Influence spotlight: Screenwriter W.D. Richter

You probably know his work, or you should

W.D. Richter is responsible for several films that are cult classics in my book.

It’s not all glory, though. Richter’s name is associated with one of the worst losses in cinematic history, the movie “Stealth” (2005), supposedly based on, or at least triggered by, his script titled “Warrior”. Was the failure his fault? No way. I found one source that said Richter’s script for “Warrior” was “massively re-written” for “Stealth”, which turned Richter’s high concept script with his signature intelligence and eccentricity into a ham-handed Hollywood summer action film, a pale and not fun blend of “Top Gun” with a Hal 9000 story. There’s so much rewriting going on with screenplays, so much influence and change by directors, and at least as much meddling by studios and bean counters, that you can’t trust a screenplay attribution. You’d have to obtain and compare the scripts. Hollywood has pretty much always sucked at science fiction. On IMDB, the screenplay is attributed to Richter. That’s how those responsible for travesties protect their own names.

But let’s go farther back in time.

At the ripe old age of 28, Richter wrote a screenplay called “Slither”, which was made into a moderately well-received movie starring some big names: Caan, Kellerman, Boyle, Lasser, Shull. 28.

A 1976 script of his, “Starlight Parade”, was massacred by Peter Bogdanovich to make “Nickelodeon”, a failure. One of the producers, Irwin Winkler, later described Bogdanovich thusly:

By the time Peter was done with it, it was authentic, but it wasn't dramatic anymore. Peter hadn't really experienced any failure yet — we hired him before At Long Last Love had come out - so he was easily the most arrogant person I'd ever met in the business, before or since. When we shot the picture, he actually directed some of the scenes on horseback. When I asked him why he was on horseback, he said: "Because that's the way John Ford did it.'"

After “Nickelodeon”, though, Richter’s job prospects went through the roof — Hollywood knows how Hollywood works.

If you’ve seen the classic 1978 film adaptation of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, starring Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Leonard Nimoy, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright, and Kevin McCarthy (who starred in the original), that’s a W.D. Richter script. I see no indication it was re-written, aside from notes about how the team executed the twist ending to contrast it from the ‘pat’ ending of the original film rendition from 1956. That twist was an improvement by anyone’s standards (and wonderfully apropos to this day). This movie is a cult classic, the quintessential “I’m surrounded by pod people” horror sci fi experience. I have that experience every day, and I’m not alone in that. Richter was 33 years old.

As a Hollywood screenwriter, Richter no doubt wrote many scripts none of us will ever know about, helped re-write and co-write others, and who knows what else they do to make a living (in 1974 he was “working as a script analyst for Warner Bros.”). But after ‘Body Snatchers’, he went on to create the other aforementioned cult classics on my list:

1984’s “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension” Richter did not write but directed and produced with his co-founded production company, Canton/Richter. It’s based on Earl Mac Rauch’s ideas, which Richter and his wife enjoyed. I strongly encourage you, especially any creatives, to read the, eh, storied history behind this movie, e.g. on wikipedia.

‘Buckaroo Banzai’ has that earnest quirkiness in its sci fi elements, and a winky self-awareness that we see in the other two on this highlights list, which were scripted by Richter. It doesn’t feel campy, though, because it’s not mocking or condescending with the genre, it’s merely playfully enjoying it. That’s a common feature of Richter’s work, almost a translucent fourth wall. And this movie has some serious talent on the cast: Peter Weller, John Lithgow, and Jeff Goldblum, to name a few. Ellen Barkin’s “Penny Priddy” is spot on. It’s one of those films that delivers certain hilarious quotable quotes that keep on giving, decade after decade.

“Big Trouble in Little China”, 1986, has the same qualities, but with a Hong Kong fighty, magicky kinda vibe. Directed by John Carpenter, it knows it’s low budget, it knows its characters are stereotypes, but because it loves them and their adventures, it works. Note how much that sounds like “Galaxy Quest”. The cast, headed by Kurt Russell and Dennis Dun, play it perfectly. The always amazing James Hong as Lo Pan is dead-on and hilarious, of course, and Victor Wong as Egg Shen is the perfect wacky foil.

And then there’s “Home for the Holidays”, 1995. In hard-to-read white letters, which I find amusingly fitting, the movie poster says,

“On the fourth Thursday in November, 84 million American families will gather together…
And wonder why.”

As someone who liked Thanksgiving as a holiday but has never bought into cultural traditions as peer-pressure imperatives, that speaks to me. There are some damn funny-and-poignant lines in this film, too, especially some delivered by the three veteran actors playing the family elders, Anne Bancroft, Charles Durning, and Geraldine Chaplin.

This was the second film Jodie Foster directed. Here are some notes from the wikipedia page:

Foster said, "The great challenge was to find a beautiful idea to pull through it, a narrative line that would make the story work." Foster met with Richter and together they brainstormed and "had great fun thinking up new details and lives and clearing up the relationships," Foster remembers. They worked on the script so that the film reflected Foster's point of view and her own life experiences. … Foster allowed Robert Downey Jr. to improvise, which got him excited about making films again after a period of time when he became disillusioned with acting.

This shows that Richter wasn’t precious about his writing and just wanted to make the script work for Foster (who also let the actors have input on whether or not their lines felt genuine). The result is just a wonderful film that was ahead of its time, and you can’t argue with the win of getting RDJ back into acting.

I only became aware of W.D. Richter’s responsibility for these classics after they became classics to me. It never would have occurred to me in the moment that the same guy was responsible for “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, “Buckaroo Banzai”, “Big Trouble in Little China”, and “Home for the Holidays”, but I love that fact. W.D. Richter is damn good at storytelling, never mind that Hollywood only produces works like these despite itself. I like his particular idiom, and he has my respect as well as gratitude.