Hollywood Novelisation Writer James Kahn Talks To Tripwire About A Hidden Career

Leading A Double Life

James Kahn is a prolific writer within Hollywood that has a new book out that may appeal to Tripwire’s fans. It tells the story of his career as a skilled medical professional and his time as a novelist and writer in Hollywood. His most famous credits include the novelisation of Poltergeist, The Goonies and Return of the Jedi.

With the writer’s new memoir in mind, Tripwire’s contributing writer Paul N Neal reached out to find out a little more.…

TW: You state in your book that your novelisation of Return of The Jedi went on to be the best-selling book of 1983, and the only book ever to be #1 on the NYT best-seller list in both hardcover and paperback simultaneously. I am curious, to the best of your knowledge do you know how many languages it has been translated into, and in 2025 what the total sales of the book are?

JK: I’ve actually recently learned that although that statement was true – paper and hardcover simultaneously #1 – the hardcover version that was number 1 while my paperback was number 1 was the young adult hardcover written by Joan Vinge. My mass market version was # 1 for many months, though. I’ve been trying for some time to find out how many total books I’ve sold over all these years, but retrieving those numbers is difficult, especially after Disney bought LFL. I’ll let you know if I find out.

TW: Can you share any experiences you have had meeting the likes of George Lucas or Steven Spielberg that you have not included in your book? A random joke or an amusing anecdote?

JK: A random memory. In January or February 1984, after Spielberg’s wild successes of the summer of ’83, Universal built a studio for him on the Universal lot – Amblin Studios – like putting out a dish of cream for a kitty, to lure it and keep it there. There was a big opening night party, with celebrities galore, as well as all the people involved in making ET, Poltergeist and Raiders. But it was also 2 months after the birth of my first child, Laura, who’d been born premature, so she was still quite small. So, my wife, Jill, and I bundled her up and took her to the party.

We mingled, said hi to some of the folks I’d worked with – but I wanted Spielberg to bless my baby. People were starting to sit down at tables, and we went over to the big Spielberg table, he was like King Arthur at the Round Table, holding court. It was Steven, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall (who were married, and as far as I know, still are), George Lucas, Barbra Streisand, Harrison Ford and Melissa Mathison (who were married, but later were not). It was before Kate Capshaw, but after Amy Irving for Steven, but maybe she was there too, and I think Linda Ronstadt was there, but maybe just visiting the table like me.

It’s all a little blurry to me now. But I held Laura in my arms and presented her to Steven, and everyone oohed and ahhed about how cute and tiny she was, and Steven put his palm on her forehead, just like the blessing I wanted, and we thanked him and withdrew. Mission accomplished.

TW: Early on in your book, you discuss an experience that was a huge part in shaping your career. You consulted on the writing and appeared in a key medical scene in Steven Spielberg’s ET. Those scenes were filmed over 40 years ago, as a medical doctor and, given the advances in medical techniques, would those scenes be written remarkably differently today?

TRIPWIRE NOTE: James Kahn appears here in ET as the Doctor with the clipboard.

JK: Yes and no. We (the doctor/script consultants) wrote ET‘s resuscitation as if we were working on a human in cardiac arrest – calling for injections of epinephrine, shocking with electrical paddles. And there’s of course no reason to believe an alien would respond to those same interventions.

I think today we’d try to analyse ET’s metabolic status a little more before jumping in to treat – did he even have cells that might respond to epinephrine. On the other hand, that scene was like a speeding locomotive, and slowing it down with that kind of expositional analysis would not have helped the drama of the situation. So, all in all, it was a good choice on Spielberg’s part to go that way.

TW: To get a sense of your own taste, can you list a few of your favourite movies that have absolutely no connection to Mister Lucas or Spielberg, or yourself? Films that you enjoy just because they are good films.

JK: I can’t rank them. But just to name a bunch randomly: The Godfather trilogy, To Kill a Mockingbird, My Cousin Vinny, The Magnificent 7, Some Like it Hot, Chinatown, Casablanca, City Island, In A World, Living in Oblivion, Alien, The Misfits, Lonely Are the Brave, Spartacus, Top Secret, The Great Escape, The Third Man, The Usual Suspects, The Sting, Lord of the Rings trilogy, Hombre, The Hustler, Airplane.

TW: You have worked in and written extensively in the television industry. Many say that we are living in a golden age of television that attracts big- name film stars to the small screen and budgets many year ago film producers could only dream of at their disposal. Would you agree with that assessment? Or has anything been lost at all? The tradition writers room environment or the 20 plus episode per season nature of properties like ST: TNG?

JK: It is a golden age in some ways. We’re not just limited to the 4 major networks and a couple random distribution services to generate product. Streaming has allowed an explosion of series, including many from other countries, that were never available before. And some of the big streamers, like MAX and Prime, offer huge budgets for their anchor shows, like GOT. That money attracts great writers, directors, and actors, so there’s some really great TV going on now.

On the other hand, there’s a lot of crap as well. I don’t want to disparage that – in every artistic medium the vast amount of bad output has always outweighed the good and the great. As a viewer it’s nice to have the choice, though. And except for those mega-series, the traditional writer’s room has been decimated. Used to be 5-8 writers would be hired for an entire season of 26-32 episodes, and the young writers would be mentored and trained in the craft by the experienced ones.

Now a season of episodes is 6-8 long, and those are written by the showrunner and one or two writers over a few months before production begins. Then often the writers are terminated, and only the showrunner and maybe one more writer-producer is employed during the production season, to deal with all the rewrites actual production entails.

