We had the chance to speak to the co-writer of The Terminator (inc. Novelization) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day William Wisher. Sit back and enjoy some details of Terminator history that you might not have known before…
Which Terminator movie did you enjoy writing on the most and why?
T2 of course. Because I was much more involved in creating and writing it.
In the novelization you worked on with Randall Frakes,- we get more backstory to minor characters, for example in The Terminator we got to find out more about the punks and the garbage man played by Chino ‘Fats’ Williams. Was it fun to give these characters more of a backstory and to develop their characters more in a format off-screen?
I only worked on the novelization of The Terminator. I believe Randy wrote more Terminator books. But yes, It was fun to know you could wander about the landscape, taking your time and embellishing characters. It was much more of a lark and much less of a disciplined exercise than writing a screenplay, which is far more like journalism where every single word counts, and the fewer of them the better.
If you worked on another Terminator movie, what direction would you take the T-800 character, or would your interest lie elsewhere in a new Terminator?
Well, that’s kind of a moot point, because I highly doubt that is ever going to happen. When I was thinking about T5 and T6 my instinct was to bring Arnold and Linda back and close out the story by taking it full circle. But that was five years and another sequel ago and it didn’t happen. So I’m going to let someone else figure out which direction to go from here.
TheTerminatorFans.com and many hardcore fans are quite saddened that Terminator left the horror/sci-fi genre and became a commercialized PG-13 Summer movie product… What are your views on this and a possible return to Rated R Terminator movies?
It’s commerce. That’s all. The films were more and more expensive, and very commercially successful. No one, no one on this earth, is going to spend a hundred or two hundred million dollars to make an “R” rated movie. It’s financial suicide. So the franchise has become one of the summer tent pole perennials like Mission Impossible. It is the way of the film world. Personally, I have no desire to rail against it or wonder what might have been- were the world a different place. I made two good Terminator films. I am content.
Could a studio release a low-budget R Rated Terminator movie via another channel if they wished, a separate entity from Mainstream PG-13 Terminator?
I suppose if a studio had all the rights exclusively (which is a lawyer question) that they could do damn near anything they wanted to. Including a musical version. Now, would they be likely to want to? Maybe, but I doubt it. Studios tend to make the safest financial decisions possible. And a separate “R” low budget version to please American fans doesn’t sound like something a studio would do. Unless the newest hundred million dollar global version tanked and they thought the series had played out. Was essentially not worth the investment anymore. Then they might try another TV version, or even a total reboot with a new cast, etc. then you might get the movie you’d like.
-You wrote the LAPD Detective Story arc in The Terminator and most of the scenes involving Sarah Connor, was this the same for T2 (Sarah) and when Linda said she wanted to play crazy to Jim, was this fun as a writer to delve into and to evolve the character of the mother of the future?
First of all, it didn’t happen quite that way. Jim and I decided that Sarah Connor would have been deemed crazy by the time we pick her back up in T2. I’m sure Linda was excited to play it that way, but it wasn’t her idea.We concluded that Sarah would have spent time with survivalists and possibly drug dealers and all manner of unsavory types in the intervening years in order to develop the skill sets she thought she’d need to protect her young son John. And that the authorities would likely have thought her a nutcase and locked her up eventually. And yes, all of that was fun.
To be clear, we didn’t split scenes up in the writing of Terminator 2, as happened in The Terminator. We wrote the T2 treatment “out loud” and side by side taking turns typing. it was very specific and detailed. It was the whole movie. Then we cut it in half and spent a couple weeks apart simply fleshing the scenes out. Then we traded halves, rewrote each other, then came back together and went over all of it again together, side by side. it was very collaborative.
-cool
Yeah. It was really a lot of fun.
So given the chance to work with Jim and Gale again on Terminator or perhaps a new collaborative effort; would you be interested in re-teaming? (Gale has expressed interest in Terminator and Aliens “if” Jim is involved)
I love Jim. I mean actually. We met as teenagers. I’ve known him over forty years.We’re very good friends. I dove to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean beside him on the Bismarck Expedition. So of course I’d be happy to work with him again. On a Terminator. On an Alien project. On any damn project at all. I like working with him.
But the thing is, I seriously doubt there is a snowball’s chance in hell of Jim Cameron making a Terminator or Alien film. Jim is working on Avatar 2 and 3. It’s going to take him years to complete those. I’m not speaking for him, I’d never do that, but I think he’s more inclined to look forward than to look back.
He (Jim) did say a grand re-conceptualization might interest him.
Once Jim Owns the franchise again what do you think he will do with it? Sit on it and prevent more movies.. would he let Gale take charge of it?
I have no idea. Literally, none. Never discussed it with him. Don’t know what Jim will do when he gets the rights back . But Mr. Cameron loves 3D.
in 1996 a JC Terminator 3 had early talks before he cut his emotional ties… did you get any calls about that T3 or what became T3 Rise of the Machines (without Jim’s involvement)?
I did get phone calls. That’s a very long story I will keep for my memoirs.
Do you have any stories to tell about your cameo appearances in The Terminator (Police Officer slammed head-first into a car) or Terminator 2: JD (tourist in the galleria) and which cameo role would you have liked to have played if you and Jim had written Terminator 3 together; the trend was already set right?
