In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,
the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
All truth and beauty and love come from God. That said, a devout, but misanthropic Jew and a nihilistic, erstwhile catholic made a surprisingly Christian film in 1980. That these two poorly matched film-makers somehow made a movie greater than the sum of their acrimony is evidence of His providence. The film, Altered States is one man’s apology, message of love and, I think, a goodbye to his wife and son. The director, for his part, made a meaningful drama in spite of his predilection toward decadence… as though guided against himself.
The writer, Paddy Chayefsky, a battle scarred World War II veteran famous for winning three Oscars (Marty, The Hospital, Network) was a Zionist and insanely pugnacious in all conversations and encounters merely for the sport of conflict. So intense was his rage, he remained in therapy most of his adult life. Friends said his rage fueled his creativity. He has been called the “angriest man in Hollywood.”
The director of the film was an “emotional genius” and lapsed-Catholic, the iconoclastic Ken Russel, famous for glam-rock visuals in Tommy (the rock opera by The Who). But Russel remains infamous for his film, The Devils, considered to be the most controversial and disgusting film of all time. I will never watch it and neither should any of you. Knowing it exists is enough (One does not need to catch syphilis to understand its dangers). But Russel was a skilled translator of emotional action and he was able visualize Chayefsky’s script in ways Chayefsky could not. Chayefsky, forever a control freak, was so outraged by Russel’s directorial stubbornness, he disowned the film.
Chayefsky’s actions after his triumph with Network were those of a man haunted by guilt and mortality. The first public revelation of this was his 1977 Oscar acceptance speech. In it, Chayefsky only thanks his wife and son for their input, no one else. We know now he only ever asked for advice from those two. Chayefsky was known to be cruel to both his wife and son, and was an unfaithful husband. But he remained loyal to both of them. Watch Chayefsky’s speech below.
After Network, Chayefsky began working on Altered States as a novel designed only to inspire a script. Like he did with Network, he immersed himself in the subjects and experts in the field. He studied genetic regression and memory, human genetics, anthropology, isolation tank research and hallucinogenic drugs. He spent months among scientists noting their mannerisms and speech.
What drove him to this subject is unclear, but I surmise it was his personal life. All of his major screenplays were personal: Marty was about his insecurity around women due his facial scars from the war. The Hospital was an indictment of the medical system inspired by his wife’s treatment (Susan Chayefsky suffered from muscular dystrophy). Network was about his rage over everything in the world; he claimed the famous “mad as hell” speech was easy to write because it was exactly how he felt.
Chayefsky, in poor health, angry, perpetually in therapy and guilt ridden about his familial abuse, was in a mid-life crisis. He wanted to slay his dragons. But from where did the dragons come? And when?
I suspect Chayefsky read Carl Sagan’s book, The Dragons of Eden, which came out the year he started writing the Altered States. Sagan’s book explores the brains of our early ancestors (assuming the evolutionist viewpoint). Our fears and instincts come from our long natural history of survival and danger. We fear the dark, children especially so. Children seek hiding places to feel safe. We fear heights. People dream of falling even when we have never been anywhere high enough to fall. Sagan’s speculations on man’s fear of reptiles would have been very influential to Chayefsky, had he read the book. I am almost certain he did.
Chayefsky’s maniacal work ethic (and perhaps the subject matter itself) nearly killed him while writing the novel. He suffered a heart attack while writing it forcing him to change his lifestyle and depend even more on his wife and son. When a man is brushed in the dark by the gauzy robes of Death, he thinks of his family. Undoubtedly this affected his narrative.
Chayefsky quickly adapted Altered States into a screenplay (this was his intention). The main character is the driven, pre-occupied Dr. Edward Jessup, a man so consumed with his own research he is oblivious to the needs of his wife and child. Chayefsky was portraying himself, of course.
Jessup is searching for the “first thought,” the very first spark of life that is contained somehow within our very atoms.
