Walking into Dean Devlin’s sunny second-floor office at the West Hollywood headquarters of his company, Electric Entertainment, on a mid-September afternoon, the first thing that catches a visitor’s attention is the friendly, energetic presence of the writer, producer, director, and mini-mogul himself. Smiling, wearing glasses, he still looks like a boy at 63 years old. However, the eye is immediately drawn to a large painting of Richard Sheldon that hangs in the room. Next to the wall behind the small sofa hung an 8-by-10 framed photo of Devlin posing with Presidents Clinton and Obama, as well as a photo of a letter from an MCA Universal executive confirming that his father, the late screenwriter and producer Don Devlin, had discovered Steven Spielberg (“I always thought he was lying about that,” he says).
Sheldon’s painting depicts a young black man wearing a baseball cap, jeans, and an untucked long-sleeve button-down shirt standing on a sidewalk with his arms outstretched as a blur of white men in business attire walk past. The title is “Invisible Man”.
“I really identified with that,” Devlin says.
Still in his 30s, he co-wrote and produced blockbuster sci-fi adventure films with director Roland Emmerich, including Stargate (1994) and Independence Day (1996), before striking out on his own at Electric Entertainment, producing long-running series such as The Librarian and Leverage, and the 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? ‘ and went on to make many more films. Are you referring to the director’s 2017 film “Geostorm”? Do you feel like you’re invisible?
“Yeah, I’ve always felt that way. For years, I was Roland Emmerich’s partner, you know? He was a big director and I was a screenwriter and did stuff behind the scenes. And I grew up with a little bit of dark skin,” he says, tapping his forearm with his index finger.
But there’s further evidence in Devlin’s office that supports the idea that despite all the bumps, bruises, and injustices he’s experienced over the years, he’s lived a charmed and charmed life. On the wall opposite “The Invisible Man” is a photo of his late mother, the strikingly beautiful Filipino actress Pilar Sula, from a 1967 “Star Trek” episode. (“Scottie would kill her,” he points out.) She also appeared in many other classic TV shows of the era, from “Bonanza” to “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.”
“My mother has always been the most supportive person in the entire universe,” Devlin says. Devlin’s parents divorced the year after he was born. “I credit everything to her because when she came home from the set of Star Trek, she had a stuntman’s rubber phaser and she gave it to me, and that literally started my addiction.”
If “Star Trek” was the beginning of Devlin’s addiction, “Star Wars,” released in May 1977, turned him into a hopeless, unrepentant addict. Devlin, 14, rode his bike from his home in the San Fernando Valley over the hills to Hollywood Boulevard and was ninth in line to see a movie at Grauman’s Chinese Theater on opening day.
“When the first spaceship flew across the screen, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s amazing,'” says Devlin. “But then the big things that followed on the screen kept coming and coming and coming out, and the audience started screaming and I started screaming. Literally in that moment, I thought, ‘This is what I want to do. This is exactly what I want. This experience.'”
The influence of “Star Wars,” which used modern visual effects techniques to tell classic sci-fi adventure stories, is evident in many of his upcoming projects since “Stargate.” But he was also drawn to the deeper aspects of science fiction.
“With Star Trek, we were always able to talk about things we couldn’t talk about because we were in space,” Dean explains. “We didn’t talk about race relations, but there were guys who were black on one side and white on the other, and they were fighting guys with the opposite face. In Star Wars, I was completely escaping my reality into this other reality. I was really excited about the idea of being able to rewrite the world.”
Devlin’s current career could be seen as a rewrite of Page 1. He started out as an actor, appearing in guest roles in television series such as Happy Days and 15-Year-Old James, as well as bit roles in films produced by his father, Don Devlin, such as Harry and Walter Go to New York (1976) and My Bodyguard (1981). (1957). But Devlin insists he always saw acting as a path to work behind the camera.
“I thought maybe if I could be an actor on a series and the series was successful enough, they’d let me direct some episodes, or maybe my acting could get me where I wanted to go,” he says.
After high school, Devlin entered biannual drama competitions with future stars Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kevin Spacey, Val Kilmer, and Mare Winningham, moved to New York, and ended up working as Al Pacino’s chauffeur. One day, an actor caught him sneaking a peek at a script he was considering, “Scarface.” He forgave his employees for their transgressions and asked them what they thought about it.
“I said, ‘I think you’ve already done this movie. It’s called ‘The Godfather,’ and it was much better than this script.’ Luckily, he didn’t listen to me,” Devlin laughed. Devlin was no stranger to celebrity, having visited Jack Nicholson’s Mulholland Drive home six times in his youth, thanks to the couple’s close friendship.
Eventually, Devlin quit Pacino’s job and starred off-Broadway in James Kirkwood’s There Must Be a Pony, which gave him the confidence to take his acting career seriously. Returning to Los Angeles, he co-starred in the three-episode series L.A. Laws and the short-lived TV series Hard Copy (1986), which led to him appearing in the low-budget sci-fi blockbuster Moon 44, directed by an unheralded German director named Roland Emmerich.
“I didn’t want to do it, but at the time I was struggling with money and caring for my mother,” he says. Arriving on set in Germany, he discovered that the director was surprisingly good. “I remember turning to him and saying, ‘Oh my God, you’re a first-rate director, why would you do this crappy script?’ And he said to me, ‘Dean, when I wrote the script…'” Devlin laughed.
Devlin requested that his dialogue be rewritten, which led to everyone else’s dialogue being rewritten as well. Director Emmerich then asked Devlin to significantly rewrite his next film, Universal Soldier, a 1992 science fiction action film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. Despite negative reviews, the film was a box office success, spawning a franchise series and solidifying a filmmaking partnership that lasted until 2000.
Devlin has a deep love (and track record) for science fiction, but that’s not his only artistic passion. In his office window, two electric guitars (a Fender Stratocaster and an Airline semi-hollowbody) and a practice amplifier testify to his love of music. Decades ago, he was in a group called Nervous Service, and now he plays in a Beatles cover band with director Rob Minkoff (“Sometimes I play George’s parts, sometimes I play John’s parts, I sing Paul’s parts,” he explains). Behind his desk is the owl-like helmet worn by the title character in Brian DePalma’s 1974 film Phantom of Paradise. The film tells the story of a talented but naive composer who is tricked into playing a role by a manipulative tycoon. “I really want to turn this into a Broadway musical, but I haven’t been able to get the rights,” he laments.
But when asked to name the project closest to him, Devlin cited the crime drama series Almost Paradise (2020-2023), which was shot on location in the Philippines.
“I discovered my Filipino heritage late in life,” Devlin says. He, too, later embraced his father’s Jewish heritage and batmitzvahed his wife, Lisa Brenner, and their two daughters. “I think that being able to perform the show in the Philippines, where 98% of the staff and 95% of the cast were Filipino, was an emotional experience on a personal level that I couldn’t have experienced anywhere else.”
