Conan the Barbarian: The Official Story of the Film E-Book

John Walsh

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 171

Beschreibung

In 1982, Robert E. Howard's iconic literary anti-hero, Conan, slashed his way from page to screen after a perilous decades-long journey. With its potent mix of epic vistas and bloody battles, Conan the Barbarian thrilled moviegoers around the world and launched the career of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Forty years after its release, this cult-classic film is celebrated in Conan the Barbarian – The Official Story of the Film, a lush hardback volume that tells the full story of how the film was made. Brand new interviews with cast and crew, as well behind-the-scenes photography from the set and concept art created for the production, give fascinating insights into the development of one of the best-loved fantasy films of the 1980s.

Leseprobe

THE OFFICIAL STORY OF THE FILM

THE OFFICIAL STORY OF THE FILM

ISBN: 9781803361765E-BOOK ISBN: 9781835411087

Published byTitan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark StLondonSE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: August 20232 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3

© Conan Properties International LLC (“CPI”) CONAN, CONAN THE BARBARIANand all related logos, characters, names, and distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarksor registered trademarks of CPI. ROBERT E. HOWARD is a trademark or registeredtrademark of Robert E. Howard Properties LLC.

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A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

DEDICATION:For three little princesses: Annabel, Charlotte & Helena

THE OFFICIAL STORY OF THE FILM

JOHN WALSH

CONTENTS

6

FOREWORD BYRAFFAELLA DE LAURENTIIS

8

INTRODUCTION

22

DEVELOPMENT

70

CASTING

100

THE SHOOT

132

CONAN’S WORLD

150

POSTPRODUCTION

176

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOVE: Director John Milius with producers Raffaella De Laurentiisand Buzz Feitshans.

BELOW: De Laurentiis and Feitshans would marry after the film.

6CONAN THE BARBARIAN – THE OFFICIAL STORY OF THE FILM

FOREWORD

RAFFAELLA DE LAURENTIIS

Making Conan the Barbarian was a tale of unexpected twists and turns. We had a big budget of $20 million and started shooting in the former country of Yugoslavia, but when we encountered a lack of infrastructure we had to rethink and set up shop in Spain instead. We lost some time and money, but we found wonderful Spanish artisans who helped breathe life into Conan in a way we never imagined. We saved fifty percent of our budget shooting outside Hollywood, but it meant working extra hard. We had to build our own film studio for the production because nothing on our scale had been done there before.

I had just finished producing the 1979 film Hurricane in the South Pacific. My father, Dino De Laurentiis, had fallen in love with the island of Bora Bora and when he set the film up, he called me and said, ‘I need to build a hotel there to house the crew. Can you do it?’ Hindsight being 20/20, I would say, ‘No, it’s not doable.’ But I had studied architecture, I was 24, so I agreed to go for a week-long exploratory trip—and ended up staying for two years. I did build the hotel, tackling all sorts of production, construction and crew-related issues. By the time we were done, Dino was confident I could handle an even bigger movie.

I had a free hand producing Conan, but that doesn’t mean it was all plain sailing. John Milius was a talented director and screenwriter, but he was a big personality, just like my father. He had his up days and down days. Wrangling him was difficult. He’s a great guy, and a fabulous writer, but John loved fighting. He liked to challenge authority figures. It was his style. And it was Dino’s, too. Soon, the two of them were fighting every day. You know, the typical ‘Who’s got the bigger dick?’ thing. That was every day on Conan! There were big, macho guys on that movie. John and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and all of Arnold’s bodybuilding buddies. I get asked all the time about being a female producer in the early 1980s, how there weren’t that many women doing it, and how difficult it must have been. But I just went and did my job. The fact that I was a woman actually helped me deal with these fiery macho men. Being a woman was never a problem in my career.

We first rolled cameras on a costume, makeup and lighting test in London with Arnold. Who knew he was a megastar in the making? This was to show Conan as a king, older and later in life. The idea was to use the test as a trailer. It was never supposed to be in the film, but because Arnold’s screen presence was so powerful, it ended up being used anyway. Of course, he was still working on his English at the time. In the original script, it was the character of Conan who performed the narration. But ultimately we changed it to Mako’s character, The Wizard, because everybody felt that Arnold’s accent was too pronounced.

