1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,800
Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of My Heart Radio.

2
00:00:09,160 --> 00:00:11,879
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show

3
00:00:11,920 --> 00:00:14,640
Speaker 1: that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating

4
00:00:14,680 --> 00:00:18,160
Speaker 1: facts and figures behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows

5
00:00:18,160 --> 00:00:22,800
Speaker 1: and more. We're You're two frozen in ice, freaky phantasmagorical

6
00:00:22,920 --> 00:00:26,439
Speaker 1: film buffs. I'm Alex Heigel and I'm Jordan Run Talk

7
00:00:26,680 --> 00:00:28,840
Speaker 1: and Jordan's Today is the day I pay you back

8
00:00:28,880 --> 00:00:31,520
Speaker 1: for making me sick through seventeen hours of Large Boat

9
00:00:31,680 --> 00:00:35,239
Speaker 1: the James Cameron Story by tanking our traffic numbers for

10
00:00:35,280 --> 00:00:39,120
Speaker 1: the month, and at long last, bringing my favorite director

11
00:00:39,120 --> 00:00:41,000
Speaker 1: of all time into the t M I fold. That

12
00:00:41,120 --> 00:00:45,360
Speaker 1: is right. We're talking about John Carpenter and his what

13
00:00:45,520 --> 00:00:51,680
Speaker 1: one of his two magnum opies. What's the plural of opus?

14
00:00:51,440 --> 00:00:54,560
Speaker 1: Sounds like a pizzeria, but I'll go with that. Ah,

15
00:00:55,640 --> 00:00:58,840
Speaker 1: one of his two magnum opie along with Halloween, The Thing,

16
00:00:59,600 --> 00:01:03,959
Speaker 1: probably the greatest, least s e O friendly sci fi

17
00:01:04,080 --> 00:01:07,680
Speaker 1: horror masterpiece of all time, The Thing movie. You know,

18
00:01:07,800 --> 00:01:12,240
Speaker 1: with the Thing, just a guy from Jersey, you know,

19
00:01:12,319 --> 00:01:15,760
Speaker 1: the movie with the Thing. It's a sci fi, cosmic

20
00:01:15,800 --> 00:01:19,040
Speaker 1: hor beyond comprehension, you know, the thing, the ultimate and

21
00:01:19,120 --> 00:01:25,360
Speaker 1: alien terror. Terror Man is the warmest place to hide. Hey,

22
00:01:25,520 --> 00:01:30,039
Speaker 1: the real monster is us role Monsters us uh and

23
00:01:30,160 --> 00:01:36,840
Speaker 1: the Knicks Big bomb Um no Nicks one the other right. Uh. Yeah,

24
00:01:36,880 --> 00:01:39,000
Speaker 1: it's it's one of the greatest movies of all time. Uh.

25
00:01:39,040 --> 00:01:41,680
Speaker 1: And even if it wasn't, it would be grandfathered in

26
00:01:42,200 --> 00:01:47,160
Speaker 1: solely because of the rubber. The sweet sweet piles of rubber,

27
00:01:47,440 --> 00:01:51,640
Speaker 1: of moist dripping rubber. Uh. One of the guys, one

28
00:01:51,640 --> 00:01:53,440
Speaker 1: of the editors in the film it talks about, He's like,

29
00:01:53,440 --> 00:01:55,040
Speaker 1: you know, my memories of the thing are mostly of

30
00:01:55,120 --> 00:01:58,000
Speaker 1: walking in and seeing like five gallon buckets of k

31
00:01:58,240 --> 00:02:00,720
Speaker 1: y jelly strewn around everywhere. I didn't know you could

32
00:02:00,800 --> 00:02:05,240
Speaker 1: order it in such five quantities, because that's what they

33
00:02:05,320 --> 00:02:06,760
Speaker 1: used for all this. They use it in The Predator

34
00:02:06,800 --> 00:02:10,919
Speaker 1: to when the Predator um. The predators blood is glowstick,

35
00:02:11,120 --> 00:02:14,800
Speaker 1: fluid and mixed with k y jelly glow. That's good

36
00:02:15,080 --> 00:02:18,560
Speaker 1: glow stick. I feel like it's an underutilized thing to

37
00:02:18,800 --> 00:02:22,160
Speaker 1: use in stuff like this. Wow. I mean, I there's

38
00:02:22,160 --> 00:02:24,760
Speaker 1: a there's a there's a YouTuber. I like, who thought

39
00:02:24,760 --> 00:02:26,440
Speaker 1: slime is the name of the channel. And then he

40
00:02:26,480 --> 00:02:28,960
Speaker 1: has one about horror movies called scaredy Cats, and he

41
00:02:29,080 --> 00:02:34,799
Speaker 1: coined the term wet puppets really practical for really amazing

42
00:02:34,840 --> 00:02:38,200
Speaker 1: practical effects, because when you start like reading about this stuff,

43
00:02:38,240 --> 00:02:40,840
Speaker 1: it is so funny how these guys were just like, yeah,

44
00:02:40,919 --> 00:02:45,120
Speaker 1: we just crammed like garbage into it. It's like like

45
00:02:45,160 --> 00:02:47,840
Speaker 1: the I think the one for um, the scanners, the

46
00:02:47,880 --> 00:02:51,360
Speaker 1: scanner's head explosion. He put like corn chips and like

47
00:02:51,440 --> 00:02:54,120
Speaker 1: old food into it and then they just blew it

48
00:02:54,200 --> 00:02:57,320
Speaker 1: up with like a shotgun. That's like the famous Jiff right,

49
00:02:58,080 --> 00:03:00,480
Speaker 1: just like the guy yeah yeah, yeah, would not have

50
00:03:00,480 --> 00:03:03,240
Speaker 1: passed Osha at all. They were doing, you know in Canada,

51
00:03:03,280 --> 00:03:06,440
Speaker 1: and they were like they literally just like plugged all

52
00:03:06,480 --> 00:03:09,600
Speaker 1: this crap into this latex head and then they cleared

53
00:03:09,639 --> 00:03:13,320
Speaker 1: the set and uh, we're watching playback from like remotely,

54
00:03:13,360 --> 00:03:17,480
Speaker 1: and the FX guy just like crouched underneath it and

55
00:03:17,600 --> 00:03:20,400
Speaker 1: fired a shotgun at it. It's just like the one

56
00:03:20,440 --> 00:03:22,680
Speaker 1: like this an American World from London. Like it's just

57
00:03:22,720 --> 00:03:25,600
Speaker 1: like the mount Rushmore of practical effects. The highest the

58
00:03:25,680 --> 00:03:27,920
Speaker 1: art form will ever be because the computers started to

59
00:03:27,960 --> 00:03:30,359
Speaker 1: get good enough to kind of take it over. And

60
00:03:30,400 --> 00:03:32,720
Speaker 1: it's I mean it's just so good and it would

61
00:03:32,720 --> 00:03:34,840
Speaker 1: be great for that even if it didn't have someone

62
00:03:34,880 --> 00:03:37,280
Speaker 1: like John Carpenter kind of at the top of his game,

63
00:03:37,520 --> 00:03:40,600
Speaker 1: because it has that command of editing and paint and

64
00:03:40,880 --> 00:03:44,680
Speaker 1: composition that like something like Halloween does. But instead of

65
00:03:44,680 --> 00:03:49,240
Speaker 1: William Shatner mask, you get a young Rob Boteine hospitalizing

66
00:03:49,280 --> 00:03:53,120
Speaker 1: himself with the effort of creating all this all this stuff.

67
00:03:53,440 --> 00:03:56,600
Speaker 1: Melt Dog, Melting Dog. That was the one that really

68
00:03:56,640 --> 00:04:00,640
Speaker 1: got you, which is funny because that's Stan Winston. That's

69
00:04:00,680 --> 00:04:04,200
Speaker 1: not that's not boutine. But um yeah, So I am

70
00:04:04,280 --> 00:04:07,560
Speaker 1: the horror movie person in this in our relationship, and

71
00:04:08,240 --> 00:04:11,160
Speaker 1: you don't like them, and so I made you watch this.

72
00:04:12,160 --> 00:04:16,240
Speaker 1: Uh and your thoughts. You know, I wouldn't say that

73
00:04:16,279 --> 00:04:18,520
Speaker 1: I don't like them. I just have very little exposure

74
00:04:18,560 --> 00:04:22,200
Speaker 1: to him. Uh. Yeah, No, I I texted you immediately

75
00:04:22,240 --> 00:04:25,200
Speaker 1: before sitting down to watch this saying that I spent

76
00:04:25,440 --> 00:04:27,520
Speaker 1: all of my thirty five years up to this point

77
00:04:27,560 --> 00:04:30,240
Speaker 1: believing that the thing was a Stephen King adaptations. So

78
00:04:30,680 --> 00:04:33,320
Speaker 1: I truly didn't know what to expect. That's that's where

79
00:04:33,360 --> 00:04:35,560
Speaker 1: I was coming at with this. And you know, you'll

80
00:04:35,600 --> 00:04:37,719
Speaker 1: be pleased to know that I actually really liked it

81
00:04:37,760 --> 00:04:40,719
Speaker 1: a lot um that does warm my heart, so I

82
00:04:40,800 --> 00:04:42,920
Speaker 1: know I really enjoyed it. I mean the only stuff

83
00:04:42,960 --> 00:04:45,000
Speaker 1: that I wasn't all that into, again because I'm not

84
00:04:45,040 --> 00:04:48,640
Speaker 1: a horror buff, was all the grotesque practical effects stuff,

85
00:04:48,640 --> 00:04:51,440
Speaker 1: and that's just purely because I'm squeamish about blood, and

86
00:04:51,480 --> 00:04:55,039
Speaker 1: even those I have a begrudging respect for. I mean,

87
00:04:55,080 --> 00:04:58,640
Speaker 1: like the dog's head ripping itself into quarters, leaving it's

88
00:04:58,640 --> 00:05:01,960
Speaker 1: song flapping around. Did I need to see that? No,

89
00:05:02,520 --> 00:05:06,200
Speaker 1: but I'm extremely impressed with the execution. And it's like

90
00:05:06,240 --> 00:05:08,080
Speaker 1: it's like a little bit of was that I was saying.

91
00:05:08,480 --> 00:05:13,920
Speaker 1: I don't like torture porn, like I don't like genre, Yeah, exactly.

92
00:05:13,960 --> 00:05:16,120
Speaker 1: I don't like the sub genre of whore that just

93
00:05:16,160 --> 00:05:18,960
Speaker 1: gets into like because there are these two really low

94
00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:21,520
Speaker 1: budget movies that kind of hit one after the other

95
00:05:21,520 --> 00:05:23,800
Speaker 1: in the past couple of years called Terrifier that is

96
00:05:23,839 --> 00:05:28,280
Speaker 1: literally just a clown like it's disgustingly murdering people. They

97
00:05:28,360 --> 00:05:31,080
Speaker 1: are really like like people left the theater and like

98
00:05:31,279 --> 00:05:33,360
Speaker 1: passed out and threw up and all this stuff. And

99
00:05:33,640 --> 00:05:36,400
Speaker 1: I don't like that stuff at all. But this like

100
00:05:36,640 --> 00:05:38,279
Speaker 1: the stuff with like the thing is. To me, it's

101
00:05:38,279 --> 00:05:40,919
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, it's like a tech savory cartoon,

102
00:05:41,000 --> 00:05:43,719
Speaker 1: Like it's just becomes so much of just like what

103
00:05:43,960 --> 00:05:47,160
Speaker 1: is happenings easier as it went on. The first really

104
00:05:47,160 --> 00:05:50,000
Speaker 1: grotesque thing, well, there are two images and they happened

105
00:05:50,000 --> 00:05:52,480
Speaker 1: to be I think the first things that you see

106
00:05:52,760 --> 00:05:56,120
Speaker 1: of this ILK in the movie was the guy in

107
00:05:56,120 --> 00:06:00,000
Speaker 1: the Norwegian the frozen bombed out Norwegian control center who

108
00:06:00,120 --> 00:06:05,040
Speaker 1: was dead, the frozen blood, yeah, the blood icicle, and

109
00:06:05,080 --> 00:06:09,000
Speaker 1: then uh, and then the dog that was being inhabited

110
00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:12,520
Speaker 1: by the titular thing ripping itself apart with its tongue

111
00:06:12,520 --> 00:06:15,320
Speaker 1: came and I think those were the two like truly

112
00:06:15,360 --> 00:06:17,480
Speaker 1: graphic things that you saw on the screen. And then

113
00:06:17,520 --> 00:06:20,919
Speaker 1: after that I kind of just was desensitized. If you

114
00:06:20,920 --> 00:06:23,360
Speaker 1: put yakety sacks under it, it gets a lot easier.

115
00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:29,360
Speaker 1: Just the guy's head stretching off, like the little head

116
00:06:29,400 --> 00:06:32,840
Speaker 1: scootering around. Yeah, yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, No,

117
00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:35,400
Speaker 1: I mean, but I mean, aside from all of that,

118
00:06:35,800 --> 00:06:38,120
Speaker 1: I you know, I really just from a plot perspective,

119
00:06:38,120 --> 00:06:40,560
Speaker 1: thought it was really well done. And I'm sure there

120
00:06:40,560 --> 00:06:42,960
Speaker 1: are terms and tropes that you know, as a non

121
00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:46,560
Speaker 1: horror guy. I don't know, but I love the whole

122
00:06:46,640 --> 00:06:49,480
Speaker 1: Poseidon adventured nous of it all where you start off

123
00:06:49,520 --> 00:06:51,560
Speaker 1: with a big crew and you know that a bunch

124
00:06:51,600 --> 00:06:55,000
Speaker 1: of them are about to get whacked and ridiculous ways,

125
00:06:55,160 --> 00:06:57,400
Speaker 1: and that's you wonder who's going to be the one

126
00:06:57,440 --> 00:07:00,479
Speaker 1: that that's the one that betrays everybody and the one

127
00:07:00,520 --> 00:07:04,760
Speaker 1: that you know is the saddest death. And it's kind

128
00:07:04,760 --> 00:07:07,000
Speaker 1: of like the It's like it's like the Treasure the

129
00:07:07,040 --> 00:07:11,480
Speaker 1: Sierra Madre meets like Alien, whereas like it's just like, yeah,

130
00:07:11,680 --> 00:07:16,440
Speaker 1: the monster was us, right, Yeah, but yeah, I oh, man,

131
00:07:16,600 --> 00:07:21,960
Speaker 1: Kurt Russell, Man, what a hunk, what a big beardy

132
00:07:22,040 --> 00:07:25,640
Speaker 1: honky is I really I'm embarrassed to tell you this.

133
00:07:25,720 --> 00:07:29,080
Speaker 1: I've seen him more in like the Computer War, Tennis

134
00:07:29,120 --> 00:07:33,440
Speaker 1: shoes and like Disney movies than I have in like

135
00:07:34,160 --> 00:07:38,760
Speaker 1: Escape from New York era type action roles. It was like,

136
00:07:39,160 --> 00:07:45,920
Speaker 1: I'd say, Disney stuff and Goldie Hawn rom coms and

137
00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:48,280
Speaker 1: like over the Word or something. So yeah, I was

138
00:07:48,360 --> 00:07:50,480
Speaker 1: not really all that exposed to this era of Kurt

139
00:07:50,560 --> 00:07:53,280
Speaker 1: Russell either. UM. I also had no idea that John

140
00:07:53,320 --> 00:07:58,560
Speaker 1: Carpenter directed the Elvis made for TV movie that he did. Yeah, Yeah,

141
00:07:58,720 --> 00:08:01,440
Speaker 1: there's a whole thing about that that era of like

142
00:08:01,600 --> 00:08:05,520
Speaker 1: TV movies that were like actually big and probably after

143
00:08:05,600 --> 00:08:09,120
Speaker 1: Roots Roots probably legitimized that. And like yeah, and and

144
00:08:09,160 --> 00:08:11,680
Speaker 1: they you know, they talked about um with this movie,

145
00:08:11,680 --> 00:08:13,280
Speaker 1: they were going to shoot it in black and white,

146
00:08:13,320 --> 00:08:15,480
Speaker 1: and then Universal was like, no, it has to be

147
00:08:15,520 --> 00:08:18,320
Speaker 1: done for TV, like that one on TV. So there

148
00:08:18,360 --> 00:08:21,040
Speaker 1: there's and there's a whole thing too with Halloween. There's

149
00:08:21,080 --> 00:08:23,840
Speaker 1: like a bunch of alternate cuts of or new scenes

150
00:08:23,840 --> 00:08:26,080
Speaker 1: and stuff that had come out of Halloween because when

151
00:08:26,080 --> 00:08:27,800
Speaker 1: they got the TV rights to it, it was like

152
00:08:28,320 --> 00:08:31,200
Speaker 1: TV rights, rebroadcast rights for movies were such a big

153
00:08:31,240 --> 00:08:33,079
Speaker 1: thing that it would mandate you would have to stretch

154
00:08:33,160 --> 00:08:36,000
Speaker 1: the running time blah blah blah. So it's it's really

155
00:08:36,000 --> 00:08:39,840
Speaker 1: interesting like this era of too. I think there were

156
00:08:39,840 --> 00:08:42,640
Speaker 1: a lot of scenes that were added back in that

157
00:08:42,679 --> 00:08:45,480
Speaker 1: had been cut for theatrical. This era of filmmaking is

158
00:08:45,520 --> 00:08:49,720
Speaker 1: like really informed by the TV rights stuff. Yeah, and

159
00:08:49,760 --> 00:08:54,560
Speaker 1: no Ladies, that is not a single No dames, This

160
00:08:54,640 --> 00:08:56,920
Speaker 1: movie failed the back they'll test, but it's got a

161
00:08:57,000 --> 00:09:01,440
Speaker 1: mustache less Wolf of Brimley. So I just remember when

162
00:09:01,440 --> 00:09:04,960
Speaker 1: people were discovering this movie during Quarantine and passing around

163
00:09:05,040 --> 00:09:08,040
Speaker 1: all the screen grabs of it, like nobody trusts anybody

164
00:09:08,080 --> 00:09:11,240
Speaker 1: anymore and we're all very tired, or like the one

165
00:09:11,280 --> 00:09:13,880
Speaker 1: where they just it's just that shot of Wilford frimly

166
00:09:13,960 --> 00:09:18,320
Speaker 1: and is in his shock with the noose. I just

167
00:09:18,440 --> 00:09:26,080
Speaker 1: conspicuously center frame. Well, from the twenty two year old

168
00:09:26,120 --> 00:09:30,160
Speaker 1: effects wonder kinned that created the horrifying titular creature, to

169
00:09:30,280 --> 00:09:33,880
Speaker 1: the alcohol besotted border town where they filmed, to the

170
00:09:33,960 --> 00:09:37,600
Speaker 1: still raging debate over the film's end, Here's everything you

171
00:09:37,640 --> 00:09:48,079
Speaker 1: didn't know about John Carpenter's the Thing. Like a lot

172
00:09:48,120 --> 00:09:51,800
Speaker 1: of his career, the thing began with John Carpenter's obsession

173
00:09:51,920 --> 00:09:55,120
Speaker 1: with iconic Western director Howard Hawks. This is the thing

174
00:09:55,160 --> 00:09:57,559
Speaker 1: that if you read John carpenter interviews or hear him

175
00:09:57,559 --> 00:10:02,079
Speaker 1: talk at all, he's just obsessed with Howard Hawks. Rio Bravo. Um.

176
00:10:02,120 --> 00:10:04,160
Speaker 1: If you read about like a trope of the Final

177
00:10:04,280 --> 00:10:07,800
Speaker 1: Girl as like Laurie Strode and Halloween is like the

178
00:10:07,840 --> 00:10:11,439
Speaker 1: Final Girl. Um. He talks about how his women characters

179
00:10:11,480 --> 00:10:15,280
Speaker 1: come from, like Howard Hawks, being like these very resourceful,

180
00:10:15,360 --> 00:10:19,160
Speaker 1: courageous women in these situations assault on precinct thirteen. He

181
00:10:19,160 --> 00:10:21,679
Speaker 1: basically said was like his version of doing like a

182
00:10:21,760 --> 00:10:27,080
Speaker 1: Hawksy and Cowboys under Siege movie. Uh and Hawks had

183
00:10:27,160 --> 00:10:31,400
Speaker 1: produced a nineteen fifties version of the original source material

184
00:10:31,520 --> 00:10:34,080
Speaker 1: of this. The original version is called The Thing from

185
00:10:34,120 --> 00:10:38,200
Speaker 1: Another World, and the original novella is called Who Goes There,

186
00:10:38,320 --> 00:10:41,280
Speaker 1: which is written by a guy named John W. Campbell Jr.

187
00:10:41,320 --> 00:10:44,360
Speaker 1: Who's writing under the pseudonym of Don Stewart. That film

188
00:10:44,400 --> 00:10:47,800
Speaker 1: was directed by Christian ninety and starred gun Smokes James

189
00:10:47,920 --> 00:10:51,560
Speaker 1: Arness as the titular creature. Um. And because it was

190
00:10:51,600 --> 00:10:54,600
Speaker 1: the fifties, they didn't do the whole shape shifting thing.

191
00:10:55,000 --> 00:10:58,320
Speaker 1: They just put James RNs in some rubber and it

192
00:10:58,320 --> 00:11:01,360
Speaker 1: doesn't look particularly good. But he was also six ft

193
00:11:01,400 --> 00:11:03,520
Speaker 1: seven inches tall, so he was kind of a special

194
00:11:03,520 --> 00:11:10,120
Speaker 1: effect in of himself. Cigar Shopping Executive, there's a there

195
00:11:10,200 --> 00:11:12,560
Speaker 1: is a great shot of it where like a door

196
00:11:12,640 --> 00:11:15,760
Speaker 1: opens and you just see like all you know, eighty

197
00:11:15,840 --> 00:11:18,600
Speaker 1: inches of James Rnst. They're just like silhouetted and it's

198
00:11:18,679 --> 00:11:22,160
Speaker 1: very dramatic looking. Um Carpenter said in the late nineties

199
00:11:22,200 --> 00:11:24,280
Speaker 1: on a show called Movie Talk, he said Howard Hawks

200
00:11:24,320 --> 00:11:26,200
Speaker 1: was kind of the ultimate hero to me, and I

201
00:11:26,240 --> 00:11:28,480
Speaker 1: saw his movies as a kid, but I wasn't familiar

202
00:11:28,520 --> 00:11:30,200
Speaker 1: with some of the older ones in the scope of

203
00:11:30,240 --> 00:11:32,320
Speaker 1: his work until I went to film school at usc

204
00:11:33,000 --> 00:11:34,960
Speaker 1: You don't really understand what he's doing when he does

205
00:11:35,000 --> 00:11:37,080
Speaker 1: his technique and it works on you. Do you think

206
00:11:37,200 --> 00:11:39,520
Speaker 1: you're just watching a movie and watching the actors, and

207
00:11:39,520 --> 00:11:43,160
Speaker 1: in reality you're watching a master at work. Um. So

208
00:11:43,240 --> 00:11:47,040
Speaker 1: for movie. The producer of that, this guy named Stewart Cohen,

209
00:11:47,120 --> 00:11:50,199
Speaker 1: who has this a blog where he basically just runs

210
00:11:50,240 --> 00:11:52,640
Speaker 1: down the entirety of the making of this movie. So

211
00:11:52,679 --> 00:11:54,480
Speaker 1: that's where a lot of this comes from. There's a

212
00:11:54,520 --> 00:11:57,280
Speaker 1: really great oral history over its sci fi from September

213
00:11:57,360 --> 00:11:58,600
Speaker 1: that I put a lot of this from as well.

214
00:11:58,960 --> 00:12:02,360
Speaker 1: Cohen was a classmate of Carmenters at usc UH and

215
00:12:02,520 --> 00:12:06,080
Speaker 1: brought the film to Universal by way of a producer

216
00:12:06,160 --> 00:12:10,880
Speaker 1: named David Foster in the late nineties seventies. Not that

217
00:12:11,200 --> 00:12:17,440
Speaker 1: producer named David Foster, not the music producer. Yeah, Katherine McFee,

218
00:12:18,800 --> 00:12:24,240
Speaker 1: Uh No, I don't believe so. Um. The first version

219
00:12:24,280 --> 00:12:27,560
Speaker 1: of this was with Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Toby Hooper

220
00:12:27,920 --> 00:12:30,480
Speaker 1: and his co writer on Matt film guy named Kim Henkel.

221
00:12:30,880 --> 00:12:33,319
Speaker 1: They wanted to put it into development, but weren't sure

222
00:12:33,320 --> 00:12:36,640
Speaker 1: about John. Stuart Cohen told sci Fi he hadn't made

223
00:12:36,679 --> 00:12:38,720
Speaker 1: Halloween at that point, and they wanted to keep their

224
00:12:38,720 --> 00:12:42,040
Speaker 1: options open. And then in the interim, Halloween came out

225
00:12:42,040 --> 00:12:44,640
Speaker 1: and became like the most profitable independent film of all time.

226
00:12:45,160 --> 00:12:48,400
Speaker 1: Written quickly in order to avoid an impending writers strike,

227
00:12:48,559 --> 00:12:50,520
Speaker 1: what I remember of the script was an attempt at

228
00:12:50,520 --> 00:12:53,680
Speaker 1: a man versus monster epic set at the bottom of

229
00:12:53,679 --> 00:12:56,920
Speaker 1: the world. Stewart Cohen set on his blog and he

230
00:12:56,960 --> 00:13:00,120
Speaker 1: described their script as a sort of Antarctica mo b

231
00:13:00,280 --> 00:13:03,720
Speaker 1: Dick with an Ahab like character. I believe his name

232
00:13:03,760 --> 00:13:07,440
Speaker 1: was the captain battling a large but decidedly non shape

233
00:13:07,440 --> 00:13:11,520
Speaker 1: shifting creature. Sounds like kind of great. I would watch

234
00:13:11,559 --> 00:13:15,520
Speaker 1: that movie with us, uh, he continued, seemingly written as

235
00:13:15,520 --> 00:13:18,840
Speaker 1: a tone poem with a stab at a Southern Davis

236
00:13:18,880 --> 00:13:21,400
Speaker 1: Grub like feel. I don't know what any of those

237
00:13:21,400 --> 00:13:26,600
Speaker 1: words mean. The script was dense, humorless, almost impenetrable. The

238
00:13:26,679 --> 00:13:28,800
Speaker 1: word John used for it when he later came on

239
00:13:28,800 --> 00:13:32,640
Speaker 1: board was incomprehensible. Judged by all at the time, to

240
00:13:32,720 --> 00:13:36,160
Speaker 1: be something akin to a disaster. We agreed to part company.