It’s not good for the show – which partially explains the mass of bad series – and it’s not good for developing and bringing up the next generation of writers. So, I’m afraid when the current phalanx of great, seasoned writers retire, we’ll be left with a lot of young writers who don’t really understand the ins and outs of writing-producing TV.

TW: Almost as a follow-up question, on a personal note do you subscribe to many streaming services yourself?

JK: I subscribe to Netflix, Prime, HBO Max, Hulu, Apple, Disney+, Peacock, Paramount, Britbox and YouTube. I’m oversubscribed, but I’m picky about what I watch, and I need a wide menu to find a limited number of choice shows.

TW: As an experienced medical professional and a long-time television writer, I would be a fool not to ask you this. Do you have a favourite medical drama? From ER to Chicago Hope or Scrubs to House, do you have any thoughts you could share?

JK: In general, I avoid TV medical shows, finding them overly dramatic or just unrealistic. House was the worst offender in this regard, as if patients stumbled into the same medical centre every week with the most bizarre medical conditions imaginable.

I liked Scrubs because it didn’t take itself so seriously, it was funny, and it was primarily about the relationships, not the medicine. That being said, The Pitt, about 15 hours in a trauma centre in Pittsburgh, streaming on HBO MAX and others, is by far the most realistic dramatisation of real ER medicine I’ve ever seen.

Again, it’s unrealistic that that many grim cases would all turn up in one day, but it’s leavened by all the goofy or even boring cases that also show up. The relationships of the ER staff are also very real. And I was actually triggered from time to time, with some horrific case that I’d actually witnessed or been part of in the ER at one time or another. And every patient who came in those 15 hours of television was viewed realistically, diagnosed accurately, and treated correctly – though sometimes with awful outcomes. Which was also real.

TW: As a follow-up, have you ever been involved in writing any pilot episodes of a television series that generated interest? I am told it can be a frustrating process. Do you have any experiences pitching such things to any studios?

JK: Yes, I’ve pitched a lot of shows, with a number of spec pilots, and they all went nowhere. Many of them had some interest initially, but as they worked their way up the ladder of greenlighting, eventually they all got shot down, for a variety of reasons. There was no star or director attached to the project, the studio had a similarly themed show already in the works, it wasn’t the kind of show they were looking for that season, they didn’t care for the A-story but could I please do a page one rewrite expanding the B-story?

I sold one feature film script that almost got made until the small studio financing it went bankrupt. I had half a dozen feature scripts optioned – received a small amount of money from a producer in exchange for rights to develop the movie for 6 months. Three of these got casting and director attached and were in various stages of preproduction… until they fell apart.

In one case the attached star – Pierce Brosnan – got whisked away to do a James Bond film first. In another case, the Chinese government shut down production the week before filming was to start. In another case, money arguments between the producer and the studio. Getting a film made is a long and winding road.

TW: Your book is a fascinating read. I guess I ask, why now? What inspired you to write the book?

JK: A number of reasons. First, my kids have been pushing me for years to write down some of the wild and fascinating tales I’ve regaled them with over the years. Then that made me remember how much I loved hearing and reading about the adventurous stories of my grandparents fleeing Russia just before the revolution – which made me want to preserve my stories for my grandchildren. I’m not getting any younger either, and contemplating legacy and mortality had something to do with it.

TW: Here is a chance for you to outrageously plug your book. In a couple of hundred words, can you shamelessly promote your book?

JK: This is a unique memoir for a number of reasons. First, it’s unusual that I recount stories both from my Hollywood life and my emergency room career, and the way those two worlds informed each other. The way I’d bring parts of an ER tale into something I was writing in television, or in one of the novelisations.

And speaking of novelisations, the 80’s were the decade of peak novelization, and I wrote some of the biggest sellers of all time. I think Return of the Jedi has sold around 3 million copies by now. I also included something I’ve never seen before in a memoir – scans of some of my original handwritten manuscript pages, as well as pages from the ROTJ screenplay, with my handwritten annotations in the margins.

I talk about some of the TV shows I wrote, including Star Trek: Voyager, Melrose Place, Xena: Warrior Princess, TekWar and others – as well as my novelisations like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Goonies, Poltergeist, Poltergeist II and of course Return of the Jedi.

And to make it a total treat for Jedi nerds like me. I took a deep dive into that novelisation and wrote a complete scene by scene analysis of the book, touching on my thought processes in certain scenes, or things I wrote to enhance the movie, or memories of interactions with George Lucas. The only similar thing I’ve seen in another memoir is in William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade, in which he reprints the entire script of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and proceeds to talk about things he liked about it, and things he wish he’d written differently. But I go deeper with this. I explain why I wrote certain lines, I write about subtext and backstory in ROTJ, its hidden meanings and surprise revelations. It’s a full-on exegesis, and I use that word because of the deep religious connotations of The Force. I think the Force was strong in me when I wrote it, and May the Force be with you.

TW: Where can people purchase your memoir?

JK: Thanks for reminding me to include all that. Here are a few links.

Website: https://www.youtube.com/c/JamesKahnEntertainments

YouTube channel https://thatjameskahn.com/

In addition, Heritage Auction just opened bidding on my original handwritten novelisation manuscript pages of Return of the Jedi, and the 3rd draft, hand-annotated ROTJ script I used to write it from. It will entertain private online bids for the next 35 days, until the last day, 17 July, when the bidding streams live. You can see the two auction catalogue items here, with scans of some of the pages, followed by descriptions of the contents:  https://entertainment.ha.com/c/search/results.zx?dept=2182&mode=live&auction_name=7392&consignor_no=149&type=friend-consignorlive-notice

And lastly, the memoir can be bought on Amazon at https://tinyurl.com/JediMemoirAmazon