I haven’t posted on here in a while so I thought I’d go ahead and answer a question I get asked a lot when I do con appearances: how did you get involved in the film “Stinger” and “weren’t you supposed to direct it?”

As many of you know I wrote a cheesy horror film called STINGER for a company called Shoreline Entertainment back in around 2004. It was originally planned to be the sequel to a film called “Tail Sting” which is often considered one of the worst creature features to come out in a very long time. Even Shoreline Entertainment owner and “Tail Sting” Executive Producer, Morris Ruskin, hated the film in spite of the fact it had made his company quite a bit of money and was a decent hit outside of the USA. I remember many a conversation sitting in Morris’ office where he’d talk about what a load of crap that movie was.

Truthfully, it is a bad movie but there are some funny bits in there and it was good enough for New Line Cinema to complete rip off in its equally bad “Snakes on a Plane.” If you think “Snakes on a Plane” wasn’t a rip off of “Tail Sting,” then just do a quick watch of both movies. There are too many similar beats and duplicated sequences to be just a coincidence. Why they chose to plagiarize “Tail Sting” I have no clue.

Back to “Stinger.” I was working with Morris at Shoreline doing some script doctoring (you have no idea how many re-writes I did on Shoreline’s failed attempt to do a “Judge Dredd” movie), one sheet work and general bits here and there. This went off and on from 2002 through 2004. During that time I would constantly harass Morris about why he and Shoreline weren’t venturing out in to the world of digital film production. Shoreline would produce a few films a year and would always shoot on 35mm. For some reason Morris was under the assumption that this whole digital thing was something that would never be accepted by his distributors. But, as a huge fan of low budget horror movies, I persisted and would bring it up whenever I was there at his Century City offices.

Eventually I wore Morris down enough to where he asked me to put my money where my mouth was. He asked what I’d do if I had a chance to write and direct something for Shoreline on digital video…to his surprise I said I’d love to do the sequel to “Tail Sting.” I knew Shoreline had pre-sold the sequel way back when the original was still being taken around to AFM and the other film markets, and I also knew that they were running out of time to do it. I believe they had pre-sold the Japanese territory rights to what was then called “Tail Sting 2″ for around $150,000 and the deadline for a cut of the film was fast approaching.

So, Morris asked me to start by working up a budget for the sequel even though the screenplay had not yet been written. Thanks to the internet I found an incredibly talented producer named Todd Wade who helped me work up a budget based on a quick outline I jotted down while sitting at the Century City food court across the street from Shoreline’s offices on Century Park East. Even though the original “Tail Sting” was budgeted at over $300,000, Morris asked that we stick to the same amount as the presales: $150,000. He also wanted to make sure we had explosions and a flooding submarine. Luckily, I was able to get rid of the flooding by the time the screenplay was finished and Morris never noticed.

Once the budget was approved, Morris asked me why I hadn’t finished the screenplay yet…this was about 2 weeks after we had agreed to do the thing. I told him that it was just about done and that I’d have it to him in a couple of weeks. I was doing some writing for Disney TV Animation at the same time and decided to forego sleep for a while as I proceeded to bang out the first draft of the “Tail Sting 2″ screenplay in about 2 weeks.

Morris kept giving me his idea on the film’s story. I believe his exact words were “just write Aliens.” I did mention to him that someone had already written “Aliens” and had done a brilliant job at it, but he would not be swayed. So, “just write Aliens” became my mantra. As for the setting, we knew it had to take place on a submarine because of the one-sheet we sold the film with. I’m guessing a third movie would take place on a train to complete the transportation trifecta.

I handed the screenplay in to Morris — keep in mind I’ve done all of this just on Morris’ word I’d get to write and direct the thing. No contract was signed or even discussed. One of my biggest weaknesses is trusting people to abide by their word…not a good idea in Hollywood. If you’ve ever worked in Hollywood then you know what happened next. Nothing. Once you turn a screenplay in you then sit back and wait for notes. It doesn’t matter that a producer or studio has been hounding you to finish the darn thing because they have a deadline. Once you hand it in then you wait…generally for a month or so.

Morris then gave me his notes. The most interesting of which was “needs a sex scene.” This baffled me a bit because there were no female characters in the first draft and all I had to create a sex scene was a bunch of burly marines. I decided to add in a couple of females instead of turning “Tail Sting 2″ in to “Brokeback Submarine.” The secondary female character was tossed in to be a completely gratuitous sexpot who gets killed. The fact that she is killed right after banging the villain AND gets killed with a stinger to the back, causing her boobs to pop out of her shirt, was not accidental.

