Michael McDowell

1950-1999

by Lloyd Schwartz

Michael McDowell, the screenwriter (Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Tales from the Darkside -- both the TV series and the movie) and novelist (The Amulet, Blood Rubies, Toplin), died of complications from AIDS just after Christmas -- a few days short of the new century, six months short of his 50th birthday, both of which he was looking forward to.

We met in 1969, as fellow cast members of a production of Bartholomew Fair, Ben Jonson's epic comedy, that was directed by Laurence Senelick for his theater company, HARPO (Harvard Producing Organization), at Agassiz Theatre. Michael played Ursula the Pig Woman's feeble-minded helper, Mooncalf -- his face smeared with dirt, his long blond hair dangling nearly to his waist. Michael and Laurence became partners in what was to be a 30-year relationship.

Michael came to Harvard from Enterprise, Alabama, in 1968. Local movie buffs might remember him as the Reverend Ed Mark's young assistant for his now legendary film series at the Harvard-Epworth Church. He seemed angelic, an innocent. Yet he had a devilish -- not to say uninhibitedly morbid -- sense of humor. Even at 19, death seemed to him life's most grotesque joke.

Michael wanted to write. He wrote half a dozen novels before Avon finally accepted one for publication in 1979 -- a paperback original called The Amulet. The year before, he completed his PhD thesis at Brandeis, "Changing American Attitudes Towards Death, 1825-1865," and was working as a secretary at MIT.

Once The Amulet was accepted, there was no stopping him. His fiction ranged over several genres: horror, the occult, the supernatural, murder mysteries, and detective stories, occasionally in collaboration and often under a pseudonym (Alex Young, Mike McCray, Preston MacAdam). His six Blackwater novels were serialized by Avon. In all, he published 33 books, as well as short stories, theater reviews, and articles (my favorite, for the Harvard Library Bulletin: "A Cursory View of Cheating at Whist in the 18th Century").

And screenplays, of course.

Here's how that came about. One day, out of the blue, he got a phone call from George Romero's office. The director of Night of the Living Dead had a TV series called Tales from the Darkside. The caller asked Michael whether he'd ever written a screenplay. Michael admitted he hadn't but thought he could learn. And fast. The caller was impressed and eager to have Michael work for Romero.

At the end of the conversation, Michael -- curious as to how Romero's office knew about him -- asked which of his books the Romero people had read. But the ones they mentioned were actually written by a different Michael McDowell.

"Do you write horror stories too?", Romero's embarrassed assistant asked.

The next time Michael heard from Romero's people, they had read his books and loved them, and they offered him a contract. His best-known episodes were an unnerving Christmas story with E.G. Marshall, "Seasons of Belief," which he also directed, and "The Cutty Black Sow," with Deborah Harry (for whom he also wrote the "wraparound" for Tales from the Darkside: The Movie). Stephen King was a fan (Michael wrote the screenplay for his Thinner), and so was Steven Spielberg, for whom he worked on Amazing Stories. He wrote episodes for the revival of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Monsters, and Moment of Fear. He also continued to act. In Boston, he appeared with the Double Edge Theatre in several plays, including an adaptation of his own novel Blood Rubies, in which he played a brutal and incestuous rapist.

A scholar of non-canonical 19th-century Americana, he collected all sorts of esoteric material. He had an extensive library of 19th- and early-20th-century "French postcards," sheet music, and grave rubbings. Privately and publicly, he regaled audiences with comic stories about Hollywood, talking with relish, for example, about a producer who would say things like "I'll have him eating out of my lap" and "I know this town like the back of my head" (lines that inspired my poem "Proverbs from Purgatory").

That wicked sense of humor pervades my favorite of his books, too, the "colorful" series of gay detective novels set in a very recognizable Boston and Provincetown: Vermilion, Cobalt, Slate, and Canary, which were a joint venture with Dennis Schuetz under the name Nathan Aldyne. The relationship between the gay bartender/detective Daniel Valentine and his friend Clarisse Lovelace (a ticklish pun on characters from Samuel Richardson's Clarissa) has some of the most delicious badinage since Shakespeare's Beatrice and Benedick. Michael's dialogue always had the ring of truth. His biggest success, of course, was writing the story and screenplay for Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, which deserves its cult status not only because it's so creepy and unpredictable but because it's one of the best-written -- and wittiest -- horror movies ever made.

Hollywood took its toll on Michael. He was drinking too much. And taking drugs. Five years ago he was diagnosed with AIDS. He returned to Boston and taught screenwriting courses at BU and Tufts. The "cocktail" worked for a while. Then this last year it wasn't working so well. Michael refused dialysis. He didn't want his bed in the living room. And by Christmas, he had a series of crises even his resilient body couldn't fight. He'd been working on treatments of the children's book Flat Stanley and E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Nutcracker. What a waste he couldn't finish them.