1
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Crawford, what did you see?

2
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- Bit off his head.

3
00:00:35,410 --> 00:00:40,082
- I just love you've what
you've done with this room.

4
00:00:41,458 --> 00:00:43,085
- You may be a scientist, but right now,

5
00:00:43,418 --> 00:00:44,795
you're acting like a junkie.

6
00:00:45,128 --> 00:00:46,838
- Just take him and leave.

7
00:00:48,465 --> 00:00:52,344
- What the hell is that?
- Dr. Edward pretorious.

8
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- Well, we learned what we came for.

9
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He ain't crazy and that...
It... ate pretorious' head.

10
00:01:01,853 --> 00:01:03,772
They're gonna think we're crazy.

11
00:01:04,106 --> 00:01:08,402
- All right, come and get me, eunuch!

12
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This time, I'm not running away.

13
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- Yes, the greatest
sensual pleasure there is

14
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is to know the desires of another mind.

15
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- I know your desires, you impotent pig.

16
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- When I met Stuart Gordon,

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I was introduced by a friend of mine,

18
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of ours, back in the
day, named Bob Greenberg.

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- Bring a friend to me.

20
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- Bob Greenberg told me I
should go meet Stuart Gordon,

21
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who, for 10 years, had
been the artistic director

22
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of the organic theater in Chicago.

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We got along real well and
I really, I saw his plays,

24
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and saw how he took
questions from the audience,

25
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and I thought, "wow, this
guy, I have confidence here."

26
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'Cause I didn't know what I was doing.

27
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And I said, "well, let's make a movie,

28
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and I wanna make a horror movie."

29
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And he said he had a couple ideas,

30
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and one of them was re-animator.

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Now, I'd read some lovecraft

32
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and I knew the name lovecraft,

33
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but I was never a fan of the stories.

34
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He doesn't write in images like

35
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us modern people like to
read images, he wrote words.

36
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And it seemed like at the end,

37
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when the real horror was coming,

38
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the protagonist would like... pass out.

39
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- Well, like tolkien,
lovecraft created a mythos,

40
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a backstory if you will, of this place.

41
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Or maybe not so much a backstory,

42
00:02:54,633 --> 00:02:56,843
that they're there, they're still there.

43
00:02:57,177 --> 00:03:01,973
And I think it was kind of a
manifestation, in a vague way,

44
00:03:02,724 --> 00:03:05,977
of his own fear of germs.

45
00:03:06,311 --> 00:03:09,314
- He was writing at a time when germs

46
00:03:09,648 --> 00:03:11,733
were kind of a new concept.

47
00:03:12,067 --> 00:03:13,902
You know, biotics and antibiotics

48
00:03:14,236 --> 00:03:15,904
and all of this sort of stuff.

49
00:03:16,238 --> 00:03:19,032
The fact that something we
couldn't see could kill you.

50
00:03:19,366 --> 00:03:21,366
- You know, he had this
idea that there were things

51
00:03:21,618 --> 00:03:24,037
in the air in a paralleled universe,

52
00:03:24,371 --> 00:03:25,706
like germophobia,

53
00:03:26,039 --> 00:03:28,333
kind of like... he didn't like fish.

54
00:03:29,418 --> 00:03:31,628
He didn't like fish,
fish were creepy to him.

55
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So he made it kind of, you know,

56
00:03:34,005 --> 00:03:38,260
these half fish, weird, gooey people.

57
00:03:38,593 --> 00:03:42,222
Cthulhu, this whole idea
of this subterranean,

58
00:03:42,556 --> 00:03:46,059
ancient old ones that were
still rumbling down there,

59
00:03:46,393 --> 00:03:48,478
and there were certain places on earth

60
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where they could come
up and still get you.

61
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You know, that's a mythos that's created

62
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and everybody goes, "yeah."

63
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And they've stolen from
him right and left.

64
00:04:01,032 --> 00:04:03,243
- But then Stuart mentioned re-animator,

65
00:04:03,577 --> 00:04:06,163
and they already... he and
Dennis, and William Norris,

66
00:04:06,496 --> 00:04:10,041
had already written a script
for a pilot for a TV show.

67
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It was half the length

68
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of a feature film script

69
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and it was for broadcast television.

70
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I read the story, the re-animator

71
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was actually six stories,

72
00:04:21,970 --> 00:04:24,264
and they're not really lovecraftian.

73
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They are more like
"monkey's paw" type stories,

74
00:04:28,685 --> 00:04:30,604
people crawling out of the grave,

75
00:04:30,937 --> 00:04:33,273
those sort of ec comics type of thing,

76
00:04:33,607 --> 00:04:35,984
and that appealed to me.

77
00:04:36,318 --> 00:04:40,322
- October of '85, re-animator comes out.

78
00:04:40,655 --> 00:04:41,990
It makes a bit of a splash,

79
00:04:42,324 --> 00:04:45,035
not the thing that
everybody seems to remember.

80
00:04:45,368 --> 00:04:48,747
- Pauline Kale had a very
nice writeup about the movie

81
00:04:49,080 --> 00:04:50,800
and she said some very
nice things about me,

82
00:04:51,041 --> 00:04:53,835
and I thought, "okay, I've arrived.

83
00:04:54,169 --> 00:04:56,505
My career is finally gonna take off."

84
00:04:56,838 --> 00:04:59,966
And then I was talking
to my agent, saying,

85
00:05:00,300 --> 00:05:02,719
"ooh, all these roles
are gonna come my way."

86
00:05:03,053 --> 00:05:04,930
And he said, "yeah, but
it was a horror movie,

87
00:05:05,263 --> 00:05:06,848
and it was really over the top,

88
00:05:07,182 --> 00:05:10,060
and it was kind of really out there,

89
00:05:10,393 --> 00:05:12,062
and really gory and silly."

90
00:05:12,395 --> 00:05:15,398
- Everything was kind of
a mixed bag, actually.

91
00:05:15,732 --> 00:05:17,567
You loved it or you hated it.

92
00:05:17,901 --> 00:05:20,195
Then I think it came out on vhs

93
00:05:20,529 --> 00:05:23,865
and it was a full-fledged phenom there

94
00:05:24,199 --> 00:05:26,493
in this vhs new world.

95
00:05:26,827 --> 00:05:29,496
Charlie band made a three-picture deal,

96
00:05:29,830 --> 00:05:34,501
I think with Stuart and
Brian, to make some movies.

97
00:05:34,835 --> 00:05:39,631
Charlie had started empire
studios in Rome, outside of Rome.

98
00:05:40,173 --> 00:05:45,095
So let's do a follow up,
another lovecraft project

99
00:05:45,762 --> 00:05:49,683
follow up, and using the same team.

100
00:05:50,016 --> 00:05:51,726
I was always sorry that Bruce abbott

101
00:05:52,060 --> 00:05:53,854
was never a part of any of that.

102
00:05:54,187 --> 00:05:58,984
So Barbara and I, and Brian
and Stuart, of course,

103
00:05:59,317 --> 00:06:02,863
and of course, Mac ahlberg,
who was the cinematographer

104
00:06:03,196 --> 00:06:07,951
and a dear friend, and such a talent.

105
00:06:09,452 --> 00:06:11,705
I honestly think Stuart was surprised

106
00:06:12,038 --> 00:06:15,750
at the humor in re-animator

107
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and he wanted to do his follow
up and not have that flavor.

108
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He wanted to do a straight-ahead,
serious lovecraft piece.

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I have to say that I think
of any lovecraft movie

110
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that has been made, that
from beyond comes the closest

111
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to the mythos, the vibe, the otherworldly

112
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kind of parallel universe

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that lovecraft tried to convey.

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The color scheme that
Mac ahlberg came up with,

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the palette, it was fantastic.

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00:06:59,544 --> 00:07:00,712
Nothing like re-animator.

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Re-animator had none of
that lovecraft mythos in it.

118
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It's not a story that lovecraft himself

119
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even thought was worthy of him.

120
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It was a gig that he did for
money, whereas from beyond

121
00:07:17,979 --> 00:07:21,107
was probably something much closer to...

122
00:07:22,484 --> 00:07:25,570
His imagination.

123
00:07:26,738 --> 00:07:29,074
- They're at it again
with the colored lights

124
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and the weird sounds.

125
00:07:31,076 --> 00:07:34,955
- From beyond, the pre-credit sequence

126
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is almost the entire story,

127
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almost the entirety of
the lovecraft story.

128
00:07:40,043 --> 00:07:43,171
After that, it's all of our work.

129
00:07:43,505 --> 00:07:47,759
It's... Stuart gets story
credit and he helped develop

130
00:07:48,093 --> 00:07:51,805
the story itself, the story elements,

131
00:07:52,138 --> 00:07:53,890
and then I did the screenplay.

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In lovecraft, you are getting
the dread of the unknown.

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You see the terrible
in the story you see

134
00:08:03,733 --> 00:08:08,530
the terrible consequences of
having built the resonator,

135
00:08:09,823 --> 00:08:14,202
and having delved into the

136
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unseen dimensions

137
00:08:17,288 --> 00:08:20,834
of creatures that are
around us all the time.

138
00:08:21,167 --> 00:08:24,254
However, you see the consequences of it,

139
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but you are left to
dread the reality of it.

140
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We, especially Stuart and
Brian, were very dedicated

141
00:08:34,514 --> 00:08:39,102
to putting as much of that
reality onto screen as possible.

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- It was said to us,
"this movie is not funny,

143
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so don't play it funny."

144
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So yes, it was a conscious
choice from Stuart

145
00:08:50,196 --> 00:08:53,658
not to make it funny, but I
also think, to Stuart's credit,

146
00:08:53,992 --> 00:08:58,246
he didn't want to do something
that he had done before.

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He wanted to do something different.

148
00:08:59,831 --> 00:09:02,375
He wanted to show that he
could do different tones

149
00:09:02,709 --> 00:09:04,294
and make different kinds of movies,

150
00:09:04,627 --> 00:09:06,267
and a lot of his stuff is very different.

151
00:09:06,463 --> 00:09:08,715
- We loved all kinds of stories.

152
00:09:09,049 --> 00:09:13,094
We especially loved making people laugh.

153
00:09:14,054 --> 00:09:15,430
It's the first stuff we did.

154
00:09:15,764 --> 00:09:19,684
We had a satire comedy
group in high school

155
00:09:20,018 --> 00:09:21,858
and we actually played
the coffee house circuit

156
00:09:22,187 --> 00:09:24,606
in Chicago back in the
day, back in the '60s.

157
00:09:24,939 --> 00:09:27,650
- And we talked about doing
other lovecraft movies,

158
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and that's what I thought
a sequel would be,

159
00:09:31,571 --> 00:09:33,782
because I was basing my ideas

160
00:09:34,115 --> 00:09:37,702
on the Roger corman Edgar
Allen poe movies from the '60s,

161
00:09:38,870 --> 00:09:43,416
where the sequel was a new
story by Edgar Allen poe.

162
00:09:43,750 --> 00:09:47,504
You went from "house of Usher"
to "pit and the pendulum,"

163
00:09:47,837 --> 00:09:50,757
to "premature burial,"
to "tales of terror,"

164
00:09:51,091 --> 00:09:55,053
and that, to me, was what a sequel was.

165
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But I didn't understand
then what I do now,

166
00:09:58,723 --> 00:10:00,308
which is that a sequel is really just

167
00:10:00,642 --> 00:10:02,769
a celebration of the original movie,

168
00:10:03,103 --> 00:10:04,979
and people want to see those characters.

169
00:10:05,313 --> 00:10:07,690
They really don't want a new thing.

170
00:10:08,024 --> 00:10:11,694
They want to elongate
what they enjoyed before.

171
00:10:12,028 --> 00:10:13,948
Back then, everybody's
doing a three picture-deal

172
00:10:14,280 --> 00:10:17,367
on a napkin at cannes, so
we did a three-picture deal

173
00:10:17,700 --> 00:10:20,912
on a napkin, three pictures
that we would decide.

174
00:10:21,246 --> 00:10:25,250
And so the first one was dolls,

175
00:10:25,583 --> 00:10:30,380
which was a script that already existed

176
00:10:31,297 --> 00:10:32,549
by ed naja.

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00:10:32,882 --> 00:10:35,426
We did that, we were
gonna do that one first,

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00:10:35,760 --> 00:10:39,097
and then we were gonna do a lovecraft one.

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00:10:39,430 --> 00:10:42,642
And so I looked at all the lovecraft stuff

180
00:10:42,976 --> 00:10:46,563
that was available to
us and came up with two

181
00:10:46,896 --> 00:10:48,314
that I thought would be good.

182
00:10:48,648 --> 00:10:50,859
One was "dreams in the witch house,"

183
00:10:51,192 --> 00:10:53,194
and the other was "from beyond."

184
00:10:53,528 --> 00:10:55,864
And so we discussed it and we decided

185
00:10:56,197 --> 00:10:58,783
that from beyond had that metal machine,

186
00:10:59,117 --> 00:11:03,037
so it added a kind of
a Sci-Fi element to it,

187
00:11:03,371 --> 00:11:08,126
which seemed maybe safer
in the marketplace.

188
00:11:08,877 --> 00:11:13,798
And so then, the third one
was gonna be robot jox,

189
00:11:15,133 --> 00:11:17,844
and for dolls and from beyond,

190
00:11:18,803 --> 00:11:22,473
we went to Rome, Italy, to shoot it.

191
00:11:22,807 --> 00:11:27,061
So in September of 1985,

192
00:11:28,980 --> 00:11:30,899
I moved my family to Rome

193
00:11:31,232 --> 00:11:35,445
and we shot dolls up
to the Christmas break,

194
00:11:36,362 --> 00:11:39,490
and then after the break,
we transformed the set.

195
00:11:39,824 --> 00:11:41,201
We built one big house set,

196
00:11:41,534 --> 00:11:45,079
we redid it to shoot from beyond,

197
00:11:45,413 --> 00:11:48,333
and then we edited them both after.

198
00:11:48,666 --> 00:11:51,211
So dolls was actually shot first,

199
00:11:51,544 --> 00:11:52,879
although it was released second.

200
00:11:53,213 --> 00:11:54,714
- It's running itself!

