This is a production-used script for the 1985 film "Enemy Mine". It was written by Edward Khmara, based on the book by Barry B. Longyear. This script is annotated by John Dysktra, who handled the ILM part of the special effects through his company Apogee Special Effects. The original script was copied in order to be used as reference by the SFX crew, and this is one of those copies. It was part of the materials from Apogee and acquired privately.
Below is an excerpt from an interview with screenwriter Edward Khmara, published in "Starlog Magazine" #103, February 1986. The first part of the interview deals mostly about "Ladyhawke" (there is also a script for this film in the collection), but here is the part about "Enemy Mine".
Ed Khmara
Scripting Fantasy & Science Fiction
in a world of medieval magic,on a planet of
alien intrigue, this wordsmith crafts the
relationshipsat the centers of
"Ladyhawke" and "Enemy Mine."
(...)
"At the same time he was getting the cold shoulder
on Ladyhawke, Khmara got another job.
"Steve [All of Me] Friedman had found Barry
Longyear's 'Enemy Mine' and asked me if I thought there was a movie in
it," Khmara smiles. "I needed a job, so I said yes."
Though he agreed there was a movie in Longyear's
novella, Khmara admits that it wasn't easy to find.
"The story was not structured," the
writer explains. "I had to create a linear time structure that could
only be inferred from the book. The other major problem was that the story had
no real ending. There was just a second story tacked on. I needed somehow to
integrate these two things and create something for Davidge to do at the end
that was more riveting than what he had to do in the story. "
Apparently, Khmara's script was sufficiently
riveting. 20th Century Fox picked up the project — and Khmara with it. They
also picked up director Richard {The Haunting of Julia) Loncraine. And then the
real work started — nine months of rewriting.
"The script went through an expanding process
when I worked with Richard," Khmara remembers. "There are many things
that Richard contributed when we were working together that improved the story
and are still in there. But at the end, we had a script that was too long and,
in some ways, too diffuse."
Loncraine took that script and started to film
Enemy Mine in Iceland. He didn't get very far. After a few weeks of shooting,
Fox closed down the production.
' 'Richard wanted to make a certain kind of movie,"
Khmara explains. "The studio did not see eye to eye with him. That
association ended, but he's a wonderful guy to work with and a great deal of
fun."
"Enemy " Employment
Rather than kill Enemy Mine altogether, Fox
brought on a new director— Wolfgang Petersen, who had just finished the big budget
fantasy, The Neverending Story. Petersen loved the script. He wanted to make the
movie. And, contrary to all the rules of Hollywood protocol, he did not fire
Khmara and replace him with his pet writer. Instead, he brought Khmara to
Germany and began to work with him on refining the script.
"Wolfgang and I spent months putting it together,"
Khmara recalls. "Because the script timed out longer than the traditional one
minute per page, we really had demands on us, budgetary and lengthwise, to
tighten it, tighten it, tighten it. We tightened it far more than we ever
imagined we could. We cut out about 45 pages from the previous draft.
"If I wanted to create a sequence and Petersen
liked it, we would go to the production designer, and he would make us some drawings
or models so I could work from them. It's so much easier than just creating a that
and a that and a that and then being told by the studio, 'We can't really film
that.' It's not very often a writer gets a chance to sit down with all those
people and put all those elements together simultaneously and really see the
film evolve. ' '
There were times, however, when it looked as
if that evolution would be cut short.
"There were several changes in studio administration while we were working on the script," the writer says.
"Each change brought new demands. There was a time when we didn't know if
the new administration would decide this was just throwing good money after bad. During those times, Wolfgang
and I would go to lunch, and afterwards, he would say, 'Should we go back to work,
or just to the beer garden?' "
Fortunately for Khmara— and unfortunately
for the German beer industry— each new Fox administration decided to continue with
the project. And this screenwriter is delighted with the results.
"I can't say this is exactly the movie I
saw in my head when I sat down to write the script," Khmara acknowledges.
"It could never be totally that. But it is 80 or 90%. And that 80% is more
than anybody has a right to expect. Filmmaking is a collaborative experience,
and the movie that has been made came into my vision gradually by working with
Petersen and Rolf Zehetbauer, the production designer. From what I've seen,
the movie they've made is wonderful."
With Enemy Mine finally out of the way, Khmara
is writing another genre project for producer Stephen Friedman.
"I seem to have gotten typecast as a
genre writer," Ed Khmara says. "If I could, I would like to write
films like Places in the Heart— simple, poignant, emotional. You listen to the
songs of a singer like Bruce Springsteen whose lyrics seem like something someone
could have said in a moment of pure emotion and feeling. The fact that they can
be said so smoothly and poignantly and effortlessly — that's also the best
plotting. But it's obviously the very hardest, the most difficult. It's real
sleight of hand.
"Working with science fiction, I try to
find the elements that are really human. I believe those are the elements that
any story needs to make it work. That's what attracted me so much to Enemy
Mine — it's that human relationship between the two characters. That's what's
important."
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