Interview – Robert Harmon and Eric Red
[This interview took place in 1986.]
the hitchhiker
Directed by Robert Harmon
Screenplay by Eric Red
Breaking into Hollywood is rarely easy. It takes talent, persistence, determination and a lot of luck. Director Robert Harmon and screenwriter Eric Red have managed to bring all of the above together to create the hitchhikera new thriller starring C. Thomas Howell, Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
The project began with an eventful cross-country trip from New York City to Los Angeles. As young filmmaker and ex-cab driver Eric Red drove alone through a dark Texas night, he began to fall asleep at the wheel. “I picked up a hitchhiker,” Red explains, “just to pass the time. To help me stay awake. But the guy just sat there smelling dirty and staring at me. I started to feel uncomfortable about the whole situation and I thought that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to pick it up. It had a rough edge. I finally stopped the car a few miles down the road and asked him to get out. He went willingly, and that was it.”
Nightmares are born from such experiences. Continuing through Texas, Red kept turning the story over in his mind, wondering what would have happened if the hitchhiker hadn’t left voluntarily. When he got to Austin, he was nearly broke. “I stayed in Austin for a month to write the script,” recalls Red, “and I sent a short ten-line letter to all the production companies in Los Angeles. It was an unsolicited inquiry to get people interested in the story, telling them that the script was available.”
He received responses from about forty percent of the companies. A Letter, by David Bombyk (producer of Witness) asked to see the script. That script was later sent to director Robert Harmon, whose previous credits include the short film chinese lakea period of one year Playboy photographer and camera work for numerous UCLA student films. “I immediately responded to Eric’s script,” says Harmon. “I was in a rather awkward position at the time, really wanting to make a feature film but having already said ‘no’ to a number of potential projects. The story had fascinating characters and, more importantly, few characters. That was definitely a advantage as I was a first-time director and wanted a project that wasn’t too big to handle.
Harmon attended Boston University film school, but left after several conflicts with his professors. Says Harmon, “I didn’t really do a lot of research on the school before I went. It wasn’t the right thing for me; it wasn’t what I wanted to do; it wasn’t the place I wanted to be in film. They were too concerned with film theory in place of practice. Everyone was talking about movies, but I wanted to make movies. In Hollywood.”
And now both Robert Harmon and Eric Red have made that dream come true, with a nightmare called the hitchhiker.