241
00:13:38,200 --> 00:13:42,320
Speaker 1: Very mean, Mr Cohen. Uh. They met with John Landis Um,

242
00:13:42,360 --> 00:13:45,160
Speaker 1: a playwright named David Wiltse to write a draft UH.

243
00:13:45,280 --> 00:13:47,840
Speaker 1: The guy who wrote Logans Run, William F. Nolan wrote

244
00:13:47,840 --> 00:13:51,120
Speaker 1: a draft. None of these happened. So after three failed

245
00:13:51,160 --> 00:13:55,320
Speaker 1: attempts to realize the thing, UH, Universal was finally swayed

246
00:13:55,360 --> 00:13:58,280
Speaker 1: in May of ninety nine when Alien came out and

247
00:13:58,320 --> 00:14:02,880
Speaker 1: became a huge, huge sass and Cohen went back to Carpenter,

248
00:14:03,559 --> 00:14:07,880
Speaker 1: who said no again. He said, you guys have failed

249
00:14:07,920 --> 00:14:10,079
Speaker 1: three times. Why do I want to sign on to

250
00:14:10,200 --> 00:14:13,600
Speaker 1: a failed project? And he told Carpenter. John Carpenter told

251
00:14:13,600 --> 00:14:16,000
Speaker 1: sci Fi it was not something I wanted to do.

252
00:14:16,480 --> 00:14:19,000
Speaker 1: The original Thing was one of my favorite movies. I

253
00:14:19,040 --> 00:14:21,280
Speaker 1: really didn't want to get near it. But I reread

254
00:14:21,280 --> 00:14:23,320
Speaker 1: the novella and I thought, you know, this is a

255
00:14:23,320 --> 00:14:25,520
Speaker 1: pretty good story. Here. We get the right writer, the

256
00:14:25,640 --> 00:14:29,080
Speaker 1: right situation. We could do something with this. And so

257
00:14:29,200 --> 00:14:32,080
Speaker 1: in Halloween there's a point where their kids are watching

258
00:14:32,440 --> 00:14:35,000
Speaker 1: UH TV and there's the Thing from Another World is

259
00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:38,160
Speaker 1: playing on the TV. So after Halloween and then Escape

260
00:14:38,160 --> 00:14:40,080
Speaker 1: from New York had also come out, and made a

261
00:14:40,080 --> 00:14:42,640
Speaker 1: big hit, and so Carpenter is something like a name,

262
00:14:42,680 --> 00:14:45,480
Speaker 1: and Universal is like okay, like they're more amenable to

263
00:14:45,520 --> 00:14:48,960
Speaker 1: having him on it. And this is also funny. He

264
00:14:49,080 --> 00:14:51,840
Speaker 1: almost didn't come onto it because he was tapped to

265
00:14:51,960 --> 00:14:56,440
Speaker 1: make this horror western called L Diablo that I knew

266
00:14:56,440 --> 00:14:59,520
Speaker 1: nothing about, uh, and I guess it finally came out

267
00:14:59,600 --> 00:15:01,640
Speaker 1: and was not good. But he had he was gonna

268
00:15:01,640 --> 00:15:04,080
Speaker 1: do that with E M I. So they started looking

269
00:15:04,120 --> 00:15:06,320
Speaker 1: at other people. Stuart Cohen said they were going to

270
00:15:06,440 --> 00:15:10,800
Speaker 1: have Walter Hill, who did The Warriors, and uh didn't

271
00:15:10,800 --> 00:15:13,920
Speaker 1: he do Four to eight Hours? And even Sam peckin

272
00:15:13,960 --> 00:15:18,040
Speaker 1: Paw was was in talks supposedly UM. And another reason

273
00:15:18,040 --> 00:15:20,840
Speaker 1: that Carpenter wasn't interested in actually writing this was because

274
00:15:20,920 --> 00:15:23,440
Speaker 1: he had just written and directed Halloween, the TV movie

275
00:15:23,480 --> 00:15:26,880
Speaker 1: Somebody's Watching Me the Fog and Escape from New York

276
00:15:26,920 --> 00:15:29,160
Speaker 1: within like three years, and then he had done UM.

277
00:15:29,200 --> 00:15:31,640
Speaker 1: He had written the script for a movie about the

278
00:15:31,680 --> 00:15:36,320
Speaker 1: Philadelphia Experiment, which is UM a famous urban legend hoax

279
00:15:36,480 --> 00:15:40,240
Speaker 1: about like a naval destroyer that travels through time. Have

280
00:15:40,280 --> 00:15:42,240
Speaker 1: you heard about that? I've heard about. That's about all

281
00:15:42,280 --> 00:15:44,960
Speaker 1: I know about it, though, Yeah, I guess. The movie

282
00:15:44,960 --> 00:15:47,760
Speaker 1: came out and it was also bad. But John Carpenter

283
00:15:47,800 --> 00:15:49,680
Speaker 1: did a he had done a right on that and

284
00:15:50,120 --> 00:15:53,000
Speaker 1: was tired of writing that. By the time that movie

285
00:15:53,040 --> 00:15:55,560
Speaker 1: came out, the guy who directed it, Stuart Raffle, said

286
00:15:55,600 --> 00:16:00,760
Speaker 1: it had been rewritten nine times, so yeah, was not alone.

287
00:16:01,680 --> 00:16:03,720
Speaker 1: John Carbert said it had a great first two acts,

288
00:16:03,720 --> 00:16:06,520
Speaker 1: but no no third act. He called it a shaggy

289
00:16:06,560 --> 00:16:09,440
Speaker 1: dog story that didn't end. So I struggled with it,

290
00:16:09,480 --> 00:16:11,560
Speaker 1: but I couldn't fix it. I hit the wall, and

291
00:16:11,600 --> 00:16:13,680
Speaker 1: I think it spooked me on writing for a little bit.

292
00:16:14,160 --> 00:16:18,080
Speaker 1: So instead they hired the son of Golden age Hollywood

293
00:16:18,080 --> 00:16:22,920
Speaker 1: actor Burt Lancaster, Bill Lancaster, and he had a lot

294
00:16:22,920 --> 00:16:25,600
Speaker 1: of flak from the horror and sci fi community before

295
00:16:25,680 --> 00:16:29,400
Speaker 1: and after the things released because his only credits up

296
00:16:29,400 --> 00:16:33,440
Speaker 1: to that point were The Bad News Bears Walter math

297
00:16:33,520 --> 00:16:37,560
Speaker 1: now Naughty Little League Coach Baseball Movie, and The Bad

298
00:16:37,600 --> 00:16:40,880
Speaker 1: News Bears Goes to Japan, which I have to admit

299
00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:45,160
Speaker 1: I was not aware existed, and I kind of was.

300
00:16:45,320 --> 00:16:49,520
Speaker 1: Did Matho come back for that? I hope so no.

301
00:16:50,400 --> 00:16:54,640
Speaker 1: Tony Curtis in what I assumed to be The Naughty

302
00:16:54,680 --> 00:16:59,960
Speaker 1: Little League coach role. Wow. Oh man, Now I'm really

303
00:17:00,080 --> 00:17:02,720
Speaker 1: curious about it. So, yeah, the legacy of this Bill

304
00:17:02,800 --> 00:17:06,520
Speaker 1: Lancaster guy, the screenwriter is uh too bad News Bears

305
00:17:06,520 --> 00:17:10,639
Speaker 1: Movies and the Thing, So that's wild. Bill Lancaster is

306
00:17:10,680 --> 00:17:13,480
Speaker 1: talking to Starlog magazine in nineteen two that he was

307
00:17:13,560 --> 00:17:16,000
Speaker 1: first approached by producer Stuart Cohen for The Thing in

308
00:17:16,080 --> 00:17:19,320
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, and he admitted that he had no

309
00:17:19,359 --> 00:17:22,159
Speaker 1: idea why he was the one who was approached, and

310
00:17:22,200 --> 00:17:24,400
Speaker 1: he admitted that he hadn't read the novella at all

311
00:17:24,400 --> 00:17:27,400
Speaker 1: at that point, and by nineteen seventy nine, two years later,

312
00:17:27,400 --> 00:17:30,560
Speaker 1: when John Carpenter was attached, he finally read the source material,

313
00:17:30,840 --> 00:17:33,560
Speaker 1: but told Starlog magazine that he quote didn't know who

314
00:17:33,600 --> 00:17:38,919
Speaker 1: the heck John Carpenter was and hadn't seen Halloween. He continued,

315
00:17:39,160 --> 00:17:42,240
Speaker 1: it's a very interior story. You can get a little confusing.

316
00:17:42,480 --> 00:17:45,280
Speaker 1: He's talking about the novella. There's very little action in it.

317
00:17:45,280 --> 00:17:48,000
Speaker 1: It's mostly talk. Our problem was to try to turn

318
00:17:48,000 --> 00:17:50,879
Speaker 1: it into physical action as well as verbal action, and

319
00:17:50,920 --> 00:17:53,520
Speaker 1: to clarify the weirdness of this monster as much as

320
00:17:53,520 --> 00:17:55,480
Speaker 1: we could. Yeah, it's kind of hard to portray a

321
00:17:55,520 --> 00:17:59,760
Speaker 1: monster whose whole stick is that it's anything and everything.

322
00:18:00,200 --> 00:18:02,960
Speaker 1: John Carpenter said in an interview with Creative Screenwriting. We

323
00:18:03,080 --> 00:18:04,919
Speaker 1: met a lot of people on the thing, and it

324
00:18:05,000 --> 00:18:07,440
Speaker 1: was only when Bill Lancaster talked about what he could

325
00:18:07,480 --> 00:18:09,560
Speaker 1: do with the short story that I thought this is

326
00:18:09,600 --> 00:18:13,280
Speaker 1: the guy. Bill was incredibly I can't say this line

327
00:18:13,280 --> 00:18:16,560
Speaker 1: with that laughing. Bill was an incredibly charming person, and

328
00:18:16,600 --> 00:18:20,680
Speaker 1: I loved his movie The Bad News Bears. John Carpenter,

329
00:18:20,920 --> 00:18:22,639
Speaker 1: who I get. I don't. I'm not as familiar with

330
00:18:22,720 --> 00:18:24,199
Speaker 1: him as you are, but I get the impression he

331
00:18:24,240 --> 00:18:28,080
Speaker 1: hates everything loves Bad News Bears. Although Bad News Bears

332
00:18:28,240 --> 00:18:30,159
Speaker 1: is a grumpy movie, so I guess I kind of

333
00:18:30,200 --> 00:18:32,760
Speaker 1: see him enjoying that. It's a movie where where where

334
00:18:32,800 --> 00:18:35,840
Speaker 1: adults are nasty to kids, so I can see John

335
00:18:35,840 --> 00:18:40,720
Speaker 1: Carpenter enjoying that. John Carpenter continued, I thought Bill Lancaster

336
00:18:40,880 --> 00:18:43,359
Speaker 1: was just brilliant, and that script for Bad News Bears

337
00:18:43,440 --> 00:18:45,680
Speaker 1: was really, really good. He was the one who came

338
00:18:45,760 --> 00:18:48,120
Speaker 1: up with a couple really key scenes in the Thing.

339
00:18:49,400 --> 00:18:51,680
Speaker 1: And one of the challenges of adapting this novella to

340
00:18:51,760 --> 00:18:55,000
Speaker 1: a screenplay was that there are thirty seven characters in

341
00:18:55,040 --> 00:18:58,280
Speaker 1: the original novella, which is way too many characters. Bill

342
00:18:58,359 --> 00:19:01,159
Speaker 1: Lancaster cut those to just twelve golf and he added

343
00:19:01,160 --> 00:19:06,240
Speaker 1: the films as you right, literally explosive, ending, I forget

344
00:19:06,280 --> 00:19:09,880
Speaker 1: everyone's names in this except for except for Child's because

345
00:19:09,880 --> 00:19:14,000
Speaker 1: it's Keith David and McCready because it's a great name. Yeah,

346
00:19:14,359 --> 00:19:17,840
Speaker 1: I will, I get Palmer and Windows confused. And then

347
00:19:17,880 --> 00:19:20,280
Speaker 1: when there's the radio guy but now the only reason

348
00:19:20,320 --> 00:19:25,360
Speaker 1: I know Windows. We'll get into it later. Bill Lancaster

349
00:19:25,480 --> 00:19:28,000
Speaker 1: was asked why he did not include any female characters

350
00:19:28,000 --> 00:19:31,040
Speaker 1: in this movie, and he told star Log in reality,

351
00:19:31,080 --> 00:19:34,440
Speaker 1: there aren't any women in these kinds of situations down

352
00:19:34,480 --> 00:19:38,000
Speaker 1: in Antarctica. It seems more honest to have a group

353
00:19:38,040 --> 00:19:41,120
Speaker 1: of men in that situation. And in fact, the only

354
00:19:41,160 --> 00:19:43,720
Speaker 1: women in the film technically other than there's a blow

355
00:19:43,760 --> 00:19:46,280
Speaker 1: up doll in it is John Carbon who's then wife

356
00:19:46,320 --> 00:19:50,280
Speaker 1: Adrian Barba, who started the fog and escape from New York,

357
00:19:50,600 --> 00:19:53,280
Speaker 1: and she provides the voice of Kurt Russell's chess computer

358
00:19:53,320 --> 00:19:56,520
Speaker 1: at the very beginning of the movie. Who cheating bitch? Yeah,

359
00:19:56,560 --> 00:19:58,520
Speaker 1: And then he pours his bottle of gym beam in

360
00:19:58,560 --> 00:20:02,200
Speaker 1: the computer and b you know, It's sorry, James. Yeah.

361
00:20:02,560 --> 00:20:05,800
Speaker 1: Kur Russell actually talked about this phenomenon of being on

362
00:20:05,840 --> 00:20:08,399
Speaker 1: an all male set in a two thirteen screen He

363
00:20:08,440 --> 00:20:10,879
Speaker 1: said it was the most interesting set I was on

364
00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:13,920
Speaker 1: because the psychology of what happened on that movie was unique.

365
00:20:14,119 --> 00:20:17,520
Speaker 1: It's something I've never seen. Very little posturing goes on

366
00:20:17,600 --> 00:20:19,840
Speaker 1: with men when there's no women around to posture for,

367
00:20:20,200 --> 00:20:22,440
Speaker 1: and it seriously begins to show itself in the movie.

368
00:20:22,680 --> 00:20:24,480
Speaker 1: I just did a quick search that I didn't put

369
00:20:24,480 --> 00:20:27,439
Speaker 1: in this before, but the history of women in an

370
00:20:27,480 --> 00:20:32,040
Speaker 1: Antarctic polar research uh Maurice Stops, who is now famous

371
00:20:32,080 --> 00:20:34,439
Speaker 1: as an early advocate for birth control, was also a

372
00:20:34,520 --> 00:20:39,720
Speaker 1: highly accomplished paleobotanist in the early twentieth century, and she

373
00:20:40,080 --> 00:20:45,159
Speaker 1: requested to join Robert Scott's Terra Nova expedition and he refused.

374
00:20:45,480 --> 00:20:51,160
Speaker 1: When was this nineteen? Are you very very good, very

375
00:20:51,760 --> 00:20:57,200
Speaker 1: very good Arctic pool there? Ernest Shackleton wrote of three

376
00:20:57,359 --> 00:21:00,840
Speaker 1: sporty girls who begged to be included in his his

377
00:21:01,000 --> 00:21:05,760
Speaker 1: Antarctic expedition from nineteen fourteen UH to nineteen seventeen, and

378
00:21:05,880 --> 00:21:10,000
Speaker 1: apparently dozens of women requested to join expeditions by Australian

379
00:21:10,000 --> 00:21:16,520
Speaker 1: explorer UH Douglas Mawson and American aviator Richard Byrd and Uh.

380
00:21:16,640 --> 00:21:20,919
Speaker 1: When a British Antarctic expedition was proposed in ninety seven,

381
00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:24,560
Speaker 1: a newspaper reported that hundred women applied to join and

382
00:21:24,640 --> 00:21:29,880
Speaker 1: all were denied. In most countries, women were formally excluded

383
00:21:30,200 --> 00:21:34,800
Speaker 1: from Arctic research communities until the twentieth century. So not

384
00:21:34,920 --> 00:21:37,920
Speaker 1: just blowing smoke up everyone's ass. That was very much

385
00:21:37,920 --> 00:21:41,760
Speaker 1: a thing. Women were not allowed in the Arctic. So

386
00:21:41,800 --> 00:21:45,840
Speaker 1: Bill Glancaster was right about that, but the reasons were bad.

387
00:21:46,880 --> 00:21:48,840
Speaker 1: Who was just telling me a lot about explorations in

388
00:21:48,880 --> 00:21:53,640
Speaker 1: the South Pole actual Friend of the Pod Ali, She's

389
00:21:53,880 --> 00:21:56,000
Speaker 1: she's in the same way that I love Titanic. She's

390
00:21:56,000 --> 00:21:59,320
Speaker 1: really into early South Pole exploration and she was telling

391
00:21:59,359 --> 00:22:01,359
Speaker 1: me a lot about out it recently. So that's uh,

392
00:22:02,400 --> 00:22:06,359
Speaker 1: this is funny to Stoker Award nominated horror author Friend

393
00:22:06,359 --> 00:22:09,840
Speaker 1: of the Pod Ali Malanenko. But the biggest change Lancaster

394
00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:12,480
Speaker 1: made to the story was changing its triumphant tone in

395
00:22:12,520 --> 00:22:17,120
Speaker 1: which Man defeats the Aliens, into a much more ambiguous one.

396
00:22:16,080 --> 00:22:19,280
Speaker 1: The one I didn't know this. The nine film ends

397
00:22:19,280 --> 00:22:23,040
Speaker 1: with a character actually saying keep watching the skies, which

398
00:22:23,080 --> 00:22:24,919
Speaker 1: is as far as I can tell, where that phrase

399
00:22:24,960 --> 00:22:27,600
Speaker 1: comes from. And that is like the that's like the

400
00:22:27,640 --> 00:22:31,720
Speaker 1: classic colde War paranoia line. Yeah. I I looked that

401
00:22:31,840 --> 00:22:33,520
Speaker 1: up as I was writing this, because I was like,

402
00:22:33,600 --> 00:22:37,320
Speaker 1: surely that can't actually be where that's from. Apparently it is,

403
00:22:38,200 --> 00:22:40,959
Speaker 1: And he told star Log Lancaster there seemed to be

404
00:22:41,040 --> 00:22:43,720
Speaker 1: only two ending in these kinds of movies, either the

405
00:22:43,760 --> 00:22:46,719
Speaker 1: Twilight Zone type of twist or the destruction of the monster.

406
00:22:47,160 --> 00:22:49,440
Speaker 1: What we have instead is like a tag. It's a

407
00:22:49,520 --> 00:22:53,159
Speaker 1: nice comment of partial trust and partial mistrust, fear and

408
00:22:53,200 --> 00:22:56,080
Speaker 1: a little bit of relief. I like the ambiguity of it.

409
00:22:56,440 --> 00:22:58,480
Speaker 1: I thought it would be interesting, after all the violence,

410
00:22:58,520 --> 00:23:01,000
Speaker 1: to have this semi nebulous little ending. I don't know,

411
00:23:01,080 --> 00:23:03,680
Speaker 1: maybe people will hate it. It may not be commercial enough.

412
00:23:04,520 --> 00:23:07,680
Speaker 1: Hold that thought. We'll get to that later. Bill wrote

413
00:23:07,680 --> 00:23:09,399
Speaker 1: the first thirty or forty pages and gave it to

414
00:23:09,440 --> 00:23:12,480
Speaker 1: me Carpenter continued. I read it and loved it, and

415
00:23:12,520 --> 00:23:14,280
Speaker 1: then he struggled with the second act and the rest

416
00:23:14,280 --> 00:23:16,119
Speaker 1: of the script. When he finished it, we went up

417
00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:18,359
Speaker 1: to northern California together for a weekend just to kind

418
00:23:18,400 --> 00:23:20,800
Speaker 1: of hang out and talk it through. So we'll get

419
00:23:20,840 --> 00:23:22,919
Speaker 1: to the human stars of this film out of the

420
00:23:22,920 --> 00:23:26,159
Speaker 1: way now before we get to the actual stars. The

421
00:23:26,240 --> 00:23:31,639
Speaker 1: Wet Puppets. Casting director Anita Dan deserves a lot of

422
00:23:31,720 --> 00:23:33,840
Speaker 1: credit for the crew she and John put together At

423
00:23:33,840 --> 00:23:37,080
Speaker 1: the outpost. David Klennan, who plays Palmer, told the Village

424
00:23:37,160 --> 00:23:41,840
Speaker 1: Voice In. Richard Maser, who played Clark, added, John's casting

425
00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:43,560
Speaker 1: has a lot to do with people he has a

426
00:23:43,600 --> 00:23:46,520
Speaker 1: good feeling about. He was never a big audition er.

427
00:23:48,160 --> 00:23:50,640
Speaker 1: In fact, Clennon and Mazer were both supposed to read

428
00:23:50,680 --> 00:23:53,120
Speaker 1: for different parts and then we're just like, ah, can

429
00:23:53,160 --> 00:23:57,600
Speaker 1: I do this guy? Instead? Carpenter was like exhales cigarette,

430
00:23:57,880 --> 00:24:01,719
Speaker 1: Oh dam whatever. Uh. Clennon taught himself to roll joints

431
00:24:01,720 --> 00:24:05,720
Speaker 1: for the movie, brought his own folding wooden weed pipe

432
00:24:05,760 --> 00:24:08,840
Speaker 1: to the set um and there's a great part. One

433
00:24:08,880 --> 00:24:11,080
Speaker 1: of the things that he's reading is Chariots of the Gods.

434
00:24:11,119 --> 00:24:13,520
Speaker 1: Do you know that book? I? I do, yes. As

435
00:24:13,560 --> 00:24:17,600
Speaker 1: a die hard alien enthusiast. That's very interesting to me.

436
00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:21,080
Speaker 1: It's the basically the error text I would say for

437
00:24:21,720 --> 00:24:26,160
Speaker 1: ancient aliens. Theories that aliens helped humanity along by giving

438
00:24:26,240 --> 00:24:29,840
Speaker 1: us technology, in ancient times. What do you think about that?

439
00:24:30,400 --> 00:24:34,239
Speaker 1: Not to totally derail this episode, Um, I mean I

440
00:24:34,280 --> 00:24:37,639
Speaker 1: actually tend to think of being like a big not

441
00:24:37,720 --> 00:24:40,240
Speaker 1: a big fan of I was gonna say yes, but

442
00:24:40,359 --> 00:24:44,280
Speaker 1: also um a big fan of spores, molds and other

443
00:24:44,320 --> 00:24:48,280
Speaker 1: fun guy. UM. I tend to think that if we

444
00:24:48,720 --> 00:24:51,879
Speaker 1: if there is life out there, it's like something horrifying

445
00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:56,640
Speaker 1: and incomprehensible to us. Like that makes sense, like the

446
00:24:56,640 --> 00:25:01,240
Speaker 1: things your take on the humanity. Yeah, yeah, it's but

447
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:03,359
Speaker 1: I mean you know, like you know, like mushrooms and

448
00:25:03,400 --> 00:25:05,440
Speaker 1: like all over the world like talk to each other,

449
00:25:05,480 --> 00:25:11,240
Speaker 1: they communicate and and yeah exactly, yeah, No, I I

450
00:25:11,280 --> 00:25:13,919
Speaker 1: don't I think if anything came down and gave us anything,

451
00:25:13,960 --> 00:25:16,800
Speaker 1: it would be like the disease of consciousness or or

452
00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:20,760
Speaker 1: or something. I mean that's what it's like. Psychedelic there's

453
00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:24,400
Speaker 1: like psychedelics authors that think like, um, you know the

454
00:25:24,480 --> 00:25:30,520
Speaker 1: leaps and human consciousness came from psychedelics, uh, which is

455
00:25:30,600 --> 00:25:34,520
Speaker 1: either a blessing or a curse. Um. It was a

456
00:25:34,560 --> 00:25:37,600
Speaker 1: book that was recommended to me by fellow I Heart

457
00:25:37,640 --> 00:25:43,280
Speaker 1: producer Taylor Chicoin called um The Illusion of Us, which

458
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:50,480
Speaker 1: basically posits that human beings were given just enough sentiance

459
00:25:50,680 --> 00:25:55,080
Speaker 1: by alien overlords to be able to efficiently mind this

460
00:25:55,240 --> 00:26:01,400
Speaker 1: planet for various precious metals that were useful for are building,

461
00:26:01,520 --> 00:26:06,239
Speaker 1: I believe, spacecrafts that tracks. And then they gave us

462
00:26:06,359 --> 00:26:09,040
Speaker 1: just a little too much and we started trying to

463
00:26:09,119 --> 00:26:13,080
Speaker 1: think on our own. But and then we created podcasts

464
00:26:13,320 --> 00:26:19,200
Speaker 1: and now we just talked. Uh. Stewart Cohen told sci

465
00:26:19,280 --> 00:26:21,879
Speaker 1: Fi that Rob Boutin, who is the guy who did

466
00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:24,199
Speaker 1: all the makeup and SFX, which we'll talk about him

467
00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:26,199
Speaker 1: in a second, he wanted to play Palmer. He had

468
00:26:26,200 --> 00:26:28,200
Speaker 1: been in the Fog. I guess that guys like also

469
00:26:28,280 --> 00:26:30,960
Speaker 1: like six. He's a very tall man and so he's

470
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:34,000
Speaker 1: the lead ghost pirate in the Fog. Uh. And he

471
00:26:34,080 --> 00:26:36,240
Speaker 1: was like, let me play Palmer, and they were like, ah,

472
00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:38,680
Speaker 1: you probably have enough on your plate, which he did.