201
00:11:55,048 --> 00:11:58,009
- I think for Stuart, I think
what really attracted him

202
00:11:58,343 --> 00:12:01,721
about from beyond...
I mean, he liked to do

203
00:12:02,055 --> 00:12:06,017
the crazy scenes and stuff,
but I think there was...

204
00:12:06,351 --> 00:12:10,063
I think he always liked
this idea that you could

205
00:12:10,396 --> 00:12:13,942
go into another dimension,
like you're an adventurer,

206
00:12:14,275 --> 00:12:17,528
and maybe you've gotta be careful

207
00:12:17,862 --> 00:12:19,113
that you can't get out.

208
00:12:19,447 --> 00:12:21,407
And I think that was what Stuart really,

209
00:12:21,741 --> 00:12:22,741
what had appealed to him,

210
00:12:22,784 --> 00:12:24,577
at least when we would talk about it.

211
00:12:24,911 --> 00:12:29,707
He really liked that idea
of the intrepid explorers.

212
00:12:30,708 --> 00:12:33,670
- When Stuart was first
talking to me and Dennis

213
00:12:34,003 --> 00:12:37,924
about Katherine mcmichaels
and playing her,

214
00:12:38,258 --> 00:12:42,428
what I heard, maybe it
was from Charlie band,

215
00:12:42,762 --> 00:12:44,889
was that, "Barbara's not really old enough

216
00:12:45,223 --> 00:12:47,642
to play a psychiatrist
and somebody who has

217
00:12:47,976 --> 00:12:49,852
gone to school and maybe had a phd.

218
00:12:50,186 --> 00:12:54,148
She just played this college
co-ed in re-animator,

219
00:12:54,482 --> 00:12:55,608
who's gonna believe this?"

220
00:12:55,942 --> 00:12:59,779
And Stuart was adamant that
I play the part, and he said,

221
00:13:00,113 --> 00:13:04,409
"no, however she plays it,

222
00:13:05,618 --> 00:13:07,745
it's gonna become iconic,
because she's playing it,"

223
00:13:08,079 --> 00:13:09,914
and it would've been this true of anybody.

224
00:13:10,248 --> 00:13:13,293
Like, if he didn't pick me,
if it was somebody else,

225
00:13:13,626 --> 00:13:16,879
that you buy into that,
because that person

226
00:13:17,213 --> 00:13:19,966
cements that role for you
and then you can't imagine

227
00:13:20,300 --> 00:13:21,509
anybody else playing it.

228
00:13:22,635 --> 00:13:24,887
But there was a leap and
I did think to myself,

229
00:13:25,221 --> 00:13:29,684
"okay, I've gotta deepen my
voice and be very serious,"

230
00:13:30,018 --> 00:13:32,687
because I did play a college
co-ed in re-animator.

231
00:13:33,021 --> 00:13:35,982
But the thing that I liked about working

232
00:13:36,316 --> 00:13:40,987
in the Stuart Gordon
universe in my early career

233
00:13:41,321 --> 00:13:44,324
is that both roles were smart women.

234
00:13:44,657 --> 00:13:49,287
However I looked, young
or old, or whatever,

235
00:13:49,620 --> 00:13:53,249
I just infused my character with who

236
00:13:53,583 --> 00:13:55,626
I thought she was as a woman.

237
00:13:55,960 --> 00:13:57,962
And yes, of course, wearing a suit

238
00:13:58,296 --> 00:13:59,380
and wearing Pearl earrings,

239
00:13:59,714 --> 00:14:01,841
and putting my hair back
and wearing glasses.

240
00:14:02,175 --> 00:14:04,677
Part of the reason they
wanted me to wear glasses

241
00:14:05,011 --> 00:14:07,430
is they thought that would
make me look smarter,

242
00:14:07,764 --> 00:14:11,225
and maybe older, and then I
would get to take them off

243
00:14:11,559 --> 00:14:14,062
later on in the story
when I put the leather on,

244
00:14:14,395 --> 00:14:17,982
and it would be a little
bit of a dichotomy.

245
00:14:18,316 --> 00:14:19,776
- What the hell are you doing'?

246
00:14:20,109 --> 00:14:24,781
- Stuart took me to trashy
lingerie on la cienaga

247
00:14:25,114 --> 00:14:28,409
and I tried on a few outfits for him.

248
00:14:28,743 --> 00:14:31,204
I don't think you could
get away with that today.

249
00:14:31,537 --> 00:14:33,247
It would be the costume designer

250
00:14:33,581 --> 00:14:35,833
that would be having me try a few on,

251
00:14:36,167 --> 00:14:36,793
maybe take some pictures.

252
00:14:37,126 --> 00:14:41,881
But we were just there at the store,

253
00:14:42,215 --> 00:14:43,335
maybe for a couple of hours,

254
00:14:43,549 --> 00:14:45,968
and I tried on different
outfits and he would say,

255
00:14:46,302 --> 00:14:48,221
"huh, I like that one.

256
00:14:48,554 --> 00:14:49,847
Yeah, that one's all right.

257
00:14:50,181 --> 00:14:52,225
No, I don't like that one, try this one."

258
00:14:52,558 --> 00:14:54,644
So that's what we did, but you know,

259
00:14:54,977 --> 00:14:59,774
it was all perfectly safe
and normal and whatever.

260
00:15:00,608 --> 00:15:02,235
I was completely fine with that, too.

261
00:15:02,568 --> 00:15:04,570
And I think we came up
with a great outfit.

262
00:15:05,530 --> 00:15:09,534
- Honestly, it's not one of
my favorite works of mine,

263
00:15:09,867 --> 00:15:14,497
simply because I feel like I'm pathetic.

264
00:15:14,831 --> 00:15:17,125
I'm just constantly, "what's happening?"

265
00:15:17,458 --> 00:15:18,584
And, "wait," and "I can't."

266
00:15:18,918 --> 00:15:23,047
And you know, even the scene
with Barbara in her gear,

267
00:15:23,381 --> 00:15:25,842
I'm like, "why am I comatose in this?

268
00:15:26,175 --> 00:15:29,011
Why am I not participating in this?"

269
00:15:29,345 --> 00:15:31,639
I don't even know this
happened, apparently.

270
00:15:31,973 --> 00:15:34,475
Barbara was the driving
force in that movie.

271
00:15:34,809 --> 00:15:39,105
If you wanna think
about it, I was Dan Kane

272
00:15:39,439 --> 00:15:44,193
and she was Herbert west,
and pretorius was Dr. Hill.

273
00:15:45,486 --> 00:15:47,321
- From beyond was shot in Italy,

274
00:15:47,655 --> 00:15:50,908
so all the effects crews
basically built all their effects

275
00:15:51,242 --> 00:15:53,327
in Los Angeles, and then everything

276
00:15:53,661 --> 00:15:55,955
had to be shipped over to Italy,

277
00:15:56,289 --> 00:15:58,249
and then that's where we
all finally got together.

278
00:15:58,416 --> 00:16:00,293
We had a big warehouse
set up for ourselves,

279
00:16:00,626 --> 00:16:02,128
for the effects crew.

280
00:16:02,462 --> 00:16:05,256
All the crates came in, all
of Tony's physical effects

281
00:16:05,590 --> 00:16:07,842
stuff came in, and we all
worked out of it together.

282
00:16:08,176 --> 00:16:10,761
So we kind of kept sharing and,

283
00:16:11,095 --> 00:16:12,823
"oh, I forgot to bring
this from the states,"

284
00:16:12,847 --> 00:16:14,087
'cause this is back in the '80s

285
00:16:14,348 --> 00:16:17,810
and not everything was
readily available in Italy.

286
00:16:18,144 --> 00:16:20,229
Once I read the screenplay

287
00:16:20,563 --> 00:16:22,690
and saw what type of
effects were involved,

288
00:16:23,024 --> 00:16:24,650
I had a meeting with Stuart

289
00:16:24,984 --> 00:16:28,446
to try and decide what I would be doing.

290
00:16:28,779 --> 00:16:31,032
And it was either he or Brian that said,

291
00:16:31,365 --> 00:16:33,525
"you know, we realize this
is a very ambitious project,

292
00:16:33,701 --> 00:16:36,120
so we're gonna have to
divide the special effects

293
00:16:36,454 --> 00:16:38,122
into two or three different teams."

294
00:16:38,456 --> 00:16:40,583
I think it ended up being my team,

295
00:16:40,917 --> 00:16:42,960
John buechler's team for makeup effects,

296
00:16:43,294 --> 00:16:45,588
Tony doublin for all
the resonator effects,

297
00:16:45,922 --> 00:16:48,841
along with the prop
guy, and Michael muscal

298
00:16:49,175 --> 00:16:50,615
was the special effects coordinator.

299
00:16:50,801 --> 00:16:52,470
He was the guy that hopped around

300
00:16:52,803 --> 00:16:54,388
between all of our workshops.

301
00:16:54,722 --> 00:16:58,392
Oh, and John naulin for
the pineal gland-involved

302
00:16:58,726 --> 00:17:00,561
ball cap on Jeffrey combs.

303
00:17:00,895 --> 00:17:02,980
So you had three makeup effects groups,

304
00:17:03,314 --> 00:17:05,775
mechanical effects
group, and Michael muscal

305
00:17:06,108 --> 00:17:09,153
was jumping around from shop to shop

306
00:17:09,487 --> 00:17:11,405
to make sure everybody's on track.

307
00:17:11,739 --> 00:17:13,419
You know, my team was
responsible for doing

308
00:17:13,741 --> 00:17:18,496
kind of the Mr. Bubbly
pretorious makeup on Ted sorel,

309
00:17:18,829 --> 00:17:23,167
and the pretorious monster,
which was very nebulous

310
00:17:23,501 --> 00:17:26,712
up until quite late
into the pre-production,

311
00:17:27,046 --> 00:17:30,550
where Stuart was about to leave for Rome,

312
00:17:30,883 --> 00:17:33,761
and we hadn't nailed
down the design he liked.

313
00:17:34,095 --> 00:17:35,805
I'd done a lot of sketches and sculptures,

314
00:17:36,138 --> 00:17:38,933
and finally, one night
I had him and his wife

315
00:17:39,267 --> 00:17:40,867
come out to my studio, it was very late,

316
00:17:40,977 --> 00:17:43,062
and I had sculpted this little

317
00:17:43,396 --> 00:17:45,773
kind of pretzel-like creature.

318
00:17:46,107 --> 00:17:48,317
I did it very quickly
as kind of a last ditch,

319
00:17:48,651 --> 00:17:50,820
"maybe he'll like this, it's kinda cool."

320
00:17:51,153 --> 00:17:53,447
And he came out, took
one look at it and said,

321
00:17:53,781 --> 00:17:54,781
"I love it, let's do it."

322
00:17:55,032 --> 00:17:57,493
So finally, we nailed him
down on something he liked

323
00:17:57,827 --> 00:17:58,869
right before he took off.

324
00:18:00,037 --> 00:18:03,124
I had Bob kurtzman as
my lead artistic guy.

325
00:18:03,457 --> 00:18:05,835
So Bob and I did most of the sculpting,

326
00:18:06,168 --> 00:18:07,628
had Greg punchatz sculpting,

327
00:18:07,962 --> 00:18:10,756
Aaron sims, sculpture and painting,

328
00:18:11,090 --> 00:18:13,634
John Blake did all the beautiful hair work

329
00:18:13,968 --> 00:18:18,639
for the bubbly Ted sorel,
the wig and the chest hair.

330
00:18:18,973 --> 00:18:20,683
And David kindlon was essential,

331
00:18:21,017 --> 00:18:23,185
he did the mechanical stuff for it.

332
00:18:23,519 --> 00:18:28,024
And Steve patino and Tom
floutz did the fiberglass mold.

333
00:18:28,357 --> 00:18:30,151
Steve was in charge, that was his baby.

334
00:18:30,484 --> 00:18:32,486
- When they told me that
we were going to shoot

335
00:18:32,820 --> 00:18:36,198
from beyond in Italy, I said,
"let me get my passport."

336
00:18:36,532 --> 00:18:39,035
I didn't have one, I'd never
been out of the country.

337
00:18:39,368 --> 00:18:42,913
So I had to get one of
those expediated passports

338
00:18:43,247 --> 00:18:48,044
and fly overnight to Italy, by
myself, and show up in Rome.

339
00:18:48,377 --> 00:18:52,840
And it was like magic,
getting off the plane

340
00:18:53,174 --> 00:18:54,800
and coming to the old city.

341
00:18:55,134 --> 00:18:59,930
And we stayed this really nice
place off of viale parioli,

342
00:19:02,391 --> 00:19:07,188
and it was just, you
know, the coolest thing.

343
00:19:07,521 --> 00:19:09,982
The keys had big balls attached to them

344
00:19:10,316 --> 00:19:11,984
and you had to give it to the...

345
00:19:13,527 --> 00:19:15,047
Like you never took your key with you.

346
00:19:15,071 --> 00:19:16,423
They didn't want you to lose your key,

347
00:19:16,447 --> 00:19:18,247
so you had to leave the
key at the front desk.

348
00:19:18,532 --> 00:19:20,172
"Okay, I hope they don't steal my stuff."

349
00:19:20,326 --> 00:19:23,371
- Well, my memories... and this
is true for a lot of movies,

350
00:19:23,704 --> 00:19:25,956
my memories of from beyond

351
00:19:26,290 --> 00:19:30,961
are much more on a personal
basis in terms of being in Rome,

352
00:19:32,588 --> 00:19:37,510
having days off in Rome, meals
in Rome, walking the streets,

353
00:19:38,803 --> 00:19:41,764
being there for a longer period of time

354
00:19:42,098 --> 00:19:46,143
in order to kind of have it wash over you,

355
00:19:46,477 --> 00:19:51,273
instead of a five-day
tourist vacation, you know?

356
00:19:52,149 --> 00:19:54,985
I was kind of living there, going to the

357
00:19:55,319 --> 00:19:57,446
real Italian deli across the street,

358
00:19:57,780 --> 00:20:00,908
or the people that knew me
at the little local cafe

359
00:20:01,242 --> 00:20:04,537
that I would eat at, or...

360
00:20:04,870 --> 00:20:08,624
And my companion for
all of that was perfect,

361
00:20:08,958 --> 00:20:10,876
it was Mac ahlberg.

