THE THIRTEENTH
FLOOR

CINEMA MOMENT

My Books and Movies!

E.C. McMullen Jr.
RUMOR

RUMOR: People are dying to know the truth

PERPETUAL
BULLET

"'Some People' ... may be the standout story in the book."
- John Grant, Infinityplus

E.C. McMullen Jr.
WILLOW BLUE

"'Willow Blue' will burrow under your skin and stay there long after you've put the book down."
- Jeffrey Reddick, Creator of
FINAL DESTINATION

IN OTHER BOOKS
E.C. McMullen Jr.'s
short story
CEDO LOOKED LIKE PEOPLE
in the anthology
FEAR THE REAPER

"This Ray Bradbury-esque is one of the most memorable and one of the more original stories I've read in a long time."
- Steve Isaak,
Goodreads

HORROR 201:
The Silver Scream

Filmmaker's Guidebook
featuring
RAY BRADBURY,
JOHN CARPENTER,
WES CRAVEN,
TOM HOLLAND,
E.C. McMULLEN Jr.,
GEORGE A. ROMERO,
and many more.

And In
CINEMA
E.C. McMullen Jr.
Head Production Designer

MINE GAMES
(Starring:
JOSEPH CROSS,
BRIANA EVIGAN,
ALEX MERAZ,
ETHAN PECK)

Dept. head
Special Effects Make-Up
(SFX MUA)

A SIERRA NEVADA
GUNFIGHT
(MICHAEL MADSEN & JOHN SAVAGE).

Production Designer

UNIVERSAL DEAD
(DOUG JONES,
D.B. SWEENEY,
GARY GRAHAM)

Article by
E.C. McMullen Jr.

YOU CAN GO THERE, EVEN THOUGH IT DOESN'T EXIST.

The production crew behind DARK CITY became the crew behind THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR and would also be the same ones behind THE MATRIX: Different studios, much of the same crew and sets.

Director Alex Proyas, who defined an era of Goth culture with THE CROW, ingrained it with DARK CITY, and by doing so created a group of people who now had specific skills to approach story lines that Hollywood had never tried.

Meanwhile, director Josef Rusnak, was making low budget indies that made little box office but were getting attention among the freelancers who worked on Finder's Fees and could get the eyes of Big Studios on "Up and comers".

Computers were becoming a staple of home consumerism and Hollywood knew there was money there, they just didn't know what kind of hook they needed. Everyone realized the value of the late Philip K. Dick, but were there any other Science Fiction writers of his era that were left untapped? Previous attempts at this thing called Cyberpunk had been attempted and crashed on everything from JUDGE DREDD to JOHNNY MNEMONIC (because Hollywood tried to tell their template cop and spy stories, then give it a Cyberpunk garnish).

A name that kept surfacing was the late Science Fiction writer, Daniel F. Galouye. Like Dick, Galouye was considered far ahead of his time even by his own peers who wrote entire novels that took place thousands of years into the future. Like Dick, Daniel was visionary. But also like P.K.D., Galouye's work was deeply human, flawed humans, trying to exist and survive in a high tech world that was moving too fast beyond them.

You know you have something visionary when a 1960s novel considers 21st Century Artificial Intelligence passe: PKD and DFG did. Hell, Ridley Scott's 1982 BLADE RUNNER was a story about hunting down the last of the old and outlawed Nexus phase Replicants.

The title that kept resurfacing alone with Galouye's name was SIMULACRON-13.

The late mad German Director, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, had already directed SIMULACRON-13 as a two part television movie, in German, called WORLD ON A WIRE.

Producers Roland Emmerich (GODZILLA [1998], EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS, THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW) and his sister, Ute Emmerich (GODZILLA [1998], THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW), along with Marco Weber, knew they had something special. Marco also believed he had the right director for it, as he'd already worked with Josef Rusnak.

And as for their studio? Columbia Pictures was putting them up against Warner Bros. highly anticipated THE MATRIX - which wound up opening a month earlier and dominating the world. Could a Roland Emmerich movie, fresh off of the disaster of Roland's GODZILLA, compete? The movie was already finished, the money already spent, the screen and release slots at the theaters already fixed. This is what happened upon release of THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR.