Three Visionary Screenplays

For every screenplay that becomes a movie, there are hundreds of spec scripts that never see the light of day. Even Oscar-winning screenwriters have their share. In a Hollywood career spanning four decades, Bruce Joel Rubin originated the films Ghost, Jacob's Ladder and Brainstorm. But those celebrated works are not the only stories to emerge from his visionary imagination. Quasar, written with David Bienstock, is a mind-bending science fiction epic for the era of Timothy Leary, 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Human Potential Movement, about a scientist who sees the origins of life as we know it and a society on the verge of an evolutionary leap. Teratoma is a gut wrenching horror story that combines body horror with spiritual drama, charting the outbreak of a global epidemic and a soul-searching war between hope and fear, angels and devils. Secrets of the Astral Plane is a metaphysical thriller set during the waning days of the Cold War, pitting a ragtag team of American psychics against a Soviet supervillain The fate of the Western world will be determined behind the cosmic curtain. Together, these three unproduced scripts offer insight into their respective genres, the times in which they were written, and the existential questions of a writer who has inspired many.