[This interview took place in 1986.]
The Hitcher
Directed by Robert Harmon
Screenplay by Eric Crimson
Breaking into Hollywood isn’t uncomplicated. It’ll take expertise, persistence, perseverance, and heaps of luck. Director Robert Harmon and screenwriter Eric Crimson have managed to place collectively all the earlier talked about in making The Hitcher, a brand new thriller starring C. Thomas Howell, Rutger Hauer, and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
The undertaking commenced with an eventful cross-nation trip from New York city to Los Angeles. As youthful filmmaker and ex-taxi driver Eric Crimson drove alone through a darkish Texas night, he found himself beginning as much as fall asleep on the wheel. “I picked up a hitch-hiker,” clarifies Purple, “simply to go the time. To assist preserve me awake. However the dude simply form of sat there, smelling dirty and observing me. I began off emotion awkward about the complete circumstance and imagined probably it wasn’t a lot of these an excellent thought shopping for him up. He had a tricky edge. I finally stopped the auto just a few miles down the freeway and questioned him to get out. He nonetheless left willingly sufficient, and that was it.”
From these ordeals are nightmares born. Persevering with throughout Texas, Crimson stored turning the story round in his mind, questioning what would have occurred if the hitcher hadn’t nonetheless left willingly. By the point he achieved Austin, he was virtually broke. “I stayed in Austin a thirty day interval to compose the screenplay,” Crimson recollects, “and despatched a fast ten-line letter to simply about each manufacturing agency in Los Angeles. It was an unsolicited inquiry to spark curiosity within the story, telling them that the script was supplied.”
He been given responses from about forty % of the companies. One specific letter, from David Bombyk (producer of Witness) questioned to see the script. That script was later despatched to director Robert Harmon, whose earlier credit embody the brief film China Lake, a a single-year stint as a Playboy photographer, and digital digital camera function for quite a few UCLA college scholar movies. “I instantly responded to Eric’s script,” claims Harmon. “I used to be in a quite uncomfortable placement on the time, in that I wished extremely lots to do a perform film however skilled presently talked about ‘no’ to quite a lot of doable assignments. The story had fascinating characters and, way more importantly, couple folks. That was undoubtedly a as well as contemplating that I used to be a initial-time director and desired a job that wasn’t far too vital to handle.”
Harmon attended movie school at Boston College, however remaining instantly after quite a few conflicts along with his professors. Suggests Harmon, “I undoubtedly didn’t study the college significantly previous to attending. It wasn’t appropriate for me it wasn’t what I wanted to do it wasn’t wherever I wanted to go in film. That they had been as nicely anxious with movie idea in its place of apply. All of them talked about films, however I wanted to make films. In Hollywood.”
And now each equally Robert Harmon and Eric Crimson have constructed that want arrive correct – with a nightmare termed The Hitcher.