KIDS HAVE A SAY IN ’NIGHT’ by Dennis Georgatos

KIDS HAVE A SAY IN ’NIGHT’
Miami Herald, The (FL) - January 11, 1983
Author: DENNIS GEORGATOS Associated Press

A psychiatrist cast in the unfamiliar role of horror - movie producer wanted some advice on what scares young people, so he
went straight to the source, with newspaper ads asking for help.

The result is the movie One Dark Night, a film about a "school wimp" who takes a dare, spends the night in a mausoleum and ends up being kept company by living corpses with glittering eyes and coffins popping out of walls.

About 100 young people between the ages of 12 and 25 responded to the ads in San Diego newspapers last September and helped in the film’s production by offering comments, criticisms and suggestions.

"Basically, this is their film," said psychiatrist Thomas P. Johnson, executive producer and senior consultant with Comworld, the Orem, Utah-based studio that bankrolled the $865,000 venture.

Johnson said he solicited their thoughts because "I wanted their feedback, with the potential advantage being that we would be in closer touch with the grass-roots ticket buyer.

"Some people feel that people in Hollywood start making movies for each other and lose touch with the public and what the non-Hollywood people would like to see on the screen," he said.

Having young people help select the script, make plot changes and vote on versions they liked best had never been tried before on such a large scale, Johnson said, and the experience to the participants was a positive one.

"They are at a very critical stage of development," Johnson said. "Many of them feel that this is an adults’ world, and adults don’t listen, and this was a chance for them to find themselves in a position like

producer-director Steven> Spielberg. They got to call the shots."

The movie was shot in Hollywood, produced by Michael Schroeder and directed by Tom McLoughlin. McLoughlin wrote the script with Michael Hawes.

It opened last week at 300 theaters in the West. A South Florida release date has yet to be set.

"I liked it, but I expected it to be more scary," said Julie Phillip, 22, a student at Mesa College who contributed suggestions to the movie . "I would recommend it to my friends. It has good suspense. It’s pretty creative. And it was nice to be part of the moviemaking process, even if it was a small part."

Bobby Straker, 16, a La Jolla High School student who answered the ads "because I like the movies ," said the film is "100 per cent better" because of the input from young people.

The moviemakers didn’t use all the suggestions. While the young people came up with some macabre situations, Johnson said he was surprised that the consensus was for a nonviolent ending -- which the studio vetoed.

"It just goes to show you that young people don’t need to see a chainsaw hacking someone up or violent scenes with a lot of blood in a movie thriller," he said.

The young people who participated in the novel arrangement were not compensated for their time, nor did they receive screen credits. "I wish we could have done something about that, but we had to follow traditional Hollywood protocol," Johnson said.

Johnson, who has never been involved in making a movie before, said he was approached by Comworld last year "to see if my background with psychiatry in the prime movie age group of 12 to 29 would better the odds" of making a successful film.

Comworld is an independent studio, and one of the factors in seeking opinion was the fact that so many independent ventures lose money, he said.