A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : LONG, WINDING ROADS : Houdini, the Movie: Many Have Escaped Already

When director Robert Zemeckis (“Death Becomes Her,” “Back to the Future”) walked away from producer Ray Stark’s “The Great Houdini”--written by Peter Seaman and Jeffrey Price (“Who Framed Roger Rabbit”)--last month, it was the latest in a series of setbacks that Stark has endured on the project, which has had an 18-year development process that’s frustrated eight major writers.

Stark’s refusal to abandon his long-cherished project about the life and times of legendary escape artist Harry Houdini belongs in the record books as either one of the great feats of tenacity in Hollywood history--or as the most over-indulged development blunder in Stark’s decades-long career as a producer (“Funny Girl,” “Annie,” “Steel Magnolias”). Stark did not return calls about this story.

“Ray Stark does not give up,” says Don Safran, marketing vice-president for Stark’s company, Rastar Prods.

Stark’s first stab at the Houdini legend came in 1974 when, after succeeding with the “Funny Girl” sequel “Funny Lady,” he hired novelist and playwright Anthony Burgess (“A Clockwork Orange”) to write a Houdini stage musical. The result was not entirely to his liking, leading Stark to pursue a dramatic film.

Director-writer Jim Bridges (“Urban Cowboy,” “The Paper Chase”) was hired in early 1975 to have a go at it. At year’s end, having churned out several drafts, all of which told Houdini’s story in linear terms and fell short of inspiration, Bridges left the project. He was replaced in early 1976 by the late Carol Sobieski, whose efforts over the next few months were similar to Bridges’. In late 1976 came William Goodhart (co-writer of “Exorcist II: The Heretic”), whose eventual script, “The Death/Birth of Houdini,” was viewed by some as too similar to “All That Jazz,” then in development. Stark, in any event, disliked the Goodhart script and turned his attention elsewhere.

Two years later, in early 1979, Stark hired William Hjortsberg to attempt a treatment based on the Houdini legend. Hjortsberg produced two versions--one a murder-mystery similar to “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution,” the other a metaphysical time-travel fantasy--but neither were developed into scripts. Then, in 1982, Stark swerved back to the Houdini stage musical idea and hired Elizabeth Swados, the New York-based stage director and choreographer, to create one. The result, as with all the others, was deemed unsatisfying.

For the remainder of the ‘80s, the Houdini movie was relegated to the status of a “trunk project”--one of several would-be movies that Stark could never quite launch but hadn’t given up on. Among other such projects are “Libby,” a biography of singer Libby Holman, which Debra Winger was reportedly once attached to, and “The Way We Are,” a flash-forward sequel to Stark’s 1973 hit “The Way We Were,” which would have reteamed original co-stars Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand.

Then, in April 1991, Stark persuaded Zemeckis to use his zeal for visual pyrotechnics, among other talents, to shape the Houdini legend. Zemeckis hired Seaman and Price to write the script. He then began filming “Death Becomes Her” for Universal, and didn’t return to “The Great Houdini” until this August. He was off the project a few weeks later.

Zemeckis offers several reasons for leaving, most having to do with his discomfort over the Seaman-Price script, even though he calls it “the most interesting, dynamic and most filmic” of all the versions. “Making a movie is like starting a love affair,” Zemeckis offers. “Everything has to be in the right place, or it won’t work. You have to give 200% to a movie, and I just didn’t feel inspired enough. Leaving seemed like a lesser evil, in the end.”

Why can’t anyone pull it off? One stumbling block, recognized years ago by Stark in a memo, is that magic and escape artistry are dazzling live but wouldn’t register alongside today’s special-effects feats. Another problem may be that Houdini’s life simply doesn’t add up to strong drama, or that his character is too prudish and Victorian to find favor among today’s audiences.

Which, of course, has not given Stark the slightest pause. David Webb Peoples, currently one of Hollywood’s hottest writers (“Hero,” “Unforgiven”), has agreed to begin preliminary work for Stark on yet another Houdini script.

“If Ray really likes an idea, especially if it’s one that he’s originated, he won’t let go of it,” observed producer Daniel Melnick (“Air America”), a longtime Stark associate. “He’s like a terrier. I think that Ray might subconsciously identify with Houdini’s prowess as a magician. What Ray does involves a lot of illusion and sleight-of-hand, and he’s probably a great admirer of the master.”