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Conan the Barbarian holds a special place in the history of cinema as the movie that effectively launched the career of Arnold Schwarzenegger and kickstarted a heady decade of sword and sorcery epics. Yet to writer Oliver Stone, two words will forever hang over John Milius’ rough-and-ready adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s proto comic book hero: What if.
Stone may have earned a writing credit on the finished film, but what ended up on the screen was a far cry of “Crom!” from what he had envisioned in the script he presented to producer Edward R. Pressman in 1978.
That screenplay was bold, brilliant, and, potentially, unfilmable. But to Stone at least those two words will linger on: What if. Pressman had recruited Stone amid the buzz surrounding his script for Midnight Express, the real-life story of the imprisonment and eventual escape of American national Billy Hayes from a Turkish prison, which eventually bagged the scribe a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar.
With Paramount willing to back the Conan the Barbarian production, provided a notable name was behind the script, Stone was seen as the ideal fit, particularly after he impressed Pressman by sending over an early draft of Platoon by way of a writing sample.
Initially, Stone was attached to write and co-direct alongside Joe Alves, who had worked under Steven Spielberg on the first Jaws film and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That didn’t last, of course, but then few things would during the initial pre-production stages of the project. Besides which, there was still the matter of Stone’s script to think about.
As any aficionado of Stone’s work knows, whether it’s Wall Street, JFK, or Alexander, he’s never been a man to do things by halves, and Conan was no exception. Stone spent four months writing his version of the barbarian’s story, later recalling how both Paramount and Pressman encouraged him to “to go ahead without restraining myself” in a piece of advice they likely came to regret.
Getting Medieval in the Future
Stone’s preparations were meticulous; he immersed himself in Howard’s writing, reading every book, short story, or Conan comic he could get his hands on. Viewing Conan as a “kind of post-modern Tarzan,...