If you’ve poked through this website, you’ll see I make the occasional reference to a Ninja movie I wrote once. It’s funny, when I tell people the plot of it like I’m pitching it, everyone always gets excited.
“That’s cool!”
Fortunately the ninja craze is done.
How did I get into the Ninja craze? It had to do with my martial arts training. Friends of mine were of course obsessed with Shaw Brothers Kung Fu theater, and I was watching every martial arts film I could get my hands on.
My entire family seems to be involved (except for two sisters) in the pursuit of writing fiction. So my mother around this time gave me David Gerrold’s book on “The making of the Trouble with Tribbles”. It had a lot of info on script writing, so I read it, made some notes, then sat down and said –
“How can I write a Ninja movie?”
I was at the time talking with a local production company, and I came up with an on-the-fly one line summary of the movie that broke all the rules of loglines.
It sold.
Now I had to write a script.
So I sat down with my friends, got two bundles of 3X5 cards from the local Cumberland Farms (or was it Store 24?) and wrote out concepts. “A & B meet in neutral place.”
Once I’d used up the entire 100 cards in the first deck, I put paper in my IBM Selectric, chose 12 point pitch (after reading David Gerrold’s rant), set up margins manually, and began writing.
That was Sunday.
Script was done on Friday afternoon.
Including Martial Arts choreography.
No kidding, I had Karate in there, Togakure Ninjutsu, even some Robert Bussey and Ashida Kim stuff in there! All genuine stuff, meaning I’d learned it out of books, the same way a lot of so-called modern Ninja masters learned theirs.
I will say that my Ninjutsu was about as authentic as Sho Kosugi’s – we both learned Shotokan Karate, and just put on a Shinobi Gi and did Shotokan with Okinawan weapons.
I handed the script in at the first meeting. For the timing of it, I’d looked at the back cover of “The Octagon” with Chuck Norris, noticed the time duration of the movie (107 minutes, I think it was) and wrote a 107 page script.
There was some recommended changes (mostly some minor dialog stuff), but the producer wanted explanations of the choreography – so I had to show him a lot of the moves.
Then I went and sat with my friends, showed them the script, and got more suggestions for re-write.
It required re-writing the entire script, because after all – it was a typewriter.
No real plot, except for a highly improbable war between two restaurants, a mafia boss who hired a Ninja, and another Ninja who arrived in town, pursing the first one.
The key thing was, the good Ninja only knew English from watching Bugs Bunny cartoons.
And the two Ninjas were brothers.
Why this script sold, I have no idea. Today, the script idea (to me) sounds terrible! I’m just thankful it sold.
And I’m thankful of course that the production company lost the funding and the movie never got filmed!
I do know that “The Ninja Mission” came out in movie theaters right after I finished the re-write, and the producer told me, “I like your movie a lot better than that one.” Which of course made me feel good!
The production company asked me to quickly write a movie about a tournament, so they could get a different funding source.
I wrote one roughly based upon the factual story of Chuck Norris and Skipper Mullins. For the villain, I chose fellow Shotokan man Tonny Tulleners.
I’d finished the synopsis, but by that time, the company had folded, alas.
They still own the rights to the Ninja movie, and my biggest fear is that they still have the script!
What is my take aways from this experience?
Not every idea is a good idea! Click To Tweet- Not every idea is a good idea. If I’d removed the “bugs Bunny” part from the first script, it would have just been another movie about two men in black pajamas.
- the setup is exceptionally important. I had roughly three movies all combined in that one. If I’d moved it to more of a corporate setting, or perhaps an international intrigue/shadow government setting, the movie would have at least had the plausibility factor.
- If you plan appropriately, you can write a movie in a week. Not really sure how I did it. They just set a review date of one week to see what I had in the script, and sure enough, it was done.
- Telling someone you’re a martial arts choreographer literally makes you a martial arts choreographer. You may disagree with that, but now I’ve got experience showing actors how to do martial arts, and more important – what techniques look good on camera.
- Don’t hurry a re-write. The Writer’s Guild gives you two whole weeks for a minor re-write. A cover to cover is longer. Use it.
- Your word is your currency. Spend it well. The company that bought this folded in the 80’s. Others have tried to talk me into re-writing this movie, but I always tell them, “I don’t own the rights to it.” I can’t legally re-write this or re-sell this, in my opinion. I don’t own it. Now if Cannon Films is intrigued and offered the former owner of the production company a thousand dollars or so, he’d probably sell it. And I’d be back into the Ninja business.
- You don’t have to throw in every idea you think of. I was training myself to get ideas, and unfortunately, I stuck in every idea I could think of. Fortunately, I couldn’t think of a technical way to make the good Ninja ride into battle on a Great White Shark.
- Comedic lines can actually be uttered in a chilling, dramatic way if you have a good actor. One line of the script produced laughs when it was read aloud. When the intended actor delivered the line a moment later, we sat there saying, “I’ve got chills.”
- You really can write a movie in a week. I’ve yet to beat Stallone’s record of writing Rocky, though. Maybe someday.
In the spirit of Ninjutsu, you’ll notice there’s 9 takeaways.
And no, I’m not a Ninja master, unless reading every book by Stephen Hayes, Ashida Kim/Chris Hunter and Robert Bussey makes you a Ninja. Please don’t ask me for lessons.
Now if someone would just do a remake of “Kill or Be Killed” – I’m your guy for the script and fight choreography!