473
00:26:39,320 --> 00:26:41,600
Speaker 1: And this is funny, I guess Stewart Cohen was talking

474
00:26:41,600 --> 00:26:44,000
Speaker 1: about like at the time, they was kind of standard

475
00:26:44,080 --> 00:26:47,480
Speaker 1: practice in these studio movies to give these like idiot

476
00:26:47,920 --> 00:26:51,840
Speaker 1: sort of third build characters in horror films and ensemble

477
00:26:51,920 --> 00:26:55,360
Speaker 1: cast too, like up and coming stand up comics. So

478
00:26:56,280 --> 00:26:59,920
Speaker 1: he audition to Jay Leno for Palmer as well as

479
00:27:00,359 --> 00:27:04,920
Speaker 1: the guy who played Roger Rabbit Charles Fleischer WHOA and

480
00:27:05,040 --> 00:27:09,960
Speaker 1: Gary shandlink. So if if you subscribe to multiverse theory,

481
00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:12,240
Speaker 1: as I often say, there's a universe somewhere in rich

482
00:27:12,480 --> 00:27:15,320
Speaker 1: a young Jay Leno got his big break by playing

483
00:27:15,520 --> 00:27:19,159
Speaker 1: the stoner researcher in The Thing. I have a much

484
00:27:19,240 --> 00:27:21,679
Speaker 1: less interesting fact toyed about the guy who did end

485
00:27:21,760 --> 00:27:25,080
Speaker 1: up playing the stoner researcher in the Thing, David clenn

486
00:27:25,080 --> 00:27:28,800
Speaker 1: And he appeared in how Ashby's Being There, the Peter

487
00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:32,440
Speaker 1: Sellers movie with the guy who played Copper in The Thing.

488
00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:37,840
Speaker 1: Richard disert, okay, whether they shared a wonder if they

489
00:27:37,840 --> 00:27:41,120
Speaker 1: shared a producer or something. Yeah, I thought I saw

490
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:43,920
Speaker 1: something about how there was some kind of how Ashby

491
00:27:43,920 --> 00:27:47,280
Speaker 1: connection with John Carpenter. Yeah, I don't really have any

492
00:27:47,359 --> 00:27:51,760
Speaker 1: follow ups with us. Thought it was weird. Well, Uh,

493
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:55,480
Speaker 1: Tommy Waits, who plays the radio operator Windows, uh, went

494
00:27:55,520 --> 00:27:58,800
Speaker 1: a little too method. He decided that his character secretly

495
00:27:58,840 --> 00:28:03,320
Speaker 1: harbord aspirations of making it in Hollywood, which he telegraphed

496
00:28:03,560 --> 00:28:05,800
Speaker 1: by the mere fact of having this guy read just

497
00:28:05,840 --> 00:28:08,479
Speaker 1: a Hollywood magazine in one scene. And then he went

498
00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:11,639
Speaker 1: a step further by deciding that this character trade would

499
00:28:11,720 --> 00:28:15,880
Speaker 1: manifest in um having him wear sunglasses indoors. And then

500
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:18,360
Speaker 1: he went another step further and told Carpenter, I want

501
00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:22,040
Speaker 1: everyone to call me Windows. That's my character's name now

502
00:28:22,320 --> 00:28:25,240
Speaker 1: is Windows. That was not the character's name in the script.

503
00:28:26,080 --> 00:28:28,080
Speaker 1: He told sci Fi. I went up to John on

504
00:28:28,119 --> 00:28:29,719
Speaker 1: the break, I said, John, from now on, I want

505
00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:32,840
Speaker 1: everyone to call me Windows. And then then the most

506
00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:38,800
Speaker 1: John Carpenter action description of all time. He looked down

507
00:28:38,800 --> 00:28:40,560
Speaker 1: at the floor, and he looked up at the ceiling

508
00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:42,680
Speaker 1: and took a long drag on the cigarette and put

509
00:28:42,680 --> 00:28:44,960
Speaker 1: the cigarette out. You could see him thinking it through,

510
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:47,000
Speaker 1: and he went, all right, everyone, from now on, Tommy

511
00:28:47,040 --> 00:28:51,200
Speaker 1: wants everyone to call him Windows. Okay. And according to

512
00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:54,959
Speaker 1: Stewart Cohen, everyone hated the name Windows. Outside of Weights

513
00:28:54,960 --> 00:28:57,080
Speaker 1: and Carpenter. The rest of the cast thought he was

514
00:28:57,120 --> 00:28:59,719
Speaker 1: being a weird prima donna trying to get this character

515
00:28:59,800 --> 00:29:05,840
Speaker 1: all his method background Meisner actor's studio, bullsh I think

516
00:29:05,880 --> 00:29:08,240
Speaker 1: it's a cool fitting name because he's a radio operator.

517
00:29:08,320 --> 00:29:11,840
Speaker 1: He's their window into the outside world. Did you also

518
00:29:11,840 --> 00:29:15,920
Speaker 1: study at the actors too? Are you an adler guy?

519
00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:19,440
Speaker 1: Jordan's had a lot of about your friends. Yes, I

520
00:29:19,480 --> 00:29:23,400
Speaker 1: did talk about rolling your instrument. Um. The runner up

521
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:26,440
Speaker 1: for that part was Brad Dorief, who would go onto

522
00:29:26,560 --> 00:29:31,840
Speaker 1: a voice Chucky in the child's Yeah, Um, you know

523
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:36,520
Speaker 1: Alexander technique guy, but you are I I went to

524
00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:40,040
Speaker 1: uh an Alexander Technique class on the advice of my girlfriend,

525
00:29:40,520 --> 00:29:42,720
Speaker 1: and um, you know, they put you on the table

526
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:48,080
Speaker 1: and they basically just try to some yeah, and you're

527
00:29:48,240 --> 00:29:50,840
Speaker 1: made of tension. The the woman had to go and

528
00:29:50,880 --> 00:29:58,760
Speaker 1: get her supervisor, which somehow made me more tense. She's like,

529
00:29:58,800 --> 00:30:03,200
Speaker 1: I've never seen anything like she. She was, in my opinion,

530
00:30:03,280 --> 00:30:08,680
Speaker 1: fairly rude about it, and I didn't go back. It

531
00:30:08,920 --> 00:30:13,959
Speaker 1: is so funny to me, like calling in, like calling

532
00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:17,080
Speaker 1: in other specialists, like you gotta see this guy. He

533
00:30:17,120 --> 00:30:20,520
Speaker 1: doesn't have a relaxed part of his entire body by

534
00:30:20,600 --> 00:30:26,280
Speaker 1: his medical science. When we were talking before we started

535
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:29,880
Speaker 1: recording that my my chest literally hurts right now from

536
00:30:29,960 --> 00:30:34,200
Speaker 1: somehow sleeping incorrectly. And I don't know why I was tense,

537
00:30:34,320 --> 00:30:36,600
Speaker 1: and I was so tense when I slept that I

538
00:30:36,640 --> 00:30:40,320
Speaker 1: somehow did something to my I was gonna suggest Alexander

539
00:30:40,360 --> 00:30:42,320
Speaker 1: technique to you, but apparently they've already you're on a

540
00:30:42,440 --> 00:30:46,360
Speaker 1: do not call list, got a I'm blacklisted, you know.

541
00:30:48,960 --> 00:30:51,560
Speaker 1: So this ensemble cast, which was actually a first for

542
00:30:51,640 --> 00:30:55,080
Speaker 1: John Carpenter, went through two weeks of rehearsals before shooting,

543
00:30:55,480 --> 00:30:58,160
Speaker 1: which sort of helped their chemistry, but it may have

544
00:30:58,200 --> 00:31:02,680
Speaker 1: also contributed to their irritability with each other. David Klennan,

545
00:31:02,760 --> 00:31:05,840
Speaker 1: the guy who played Palmer, said, we wasted hours and

546
00:31:05,920 --> 00:31:09,640
Speaker 1: hours of rehearsal time discussing metaphysics. Some of the actors

547
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:12,720
Speaker 1: were obsessed with this question, when did you become the thing?

548
00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:15,400
Speaker 1: When did the alien take over your mind and body?

549
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:17,760
Speaker 1: Do you know that you've become the thing? Or do

550
00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:19,960
Speaker 1: you just go on thinking that you're your old self.

551
00:31:20,080 --> 00:31:23,840
Speaker 1: That's a horrifying question. David Clennet, on the other hand,

552
00:31:23,920 --> 00:31:26,800
Speaker 1: quote couldn't see the point in solving the silly riddle.

553
00:31:28,600 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 1: John Carpenter, meanwhile, deeply regretted having these rehearsals. Another actor,

554
00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:35,840
Speaker 1: Richard Masner, said John said a couple of times that

555
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:39,240
Speaker 1: the worst mistake he made was having these rehearsals. It's

556
00:31:39,280 --> 00:31:42,960
Speaker 1: a process that John never repeated. Someone else said the

557
00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:45,880
Speaker 1: documentary that it was the actors took too much power

558
00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:51,000
Speaker 1: from him by having these rehearsals. The actor who played

559
00:31:51,080 --> 00:31:54,800
Speaker 1: the biologist Fuchs in the movie, Joel Paula, said, we

560
00:31:54,840 --> 00:31:57,280
Speaker 1: really established relationships with each other, and I think that

561
00:31:57,360 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 1: comes through in the film. When we finished filming the film,

562
00:32:00,120 --> 00:32:05,560
Speaker 1: m John famously said, I'll never rehearse actors again. And

563
00:32:05,600 --> 00:32:07,520
Speaker 1: this was the first movie for one of your favorite

564
00:32:07,520 --> 00:32:11,240
Speaker 1: actors in this Keith David, who plays Childs and he'd

565
00:32:11,280 --> 00:32:14,719
Speaker 1: go on to acting. John carpenters they live opposite professional

566
00:32:14,760 --> 00:32:19,480
Speaker 1: wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper. The film in which the famous

567
00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:22,840
Speaker 1: one of the best fight scenes of all time, the

568
00:32:22,880 --> 00:32:26,360
Speaker 1: alley fight that is recreated in full in that episode

569
00:32:26,360 --> 00:32:28,840
Speaker 1: of South Park. I think I've sent you that before

570
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:32,160
Speaker 1: because it's just it's I mean, I mean the Southpark

571
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:34,440
Speaker 1: clip I've seen him. I mean, yeah, no, but the

572
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:37,680
Speaker 1: actual alley fight is just them like sweating. It's just

573
00:32:37,720 --> 00:32:40,600
Speaker 1: like big beefy man. It's so it's just so funny

574
00:32:40,600 --> 00:32:43,640
Speaker 1: because it's like you know, nowadays, in like action movies,

575
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:46,120
Speaker 1: like everyone has to know like Krafmagal and everything is

576
00:32:46,160 --> 00:32:49,040
Speaker 1: like like these all these actors are just like super

577
00:32:49,080 --> 00:32:52,200
Speaker 1: good at blocking and hand to hand combat and stuff

578
00:32:52,200 --> 00:32:56,640
Speaker 1: and this is just two big beefy dudes, sweating and

579
00:32:56,720 --> 00:33:00,840
Speaker 1: out of breath in a trashed strewn alley, like just

580
00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:04,400
Speaker 1: swearing and kicking each other in the groin. It's it's

581
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:14,440
Speaker 1: a triumph to take a busby Berkeley Uh. Prior to

582
00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:18,200
Speaker 1: appearing in the thing, Keith David, who played Child's he

583
00:33:18,240 --> 00:33:20,480
Speaker 1: had been a speech therapist, and so he spent six

584
00:33:20,560 --> 00:33:24,520
Speaker 1: or seven weeks before shooting the thing doing speech training,

585
00:33:25,240 --> 00:33:27,640
Speaker 1: and then he got into a car accident the night

586
00:33:27,680 --> 00:33:30,680
Speaker 1: before shooting began and broke his hand, and he told

587
00:33:30,680 --> 00:33:32,320
Speaker 1: the village voice. By the time I had to be

588
00:33:32,360 --> 00:33:34,719
Speaker 1: at work in the morning, my hand had swollen up

589
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:37,280
Speaker 1: to the size of a boxing glove. I could see

590
00:33:37,320 --> 00:33:40,360
Speaker 1: John Carpenter and producer Larry Frankel on the set, so

591
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:42,760
Speaker 1: I tried to hide my hand behind my back because

592
00:33:42,760 --> 00:33:45,280
Speaker 1: he didn't want to be recast. But I couldn't function

593
00:33:45,360 --> 00:33:48,000
Speaker 1: because it hurts so bad. So as I walked slowly

594
00:33:48,040 --> 00:33:50,320
Speaker 1: towards them, I let my hand drop to my side.

595
00:33:50,640 --> 00:33:52,920
Speaker 1: Their eyes grew to the size of saucers when they

596
00:33:52,920 --> 00:33:56,120
Speaker 1: saw my hand. What happened to you? They immediately sent

597
00:33:56,200 --> 00:33:58,040
Speaker 1: me to the hospital, where they put two pins in

598
00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:00,200
Speaker 1: my hand. I was able to start shooting in the

599
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:01,960
Speaker 1: next couple of days, but there was still a bit

600
00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:04,480
Speaker 1: of swelling, so I put on a surgical glove to

601
00:34:04,520 --> 00:34:07,120
Speaker 1: cover my stitches, and they put on a black glove

602
00:34:07,280 --> 00:34:10,600
Speaker 1: over it that was painted to match my skin. You'll

603
00:34:10,600 --> 00:34:12,600
Speaker 1: note that you never see my left hand in the

604
00:34:12,600 --> 00:34:17,520
Speaker 1: first part of the movie. God Keith David also added

605
00:34:17,640 --> 00:34:21,920
Speaker 1: he was scared of operating the film's extremely awesome flamethrower.

606
00:34:22,400 --> 00:34:25,239
Speaker 1: He said, everybody always thinks it's so sexy and exciting,

607
00:34:25,280 --> 00:34:29,120
Speaker 1: but it was scary talking to sci fi. It wasn't napalm.

608
00:34:29,239 --> 00:34:32,279
Speaker 1: It was real ghasoline coming through a real pump and

609
00:34:32,320 --> 00:34:34,840
Speaker 1: a real gun and real fire. A slip of the

610
00:34:34,840 --> 00:34:37,880
Speaker 1: finger could cause somebody their life or certainly lots and

611
00:34:37,920 --> 00:34:41,279
Speaker 1: lots of damage. Other people that were considered to play

612
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:46,400
Speaker 1: the part of Child's were Isaac Hayes. Yeah, I didn't

613
00:34:46,400 --> 00:34:48,160
Speaker 1: realize he was in to escape from New York. Oh

614
00:34:48,160 --> 00:34:51,160
Speaker 1: my god, Carl Weathers can totally see that, and Ernie

615
00:34:51,239 --> 00:34:54,719
Speaker 1: Hudson would go on to co Star and Ghostbusters. I

616
00:34:54,719 --> 00:34:56,560
Speaker 1: thought they were gonna be a lot more flamethrowers in

617
00:34:56,600 --> 00:34:59,000
Speaker 1: my life. When I was a kid. Every every days

618
00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:02,399
Speaker 1: because there's an alien in two right, this is their flame.

619
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:04,839
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and the second one she has the flamethrow. Yeah, man,

620
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:06,960
Speaker 1: I thought I thought I was gonna have a lot

621
00:35:07,000 --> 00:35:12,640
Speaker 1: more FLA. Living in California really didn't help with that. No, no, no.

622
00:35:14,040 --> 00:35:17,680
Speaker 1: Kurt Russell, who plays the film's begrudging hero McCready, started

623
00:35:17,960 --> 00:35:21,160
Speaker 1: two of Carpenter's last three pictures at this point, the

624
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:25,120
Speaker 1: aforementioned TV movie Elvis in nineteen seventy nine Escape from

625
00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:28,439
Speaker 1: New York. When he's just doing clean Eastwood with great hair.

626
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:32,160
Speaker 1: He has great cliskin hair. It looks like a beautiful wig.

627
00:35:32,840 --> 00:35:36,400
Speaker 1: I don't give a about your war or your president.

628
00:35:37,480 --> 00:35:41,799
Speaker 1: It's so good in it. Um. Jeff Bridges, who would

629
00:35:41,800 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 1: go on to start in Starman by Carpenter, was also

630
00:35:44,640 --> 00:35:48,920
Speaker 1: considered for McCready Christopher Walkin Can you imagine that? I

631
00:35:48,960 --> 00:35:51,200
Speaker 1: think he he would be in When did When did

632
00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:52,919
Speaker 1: Dead Zone come out? He was in Dead Zone around

633
00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:55,319
Speaker 1: this time. Nick Nolty. Nick Nolty would have been been

634
00:35:55,320 --> 00:35:57,440
Speaker 1: a good McCready. He wouldn't even had to bring He

635
00:35:57,480 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 1: would have brought his own scotch to the set. Chris

636
00:35:59,680 --> 00:36:04,359
Speaker 1: christ Offerson. That would have whipped Sam Shepard Um they

637
00:36:04,400 --> 00:36:07,680
Speaker 1: were they were all unavailable or unwilling m Other meetings

638
00:36:07,680 --> 00:36:12,120
Speaker 1: were held with Tom Behringer, Ed Harris Scott glenn Um,

639
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:15,960
Speaker 1: Tom Atkins, another Carpenter eighties horror icon. He's in the Fog.

640
00:36:16,200 --> 00:36:18,600
Speaker 1: He's also an escape from New York. He's the star

641
00:36:18,680 --> 00:36:23,680
Speaker 1: of Halloween three. But funnily enough, Australian actor Jack Thompson,

642
00:36:23,719 --> 00:36:27,040
Speaker 1: who had just won a Best Actor statuette can for

643
00:36:27,640 --> 00:36:31,240
Speaker 1: Breaker Morant. Do you know that film? I don't know, Nope.

644
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:34,919
Speaker 1: H He came closest. He flew into read for Carpenter personally. Uh.

645
00:36:34,960 --> 00:36:37,840
Speaker 1: And they had decided to go with Russell and Russell

646
00:36:37,920 --> 00:36:40,600
Speaker 1: had I love this so much. Kurt Russell and John

647
00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:43,880
Speaker 1: Carpenter are like buds. And I guess before he was

648
00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:46,160
Speaker 1: even cast in this movie, he would been hanging out

649
00:36:46,200 --> 00:36:49,040
Speaker 1: with John Carpenter and like kicking ideas around for it

650
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 1: and working on the movie with him. And they are

651
00:36:52,040 --> 00:36:55,120
Speaker 1: on completely opposite sides of the political spectrum. John Carpenter

652
00:36:55,200 --> 00:36:58,919
Speaker 1: is like a committed ex hippie leftist smokes ton of weed,

653
00:36:59,120 --> 00:37:02,319
Speaker 1: and he has repeatedly said that Kurt Russell is to

654
00:37:02,480 --> 00:37:06,399
Speaker 1: the right of Attila the hun Um, but he wasn't

655
00:37:06,400 --> 00:37:09,040
Speaker 1: actually brought on the ink, wasn't drying his deal until

656
00:37:09,120 --> 00:37:11,759
Speaker 1: they were about to do second unit stuff in in Alaska,

657
00:37:12,200 --> 00:37:17,600
Speaker 1: and it took him a year to grow that beard. Um.

658
00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 1: And one day, while he was after shooting a scene

659
00:37:20,040 --> 00:37:22,759
Speaker 1: with the flamethrower, he pranked Carpenter by showing up the

660
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:25,680
Speaker 1: next day with his face and head completely covered in bandages.

661
00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:30,040
Speaker 1: Which can you imagine your star shows up? He's like

662
00:37:30,200 --> 00:37:34,480
Speaker 1: John because they had to take a bus. They had

663
00:37:34,480 --> 00:37:36,319
Speaker 1: to drive like a bus an hour and a half

664
00:37:36,320 --> 00:37:37,920
Speaker 1: from where they were staying to get up to the

665
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:40,799
Speaker 1: shooting thing. And I guess sometimes Carpenter would already be

666
00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:42,360
Speaker 1: there because he wasn't staying in the same place with

667
00:37:42,400 --> 00:37:44,600
Speaker 1: the rest of them. So imagine Kurt Russell coming down

668
00:37:44,600 --> 00:37:48,000
Speaker 1: off this bus completely swaddled and bandages the day after

669
00:37:48,000 --> 00:37:52,800
Speaker 1: shooting with a flamethrower. Uh. Kurt Russell was our captain.

670
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:56,080
Speaker 1: Peter Maloney, who played the meteorologist Bennings, told sci Fi

671
00:37:56,200 --> 00:37:59,160
Speaker 1: he was hilarious and with us all the time. There

672
00:37:59,239 --> 00:38:01,239
Speaker 1: was no separate and of him and us, the way

673
00:38:01,239 --> 00:38:03,040
Speaker 1: that there is sometimes with the star of a movie

674
00:38:03,040 --> 00:38:06,560
Speaker 1: and the rest of the cast Tommy Windows Weights, explained

675
00:38:06,560 --> 00:38:08,680
Speaker 1: that Russell got in a bit of real life heroics

676
00:38:08,680 --> 00:38:11,840
Speaker 1: before the film even started shooting. Much of this was

677
00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:15,800
Speaker 1: shot in Stewart, British Columbia in Canada, near the Alaskan border,

678
00:38:16,239 --> 00:38:18,719
Speaker 1: and during the nearly six hour bus trip to the

679
00:38:18,719 --> 00:38:21,719
Speaker 1: location the first time a white out hit and which

680
00:38:21,719 --> 00:38:24,160
Speaker 1: is a very severe snowstorm hit and the bus the

681
00:38:24,160 --> 00:38:27,719
Speaker 1: cast was traveling in nearly skidded off the road and

682
00:38:27,719 --> 00:38:31,640
Speaker 1: when Tommy said, Kurt goes okay, nobody moved. Who's in

683
00:38:31,640 --> 00:38:34,560
Speaker 1: the seat farthest from the door, I said, I am.

684
00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:36,840
Speaker 1: He goes all right, Tommy, get on your hands and

685
00:38:36,920 --> 00:38:39,600
Speaker 1: knees and crawl to the front slowly. I did it,

686
00:38:39,640 --> 00:38:41,719
Speaker 1: and I got off the bus one at a time.

687
00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:44,120
Speaker 1: He got us all off the bus. Then the weight

688
00:38:44,160 --> 00:38:46,440
Speaker 1: shifted and we got behind the bus and pushed it

689
00:38:46,480 --> 00:38:49,120
Speaker 1: back on the road and drove on safely. This was

690
00:38:49,200 --> 00:38:52,920
Speaker 1: before cell phones. There were no radios, no communications. We

691
00:38:53,000 --> 00:38:55,640
Speaker 1: arrived at five thirty am as the sun was coming up,

692
00:38:55,680 --> 00:38:58,040
Speaker 1: and there was John Carpenter at the bus stop waiting

693
00:38:58,040 --> 00:39:06,279
Speaker 1: for his men, presumably changed, smoking, presumably pissed. Yeah, as

694
00:39:06,320 --> 00:39:08,759
Speaker 1: you meditate on Matt we'll be right back with more

695
00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:21,960
Speaker 1: too much information after these messages. Now you've arrived at

696
00:39:21,960 --> 00:39:25,759
Speaker 1: the Wilford Brimley corner of this podcast. He plays the

697
00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:29,840
Speaker 1: character Blair role that was originally considered for Halloween regular

698
00:39:29,880 --> 00:39:33,760
Speaker 1: Donald pleasants, who's better known to me as blow Feld

699
00:39:34,040 --> 00:39:36,360
Speaker 1: and you only lived twice. I think that was the

700
00:39:36,400 --> 00:39:40,919
Speaker 1: only Bond movie he was in. And loomis in Halloween, right, yeah, yeah,

701
00:39:41,239 --> 00:39:45,600
Speaker 1: God evil has come to your little town. He has

702
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:49,000
Speaker 1: one spooky dude. Oh he is, yeah, yeah, and he

703
00:39:49,080 --> 00:39:52,120
Speaker 1: was just drunk all the time. Daniel Harris, who's the

704
00:39:52,640 --> 00:39:56,120
Speaker 1: who she's in four and five? I think, um, she

705
00:39:56,120 --> 00:39:58,800
Speaker 1: she's At one point, it was a long time before

706
00:39:58,800 --> 00:40:01,359
Speaker 1: I learned that what Donald hadn't his hip flask wasn't

707
00:40:01,360 --> 00:40:04,000
Speaker 1: actually medicine, and that that's why he smelled the way

708
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:07,320
Speaker 1: that he did. But he was very sweet with her apparently,

709
00:40:07,320 --> 00:40:09,480
Speaker 1: which is just funny because when you watch that fourth

710
00:40:09,560 --> 00:40:13,400
Speaker 1: Halloween movie, he's like like shaking her and he's like yeah,

711
00:40:13,680 --> 00:40:15,719
Speaker 1: like just screaming at the top of his lungs at

712
00:40:15,719 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 1: this like five year old child. I feel like he

713
00:40:19,680 --> 00:40:22,799
Speaker 1: would have tipped the movie. I can't imagine Donald pleasants

714
00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:25,560
Speaker 1: in the thing like he would have been chewing. They

715
00:40:25,600 --> 00:40:27,759
Speaker 1: would have been pulling chunks of the scenery out from

716
00:40:27,800 --> 00:40:31,080
Speaker 1: his teeth in between takes. I mean, he's yeah, there's

717
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:35,120
Speaker 1: He's not a subtle man. So they went with Wilford Brimley,

718
00:40:35,239 --> 00:40:38,080
Speaker 1: who takes subtlety to the level of a martial art.

719
00:40:38,120 --> 00:40:41,359
Speaker 1: I would say. Actor Richard Masser has a great line

720
00:40:41,360 --> 00:40:44,040
Speaker 1: about Brimley that he said to The Village Voice. One day.

721
00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:46,880
Speaker 1: We were sitting around talking about an upcoming scene and

722
00:40:46,920 --> 00:40:50,120
Speaker 1: Wilford Brimley is just sitting there chuckling. I said what

723
00:40:50,560 --> 00:40:52,960
Speaker 1: and he said, you guys still don't get it. This

724
00:40:53,000 --> 00:40:58,440
Speaker 1: movie isn't about us. It's about the rubber guy, the

725
00:40:58,520 --> 00:41:02,480
Speaker 1: wet puppets. If you will us. Brimley himself told the

726
00:41:02,520 --> 00:41:04,879
Speaker 1: Village Voice, I didn't go to the premiere of the Thing.

