DIRECT APPROACH : ‘Exit to Eden’ Gives Writer Her ‘Last Shot’

While adapting Anne Rice’s erotic fantasy novel “Exit to Eden” for the big screen, writer Deborah Amelon got to realize one of her own fantasies--minus the sex.

While weaving together the “Eden” script for director and co-producer Garry Marshall (“Pretty Women”), she directed him as the lead actor in her own project, a short called “The Last Shot.” It is a directorial debut for Amelon, who has spent the bulk of her career writing TV miniseries and movies of the week.

“The Last Shot” is about the dying patriarch of a family who has instructed his doctor and son to give him his last shot of medication since he’s lost his will to live. In the process, he changes his mind. The short, which will air again on Showtime in March (it previously ran in September and October), is part of the cable channel’s Chanticleer for aspiring directors. Amelon is hoping her piece will also get a theatrical showing in the spring.

“In my meetings on ‘Exit to Eden,’ I’d look at Garry and think, he’s really the dad in my movie. It was scarier asking him to do it than directing him when he accepted. He said, ‘I’m really not doing this as a favor. I really want to do the part.’ He wasn’t any trouble. He’d change a word or two here and there, but really followed the script,” recalls Amelon. “There was one speech he didn’t really want to do and I had to make him do it. It was really interesting to be put in that position . . . the student directing the teacher, telling the teacher what he had to do. I was very . . . nervous.”

Says Marshall: “She treated me the way that I would treat an actor--firm, yet with enough finesse and sensitivity to make it a dignified experience. You must remember, I was in my pajamas for the entire movie, which is not exactly a major clout outfit!”

Production sources say Marshall may have a cameo bit in “Eden” as well, but Marshall, Amelon and producer Alexandra Rose refuse to discuss any details about the film, insisting it’s premature. Marshall has played bit parts in a number of movies over the years, including “Lost in America,” “Soapdish” and his director-sister Penny Marshall’s “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “A League of Their Own.”

“Eden,” which stars Paul Mercurio (“Strictly Ballroom”) and Dana Delany (“Tombstone,” ABC’s “China Beach”), is set for a July 22 release by Savoy Pictures. Essentially, the story is about a sex camp for adults. While Amelon and Rose won’t talk about the screen adaptation, Rice’s novel centers on an adventurous photojournalist (Mercurio) who sells himself into sexual slavery for a huge sum of money to spend two years on Eden, a sadomasochism island in the sun. Problems arise when he falls for the camp’s headmistress (Delany).*