362
00:20:11,210 --> 00:20:13,129
Mac ahlberg is Swedish

363
00:20:16,340 --> 00:20:20,469
and spoke fluent Italian.

364
00:20:20,803 --> 00:20:24,223
We would just go on walking
tours on our days off,

365
00:20:24,557 --> 00:20:27,560
have lunch at piazza
navona, walk over here.

366
00:20:27,893 --> 00:20:31,564
"This is that, the history
of this statue is this,"

367
00:20:31,897 --> 00:20:33,274
and they're just right there,

368
00:20:33,607 --> 00:20:35,985
fading away, but in public.

369
00:20:36,318 --> 00:20:38,946
You know, not behind glass or protected,

370
00:20:39,280 --> 00:20:41,115
they're just decaying slowly,

371
00:20:41,449 --> 00:20:43,868
right where they existed always.

372
00:20:44,201 --> 00:20:46,620
But Mac was a fount of knowledge that way,

373
00:20:46,954 --> 00:20:48,247
and a great companion.

374
00:20:48,581 --> 00:20:52,042
So I do remember just enjoying...

375
00:20:53,711 --> 00:20:57,798
Well, who wouldn't? Rome like that.

376
00:20:58,132 --> 00:21:00,176
- Being in Rome, that's my
first time overseas, too.

377
00:21:00,509 --> 00:21:03,012
Being in Rome and on the set,

378
00:21:03,345 --> 00:21:05,389
there were so many things going on

379
00:21:06,515 --> 00:21:08,225
on and off the set, you know?

380
00:21:08,559 --> 00:21:11,979
So there was a story a minute, really.

381
00:21:12,313 --> 00:21:14,513
- I think we had really good
chemistry, the three of us,

382
00:21:14,565 --> 00:21:16,776
Ken and Jeffrey and myself in from beyond.

383
00:21:17,109 --> 00:21:18,944
And I think that was
due, in part, to the fact

384
00:21:19,278 --> 00:21:20,958
that we were in Italy
and we were so happy.

385
00:21:21,280 --> 00:21:25,034
We were making a movie, making
great money, feeling good.

386
00:21:25,367 --> 00:21:30,164
And on the weekends, we
always would have a brunch,

387
00:21:32,583 --> 00:21:34,794
and I would host everybody

388
00:21:35,127 --> 00:21:36,712
to come up to my little apartment.

389
00:21:37,046 --> 00:21:40,424
I had a spiral staircase up to the roof

390
00:21:40,758 --> 00:21:42,593
and I would make biscuits for everybody.

391
00:21:42,927 --> 00:21:45,638
Remember, Ken foree made
biscuits in the movie,

392
00:21:45,971 --> 00:21:47,848
and it was some sort of like dumpling

393
00:21:48,182 --> 00:21:49,182
beef stew or something?

394
00:21:49,391 --> 00:21:53,854
Well, it was the same
concoction, it was bisquick.

395
00:21:54,188 --> 00:21:57,358
And I had brought over some
bisquick, or bought bisquick,

396
00:21:57,691 --> 00:21:59,091
I don't know if they sold it there.

397
00:21:59,318 --> 00:22:02,863
But I would make biscuits every weekend,

398
00:22:03,197 --> 00:22:07,910
and I would mash up butter and pistachios,

399
00:22:08,244 --> 00:22:10,538
and we would have pistachio butter on it

400
00:22:10,871 --> 00:22:11,871
and then put honey on it.

401
00:22:12,164 --> 00:22:13,958
It was like this thing I invented.

402
00:22:14,291 --> 00:22:16,919
- It was like a family
environment because we...

403
00:22:17,253 --> 00:22:22,049
It was Brian and his wife, I believe.

404
00:22:24,093 --> 00:22:26,804
Yeah, his wife, and then Stuart and his,

405
00:22:27,137 --> 00:22:29,223
she was in the film as well.

406
00:22:29,557 --> 00:22:34,353
And then it was Barbara,
Jeffrey, myself, Ted,

407
00:22:36,438 --> 00:22:39,066
and I think we kind of hung out together.

408
00:22:39,400 --> 00:22:41,235
- We were all crazy.

409
00:22:41,569 --> 00:22:45,155
- Charlie band had made movies
with his father, Albert band,

410
00:22:45,489 --> 00:22:49,535
in Italy, and Charlie always loved Italy.

411
00:22:49,869 --> 00:22:53,622
And so he bought some property there,

412
00:22:53,956 --> 00:22:55,958
and continued to work there a little bit.

413
00:22:56,292 --> 00:22:58,836
- When I was a teenager,
the high school I was at

414
00:22:59,169 --> 00:23:01,422
was offering a four-week trip to Europe

415
00:23:01,755 --> 00:23:04,341
and it was really inexpensive,
and my folks said,

416
00:23:04,675 --> 00:23:06,927
"you know what? When is he
ever gonna get the opportunity

417
00:23:07,261 --> 00:23:08,572
to go to Europe or anything like that?"

418
00:23:08,596 --> 00:23:10,389
So they did that and it was like,

419
00:23:10,723 --> 00:23:11,963
you know, it was nice thinking.

420
00:23:12,016 --> 00:23:15,978
And we went to Italy, France,
Switzerland and england.

421
00:23:16,312 --> 00:23:18,272
And I remember coming from
Naples, on the tour bus

422
00:23:18,480 --> 00:23:21,025
from Naples to Rome, and we
were driving on the freeway

423
00:23:21,358 --> 00:23:23,152
and I see this weird
complex over to my side.

424
00:23:23,485 --> 00:23:26,864
And I even took out my 110
instamatic camera at that point,

425
00:23:27,197 --> 00:23:29,437
and snapped a picture, going,
"what's that? What's that?"

426
00:23:29,533 --> 00:23:30,993
Nobody knew what the hell it was.

427
00:23:32,202 --> 00:23:34,163
Go up ahead 10 years later,

428
00:23:35,164 --> 00:23:37,750
I get hired to go on from beyond

429
00:23:38,083 --> 00:23:39,668
and we were staying at a hotel that was

430
00:23:40,002 --> 00:23:44,048
down south of Rome, in
pomezia, or in torvaianica,

431
00:23:44,381 --> 00:23:46,693
and they had a bus and they
picked up all the effects crew.

432
00:23:46,717 --> 00:23:48,677
The first day, we're coming up the highway

433
00:23:49,011 --> 00:23:51,323
and I'm sitting there in the
bus, and I look out the window

434
00:23:51,347 --> 00:23:53,187
and I see that same
complex of buildings again.

435
00:23:53,515 --> 00:23:55,309
And I started telling bill Butler,

436
00:23:55,643 --> 00:23:57,443
"oh my god, I remember
that from 10 years ago.

437
00:23:57,519 --> 00:23:58,538
When I was a kid, I saw that

438
00:23:58,562 --> 00:23:59,229
and I didn't know what the hell it was.

439
00:23:59,563 --> 00:24:00,790
Does anybody know what that was?"

440
00:24:00,814 --> 00:24:02,650
Well, before I knew it, the bus turned in

441
00:24:02,983 --> 00:24:05,444
and it was the dino de laurentiis studios,

442
00:24:05,778 --> 00:24:08,781
and I ended up working there
next three years of my life.

443
00:24:09,114 --> 00:24:11,784
- Charlie had bought
the de laurentis studio

444
00:24:12,117 --> 00:24:14,828
and it was just out... it
was kind of in between Rome

445
00:24:15,162 --> 00:24:19,416
and where we were staying,
which was this small town,

446
00:24:19,750 --> 00:24:21,502
I'm not sure I pronounce it right,

447
00:24:21,835 --> 00:24:24,546
porta vionica or something like that.

448
00:24:24,880 --> 00:24:25,881
And they had us staying

449
00:24:26,215 --> 00:24:29,009
at a hotel there on the beach,
which was the off season,

450
00:24:29,343 --> 00:24:32,262
so it was just film crew
in there, which was nice.

451
00:24:32,596 --> 00:24:34,181
And then the studio was, I don't know,

452
00:24:34,515 --> 00:24:39,186
maybe half an hour away,
and it was a real studio.

453
00:24:39,520 --> 00:24:41,772
I mean, they had sound stages and offices,

454
00:24:42,106 --> 00:24:45,275
and everything set up
there for production.

455
00:24:45,609 --> 00:24:48,112
Plus, they had a cappuccino bar,

456
00:24:48,445 --> 00:24:51,782
so we were downing cappuccinos like crazy.

457
00:24:52,116 --> 00:24:54,702
- The back lot had red Sonja
sets still standing there,

458
00:24:55,035 --> 00:24:57,329
the spaceship from barbarella
still standing there.

459
00:24:57,663 --> 00:25:01,041
Film history was just
sitting there in junk heaps

460
00:25:01,375 --> 00:25:04,670
and I tried to save as much
of it as I could, you know.

461
00:25:05,004 --> 00:25:06,004
It was amazing, because

462
00:25:06,213 --> 00:25:08,632
you think about all the stuff
that was done at this studio.

463
00:25:08,966 --> 00:25:11,677
- They're trying to sell
off things within the studio

464
00:25:12,011 --> 00:25:15,806
and one of the things they sold
off was the heating element.

465
00:25:16,140 --> 00:25:20,644
So we got there in April
of whatever year it was,

466
00:25:20,978 --> 00:25:24,189
and there was a snowstorm
and it was freezing,

467
00:25:24,523 --> 00:25:26,400
and there was no heat
in the entire building,

468
00:25:26,734 --> 00:25:29,194
because they'd sold off the
components or something.

469
00:25:29,528 --> 00:25:34,324
So they got these big, big,
huge size portable heaters

470
00:25:35,492 --> 00:25:38,954
for all of the rooms
and they were very loud,

471
00:25:39,288 --> 00:25:42,458
and it was always very
cold, because we couldn't

472
00:25:42,791 --> 00:25:44,991
have them on during filming
and the room was really big.

473
00:25:45,127 --> 00:25:46,503
So I just remember it being...

474
00:25:46,837 --> 00:25:48,547
I was scantily clad in my leather

475
00:25:48,881 --> 00:25:51,592
and I remember just being
freezing all the time.

476
00:25:51,925 --> 00:25:54,803
- Oh, the coolest part was that they had

477
00:25:55,137 --> 00:25:59,892
an old-style plaster shop
where these old, you know,

478
00:26:00,225 --> 00:26:05,064
classically-trained
technicians were making molding

479
00:26:05,981 --> 00:26:09,985
and things for the sets
that were made out of molds,

480
00:26:10,319 --> 00:26:12,338
plaster molds and silicone
molds and everything like that.

481
00:26:12,362 --> 00:26:15,365
But they were doing it like an old style

482
00:26:15,699 --> 00:26:17,993
of how they did it, you
know, and approached it.

483
00:26:18,327 --> 00:26:22,581
And they were all kinda
old-timers, and it was cool.

484
00:26:22,915 --> 00:26:24,917
We'd just go over there to watch

485
00:26:25,250 --> 00:26:26,890
what they were doing in the plaster shop.

486
00:26:27,211 --> 00:26:30,297
- I think when a film
is prepped in one place,

487
00:26:30,631 --> 00:26:34,885
let's say Los Angeles, and
especially if it's an overseas,

488
00:26:35,219 --> 00:26:37,763
there's always... I mean, it's tricky,

489
00:26:38,097 --> 00:26:40,724
any kind of big shipping,
and you have a specialty item

490
00:26:41,058 --> 00:26:43,060
that needs to be handled carefully,

491
00:26:43,393 --> 00:26:46,146
you also have all the
time that is taken away

492
00:26:46,480 --> 00:26:50,901
from your prep time, because
there's crating, the shipping,

493
00:26:51,235 --> 00:26:54,404
usually production doesn't
wanna do it too fast.

494
00:26:54,738 --> 00:26:58,033
So it's slow, that cuts
into your prep time.

495
00:26:58,367 --> 00:27:00,994
So there's a lot of considerations
that are a little tricky.

496
00:27:01,328 --> 00:27:02,764
You just keep that in
the back of your mind

497
00:27:02,788 --> 00:27:04,548
when you're building
it, you kind of build it

498
00:27:04,873 --> 00:27:07,126
more bulletproof than even
it has to be for shooting.

499
00:27:07,459 --> 00:27:09,795
You're actually building it
to withstand the shipping.

500
00:27:10,129 --> 00:27:13,841
Where on shooting, you know
it's gonna be six frames of film

501
00:27:14,174 --> 00:27:15,801
and you're gonna be shooting it

502
00:27:16,135 --> 00:27:19,179
one of 60 shots being done that day.

503
00:27:19,513 --> 00:27:22,975
So it's strange to
consider stuff that way,

504
00:27:23,308 --> 00:27:24,768
but it's kinda the way it is.

505
00:27:25,102 --> 00:27:27,104
- One of the funniest
things that happened,

506
00:27:27,437 --> 00:27:31,400
the shipping for this project was insane.

507
00:27:31,733 --> 00:27:34,027
We had to measure each monster

508
00:27:34,361 --> 00:27:37,239
and then we had to have a
crate made for each monster.

509
00:27:37,573 --> 00:27:40,159
And the biggest monster in the project

510
00:27:40,492 --> 00:27:43,036
was what we all called
the giant shrimp chicken,

511
00:27:43,370 --> 00:27:45,747
which comes boinging in.

512
00:27:46,081 --> 00:27:49,877
So we had this crate made for
this giant shrimp chicken.

513
00:27:50,210 --> 00:27:51,378
It was as big as this room,

514
00:27:51,712 --> 00:27:54,464
it was a huge crate
full of packing peanuts,

515
00:27:54,798 --> 00:27:57,009
and the shrimp chicken was in there.

516
00:27:57,342 --> 00:27:59,469
And it must have been...
The monster was probably

517
00:27:59,803 --> 00:28:00,929
10 and a half feet long.

518
00:28:01,263 --> 00:28:05,767
So things would arrive
to us on a daily basis.

519
00:28:06,101 --> 00:28:08,246
It wasn't just like, one day
all the puppets were there.

520
00:28:08,270 --> 00:28:10,439
Because Italy has so much red tape

521
00:28:10,772 --> 00:28:13,150
for anything like that, and you know,

522
00:28:13,483 --> 00:28:15,443
I'm sure that they would
want to see what the hell

523
00:28:15,569 --> 00:28:19,072
was inside of a giant
shrimp chicken, if anything.