727
00:41:05,239 --> 00:41:07,399
Speaker 1: I didn't see it in a theater. I finally saw

728
00:41:07,440 --> 00:41:09,400
Speaker 1: the movie in my home and I thought it was

729
00:41:09,440 --> 00:41:12,640
Speaker 1: really good. Apparently this was about twenty five years after

730
00:41:12,680 --> 00:41:18,120
Speaker 1: Brimley said the film quote stunk in star Log In Yeah,

731
00:41:18,160 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to find that one the star Log

732
00:41:20,440 --> 00:41:23,719
Speaker 1: Like a hundred and thirty issues of Star Logger on

733
00:41:24,120 --> 00:41:26,759
Speaker 1: archive dot org. So funk tip for you sci fi

734
00:41:26,840 --> 00:41:30,880
Speaker 1: dorks out there, red really good quality scans of almost

735
00:41:31,840 --> 00:41:34,200
Speaker 1: almost all of star Log, but not that one, which

736
00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:36,640
Speaker 1: killed me because I really wanted to read Wilford Brimley

737
00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:43,160
Speaker 1: talking about the thing and also Cocoony like I think

738
00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:46,160
Speaker 1: he did. I think he liked yeah, um, but I didn't.

739
00:41:48,000 --> 00:41:54,600
Speaker 1: I thought it's stunk you, Wilford Brimley. After filming the

740
00:41:54,680 --> 00:41:58,239
Speaker 1: opening of the film in a Juno ice field, more

741
00:41:58,360 --> 00:42:01,320
Speaker 1: as you called it, civilized wooing began on the Universal

742
00:42:01,360 --> 00:42:06,000
Speaker 1: back lot. Director of photography Dean Kundy, your personal hero boy,

743
00:42:06,440 --> 00:42:09,440
Speaker 1: told star Log Magazine. One of our first thoughts was

744
00:42:09,480 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 1: to build the sets inside a big ice house, but

745
00:42:12,719 --> 00:42:15,360
Speaker 1: we couldn't find one big enough. Then we decided to

746
00:42:15,400 --> 00:42:19,120
Speaker 1: refrigerate the stages on the Universal lot. We had a

747
00:42:19,160 --> 00:42:22,240
Speaker 1: couple of experts figure out the humidity to temperature ratios,

748
00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:25,480
Speaker 1: and we brought in as many huge portable air conditioners

749
00:42:25,520 --> 00:42:28,279
Speaker 1: as the studio had. We sealed off the stages and

750
00:42:28,320 --> 00:42:31,560
Speaker 1: built huge humidifiers and Mrs Dad moisture to the air

751
00:42:32,239 --> 00:42:34,800
Speaker 1: and I guess this was to create the effect of

752
00:42:35,160 --> 00:42:42,040
Speaker 1: a frozen tundra. The aforementioned freezing icy tundra wasn't really

753
00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:44,080
Speaker 1: a problem for the actors on the sets because they

754
00:42:44,080 --> 00:42:47,400
Speaker 1: were in wardrobe, but it was nearly a hundred degrees outside,

755
00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:49,560
Speaker 1: and going in and out of the cold set in

756
00:42:49,600 --> 00:42:51,920
Speaker 1: the hot exterior meant that all the actors in this

757
00:42:52,040 --> 00:42:55,080
Speaker 1: environment got sick. Yeah, it's as anyone would tell you.

758
00:42:55,120 --> 00:42:56,920
Speaker 1: It's not being in one temperature for too long. It's

759
00:42:56,960 --> 00:43:01,120
Speaker 1: the constant extremes. Producer Stuart and told sci Fi the

760
00:43:01,200 --> 00:43:04,000
Speaker 1: first day I got sick, it was thirty seven degrees

761
00:43:04,040 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 1: inside at a hundred and six outside. The crew inside

762
00:43:07,239 --> 00:43:09,560
Speaker 1: wearing park is all day. It was okay. I was

763
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:11,719
Speaker 1: going in and out, throwing my jacket off and then

764
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:13,600
Speaker 1: throwing it back, and I came down with the flu

765
00:43:13,719 --> 00:43:15,640
Speaker 1: by the end of the first day. I was not

766
00:43:15,680 --> 00:43:18,480
Speaker 1: the only one, though. The crew ended up trading colds

767
00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:22,640
Speaker 1: and flew back and forth ever since day one. Uh.

768
00:43:22,680 --> 00:43:26,440
Speaker 1: Probably my favorite anecdote from this entire making of occurred

769
00:43:26,480 --> 00:43:29,080
Speaker 1: on the Universal backlot when the production attempted to build

770
00:43:29,520 --> 00:43:33,360
Speaker 1: what became known by one crew member as the forty

771
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:37,279
Speaker 1: dollar Mistake, and this is basically an artificial version of

772
00:43:37,320 --> 00:43:41,320
Speaker 1: the Arctic wilderness. There were sheets of Muslim hundred pound

773
00:43:41,320 --> 00:43:44,080
Speaker 1: bags of gypsum and fiber glass rocks, along with about

774
00:43:44,080 --> 00:43:46,040
Speaker 1: three and a half weeks of work when to the

775
00:43:46,080 --> 00:43:49,680
Speaker 1: creation of this faux Arctic wilderness, which was then used

776
00:43:49,719 --> 00:43:53,080
Speaker 1: for three half scale remote control helicopters and a shot.

777
00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:56,440
Speaker 1: But one of these remote control helicopters bumped into a

778
00:43:56,520 --> 00:44:00,719
Speaker 1: rock and crashed, the second exploded by at accident, and

779
00:44:00,760 --> 00:44:04,600
Speaker 1: the third didn't fly correctly, and one crew member told

780
00:44:04,640 --> 00:44:09,359
Speaker 1: Sci Fi Stewart Cohen does not like to relate that story. Yeah,

781
00:44:09,400 --> 00:44:11,040
Speaker 1: you know, you know it was a good shoot. When

782
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:14,240
Speaker 1: someone just has a whole I think called the mistake.

783
00:44:15,600 --> 00:44:17,759
Speaker 1: Uh So, as we mentioned, the exteriors were shot in

784
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:21,320
Speaker 1: British Columbia, and to get to where they built them,

785
00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:23,839
Speaker 1: where they built this on top of a glacier, they

786
00:44:23,880 --> 00:44:27,439
Speaker 1: where they built the research outposts, set cast and crew

787
00:44:27,520 --> 00:44:29,720
Speaker 1: had to take a bus an hour and a half

788
00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:32,200
Speaker 1: each day to get from the town where they were

789
00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:35,560
Speaker 1: staying Stewart up to the up to the set um.

790
00:44:35,640 --> 00:44:38,040
Speaker 1: John Carpenter said, I stayed in a nice old hotel

791
00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:40,279
Speaker 1: and Stewart, but the crew had to stay on a

792
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:43,040
Speaker 1: harbor barge. Luckily I didn't have to put up with that.

793
00:44:44,239 --> 00:44:47,040
Speaker 1: This is for the Village Voice. UM Richard Maser said.

794
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:49,759
Speaker 1: The crew stayed on the Portland Canal, which is the

795
00:44:49,800 --> 00:44:54,280
Speaker 1: longest fiord in North America. Stewart has the highest snowfall

796
00:44:54,280 --> 00:44:57,480
Speaker 1: in all of North America, like ninet of snow on average.

797
00:44:57,680 --> 00:44:59,120
Speaker 1: And at the end of this canal where a couple

798
00:44:59,120 --> 00:45:02,319
Speaker 1: of big residential barges that had thirty rooms apiece. And

799
00:45:02,360 --> 00:45:04,880
Speaker 1: we're typically used for mining crews. But we were there

800
00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:07,399
Speaker 1: in December, so the hunters and myers had cleared out

801
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:09,680
Speaker 1: for the winter. We were the idiots who came up

802
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:14,200
Speaker 1: to shoot a movie. It was twenty degrees below zero

803
00:45:14,320 --> 00:45:18,880
Speaker 1: there and the shoot obviously was totally dependent on the weather.

804
00:45:19,520 --> 00:45:21,799
Speaker 1: Carpenter continued to The Village Voice. We lost a lot

805
00:45:21,800 --> 00:45:23,400
Speaker 1: of time because we would get white out so that

806
00:45:23,440 --> 00:45:25,920
Speaker 1: we couldn't shoot in Sometimes we couldn't even leave the

807
00:45:25,960 --> 00:45:29,160
Speaker 1: base camp. He continued to Sci Fi. We were all

808
00:45:29,200 --> 00:45:31,600
Speaker 1: in it together. It was not an easy film to make.

809
00:45:31,920 --> 00:45:34,640
Speaker 1: We had to fight the elements. It was rough, and

810
00:45:34,680 --> 00:45:37,160
Speaker 1: since we were all in it together, we all bonded.

811
00:45:37,560 --> 00:45:41,279
Speaker 1: Everybody bonded. Do you remember the episode Weird Next Files Guy?

812
00:45:41,440 --> 00:45:44,840
Speaker 1: You know, surprisingly no no, I never really there's a

813
00:45:45,760 --> 00:45:47,640
Speaker 1: I went back and watched all of the Monster of

814
00:45:47,680 --> 00:45:49,759
Speaker 1: the Week episodes because I have no patience for the

815
00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:53,839
Speaker 1: larger conspiracy theory, like the larger longer I just want

816
00:45:53,920 --> 00:45:56,560
Speaker 1: the ones that have like the good wet puppets and

817
00:45:56,719 --> 00:45:59,279
Speaker 1: guys and rubber suits. Uh. And there's one that is

818
00:45:59,440 --> 00:46:02,440
Speaker 1: very obvious, a lee just a thing rip. It's called ice,

819
00:46:02,640 --> 00:46:05,960
Speaker 1: and the homage went so far that they reused exterior

820
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:10,479
Speaker 1: shots from the thing in this uh X Files episode. UM.

821
00:46:10,520 --> 00:46:14,440
Speaker 1: Another element of bonding alcohol. Uh. There's a town in Alaska,

822
00:46:14,520 --> 00:46:17,200
Speaker 1: two miles from Stewart called Hyder, which at the time

823
00:46:17,239 --> 00:46:21,520
Speaker 1: had a permanent population of fifteen people and seven bars.

824
00:46:22,600 --> 00:46:25,440
Speaker 1: This is because alcohol in Canada was more expensive and

825
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:28,920
Speaker 1: more regulated than the US, so fisherman, hunters, and miners

826
00:46:28,920 --> 00:46:32,400
Speaker 1: and Stewart would walk the two miles in twenty degree

827
00:46:32,400 --> 00:46:36,759
Speaker 1: below whether two Hyder to get drunk. Richard Maser told

828
00:46:36,760 --> 00:46:38,600
Speaker 1: the Voice about a ritual that the cast went through

829
00:46:38,640 --> 00:46:41,480
Speaker 1: called Hyder Rizing, which took place at a bar in

830
00:46:41,520 --> 00:46:44,120
Speaker 1: town called the Hyder. In we get to the hyder In,

831
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:46,920
Speaker 1: We're the only two people there, Kurt Russell says to

832
00:46:46,920 --> 00:46:49,760
Speaker 1: the bartender, my friend here needs to get hyder rized.

833
00:46:50,280 --> 00:46:52,840
Speaker 1: The guy brings this little four ounce juice glass and

834
00:46:52,880 --> 00:46:55,200
Speaker 1: he fills it with white liquid. You have to blow

835
00:46:55,239 --> 00:46:57,239
Speaker 1: it back in one shot and then turn it over

836
00:46:57,320 --> 00:47:00,000
Speaker 1: on the bar. Then the bartender rubs the glass around

837
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:02,239
Speaker 1: un on the bar, picks up the glass and lights

838
00:47:02,239 --> 00:47:05,640
Speaker 1: it on fire. The glass explodes instantly because it was

839
00:47:06,080 --> 00:47:09,600
Speaker 1: full of pure grain alcohol. Your head explodes after the

840
00:47:09,600 --> 00:47:13,760
Speaker 1: booze hits your stomach. Your face drunk almost immediately, especially

841
00:47:13,800 --> 00:47:15,960
Speaker 1: if you've been working all day and haven't eaten in

842
00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:18,760
Speaker 1: several hours. Did you find a yelp for the hider

843
00:47:18,800 --> 00:47:21,960
Speaker 1: in I've on I'm on trip Advisor and they have

844
00:47:22,040 --> 00:47:24,200
Speaker 1: a speech bubble on the wall for photo ops that

845
00:47:24,239 --> 00:47:28,360
Speaker 1: says I've been hide rorized. That's amazing. You know the

846
00:47:28,400 --> 00:47:30,560
Speaker 1: other thing about it is that they were drinking all

847
00:47:30,560 --> 00:47:34,200
Speaker 1: this ever clear and stuff. Because I remember John carveron

848
00:47:34,960 --> 00:47:36,440
Speaker 1: there was a quote in here that didn't put in

849
00:47:36,440 --> 00:47:38,120
Speaker 1: where he was like he was upset that they couldn't

850
00:47:38,160 --> 00:47:42,400
Speaker 1: get beer because it freezes, right, So the only thing

851
00:47:42,440 --> 00:47:47,760
Speaker 1: that you're the only alcohol was hard liquor. Keith David,

852
00:47:47,880 --> 00:47:51,040
Speaker 1: who played Child's told the voice if I don't drink today.

853
00:47:51,080 --> 00:47:54,640
Speaker 1: It's because I drank enough then. And uh Weights who

854
00:47:54,640 --> 00:47:58,200
Speaker 1: played Windows is now a recovering alcoholic told sci Fi

855
00:47:58,880 --> 00:48:01,239
Speaker 1: that became a hazing or a ritual that we put

856
00:48:01,239 --> 00:48:03,360
Speaker 1: ourselves through. We did a lot of drinking and a

857
00:48:03,440 --> 00:48:06,600
Speaker 1: lot of partying. It was burning the candle at both ends,

858
00:48:06,640 --> 00:48:09,040
Speaker 1: staying up all night and having to shoot all day.

859
00:48:09,080 --> 00:48:11,360
Speaker 1: It was the eighties, man, it was a different time,

860
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:16,520
Speaker 1: and the locals were an eccentric bunch. On the film's

861
00:48:16,600 --> 00:48:19,799
Speaker 1: DVD commentary, John Carpenter recalls that the pilot they used

862
00:48:19,880 --> 00:48:25,840
Speaker 1: for shooting in Alaska offered the Crashes helicopter for money.

863
00:48:27,120 --> 00:48:30,319
Speaker 1: I'll take it down if you if you want an

864
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:36,120
Speaker 1: extra extra fifty bucks. Tommy Waits is not Tom Waits,

865
00:48:36,160 --> 00:48:38,480
Speaker 1: but Tom Tommy Waits who played Windows. He was a

866
00:48:38,520 --> 00:48:41,920
Speaker 1: member of the actor's studio. Oh okay, so that they

867
00:48:41,960 --> 00:48:47,319
Speaker 1: met guy. Yeah, um oh. He was in a Man

868
00:48:47,440 --> 00:48:49,759
Speaker 1: at Play. He was in American Buffalo, and that's when

869
00:48:49,840 --> 00:48:54,200
Speaker 1: Kurt Russell and John Carpenter saw him. Oh wow, supposedly,

870
00:48:54,880 --> 00:48:59,320
Speaker 1: h still think it's good. Then he actually met Tom Waits,

871
00:48:59,680 --> 00:49:02,000
Speaker 1: and that's when he decided to start going by Tom

872
00:49:02,080 --> 00:49:06,520
Speaker 1: g waits to differentiate himself. It's funny to tell if

873
00:49:07,640 --> 00:49:09,680
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm reading this guy Wikipedia right now because

874
00:49:09,680 --> 00:49:11,320
Speaker 1: he was also in the Warriors. When I just googled

875
00:49:11,360 --> 00:49:12,600
Speaker 1: him and I was like, oh, yeah, he's one of

876
00:49:12,640 --> 00:49:15,799
Speaker 1: the Warriors. I completely forgot about that because everybody in

877
00:49:15,800 --> 00:49:19,319
Speaker 1: the Warriors has like dark hair and looks the same

878
00:49:19,360 --> 00:49:21,960
Speaker 1: in those in those vests. But yeah, this guy was

879
00:49:23,400 --> 00:49:26,719
Speaker 1: just going down. This guy you you gott you had

880
00:49:26,760 --> 00:49:30,600
Speaker 1: stuff to do. I'm sorry, I don't my boy. Dean

881
00:49:31,600 --> 00:49:34,919
Speaker 1: love Dean Condy. I love pan division, I love anamorphic,

882
00:49:35,480 --> 00:49:40,480
Speaker 1: anamorphic lenses. I love wide shot compositions. Jean Condy was

883
00:49:40,520 --> 00:49:42,640
Speaker 1: one of the first guys who I actually like saw

884
00:49:42,840 --> 00:49:45,920
Speaker 1: as like a I was like, oh, I like cinematography.

885
00:49:46,239 --> 00:49:49,200
Speaker 1: It's interesting to me. It's like him and Roger Deakins

886
00:49:49,400 --> 00:49:51,880
Speaker 1: and use Beski. He's not the guy who does all

887
00:49:52,040 --> 00:49:56,200
Speaker 1: in your reduce stuff of Revenant in like natural light.

888
00:49:56,320 --> 00:49:58,000
Speaker 1: Do you ever read about that? I remember it was

889
00:49:58,040 --> 00:50:00,160
Speaker 1: like him, and like, I remember reading about that after

890
00:50:00,200 --> 00:50:03,399
Speaker 1: reading about like Barry Linden, because didn't Kubrick do all

891
00:50:03,440 --> 00:50:06,719
Speaker 1: Barry Linden with natural lighting or most of it? Yeah? Yeah,

892
00:50:06,760 --> 00:50:09,560
Speaker 1: And then the who did hateful late or they had

893
00:50:09,600 --> 00:50:12,600
Speaker 1: to go and actually find like the old they found

894
00:50:12,640 --> 00:50:14,880
Speaker 1: like antique culture pan of visions they shot at the

895
00:50:14,880 --> 00:50:18,279
Speaker 1: seventy millimeters, so they found like literal old antique pan

896
00:50:18,320 --> 00:50:20,680
Speaker 1: of vision seventy millimeters to to shoot that and they

897
00:50:20,800 --> 00:50:22,920
Speaker 1: made ninety percent of that movie, you know, in a

898
00:50:22,920 --> 00:50:27,640
Speaker 1: one room cabin. Uh. What episode did Dean Cundy come

899
00:50:27,719 --> 00:50:30,480
Speaker 1: up in? Because I remember, like we've we've talked about

900
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:33,800
Speaker 1: him on here and you've talked was a Jurassic Park. Uh,

901
00:50:33,960 --> 00:50:35,800
Speaker 1: I don't I know He's We didn't do an episode

902
00:50:35,800 --> 00:50:38,600
Speaker 1: a Dreassic Park. I'm trying to remember, Honey shrunk the kids.

903
00:50:39,680 --> 00:50:41,439
Speaker 1: I know I did bring him up at some point.

904
00:50:41,600 --> 00:50:44,360
Speaker 1: He worked closely with Rob Boutine to figure out the

905
00:50:44,360 --> 00:50:46,520
Speaker 1: best angles and lighting to shoot all the stuff. He

906
00:50:46,560 --> 00:50:49,120
Speaker 1: says Rob was very sensitive about his creations because he

907
00:50:49,120 --> 00:50:51,560
Speaker 1: didn't want them to look fake. So he was like, I,

908
00:50:51,680 --> 00:50:54,200
Speaker 1: you know, I have suggestions about the angles and stuff.

909
00:50:54,239 --> 00:50:56,880
Speaker 1: But um, one of the ideas that they had they

910
00:50:56,880 --> 00:51:01,000
Speaker 1: wanted to change the speed of the camera during the sequences. Uh.

911
00:51:01,320 --> 00:51:05,000
Speaker 1: Coundry was talking to American Cinematographer magazine. He said, I

912
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:07,560
Speaker 1: wanted to vary the camera speed during the transformations, because

913
00:51:07,640 --> 00:51:09,440
Speaker 1: Rob and I thought they might be more interesting if

914
00:51:09,440 --> 00:51:11,719
Speaker 1: we didn't shoot them in regular speed. We went through

915
00:51:11,719 --> 00:51:14,120
Speaker 1: a couple of iterations trying to vary the speed from

916
00:51:14,200 --> 00:51:16,720
Speaker 1: very fast motion to slow motion all in one shot.

917
00:51:17,120 --> 00:51:19,160
Speaker 1: And of course the technical challenge was that as you

918
00:51:19,239 --> 00:51:22,400
Speaker 1: vary the frame rate, the exposure changes. As you increase

919
00:51:22,480 --> 00:51:25,240
Speaker 1: the speed to slow the image down, everything gets darker

920
00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:28,000
Speaker 1: because the negative is seeing less light. We worked with

921
00:51:28,040 --> 00:51:30,000
Speaker 1: Panavision and a couple of other companies to try and

922
00:51:30,040 --> 00:51:33,360
Speaker 1: develop a camera that would automatically adjust the exposure, and

923
00:51:33,400 --> 00:51:36,360
Speaker 1: we got kind of close, but we never succeeded. Now,

924
00:51:36,480 --> 00:51:40,320
Speaker 1: of course, you know it's all computer controlled stuff. Another

925
00:51:40,320 --> 00:51:42,799
Speaker 1: thing that they worked with Panavision on uh he told

926
00:51:42,840 --> 00:51:44,759
Speaker 1: this is him talking to Sci Fi now, is that

927
00:51:44,840 --> 00:51:48,759
Speaker 1: they replaced the usual lubricant that they used in these

928
00:51:48,800 --> 00:51:51,799
Speaker 1: cameras with um an anti freezing agent because they were

929
00:51:51,800 --> 00:51:54,680
Speaker 1: shooting in these temperatures. And he said that we also

930
00:51:54,719 --> 00:51:58,480
Speaker 1: had a warming system mounted on the for the magazine

931
00:51:58,480 --> 00:52:00,239
Speaker 1: for the film magazine, on top of the came that

932
00:52:00,280 --> 00:52:03,120
Speaker 1: held all the film to keep the film from freezing

933
00:52:03,200 --> 00:52:07,400
Speaker 1: and cracking and buckling. But they couldn't get too warm,

934
00:52:07,760 --> 00:52:10,640
Speaker 1: because then if you brought the cameras inside during breaks,

935
00:52:10,680 --> 00:52:13,520
Speaker 1: the lenses would fog up because of the condensation because

936
00:52:13,560 --> 00:52:15,680
Speaker 1: of the temperature shifts, and you have to take them apart.

937
00:52:16,000 --> 00:52:18,680
Speaker 1: And he said, pretty quickly, we decided that the room

938
00:52:18,719 --> 00:52:20,839
Speaker 1: with the camera work always had to say the same

939
00:52:20,880 --> 00:52:24,720
Speaker 1: temperature as outside, which was below freezing. So the camera

940
00:52:24,760 --> 00:52:27,480
Speaker 1: assistance never got a break to go into the warmth

941
00:52:27,560 --> 00:52:29,920
Speaker 1: while they were working. They would go into the below

942
00:52:30,000 --> 00:52:32,520
Speaker 1: freezing camera room and work in their big parks and

943
00:52:32,560 --> 00:52:36,799
Speaker 1: gloves and everything. Um. Candy started in pre production with this.

944
00:52:36,880 --> 00:52:39,880
Speaker 1: He started when they were basically in the story boarding phase.

945
00:52:39,960 --> 00:52:42,120
Speaker 1: He said, I suggested this is he's talking to star

946
00:52:42,160 --> 00:52:46,160
Speaker 1: log in. He said, I suggested put in ceilings on

947
00:52:46,200 --> 00:52:48,920
Speaker 1: all the sets and bringing the pipes into the frame

948
00:52:49,000 --> 00:52:52,280
Speaker 1: line to increase the sense of clustrophobia. We lit whole

949
00:52:52,360 --> 00:52:56,759
Speaker 1: scenes with just the flares the actors carried around. Yeah,

950
00:52:56,880 --> 00:53:01,320
Speaker 1: can you imagine that? Just uh. And he's one of

951
00:53:01,320 --> 00:53:02,719
Speaker 1: the people who wanted to shoot it in black and

952
00:53:02,719 --> 00:53:05,680
Speaker 1: white earlier. Um. And so when the studio balked at that,

953
00:53:05,719 --> 00:53:09,440
Speaker 1: he said, well, we'll just desaturate everything. Um. And so

954
00:53:09,520 --> 00:53:11,840
Speaker 1: he said, We ended up using color very selectively, with

955
00:53:11,880 --> 00:53:14,680
Speaker 1: the thing being the most colorful object in the entire movie.

956
00:53:15,040 --> 00:53:18,479
Speaker 1: We painted the inside of the station in shades of gray, uh,

957
00:53:18,560 --> 00:53:20,640
Speaker 1: testing the paint colors to get one that was the

958
00:53:20,680 --> 00:53:25,160
Speaker 1: most neutral. We repainted props gray, and even the wardrobe

959
00:53:25,160 --> 00:53:27,560
Speaker 1: was coordinated to be in somber colors of dark blue,

960
00:53:27,880 --> 00:53:31,319
Speaker 1: gray and brown. Whatever we wanted to give color to

961
00:53:31,360 --> 00:53:33,439
Speaker 1: a sequence, I did it with lights. So that's when

962
00:53:33,440 --> 00:53:36,920
Speaker 1: you get the flares and and um fire and everything.

