Edward Khmara

"Ladyhawke goes back to when I was living in Paris for a couple of years and making a living translating. I read a lot of medieval literature and was very struck by poet Francois Villon's story of how he had been mistreated by a bishop. That started becoming the story of a little theif who had to go on a quest to redeem himself but was afraid to go on it alone. He needed someone's help, and there would be a price to pay for this. In my mind's eye, I saw a knight with a hawk on his arm, but I didn't know what the knight wanted or why the hawk was there. I first had this idea in 1970, but didn't actually write the screenplay until 1976, and the movie wasn't made until 1983. I wrote Ladyhawke on speculation, without being paid for it. I didn't have an agent, and couldn't get the studios to pay attention to it. When agents did read it, I couldn't find anybody at first who wanted to represent me or the screenplay. When I did finally find an agent, he didn't like Ladyhawke at all and wanted to send it to the Japanese because they did Godzilla movies."

"I was happy with parts of the movie, although I thought that Rutger Hauer was a little too civilized for my knight. I had imagined someone more like Jurgen Prochnow."

"Before we wrote the screenplay, we tried to get the studios interested in the story. It was turned down everywhere. But again, after the screenplay was done, there was quite a bit of studio interest. We finally went with 20th Century Fox. Then they started having trouble finding a director. Either the ones they wanted weren't available, or wanted to go in such a different direction with the story that they were unacceptable. Finally, Richard Loncrane was hired. The first draft of my screenplay took ten months, which is a very long time. When I started working with Richard, I would fly to London or he would fly here. He had a wonderful, very exciting vision of the film, but at the same time, it might have exceeded what was possible. What you see on the screen today is maybe 75 script pages. The script Loncrane and I started shooting with in Iceland was 140 pages long."

"The problem ... was that the original novella was not structured for film. It has big gaps in time and essentially starts another story two-thirds of the way through. This is when Davidge takes the young Drac back to Dracon and has to deal with their prejudice against him. We just didn't have the money for that. I had to create a new ending where Zammis is kidnapped by gypsy miners who use Dracs for slave labor. Davidge has to rescue him, and this leads to a new understanding between the two races. There was a good line in the film that got cut out, where Davidge's friends come to help him and run into a party of armed Dracs. The Drac who knows about Davidge and Zammis is about to shoot the friends when one holds his hands up and says "Hold it! I don't understand it completely either, but we're on the same side now!" I also wanted to have a scene at the end where Davidge is shown on Dracon at Zammis' acceptance ceremony. To be officially accepted into Dracon society and become head of your family line, you have to stand before the Council of Elders with your father. He introduces you by reciting your line's entire heritage. That's from the book and I wanted to make that a big scene, but it wound up as a matte painting because that's all there was money for. That's as close to the Drac culture as we could afford to come."

"The space burial sequence now two-thirds of the way into the film was actually menat to be the first scene of the movie. Davidge is found after three years on Fyrine IV, but doesn't initially answer what he did there or how he survived. The story is initially told through flashback because I wanted to set up suspense by slowly uncovering what had happened to him. After the first public testing, Wolfgang decided that it wasn't right. I can see some of it, but I still think that's the best structure for the story. Plus I think they cut more out of the film than they should have. There's some stuff showing his relationship with his three friends aboard the battle station that I wish they would have kept in. I think it created a feeling in the first of the film that carried over to the ending. But I do think that the film has an epic grandeur and enormous emotional intensity to the two characters. That's what I wanted to do most and I think that got to the screen."