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 brought 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 trip across the country from New York City to Los Angeles. As young filmmaker and former taxi driver Eric Red drove alone through a dark Texas night, he began to fall asleep at the wheel. “I picked up a hitchhiker,” explains Red, “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 with 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.”
From such experiences nightmares are born. Continuing through Texas, Red kept turning the story over in his mind, wondering what would have happened if the hitchhiker hadn’t gone 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 10-line letter to all the production companies in Los Angeles. It was an unsolicited query to spark interest 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 as Playboy photographer and camera work for numerous UCLA student films. “I immediately responded to Eric’s script,” says Harmon. “I was in a pretty awkward position at the time, I really wanted to do a feature film but had already said ‘no’ to several possible projects. The story had fascinating characters and more importantly few characters. That was definitely a advantage since I was a first-time director and I wanted a project that wasn’t too big to handle.
Harmon attended the Boston University film school, but left after several conflicts with his professors. Says Harmon, “I didn’t really do much 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 where I wanted to get to in film. They were too preoccupied with film theory at all. practice place. 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.