Quotes

You need to get what I call "the lump of clay" on the table. You can't mold it until it's there. So if you get ten pages down and then start being judgmental and critical of your work, you'll never get that lump of clay on the table.

I could do an entire sequel to Brainstorm (1983) just from the script material that wasn't used, but of course, it's unlikely I'll ever get that chance. There is a major flaw in our copyright system, that fertile ideas can be bought and sold and left to decompose in studio vaults. [Interview in Cinefantastique magazine, March 1986]

[on writing Jacob's Ladder (1990)] The film was beginning to feel shallow, stagnant. I felt trapped. Something was missing. For nearly three days I stopped working. I felt the script was a disaster in the making and I grew terribly depressed. I didn't want to proceed. I had come to this point in many scripts, that moment of total devastation, where you realize that what you are writing is absolute garbage, that you have strayed from your path, and that you are deluded to think you were ever a writer in the first place. How a writer overcomes this obstacle is in many ways what determines his success or failure. It is a time of battle, of sacrifice, of killing your babies as some writer once said. It is a terrible and ultimately liberating struggle, if you get through it. It weds you to your material in a blood ceremony that makes it yours. It becomes your life. [Jacob's Ladder, Applause Books, 1990]

Each film was an attempt, successful or not, to witness and explore the unseen world of our lives. I wanted to speak to adults and to children and to touch the inner mystery of our shared being.

[on being offered to write the script for Deadly Friend (1986) ] At first I said, 'I can't write that. I have integrity. I didn't come to Hollywood to make horror films.' The next morning, as I was meditating and feeling very smug about turning down the job, I heard [my deceased meditation teacher] Rudi's voice in my head, as clear as could be. He said, 'You schmuck! There's more integrity in providing for your family than in turning down jobs. Get up right now, go to the phone, call the producer and say you're going to do it.' I've had a long enough spiritual practice to know that when your teacher speaks to you from beyond the grave, you listen. I got up and called Robert M. Sherman and said, 'I want this job.' He said, 'It's yours.' That film, Deadly Friend, turned out to be a joy to make and a lifesaver on many levels...There were a lot of other benefits from working on that film, one of which was getting to know Wes Craven. [Jacob's Ladder, Applause Books, 1990 and brucejoelrubin.com]

The script idea for Jacob's Ladder (1990) began as a dream: A subway late at night; I am traveling through the bowels of New York City. There are very few people on the train. A terrible loneliness grips me. The train pulls into the station and I get off. The platform is deserted. I walk to the nearest exit, and discover the gate is locked. A feeling of terrible despair begins to pulse through me as I hike to the other end of the platform. To my horror, that exit is chained, too. I am totally trapped and overwhelmed by a sense of doom. I know with perfect certainty that I will never see daylight again. My only hope is to jump onto the tracks and enter the tunnel, the darkness. The only direction from there is down. I know the next stop on my journey is hell. Partly that came out of my own fear and despair, because nothing in my life seemed to be working. In Illinois, I felt like my story had evaporated completely. My story was, 'You don't have a story.' Here you are, living in a cornfield. No friends. No work. Your wife is supporting the family. Basically, in my mind, the story was over. I could have given up my filmmaking goals and settled into a different kind of lifestyle... My story would have been: 'Okay, you tried.' Instead, I woke up from my subway dream and said, 'That's a great opening for a movie.' I then tried to write my way out of hell. [Jacob's Ladder, Applause Books, 1990 and brucejoelrubin.com]