524
00:28:19,406 --> 00:28:24,161
So one day, we see Manuelo,
our assistant, our driver,

525
00:28:24,494 --> 00:28:26,413
pacing around and rubbing his forehead,

526
00:28:26,747 --> 00:28:28,957
and speaking on the
phone, and he's nervous.

527
00:28:29,291 --> 00:28:31,168
And I was like, "what's wrong, Manuelo?"

528
00:28:31,501 --> 00:28:34,296
And he's like, "oh,
there's a very big problem

529
00:28:34,630 --> 00:28:36,465
with the shrimp chicken."

530
00:28:36,798 --> 00:28:38,842
I'm like, "what's wrong with him?"

531
00:28:39,176 --> 00:28:42,179
He's like, "oh, he fell,
he fell off the airplane

532
00:28:42,512 --> 00:28:46,141
onto the runway and there's
millions of packing peanuts

533
00:28:46,475 --> 00:28:48,602
blowing all over DaVinci airport,

534
00:28:48,936 --> 00:28:51,438
and the shrimp chicken
is laying on the runway."

535
00:28:51,772 --> 00:28:55,317
So they had to have our
guys go with a truck

536
00:28:55,651 --> 00:29:00,447
and get clearance to go to
the DaVinci airport runway,

537
00:29:00,781 --> 00:29:05,327
and load this giant shrimp
chicken in the back of a truck

538
00:29:05,661 --> 00:29:07,861
and drive it, it must have
been the funniest thing ever.

539
00:29:08,121 --> 00:29:10,624
I can't imagine. I can't
imagine what the Italians

540
00:29:10,958 --> 00:29:12,038
were thinking as that thing

541
00:29:12,167 --> 00:29:14,795
went careening down the
highway, headed back.

542
00:29:15,128 --> 00:29:17,881
- Due to some of my
less favorite memories,

543
00:29:18,215 --> 00:29:20,842
my wife and my child, Daniel,

544
00:29:21,176 --> 00:29:23,637
who's now a two-time academy
award winner on his own,

545
00:29:25,764 --> 00:29:29,518
got to come over there for a
lot longer than we had planned.

546
00:29:29,851 --> 00:29:34,648
And Daniel was embraced
by both cast and crew,

547
00:29:37,943 --> 00:29:40,404
both American and Italian.

548
00:29:40,737 --> 00:29:42,131
And I don't don't know if you've ever,

549
00:29:42,155 --> 00:29:43,740
if the people here have ever seen

550
00:29:44,074 --> 00:29:47,119
a European hare, a European rabbit.

551
00:29:47,452 --> 00:29:49,013
You know, I mean, they're
completely different

552
00:29:49,037 --> 00:29:53,125
than the bunnies we have
out here and they're bigger.

553
00:29:54,251 --> 00:29:56,169
And we had water tanks at the studio,

554
00:29:56,503 --> 00:29:58,255
and we came in one Monday morning,

555
00:29:58,588 --> 00:30:00,966
and a hare had been
jumping along and obviously

556
00:30:01,300 --> 00:30:04,511
fell into a water tank,
drowned, and bloated.

557
00:30:05,971 --> 00:30:08,265
So there's basically, I mean, this looked

558
00:30:08,598 --> 00:30:11,018
almost like a little person in a suit.

559
00:30:11,351 --> 00:30:15,772
This thing is this big, floating
in the water tank, face up,

560
00:30:16,106 --> 00:30:19,818
and this about three weeks before easter.

561
00:30:20,944 --> 00:30:23,196
And Daniel's like, "what is that?"

562
00:30:23,530 --> 00:30:26,908
And one of the Italian guys,
thinking it was a joke, said,

563
00:30:27,242 --> 00:30:31,913
"oh, that's the easter bunny,
I guess no easter this year."

564
00:30:32,247 --> 00:30:37,085
And Daniel freaks out,
starts crying, runs away,

565
00:30:37,753 --> 00:30:41,381
and the crew is like... his name was bony.

566
00:30:41,715 --> 00:30:44,009
And they're all like, "what
did you do?" You know?

567
00:30:44,343 --> 00:30:46,928
And I will have to tell
you that the Monday morning

568
00:30:47,262 --> 00:30:50,682
we came in after easter,
we had a 5,000-square foot

569
00:30:51,016 --> 00:30:52,309
shop over there to be able to do

570
00:30:52,642 --> 00:30:54,394
all the stuff we were still building.

571
00:30:54,728 --> 00:30:58,815
And that Monday morning,
it looked like easter

572
00:30:59,149 --> 00:31:02,027
had regurgitated into that room.

573
00:31:02,361 --> 00:31:05,113
They had these... the eggs
that they have over in Europe,

574
00:31:05,447 --> 00:31:07,908
they have toys and stuff in them this big.

575
00:31:08,241 --> 00:31:09,635
I mean, over here, that's a hundred bucks.

576
00:31:09,659 --> 00:31:12,162
I have no idea what they...
I mean, they must have spent,

577
00:31:13,163 --> 00:31:15,290
even in the '80s, they had to have spent

578
00:31:15,624 --> 00:31:18,335
hundreds of dollars to
maybe a thousand dollars

579
00:31:18,668 --> 00:31:23,465
on doing this room like a
department store easter display.

580
00:31:24,007 --> 00:31:27,344
And, "look, look, the bunny's okay,

581
00:31:27,677 --> 00:31:29,888
bunny's fine," you know?

582
00:31:30,222 --> 00:31:31,765
And it was just so sweet.

583
00:31:32,974 --> 00:31:36,186
- I really thought that
I could control it.

584
00:31:37,813 --> 00:31:40,065
- One of our biggest
problems on from beyond,

585
00:31:40,357 --> 00:31:43,193
the biggest, biggest problem, was sound.

586
00:31:43,527 --> 00:31:48,031
Sound, because the Italians,
at least at that time,

587
00:31:48,365 --> 00:31:52,035
had a long, long history of
not worrying about sound.

588
00:31:52,369 --> 00:31:56,331
Not just because of silence,
but because they were

589
00:31:57,582 --> 00:32:02,421
so used to having movies
come in and dub them.

590
00:32:02,754 --> 00:32:05,173
They even dubbed their
own fricking movies.

591
00:32:05,507 --> 00:32:08,802
I remember going to the theater
to see an Italian movie,

592
00:32:09,136 --> 00:32:13,390
in a movie theater, and
their mouths are not doing

593
00:32:13,723 --> 00:32:15,725
what they're saying in Italian,

594
00:32:16,059 --> 00:32:17,561
and these are Italian actors.

595
00:32:17,894 --> 00:32:21,606
So that was... they just don't
have... at the time, anyway,

596
00:32:21,940 --> 00:32:23,340
they didn't have a tradition of it.

597
00:32:23,567 --> 00:32:25,652
So we would be doing a quiet scene

598
00:32:25,986 --> 00:32:27,612
and all of a sudden, we'd hear...

599
00:32:33,076 --> 00:32:36,037
Or a construction guy would
start banging a hammer,

600
00:32:36,371 --> 00:32:39,875
and you'd go, "what's
going on? Cut, cut, cut."

601
00:32:40,208 --> 00:32:41,626
And then you'd go to these guys

602
00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:43,560
and they would have an attitude of like,

603
00:32:43,795 --> 00:32:46,715
"what's your problem? Americans, whoo."

604
00:32:47,048 --> 00:32:49,759
- I remember that drove Stuart crazy,

605
00:32:50,093 --> 00:32:51,845
like, "why can't they be quiet?"

606
00:32:52,179 --> 00:32:56,141
And the first ad was like, "I
can't do anything about it.

607
00:32:56,475 --> 00:32:57,100
That's just the way it is."

608
00:32:57,434 --> 00:32:59,478
- Well, the other thing
that the Italians would do

609
00:32:59,811 --> 00:33:04,441
is that they kinda went on
strike, because the first day

610
00:33:04,774 --> 00:33:07,569
when we were shooting,
they had box lunches

611
00:33:07,903 --> 00:33:09,905
and the box lunches did not have

612
00:33:10,238 --> 00:33:11,656
little bottles of wine in them.

613
00:33:12,782 --> 00:33:17,120
And this was revolt time, where,

614
00:33:17,454 --> 00:33:21,541
"we're not continuing until
we get what we're used to

615
00:33:21,875 --> 00:33:24,586
and that is wine with our lunch."

616
00:33:27,130 --> 00:33:29,674
- Lunch was very important
and having a glass of wine

617
00:33:30,008 --> 00:33:30,550
at lunch was very important.

618
00:33:30,884 --> 00:33:33,512
- And then at about 4:00,
they either go have a whiskey

619
00:33:33,845 --> 00:33:38,099
or a lemon vodka, and the American team,

620
00:33:38,433 --> 00:33:42,020
we took to this tradition wholeheartedly.

621
00:33:42,354 --> 00:33:45,482
And then we would get drunk,
and then we would wrap

622
00:33:45,815 --> 00:33:47,210
and we would get in the rental cars,

623
00:33:47,234 --> 00:33:49,778
and we would figure-8
race around the back lot

624
00:33:50,111 --> 00:33:52,697
through the red Sonja set, until Mike deak

625
00:33:53,031 --> 00:33:55,659
drove the rental car off the bridge

626
00:33:55,992 --> 00:33:57,827
and into the red Sonja moat.

627
00:33:58,870 --> 00:34:00,080
But Charlie doesn't know that,

628
00:34:00,413 --> 00:34:01,773
because we all climbed in the moat

629
00:34:02,082 --> 00:34:05,418
and we pushed the car out. Sorry, Charlie.

630
00:34:05,752 --> 00:34:08,588
- But they were incredible artists

631
00:34:08,922 --> 00:34:10,882
and the crew was just great.

632
00:34:11,216 --> 00:34:13,969
It was just, they're just
different, just different.

633
00:34:14,302 --> 00:34:16,179
They're more chill, more relaxed.

634
00:34:16,513 --> 00:34:21,309
- There is a working class
feel to it, and you know,

635
00:34:22,394 --> 00:34:25,188
specifically speaking to the
Italian culture, it's like,

636
00:34:25,522 --> 00:34:27,107
"yeah, oh there's big shot, great.

637
00:34:27,440 --> 00:34:29,776
Well, it's 5:00. See ya.
We'll see ya tomorrow."

638
00:34:30,110 --> 00:34:33,029
Like, it's not that romanticized.

639
00:34:33,363 --> 00:34:36,700
It's taken very seriously,
but I think maybe

640
00:34:37,033 --> 00:34:38,702
there's a different understanding

641
00:34:39,035 --> 00:34:43,164
that there's a life after 5:00,
and there are wine breaks.

642
00:34:43,498 --> 00:34:45,125
You know, wine is on the table at lunch,

643
00:34:45,458 --> 00:34:47,502
and make sure that bread is crunchy,

644
00:34:47,836 --> 00:34:50,422
and life is okay and a film will get done.

645
00:34:50,755 --> 00:34:53,550
A little different,
sometimes, to the intensity

646
00:34:53,883 --> 00:34:55,083
and the passion you see in la,

647
00:34:55,302 --> 00:34:56,970
and depending on the day,

648
00:34:57,304 --> 00:35:00,098
I can make an argument for
either one.

649
00:35:00,432 --> 00:35:02,642
- The cool thing was, the long shots

650
00:35:02,976 --> 00:35:05,895
of the outside of the house
was all forced perspective.

651
00:35:06,229 --> 00:35:11,026
In other words, it was
a very small miniature,

652
00:35:11,484 --> 00:35:13,987
and then with lines coming away,

653
00:35:14,321 --> 00:35:16,406
so that when we're at the
gate and looking at it,

654
00:35:16,740 --> 00:35:18,074
it looks like it's way far away.

655
00:35:18,408 --> 00:35:22,162
But really, it's just
a forced perspective.

656
00:35:22,495 --> 00:35:25,332
That house didn't really exist.

657
00:35:25,665 --> 00:35:27,792
It didn't exist.

658
00:35:28,126 --> 00:35:32,881
Everything was done on that
sound stage, or on the grounds

659
00:35:34,466 --> 00:35:39,387
of the production company of
the studio, empire studio.

660
00:35:40,180 --> 00:35:42,223
For instance, us coming
out in the hospital

661
00:35:42,557 --> 00:35:44,197
and getting in the ambulance and driving,

662
00:35:44,476 --> 00:35:47,395
that was all just out
in front of the studio

663
00:35:47,729 --> 00:35:48,729
using those buildings.

664
00:35:49,022 --> 00:35:51,733
It wasn't anything... I don't recall us

665
00:35:52,067 --> 00:35:53,693
going anywhere for a location.

666
00:35:54,027 --> 00:35:57,989
Movies are illusion.
If the eye believes it,

667
00:35:58,323 --> 00:36:00,241
it doesn't matter if it's true or not.

668
00:36:00,575 --> 00:36:01,677
- I remember towards the end of the film

669
00:36:01,701 --> 00:36:04,829
when the house goes crazy,
Stewart asked us could he...

670
00:36:05,163 --> 00:36:07,582
There was a banister or something
on a stairway, and said,

671
00:36:07,916 --> 00:36:09,810
"I want it to come to live
and be a three-fingered

672
00:36:09,834 --> 00:36:11,145
tentacle thing," and stuff like that.

673
00:36:11,169 --> 00:36:12,563
And he says, "can you guys do that?"

674
00:36:12,587 --> 00:36:14,467
'Cause it wasn't anything
that was budgeted for.

675
00:36:14,506 --> 00:36:15,946
And we were like, "yeah, we'll try."

676
00:36:16,174 --> 00:36:18,635
And I literally think it
was like a day or two later,

677
00:36:18,968 --> 00:36:20,804
criswell had an old
mechanism of a tentacle.

678
00:36:21,137 --> 00:36:23,014
We sculpted this thing out of Clay,

679
00:36:23,348 --> 00:36:25,517
we made a quick mold on it,
did it in simple red latex.

680
00:36:25,850 --> 00:36:28,311
Anything that... it was done so fast,

681
00:36:28,645 --> 00:36:31,189
and we had on the set like
within the next day or two

682
00:36:31,523 --> 00:36:32,958
for Stuart, and he was
just like blown away.

