Small town professor goes Hollywood

By Jessica Pickens

pickensj@mytjnow.com

Haney Howell in Camodia with CBS News in 1974. Howell reported for CBS during the Vietnam war in both Cambodia and Saigon. Among Howell’s bragging rights, he has published a book called “Roadrunners” about his experiences. Photo courtesy of Haney HowellHaney Howell had his taste of the Hollywood lifestyle. 

“It all started at a dinner party in New York,” said Howell, broadcast professor. “We were telling stories about the war, and Jules Fisher was looking for a Vietnam movie and wanted the stories written down.”

Howell wrote 55 pages of sketches.  The stories were based on his time during the summer of 1973 in Cambodia.

After writing and negotiating, Columbia Studios flew Howell to Hollywood with a $25,000 contract.

“They put me in the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel with my room overlooking Rodeo Drive,” he said. “Imagine that happening to a country boy.”

Howell spent three days with “Bonnie and Clyde” director Arthur Penn and “MASH” screenwriter Larry Gelbart. The trio spent their time reading, writing and fleshing out the story under a working film title of “Hotel Royale.” 

“The writing experience was incredible,” Howell said. “All of my expenses were on Columbia.” 

Howell ate in exclusive hotel restaurants and was given an inside tour of Hollywood homes in side Larry Gelbart’s Bentley. 

But the Hollywood dream ended.

“The movie project died six months after ‘Apocalypse Now’ came out,” Howell said. “Francis Ford Coppola had a lot of problems with the movie; it went way over budget and it was too early for a Vietnam movie.”

After the movie project ended, Howell started to flesh out the story as a book because the Columbia contract allowed him novelization rights of the story.

Hop to Normandy, France, where Howell and a friend labored to finish the story.

“I took the $25,000 and finished the book. The main draft was finished in 1980,” he said. “I was in a farm house where we cranked out a chapter a day.” 

Howell published his book “Roadrunners” with Jim Morrison, who wrote the story “Operation Dumbo Drop,” in 1989. Morrison was a Green Beret and liked the story since it was about Vietnam.

“I made ‘Roadrunners’ a novel because I can say its made up, even though its really an autobiography,” Howell said. “You can combine characters in a novel, because I met so many colorful people.”

The novel is about a guy on the hunt for a gun and ends up getting his girlfriend killed in the process. 

Howell knew he wanted to write a book ever since he took a creative writing course at Midwestern University. 

“I was told there were only two differences between being a published writer: there are the 60 million people trying to get published and you are the six million who have,” he said.

Howell’s career in broadcast spans from working as a disc jockey in the mountains of Tennessee as a teenager, traveling across India in a Volkswagon bus and evacuating from Cambodia and Saigon during the war. 

But publishing “Roadrunners” is one thing he is most proud of.

“I love seeing my name on the binding on my shelf.”