I love boobs popping out.

Other than that there weren’t any major changes. Morris did ask that we show the creatures earlier in the film even though I knew it was a bad idea. The Predator doesn’t even show completely up until about 45 minutes in to his movie for a reason. The rewrite took about 2 days and the screenplay was approved.

At this point Morris decided to rename the film because the screenplay was a lot better than the original “Tail Sting” and he didn’t want anything to tie the two together…although the lead character was supposed to be the sister of the scientist in the first film and the corporation has the same name. Not that anyone really noticed.

Another aside: I stole from “Real Genius.” One of the greatest characters in film history is Lazlo Hollyfield and I stole him for the film. The semi-autistic assistant scientist is, in my head at least, the same Lazlo Hollyfield as the one in “Real Genius.” This is what happened to him after that film ended. In my head. If I had been able to cast the film I would have found someone that actually looked like Jon Gries.

Once the screenplay was done and approved, Morris informed me that he wanted to shoot the film for a bit less than we had budget. Doing “Aliens” on $150,000 was already going to be tough and I just about shit a brick when he told me the new budget was going to be $30,000. He also asked that I put in part of the money myself. Don’t you love Hollywood?

I was still set to direct at this time, so I went about finding a producer and a special effects team. The FX guys came first in the form of Abomination FX. Abomination was made up of a couple of guys I knew who were incredibly talented artists looking to break out on their own. The producer came in the form of a friend of a friend who, later on it turns out, falsely represented himself to me and, by proxy, to Shoreline.

We set about getting the FX guys going — they began designing some truly cool scorpion suits, radio controlled scorpions, corpses and the like — and we went about trying to find locations. At this point Shoreline hadn’t given us any actual budget to work with and no contracts. I began having problems with the producer at this point. I won’t get in to what they were, but I ended up taking some pretty big heat from them with everyone else involved in the film. By the time the contracts had arrived the problems had come to the point where we needed a new producer.

Unfortunately, the producer got to Shoreline and Morris before I did. From what I’ve heard from other people since, the guy told Morris a number of falsehoods about me and the project itself and was able to get me removed as director. Morris never contacted me directly about any of it and never returned a single one of my phone calls or emails. When I went to his office to find out what was going on I wasn’t allowed in to see him. This was a project that, at this point, I’d been working on for FREE for about a year. Something I’d initiated and developed and nurtured and suffered for and it hurt more than a little that a man I saw as a friend and mentor would cut me off with no defense on my part. Morris was a guy who I’d go out and see at Shoreline once a week, have lunch with, hang out with, and who I turned on to the idea of digital film production…something Shoreline’s Riptide line has been doing incredibly well with ever since.

That ended my work with Shoreline. They paid me $500 for the screenplay but pulled all the points I had in the film. I was so crushed by the whole situation that I just signed the new agreement and let myself get cut from a project that I had really enjoyed and wanted to finish. That’s just the way Hollywood works.

While that ends my involvement, the story does continue. Everyone else involved in the film was cut — I’m assuming the producer was found out. Shoreline took the film over to Sweden and a capable director by the name of Martin Munthe. The downside is, when you give a film with American humor over to someone from another country a lot of it will get lost. Since the majority of the actors and crew were European most of the jokes were lost in translation. Check the original screenplay HERE for an idea of what could have been.

The film premiered, finally, here in the US in August 2006. I believe it had been released in Japan earlier under the “Tail Sting 2″ title and with a fantastic piece of box art. The DVD was given a US release here in April 2007 and a terrible piece of cover artwork.

My final thoughts on the movie itself are: it was ok. They completely changed and botched the ending. They killed a lot of the humor and removed a fairly vital scene in the beginning which introduced all the marines. All in all, it wasn’t horrible…the version shown on Sci Fi was horrible - it very dark and grainy, and the story itself was cut way down. Not a good idea. I did really enjoy the actor who played Silva.  Check out the trailer:

Oh, a final piece of trivia, the marines were all named after my college roommates. Jeff Yearges, Scott Silva and Tom Volante are all real people. I haven’t talked to any of them in more than 10 years but they were great guys. 

So there ends the tale of “Stinger.” It was equal parts fun and painful. Morris, if you’re out there, feel free to get back in touch with me — I’d love to do “Stinger 2″ and do it right this time.

-NiftyMat, Professional Nerd
http://www.theniftynerd.com/