683
00:36:32,982 --> 00:36:35,402
And it's like anything he
wanted we wanted to try and do,

684
00:36:35,735 --> 00:36:38,196
because we were caught up in this film.

685
00:36:38,530 --> 00:36:41,324
Stuart, everything, this was
like one of the first ones,

686
00:36:41,658 --> 00:36:43,219
or this was the first
one I was involved with

687
00:36:43,243 --> 00:36:46,871
that was a multi crew effects picture,

688
00:36:47,205 --> 00:36:50,917
where you're trying to do
ridiculous, over-the-top stuff

689
00:36:51,251 --> 00:36:54,587
that was not anything that
was ever really done before.

690
00:36:54,921 --> 00:36:57,006
And it took five makeup
effects crews to do it,

691
00:36:57,340 --> 00:36:59,175
and you had to work together and try to do

692
00:36:59,509 --> 00:37:01,302
every trick in the book to pull this off,

693
00:37:01,636 --> 00:37:02,887
'cause it was way before cgi.

694
00:37:03,221 --> 00:37:05,724
If it didn't happen on
camera, it didn't happen.

695
00:37:06,057 --> 00:37:07,726
- One of the projects I was working on

696
00:37:08,059 --> 00:37:11,104
was history of the world: Part I,

697
00:37:11,438 --> 00:37:16,234
with a person by the
name of Bob Greenberg,

698
00:37:16,985 --> 00:37:21,781
who became a good friend
of mine, and he's how

699
00:37:22,115 --> 00:37:25,952
I connected with Brian
yuzna and Stewart Gordon.

700
00:37:26,286 --> 00:37:27,787
Robert was from Chicago

701
00:37:28,121 --> 00:37:30,498
and Stuart was from Chicago as well.

702
00:37:30,832 --> 00:37:32,709
He brought the two of them together

703
00:37:33,042 --> 00:37:35,503
and then when they were
looking for special effects,

704
00:37:35,837 --> 00:37:38,339
he brought me into the picture.

705
00:37:38,673 --> 00:37:43,094
So that was on re-animator
and I brought John naulin in

706
00:37:43,428 --> 00:37:45,638
to help me with the makeup effects.

707
00:37:45,972 --> 00:37:48,141
And we also brought in John buechler

708
00:37:49,142 --> 00:37:51,102
to help with the makeup effects.

709
00:37:51,436 --> 00:37:55,857
I'd known John before then, buechler,

710
00:37:56,191 --> 00:37:59,652
and then so we did re-animator,

711
00:37:59,986 --> 00:38:02,113
and they were happy with our work.

712
00:38:02,447 --> 00:38:05,241
So when they were starting from beyond,

713
00:38:06,951 --> 00:38:10,872
there was a lot of creature
effects and visual effects,

714
00:38:11,206 --> 00:38:13,124
and special effects
that needed to be done.

715
00:38:13,458 --> 00:38:16,544
So they brought John naulin back in,

716
00:38:16,878 --> 00:38:18,922
John buechler back in, myself in.

717
00:38:19,255 --> 00:38:20,840
They also brought in Mark shostrum

718
00:38:21,174 --> 00:38:23,593
to help with the pretorious monsters.

719
00:38:23,927 --> 00:38:25,762
We had quite a bit of makeup

720
00:38:26,095 --> 00:38:30,225
and creature effects, so we
all had quite a full plate.

721
00:38:30,558 --> 00:38:33,853
- There were four teams that broke up,

722
00:38:34,187 --> 00:38:36,272
honestly, I believe it must
have been a hundred gags,

723
00:38:36,606 --> 00:38:38,107
with buechler, I think, doing

724
00:38:38,441 --> 00:38:41,361
the majority of the puppet-y ones.

725
00:38:41,694 --> 00:38:44,656
And it was just nonstop from
the minute you got there.

726
00:38:44,989 --> 00:38:46,491
- Going through it, you know,

727
00:38:46,825 --> 00:38:48,385
we had a couple of production meetings,

728
00:38:48,660 --> 00:38:51,538
we read the script, made
notes, and then we had

729
00:38:51,871 --> 00:38:56,584
a couple of meetings
beforehand, and with all of us,

730
00:38:56,918 --> 00:38:59,045
the people I just mentioned,
we sat around a table,

731
00:38:59,379 --> 00:39:03,800
went through it all,
solved their questions,

732
00:39:04,133 --> 00:39:06,594
answered questions, solving
some of the problems

733
00:39:06,928 --> 00:39:07,929
and that kinda thing.

734
00:39:08,263 --> 00:39:11,307
And then Brian kinda looks at
us, "what's the next step?"

735
00:39:11,641 --> 00:39:12,841
We looked at him and all of us

736
00:39:12,934 --> 00:39:17,397
in union went, "writing checks."

737
00:39:17,730 --> 00:39:20,942
- Oftentimes, the most
difficult effects to do

738
00:39:21,276 --> 00:39:24,153
are the ones that have three
or four drops of blood,

739
00:39:24,487 --> 00:39:26,406
not blood shooting all over the place.

740
00:39:26,739 --> 00:39:29,951
And in re-animator,

741
00:39:30,285 --> 00:39:33,079
we'd gone through over
30 some gallons of blood,

742
00:39:33,413 --> 00:39:37,292
and in from beyond, not so
much blood. A lot more slime.

743
00:39:38,418 --> 00:39:42,130
So much slime that we, by
the way, made it in Italy.

744
00:39:42,463 --> 00:39:47,093
We brought it over dry,
because it was gonna cost

745
00:39:47,427 --> 00:39:49,429
thousands of dollars to ship two drums,

746
00:39:49,762 --> 00:39:52,891
'cause we went through over
a hundred gallons of slime.

747
00:39:53,224 --> 00:39:54,224
- I was just so excited.

748
00:39:54,475 --> 00:39:56,978
I didn't really know
much about the script,

749
00:39:57,312 --> 00:40:00,899
but I did know there was
like 150 makeup effects gags.

750
00:40:01,232 --> 00:40:05,069
And part of my job,
aside from helping ship

751
00:40:05,403 --> 00:40:09,908
all of these puppets
overseas, was to stand on set

752
00:40:10,241 --> 00:40:11,910
with the bucket, with the paintbrush,

753
00:40:12,243 --> 00:40:15,622
and paint slime on all the
monsters in between every shot.

754
00:40:15,955 --> 00:40:18,207
That was really one of my main jobs.

755
00:40:18,541 --> 00:40:22,170
- It was a very slimy show, lots of slime.

756
00:40:22,503 --> 00:40:24,923
And I remember there was times
when we were under the set...

757
00:40:25,256 --> 00:40:27,717
There was a lot of
effects that we basically

758
00:40:28,051 --> 00:40:30,428
had to pull out of our
ass, 'cause, you know,

759
00:40:30,762 --> 00:40:32,322
all the money went into certain things,

760
00:40:32,388 --> 00:40:33,708
and it wasn't a huge budget show.

761
00:40:34,015 --> 00:40:37,101
You know, it was relatively small budget,

762
00:40:37,435 --> 00:40:40,813
but there was times that...

763
00:40:41,147 --> 00:40:44,484
The end sequence where
they're dueling each other

764
00:40:44,817 --> 00:40:46,694
in a mass of flesh and goo.

765
00:40:47,028 --> 00:40:50,239
The attic set was on a raised
floor for various reasons.

766
00:40:50,573 --> 00:40:54,035
One was the Ken foree thing
where they eat his body

767
00:40:54,369 --> 00:40:57,038
and he's just a skeleton,
so Ken had to be through

768
00:40:57,372 --> 00:40:59,415
a slant board thing in the floor,

769
00:40:59,749 --> 00:41:02,835
but also just to operate certain
things through the floor.

770
00:41:03,169 --> 00:41:05,672
And so we're under there
and there's gallons of slime

771
00:41:06,005 --> 00:41:07,298
just leaking through the holes

772
00:41:07,632 --> 00:41:10,301
that we had cut in the floor,
and we were covered with it.

773
00:41:10,635 --> 00:41:12,595
And I remember, because I
was down under the floor

774
00:41:12,637 --> 00:41:14,931
with bill and Mike, puppeteering,

775
00:41:15,264 --> 00:41:17,558
and we were so covered with it.

776
00:41:17,892 --> 00:41:21,980
And then I remember the slime covering us,

777
00:41:22,313 --> 00:41:27,110
and then a few hours later,
that slime kinda is like starch.

778
00:41:28,277 --> 00:41:31,572
So when it dries, it's suddenly hard,

779
00:41:31,906 --> 00:41:34,784
and you could hear your blue
jeans cracking as you walk.

780
00:41:35,118 --> 00:41:37,286
- By the end of the film, that stuff

781
00:41:37,620 --> 00:41:40,832
started getting very rotten,
and there was the big finale

782
00:41:41,165 --> 00:41:43,710
in the scene where Jeffrey
combs and Ted sorel's head

783
00:41:44,043 --> 00:41:45,837
are coming out of a
slime pile on the floor,

784
00:41:46,170 --> 00:41:47,773
and Jeffrey's getting
pulled outta this thing.

785
00:41:47,797 --> 00:41:49,966
And then the skulls of
each other are fighting.

786
00:41:50,299 --> 00:41:52,927
And this stuff stunk so bad,

787
00:41:53,261 --> 00:41:55,596
and bill and I were underneath the stage,

788
00:41:55,930 --> 00:41:58,391
and we were under this stuff,
and it's dripping on us,

789
00:41:58,725 --> 00:42:01,728
and it really smelled awful,

790
00:42:02,061 --> 00:42:03,461
and the entire stage smelled awful.

791
00:42:03,521 --> 00:42:05,940
And we did days of that stuff.

792
00:42:06,274 --> 00:42:08,234
- And apparently, someone
told me at the time,

793
00:42:08,568 --> 00:42:11,738
they put this in McDonald's shakes

794
00:42:14,282 --> 00:42:16,784
to give it a nice... mm-mm.

795
00:42:17,785 --> 00:42:21,664
- At the time, the slime was
made out of a food thickener

796
00:42:21,998 --> 00:42:23,458
called methyl cellulose,

797
00:42:23,791 --> 00:42:27,670
which was a thickener for
McDonald's milkshakes.

798
00:42:28,004 --> 00:42:32,383
So when we went to the
studio, we were told

799
00:42:32,717 --> 00:42:34,343
that we were gonna go through 12

800
00:42:35,678 --> 00:42:38,931
50 gallon barrels of this slime.

801
00:42:39,265 --> 00:42:40,683
So we'd never worked on a project

802
00:42:41,017 --> 00:42:42,577
where there was that much slime before,

803
00:42:42,769 --> 00:42:46,981
so we foolishly said, "well,
once we start working,

804
00:42:47,315 --> 00:42:48,375
we are not gonna have time."

805
00:42:48,399 --> 00:42:50,079
It took like a half a
day to make a barrel.

806
00:42:50,318 --> 00:42:53,112
You have to heat it up,
literally heat the water up,

807
00:42:53,446 --> 00:42:55,239
put the powder in there, stir it,

808
00:42:55,573 --> 00:42:57,825
color it, tint it, store it.

809
00:42:58,159 --> 00:43:02,955
So we made all 12
gallons at the same time.

810
00:43:03,581 --> 00:43:08,503
What we didn't take into
consideration is that it gets sour.

811
00:43:09,378 --> 00:43:14,300
So these barrels of slime, I
cannot even begin to tell you

812
00:43:15,009 --> 00:43:17,720
or describe the smell of this slime.

813
00:43:18,054 --> 00:43:19,472
Every day that would pass,

814
00:43:19,806 --> 00:43:21,307
it would get more and more rancid.

815
00:43:21,641 --> 00:43:23,392
So a lot of times, you have to understand,

816
00:43:23,726 --> 00:43:26,562
in particular, the scene
where Jeffrey's skull

817
00:43:26,896 --> 00:43:29,315
and pretorious' skull are biting back.

818
00:43:29,649 --> 00:43:32,068
That's us underneath a platform

819
00:43:32,401 --> 00:43:35,655
with this sort of poly foam webbing,

820
00:43:35,988 --> 00:43:37,668
you know, melted body, and they're biting,

821
00:43:37,907 --> 00:43:39,107
we're puppeteering each other,

822
00:43:39,242 --> 00:43:42,495
and they were pouring five
gallon barrels of this slime.

823
00:43:42,829 --> 00:43:45,373
Well, unfortunately for us,

824
00:43:45,706 --> 00:43:48,084
those puppet platforms are not airtight.

825
00:43:48,417 --> 00:43:53,214
So spoiled slime was just pouring down,

826
00:43:54,298 --> 00:43:56,425
the worst smell that
you could ever imagine,

827
00:43:56,759 --> 00:43:59,053
just pouring and covering all over us.

828
00:44:00,721 --> 00:44:03,182
But I wouldn't change it for the world.

829
00:44:03,516 --> 00:44:06,561
It was actually quite fun,
but it didn't smell too good.

830
00:44:06,894 --> 00:44:09,689
- It's one of the things
that they do to bend wood,

831
00:44:10,022 --> 00:44:12,441
you know, to make elaborate
shapes outta wood and stuff,

832
00:44:12,775 --> 00:44:16,279
is they soak it in methyl
cellulose, which is a wood fiber,

833
00:44:16,612 --> 00:44:20,074
and it gets in there and
it makes wood flexible.

834
00:44:20,408 --> 00:44:22,785
And so they got these
big paddles that they use

835
00:44:23,119 --> 00:44:24,745
over in Italy for pasta.

836
00:44:25,079 --> 00:44:27,206
And they got these big, giant containers,

837
00:44:27,540 --> 00:44:28,809
and they'd have these guys over there.

838
00:44:28,833 --> 00:44:31,669
And after a while, the handles
are starting to do this,

839
00:44:32,003 --> 00:44:33,546
and they're like, "ah!" You know?

840
00:44:33,880 --> 00:44:35,756
- To this day, as anyone will tell you,

841
00:44:36,090 --> 00:44:38,885
when I direct something that has slime,

842
00:44:39,218 --> 00:44:40,863
I say, "slime it up," and then they run in

843
00:44:40,887 --> 00:44:42,887
with a paintbrush and I
can just see Stuart Gordon,

844
00:44:43,014 --> 00:44:45,349
"no, pour it with a bucket."

