Rocketeer Movie Preview
A film preview by Jeff Meyer
Copyright 1988 Jeff Meyer
When we entered the San Diego Con Thursday, I noticed a hastily-scrawled note on the events chalkboard discussing the "Rocketeer Movie." I was intrigued by this, since I had heard nothing about any adaptation of Dave Stevens' characters (a wayward young pilot in the late 1930s who unwittingly gains a jet-pack that allows him to fly, for those of you who don't read rec.arts.comics) for film. At first I thought it might be animated, which was slightly amusing since Stevens (whose art in THE ROCKETEER has gained him a great deal of renown) is not known to be the most speedy of pencilers. Anyway, Kathy Li and I stopped by and took a look; Stevens and two of the screenwriters for the proposed film were there to talk about it.
Basically it would be a live-action period adventure picture, set very closely to the plot of the Rocketeer graphic novel, though not exactly adapting it. It has (after being taken around to several studios over the last two years) almost been picked up by Disney; they're looking for something in the "Indiana Jones" area, and feel that the Rocketeer could be just as popular (and have just as many popular sequels -- so do I, if they can get people to really capture the period, as Stevens does in his work). "They want to market this as much as possible -- a Rocketeer ride at DisneyLand." Disney is "about the fattest company around" (i.e. they're making good profits via Touchstone and Buena Vista), so they can supply the needed budget. They say a director, the fellow who did HARRY AND THE HENDERSONS ("Bill Geer"? -- my tape recorder didn't do so well in this session) has been picked, and it's close to being finalized. It needs to be fairly big-budget, since it's a period piece, they want the old airplanes (they want the "Gee Bee" very badly -- Dave knows where there's one in Springfield, IL) for the flying sequences, and of course a Flying Man with a Rocket On His Back (the last flying sequence is *inside* a building -- neat idea). They really want it to look like Superman in the old Fleisher cartoons -- "like he has velocity and mass, not like the old Commander Cody and the Rangers of the Stratosphere." As they point out, this film *is* about flying more than anything else, and so this will have to be a very strong point.
The two screenwriters are apparently working very closely with Stevens -- in fact, they're scripting the next two issues of THE ROCKETEER ADVENTURE MAGAZINE (with Cliff working for The Shadow in New York). It sounds as if the three of them have been working together to get the picture made, and Stevens feels that whatever makes THE ROCKETEER so popular in comics will be carried over to the picture (at least by the script). Someone asked if the in-joke in the comic about the jet-pack's creator (it's "revealed" to be Howard Hughes, but Hughes and his assistants are certainly meant to be Doc Savage and his aides) will simply be made to be Hughes (let's face it, most moviegoers wouldn't get the joke). J. Edgar Hoover is chasing Cliff around for the jet-pack, and the villain is a quasi-Errol Flynn character that plays off the rumors that Flynn was a Nazi (much like Chaykin did in the BLACKHAWK series). The sequence with Cliff rescuing the old rummy in the plane with the jet-pack has been taken straight out of the movie.
Speaking of what makes THE ROCKETEER so popular: Betty (Cliff's pin-up girl obsession that Stevens has rendered so memorably). She'll be an voluptuous, aspiring actress who doesn't act very well -- "Well, it won't be Merryl Streep." They'd like Matthew Modine to play Cliff, but the director apparently likes Bruce Campbell (sp?) who was in EVIL DEAD II. There's also a character in the movie that they'll be introducing in the comix series very soon.
One interesting side story about all of this: Warren Beatty is starring, producing and possibly directing as -- get this -- Dick Tracy. Whoever's hired him was talking a budget of $25 million, but Beatty is promised to get $11 million out of the deal. Be nice to see him go after Bonnie and Clyde... :-)
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
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