The hypothesis of genetic memory is not without some merit. Mice, trained to fear a certain smell, passed on that fear to their progeny who were not trained to do so. A child naturally fears a snarl, exposed teeth and a frightful frown. Atomic memory is all fantasy, however, but it makes good fiction.
The clip below reveals Jessup’s obsession, his wife’s concern (Emily is played by Blair Brown) and Chayefsky’s personal quest.
Jessup’s monologue distilled the essence of man’s maniacal pursuit of “self” at the expense of love… to gain a “world” but lose his soul.
“Ever since we dispensed with God we’ve got nothing but ourselves to explain the meaningless horror of life.”
Dr. Jessup pursues this quest for the self by first separating from his wife and child and then traveling to Mexico to try a strange hallucinogenic concoction among some indigenous people. Jessup is unafraid of the experiment, but as the ceremony begins, a shaman seizes Jessup’s hand, cuts him and drains some blood into the brew. Jessup drinks. The religiosity of the moment is emphasized.
We understand immediately that his vision is not a simple drug induced hallucination, but instead biblical, and that he is not alone in them. Another is there, a tormentor, the serpent, the dragon. These are primal memories but they are shaped by his own biases, his own dismissal of Christ caused by misunderstanding his father’s death. The enemy is waiting for him here, determined to defile the creation and give Dr. Jessup a false revelation that there is no truth, but only horror, ugliness and despair. But there is hope: After Jessup regains his faculties, he is told he killed a large lizard while hallucinating. He has choices, he can slay the dragon.
Jessup takes the hallucinogenic brew back to his lab where he enlists two fellow scientists to help him explore the primordial past using an isolation tank to enhance its effects. He also reconnects with Emily, but not as a committed husband and father. Soon, his visions begin to change him physically into more primitive states.
Jessup begins to have visions without the drug. One evening, after bedding a young female student, he visualizes himself with ape-like feet and forehead and watches the room change into a molten hell. Regression or revelation? Perhaps Chayefsky felt this way in Kim Novak’s bedroom, the knock-out actress with whom he had torrid affair.
Jessup continues his experiments in an isolation tank to enhance the effects. But the Creation is beyond his mortal mind, beyond his ability to order himself. Without the order of God, his “self” is a twisted mass of useless flesh, a monster screaming into the incomprehensible fires of creation. Jessup descends into an endless vortex of primal creation, but this is not the actual creation, it is just a memory of it and memories are limited by our fallen nature and twisted by the Enemy. Jessup cast himself faithless and loveless into an oblivion of his own making. Emily saves him, pulling him back into reality.
Learning nothing from the experience, Jessup confesses to his wife that the beginning is nothingness, no first truth, no truth at all in fact. The moment triggers a physical regression and Emily screams for him to fight it and that since he created it, he can stop it. His touch, charged with unconstrained selfish energy nearly kills her. He realizes, almost too late, man can choose to slay the dragon. He sees that the first truth and the final truth is Love. Love, God’s love, orders all chaos and sparks every creation.
Although Altered States was a critical success and moderately profitable, Chayefsky disowned the film. Blair Brown claimed that his script was not changed and that Chayefsky’s estrangement was sourced in his antipathy for director Ken Russel. I think he wanted a masterpiece as a final message of love to Susan and Daniel, his wife and son. But he was recalcitrant to the end, refusing a possible live-saving cancer surgery because he thought doctors would seek revenge for The Hospital. Paddy Chayefsky died only a year later, August 1, 1981.
PS:
Chayefsky did several commendable things during the 1977 Academy Awards. The first was to thank only his wife and son as mentioned above. The second was to scold Vanessa Redgrave for her anti-Israel remarks during her acceptance speech (Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave were both rejected by Chayefsky for the lead role in Network). And third, and the most noble, was he defied orders by Producer William Friedkin to accept Peter Finch’s posthumous Academy Award. Chayefsky instead asked Mrs. Finch to come up to the stage and speak, which she does in a rare moment of unrehearsed gratitude. Chayefsky may have been a misanthrope, but he had a sense of honor. Watch the video below, it may choke you up a little