845
00:44:45,683 --> 00:44:48,561
So I'm carrying on Stuart's tradition

846
00:44:48,895 --> 00:44:51,564
of making sure that everything is slimy.

847
00:44:51,898 --> 00:44:55,693
Even if it's a family drama,
I slime all the actors up.

848
00:44:56,027 --> 00:44:57,820
- I do find you distracting.

849
00:44:58,154 --> 00:45:02,158
- Stuart is one of a fairly... he was one

850
00:45:02,491 --> 00:45:07,288
of a fairly short list
of directors, for me,

851
00:45:08,331 --> 00:45:13,252
that I've worked with,
that knew what he wanted,

852
00:45:13,586 --> 00:45:17,590
but that vision always
came into final focus

853
00:45:17,924 --> 00:45:19,008
once you were on set.

854
00:45:20,509 --> 00:45:24,305
And so I had learned on re-animator

855
00:45:24,639 --> 00:45:27,892
that if it was storyboarded
to be this big,

856
00:45:28,851 --> 00:45:32,104
what Stuart really wanted was this big.

857
00:45:32,438 --> 00:45:35,233
And by the time he explained
it all to Mac ahlberg,

858
00:45:35,566 --> 00:45:37,276
and it had to be lit
and it had to be done,

859
00:45:37,610 --> 00:45:39,330
'cause you know, Stuart
came out of theater.

860
00:45:39,570 --> 00:45:42,156
He came out of live, out of theater,

861
00:45:42,490 --> 00:45:45,034
and it really needed to be this big.

862
00:45:45,368 --> 00:45:49,288
- My first memory of
some solid talk about it

863
00:45:49,622 --> 00:45:54,168
was a lunch I had with Brian and Stuart,

864
00:45:56,420 --> 00:46:01,259
bringing forth this idea
of from beyond, Rome,

865
00:46:02,843 --> 00:46:05,846
and, "by the way, would you be
willing to shave your head?"

866
00:46:07,598 --> 00:46:11,477
As it turned out, that was premature,

867
00:46:11,811 --> 00:46:15,064
because they didn't have
the idea that I had

868
00:46:15,398 --> 00:46:18,484
this thing coming outta my
head and wiggling around,

869
00:46:18,818 --> 00:46:21,570
that required a whole
apparatus that, you know,

870
00:46:21,904 --> 00:46:23,823
me shaving my head ain't gonna help.

871
00:46:24,156 --> 00:46:25,436
That's not gonna help with that.

872
00:46:25,533 --> 00:46:28,286
So they quickly realized that I didn't

873
00:46:28,619 --> 00:46:29,829
necessarily have to do that.

874
00:46:30,162 --> 00:46:34,959
I mean, they did put, for
one scene, a bald cap on me

875
00:46:35,501 --> 00:46:39,005
for when the monster drops
me. That big worm thing.

876
00:46:39,338 --> 00:46:43,634
But then, pretty much after
that, it was the bigger

877
00:46:43,968 --> 00:46:48,306
head apparatus with the hidden headband

878
00:46:48,639 --> 00:46:52,518
that allowed the dog dick to move around.

879
00:46:53,811 --> 00:46:55,563
- I knew that like in re-animator,

880
00:46:55,896 --> 00:46:58,274
it wasn't gonna all happen on one gag.

881
00:46:58,607 --> 00:47:00,568
It's going to be moments here,

882
00:47:00,901 --> 00:47:02,862
moments there, put them together.

883
00:47:03,195 --> 00:47:06,365
I made the stalk that it sat on.

884
00:47:06,699 --> 00:47:09,493
I wanted it to be as thin as possible.

885
00:47:09,827 --> 00:47:13,414
As a matter of fact, when
I tasked the machinists

886
00:47:13,748 --> 00:47:17,293
to make the ball and socket
armature that it worked off of,

887
00:47:17,626 --> 00:47:21,839
I said to them, I said, "I
want it to be literally,

888
00:47:22,173 --> 00:47:23,591
when this piece fits over it,

889
00:47:23,924 --> 00:47:26,218
I want it to be smaller
than a number two pencil."

890
00:47:27,345 --> 00:47:30,765
So these were tiny little
pieces and we made it

891
00:47:31,098 --> 00:47:33,851
so that they didn't snap together

892
00:47:34,185 --> 00:47:37,813
or anything like that,
they fit front to back

893
00:47:38,147 --> 00:47:42,818
and were held on by pressure,
and by the actual sleeve.

894
00:47:43,152 --> 00:47:47,656
And they were operated
using swage surgical cable,

895
00:47:48,574 --> 00:47:50,659
and John criswell made the controller.

896
00:47:51,744 --> 00:47:54,288
And so we had a version of that

897
00:47:54,622 --> 00:47:55,942
that was literally a pistol grip,

898
00:47:56,207 --> 00:47:58,084
with the controller for the shots of it

899
00:47:58,417 --> 00:48:00,086
just kinda doing that sort of thing.

900
00:48:00,419 --> 00:48:05,216
And we had a head of Jeffrey
with the little opening in it

901
00:48:06,759 --> 00:48:09,178
that we could put that
through and make it,

902
00:48:09,512 --> 00:48:11,222
you know, do those closeups.

903
00:48:11,555 --> 00:48:14,767
We could also poke it
through at different levels.

904
00:48:15,101 --> 00:48:17,853
We could also put... I could
put eight of those pieces

905
00:48:18,187 --> 00:48:20,731
together and make it so
it was only that long.

906
00:48:21,065 --> 00:48:22,983
I could put all 50 of
those pieces together

907
00:48:23,317 --> 00:48:24,443
and make it that long.

908
00:48:24,777 --> 00:48:27,405
And when it was that long,
it was actually so flexible

909
00:48:27,738 --> 00:48:29,949
it would cross back over itself.

910
00:48:30,282 --> 00:48:33,327
I wanted it to be elegant,
partially because when Barbara

911
00:48:33,661 --> 00:48:35,413
takes it in her mouth and bites it off,

912
00:48:35,746 --> 00:48:37,665
I wanted it to look like, you know,

913
00:48:37,998 --> 00:48:41,460
her taking a Rose, the stem of a Rose

914
00:48:41,794 --> 00:48:43,087
in her mouth, and biting it off.

915
00:48:43,421 --> 00:48:45,548
I didn't want it to look
like she's, you know,

916
00:48:45,881 --> 00:48:49,176
she's trying to chomp through
a banana or something.

917
00:48:49,510 --> 00:48:51,762
You know I wanted it to be kind of

918
00:48:52,096 --> 00:48:54,640
elegant and gross at the same time.

919
00:48:54,974 --> 00:48:58,310
- Later, in other projects,
I've had apparatuses

920
00:48:58,644 --> 00:49:01,313
and they've had a joystick,

921
00:49:01,647 --> 00:49:05,234
and they're maneuverable,
but they're radio operated.

922
00:49:05,568 --> 00:49:07,778
You know, there's a
signal that goes to a bug.

923
00:49:08,112 --> 00:49:09,363
Well, not in those days, man.

924
00:49:09,697 --> 00:49:14,493
It was practical, hardwired clamps, and...

925
00:49:15,286 --> 00:49:16,537
So yeah, you had a joystick,

926
00:49:16,871 --> 00:49:18,998
but it was connected to literal wires.

927
00:49:19,331 --> 00:49:22,042
So everywhere I went,
when I had that shit on,

928
00:49:23,002 --> 00:49:26,255
someone's following me with
their joystick.

929
00:49:28,632 --> 00:49:32,887
It's fun to do it for a period of time.

930
00:49:33,220 --> 00:49:36,974
It becomes less and less fun
the more and more you do it.

931
00:49:37,308 --> 00:49:38,309
That's what I can say.

932
00:49:39,560 --> 00:49:41,145
It was kind of novel at first,

933
00:49:41,479 --> 00:49:43,272
"this is gonna be really cool,"

934
00:49:43,606 --> 00:49:45,316
and then you're tired of the really cool,

935
00:49:45,649 --> 00:49:49,987
and you just want this crap to be off.

936
00:49:50,321 --> 00:49:52,241
- Some of the effects that
stand out in my memory

937
00:49:52,406 --> 00:49:56,035
are for sure the makeup that
Bob kurtzman did on Ted sorel,

938
00:49:56,368 --> 00:49:58,537
where half of his body is fused.

939
00:49:58,871 --> 00:50:01,207
And that took... you know,
you hear these stories

940
00:50:01,540 --> 00:50:03,501
about makeups taking like
five hours to put on,

941
00:50:03,834 --> 00:50:06,587
and a lot of times, it's exaggerated.

942
00:50:06,921 --> 00:50:09,256
But that really did take forever.

943
00:50:09,590 --> 00:50:11,759
I think they showed up at
like 3:00 in the morning.

944
00:50:12,092 --> 00:50:16,430
It was beautifully sculpted
and applied makeup,

945
00:50:16,764 --> 00:50:19,517
where Ted had to lay on a slant board

946
00:50:19,850 --> 00:50:23,312
and Bob just carefully glued it on him.

947
00:50:23,646 --> 00:50:25,207
And I just remember
thinking, "oh my gosh."

948
00:50:25,231 --> 00:50:28,984
The guy had to kinda keep
his arm in this position

949
00:50:29,318 --> 00:50:30,611
and he was so patient.

950
00:50:30,945 --> 00:50:34,615
The actor was so, so
patient with the makeup.

951
00:50:34,949 --> 00:50:36,269
And I remember having to go there

952
00:50:36,492 --> 00:50:38,244
and just slop that slime on him,

953
00:50:38,577 --> 00:50:39,995
and paint that slime in every shot.

954
00:50:40,329 --> 00:50:42,414
- Everything had to be
shot by a certain day,

955
00:50:42,748 --> 00:50:44,041
'cause all these extra people,

956
00:50:44,375 --> 00:50:46,210
all this extra cost was going away.

957
00:50:46,544 --> 00:50:48,879
They were getting in airplanes,
coming back to the states.

958
00:50:49,213 --> 00:50:54,009
So we shot and we shot all
of this stuff, and you know,

959
00:50:55,719 --> 00:50:59,306
David kindlon had made this
really, really nice head.

960
00:50:59,640 --> 00:51:01,725
So we've got this pretorious head

961
00:51:02,059 --> 00:51:06,605
and that's a major sequence
with a major speech

962
00:51:06,939 --> 00:51:09,066
that is given by that
character in closeup.

963
00:51:10,025 --> 00:51:14,321
And they shot it, and then
they sent the crew home

964
00:51:14,655 --> 00:51:16,156
before they looked at the dailies.

965
00:51:16,490 --> 00:51:18,909
And what they ended up
with is they ended up

966
00:51:19,243 --> 00:51:21,287
with a great looking head kinda doing,

967
00:51:21,620 --> 00:51:25,207
you know, this sort of thing
all over it, and it's moving,

968
00:51:26,417 --> 00:51:29,253
but they can't get it to
line up with the dialogue.

969
00:51:29,587 --> 00:51:32,381
And they got the actor
trying to do adr work on it,

970
00:51:32,715 --> 00:51:35,593
and trying to... additional
dialogue recording,

971
00:51:35,926 --> 00:51:38,679
and trying to get it all to sync up,

972
00:51:39,013 --> 00:51:40,889
and it's just not working.

973
00:51:41,932 --> 00:51:43,934
And that was the second
time, when John and I

974
00:51:44,268 --> 00:51:48,063
both got called in, and we said,

975
00:51:48,397 --> 00:51:50,858
"well, ithinkthey're
about landing in New York

976
00:51:51,191 --> 00:51:52,335
if you wanna get on the phone."

977
00:51:52,359 --> 00:51:54,445
You know, it's like, "what?"

978
00:51:54,778 --> 00:51:59,199
And they said, "well, what
can you do with what's left?"

979
00:51:59,533 --> 00:52:01,869
And I said, "well, have
they picked up the trash?"

980
00:52:02,202 --> 00:52:05,414
Because everything was thrown
into a dumpster in Italy.

981
00:52:05,748 --> 00:52:08,334
And we went out and we dug it all out.

982
00:52:08,667 --> 00:52:12,212
They had taken the animatronic
head and just cut it off.

983
00:52:12,546 --> 00:52:16,508
It was not there. But we had a lot

984
00:52:16,842 --> 00:52:18,344
of the other elements of it

985
00:52:18,677 --> 00:52:20,679
and we had the rest of the creature,

986
00:52:21,013 --> 00:52:23,682
but the neck was truncated,
it was shortened.

987
00:52:24,016 --> 00:52:26,393
So in order to make it fit
around the back of his head,

988
00:52:26,727 --> 00:52:28,604
I was gonna have to truncate it even more

989
00:52:28,937 --> 00:52:31,523
by cutting a notch into it.

990
00:52:31,857 --> 00:52:34,693
And that led us to what I
affectionately have called

991
00:52:35,027 --> 00:52:37,613
for the rest of my career, hell day.

992
00:52:37,946 --> 00:52:41,825
- It's the greatest
sensual pleasure there is.

993
00:52:42,159 --> 00:52:45,871
- And we started doing the prosthetics,

994
00:52:46,205 --> 00:52:49,500
and attaching the actual actor's head

995
00:52:49,833 --> 00:52:52,795
with a dark, black piece down here,

996
00:52:53,128 --> 00:52:57,925
so we could do a black,
you know, a contrast matte,

997
00:52:58,258 --> 00:53:00,719
kinda like what some of the
stuff we did in re-animator.

998
00:53:01,053 --> 00:53:03,305
And so we've got the
actor forward like that,

999
00:53:03,639 --> 00:53:07,101
with the black down here
and the pieces up here,

1000
00:53:07,434 --> 00:53:08,870
and you raise the camera a little bit

1001
00:53:08,894 --> 00:53:09,974
and you don't see the neck.

1002
00:53:10,187 --> 00:53:12,523
So that's what the gag was.

1003
00:53:12,856 --> 00:53:14,692
And we did that whole speech,

1004
00:53:16,026 --> 00:53:20,948
and all of that was re-shot,
so that was a major day.

