Ric was a great communicator.  His prolific trail of manuscripts, articles, emails, letters and screenplays provide a clear indicator to the wide body of work he produced over the years.  The indelible image of Ric hovering over his computer, operatically slamming away at the keyboard in a torrent of creative energy, remains deeply etched in the minds of many of his closest friends.

Ric left behind an enormous body of work including several excellent, unproduced feature length screenplays and television projects. In time, we will have a full listing with an attached synopsis for each.

FALLEN ANGEL: THE FILMS OF ALAIN DELON – by Ric Menello

The recent rage for the Asian action cinema of John Woo, and “THE KILLER” in particular, has led to
several interviews with the talented Hong Kong director. In a recent one, he credited a certain actor with
teaching him all there was to know about how to hold a gun and wear a trenchcoat, about style and
movement, about attitude and cool. No, Mr. Woo wasn’t talking about his “KILLER” star Chow Yun Fat,
but about French screen icon Alain Delon. Delon has been a major fixture of the Gaelic film scene for
over thirty years, and for almost twenty of those he was one of the top box office attractions throughout
Europe, South America, and the Near and Far East. These territories included Japan, where Delon
regularly matched such superstars as Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood in popularity, and Hong Kong,
where a young moviegoer and aspiring filmmaker named John Woo drank deep of the gangster films
Delon was regularly turning out during this period, especially those directed by Jean Pierre Melville.
Indeed, Woo has acknowledged his debt to Melville and Delon on numerous occasions, the most recent of
which was an issue of the magazine SIGHT AND SOUND, in which he named their 1967 collaboration
“LE SAMOURAI” as one of the Ten Best Films of All Time.

Continue reading

Scared Stupid: Original First Draft Treatment by Ric Menello

Many people have asked for the early material that Ric worked on for the Beastie Boys, such as the TV Pilot and feature film project. The original treatment for Scared Stupid was devised by Ric, who after several revisions, turned all the ideas into a feature length screenplay with Mel Neuhaus. In the end, there were two versions of Scared Stupid, one authored by Ric and another completely different and original version written by Adam Yauch and Tom Cushman. Continue reading