Calvin Yocum was a product of Yale University and a reader for the Samuel Goldwyn Company. He was infamous among the Goldwyn execs for being the toughest reader they had—he even panned Dr. Zhivago. According to them, Calvin hated everything.² But to the amazement of everyone at the Goldwyn Company, he loved our script, to the point that it got us our first spec sale. His coverage was so gushing that Sam Goldwyn actually showed Calvin's write-up to us one day at the Friars Club. I still have a copy. Here are Calvin's notes:

COMMENTS: This script is absolutely hilarious, sort of a Rocky Horror Picture Show meets Blazing Saddles with a little Airplane! thrown in. No mere synopsis can convey the goldmine of humor. Besides the story itself, there are dozens of sightgags thrown in to keep things jumping. Literally, there is never a dull moment. It's no-holds-barred comedy that pushes the boundaries of good taste at all times, but it is exactly that kind of demonic energy that makes it all so inspired. The writers create a Fellini-esque vision of Hollywood that reeks not only of comic atmosphere but somehow captures and hyperbolizes our worst fears about the sleazy parts of town. It is a vision that balances precariously and triumphantly on a razor blade. It is funny, but with a few minor changes, it could be visually and intellectually serious enough to rival Satiricon or Coppola's Rumblefish. The high school takes all of the not so latent fears of our own experience -- especially the fear of ostracism -- and hyperbolizes them and satirizes them wildly. There are a half-dozen other bits like the disco gypsies and the Redemption Center that score too.

In the right hands, this script has enormous commercial potential. Certainly it is 180 degrees from the serious and wholesome intentions of The Golden Seal, and it may not be the type of project that interests the Goldwyn company. Nonetheless, in its genre, Nightlife is superb.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

....A year later: The film, now titled Once Bitten—and heavily rewritten by the director and his own writer—opened in theaters to embarrassingly negative reviews... All of the special qualities that Calvin Yokum has praised in our original script had been systematically weeded out: The filmmakers were more interested in recreating generic teen-film formulas than rocking the boat with anything untested or different.

Originally our script portrayed Hollywood as a seedy, scary place, filled with homeless people and Goth weirdos, where a vampire could blend in and never be noticed (the film still uses that explanation in a bookshop scene, but now it doesn't make any sense). The director, a TV veteran who had helmed episodes of Taxi and Mork & Mindy, got rid of the "Fellini-esque" elements in the script. He replaced the opening sequence in the seedy downtown Hollywood area with a splashy music video-style montage in Beverly Hills, and replaced my favorite carnival scene (Carrey's character is stalked by the vampire through the House of Mirrors in a run-down amusement park—where she can see his reflection in the glass as she chases him through the maze, but he can't see her) with a single mirror in a changing booth at a trendy shopping mall clothing store.

..much of the comedy in our screenplay had been removed or compromised (the director had even cut jokes to "give the audience more time to laugh" at the previous jokes)