Shooting Conan was one battle. Releasing it was another. The big issue was that the first cut of the movie was too violent. Conan got an ‘X’ rating on three submissions to the MPAA before we finally received an ‘R’. The picture

was unique, and the violence made a real impact in 1982. The film eventually influenced the creation of the PG-13 rating, two years later. Right up until the first audience test screening, Dino was unsure if what we had made would work. But the attendance turned out to be overwhelming, more than three times the number of people we could accommodate. A group of motorcycle bikers who were bodybuilding fans even threatened to riot if they didn’t get into the cinema. Luckily, we came up with a solution that let everyone see the movie!

As I look back on the 40th anniversary of Conan the Barbarian, I remember the great passion, toil and effort it took to bring the film to life. I had so much fun, and if you look at my career, I’ve stuck with fantasy and adventure for over 30 films since. But that is another story...

- RAFFAELLA DE LAURENTIIS

RIGHT: Raffaella De Laurentiis supervises every detail of the make-up for Conan’s resurrection scene.

INTRODUCTION

ANVIL OF CROM

The character of Conan the Barbarian faced many battles during his literary life, but securing the film rights to put Conan on the big screen was only a part of a much greater battle. Previous attempts had failed due to the explicit nature of the source material. In the late 1960s, Ray Harryhausen felt the monstrous tales of Robert E. Howard’s adventures would ideally suit his stop-motion special-effects magic; Harryhausen wanted to avoid dinosaurs after having made two dino-filled projects back to back with One Million Years BC (1966) and The Valley of Gwangi (1969). Harryhausen greatly admired Frank Frazetta’s cinematic cover art for the books, and had read the Conan tales as a teenager when they were first published in Weird Tales magazine in the 1930s. Adapting them for the more family-friendly audiences that enjoyed Harryhausen films would mean a substantial change to the original material, so an agreement was never reached, and it seemed the X-rated material of Conan would have to remain between the pages of novels and comics.

The films of 1982 successfully reinforced the perception that science- fiction and fantasy cinema relied upon juvenile audiences. E.T. The Extra- Terrestrial redefined the box office with its record-breaking receipts of $793 million, far ahead of the second-place film, Rocky III, on $270 million. The only other genre films in the top ten would be the Spielberg-produced horror Poltergeist at number four with $121 million, and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in a respectable seventh place with a box-office booty of £97 million. More thoughtful, imaginative or explicit sci-fi content would not find

sympathetic audiences in 1982, however, with box-office failures includingTron, Blade Runner and John Carpenter’s The Thing. However, these films have since gone on to find their audiences, and are held in great regard by critics today.

The view of major studios was that sword-and-sorcery films were outdated, expensive, and needed to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. Today it is hard to believe, in the wake of Game of Thrones and the like, that there was such resistance from the industry.

On its release in 1982, Conan the Barbarian was a box-office success, despite (or perhaps because of) its mostly faithful depiction of the original character and narrative. From the original script by Oliver Stone to the reinvention by filmmaker John Milius and his fiery relationship with Italian movie mogul Dino De Laurentiis, cinema history was made. Taking the seeds of Robert E. Howard’s classic stories, John Milius was inspired by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and quotes him in the film’s opening titles.

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”-Friedrich Nietzsche

Critics have accused Milius’ film as being a form of right-wing posturing. To others, he is regarded as one of the great filmmakers of his time, bringing a brutal realism to a genre of cinema that had up to then been largely defined by movies rather more palatable to mainstream audiences. Milius takes greatcare to treat his material with a respect and seriousness that would beapplied to any historical biopic. Conan the Barbarian redefined the limitsof acceptable mainstream filmmaking and, in the process, createdone of the world’s biggest film stars.

RIGHT: Despite having won Mr Universe five times and Mr Olympia seven times, Schwarzenegger’s training for the film would push him to new heights of endurance.

INTRODUCTION11

INTRODUCTION

ORIGIN STORY

American writer Robert E. Howard was just 26 when he conceived the idea for Conan on a trip to Texas. Nine months later, he had the basis for the series of short stories and books that would follow. He was considered the father of the sword-and-sorcery genre. Four years later, he would take his own life.

Howard was born in 1906 in Texas, USA. Those who knew him thought he was a studious child, but he was also an amateur boxer and bodybuilder. He dreamt of becoming a published writer when he was nine years old, and by the age of 23 his work was being published in the magazine Weird Tales and also in newspapers. Unfortunately, he was not fully appreciated in his lifetime, with his greatest success coming after his death.