I had fun playing the cop in The Terminator. As it often happens in films, I arrived and suited up as a cop hours before they shot my scene. The actual police, working our crowd control and security, were a little shorthanded as midnight, and the weirdos, approached. So they asked if I would help. Since I was dressed EXACTLY like a LAPD officer, gun, badge, and all, I said sure. They handed me a walkie talkie and I was a “cop” for a couple of hours. That was interesting. Every time I opened my mouth, people would do exactly what I said. They never made eye contact, which was interesting, but they did what I said.
Did it hurt when Arnold slammed your head into the car?
No. It didn’t hurt. The stunt crew was first class. They took good care of me.
It definitely Looks real…
I hit the window with my shoulder. Illusion only. We rehearsed. It was great.
Was that stunt coordinated by Joel Kramer?
Yes. Bless him! He’s a great guy. Joel choreographed everything. He was the team leader.
Nice and the T2 cameo?
The silent cameo as a tourist in T2 was kind of an accident. A friend of Jim’s from Japan was supposed to play the “Japanese Tourist,” which is how it was written. But the guy missed his flight, so Jim called me and asked me to get to the set at dawn and stand in for him. I said sure. That was that.
As far as a T3 that Jim and I might have done, I have no idea if I would have played a cameo. Though I doubt it. I probably shouldn’t have even been in T2 since I was recognizable as the cop who died in The Terminator. In any event, we never discussed what our T3 might have been. Events moved too quickly for that, and then the possibility of Jim and I making T3 together was over.
So are you writing anything right now or in any negotiations to write something?
I just finished a film called “I.T.” starring Pierce Brosnan. We shot it in Ireland this last summer. Should be out early next year. And I’m writing a new film called “Samar” about a David and Goliath naval battle off the coast of the Philippines in 1944. Same Director as “I.T.” John Moore. That should keep me busy most of next year.
Excellent! We’ll keep an eye out for them. So T2 is being released in 3D worldwide, will you be going to the theater to watch it in the 3D conversion for the 25th anniversary of the movie?
T2 in 3D? Hadn’t heard that. Not a huge fan of 3D (because movies are already 3D in your head anyway, aren’t they?). I hope they don’t screw with the cut either. Seems like a gimmick to me, but maybe I’ll get a new residual schedule. Wouldn’t mind that. Will I go see it in 3D? Maybe. I already know how it ends… 🙂 .
So, at what age did you realize you had a talent and passion for writing and how did this progress to having your career firmly set in the movies?
I initially wanted to be an actor. That’s what I studied in school. And I think I was pretty good too, if the encouragement I got from my teachers and friends was real. But after a few years auditioning and doing theater and so forth, I realized i wasn’t built for the business end of that. My hat is off to young actors who can deal with the soul killing abuse one has to endure to make acting an actual career. Or perhaps I simply wasn’t really good enough. Who knows? At any rate, I decided to find something else to do.
I had always been pretty good at stringing a few sentences together. But I had never been trained as a writer. Not formally. I was in my 20’s and didn’t feel like I had time to go back to college and spend four years getting a degree in creative writing. So instead I went to the UCLA Creative Writing department and took copies of the course book lists off of the professor’s doors. Then I went to the UCLA bookstore and dropped several hundred dollars buying them all. I decided I would take a semester to read the books, do the assignments listed within them, and write a screenplay as a kind of final exam. I sort of undertook my own creative writing course based on the UCLA reading material. I attended a couple of lectures as well, because you could just wander in to the lecture hall and no one really bothered you about it. So after I finished all the course work I wrote a screenplay as a “final exam.” And it was pretty bad. But I had learned a lot. The one book I would recommend to anyone is Lajos Egri’s “The Art Of Dramatic Writing.” All the other ones are a waste of time. That one is priceless.
And then I wrote another script. And then another. A few months after that, I had a serious heart to heart with myself and I decided “to hell with Hollywood,” I would just write books instead. So I planned to move to NYC, find a job, and start writing novels. That’s what I determined to do. But… Jim Cameron was already a friend of mine and he’d written a treatment to The Terminator. Which I’d read. And we’d talked about it, as friends do. So, I was about a couple of weeks away from leaving when Jim called me and asked me to postpone my trip. He’d sold the treatment and had to write the screenplay. But he was short on time. He asked me to write some scenes based on his treatment to get the thing finished on schedule; the early Sarah Connor scenes and all the police and detective scenes. So I said okay. I wrote those, and helped him polish a few other things. And then the film got financed. He then asked if I was still interested in getting a SAG card, because if so he’d cast me as a cop in the movie and give me a scene. Well, I wanted all of my options, just in case, so I said sure. That would be great. And thanks. I never left for New York; I became a screen writer instead. The Terminator was my turning point. One thing led to another, one film led to another and I realized after T2 that I actually already had a career as a screen writer, and it had happened more or less by accident.
You produced die hard 4… so that’s why there was an endoskeleton statue in the movie’s opening action sequence?
Great guess. I executive produced it for Fox after I rewrote the script front to back. I was on set every day of production. The director, Len Wiseman, was a huge Terminator 1 & 2 fan, and on the day we shot that, he put the endoskeleton on the table himself. I think he was saying “thank you” to me. Or at least did it for me. It was a sweet gesture. Len is a good guy.
Well that’s a mystery solved and a great Easter egg.
A huge thanks to Mr.Wisher for taking time out for the fans!