963
00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:41,000
Speaker 1: And because they're shooting in anamorphic in these pan division lenses,

964
00:53:41,080 --> 00:53:43,879
Speaker 1: you get that really beautiful lens flare and everything, which

965
00:53:43,920 --> 00:53:46,600
Speaker 1: is of course how you know now it's become a

966
00:53:46,640 --> 00:53:49,040
Speaker 1: punchline because guys like J. J. Abrams when they were

967
00:53:49,040 --> 00:53:52,440
Speaker 1: shooting Star Trek was just like inserting digital lens flare

968
00:53:52,440 --> 00:53:55,560
Speaker 1: and everything because they were not shooting with you where

969
00:53:55,560 --> 00:53:59,000
Speaker 1: you get natural lens flare from the lenses. But no,

970
00:53:59,120 --> 00:54:01,960
Speaker 1: he was like, no, just do it and post. I

971
00:54:02,040 --> 00:54:04,520
Speaker 1: have a question for you, and the answer might just

972
00:54:04,560 --> 00:54:08,640
Speaker 1: be because it looks cool. Why did all the characters

973
00:54:08,640 --> 00:54:11,600
Speaker 1: in the movie when they went out into the snow

974
00:54:11,920 --> 00:54:15,680
Speaker 1: and the winds carry these flares for light as opposed

975
00:54:15,760 --> 00:54:20,279
Speaker 1: to I don't know flashlights because it looked cool. I

976
00:54:20,360 --> 00:54:23,000
Speaker 1: just that's my figure. I was sure if something about

977
00:54:23,040 --> 00:54:28,319
Speaker 1: how like flashlights didn't work a fla, that might be it.

978
00:54:28,400 --> 00:54:30,719
Speaker 1: That might be it. But those were real flares. On

979
00:54:30,800 --> 00:54:33,719
Speaker 1: the DVD commentary, they talked about burning themselves on all

980
00:54:33,760 --> 00:54:36,799
Speaker 1: the time. And when I was watching that and doing

981
00:54:36,800 --> 00:54:39,040
Speaker 1: the when they do that when he's doing the scene

982
00:54:39,160 --> 00:54:41,080
Speaker 1: of mc cready, when Kurt Russell's doing the scene when

983
00:54:41,120 --> 00:54:42,840
Speaker 1: he comes back in and he's holding the flare up

984
00:54:42,880 --> 00:54:45,640
Speaker 1: to the to the dynamite, he talked about having to

985
00:54:45,719 --> 00:54:48,040
Speaker 1: rush through that monologue so he would burn his hands

986
00:54:48,080 --> 00:54:50,000
Speaker 1: on it, having to time it out to the length

987
00:54:50,160 --> 00:54:53,640
Speaker 1: that he had in the flare. Um. Another shout out

988
00:54:53,680 --> 00:54:58,520
Speaker 1: to the Wolf Dog actor Jed Uh simply an incredible

989
00:54:58,520 --> 00:55:02,759
Speaker 1: screen presence in this home. Um that dog man, That

990
00:55:02,800 --> 00:55:08,000
Speaker 1: dog hit his marks like a champ. Um. Is he

991
00:55:08,080 --> 00:55:11,560
Speaker 1: the one that tears himself into four yes? Because he

992
00:55:11,680 --> 00:55:15,239
Speaker 1: is um. He went on to uh start in both

993
00:55:15,280 --> 00:55:20,200
Speaker 1: of the White Fang movies, Um yeah, and the hallway

994
00:55:20,280 --> 00:55:23,240
Speaker 1: walk that he does took only four or five takes,

995
00:55:23,400 --> 00:55:26,479
Speaker 1: which is uh better than most actors. I was gonna

996
00:55:26,520 --> 00:55:29,520
Speaker 1: say yeah, Richard Maser told The Village Voice. During the

997
00:55:29,560 --> 00:55:32,680
Speaker 1: rehearsal period, dog trainer Clint Roe brought Jed the wolf

998
00:55:32,760 --> 00:55:34,480
Speaker 1: dog in to get him used to the sound and

999
00:55:34,520 --> 00:55:36,920
Speaker 1: smell of people. He was a young dog, so he

1000
00:55:36,960 --> 00:55:41,680
Speaker 1: was very jumpy. Same buddy, I wanted to smell of

1001
00:55:41,800 --> 00:55:45,440
Speaker 1: people too. Yeah. I worked with Jed and Clint for

1002
00:55:45,440 --> 00:55:47,439
Speaker 1: an hour on the first day of rehearsals and every

1003
00:55:47,480 --> 00:55:50,040
Speaker 1: day after that. It worked out very well. During shooting

1004
00:55:50,040 --> 00:55:52,440
Speaker 1: to Jed would come and stand next to me, and

1005
00:55:52,520 --> 00:55:54,560
Speaker 1: he wouldn't do that thing that dogs do where they

1006
00:55:54,560 --> 00:55:57,040
Speaker 1: look back at the handlers. If you watch the scenes

1007
00:55:57,080 --> 00:55:59,280
Speaker 1: between us, he's never looking at my hand for a treat.

1008
00:55:59,760 --> 00:56:02,440
Speaker 1: He's just there with me. He's making his own choices.

1009
00:56:03,160 --> 00:56:06,200
Speaker 1: That's what makes his performance so spooky. He talks about

1010
00:56:06,239 --> 00:56:09,160
Speaker 1: in the in the documentary, Uh, the thing takes shape

1011
00:56:09,160 --> 00:56:12,880
Speaker 1: about how because he was part wolf, the dog wouldn't

1012
00:56:12,920 --> 00:56:15,680
Speaker 1: like whimper or like mark or cry. He wasn't his

1013
00:56:15,760 --> 00:56:18,920
Speaker 1: vocal and so he was like the trainer, this guy

1014
00:56:19,000 --> 00:56:21,200
Speaker 1: Clinton Roe was like, yeah, so you know, you just

1015
00:56:21,239 --> 00:56:23,759
Speaker 1: gotta watch out for when he stares a certain way,

1016
00:56:23,800 --> 00:56:33,400
Speaker 1: because that means he's getting upset, so they also say yeah. Um.

1017
00:56:33,440 --> 00:56:36,439
Speaker 1: Peter Maloney, who plays Bennings, needed extra time with Jed

1018
00:56:36,520 --> 00:56:40,359
Speaker 1: because he was afraid of dogs and Jed was enormous. Uh.

1019
00:56:40,400 --> 00:56:42,320
Speaker 1: He said. When Jed stood up and put his paws

1020
00:56:42,320 --> 00:56:44,600
Speaker 1: on my shoulder to lick my face, he was taller

1021
00:56:44,600 --> 00:56:47,799
Speaker 1: than me. I was pretty freaked out by having him do. That.

1022
00:56:48,360 --> 00:56:51,440
Speaker 1: Is Bennings the dog handler in the movie. Uh No,

1023
00:56:51,640 --> 00:56:54,319
Speaker 1: that's uh, that's I think that's Richard Maser. Bennings is

1024
00:56:54,360 --> 00:56:57,040
Speaker 1: the guy who runs out in the in the snow

1025
00:56:57,360 --> 00:57:00,799
Speaker 1: with Um with the big finger loves and then looks

1026
00:57:00,840 --> 00:57:06,240
Speaker 1: at the camera and does there like uh yeah, yeah, yeah.

1027
00:57:06,520 --> 00:57:10,719
Speaker 1: Once again, they're all just guys in parkas. I was

1028
00:57:10,760 --> 00:57:13,040
Speaker 1: hoping for more interesting stuff about how they got those

1029
00:57:13,280 --> 00:57:16,280
Speaker 1: those sounds. It's it's just like it's they just pitch

1030
00:57:16,800 --> 00:57:18,880
Speaker 1: like very speed at a bunch of stuff to get

1031
00:57:18,880 --> 00:57:23,480
Speaker 1: those sounds. So some of the transformations and visual effects

1032
00:57:23,480 --> 00:57:26,439
Speaker 1: were included into the script. Bill Lancaster told star Log,

1033
00:57:26,960 --> 00:57:30,080
Speaker 1: Basically I just wrote with no holds barred, uh, and

1034
00:57:30,080 --> 00:57:33,280
Speaker 1: then other scenes he kind of left vague and uh

1035
00:57:33,520 --> 00:57:36,720
Speaker 1: fleshed out once the pun intended. Once the effects team

1036
00:57:36,760 --> 00:57:40,000
Speaker 1: got on Robbot team is doing the makeup. Effects. Guy

1037
00:57:40,080 --> 00:57:43,640
Speaker 1: named Roy arbor Gas was doing all the mechanical armatures

1038
00:57:43,680 --> 00:57:47,280
Speaker 1: and animatronic stuff, and an artist named Michael Plugue, who

1039
00:57:47,320 --> 00:57:50,520
Speaker 1: is a comic book artist, had done all the storyboards,

1040
00:57:50,760 --> 00:57:55,080
Speaker 1: and they all sat together and basically decided what was feasible. Uh.

1041
00:57:55,160 --> 00:57:58,040
Speaker 1: Lancaster told Starlog we'd put our ideas together and they'd

1042
00:57:58,040 --> 00:58:00,640
Speaker 1: be there for different departments to see. Some of the

1043
00:58:00,640 --> 00:58:03,160
Speaker 1: effects were just too difficult. Sometimes I'd come up with

1044
00:58:03,160 --> 00:58:05,440
Speaker 1: an idea and they'd say, screw the writer, he's nuts,

1045
00:58:05,480 --> 00:58:08,439
Speaker 1: how can we do this? But occasionally they'd suggest something

1046
00:58:08,480 --> 00:58:10,160
Speaker 1: and I'd say, how the hell do you think you

1047
00:58:10,200 --> 00:58:12,960
Speaker 1: can do that? They'd say, watch us, and then they

1048
00:58:13,120 --> 00:58:15,680
Speaker 1: do it. So that's when we now we come to

1049
00:58:15,880 --> 00:58:18,880
Speaker 1: Rob Bottine, whose name I don't know why it's pronounced

1050
00:58:18,880 --> 00:58:22,360
Speaker 1: like that. It's selled Boton, but it's everyone calls it Botine,

1051
00:58:22,440 --> 00:58:27,960
Speaker 1: So sure um. That kid was I think twenty one

1052
00:58:28,080 --> 00:58:30,320
Speaker 1: or twenty two when he started working on this, and

1053
00:58:30,360 --> 00:58:32,600
Speaker 1: he had like thirty five or forty people working on

1054
00:58:32,640 --> 00:58:36,400
Speaker 1: this film with him. The film was budgeted at ten

1055
00:58:36,520 --> 00:58:39,400
Speaker 1: mill UH and he was given one and a half

1056
00:58:39,520 --> 00:58:42,720
Speaker 1: million out of it uh too, which was, like I think,

1057
00:58:42,920 --> 00:58:45,200
Speaker 1: at the time, the largest budget that had been given

1058
00:58:45,240 --> 00:58:48,840
Speaker 1: to a makeup department on this UM. And it's like

1059
00:58:48,840 --> 00:58:50,880
Speaker 1: like I mentioned that the intro, it's like this and

1060
00:58:51,120 --> 00:58:55,120
Speaker 1: American Werewolf in London. And actually Rob Boteine, when he

1061
00:58:55,200 --> 00:59:00,360
Speaker 1: was fourteen, UH sent the guy who did the American

1062
00:59:00,400 --> 00:59:04,120
Speaker 1: Worolf in London effects, Rick Baker. Um. He sent that

1063
00:59:04,200 --> 00:59:06,320
Speaker 1: dude just a drawing because he was trying to get

1064
00:59:06,360 --> 00:59:09,960
Speaker 1: Rick Baker's autograph. And Rick Baker was so impressed by

1065
00:59:10,000 --> 00:59:12,080
Speaker 1: what he had sent him that he was like, come

1066
00:59:12,120 --> 00:59:15,440
Speaker 1: apprentice for me. And so he did work on the

1067
00:59:15,480 --> 00:59:18,040
Speaker 1: seventies six version of King Kong. He did work on

1068
00:59:18,160 --> 00:59:22,120
Speaker 1: Star Wars. Roboteen is actually the tallest member of the

1069
00:59:22,200 --> 00:59:27,040
Speaker 1: Cantina band in Star Wars in No no, no, no, no,

1070
00:59:27,040 --> 00:59:30,600
Speaker 1: no no. I think he's the guy like the one

1071
00:59:30,680 --> 00:59:34,000
Speaker 1: playing the thing that looks like a clarinet. Um. And

1072
00:59:34,040 --> 00:59:36,400
Speaker 1: then he did the Howling, which is a Joe Dante

1073
00:59:36,440 --> 00:59:40,560
Speaker 1: who did Gremlins, that is Joe Dante's werewolf movie. UM.

1074
00:59:40,880 --> 00:59:46,600
Speaker 1: And so the two the two UH Werewolf transformation scenes

1075
00:59:46,600 --> 00:59:49,360
Speaker 1: and eighties Whore are generally thought of as the Howling

1076
00:59:49,480 --> 00:59:52,640
Speaker 1: and then American Werewolf in London and it was Rick

1077
00:59:52,680 --> 00:59:55,520
Speaker 1: Baker and his protege. And that's what I love about

1078
00:59:55,560 --> 00:59:57,720
Speaker 1: this era, Like all these guys were really tight with

1079
00:59:57,760 --> 00:59:59,800
Speaker 1: each other because there weren't that many people doing this

1080
01:00:00,040 --> 01:00:01,960
Speaker 1: off and so they would just when these movies came

1081
01:00:01,960 --> 01:00:04,000
Speaker 1: out or they heard about different people who were working

1082
01:00:04,040 --> 01:00:06,840
Speaker 1: on it, uh, they would just immediately be like, oh,

1083
01:00:06,880 --> 01:00:09,280
Speaker 1: did you see that? We have to beat him now. Um.

1084
01:00:09,280 --> 01:00:11,040
Speaker 1: Probably the other biggest one is The Fly, and that

1085
01:00:11,080 --> 01:00:14,400
Speaker 1: was a guy named Chris Walas who uh um Yeah,

1086
01:00:14,400 --> 01:00:16,280
Speaker 1: they were just like, well, how do we beat the

1087
01:00:16,320 --> 01:00:19,480
Speaker 1: other guy who did this? Robert team would also go

1088
01:00:19,480 --> 01:00:24,560
Speaker 1: on to design the RoboCop suit, which is an incredible

1089
01:00:24,600 --> 01:00:29,560
Speaker 1: feat of sculpting. Um. He did the gross robot back

1090
01:00:29,640 --> 01:00:33,360
Speaker 1: of Peter Weller's head in that uh and he won

1091
01:00:33,400 --> 01:00:36,360
Speaker 1: an Academy Award for his work on a total recall.

1092
01:00:36,560 --> 01:00:40,000
Speaker 1: So another famous gift around the internet is when Arnold's

1093
01:00:40,000 --> 01:00:43,160
Speaker 1: eyes are popping out in the Martian atmosphere. That was

1094
01:00:43,200 --> 01:00:45,960
Speaker 1: boutine and he also did the gross puppet that comes

1095
01:00:46,000 --> 01:00:49,600
Speaker 1: out of the guy's torso uh, just really incredible stuff.

1096
01:00:49,640 --> 01:00:53,120
Speaker 1: It's sadly he seems to have completely left this industry

1097
01:00:53,200 --> 01:00:56,840
Speaker 1: like he does not. He's like he's he's such a gregarious,

1098
01:00:56,880 --> 01:00:59,720
Speaker 1: like funny, warm guy in the in the interviews that

1099
01:00:59,760 --> 01:01:03,919
Speaker 1: he's done, but he's like a total recluse now. I mean,

1100
01:01:04,040 --> 01:01:07,200
Speaker 1: the last credit that he did was in his last

1101
01:01:07,240 --> 01:01:09,120
Speaker 1: interview was in two thousand and eight, and the last

1102
01:01:09,200 --> 01:01:11,560
Speaker 1: work that he did was apparently in two thousand fourteen

1103
01:01:11,600 --> 01:01:13,760
Speaker 1: in an episode of Game of Thrones, and that was

1104
01:01:13,800 --> 01:01:17,000
Speaker 1: like uncredited. So people just like don't know what he's

1105
01:01:17,000 --> 01:01:19,280
Speaker 1: doing now. But man, what a what a body of

1106
01:01:19,280 --> 01:01:21,520
Speaker 1: work to go out on. Funnily enough, he was not

1107
01:01:21,600 --> 01:01:25,320
Speaker 1: productions first choice. There was a concept artist and model

1108
01:01:25,360 --> 01:01:30,040
Speaker 1: maker named Dale Cooper's Creepers Kohippers. I don't know how

1109
01:01:30,120 --> 01:01:31,960
Speaker 1: to pronounce that guy's name. He was hired to work

1110
01:01:31,960 --> 01:01:33,480
Speaker 1: on the thing, and you can see the stuff that

1111
01:01:33,520 --> 01:01:36,000
Speaker 1: he drew out there, but he was involved in a

1112
01:01:36,120 --> 01:01:40,479
Speaker 1: very serious accident months into pre production, and Carpenter hired

1113
01:01:40,520 --> 01:01:44,560
Speaker 1: Boutine because he had done and acted in the makeup

1114
01:01:44,680 --> 01:01:49,400
Speaker 1: in for the fog zombies, the ghost the ghosts, the seamen,

1115
01:01:49,560 --> 01:01:54,040
Speaker 1: the sailor ghosts. Phrasing the sailor ghosts in the fog.

1116
01:01:55,520 --> 01:02:00,280
Speaker 1: Boutine told Fangoria. Uh. Dale had some absolutely beautiful painings

1117
01:02:00,320 --> 01:02:03,400
Speaker 1: of what he thought the monster should look like. He's

1118
01:02:03,560 --> 01:02:07,000
Speaker 1: too Fangoria. Um, Fangoria and Starlock. I think we're the

1119
01:02:07,000 --> 01:02:09,360
Speaker 1: same publisher. Fangoria was the horror side of things and

1120
01:02:09,440 --> 01:02:13,160
Speaker 1: Starlight was more sci fi. Uh, I don't think the

1121
01:02:13,160 --> 01:02:15,840
Speaker 1: Fango archives, Oh no, they are. The Fango archives are

1122
01:02:15,840 --> 01:02:19,360
Speaker 1: also online. Uh. John wasn't too enthusiastic about what I

1123
01:02:19,400 --> 01:02:21,360
Speaker 1: had in mind for the thing at first. He said

1124
01:02:21,360 --> 01:02:24,479
Speaker 1: it was too weird. Serious question. I wonder if James

1125
01:02:24,560 --> 01:02:27,280
Speaker 1: Cameron was ever considered for this because models were sort

1126
01:02:27,280 --> 01:02:32,400
Speaker 1: of Well, it's funny you mentioned that because the guy

1127
01:02:32,560 --> 01:02:35,760
Speaker 1: who did James Cameron crops up later on in Passing

1128
01:02:36,000 --> 01:02:41,439
Speaker 1: Well Cameron would have been working for Rocher Corman, right, yes, yes,

1129
01:02:41,520 --> 01:02:43,800
Speaker 1: oh yeah, so the guy who did the title sequence

1130
01:02:43,840 --> 01:02:48,160
Speaker 1: to this. Um. Apparently the other guy he was up

1131
01:02:48,160 --> 01:02:52,080
Speaker 1: against was Roger Corman's New World Pictures, where James Cameron,

1132
01:02:52,200 --> 01:02:55,560
Speaker 1: young James Cameron was working. My god, can you imagine

1133
01:02:55,880 --> 01:03:01,040
Speaker 1: Jim Cameron, you know, a freaking arctic outpost, I mean

1134
01:03:01,200 --> 01:03:04,120
Speaker 1: sort of, yeah, I mean I can. He would have

1135
01:03:04,120 --> 01:03:07,800
Speaker 1: been an outrageous ass, would have been terrible um, although

1136
01:03:07,800 --> 01:03:10,240
Speaker 1: maybe he wasn't quite up his own, but at that point,

1137
01:03:10,320 --> 01:03:15,200
Speaker 1: considering he was making Piranha Piranha too. For Roger Corman

1138
01:03:16,080 --> 01:03:19,120
Speaker 1: that lengthy YouTube clip of him discussing his like LSD

1139
01:03:19,160 --> 01:03:23,520
Speaker 1: trip in the eighties, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, the first

1140
01:03:23,600 --> 01:03:28,360
Speaker 1: only time he experienced ego deaf um. It was a

1141
01:03:28,440 --> 01:03:32,400
Speaker 1: dream come true. Poutine told Fangoria of the massive budget

1142
01:03:32,440 --> 01:03:34,600
Speaker 1: and team he was given for this, but he did

1143
01:03:34,600 --> 01:03:36,880
Speaker 1: say I found it difficult to work with so many people,

1144
01:03:37,000 --> 01:03:39,840
Speaker 1: all with different needs and wants. There was an FX

1145
01:03:39,880 --> 01:03:42,040
Speaker 1: line producer named Eric Jensen who had worked on with

1146
01:03:42,080 --> 01:03:44,800
Speaker 1: The Howling, who basically was kind of the Can I

1147
01:03:44,800 --> 01:03:49,000
Speaker 1: say straw boss sure that? Yeah? Is that that has

1148
01:03:49,080 --> 01:03:53,520
Speaker 1: racist connotations? Though? Right line boss? Well is that the

1149
01:03:53,600 --> 01:03:57,439
Speaker 1: He credits air Jans with helping keep everyone in line um.

1150
01:03:57,560 --> 01:04:00,320
Speaker 1: Stewart Colton told Sci Fi Rob was the smart artist

1151
01:04:00,400 --> 01:04:04,720
Speaker 1: person on the production Whip Smart. His organizational abilities left

1152
01:04:04,760 --> 01:04:08,000
Speaker 1: something to be desired, but he was a genius. John

1153
01:04:08,040 --> 01:04:10,720
Speaker 1: Carpenter told The Village Voice there was no average working

1154
01:04:10,800 --> 01:04:13,720
Speaker 1: day with Rob. Sometimes he took forever, but sometimes he

1155
01:04:13,800 --> 01:04:17,360
Speaker 1: was really quick. Mostly he took forever. That was really rough.

1156
01:04:17,760 --> 01:04:19,560
Speaker 1: There was a lot of set up time, which mainly

1157
01:04:19,560 --> 01:04:22,480
Speaker 1: involved discussions about lighting. Rob would want the lighting to

1158
01:04:22,520 --> 01:04:24,520
Speaker 1: be darker and Dean Cundy when want the lightning to

1159
01:04:24,560 --> 01:04:26,840
Speaker 1: be brighter. At one point Rob said, maybe it's not

1160
01:04:26,840 --> 01:04:28,960
Speaker 1: a good idea to use this blood. Maybe we ought

1161
01:04:29,000 --> 01:04:31,480
Speaker 1: to use a different color. He was thinking about the

1162
01:04:31,560 --> 01:04:33,760
Speaker 1: mp A double A, so we toned that down a bit.

1163
01:04:34,440 --> 01:04:38,760
Speaker 1: Um and the the aforementioned dog effect that horrified a

1164
01:04:38,840 --> 01:04:42,440
Speaker 1: young Jordan run toss so much um was done by

1165
01:04:42,640 --> 01:04:46,760
Speaker 1: Stan Winston, who would later on do uh Aliens with

1166
01:04:46,840 --> 01:04:50,160
Speaker 1: Jim Cameron the Terminators. He did the first two Predators,

1167
01:04:50,160 --> 01:04:54,240
Speaker 1: he did the first three Jurassic parts. Yeah. Winston is

1168
01:04:54,280 --> 01:04:57,400
Speaker 1: like another guy on the Mount Rushmore of practical effects

1169
01:04:58,160 --> 01:05:02,200
Speaker 1: and he's incredible. Uh And he did the gross dog

1170
01:05:02,280 --> 01:05:06,040
Speaker 1: thing because my bootine had just done the howling and

1171
01:05:06,120 --> 01:05:08,520
Speaker 1: he said. I got to the point where I was thinking,

1172
01:05:08,560 --> 01:05:11,120
Speaker 1: if I have to do another stinking mechanical dog, I'll

1173
01:05:11,160 --> 01:05:13,480
Speaker 1: go nuts. So I asked John if we could use

1174
01:05:13,520 --> 01:05:16,920
Speaker 1: stand He said yes. I told Stan what I hadn't

1175
01:05:16,920 --> 01:05:18,880
Speaker 1: mind and just let him go. I didn't even go

1176
01:05:18,880 --> 01:05:20,760
Speaker 1: over to his shop. I told him to call me

1177
01:05:20,800 --> 01:05:22,760
Speaker 1: when he was done, and when I saw it. I

1178
01:05:22,800 --> 01:05:27,560
Speaker 1: was blown away. That set piece was so convincing that, uh,

1179
01:05:27,560 --> 01:05:32,160
Speaker 1: it caught the attention of the Humane Society, who thought

1180
01:05:32,200 --> 01:05:37,240
Speaker 1: the crew was quote doing terrible things to real dogs. Um.

1181
01:05:37,400 --> 01:05:40,440
Speaker 1: The guy who did publicity on this named Craig Millery

1182
01:05:40,480 --> 01:05:42,400
Speaker 1: told Sci Fi we had to bring them in and

1183
01:05:42,400 --> 01:05:44,480
Speaker 1: show them the mechanisms so that they would get it

1184
01:05:44,520 --> 01:05:47,160
Speaker 1: that it wasn't real. Um. We don't have to go

1185
01:05:47,200 --> 01:05:49,480
Speaker 1: over every scene in the film, but there are two

1186
01:05:49,480 --> 01:05:52,160
Speaker 1: that are really amazing, probably the I mean just the

1187
01:05:52,160 --> 01:05:56,280
Speaker 1: the show stopping piece when they do the defibrillator test

1188
01:05:56,680 --> 01:05:59,680
Speaker 1: that just everything goes hey. Wire has my favorite one

1189
01:05:59,680 --> 01:06:03,280
Speaker 1: of my favorite reaction shots and all of cinema, which

1190
01:06:03,320 --> 01:06:06,840
Speaker 1: is just the guy looking at as the head sprouts

1191
01:06:06,920 --> 01:06:09,960
Speaker 1: legs and walks away. The guy just goes, you gotta

1192
01:06:10,000 --> 01:06:18,080
Speaker 1: be kidding me. Um, that is uh. They did that

1193
01:06:18,520 --> 01:06:22,200
Speaker 1: when the scene in which that thing chomps his arms off,

1194
01:06:22,240 --> 01:06:24,640
Speaker 1: they found a guy who had lost both arms in

1195
01:06:24,720 --> 01:06:29,120
Speaker 1: the industrial accident, which I guess if you're doing gore

1196
01:06:29,160 --> 01:06:32,440
Speaker 1: effects for movies, you have those guys in your rolodex.