1005
00:53:24,034 --> 00:53:28,497
It was also a day when we had
Jeffrey in the full prosthetic

1006
00:53:29,540 --> 00:53:32,084
with the... everything's going,

1007
00:53:32,418 --> 00:53:37,214
and you know, it was
the day that bubba dies,

1008
00:53:38,424 --> 00:53:40,551
and that was all done in the same day,

1009
00:53:40,884 --> 00:53:44,304
and I've never done that much
makeup in one day in my life.

1010
00:53:44,638 --> 00:53:49,435
John criswell got a
whole lot of experience

1011
00:53:49,852 --> 00:53:52,771
putting prosthetics on with me that day,

1012
00:53:53,105 --> 00:53:55,566
kinda literally being the extra hands.

1013
00:53:55,899 --> 00:53:57,693
It was a great day.

1014
00:53:58,861 --> 00:54:01,113
- I do remember the
pretorious transformations

1015
00:54:01,447 --> 00:54:03,550
was one of the things that
deak was out there for that.

1016
00:54:03,574 --> 00:54:07,035
And we did the derma wax,
when Jeffrey comes up

1017
00:54:07,369 --> 00:54:09,009
and he sees pretorious for the first time

1018
00:54:09,079 --> 00:54:10,849
coming back from the
dead, and he puts his hand

1019
00:54:10,873 --> 00:54:13,500
on the shoulder, and the
fingers sink into his skin.

1020
00:54:13,834 --> 00:54:16,420
That was all built up
with medical derma wax,

1021
00:54:16,754 --> 00:54:18,130
so that it literally was just wax,

1022
00:54:18,464 --> 00:54:19,744
his fingers could sink into him.

1023
00:54:19,923 --> 00:54:22,718
And then buechler had this gag where...

1024
00:54:23,051 --> 00:54:24,411
He supposedly ripped off his face,

1025
00:54:24,470 --> 00:54:26,030
and it was like the
musculature underneath...

1026
00:54:26,054 --> 00:54:27,890
And he had this gag where it was

1027
00:54:28,223 --> 00:54:31,351
simply like bakery twine,
like in the appliance.

1028
00:54:31,685 --> 00:54:33,854
And he said, "it's gonna make the muscles

1029
00:54:34,188 --> 00:54:34,688
start popping out."

1030
00:54:35,022 --> 00:54:36,499
And I was thinking, "that'll never work."

1031
00:54:36,523 --> 00:54:40,360
And we did it, and that's
when I gave buechler

1032
00:54:40,694 --> 00:54:42,294
a lot of benefit of the doubt for stuff,

1033
00:54:42,362 --> 00:54:44,322
because he did this thing
and it worked perfectly,

1034
00:54:44,490 --> 00:54:45,908
and I never thought it would work.

1035
00:54:46,241 --> 00:54:48,660
I think shortly
before we left for Rome,

1036
00:54:48,994 --> 00:54:50,674
Stewart said, "oh, I've got another idea."

1037
00:54:50,871 --> 00:54:52,873
I'm like, "oh, jeez, we've
got enough work already,

1038
00:54:53,207 --> 00:54:54,207
what is it?"

1039
00:54:54,458 --> 00:54:57,795
And he said he wanted to have
Ted as the bubbly creature

1040
00:54:58,128 --> 00:55:01,298
holding Barbara crampton, you
know, tearing at her dress.

1041
00:55:01,632 --> 00:55:03,801
He wanted his fingers to grow really long

1042
00:55:04,134 --> 00:55:07,137
and kind of caress her breasts.

1043
00:55:07,471 --> 00:55:09,431
I'm like, "oh god, Stuart,
we don't, you know,

1044
00:55:09,765 --> 00:55:11,125
we don't have enough time or money

1045
00:55:11,433 --> 00:55:13,477
to create more effects, and..."

1046
00:55:13,811 --> 00:55:15,604
- Your boss had some scruples.

1047
00:55:15,938 --> 00:55:16,938
- He was a genius.

1048
00:55:20,943 --> 00:55:22,143
It's just that the five senses

1049
00:55:22,277 --> 00:55:24,404
weren't enough for him and he wanted more.

1050
00:55:24,738 --> 00:55:26,615
- We didn't have time
to bring back Ted sorel

1051
00:55:26,949 --> 00:55:29,660
and do more iifecasting and
make his arm and all that.

1052
00:55:29,993 --> 00:55:33,247
And I had a finger extension
arm from Mark patton,

1053
00:55:33,580 --> 00:55:35,020
who was much younger than Ted sorel,

1054
00:55:35,082 --> 00:55:36,875
but he was from elm street 2...

1055
00:55:37,209 --> 00:55:38,729
But I had this wonderful full arm mold

1056
00:55:38,794 --> 00:55:41,046
of him with fingers extended.

1057
00:55:41,380 --> 00:55:43,257
And I thought, you know, I can take that

1058
00:55:43,590 --> 00:55:47,052
and use that mold and make a hand,

1059
00:55:47,386 --> 00:55:49,304
and make the fingers grow.

1060
00:55:53,183 --> 00:55:56,103
- The way we did that was
we took styrofoam pellets

1061
00:55:56,436 --> 00:56:00,440
and we soaked them in gray
dye, and then we let them dry,

1062
00:56:00,774 --> 00:56:02,001
and then we scraped them all up

1063
00:56:02,025 --> 00:56:03,044
and we put them in these barrels.

1064
00:56:03,068 --> 00:56:04,611
And then when we would film,

1065
00:56:04,945 --> 00:56:08,156
we would put the styrofoam
pellets in front of leaf blowers

1066
00:56:08,490 --> 00:56:09,850
and blow them all around the room,

1067
00:56:09,950 --> 00:56:11,743
and then sweep them up off the floor,

1068
00:56:12,077 --> 00:56:13,287
put them back in and do it.

1069
00:56:13,620 --> 00:56:15,706
Well, poor Ken foree, who I'm still

1070
00:56:16,039 --> 00:56:20,168
to this day friends with,
got one of the pellets

1071
00:56:20,502 --> 00:56:24,673
in his ear canal, all the way inside.

1072
00:56:25,007 --> 00:56:26,508
And you'd never seen somebody

1073
00:56:26,842 --> 00:56:28,302
so patient in all of your life.

1074
00:56:28,635 --> 00:56:30,470
He just kind of raised
his hand and was like,

1075
00:56:30,804 --> 00:56:33,724
"excuse me, but one of
these pellets is in my ear."

1076
00:56:34,057 --> 00:56:36,685
So I think it was about 45
minutes of digging around

1077
00:56:37,019 --> 00:56:39,688
with one of those long medical o-tips.

1078
00:56:40,022 --> 00:56:42,941
I wanna say they put maple syrup,

1079
00:56:43,275 --> 00:56:44,995
or something really
sticky on the end of it,

1080
00:56:45,110 --> 00:56:46,737
and they finally got it out.

1081
00:56:47,070 --> 00:56:48,630
But my gosh, he was such a team player.

1082
00:56:48,697 --> 00:56:50,157
He didn't say a word.

1083
00:56:50,490 --> 00:56:53,535
- They put me in a wetsuit,
okay? Underneath it,

1084
00:56:53,869 --> 00:56:56,204
'cause they had to pour karo syrup

1085
00:56:56,538 --> 00:56:58,415
all over my head and my body, you know,

1086
00:56:58,749 --> 00:57:03,545
so that those little bugs,
little bees, would stick.

1087
00:57:04,421 --> 00:57:05,501
They were little styrofoam,

1088
00:57:05,756 --> 00:57:08,800
you know, that was what they were.

1089
00:57:09,134 --> 00:57:11,803
And so, they start pouring the syrup,

1090
00:57:12,137 --> 00:57:16,058
and I'm gonna be stuck
there for quite a few hours,

1091
00:57:16,391 --> 00:57:19,686
and the syrup started
going down under the suit.

1092
00:57:20,020 --> 00:57:24,816
Cold karo syrup just
dripping down your chest,

1093
00:57:25,275 --> 00:57:29,237
and then your back, you
know, almost to your butt.

1094
00:57:29,571 --> 00:57:31,698
I won't go any further,

1095
00:57:32,699 --> 00:57:34,326
but you get that idea.

1096
00:57:34,660 --> 00:57:37,162
- It's just exhausting is what it can be.

1097
00:57:37,496 --> 00:57:39,748
- One of the scenes when
I jump on Jeffrey's back

1098
00:57:40,082 --> 00:57:42,584
and we fall down into the basement,

1099
00:57:42,918 --> 00:57:47,631
if you are careful and you
look on the wall, you'll see,

1100
00:57:47,965 --> 00:57:50,717
it's a white wall, you see a brown streak.

1101
00:57:51,635 --> 00:57:55,055
They had to get a Italian man to play me

1102
00:57:55,389 --> 00:57:56,932
and they had to paint him.

1103
00:57:58,266 --> 00:58:03,063
So they painted him brown
And he streaked

1104
00:58:03,397 --> 00:58:06,858
as his arm or something hit the wall.

1105
00:58:07,192 --> 00:58:10,904
So there's a streak coming
right behind him.

1106
00:58:11,238 --> 00:58:14,408
- I know this behavior,
I've seen it in the streets.

1107
00:58:14,741 --> 00:58:19,162
- We had this shot where we
had to have this cutoff head

1108
00:58:19,496 --> 00:58:22,958
lifted off this torso, and
Mike deak and I thought,

1109
00:58:23,291 --> 00:58:25,585
"oh, this is gonna be so
good, let's pull a trick."

1110
00:58:25,919 --> 00:58:27,546
So we took a styrofoam head

1111
00:58:27,879 --> 00:58:31,133
and we just painted it
the worst way possible.

1112
00:58:31,466 --> 00:58:33,677
We put acetone on it
and made it all melt-y,

1113
00:58:34,011 --> 00:58:37,597
and then we put two crazy
cockeyed ping pong balls for eyes,

1114
00:58:37,931 --> 00:58:40,267
and we put long packing hemp for hair,

1115
00:58:40,600 --> 00:58:42,936
and put lipstick on it and
it just, it looked like

1116
00:58:43,270 --> 00:58:45,164
the stupidest thing you'd
ever seen in your life.

1117
00:58:45,188 --> 00:58:46,857
So we're thinking we're gonna be funny,

1118
00:58:47,190 --> 00:58:49,110
because Stuart's loving
us, everyone's loving us.

1119
00:58:49,359 --> 00:58:49,985
And like they, you know,

1120
00:58:50,318 --> 00:58:52,821
some of these effects,
there's so many of them,

1121
00:58:53,155 --> 00:58:55,657
the first time that Stuart
and the dp, Mac ahlberg,

1122
00:58:55,991 --> 00:58:58,493
would get to set would be the
first time they'd see them.

1123
00:58:58,827 --> 00:59:01,663
So Mike and I take this
hemp-covered styrofoam head

1124
00:59:01,997 --> 00:59:03,373
with lipstick and crossed eyes,

1125
00:59:03,707 --> 00:59:06,418
and we put a garbage bag
over it and we go on set.

1126
00:59:06,752 --> 00:59:11,548
And then Mac ahlberg is this
Swedish, very proper man

1127
00:59:12,007 --> 00:59:14,760
who literally looked
through a monocle, was like,

1128
00:59:15,093 --> 00:59:18,513
"okay, can we please
bring in the cutoff head?"

1129
00:59:18,847 --> 00:59:20,241
And we go, "all right, we're coming in,"

1130
00:59:20,265 --> 00:59:21,433
and we have have this...

1131
00:59:22,809 --> 00:59:25,103
We come in and we have this head in a bag.

1132
00:59:25,437 --> 00:59:27,677
And then we're looking at each
other, nudging each other,

1133
00:59:27,731 --> 00:59:30,275
and we pull the bag off this cutoff head.

1134
00:59:30,609 --> 00:59:34,112
And Mac ahlberg blew
his stack and was like,

1135
00:59:34,446 --> 00:59:39,159
"what is this shit storm?
I can't fucking shoot this.

1136
00:59:39,493 --> 00:59:41,512
What are you... what is going
through your fucking..."

1137
00:59:41,536 --> 00:59:44,122
Just having a fucking tantrum.

1138
00:59:44,456 --> 00:59:45,665
We didn't know what to say.

1139
00:59:45,999 --> 00:59:48,460
We're like,"
We're kidding, we're kidding,

1140
00:59:48,794 --> 00:59:50,104
we're kidding, here's the real head,"

1141
00:59:50,128 --> 00:59:52,208
you know, which really looked
a million times better.

1142
00:59:52,255 --> 00:59:53,381
But I still think our head

1143
00:59:53,715 --> 00:59:54,955
looked really good, but anyway.

1144
00:59:55,217 --> 00:59:56,937
- There's a scene where
I'm eating the brain

1145
00:59:57,219 --> 01:00:00,055
and Carolyn purdy-Gordon, Stuart's wife,

1146
01:00:00,388 --> 01:00:05,185
plays a doctor who comes in and catches me

1147
01:00:05,936 --> 01:00:08,021
before I suck her eyeball out, you know?

1148
01:00:08,355 --> 01:00:11,483
I'm eating a brain and
I say it's delicious.

1149
01:00:12,692 --> 01:00:17,614
And so they gave me a brain,
it was a rubber brain,

1150
01:00:20,325 --> 01:00:23,078
and it had some like
corn syrup blood on it,

1151
01:00:23,411 --> 01:00:28,166
and it had been molded with a
bite taken out of it. Smart.

1152
01:00:28,500 --> 01:00:31,336
And so, you know, I'm eating the brain,

1153
01:00:31,670 --> 01:00:35,549
so I use this little
hole, but I'm biting it.

1154
01:00:35,882 --> 01:00:37,384
And she, "what are you doing?"

1155
01:00:37,717 --> 01:00:39,678
And I say, "it's delicious."

1156
01:00:41,346 --> 01:00:44,766
And Stuart goes, "cut, cut, cut, cut.

1157
01:00:45,100 --> 01:00:46,643
What are you, what are you eating?"

1158
01:00:47,727 --> 01:00:49,367
I said, "I'm not eating anything, Stuart.

1159
01:00:49,437 --> 01:00:52,274
There's nothing to eat, this is rubber,

1160
01:00:52,607 --> 01:00:56,820
and see that, so I'm pretending."

