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Sometimes, during the development of a film, excellent creative opportunities arise which turn the project into something exciting and unexpected … and sometimes, circumstances intrude that take those opportunities away. So, what you’re left with are some loose ends that won’t amount to much more than an interesting sidebar during a DVD commentary.

Some of these little excursions are more interesting than others. A case in point is the character of Heavy Red, who, until the latest draft of the script, was featured in an explanatory flashback toward the end of “ef”.

How Heavy Red came about was a simple matter of story logistics - a character was needed to establish a legacy not only to the vampires that reside in the city, but also the vampire hunters that swoop in to try and sort things out … and who do you think of when someone mentions vampire hunters? Well, after Van Helsing and Buffy I guess … Wesley Snipes, naturally.

Foolishly laboring under the misguided hope that Mr. Snipes would get some kind of appeal and would not actually be languishing away in prison for the next three years, Joanne Reay began revising some of the less than interesting characters in the big flasback sequence onto one character that would do all the explaining for the audience and the young hero of the film. When she first mentioned the idea to me, I was thrilled. This would be a Blade-like character, many years after his main career was over, embarking on a new series of adventures.

Having grown up on a steady diet of Marvel’s horror comics in the seventies, the design of Blade for the film series never struck me as being right - however perfect the casting was. So I sort of extrapolated what Blade would look like, years later, if he’d evolved from his adventures in the “Tomb of Dracula” comics but was still played by Wesley Snipes. I figured there would be done amount of voodoo influence (the feathers and the coat, straight outta “Live and Let Die”), the character having travelled south at the end of his main story, maybe embracing several fringe religions together and merging them all into one of his own.

In the script, Heavy Red, a former vampire turned vampire hunter, meets a strange figure in the bayous of Louisiana, a mortal light shaman who converts him into a super-vampire hunter.


FATHER SCARBONI’S face watches intently as HEAVY RED runs his fingers along the edge of the sharpened crucifix.

HEAVY RED
Once I was defined by a blade. Now -

He raises his skulled fist.

HEAVY RED (cont’d)
I am something other.

With a twist of his arm, two bolts of blue lightning shoot from the eyes of the skull, blasting a hole in the church wall.

...

FATHER SCARBONI sees a metal shaft glint from beneath HEAVY RED’S coat. His quivering finger points to it.

FATHER SCARBONI
... and that?

HEAVY RED glances down.

HEAVY RED
My greatest weapon.

He pulls out the metal object.

HEAVY RED
Jazz trumpet.

He runs his fingers lithely over the valves.

HEAVY RED
You can’t go south without gettin’ jazzed.

It was an interesting exercise, and a lot of fun thinking about how cool it would be to see Snipes return to a Blade-like role, with a bit of a nostalgic twist.

Alas, it was not meant to be, as the final verdict came in a short while ago, and now, the latest draft of the script seems to stand up on its own without him.

I’ll be posting more info about the making of “ef” in the coming weeks and months, so stay tuned. Just a reminder, the official website is here.

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