It was clearly a personal work for him and his criticisms of details like lighting and color schemes on sets would suggest a desire for the director’s chair. It is possible that Chayefsky felt he should have directed the film himself. Whatever the reality, Chayefsky, always involved in the filming process since his first major film Marty (1955), left the production, replaced his screenplay credit with the pseudonym Sidney Aaron, and refused to ever even see the movie. “I don’t think Paddy had ever been involved with a director who wasn’t malleable,” Russell told the New York Times in early 1981, “he would make suggestions and I would listen courteously, and then disagree.” Other sources, including the film’s producer Howard Gottfried say that Russell worked well with Chayefsky during pre-production, then became quite cruel once filming began. As with the company named, Russell had a singular vision and was not willing to compromise it. In a review of one of his later films, Gothic (1986), author, critic, and notorious crank Harlan Ellison said, “Ken Russell uses film to look at things we not only don’t care to see, but to look at things we don’t even imagine exist.” In the context of the review (collected in the book Harlan Ellison’s Watching ) this is a high compliment as Ellison names Russell one of only a handful of, then-living, true geniuses of filmmaking alongside the likes of Buñuel, Kurosawa, Fellini, Kubrick, and Coppola. In retrospect, Russell was the perfect choice for Altered States, a film that relies on hallucinations as a key part of its narrative. They decided on Ken Russell, who was known for his strange, but stunning imagery in films like The Devils (1971) and The Who’s Tommy (1975), but not particularly for box-office blockbusters. Apparently because of disagreements with Chayefsky, Penn left the film and producers sought out a visually imaginative director to take over. It seems to come down to the fact that Chayefsky and Russell just plain didn’t like each other.īonnie and Clyde director Arthur Penn was originally attached to direct the film and guided it through most of pre-production, including casting. It would be assumed that a writer like Chayefsky taking his name off the film would be due to the director taking too many liberties with his work, but that does not appear to be the case. One of the most surprising things about the novel is how closely it resembles the finished film. The novel is written with the sparse, efficient prose of a screenplay while remaining highly readable despite Chayefsky’s copious use of scientific and medical jargon. It is much more interested in the scientific methods that lead to the separation of the higher and lower selves than Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novella, which focuses on the investigation surrounding Hyde’s crimes, but the essence of exploring the duality of man is at the heart of both. After leaving this gathering, Chayefsky returned home and wrote a three-page treatment of what would become the novel.Īltered States is essentially a modern retelling of The Strange Case of Dr. They decided that they should create their own monster movie remake but grounded in some kind of scientific reality. Apparently, they were commiserating about their Hollywood struggles when the subject of Dino DeLaurentiis’s King Kong (1976) remake came up. The original novel came about from a discussion among friends including Chayefsky and legendary director and choreographer Bob Fosse, among others. It was also plagued with a number of production woes centering around the strong personalities of Russell and Chayefsky, resulting in the writer ending his involvement with the film and removing his name from the finished product. It is a bold exploration into consciousness, religious experience, evolution, and the very meaning of humanity itself. Ken Russell’s film version of Paddy Chayefsky’s only novel, Altered States, is one of the most visionary pieces of early 1980’s cinema.
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