D&D Director's Odyssey Includes Cameron, Elvis

ByABC News
December 10, 2000, 7:11 PM

December 8 -- Do you remember what you were doing 10 years ago? Courtney Solomon was at the foot of a personal mountain, just beginning to climb, little suspecting how long it would be before he saw the summit.

"I just turned 30, actually, in September," he confesses, a little sheepishly. "I started when I was 20. My whole 20s was doing this."

Doing what? Producing, directing, and pouring a decade of his young life into Dungeons & Dragons, the fantasy adventure that opens today in theaters across the United States. The movie, of course, is based on the popular role-playing game of the same title, a pastime that has sucked in millions of devotees from around the world since its creation in 1974.

Rookie Director Makes GoodAfter a quarter century of orcs and ogres, and traps and treasures, the phenomenon is nearly as old as Solomon himself. What convinced its originators to place their cinematic future in the hands of a 20-year-old college dropout with no previous filmmaking experience?

"Well, they certainly didn't want to, to be honest with you," says Solomon. "They were like, 'No.' But I was very persistent." Persistent for 18 months, in fact, which is how long it took the eager Torontonian just to secure the rights to take the game and turn it into a movie.

"I've played the game," he adds, "and I knew that the worst thing you could do for D&D players would be to call a movie Dungeons & Dragons and not make it Dungeons & Dragons. You know, have clerics walking around with swords slicing people up, and stuff like that."

And what about Solomon's pristine, unmarked moviemaking resume? "I grew up in the film business in Canada," he explains. "My mom was a freelance production coordinator, so I did all the odd jobs. Did I produce or direct a movie? No. Did I write a movie? No. [But] I worked on a lot of stuff. I certainly didn't walk on the set and go, 'Ohmigod, what's all this equipment?'"

My Dinner With Jim CameronOf course, not all the challenges of bringing D&D to the big screen were technical. There are some things you can't prepare for by hanging around a studio lot. Getting the rights to make the movie turned out to be significantly simpler than finding financing for it.