network said, ‘We need another word for
sex.
Something less genital, more compassionate.’”

The Masters
(1979-1980). Developed for Bruce Lee and other martial arts masters, Silliphant described this as a cross between
Rocky
and
Bad Day at Black Rock
in which martial artists would be fully developed characters.

The Med-Ex
(ABC, 1972). Shot but unaired pilot. Idealistic young medics return from Vietnam and, rather than go to medical school to get rich, they work instead in the remote Pacific northwest as paramedics. Silliphant said he was using the series to attack what is wrong with medicine. “It was pretty powerful stuff and, yes, I did take out after the good-ole-boy bullshit of the AMA and tried to make the point that the human touch is often more effective than surgery — not always, but certainly sometimes. Hospitals have bad vibes, the karmas stink. The networks would call this an ‘action medical show.’ Little does ABC know what I have in the back of my mind.” 
[326]
Alternate title:
The New Healers.

The Menorah Men.
“Based on a novel by Lionel Davidson. I went to Israel with the director, Elliot Silverstein, to complete our research and to polish my script. This was an independently financed project out of London, but never got its financing together.” Also titled
The Sojourners.
Script dated February 24, 1972. Fifty-seven pages.

No Cross, No Crown
(CBS Playhouse, 1968). CBS gave a green light to this project about how the Vietnam war had divided America into two polar societies. A young boy doesn’t want to fight in Vietnam. The character is not a draft-dodger and won’t head to Canada, but he objects to the war. Said Silliphant (still basking in his Oscar win for
In the Heat of the Night
), “The artist cannot dissociate with his times.” 
[327]
Later, he canceled the project and returned his $25,000 writing fee, saying that he was not afraid of controversy but felt that the project would be judged by the audience who favored the war. “I truly felt I could not continue with this project because it would never be judged as a piece of writing, but only as a political tract by a writer who clearly felt that America had fielded an invasion of a foreign people for neo-colonialist purposes. We [America] were even planning to build a zapper electrical fence across Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel. Jesus Christ, what fucking right did the United States of America have to even be
talking
about such an installation?” According to a Gallup poll at the time, fifty-eight percent of Americans supported U.S. involvement in Vietnam, yet when Silliphant attended the Berlin Film Festival in 1968 he found that the European public held him accountable, as an American, for America’s bombing of North Vietnam. 
[328]

The Order.
Treatment, January 15, 1974.

The Party’s Over
(1970). Un-shot script for political satire to be made with Cy Howard. “It was intended to star Sidney Poitier, Gig Young, Sally Keller-man, etc., etc. and was ordered by Marty Baum when he was heading ABC Pictures. Marty locked Cy and me into Cy’s house for one week to do the script. Cy and I decided we’d try something new — he’d write the dramatic scenes and I’d write the funny stuff. It was a blast — WE thought — and we finished it in six days working twenty hours a day, editing each other’s stuff, so that Cy ended up having written the funny stuff while I ended up writing the dramatic scenes. Marty Baum HATED the script. Or maybe it was Sidney who hated it. It doesn’t really matter, because they unlocked Cy’s door and I went home, never to hear another word about the project. I’m positive it never went into production.” 
[329]

Philippine Diary
(CBS). Four-hour saga of American families caught in the Philippines by the Japanese invasion in 1941. The script’s anti-war, anti-stereotype sentiments worked against the network’s desire for action. “True, it broke the stereotypes of Japanese soldiers with American babies jouncing on the tips of bayonets and tried to say that everyone in a war, friend or foe, is entrapped.”

Pizzaro
(1989). “A still-pending original I wrote three years ago with the Japanese writer-director Jûzô Itami.” (Itami died in 1997.)

Poochy Noble.
Late 1970s. Treatment for a film. Undated.

R&R Murders (Rest & Rec Murders,
1978
).
Written at the invitation of Reg Grundy Productions in New South Wales and set in the red light and legal arenas of Sydney, Australia.

Race, The
(alt. title
Voice Over
). Sixty-one-page screenplay. First draft March 8, 1977.

Rivers
(Warner Bros., 1984). Project developed between Pingree and Dick Clark Cinema Productions. No further information.

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea
(Brodkin-Silliphant Productions, 1976). Adaptation of Yukio Mishima’s novel
Go No Eiko,
ultimately written and directed by Lewis John Carlino and produced by Martin Poll and David White.

The Sands of Time
(CBS). Four-hour mini-series from Sidney Sheldon’s novel. “I never did know what happened here except vague rumors that my script was ‘too strong for TV.’ True, I did have six soldiers rape a nun who then managed to shoot and kill three of them before she was machine-gunned.”

Sister Street.
First revised screenplay June 27, 1986. No further information.

Squaw Fever
(1956). Raoul Walsh’s personal production based on the
Saturday Evening Post
series “Squaw Fever” and “Fiddlefoot.”

Snowbound
(1975). Disaster film involving a blizzard. Got to script stage, then melted.

Sunset Boulevard
(CBS, 1965). Signed by Paramount for $100,000 to develop Billy Wilder’s classic film into a primetime serial (first title was
The Scene
) akin to
Peyton Place
that was drawing huge numbers for ABC and Twentieth Century-Fox in 1964, but the network lost interest when
Peyton Place
started to slide in 1965. “Pity, because I did some of my best work for this pilot script. We were virtually on the air, had begun casting. To give you some idea of the power of some of the scenes (it’s a story of young people trying to make it in Hollywood), I’ll tell you about one incident. I had written one of the key parts for a young actress who’s supposed to have the talent of Bette Davis, but who’s skinny, flat-chested, and scraggly-haired. I scouted all the acting classes in town until I found the girl I was looking for. She was simply the finest young actress I’d ever seen. I brought her in to read for the Paramount casting director and for some CBS types, all wearing suits. I talked to her outside the office for half an hour before the audition. This is the scene, I told her — you’ve been sent to the studio by its New York office. They consider you back in New York to be a find. The Hollywood crowd has taken one look at you and decided you’re a dog. The casting director is now calling you in, giving you a check for a thousand dollars as an anodyne for the ‘mistake’ New York has made — because, frankly, young lady, the picture they sent you out here for has been canceled and we have nothing else for you, sorry — And here’s a pass for Disneyland and don’t worry, we’ll pickup your bill at the Chateau Marmont — and here’s some per diem and good luck, goodbye. Now, I told her, I want you to tie into that sonofabitch. Tell him how much you hate the fucking Hollywood system, rip open your blouse, show him your flat chest, ask him if these pitiful tits are his measure of talent — sock it to him. Where are the lines, she asked me. In your heart, I told her. In your tears. I can’t ever write the words to match what I know you feel. Just go in there and
do
it — and know that I want you in this part. You’ve got it, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve found the right girl. But you have to go in there and convince
them
 — because they have the money and I don’t.