1197
01:06:33,280 --> 01:06:36,400
Speaker 1: Why is that necessary? Though, I like as opposed to

1198
01:06:36,480 --> 01:06:38,440
Speaker 1: just like having your art like I guess if you

1199
01:06:38,480 --> 01:06:40,640
Speaker 1: want a full body shot with no cutaways, if you

1200
01:06:40,640 --> 01:06:42,240
Speaker 1: want to do all this stuff in one take, And

1201
01:06:42,240 --> 01:06:44,120
Speaker 1: this gets back to the kind of like trying to

1202
01:06:44,120 --> 01:06:46,280
Speaker 1: outdo each other, they would just try and do as

1203
01:06:46,400 --> 01:06:48,800
Speaker 1: much of this stuff in like single takes and and

1204
01:06:48,920 --> 01:06:51,560
Speaker 1: with as few cutaways as possible. And so to get

1205
01:06:51,680 --> 01:06:56,040
Speaker 1: this scene where a guy plunges defibrillators into this what

1206
01:06:56,240 --> 01:06:59,040
Speaker 1: turns out to be the thing and his stomach opens

1207
01:06:59,040 --> 01:07:01,280
Speaker 1: and chomps this guy is they they found a guy

1208
01:07:01,320 --> 01:07:04,000
Speaker 1: who did not have his arms from the forearms down

1209
01:07:04,640 --> 01:07:10,720
Speaker 1: and outfitted him with both a ghoulish prosthetic mask of

1210
01:07:10,880 --> 01:07:13,800
Speaker 1: the actor he was supposed to be portraying, and fake

1211
01:07:13,960 --> 01:07:17,440
Speaker 1: arms made out of wax bones, jello, and latex rubber,

1212
01:07:18,200 --> 01:07:21,120
Speaker 1: which were then crushed for real by a set of

1213
01:07:21,600 --> 01:07:25,160
Speaker 1: hydraulically operated mechanical jaws. So yeah, I guess they didn't

1214
01:07:25,160 --> 01:07:27,400
Speaker 1: want the guy's real arms in there. I was thinking,

1215
01:07:27,480 --> 01:07:30,280
Speaker 1: like strapping your arms to your sides and having a

1216
01:07:31,200 --> 01:07:33,560
Speaker 1: fake arms out of her, you know, coming out of

1217
01:07:33,560 --> 01:07:35,720
Speaker 1: your sleeves. I think it was so that when he

1218
01:07:35,760 --> 01:07:38,680
Speaker 1: pulled away and kind of like reeled back and had

1219
01:07:38,760 --> 01:07:42,240
Speaker 1: his arms spouting google, they were like, well it needs

1220
01:07:42,240 --> 01:07:44,240
Speaker 1: to be they need we need to have those in there.

1221
01:07:44,600 --> 01:07:47,280
Speaker 1: But um, you know, doing this setup for this stuff

1222
01:07:47,760 --> 01:07:52,720
Speaker 1: took hours. And so the guy who plays Um Norris

1223
01:07:53,000 --> 01:07:55,480
Speaker 1: is like strapped to the table with just his head

1224
01:07:55,800 --> 01:08:00,480
Speaker 1: sticking out and then a whole sculpted fake body um,

1225
01:08:00,520 --> 01:08:04,600
Speaker 1: which they said he had to he They basically had

1226
01:08:04,640 --> 01:08:07,800
Speaker 1: to map out his chest hair to make it realistic

1227
01:08:08,600 --> 01:08:11,440
Speaker 1: and make a realistic double this. They had him strapped

1228
01:08:11,440 --> 01:08:13,919
Speaker 1: to this table and they do the whole thing when

1229
01:08:13,920 --> 01:08:16,439
Speaker 1: it when it opens and all the tentacles come out

1230
01:08:16,479 --> 01:08:18,759
Speaker 1: of his torso and it's making all the horrible noises

1231
01:08:18,760 --> 01:08:22,160
Speaker 1: and there's goose shooting everywhere. The first time they shot it,

1232
01:08:22,800 --> 01:08:25,360
Speaker 1: Rob Botem said, looked like a Vegas fountain, Like it

1233
01:08:25,640 --> 01:08:28,040
Speaker 1: looked like the fountain front of the Bellaggio or whatever.

1234
01:08:28,479 --> 01:08:30,400
Speaker 1: And it just looks so like he said, it looked

1235
01:08:30,400 --> 01:08:33,799
Speaker 1: like there should have been show girls dancing next to it. Um.

1236
01:08:33,880 --> 01:08:35,720
Speaker 1: And they did it, and John Carver and was like,

1237
01:08:35,720 --> 01:08:38,960
Speaker 1: cut bad. It looks like crap, you're gonna do it again,

1238
01:08:39,400 --> 01:08:43,720
Speaker 1: and rub Booteens like all right, really He's like yeah, yeah,

1239
01:08:43,720 --> 01:08:45,479
Speaker 1: it didn't didn't look good. And it was like that

1240
01:08:45,520 --> 01:08:47,880
Speaker 1: took us like eight hours to set up. And because

1241
01:08:47,880 --> 01:08:51,120
Speaker 1: so the guys like still under this table with his

1242
01:08:51,160 --> 01:08:54,160
Speaker 1: head sticking through and he's like, wait, wait, really we

1243
01:08:54,200 --> 01:08:56,680
Speaker 1: have to go again and he's like, yeah, yeah, we

1244
01:08:56,680 --> 01:09:00,640
Speaker 1: gotta go again. Um. Took hours, but they got this

1245
01:09:00,720 --> 01:09:03,439
Speaker 1: they got in the second take. Um. And there's another

1246
01:09:03,720 --> 01:09:06,160
Speaker 1: the other effect in that scene when they when the

1247
01:09:06,160 --> 01:09:10,040
Speaker 1: head starts to stretch off and like melts falls off

1248
01:09:10,080 --> 01:09:13,360
Speaker 1: the table. Um. They got the stretching effect by just

1249
01:09:13,400 --> 01:09:16,559
Speaker 1: doing like like there's like crazy glue and rubbert cement

1250
01:09:16,600 --> 01:09:19,760
Speaker 1: and all this stuff in there, and uh, it was

1251
01:09:19,760 --> 01:09:23,200
Speaker 1: giving off so many fumes that they had this. Uh,

1252
01:09:23,360 --> 01:09:26,840
Speaker 1: they had this thing called a fire grill, which is

1253
01:09:26,880 --> 01:09:29,200
Speaker 1: like a length of metal tubing that has gas going

1254
01:09:29,240 --> 01:09:31,400
Speaker 1: through it so that you can basic it looks like

1255
01:09:31,439 --> 01:09:34,360
Speaker 1: it's like a barbecue grill apparatus, and so it's so

1256
01:09:34,439 --> 01:09:38,120
Speaker 1: you can get a line of flames wherever you want

1257
01:09:38,320 --> 01:09:41,120
Speaker 1: in the camera's p o V. So they have this

1258
01:09:41,240 --> 01:09:44,360
Speaker 1: thing just under the camera's depth of field to kind

1259
01:09:44,400 --> 01:09:48,439
Speaker 1: of put flames up, and it actually ignited all of

1260
01:09:48,560 --> 01:09:52,640
Speaker 1: the fumes that were floating around in the in this

1261
01:09:52,800 --> 01:09:55,599
Speaker 1: closed tiny set at this time and lit the prop

1262
01:09:55,640 --> 01:09:59,320
Speaker 1: on fire, and there's an amazing Rob Booteen tells this story,

1263
01:10:00,120 --> 01:10:03,000
Speaker 1: and I'm staring down at the at the body and

1264
01:10:03,040 --> 01:10:05,920
Speaker 1: I'm in shock because since the one take deal only,

1265
01:10:06,479 --> 01:10:09,080
Speaker 1: I looked down at it and I go, oh my god,

1266
01:10:09,600 --> 01:10:13,840
Speaker 1: it's on fire. Right, it's on fire. And then John says,

1267
01:10:14,360 --> 01:10:18,920
Speaker 1: don't just stand there, put it out, you idiot like that.

1268
01:10:19,000 --> 01:10:20,320
Speaker 1: And then and then, you know, I was just so

1269
01:10:20,400 --> 01:10:23,160
Speaker 1: shocked at months of work preparing for this moment was

1270
01:10:23,280 --> 01:10:25,519
Speaker 1: just blown to bits and in just a second. So

1271
01:10:26,000 --> 01:10:28,160
Speaker 1: we you know, put it out with fire extinguishers and

1272
01:10:28,160 --> 01:10:31,000
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and then he just goes, oh my god.

1273
01:10:31,720 --> 01:10:33,559
Speaker 1: We had to set up take a whole other day

1274
01:10:33,560 --> 01:10:36,320
Speaker 1: to get back to this point and finally just accomplished

1275
01:10:36,320 --> 01:10:39,040
Speaker 1: the one shot where they had stretches. And in the

1276
01:10:39,080 --> 01:10:42,120
Speaker 1: next up he talks about he said for months afterwards,

1277
01:10:42,160 --> 01:10:44,559
Speaker 1: John would just look over it and start going, oh

1278
01:10:44,680 --> 01:10:49,760
Speaker 1: my god, it's on fire. And that's what I mean.

1279
01:10:49,800 --> 01:10:52,960
Speaker 1: It's so it's I I really hope Rob Boutine's okay, man,

1280
01:10:53,000 --> 01:10:57,080
Speaker 1: because he's such a delight in that documentary. Oh my god,

1281
01:10:57,200 --> 01:11:02,200
Speaker 1: it's on fire. Um. Unfortunately, all of this came at

1282
01:11:02,280 --> 01:11:06,200
Speaker 1: a high physical, mental, and emotional cost and by the

1283
01:11:06,200 --> 01:11:10,320
Speaker 1: time they get to that closing scene um uh. Stewart

1284
01:11:10,320 --> 01:11:12,799
Speaker 1: Cohen says, we were just running out of money. Rob's

1285
01:11:12,800 --> 01:11:16,439
Speaker 1: shop was like a boulder rolling downhill picking up labor costs.

1286
01:11:16,880 --> 01:11:19,800
Speaker 1: John had to go hat in hand to Universal for

1287
01:11:19,840 --> 01:11:23,680
Speaker 1: the last hundred thousand dollars to make the monster, otherwise

1288
01:11:23,720 --> 01:11:26,120
Speaker 1: there wasn't going to be one. And part of this

1289
01:11:26,200 --> 01:11:28,680
Speaker 1: was because they tried to do that whole end confrontation

1290
01:11:29,120 --> 01:11:34,400
Speaker 1: with like Ray Harryhausen level stop motion animation UM, which

1291
01:11:34,439 --> 01:11:36,120
Speaker 1: you can see like one or two shots of it

1292
01:11:36,200 --> 01:11:38,360
Speaker 1: in the final filments when the tentacle comes out and

1293
01:11:38,479 --> 01:11:41,519
Speaker 1: grabs the dynamite plunger, and it does look glaringly fake.

1294
01:11:41,880 --> 01:11:44,080
Speaker 1: But they built a whole miniature. They built a hole

1295
01:11:44,160 --> 01:11:48,080
Speaker 1: like you know whatever, one tenth scale of that underground set,

1296
01:11:48,120 --> 01:11:50,559
Speaker 1: and they did it all with stop motion uh. And

1297
01:11:50,560 --> 01:11:53,320
Speaker 1: then they saw the dailies and John Carpet was like

1298
01:11:53,320 --> 01:11:57,439
Speaker 1: a scrap it. So they built a three hundred pounds

1299
01:11:57,479 --> 01:12:01,760
Speaker 1: worth of rubber over this giant frame of mechanisms and

1300
01:12:02,200 --> 01:12:05,639
Speaker 1: you're a thane and fiberglass components and it took forty

1301
01:12:05,720 --> 01:12:08,840
Speaker 1: people to operate that thing. Um. There's a guy, a

1302
01:12:08,960 --> 01:12:12,000
Speaker 1: team member in it with the incredible name of Vaughan Babyson,

1303
01:12:13,600 --> 01:12:15,519
Speaker 1: who was actually the guy who used the term the

1304
01:12:16,439 --> 01:12:20,120
Speaker 1: mistake earlier. Uh he told sci Fi we were all

1305
01:12:20,160 --> 01:12:23,360
Speaker 1: just crammed underneath this. It was built on a stanchion

1306
01:12:23,640 --> 01:12:26,120
Speaker 1: that was six ft off the ground. They were just

1307
01:12:26,720 --> 01:12:31,800
Speaker 1: madly from hell. Yeah, exactly, just like wheeling it into

1308
01:12:31,840 --> 01:12:35,599
Speaker 1: the shot and rods and puppets and all this crap

1309
01:12:36,040 --> 01:12:38,400
Speaker 1: um and the so as we mentioned earlier, the flares

1310
01:12:38,400 --> 01:12:41,160
Speaker 1: were real. It has constantly been I read this on

1311
01:12:41,320 --> 01:12:43,280
Speaker 1: IMDb and stuff that they were like they used real

1312
01:12:43,400 --> 01:12:45,760
Speaker 1: dynamite to shoot this. They did not. That would not

1313
01:12:45,800 --> 01:12:48,280
Speaker 1: have been a thing. Um. But there is a shot

1314
01:12:48,280 --> 01:12:51,599
Speaker 1: in the movie where, um, they did not know how

1315
01:12:51,680 --> 01:12:54,880
Speaker 1: much of an explosion that they had basically built into it.

1316
01:12:55,000 --> 01:12:58,320
Speaker 1: So when Kurt Russell throws the dynamite and it explodes,

1317
01:12:58,520 --> 01:13:01,320
Speaker 1: that is his genuine reaction. He had no idea how

1318
01:13:01,360 --> 01:13:05,120
Speaker 1: big this explosion was actually going to take. And poor

1319
01:13:05,200 --> 01:13:10,160
Speaker 1: sweet Rob Boteene, Yeah, after working up to eighteen hours

1320
01:13:10,200 --> 01:13:13,160
Speaker 1: a day, seven days a week, sleeping on the set,

1321
01:13:13,400 --> 01:13:17,120
Speaker 1: he was hospitalized for two weeks with exhaustion, double pneumonia,

1322
01:13:17,160 --> 01:13:20,920
Speaker 1: and a bleeding ulcer during the production. Uh, he recalled

1323
01:13:21,000 --> 01:13:23,920
Speaker 1: during the making of documentary, John looked at me and said,

1324
01:13:24,120 --> 01:13:27,040
Speaker 1: you don't look well. Somebody take this guy to the hospital.

1325
01:13:28,120 --> 01:13:32,640
Speaker 1: And for John forty forty cigarettes a day Carpenter to

1326
01:13:32,720 --> 01:13:35,320
Speaker 1: look at you and say he don't look well, he

1327
01:13:35,479 --> 01:13:41,280
Speaker 1: looked like crap. Um, there's John Carpenters constantly repeated quote

1328
01:13:41,280 --> 01:13:44,400
Speaker 1: about having to make in Halloween two when they make

1329
01:13:44,720 --> 01:13:47,920
Speaker 1: Laurie Michael's sister. He like hated that he had, Like

1330
01:13:48,000 --> 01:13:50,200
Speaker 1: he's like his least favorite thing that he's ever written.

1331
01:13:50,240 --> 01:13:53,160
Speaker 1: He talks about having just written that under a very

1332
01:13:53,200 --> 01:13:57,080
Speaker 1: strict studio timetable, just drunk. He's like, I would sit

1333
01:13:57,120 --> 01:13:59,200
Speaker 1: down and with a six pack of Budweiser and just

1334
01:13:59,240 --> 01:14:03,519
Speaker 1: bang out page every night. We're going to take a

1335
01:14:03,600 --> 01:14:05,960
Speaker 1: quick break, but we'll be right back with more too

1336
01:14:06,080 --> 01:14:22,559
Speaker 1: much information in just a moment. The ending, the ending

1337
01:14:22,640 --> 01:14:24,920
Speaker 1: of the thing, or as I subtitled it, all things

1338
01:14:25,000 --> 01:14:28,160
Speaker 1: must pass. Uh, the ending of the thing with my

1339
01:14:28,439 --> 01:14:33,160
Speaker 1: just made my favorite scene so relentlessly downbeat Um macready

1340
01:14:33,160 --> 01:14:37,479
Speaker 1: and Child's alone freezing to death, surrounded by burning debris,

1341
01:14:37,560 --> 01:14:41,040
Speaker 1: passing a bottle of scotch back and forth, why don't

1342
01:14:41,080 --> 01:14:45,240
Speaker 1: we just sit here for a while, see what happens.

1343
01:14:46,320 --> 01:14:52,120
Speaker 1: Credits so grim, both of them wildly distrustful of the

1344
01:14:52,160 --> 01:14:56,400
Speaker 1: other because I'm not sure who is possibly infected as

1345
01:14:56,479 --> 01:14:58,880
Speaker 1: the thing. I mean something very high goal about setting

1346
01:14:58,880 --> 01:15:02,439
Speaker 1: aside your distrust and having some scotch because you're just

1347
01:15:02,479 --> 01:15:07,599
Speaker 1: gonna die anyway. So there's three there's three endings to this.

1348
01:15:07,640 --> 01:15:10,160
Speaker 1: There's the one that you see um, and then the

1349
01:15:10,160 --> 01:15:15,000
Speaker 1: original ending uh that Lancaster wrote. Carpenter said his original

1350
01:15:15,080 --> 01:15:17,960
Speaker 1: ending had McCready and Child's turning into the thing and

1351
01:15:18,000 --> 01:15:21,559
Speaker 1: being rescued in the spring. Carpenter's account of Lancaster's original

1352
01:15:21,680 --> 01:15:25,800
Speaker 1: ending his creative screenwriting interview is this. His original ending

1353
01:15:25,800 --> 01:15:28,080
Speaker 1: had both macready and Child's turning into the thing and

1354
01:15:28,120 --> 01:15:31,479
Speaker 1: being rescued in the spring. The helicopter lands and they

1355
01:15:31,520 --> 01:15:33,240
Speaker 1: both come out and say hey, which ray to a

1356
01:15:33,280 --> 01:15:36,160
Speaker 1: hot meal. I thought, no, let's not do that. It

1357
01:15:36,240 --> 01:15:40,000
Speaker 1: was a little too glib, and at some point the

1358
01:15:40,040 --> 01:15:43,880
Speaker 1: film's editor, Todd Ramsay approached John Carpenter and suggested a

1359
01:15:43,920 --> 01:15:47,599
Speaker 1: more concrete ending, which they shot. John Corperer later said

1360
01:15:47,600 --> 01:15:50,080
Speaker 1: it wasn't a happier ending since him talking to Creative

1361
01:15:50,120 --> 01:15:54,120
Speaker 1: Screenwriting Magazine. It was one shot of Kurt Russell having survived,

1362
01:15:54,400 --> 01:15:56,200
Speaker 1: and what we would have had to do was fade

1363
01:15:56,200 --> 01:15:58,720
Speaker 1: out or some type of title card or something, so

1364
01:15:58,760 --> 01:16:01,880
Speaker 1: stylistically it would have and cheesy. We did another test

1365
01:16:02,000 --> 01:16:04,720
Speaker 1: ending where McCready blows up the thing, he comes in

1366
01:16:04,800 --> 01:16:07,000
Speaker 1: and sits down by himself and the cold, and then

1367
01:16:07,040 --> 01:16:09,559
Speaker 1: you go to black. You don't have Child's coming in.

1368
01:16:09,840 --> 01:16:12,960
Speaker 1: There's absolutely no difference in audience reaction between that and

1369
01:16:13,000 --> 01:16:15,760
Speaker 1: the one we had, So the problem was inherent. The

1370
01:16:15,800 --> 01:16:19,000
Speaker 1: film just wasn't heroic enough. It wasn't the US hockey

1371
01:16:19,040 --> 01:16:22,120
Speaker 1: team beating the Russians. That's what people wanted to see,

1372
01:16:23,040 --> 01:16:26,960
Speaker 1: which is funny because Kurt Russell was later in Miracle. Yeah.

1373
01:16:27,080 --> 01:16:30,120
Speaker 1: There's another ending too that's on the DVD, the home release,

1374
01:16:30,160 --> 01:16:33,000
Speaker 1: where they're basically jed. The wolf dog runs out of

1375
01:16:33,040 --> 01:16:36,479
Speaker 1: the camp again and you're like, oh my god, it

1376
01:16:36,479 --> 01:16:39,519
Speaker 1: turned back into a dog. He can't keep getting away

1377
01:16:39,600 --> 01:16:45,080
Speaker 1: with this. Yes, um, So there are multiple theories fan

1378
01:16:45,200 --> 01:16:48,479
Speaker 1: theories about whether or not Child's or McCreary are the

1379
01:16:48,560 --> 01:16:52,560
Speaker 1: thing at the end. Um And there is one interpretation

1380
01:16:52,640 --> 01:16:56,839
Speaker 1: here that is Dean Cundy's fault because in the blood

1381
01:16:56,840 --> 01:17:00,200
Speaker 1: test scene, which gets me every time I for gott

1382
01:17:00,240 --> 01:17:02,559
Speaker 1: to talk about this earlier, the editing in that scene

1383
01:17:02,680 --> 01:17:05,960
Speaker 1: is so pitch perfect, the way that he establishes a

1384
01:17:06,040 --> 01:17:10,520
Speaker 1: rhythm of the wire going into the blood and sizzling,

1385
01:17:10,600 --> 01:17:13,200
Speaker 1: and then there's like a horrible jump scare like that

1386
01:17:13,280 --> 01:17:17,479
Speaker 1: interrupts that rhythm. It's just such a chef's kiss of editing.

1387
01:17:18,000 --> 01:17:21,040
Speaker 1: And so what Dean Kunty did was actually give a

1388
01:17:21,160 --> 01:17:24,479
Speaker 1: hint away in that which is, you know, when you're

1389
01:17:24,840 --> 01:17:27,479
Speaker 1: lighting these scenes and you have a bit of the

1390
01:17:27,520 --> 01:17:32,000
Speaker 1: source light reflected in the character's eyes, he actually, uh,

1391
01:17:32,160 --> 01:17:35,240
Speaker 1: what he said is the guy were most suspicious of

1392
01:17:35,320 --> 01:17:38,160
Speaker 1: when he's seen. I didn't put the eyelight in his eyes.

1393
01:17:38,560 --> 01:17:41,040
Speaker 1: I didn't put that little sparkle that we get most

1394
01:17:41,040 --> 01:17:43,800
Speaker 1: of the time on characters to create the sense of life,

1395
01:17:43,840 --> 01:17:46,599
Speaker 1: of intelligence. I kept the light out of his eyes,

1396
01:17:46,720 --> 01:17:49,040
Speaker 1: so his eyes were the ones that were dark and dead.

1397
01:17:49,800 --> 01:17:53,080
Speaker 1: I think just subconsciously the audience sensed that. It wasn't

1398
01:17:53,160 --> 01:17:55,280
Speaker 1: until years later that I said, okay, well let me

1399
01:17:55,320 --> 01:17:57,479
Speaker 1: tell you what I did, and people said, oh yeah,

1400
01:17:57,600 --> 01:18:00,600
Speaker 1: now I noticed. So people have gone back and analyze

1401
01:18:00,640 --> 01:18:03,120
Speaker 1: that scene, the ending scene and been like, oh, well,

1402
01:18:03,160 --> 01:18:06,080
Speaker 1: you can't see the light in Child's eyes or whatever,

1403
01:18:06,160 --> 01:18:08,320
Speaker 1: and they're like, so he has to be the thing.

1404
01:18:08,800 --> 01:18:11,200
Speaker 1: But Kundy told sci Fi and this was just in

1405
01:18:11,200 --> 01:18:13,560
Speaker 1: September two, so as far as I'm concerned, this is

1406
01:18:13,600 --> 01:18:15,679
Speaker 1: the last word on this. He said he only did

1407
01:18:15,720 --> 01:18:18,519
Speaker 1: that in the blood test scene. He did not light

1408
01:18:18,680 --> 01:18:21,519
Speaker 1: and shoot the final scene of the movie with that.

1409
01:18:22,080 --> 01:18:24,160
Speaker 1: Tell if you want to call it that in there

1410
01:18:24,640 --> 01:18:31,639
Speaker 1: so jokes on you Internet. And there's another theory about

1411
01:18:31,640 --> 01:18:33,759
Speaker 1: this that's really interesting. That comes down to the fact

1412
01:18:33,800 --> 01:18:36,720
Speaker 1: that Child's breath can't be seen in the air and

1413
01:18:36,760 --> 01:18:39,840
Speaker 1: the final scene. But Keith David said that's just because

1414
01:18:39,920 --> 01:18:42,080
Speaker 1: the wind would have been blowing around the fires at

1415
01:18:42,120 --> 01:18:44,200
Speaker 1: that point and that's why you can't see his breath.