It is widely believed that Howard’s formative years shaped his writing. His father, Isaac, a traveling country physician, was caught up in various get-rich-quick schemes that would invariably fail, and this caused a rift in the marriage with wife Hester. Believing she married below her station, Hester distanced herself and her son from Isaac. Robert and his mother would spend

many years together helping relatives suffering from tuberculosis. Hester encouraged Robert’s authorial ambitions, and introduced him to poetry, which she read daily to encourage his writing. Despite his love of books andwriting, school was a challenge for him as he resented authority figuresand school bullies. This would shape his view on the existence ofevil and how to overcome it.

His father’s profession as a local doctor would also influenceHoward’s graphic writing. He witnessed first-hand injurydetail from the increase in local crime, which accompaniedthe oil boom. This included gunshot wounds, industrialinjuries, and even lynchings. His early writing wouldfeature tales of Vikings and Arabs. He read Jack London,and was influenced in style and narrative by his stories ofpast lives and reincarnation. Along with Rudyard Kipling’sIndian adventures and Thomas Bulfinch’s work on mythology, the ground was being set for Conan.

Although Howard was submitting stories to magazines bythe age of 15, they were being regularly rejected. However, he was not deterred, and honed his writing by forming an amateur newspaper and magazine with friends who encouraged his writing. Howard’s first published

THIS PAGE: Robert E. Howard’s passion for fantasy writing would drive his early success with a publication in Weird Tales magazine.

12CONAN THE BARBARIAN – THE OFFICIAL STORY OF THE FILM

THIS PAGE: Portrait photograph of Robert E. Howard. He died at the tragically young age of 30, with his unstable mental state of mind likely leading to his suicide.

ABOVE: Howard strikes a formidable pose, one that his boxing opponents would see.

ABOVE: Howard poses in a cowboy costume. Howard’s outlook on life and writing suggests he would have likely suited a cowboy’s life.

stories would be in the December 1922 edition of The Tattler, the newspaper of Brownwood High School. After leaving school, he took various odd jobs before enrolling in Howard Payne College on a stenography course—his father refused to pay for a more expensive and less vocational course. After years of rejection from publishers, Howard would receive his first paycheck (for $16) for a story submitted to Weird Tales magazine. His fiction-writing career had officially started. He quit college and found a supplementary writing position with Cross Plains Review, a local newspaper reporting oil news. However, Howard became disillusioned with his pieces in Weird Tales, and quit writing to take an $80-a-week position at Robertson’s drug store. The money was welcome, but the situation frustrated him. He found an outlet for his anger by taking part in boxing matches.

After suffering from measles and quitting his job at the drug store, Howard would write his next and most significant work to date, “The Shadow Kingdom”, a short story fantasy epic that introduces the character of Kull and the setting of Valusia. This time his influences would include H. P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt and Edgar Allan Poe. This new formula of fantasy, mythology, action, horror and romance would become known as ‘sword and sorcery’.Weird Tales magazine was so taken with it that it paid Howard his highest writing fee to date: $100. Unfortunately, two further adventures of Kull were rejected by Weird Tales, so Howard retired the character.

In 1928, he revisited some of the Kull stories to create Red Shadows, which saw the first appearance of the Solomon Kane character. This proved

14CONAN THE BARBARIAN – THE OFFICIAL STORY OF THE FILM

successful with readers, and a series of adventures followed. In 1929, Howard created a series of short stories based on his passion for boxing, the first of which appeared in Ghost Stories magazine. This led to further tales of hand- to-hand combat for Fight Stories and Sport Story magazines. By the age of 23, Howard was a full-time writer, and for a time became fascinated by Irish legends and entered his ‘Celtic phase’, creating the character Turlogh Dubh O’Brien and even learning the Gaelic language. Unfortunately, he was unable to sell any of these stories.

