How Richard Donner Wrecked RADIO FLYER

[AndyDursin]

Came across this mess for the first time in years the other night. Man, Richard Donner really screwed this movie up.

Here's an interview with the writer, who had made over a million selling the script, but whom Donner had fired a couple of weeks into production because he wanted to direct it himself.

http://davidmickeyevansblog.blogspot.co ... bobby.html

[Eric W.]

Wow what a shame. That movie could have/should have been much more.

[Paul MacLean]

That's awful that they intentionally slowed-down the production so Evans could be thrown-off the picture. Much as in the case of Sky Captain, you had a more offbeat type of movie (that should have been lower-budget) which the studio wanted to make into a "tent pole".

To me, the biggest problem with Radio Flyer was the way it addressed the serious and all-too real problem of child abuse -- and then "magically" solved it by having the kid escape in a flying machine. That always felt cheap and irresponsible to me. And as it was in the original script, one can't really fault Donner for it. The title card at the end of the film, encouraging audiences to call a child abuse hotline if they are witness to such abuse, left me wondering "What did I just watch?"

Another problem with this movie was the score. I actually attended the scoring session for Radio Flyer. At the time, Hans Zimmer was a "hot", up-and-coming composer, and I'd liked what little I'd heard of his music, and was excited by the chance to see him at work.

However, I began to have serious doubts about Zimmer's fitness for the profession when Shirley Walker started rehearsing this theme -- which sounded like something from a 1960s Hannah-Barbara cartoon...

[Eric W.]

I always like those behind the scenes stories. That's neat that you were there. Yes...that score never fully clicked for me.

[AndyDursin]

I don't know if the original script would have worked either, but I don't think it had any chance at all with Donner making the film. I think Evans would have brought a more "adult" sensibility and gotten across that the intention was for a lot of the fantasy components to be metaphors -- either way it was his screenplay so it would have been clearer as to what his intentions were.

What Donner introduced into the script was an ambiguity that left some viewers thinking the other brother had died or had never existed at all -- which, in either instance, definitely renders the entire exercise pointless. It sounds as if Evans was trying to say these kids had survived and gotten away, regardless of how it happened -- which leaves you in a more hopeful frame than the film itself with its mixed messaging does. (That ending with Hanks was the second one Donner had shot, and neither was the original ending Evans had written either).

May well be the mix of the subject and fantasy would not have worked regardless -- but I think Donner's approach to the movie was all wrong. He's not a "subtle" director and the movie required a special, more sensitive handling he was unable to provide to the material. It's kind of like how bombastic something like THE GOONIES is compared to Spielberg's own work in the genre. That film probably would've worked so much better had Spielberg directed it or, a few years later, Chris Columbus (who wrote it) himself. The movie is overbearing, the kids are overbearing, the tone is too much. RADIO FLYER is "too much" too.

However, I began to have serious doubts about Zimmer's fitness for the profession when Shirley Walker started rehearsing this theme -- which sounded like something from a 1960s Hannah-Barbara cartoon...

It's such a terrible score. My god. lol