1416
01:18:44,600 --> 01:18:48,080
Speaker 1: John Carpenter, also speaking to sci Fi in September two, said,

1417
01:18:48,400 --> 01:18:50,840
Speaker 1: I know who the thing is in the end. I know,

1418
01:18:51,040 --> 01:18:53,799
Speaker 1: but I'm not telling you. As for the fan theories,

1419
01:18:53,920 --> 01:18:56,439
Speaker 1: I appreciate them, but they don't know what the hell

1420
01:18:56,479 --> 01:19:00,520
Speaker 1: they're talking about. There are some hilarious ones, blah blah blah,

1421
01:19:00,520 --> 01:19:05,320
Speaker 1: on and on. I'm not speaking about it anymore. Cigarette Yeah,

1422
01:19:06,120 --> 01:19:07,920
Speaker 1: can you deliver that. I feel like you could deliver

1423
01:19:07,960 --> 01:19:11,600
Speaker 1: that better than I did. Just get out of my

1424
01:19:11,640 --> 01:19:15,200
Speaker 1: way and the warriors are on. I haven't beat this

1425
01:19:15,360 --> 01:19:18,799
Speaker 1: water level in Sonic yet, I have. I have another

1426
01:19:18,880 --> 01:19:24,000
Speaker 1: album due for Sacred Bones. On the DVD commentary for

1427
01:19:24,040 --> 01:19:26,240
Speaker 1: The Thing, Kurt Russell and John Carpet of Chalk a

1428
01:19:26,240 --> 01:19:28,920
Speaker 1: lot of that scene up to Kurt himself, including the

1429
01:19:29,000 --> 01:19:31,320
Speaker 1: last line, why don't we just wait here for a

1430
01:19:31,400 --> 01:19:35,040
Speaker 1: little while and see what happens? Uh? John Carpet every

1431
01:19:35,040 --> 01:19:38,800
Speaker 1: called in creative screenwriting, there was one young gal who asked, well,

1432
01:19:38,840 --> 01:19:41,080
Speaker 1: what happened in the very end? Which one was the

1433
01:19:41,160 --> 01:19:44,240
Speaker 1: thing and which one was the good guy? And I said, well,

1434
01:19:44,320 --> 01:19:47,400
Speaker 1: you have to use your imagination and she said, oh god,

1435
01:19:47,479 --> 01:19:54,679
Speaker 1: I hate that. Yeah, um talking about beginnings and endings,

1436
01:19:54,760 --> 01:19:57,200
Speaker 1: tops and tails, if you will, quick mention of the

1437
01:19:57,200 --> 01:20:01,120
Speaker 1: title sequence which has that title that kind of appears

1438
01:20:01,600 --> 01:20:06,000
Speaker 1: that was special optical effects supervisor Peter Curran. Ah he

1439
01:20:06,200 --> 01:20:10,599
Speaker 1: undercut Roger Corman's New World Pictures by bidding just twenty

1440
01:20:10,640 --> 01:20:14,320
Speaker 1: grand for it, and as he told sci Fi Current

1441
01:20:14,320 --> 01:20:16,880
Speaker 1: told sci Fi, I can actually say that I beat

1442
01:20:17,000 --> 01:20:21,040
Speaker 1: Jim Cameron out for a job by doing that um

1443
01:20:21,040 --> 01:20:24,960
Speaker 1: and how he did that opening scene or that that title.

1444
01:20:25,040 --> 01:20:27,120
Speaker 1: He said, what I did for the effect was I

1445
01:20:27,160 --> 01:20:29,280
Speaker 1: took a fish tank that was about four ft by

1446
01:20:29,280 --> 01:20:32,120
Speaker 1: two ft, filled it with smoke, and then on the

1447
01:20:32,160 --> 01:20:34,920
Speaker 1: back of the tank I put the title drawn on

1448
01:20:34,960 --> 01:20:38,160
Speaker 1: an animation cell. Behind that, I had a piece of

1449
01:20:38,200 --> 01:20:41,160
Speaker 1: plastic garbage bag that I stretched over the frame, and

1450
01:20:41,200 --> 01:20:43,960
Speaker 1: behind that I had a light pointing through the letters.

1451
01:20:44,479 --> 01:20:47,200
Speaker 1: So when I photographed it, I put a flame from

1452
01:20:47,200 --> 01:20:50,280
Speaker 1: a match up to the plastic. The plastic would burn

1453
01:20:50,439 --> 01:20:53,719
Speaker 1: and let the light through the letters. And so that's

1454
01:20:53,760 --> 01:20:56,280
Speaker 1: that's all being filmed through the fish tank filled with smoke,

1455
01:20:56,760 --> 01:20:58,720
Speaker 1: and so he said that was a simple process, but

1456
01:20:58,760 --> 01:21:01,280
Speaker 1: we went through a lot of takes. One take only

1457
01:21:01,320 --> 01:21:04,880
Speaker 1: formed the letters n G, which is especially funny because

1458
01:21:04,920 --> 01:21:07,200
Speaker 1: on a film set, pieces of equipment that are not

1459
01:21:07,320 --> 01:21:10,920
Speaker 1: working are labeled n G or n f G for

1460
01:21:11,120 --> 01:21:17,040
Speaker 1: not good or no effing good. And he used the

1461
01:21:17,040 --> 01:21:19,400
Speaker 1: fish tank, he told sci Fi, because he had attempted

1462
01:21:19,439 --> 01:21:22,880
Speaker 1: the same effect with salt heater and sugar on Star

1463
01:21:22,960 --> 01:21:25,439
Speaker 1: Trek two The Wrath of con but he did it

1464
01:21:25,680 --> 01:21:28,200
Speaker 1: not in a fish tank, and filled the entire building

1465
01:21:28,240 --> 01:21:33,720
Speaker 1: with smoke. Um, yeah, Live and Learn on the set

1466
01:21:33,760 --> 01:21:37,839
Speaker 1: of Star Trek to the Wrath of con Uh. Carpenter

1467
01:21:37,920 --> 01:21:42,000
Speaker 1: John Carpenter famously uh and usually scores his own films,

1468
01:21:42,400 --> 01:21:46,040
Speaker 1: which he did initially because he was so poor. Ah.

1469
01:21:46,120 --> 01:21:48,759
Speaker 1: He said. He started scoring them on like an Assault

1470
01:21:48,840 --> 01:21:51,280
Speaker 1: on Precinct thirteen. He was like, I think he did

1471
01:21:51,320 --> 01:21:53,920
Speaker 1: the whole score for that in like eight hours or

1472
01:21:53,960 --> 01:21:57,080
Speaker 1: like twelve hours of studio time because he had cut

1473
01:21:57,120 --> 01:22:00,000
Speaker 1: as many corners as he could on that too, Uh,

1474
01:22:00,080 --> 01:22:02,720
Speaker 1: save up for all the panavision and film stock that

1475
01:22:02,760 --> 01:22:05,360
Speaker 1: he wanted to use for it. So he was like, ah,

1476
01:22:05,400 --> 01:22:07,719
Speaker 1: you know, I can, I know, Sue, I know, since

1477
01:22:07,920 --> 01:22:11,280
Speaker 1: so I would just I will do all this myself.

1478
01:22:11,760 --> 01:22:15,680
Speaker 1: But he said that Cohen in the studio did not

1479
01:22:15,800 --> 01:22:19,080
Speaker 1: ask him to do the score for the thing, but

1480
01:22:19,160 --> 01:22:23,800
Speaker 1: he loved as a Western fan, he loved any More Coney. Uh. Supposedly,

1481
01:22:23,800 --> 01:22:26,880
Speaker 1: when he married Adrian Barbow, he walked down the aisle

1482
01:22:26,960 --> 01:22:29,360
Speaker 1: to more Coney's score for Once upon a Time in

1483
01:22:29,360 --> 01:22:32,479
Speaker 1: the West, But in keeping with tradition of people not

1484
01:22:32,560 --> 01:22:34,720
Speaker 1: wanting to have anything to do with the movie the

1485
01:22:34,760 --> 01:22:39,759
Speaker 1: Thing any More, Coney turned them down twice until Stewart

1486
01:22:39,800 --> 01:22:43,920
Speaker 1: Cohen called his good friend Bernardo Berta Lucci to put

1487
01:22:43,920 --> 01:22:47,360
Speaker 1: in a good friend of the pod, Bernardo Berto Lucci

1488
01:22:47,520 --> 01:22:50,360
Speaker 1: to put in a good word for him and Uh.

1489
01:22:50,479 --> 01:22:53,559
Speaker 1: Carpenter traveled to Rome to work with any More Cone

1490
01:22:53,600 --> 01:22:57,599
Speaker 1: on the score. Any More Cone famously, despite working in

1491
01:22:57,680 --> 01:23:00,160
Speaker 1: Hollywood for decades, never learned how to speak English, so

1492
01:23:00,240 --> 01:23:03,840
Speaker 1: this was all through a trainslator, he said, did not

1493
01:23:03,920 --> 01:23:07,160
Speaker 1: show him the film, so he told Entertainment Weekly this.

1494
01:23:07,920 --> 01:23:10,240
Speaker 1: When Morriconey died, we hadn't done it yet, so I

1495
01:23:10,280 --> 01:23:12,439
Speaker 1: just talked to him about it, discussed with him. The

1496
01:23:12,439 --> 01:23:16,439
Speaker 1: film came later. H Carpenter later told Indie Wire it

1497
01:23:16,520 --> 01:23:20,439
Speaker 1: was all too way too flourishy and ornate. I said

1498
01:23:20,479 --> 01:23:24,479
Speaker 1: to him, an, you know, use less notes, uh, which

1499
01:23:24,520 --> 01:23:28,160
Speaker 1: is hell of the brass balls on John Carpenter to

1500
01:23:28,240 --> 01:23:32,600
Speaker 1: tell any of freaking Morricony to use less notes um.

1501
01:23:32,800 --> 01:23:36,600
Speaker 1: But Morriconi did um. The the synth parts that he

1502
01:23:36,680 --> 01:23:39,040
Speaker 1: used on this were some of his actually earliest experiments

1503
01:23:39,040 --> 01:23:41,800
Speaker 1: with synthesizers. He did that in Rome, and then he

1504
01:23:41,840 --> 01:23:45,680
Speaker 1: traveled to l A to record the orchestral parts. Uh.

1505
01:23:45,720 --> 01:23:48,559
Speaker 1: And he did twenty minutes of it and basically gave

1506
01:23:48,600 --> 01:23:50,600
Speaker 1: it to production, gave it to Carpenter, was like, do

1507
01:23:50,640 --> 01:23:54,000
Speaker 1: whatever you want, Carpenter, Tortois biographer, and you did all

1508
01:23:54,080 --> 01:23:57,240
Speaker 1: the orchestrations and recorded for me twenty minutes of music

1509
01:23:57,280 --> 01:24:00,680
Speaker 1: I could use wherever I wished. But without seeing any footage,

1510
01:24:00,920 --> 01:24:02,880
Speaker 1: I cut his music into the film and realized there

1511
01:24:02,920 --> 01:24:05,760
Speaker 1: were places, mostly scenes of tension, in which his music

1512
01:24:05,760 --> 01:24:08,760
Speaker 1: would not work. Since we needed something, I secretly ran

1513
01:24:08,800 --> 01:24:11,360
Speaker 1: off and recorded in a few days a few pieces

1514
01:24:11,360 --> 01:24:13,879
Speaker 1: to use, not really music at all, but just background

1515
01:24:13,920 --> 01:24:16,559
Speaker 1: sound effects. In no way was I trying to compete

1516
01:24:16,600 --> 01:24:19,599
Speaker 1: with any score. The score is his. The whole thing

1517
01:24:19,600 --> 01:24:22,000
Speaker 1: about only recording twenty minutes of music is so funny

1518
01:24:22,000 --> 01:24:23,519
Speaker 1: to me because that is what he did to Quentin

1519
01:24:23,520 --> 01:24:25,640
Speaker 1: Tarantino for Hateful Eight, which is the film that he

1520
01:24:25,680 --> 01:24:28,360
Speaker 1: finally won an Oscar for. I guess he gave him

1521
01:24:28,600 --> 01:24:31,960
Speaker 1: His contract included twenty five minutes of music for hatefully,

1522
01:24:32,120 --> 01:24:35,960
Speaker 1: which is like two hours long. So famously, parts of

1523
01:24:35,960 --> 01:24:39,600
Speaker 1: the Hateful Eight score include parts of the score that

1524
01:24:39,640 --> 01:24:43,120
Speaker 1: he did for the thing. So there's the Kurt Russell connection,

1525
01:24:43,160 --> 01:24:45,880
Speaker 1: there's the Anni Morriconi connection, and there is a literal

1526
01:24:46,479 --> 01:24:49,960
Speaker 1: sonic connection between Hateful Eight and the thing in that

1527
01:24:50,120 --> 01:24:53,599
Speaker 1: parts of the score are shared in both movies because

1528
01:24:53,640 --> 01:24:56,880
Speaker 1: you only get twenty five minutes of any Oh and

1529
01:24:56,920 --> 01:24:59,639
Speaker 1: then he's going back to Rome and he's not learning

1530
01:24:59,640 --> 01:25:04,240
Speaker 1: English for your movie. Uh. And fun fact that I

1531
01:25:04,320 --> 01:25:07,920
Speaker 1: learned about this The Flaming Groovies garage rock underground off on,

1532
01:25:08,200 --> 01:25:11,519
Speaker 1: we're not really famous underground garage rock band. The Flaming

1533
01:25:11,560 --> 01:25:14,479
Speaker 1: Groovies played the rap party for the thing at the

1534
01:25:14,560 --> 01:25:19,120
Speaker 1: Roxy in Hollywood. Is John Carpenter a big fan? Or

1535
01:25:19,439 --> 01:25:22,000
Speaker 1: John Carpenter loves rock rock and roll? Have you ever

1536
01:25:22,040 --> 01:25:26,240
Speaker 1: heard his band The Koop Devills. Oh you haven't seen

1537
01:25:26,280 --> 01:25:28,160
Speaker 1: this music? Fand how have I not sent this to you?

1538
01:25:29,040 --> 01:25:33,280
Speaker 1: The they the score for Big Trouble Little China, Uh

1539
01:25:33,360 --> 01:25:38,599
Speaker 1: is famously like not all atmospheric. Uh, since it's like, um,

1540
01:25:40,000 --> 01:25:43,040
Speaker 1: it's supposed to sound like fifties rock and roll, and

1541
01:25:43,640 --> 01:25:47,879
Speaker 1: boy this music video it's him and like Tommy Wallace,

1542
01:25:48,040 --> 01:25:50,880
Speaker 1: who's I think the It was like one of the

1543
01:25:50,920 --> 01:26:06,040
Speaker 1: guys who's worked on Halloween. Yeah, John Carpenter said that

1544
01:26:06,080 --> 01:26:11,120
Speaker 1: he loves the Beatles, Um, and that's it. Why not

1545
01:26:11,200 --> 01:26:15,759
Speaker 1: Warren Zevon? Uh, you know obviously any of Morrick Coney

1546
01:26:15,960 --> 01:26:19,679
Speaker 1: but apparently also Katie Perry. I just found an interview

1547
01:26:19,720 --> 01:26:24,240
Speaker 1: in which he, uh he said that he liked Roar

1548
01:26:24,520 --> 01:26:26,720
Speaker 1: by Katie Parrott, which is the worst thing I've ever heard.

1549
01:26:26,760 --> 01:26:30,120
Speaker 1: I wish I hadn't read that someone Eternal Sunshine that

1550
01:26:30,160 --> 01:26:35,960
Speaker 1: memory out of my mind? Was he kidding? No? No,

1551
01:26:36,080 --> 01:26:39,960
Speaker 1: what's his evidence for liking that? She's a cool girl,

1552
01:26:40,120 --> 01:26:42,439
Speaker 1: a great performer, and she knows how to deliver a song.

1553
01:26:43,880 --> 01:26:47,040
Speaker 1: She has an innate talent. It's a girl empowerment song,

1554
01:26:47,160 --> 01:26:50,000
Speaker 1: and I appreciate that. I like that song. There you

1555
01:26:50,040 --> 01:26:53,800
Speaker 1: have it, you got it out of me. If it

1556
01:26:53,920 --> 01:26:55,960
Speaker 1: was anything on Teenage Dream, I would have been okay

1557
01:26:56,000 --> 01:27:01,000
Speaker 1: with it, because that album kind of bangs. Roorse sucks. Wow,

1558
01:27:02,240 --> 01:27:08,320
Speaker 1: oh damn, how the Mighty Fallen? Oh yeah, this was

1559
01:27:08,400 --> 01:27:12,000
Speaker 1: the Pitchfork. Oh. I could see him doing that to

1560
01:27:12,080 --> 01:27:15,200
Speaker 1: try to prick any kind of pomposity that might have

1561
01:27:15,280 --> 01:27:18,679
Speaker 1: come through from the interview. Or maybe I guess that's true. Yeah,

1562
01:27:18,760 --> 01:27:25,879
Speaker 1: oh man, this was in the theme to Dragnet Up. Actually,

1563
01:27:25,920 --> 01:27:29,360
Speaker 1: that's a great theme. Skeeter Dad, Oh my god, this

1564
01:27:29,400 --> 01:27:32,760
Speaker 1: is so funny. But yeah, Skeeter Davis, he says, my

1565
01:27:32,840 --> 01:27:34,599
Speaker 1: dad is a music professor, but he was also a

1566
01:27:34,600 --> 01:27:38,000
Speaker 1: session musician in Nashville, and he played on Skeeter Davis

1567
01:27:38,040 --> 01:27:40,000
Speaker 1: The End of the World. He says, I don't know

1568
01:27:40,000 --> 01:27:42,280
Speaker 1: what you call this. It's a pretty song country music,

1569
01:27:42,479 --> 01:27:47,639
Speaker 1: pop music. Starts singing, don't they know It's the End

1570
01:27:48,160 --> 01:27:50,240
Speaker 1: the World? And then just the last lines, I'm not

1571
01:27:50,280 --> 01:27:58,880
Speaker 1: going to sing this shad. I know I would want to.

1572
01:27:58,920 --> 01:28:00,960
Speaker 1: I would have to like meet time off and like

1573
01:28:01,000 --> 01:28:02,439
Speaker 1: I would want to go to his house. I wouldn't

1574
01:28:02,439 --> 01:28:04,599
Speaker 1: want to do it on like Zoom. He also loves

1575
01:28:04,680 --> 01:28:08,200
Speaker 1: Love Train by the o J's. Of course, he loves

1576
01:28:08,400 --> 01:28:12,040
Speaker 1: Werewolves of London and Don't Fear the Reaper, which is

1577
01:28:12,120 --> 01:28:16,960
Speaker 1: in Halloween. He loves Toto Africa that scans. He said,

1578
01:28:17,439 --> 01:28:21,040
Speaker 1: the studio production is perfect. Yeah, I had at Home

1579
01:28:21,040 --> 01:28:24,880
Speaker 1: on vinyl. Blenda Carlisle Heaven is a place on Earth,

1580
01:28:25,600 --> 01:28:30,800
Speaker 1: bragging about having Toto's Africa on vinyl. He loves Boys

1581
01:28:30,840 --> 01:28:36,160
Speaker 1: Two Men. He loves Candle the I feel like he's

1582
01:28:36,160 --> 01:28:39,160
Speaker 1: gotta be troll. Is this all part of the Pitchfork piece? Yeah? Yeah,

1583
01:28:39,280 --> 01:28:43,519
Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra, I hate his voice. It irritates me. Dixie

1584
01:28:43,600 --> 01:28:46,880
Speaker 1: Chicks not ready to make nice, he said, he loves them.

1585
01:28:47,000 --> 01:28:49,559
Speaker 1: Uh he said, uh, I love this song because it

1586
01:28:49,640 --> 01:28:54,320
Speaker 1: blew up after they after criticizing George W. Bush. He

1587
01:28:54,360 --> 01:28:58,639
Speaker 1: likes Alicia Keys. Oh, I like that. And the last

1588
01:28:58,640 --> 01:29:04,840
Speaker 1: song in here is Katie p Is Roar. Okay, I

1589
01:29:04,840 --> 01:29:08,120
Speaker 1: guess humanizes. I mean I like that. I like that.

1590
01:29:08,240 --> 01:29:18,040
Speaker 1: He's has like Michael Scott's favorite music. Wow. Okay. Well,

1591
01:29:18,080 --> 01:29:20,920
Speaker 1: moving off that now and over to the sound editors

1592
01:29:21,000 --> 01:29:23,320
Speaker 1: portion of the program. The sound editors on the thing

1593
01:29:23,600 --> 01:29:27,880
Speaker 1: where David Lewis, You Doll and Colin Mua and for

1594
01:29:27,920 --> 01:29:30,479
Speaker 1: the sounds that the monster made, they use recordings from

1595
01:29:30,560 --> 01:29:35,240
Speaker 1: animals like birds, pigs, and lions, all pitched in different directions. Well,

1596
01:29:35,280 --> 01:29:37,679
Speaker 1: the low droning sound that you hear in various scenes

1597
01:29:37,800 --> 01:29:41,240
Speaker 1: was actually the process sound of an air conditioner that

1598
01:29:41,360 --> 01:29:45,240
Speaker 1: music editor Cliff Kowick found in a sound effects library.

1599
01:29:45,640 --> 01:29:50,679
Speaker 1: It's very Lynchan, wasn't there like a yes, yes, yes, yes,

1600
01:29:50,720 --> 01:29:52,720
Speaker 1: that was what it was. And the sounds of the

1601
01:29:52,800 --> 01:29:56,519
Speaker 1: dogs freaking out in the kennel were obtained in a

1602
01:29:56,600 --> 01:30:00,519
Speaker 1: not particularly ethical fashion. Producer Stewart co One wrote on

1603
01:30:00,600 --> 01:30:03,000
Speaker 1: his blog that one day, with the help of his kids,

1604
01:30:03,560 --> 01:30:07,200
Speaker 1: the sound editor Colin Mua rounded up all the neighborhood

1605
01:30:07,280 --> 01:30:09,960
Speaker 1: dogs and locked them in his house with a tape

1606
01:30:10,000 --> 01:30:13,720
Speaker 1: recorder running It's wrong for all sorts of reasons. But

1607
01:30:13,760 --> 01:30:16,559
Speaker 1: it gets worse. He then donned an overcoat and a

1608
01:30:16,600 --> 01:30:19,280
Speaker 1: hat that covered his face and walked around the house

1609
01:30:19,360 --> 01:30:24,360
Speaker 1: tapping on the windows with rattling door knobs. So awful

1610
01:30:24,600 --> 01:30:27,240
Speaker 1: the secret ingredient to the sounds in this movie, We're

1611
01:30:27,360 --> 01:30:32,360
Speaker 1: dog cruelty. Why is uh? Why is Colin going around

1612
01:30:32,439 --> 01:30:38,040
Speaker 1: rounding up the neighborhood dogs? Uh for this movie movie stuff? Sure?

1613
01:30:38,280 --> 01:30:41,880
Speaker 1: Well your dog be in a movie. Yeah, I'm just

1614
01:30:41,880 --> 01:30:45,760
Speaker 1: gonna torture him for a little while. And now I'm

1615
01:30:45,800 --> 01:30:48,160
Speaker 1: just trying to figure out they there's like a no

1616
01:30:48,280 --> 01:30:51,639
Speaker 1: animals were rmed message on the end of this you know, well,

1617
01:30:51,720 --> 01:30:53,920
Speaker 1: I mean they wanted to show that they didn't actually

1618
01:30:54,160 --> 01:30:58,120
Speaker 1: split any dogs open for the to the Humane Society,

1619
01:30:58,160 --> 01:30:59,960
Speaker 1: so they let them on the set. But I guess

1620
01:31:00,000 --> 01:31:04,200
Speaker 1: he didn't tell them in post. Yeah, I psychologically abused

1621
01:31:04,200 --> 01:31:08,240
Speaker 1: a bunch of dogs for this. John Carpenters are just

1622
01:31:08,400 --> 01:31:13,000
Speaker 1: chained smoking like h be mean ord to the dogs. Yeah,

1623
01:31:13,200 --> 01:31:20,200
Speaker 1: really bang on the windows play. Katie Perry Alexa play Katie.

1624
01:31:20,400 --> 01:31:29,840
Speaker 1: They hate that. Well, now let's talk about the famously

1625
01:31:29,880 --> 01:31:33,040
Speaker 1: troubled release of this movie. The Thing got a pretty

1626
01:31:33,040 --> 01:31:36,080
Speaker 1: decent advertising campaign, which is why there's so much about

1627
01:31:36,080 --> 01:31:38,639
Speaker 1: it in star Log and Pangaria magazine at the time.

1628
01:31:39,560 --> 01:31:44,280
Speaker 1: Part of this promotional campaign included a Draw the Thing contest,

1629
01:31:44,600 --> 01:31:47,280
Speaker 1: which challenged fans to draw the monster off of a

1630
01:31:47,360 --> 01:31:50,080
Speaker 1: graph from the original story to win a visit to

1631
01:31:50,160 --> 01:31:53,599
Speaker 1: Universal and the set. It's pretty cool. I gotta say.

1632
01:31:53,840 --> 01:31:55,600
Speaker 1: Some of the stuff that people came up with is

1633
01:31:55,640 --> 01:32:00,120
Speaker 1: like pretty good. Honestly, you know, the winner if the

1634
01:32:00,160 --> 01:32:03,360
Speaker 1: winner for it online? Oh man, you put this on Twitter.

1635
01:32:04,000 --> 01:32:07,080
Speaker 1: Podcasting as a medium is failing me. I want you to.

1636
01:32:07,160 --> 01:32:10,280
Speaker 1: I want you to see the winner. Ah No, it's

1637
01:32:10,320 --> 01:32:17,240
Speaker 1: not very good. Actually, it's like Medusa with three eyes. No, no,

1638
01:32:17,760 --> 01:32:24,360
Speaker 1: I do not want Oh John Carpenter picked that. I

1639
01:32:24,560 --> 01:32:29,720
Speaker 1: just found it in the original Fengoria. Oh man, I

1640
01:32:29,840 --> 01:32:31,760
Speaker 1: mean you know what I mean. I guess I would

1641
01:32:31,800 --> 01:32:35,080
Speaker 1: be kind of embarrassing and bad if you picked something

1642
01:32:35,080 --> 01:32:36,800
Speaker 1: that was better than whatever you had in your movie.

1643
01:32:37,040 --> 01:32:39,679
Speaker 1: So maybe he picked one of the worst ones. Yes,

1644
01:32:41,120 --> 01:32:45,920
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, look at this piece of movie's gonna

1645
01:32:45,920 --> 01:32:50,080
Speaker 1: look great by comparison. Yeah, this guy's the winner. I

1646
01:32:50,080 --> 01:32:52,800
Speaker 1: don't know why I make him sound like um Nor

1647
01:32:52,920 --> 01:33:06,000
Speaker 1: McDonald's Burt Reynolds. Impresses exactly what it wants. Yeah, yeah,

1648
01:33:06,040 --> 01:33:13,160
Speaker 1: bring him back to the studio. I'll sign it. Fang

1649
01:33:13,560 --> 01:33:17,760
Speaker 1: to say, though the contest winner has no professional experience

1650
01:33:17,800 --> 01:33:22,280
Speaker 1: as an illustrator. But the team behind the thing actually

1651
01:33:22,320 --> 01:33:25,519
Speaker 1: hated the poster art that was done by movie poster

1652
01:33:25,800 --> 01:33:32,080
Speaker 1: legend Drew stan who, uh, as you say, is basically

1653
01:33:32,160 --> 01:33:35,599
Speaker 1: the guy for that style of full color hand drawn

1654
01:33:35,680 --> 01:33:39,960
Speaker 1: poster already did Shawshank, Redemption, Blade Runner, Indiana Jones, Back

1655
01:33:40,000 --> 01:33:43,320
Speaker 1: to the Future, and the Star Wars franchises. He's still working.