In 1932, on one of his many trips through Texas, Howard conceived of Cimmeria and wrote a poem of this barbaric land. It was at this time that Howard first envisaged Conan. In 1935, in a letter to American writer and artist Clark Ashton Smith, Howard recalled that Conan “simply grew up in my mind a few years ago when I was stopping in a little border town on the lower Rio Grande.” It would be almost a year after that initial trip that Conan would be fully developed (Howard had first used the character name ‘Conan’ for a reincarnation story for Strange Tales magazine in 1931). The other characters, locations and mythology took much longer, of course, as he was creating an entire believable environment and fictitious historical period called the Hyborian Age. Howard refashioned an earlier Kull story, “By This Axe I Rule!”, as the first Conan adventure, renaming it “The Phoenix on the Sword”. Two more adventures followed: “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” and “The God in the Bowl”. Howard would also create two maps illustrating the geography of the lands involved, and a glossary of characters entitled “Notes on Various Peoples of the Hyborian Age”.

Howard wrote nine Conan stories before the first one was published in the December 1932 edition of Weird Tales. The public reaction was immediate and very positive, and Howard would ultimately sell a total of 17 Conan stories to Weird Tales between 1933 and 1936.

After a series of rejections from a London publisher on a compilation of hisWeird Tales Conan short stories, Howard started work on his first and only Conan novel, The Hour of the Dragon. Despite working on the book for two months, writing up to 5,000 words per day, Howard’s efforts would meet disappointment again when the publisher collapsed in 1934 before the novel could be published. The novel would eventually be serialised by Weird Talesstarting in their December 1935 issue, but by 1936, Howard had moved away from Conan, and was concentrating on more traditional Western stories.

His mother, Hester, had battled tuberculosis for over 20 years, and was now losing the fight. This emotional disruption and her need for medical care, combined with frequent hospital visits, made any new writing almost impossible for Howard. In the weeks that followed, Howard left instructions with his agent about what to do in the event of his death; he even bought a family burial plot. On 11th June, 1936, having received the news that his mother was finally dying and there was no hope of any recovery, he got into his car in the family driveway and put a gun to his head, pulling the trigger.

Howard’s work and the world of Conan has influenced many emerging writers, and his stories continue to sell strongly. He remains one of the best- selling fantasy writers of all time.

RIGHT: A young and idealistic Howard, who often tried to live the roles he created on the page.

INTRODUCTION

EVOLUTION INTO COMICS

Conan the Barbarian has appeared in comics for an unbroken run ever since 1970. The comics are arguably, apart from the books, the vehicle that had the most significant influence on the longevity and popularity of the character. President Obama is a collector and fan of Conan the Barbarian comic books, and appeared as a character in a comic book called Barack the Barbarian from Devil’s Due in 2009.

Although Conan would first appear in comic form in the 1952 Mexican comic Cuentos de Abuelito #8 published by Corporacion Editorial Mexicana (in the form of the short story “Queen of the Black Coast”), it would be the Marvel Comics relaunch of the character that would have the most significant impact with readers. Marvel Comics’ Conan premiere in October 1970 was so successful it spawned 275 issues, running until 1993. It is widely believed this lit the touch paper for a resurgence in sword-and-sorcery in popular American culture in the 1970s. By 2003, Dark Horse Comics became the new home for Conan until 2018, when the barbarian returned home after being relicensed by Marvel Comics.

New writers would bring back old characters and create new ones and, in doing so, expand the universe of the Hyborian Age. The success of Conan

the Barbarian led to the more adult black-and-white spin-off Savage Sword of Conan in 1974, by Roy Thomas, John Buscema, and Alfredo Alcala (among others). This new brand of Conan became one of the most popular comic series of the 1970s, and the strips were serialized in newspapers from 1978 to April 12, 1981. Initially penned by writer Roy Thomas and artist John Buscema, these strips were worked on by several new and experienced writing and illustrative teams over the years.

Marvel’s decision to adapt Conan came from readers’ requests for fictional characters from literature to be adapted to the comic book form. These included Doc Savage from pulp magazines, and various characters from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan and John Carter of Mars.

In his 1991 book Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics, comic historian Les Daniels commented that “Conan the Barbarianwas something of a gamble for Marvel. The series contained the usual elements of action and fantasy, to be sure. Still, it was set in a past that had no relation to the Marvel Universe, and it featured a hero who possessed no magical powers, little humor, and comparatively few moral principles.”

The comic reinvention of Conan would prove to be a financial and critical success for publishers Marvel Comics, who would pick up a series of industry awards throughout the 1970s for the continuing adventures of the Cimmerian.

LEFT AND RIGHT: Marvel Comics Conan the Barbarian