1656
01:33:43,680 --> 01:33:46,240
Speaker 1: But you like when you see these posters, when you

1657
01:33:46,280 --> 01:33:49,479
Speaker 1: imagine like those big beautiful lobby you're you're picturing it

1658
01:33:49,640 --> 01:33:53,240
Speaker 1: Drew strusan illustration. I mean, the guy is just it's

1659
01:33:53,520 --> 01:33:56,559
Speaker 1: their works of art, you know. But I guess the

1660
01:33:56,760 --> 01:34:00,280
Speaker 1: team behind the movie did not like it because felt

1661
01:34:00,320 --> 01:34:03,200
Speaker 1: like it reduced their movie to a generic slasher style look,

1662
01:34:03,200 --> 01:34:07,519
Speaker 1: which is kind of true. Uh. And while they did

1663
01:34:07,600 --> 01:34:10,600
Speaker 1: love one of the taglines for the film, Man is

1664
01:34:10,640 --> 01:34:13,960
Speaker 1: the warmest place to hide, and that was written by

1665
01:34:14,000 --> 01:34:17,040
Speaker 1: Stephen Frankfurt, who also came up with the immortal in

1666
01:34:17,080 --> 01:34:20,160
Speaker 1: space no one can hear you scream for alien. The

1667
01:34:20,200 --> 01:34:23,240
Speaker 1: other tagline that got used for the thing was the

1668
01:34:23,360 --> 01:34:26,920
Speaker 1: Ultimate in Alien Terror, which, as you can probably guess,

1669
01:34:27,000 --> 01:34:30,679
Speaker 1: was the work of a non creative executive Universal president

1670
01:34:30,760 --> 01:34:34,080
Speaker 1: Sid Sheinberg, who is I guess, desperate to shoehorn in

1671
01:34:34,120 --> 01:34:37,919
Speaker 1: the word alien to capitalize on really Scott's film, Aliens

1672
01:34:37,920 --> 01:34:40,080
Speaker 1: are hot right now. I gotta get an alien in there.

1673
01:34:41,160 --> 01:34:44,360
Speaker 1: Um Yeah. Man, just just boggles my mind. This movie

1674
01:34:44,439 --> 01:34:50,120
Speaker 1: bombed so hard, so hard. I mean, you know, I

1675
01:34:50,160 --> 01:34:51,799
Speaker 1: liked it a lot more than I thought I would.

1676
01:34:51,920 --> 01:34:55,040
Speaker 1: But for some reason, all the graphics i'd seen of it,

1677
01:34:55,080 --> 01:34:58,360
Speaker 1: and like it's not positioned very well, even down to

1678
01:34:58,439 --> 01:35:02,040
Speaker 1: the name, like yeah, terrible name. Yeah, but I've never

1679
01:35:02,120 --> 01:35:03,760
Speaker 1: I've never Yeah, what does that? What does that tell

1680
01:35:03,760 --> 01:35:05,840
Speaker 1: you about anything? And even the poster to like you

1681
01:35:05,880 --> 01:35:07,680
Speaker 1: look at the you look at the post and you're like,

1682
01:35:07,720 --> 01:35:11,479
Speaker 1: it's a there's a guy with a astronaut shiny light

1683
01:35:11,640 --> 01:35:15,400
Speaker 1: face tells you nothing about it? Yeah, But just people

1684
01:35:15,400 --> 01:35:18,360
Speaker 1: were so meeting to it, even critics like Harlan Ellison,

1685
01:35:18,400 --> 01:35:20,559
Speaker 1: who's the guy who wrote Demon with a Glass Hand,

1686
01:35:20,640 --> 01:35:24,160
Speaker 1: which is like a sort of maybe the inspiration for Terminator.

1687
01:35:24,200 --> 01:35:27,520
Speaker 1: He's a really legendary sci fi author. He called it trek.

1688
01:35:28,240 --> 01:35:30,320
Speaker 1: Roger Ebert said it didn't have anything going for it

1689
01:35:30,360 --> 01:35:34,519
Speaker 1: beyond the special effects. Vincent Canby said basically as much

1690
01:35:34,560 --> 01:35:36,720
Speaker 1: as the same in the New York Times. And and

1691
01:35:36,760 --> 01:35:39,759
Speaker 1: then this is what really bums me out. The director

1692
01:35:39,800 --> 01:35:42,360
Speaker 1: of the fifty one film, Christian Nibe, was still alive

1693
01:35:42,560 --> 01:35:45,599
Speaker 1: and dissed it. He said, uh, if you want blood,

1694
01:35:45,600 --> 01:35:47,920
Speaker 1: go to the slaughterhouse. And then he just called the

1695
01:35:47,920 --> 01:35:52,160
Speaker 1: movie a terrific commercial for J and B. Scotch. An

1696
01:35:52,200 --> 01:35:55,839
Speaker 1: actor from that film, Kenneth Toby said the visual effects

1697
01:35:55,840 --> 01:35:58,240
Speaker 1: were so explicit that they actually destroyed how you were

1698
01:35:58,240 --> 01:36:01,120
Speaker 1: supposed to feel about the characters. And it's like, that's

1699
01:36:01,160 --> 01:36:02,800
Speaker 1: the argument that you want to make about the movie,

1700
01:36:02,880 --> 01:36:05,160
Speaker 1: that the effects are too good and they take away

1701
01:36:05,160 --> 01:36:07,920
Speaker 1: from everything else. I mean, I guess that's what people

1702
01:36:07,920 --> 01:36:10,360
Speaker 1: are saying about Avatar, but I don't get that from

1703
01:36:10,360 --> 01:36:12,680
Speaker 1: the thing. Like it's still even just the editing and

1704
01:36:12,680 --> 01:36:15,000
Speaker 1: pacing and as you mentioned, like the writing, the character

1705
01:36:15,040 --> 01:36:18,960
Speaker 1: beats are so good. But um yeah, man flopped and

1706
01:36:19,240 --> 01:36:23,200
Speaker 1: you know, timing is everything, and they did not have

1707
01:36:23,280 --> 01:36:28,599
Speaker 1: good timing. No, they faced incredibly stiff competition in two

1708
01:36:28,640 --> 01:36:33,439
Speaker 1: and it was released Steven Spielberg's ET. Most notably, it

1709
01:36:33,560 --> 01:36:37,240
Speaker 1: was kind of a much more popular choice of uh

1710
01:36:37,280 --> 01:36:40,679
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial being. There was also Star Trek to the Wrath

1711
01:36:40,720 --> 01:36:43,320
Speaker 1: of Cohn and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, which opened on

1712
01:36:43,360 --> 01:36:46,519
Speaker 1: the same day as The Thing, and after just three weeks,

1713
01:36:46,680 --> 01:36:49,640
Speaker 1: the Thing grossed only thirteen point eight million on a

1714
01:36:49,680 --> 01:36:53,200
Speaker 1: ten million dollar budget, plus advertising, which Cohen said was

1715
01:36:53,479 --> 01:36:57,280
Speaker 1: about three point five millions so all total. This meant

1716
01:36:57,320 --> 01:37:00,400
Speaker 1: that this was John Carpenter's first big bomb, and multiple

1717
01:37:00,400 --> 01:37:02,760
Speaker 1: people involved with the production have blamed the failure, as

1718
01:37:02,760 --> 01:37:06,280
Speaker 1: I said on ET, saying, the audience is clearly preferred

1719
01:37:06,320 --> 01:37:10,240
Speaker 1: a cuddly, cute alien that teaches people how to love

1720
01:37:10,960 --> 01:37:15,040
Speaker 1: or thereabouts, is that what he does? Would you say that?

1721
01:37:15,439 --> 01:37:16,920
Speaker 1: I think that, you know what? I never like DT.

1722
01:37:17,880 --> 01:37:22,800
Speaker 1: Oh really good, I've seen it a lot. Yeah, I

1723
01:37:22,800 --> 01:37:27,040
Speaker 1: mean neither not really not not my speed. I take

1724
01:37:27,120 --> 01:37:30,200
Speaker 1: every failure hard, Carpenter told Time Out in New York

1725
01:37:30,200 --> 01:37:32,040
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight. The one I took the

1726
01:37:32,040 --> 01:37:34,720
Speaker 1: hardest was the thing. I don't think the studio knew

1727
01:37:34,760 --> 01:37:36,639
Speaker 1: a kind of movie they were getting. I think they

1728
01:37:36,640 --> 01:37:39,280
Speaker 1: wanted Alien, a crowd pleaser, and it was way too

1729
01:37:39,280 --> 01:37:42,599
Speaker 1: ferocious for them. They were upset by the ending, too dark,

1730
01:37:42,960 --> 01:37:45,840
Speaker 1: but that's what I wanted. Who goes there? Who are we?

1731
01:37:46,200 --> 01:37:48,799
Speaker 1: Which one of you is real? The movie was hated

1732
01:37:49,120 --> 01:37:52,160
Speaker 1: even by science fiction fans. They thought I had betrayed

1733
01:37:52,200 --> 01:37:54,840
Speaker 1: some kind of trust and the piling on was insane.

1734
01:37:55,280 --> 01:37:57,080
Speaker 1: I think the social climate in the country at that

1735
01:37:57,120 --> 01:37:58,640
Speaker 1: time had a whole lot to do with it. He

1736
01:37:58,880 --> 01:38:02,360
Speaker 1: expounded onto creative screenwriting. There was a recession underway, and

1737
01:38:02,360 --> 01:38:05,920
Speaker 1: people rejected its downbeat, depressing view of things. They didn't

1738
01:38:05,960 --> 01:38:10,160
Speaker 1: like the horrible inevitability of the movie, and then taking

1739
01:38:10,160 --> 01:38:14,000
Speaker 1: an admirably sanguine view of things. He said, but look,

1740
01:38:14,240 --> 01:38:16,439
Speaker 1: I was just a skinny kid from Kentucky who came

1741
01:38:16,439 --> 01:38:18,799
Speaker 1: to Hollywood, and I got real lucky in my life.

1742
01:38:19,080 --> 01:38:20,639
Speaker 1: If you want to play in the big leagues, you've

1743
01:38:20,640 --> 01:38:22,439
Speaker 1: got to be ready for the hits. So that was

1744
01:38:22,479 --> 01:38:25,320
Speaker 1: my first big one. I'd gotten bad reviews before, but

1745
01:38:25,400 --> 01:38:27,760
Speaker 1: I had some successes. I've been built up a little

1746
01:38:27,760 --> 01:38:29,439
Speaker 1: bit in the eyes of critics and now they wanted

1747
01:38:29,439 --> 01:38:31,960
Speaker 1: to swap me back, and I don't blame them. Whatever

1748
01:38:32,000 --> 01:38:36,360
Speaker 1: they want to do is fine. Depressingly though, it's good

1749
01:38:36,360 --> 01:38:38,040
Speaker 1: that he can have this in the review mirror and

1750
01:38:38,040 --> 01:38:40,000
Speaker 1: think of it this way, because this did alter the

1751
01:38:40,200 --> 01:38:42,960
Speaker 1: entire trajectory of his career. The thing that I was

1752
01:38:43,000 --> 01:38:45,639
Speaker 1: struck by reading these interviews with Dean Kundy and Bill

1753
01:38:45,680 --> 01:38:49,040
Speaker 1: Lancaster in uh Fangoria and star Logs. They were both

1754
01:38:49,160 --> 01:38:52,439
Speaker 1: at this point already talking about working on fire Starter,

1755
01:38:53,040 --> 01:38:55,800
Speaker 1: which is a Stephen King adaptation and eventually came out

1756
01:38:56,240 --> 01:39:00,920
Speaker 1: starting a young Drew Barrymore, and um, John Carpenter was like,

1757
01:39:00,920 --> 01:39:02,840
Speaker 1: the ink was dry on his deal to do that,

1758
01:39:02,960 --> 01:39:04,600
Speaker 1: and he had already had this team in place and

1759
01:39:04,640 --> 01:39:08,320
Speaker 1: they were already doing it. And um, Bill Phillips, who

1760
01:39:08,320 --> 01:39:11,280
Speaker 1: did a draft of fire Starter, explained that what happening

1761
01:39:11,360 --> 01:39:14,719
Speaker 1: was the marketing folks at Universal got cold feet because

1762
01:39:14,720 --> 01:39:16,759
Speaker 1: the thing didn't do very well at the box office

1763
01:39:17,160 --> 01:39:19,880
Speaker 1: and there were Stephen King films clogging up the pipeline

1764
01:39:19,920 --> 01:39:22,559
Speaker 1: and not doing very well, and they decided that since

1765
01:39:22,680 --> 01:39:24,880
Speaker 1: John was very good at delivering low budget films, they

1766
01:39:24,880 --> 01:39:28,000
Speaker 1: would cut the budget from twenty seven million to fifteen million,

1767
01:39:28,600 --> 01:39:30,800
Speaker 1: and he said since John didn't have to agree to that,

1768
01:39:30,880 --> 01:39:34,320
Speaker 1: he didn't and he had. John at the time had

1769
01:39:34,320 --> 01:39:36,240
Speaker 1: what's called a payer play deal, which means that even

1770
01:39:36,240 --> 01:39:38,200
Speaker 1: if they decided to not do your movie, used to

1771
01:39:38,280 --> 01:39:41,719
Speaker 1: get paid at chunk of your feet. Uh. This guy

1772
01:39:41,760 --> 01:39:44,960
Speaker 1: Bill Phillips hilariously said John took the money and with

1773
01:39:45,040 --> 01:39:48,200
Speaker 1: it bought a bell Jet long Ranger helicopter, which he

1774
01:39:48,280 --> 01:39:53,040
Speaker 1: later rented out to the l A Olympics. Just imagining

1775
01:39:53,680 --> 01:39:56,760
Speaker 1: John Carpenter negotiating with the Olympics for the use of

1776
01:39:56,760 --> 01:40:04,519
Speaker 1: his helicopter. Jane smoking the whole time. Yeah, I got

1777
01:40:04,520 --> 01:40:07,519
Speaker 1: a couple more payments on this. Uh this synth I bought.

1778
01:40:08,439 --> 01:40:11,599
Speaker 1: You can use a helicopter, but fill up the tank.

1779
01:40:11,600 --> 01:40:19,320
Speaker 1: Will you bring him back? Uh was the least practical

1780
01:40:19,360 --> 01:40:21,200
Speaker 1: thing I could buy with this money that I got

1781
01:40:21,400 --> 01:40:26,040
Speaker 1: for kind of a ridiculous reason. Oh, by a helicopter,

1782
01:40:26,200 --> 01:40:28,000
Speaker 1: a couple of a couple of Juno's, a couple of

1783
01:40:28,080 --> 01:40:31,559
Speaker 1: Rolands since um, and but he did. He He eventually

1784
01:40:31,600 --> 01:40:33,960
Speaker 1: switched studios. He went over to Columbia to do another

1785
01:40:34,080 --> 01:40:39,320
Speaker 1: King adaptation, Christine, which is a great movie. And uh,

1786
01:40:39,360 --> 01:40:41,320
Speaker 1: and then he would as I mentioned earlier he did

1787
01:40:41,360 --> 01:40:45,040
Speaker 1: the score for fire Starter, so he came back version

1788
01:40:45,080 --> 01:40:49,120
Speaker 1: of fire Starter, which was widely panned, but he did.

1789
01:40:49,200 --> 01:40:52,560
Speaker 1: He got his check for it, baby, so J c

1790
01:40:52,920 --> 01:40:55,560
Speaker 1: king of getting paid regardless. I don't give it what

1791
01:40:55,680 --> 01:40:58,599
Speaker 1: your movie looks like. Kind of my My whole ethos

1792
01:40:58,640 --> 01:41:01,519
Speaker 1: to something. You know. Did the check clear good? It

1793
01:41:01,600 --> 01:41:07,440
Speaker 1: was a success. I was fulfilled by it. Well. Thankfully.

1794
01:41:07,479 --> 01:41:10,320
Speaker 1: The Thing has come back around and appears on multiple

1795
01:41:10,360 --> 01:41:13,040
Speaker 1: best of lists at this point, and John Carpenter says

1796
01:41:13,080 --> 01:41:15,200
Speaker 1: this one of his favorite movies too, but clearly he's

1797
01:41:15,200 --> 01:41:18,160
Speaker 1: still stung by the rejection. In a Navy Club interview,

1798
01:41:18,160 --> 01:41:21,720
Speaker 1: in in response to a question about how critics had

1799
01:41:21,760 --> 01:41:24,640
Speaker 1: come back around on The Thing, Carpenter said, that's too

1800
01:41:24,720 --> 01:41:27,040
Speaker 1: late for me. I'm an old man now. If the

1801
01:41:27,080 --> 01:41:29,400
Speaker 1: Thing had been a hit, my career would have been different.

1802
01:41:29,520 --> 01:41:31,519
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have had to make the choices that I made,

1803
01:41:31,640 --> 01:41:33,880
Speaker 1: but I needed a job. I'm not saying I hate

1804
01:41:33,880 --> 01:41:37,000
Speaker 1: the movies I did. I loved making Christine and Starman

1805
01:41:37,160 --> 01:41:39,680
Speaker 1: and Big Trouble and Little China all those films. But

1806
01:41:39,800 --> 01:41:45,240
Speaker 1: my career would have been different. Oh no, sweet boy,

1807
01:41:45,720 --> 01:41:48,799
Speaker 1: But I am just so happy that people Every interview

1808
01:41:49,080 --> 01:41:52,160
Speaker 1: now starts with, how does it feel that people were

1809
01:41:52,160 --> 01:41:54,880
Speaker 1: wrong and that you made some of the best movies,

1810
01:41:55,280 --> 01:41:57,200
Speaker 1: some of the best horror films of all time. And

1811
01:41:57,560 --> 01:42:01,080
Speaker 1: I'm happy that he's alive and has been hearing that

1812
01:42:01,120 --> 01:42:04,240
Speaker 1: for years, so that he knows that the critics were wrong. Um.

1813
01:42:04,280 --> 01:42:07,120
Speaker 1: I think he's such a fascinating filmmaker, man. I think

1814
01:42:07,520 --> 01:42:11,639
Speaker 1: the fact that he came up loving like westerns so much, um,

1815
01:42:11,840 --> 01:42:14,920
Speaker 1: and then kind of went into making like low budget

1816
01:42:15,439 --> 01:42:19,160
Speaker 1: independent whore and sci fi it makes him very representative

1817
01:42:19,200 --> 01:42:23,519
Speaker 1: of this wonderfully like American strain of filmmaking. I mean,

1818
01:42:23,720 --> 01:42:27,439
Speaker 1: you know, he's from Kentucky. He went to USC when

1819
01:42:27,439 --> 01:42:29,080
Speaker 1: it was Another thing I love about him, man. I

1820
01:42:29,120 --> 01:42:31,679
Speaker 1: read this interview where he was talking about how cheap

1821
01:42:31,720 --> 01:42:33,720
Speaker 1: it was to go to film school in USC. He

1822
01:42:33,800 --> 01:42:36,000
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I was like a thousand dollars a semester.

1823
01:42:36,080 --> 01:42:38,800
Speaker 1: Then nowadays it's insane, like you can't imagine going to

1824
01:42:38,840 --> 01:42:41,120
Speaker 1: school for that kind of stuff. And he just talks

1825
01:42:41,120 --> 01:42:43,280
Speaker 1: about how blown away he was that he could just

1826
01:42:43,400 --> 01:42:45,280
Speaker 1: go to He was like, you mean, I can go

1827
01:42:45,320 --> 01:42:47,880
Speaker 1: to go to school and and then they'll let me

1828
01:42:47,920 --> 01:42:53,800
Speaker 1: make movies, Like, there's just such a um, yeah, exactly,

1829
01:42:53,880 --> 01:42:58,200
Speaker 1: there's just such an anti like industry dork aside to him.

1830
01:42:58,280 --> 01:43:00,559
Speaker 1: He's just like, Yeah, I just want to make movies

1831
01:43:00,680 --> 01:43:05,519
Speaker 1: and I did, and I win and I get paid. Yeah,

1832
01:43:05,560 --> 01:43:09,040
Speaker 1: I got a helicopter and now I play synthesizers and

1833
01:43:09,120 --> 01:43:12,920
Speaker 1: smoke weed and play Sonic the Hedgehog. Don't bet against

1834
01:43:13,000 --> 01:43:18,479
Speaker 1: John Carpenter um. But yeah, it's it's all his films,

1835
01:43:19,000 --> 01:43:22,479
Speaker 1: particularly stuff in from this really like home run streak

1836
01:43:22,560 --> 01:43:26,000
Speaker 1: that he that he had. The they are so reflective

1837
01:43:26,040 --> 01:43:28,400
Speaker 1: of their time, but they're still so timeless, which is

1838
01:43:28,439 --> 01:43:30,960
Speaker 1: such a neat trick to pull off. And and I

1839
01:43:31,080 --> 01:43:34,240
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that people we started getting this wave of

1840
01:43:34,320 --> 01:43:38,760
Speaker 1: think pieces about the thing during the coronavirus lockdown, when

1841
01:43:38,800 --> 01:43:42,280
Speaker 1: people were just like, yep, no one trusts anymore and

1842
01:43:42,280 --> 01:43:47,360
Speaker 1: we're all very tired. Um. And yeah, he's just that's

1843
01:43:47,360 --> 01:43:50,040
Speaker 1: a that's a really rare talent for a filmmaker to

1844
01:43:50,040 --> 01:43:52,760
Speaker 1: be able to do stuff like that. And I I

1845
01:43:52,840 --> 01:43:55,920
Speaker 1: love this quote that he has, uh this oral history

1846
01:43:55,920 --> 01:43:58,800
Speaker 1: he did for the Museum of Pop Culture. He told them,

1847
01:43:58,880 --> 01:44:02,320
Speaker 1: in a sense, there are two basic horror stories. One

1848
01:44:02,720 --> 01:44:05,960
Speaker 1: we're a tribe sitting around a campfire, and the tribal elder,

1849
01:44:06,080 --> 01:44:08,160
Speaker 1: or the witch doctor, the medicinan, or the priest, a

1850
01:44:08,200 --> 01:44:11,439
Speaker 1: religious leader. He's telling us over the fire in a circle.

1851
01:44:11,800 --> 01:44:14,639
Speaker 1: He's telling us about evil. He says, I can tell

1852
01:44:14,680 --> 01:44:17,439
Speaker 1: you where evil is, from where it hides, where it is,

1853
01:44:18,000 --> 01:44:21,360
Speaker 1: it's out there, and he points outside the circle, into

1854
01:44:21,360 --> 01:44:24,320
Speaker 1: the darkness, into the trees, into the ridges beyond where

1855
01:44:24,320 --> 01:44:27,320
Speaker 1: we're sitting. The second story, he says, I'm going to

1856
01:44:27,400 --> 01:44:30,320
Speaker 1: tell you where evil is. It's here in the human heart.

1857
01:44:30,920 --> 01:44:34,479
Speaker 1: We're all capable of evil under the right circumstances. That

1858
01:44:34,680 --> 01:44:37,720
Speaker 1: second story is harder to tell because it's more disturbing.

1859
01:44:38,160 --> 01:44:41,080
Speaker 1: It's more disturbing to the audience. The first one is

1860
01:44:41,080 --> 01:44:44,000
Speaker 1: easier and more fun. But the second one says a

1861
01:44:44,040 --> 01:44:48,519
Speaker 1: lot about humanity and in the thing he did both

1862
01:44:50,280 --> 01:44:53,360
Speaker 1: and that is just uh yeah, I mean, and I

1863
01:44:53,400 --> 01:44:55,719
Speaker 1: know horror is not everybody's cup of tea, but it's

1864
01:44:55,760 --> 01:44:59,519
Speaker 1: just great filmmaking. It's a it's great storytelling, and if

1865
01:44:59,560 --> 01:45:01,519
Speaker 1: nothing out us, I hope that's what everyone takes away.

1866
01:45:01,560 --> 01:45:06,120
Speaker 1: And it's great wet poppetry, so nothing else, I hope

1867
01:45:06,120 --> 01:45:09,120
Speaker 1: that's what everyone takes away from it. This has been

1868
01:45:09,120 --> 01:45:12,720
Speaker 1: too much information. I've talked myself horse yelling about one

1869
01:45:12,760 --> 01:45:14,719
Speaker 1: of my favorite movies. Thank you for taking this journey

1870
01:45:14,760 --> 01:45:17,519
Speaker 1: with me. My name is Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan

1871
01:45:17,600 --> 01:45:20,559
Speaker 1: Runtalg And as a non horror person, I do urrige

1872
01:45:20,600 --> 01:45:22,679
Speaker 1: all of you who have not seen this incredible movie.

1873
01:45:23,000 --> 01:45:25,840
Speaker 1: Check it out. I enjoyed it myself. We'll catch you

1874
01:45:25,920 --> 01:45:33,240
Speaker 1: next time. Too Much Information was a production of I

1875
01:45:33,360 --> 01:45:36,600
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and

1876
01:45:36,680 --> 01:45:40,479
Speaker 1: Jordan run Talk. The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June.

1877
01:45:40,760 --> 01:45:43,839
Speaker 1: The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtalg

1878
01:45:43,920 --> 01:45:46,960
Speaker 1: and Alex Hegel, with original music by Seth Applebaum. I'm

1879
01:45:46,960 --> 01:45:49,360
Speaker 1: a Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard,

1880
01:45:49,439 --> 01:45:52,160
Speaker 1: please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts

1881
01:45:52,160 --> 01:45:55,480
Speaker 1: on iHeart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast,

1882
01:45:55,760 --> 01:46:02,519
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That's Nan

1883
01:46:02,960 --> 01:46:06,200
Speaker 1: know that that Pat and