1161
01:00:57,988 --> 01:01:00,148
And he said, "well, there
should be something in there,

1162
01:01:00,323 --> 01:01:02,784
that we should really
see you eat something."

1163
01:01:03,118 --> 01:01:05,871
And I went... and he said,
"anybody got anything

1164
01:01:06,204 --> 01:01:09,791
pink around here that
we could put in there?"

1165
01:01:10,125 --> 01:01:12,169
You know, not many foods,

1166
01:01:13,336 --> 01:01:15,130
that would match brain, apparently.

1167
01:01:15,463 --> 01:01:18,633
And someone said, "well,
I got some polygrip,

1168
01:01:18,967 --> 01:01:20,719
I got some dentures adhesive."

1169
01:01:22,095 --> 01:01:23,763
And he said, "yeah, put that in there."

1170
01:01:24,097 --> 01:01:26,725
It was pink, so they filled
this hole with the thing.

1171
01:01:27,058 --> 01:01:29,686
"Action,"

1172
01:01:30,020 --> 01:01:31,897
"Crawford, what are you doing?"

1173
01:01:32,230 --> 01:01:34,608
And I say my line..

1174
01:01:38,737 --> 01:01:43,325
I can't open my mouth,

1175
01:01:43,658 --> 01:01:45,827
it's so dry in there,

1176
01:01:46,161 --> 01:01:48,163
because that's what that stuff does,

1177
01:01:48,496 --> 01:01:51,041
takes all the moisture outta your mouth.

1178
01:01:51,374 --> 01:01:53,585
And he, "cut, cut, what are you doing?"

1179
01:01:56,421 --> 01:01:59,257
And I said, "it takes
all the moisture away."

1180
01:01:59,591 --> 01:02:01,176
And I said, "you try it."

1181
01:02:01,509 --> 01:02:02,761
And he goes, "you know what?

1182
01:02:03,762 --> 01:02:06,848
I never have an actor do
anything that I won't do myself.

1183
01:02:07,182 --> 01:02:09,559
So yeah, fill that up,
I'll show you what I mean."

1184
01:02:09,893 --> 01:02:14,689
They filled it up, he took a bite and like

1185
01:02:15,106 --> 01:02:18,151
tried to spit it out, but it had already

1186
01:02:18,485 --> 01:02:21,529
cemented in and took every bit of moisture

1187
01:02:21,863 --> 01:02:24,324
that it would take to propel
something outta your mouth.

1188
01:02:24,658 --> 01:02:25,200
Took it and he goes,

1189
01:02:25,533 --> 01:02:30,288
"okay, fine. Just mime it."

1190
01:02:30,622 --> 01:02:32,916
So we wasted about half an hour on that.

1191
01:02:35,710 --> 01:02:36,710
- Delicious.

1192
01:02:36,878 --> 01:02:38,958
- So we were shooting and
everything was going great.

1193
01:02:39,256 --> 01:02:40,715
We were all very, very busy.

1194
01:02:41,049 --> 01:02:42,968
And like I said, these stages were...

1195
01:02:43,301 --> 01:02:44,901
I don't know how high the ceilings were,

1196
01:02:45,011 --> 01:02:48,473
I wanna say 35 feet up in
the air, they were massive.

1197
01:02:48,807 --> 01:02:52,185
And on each stage, there
was like a 25 foot door

1198
01:02:52,519 --> 01:02:57,065
that was about, oh, I have to
say two or three feet thick,

1199
01:02:57,399 --> 01:02:59,734
that was concrete and steel.

1200
01:03:00,068 --> 01:03:04,864
And on each door, at the end of the night

1201
01:03:05,198 --> 01:03:07,117
when you close the door, there was a ring

1202
01:03:07,450 --> 01:03:10,745
that was like this, and a
ring that was like this,

1203
01:03:11,079 --> 01:03:13,707
that would come together like that.

1204
01:03:14,040 --> 01:03:17,168
And they would put a big pin
in it and put a lock on it,

1205
01:03:17,502 --> 01:03:19,421
so nobody could get in the sound stage.

1206
01:03:19,754 --> 01:03:23,216
- We were getting ready to
do the lamprey eel sequence

1207
01:03:23,550 --> 01:03:27,429
and I needed to go in and ask
a couple questions of Stuart,

1208
01:03:27,762 --> 01:03:31,099
and I walked in a side entrance
to the stage over there.

1209
01:03:31,433 --> 01:03:33,643
And when I reached back,
I thought I was grabbing

1210
01:03:33,977 --> 01:03:36,187
a real, honest-to-god handle.

1211
01:03:36,521 --> 01:03:38,565
- So he probably pulled, you know,

1212
01:03:40,066 --> 01:03:42,193
three or four tons of concrete.

1213
01:03:42,527 --> 01:03:45,238
- And my finger went down
through one of those bolts,

1214
01:03:45,572 --> 01:03:48,033
and then the bolts
crossed over each other.

1215
01:03:48,366 --> 01:03:51,286
And iwent,
'cause that's what you do

1216
01:03:51,619 --> 01:03:54,789
when when you feel a shot
of pain, and you hear

1217
01:03:55,123 --> 01:03:57,542
what sounds like a box
of pencils crunching

1218
01:03:57,876 --> 01:03:59,336
and it's your hand.

1219
01:03:59,669 --> 01:04:02,339
And I went like that, and
when I ran out into one

1220
01:04:02,672 --> 01:04:04,632
and I put my fingers... I'm an ex EMT.

1221
01:04:04,966 --> 01:04:06,301
I put my finger right here

1222
01:04:06,634 --> 01:04:08,178
and went right into my pressure point,

1223
01:04:08,511 --> 01:04:10,151
and I went out to one of the work lights,

1224
01:04:10,388 --> 01:04:12,428
which over in Italy was
just a great, big light bulb

1225
01:04:12,682 --> 01:04:13,682
with a cage around it.

1226
01:04:13,933 --> 01:04:16,144
And I held up and I could not see...

1227
01:04:16,478 --> 01:04:19,230
I could see this finger,
I could see this finger,

1228
01:04:19,564 --> 01:04:21,399
but I couldn't see these two at all,

1229
01:04:21,733 --> 01:04:23,485
'cause they were hanging down here.

1230
01:04:23,818 --> 01:04:28,114
And the hospital the first
night cut pieces off,

1231
01:04:28,448 --> 01:04:31,076
threw them away, and we
never got those back.

1232
01:04:31,409 --> 01:04:33,411
And then they just kinda set things back,

1233
01:04:33,745 --> 01:04:36,456
and bound it up with a bunch of gauze,

1234
01:04:36,790 --> 01:04:39,459
and then two days later, I went back

1235
01:04:39,793 --> 01:04:42,253
to quote/unquote check on it,

1236
01:04:42,587 --> 01:04:45,256
and when they took the gauze
off, it stuck a little,

1237
01:04:45,590 --> 01:04:48,218
and one of my fingers fell back off.

1238
01:04:48,551 --> 01:04:52,222
And the doctor's going, you
know, like, "chop chop."

1239
01:04:52,555 --> 01:04:54,516
And I'm like, "no chop chop, no."

1240
01:04:54,849 --> 01:04:57,769
And Tony doublin's wife at the time,

1241
01:04:59,270 --> 01:05:04,192
she had driven me, and
I said to the nurse...

1242
01:05:06,194 --> 01:05:07,954
That's the only one
there that spoke English.

1243
01:05:08,279 --> 01:05:10,407
I said, "give me that file."

1244
01:05:10,740 --> 01:05:14,744
And we grabbed the file and
we went out the fire escape,

1245
01:05:15,078 --> 01:05:16,996
and down the fire escape, and that's when

1246
01:05:17,330 --> 01:05:19,611
I went back to Albert band,
held that in front of his face

1247
01:05:19,749 --> 01:05:22,293
and said, "find me a real
doctor in this country."

1248
01:05:22,627 --> 01:05:23,294
And he did.

1249
01:05:23,628 --> 01:05:26,589
- I have the same
feeling on every last day

1250
01:05:26,923 --> 01:05:28,675
of every single movie.

1251
01:05:29,008 --> 01:05:32,345
And that is, "let's start again,

1252
01:05:32,679 --> 01:05:35,181
because now I know how
to play the character."

1253
01:05:38,143 --> 01:05:41,229
There's always a little bit of
remorse at the end of a film,

1254
01:05:41,563 --> 01:05:46,276
because you think, "oh,
did I do it? Did I nail it?

1255
01:05:46,609 --> 01:05:48,003
Could I have done something different?

1256
01:05:48,027 --> 01:05:49,171
Oh, maybe I should have played

1257
01:05:49,195 --> 01:05:51,823
that scene a little bit differently,

1258
01:05:52,157 --> 01:05:54,576
and could I have done
something more or less?"

1259
01:05:54,909 --> 01:05:57,370
Or, "was I good enough?"

1260
01:05:57,704 --> 01:06:00,957
I mean, you always hope that you're gonna

1261
01:06:01,291 --> 01:06:06,087
fulfill the job required,
and I always feel

1262
01:06:06,921 --> 01:06:11,843
a sense of loss, loneliness,
and sadness at the very end.

1263
01:06:12,844 --> 01:06:17,765
And I remember the last
day of from beyond,

1264
01:06:18,391 --> 01:06:21,644
having those same feelings,
just hoping and wishing

1265
01:06:21,978 --> 01:06:24,481
that it was going to turn out okay.

1266
01:06:32,822 --> 01:06:34,216
- It's a little bit slight of hand.

1267
01:06:34,240 --> 01:06:37,160
So you know, again, this was before

1268
01:06:37,494 --> 01:06:39,537
computer generated effects,

1269
01:06:39,871 --> 01:06:42,665
so there was no visual effects shot,

1270
01:06:42,999 --> 01:06:44,479
there were only special effect shots,

1271
01:06:44,626 --> 01:06:48,963
and those were largely created on the set.

1272
01:06:49,297 --> 01:06:53,468
Occasionally, some things would
go into the optical camera

1273
01:06:53,801 --> 01:06:56,221
for optical effects, but
especially with Stuart,

1274
01:06:56,554 --> 01:06:57,889
almost everything was practical.

1275
01:06:58,223 --> 01:07:00,141
They all were pretty
much effects on the set.

1276
01:07:00,475 --> 01:07:02,477
And again, that's from
his theater background.

1277
01:07:02,810 --> 01:07:05,146
It goes back to the plays like "warp,"

1278
01:07:05,480 --> 01:07:07,941
where the effects were on
stage, live at the time,

1279
01:07:08,274 --> 01:07:09,434
and that's how Stuart worked.

1280
01:07:09,609 --> 01:07:11,528
I can't remember exactly the scene,

1281
01:07:11,861 --> 01:07:15,782
but there was a moment when something

1282
01:07:16,115 --> 01:07:19,953
was supposed to be an effect
and we didn't have the effect.

1283
01:07:20,286 --> 01:07:22,705
And the actor kind of did something

1284
01:07:23,039 --> 01:07:26,167
that made it look like it had happened.

1285
01:07:26,501 --> 01:07:28,545
And Stuart grinned and said,

1286
01:07:28,878 --> 01:07:31,506
"see, acting is the best special effect."

1287
01:07:31,839 --> 01:07:35,051
There's a great deal of latitude
in what happens in editing.

1288
01:07:35,385 --> 01:07:36,665
And every director is different,

1289
01:07:36,761 --> 01:07:41,391
but certainly by from beyond,
I had a very, very strong

1290
01:07:41,724 --> 01:07:45,812
and trusting relationship
with Stuart, and in his mind,

1291
01:07:46,145 --> 01:07:50,942
was completely given the
permission and the charge

1292
01:07:51,901 --> 01:07:54,404
to edit the film as I saw fit.

1293
01:07:54,737 --> 01:07:57,907
Once he was done shooting
in Italy, he came back.

1294
01:07:58,241 --> 01:07:59,321
In the case of from beyond,

1295
01:07:59,409 --> 01:08:02,662
he was able to be in la
through most of the production,

1296
01:08:02,996 --> 01:08:04,956
post production process.

1297
01:08:05,290 --> 01:08:07,000
So he and Brian both came back

1298
01:08:07,333 --> 01:08:11,963
and we were all working
together, I think along somewhat

1299
01:08:12,297 --> 01:08:14,632
with Albert band, who was
Charlie band's father,

1300
01:08:14,966 --> 01:08:15,966
and kind of the godfather

1301
01:08:16,259 --> 01:08:18,511
of empire films at that point.

1302
01:08:18,845 --> 01:08:21,472
So the three of us were
there, and you know,

1303
01:08:21,806 --> 01:08:23,659
it wasn't like we were
working together every day.

1304
01:08:23,683 --> 01:08:25,518
I would take the film and work things out

1305
01:08:25,852 --> 01:08:28,271
and put scenes together,
and Stuart would come in

1306
01:08:28,605 --> 01:08:32,358
and we'd look at things and change things,

1307
01:08:32,692 --> 01:08:35,528
and maybe find a way to
make something work better,

1308
01:08:35,862 --> 01:08:39,198
or find a way to make it more exciting.

1309
01:08:39,532 --> 01:08:42,160
On a daily basis, we were
reworking the scenes.

1310
01:08:42,493 --> 01:08:44,454
It takes months to edit a
movie and in those days,

1311
01:08:44,787 --> 01:08:47,040
we were editing on film, not computers.

1312
01:08:47,373 --> 01:08:48,853
So you're actually cutting and taping

1313
01:08:49,000 --> 01:08:50,209
pieces of film together.

1314
01:08:51,544 --> 01:08:54,380
And then from time to
time, Brian would come in,

1315
01:08:54,714 --> 01:08:57,342
and he would... not quite
dad coming in the room,

1316
01:08:57,675 --> 01:08:59,395
but he would be another
viewpoint that maybe

1317
01:08:59,594 --> 01:09:04,390
was a little bit more... a
little less of an enthusiast

1318
01:09:05,391 --> 01:09:08,311
than Stuart and a little
bit more of a realist.

1319
01:09:08,645 --> 01:09:11,189
So it was a nice balance getting the input

1320
01:09:11,522 --> 01:09:14,567
from the two of them,
and I think I brought

1321
01:09:14,901 --> 01:09:16,402
very much an actor's perspective,

1322
01:09:16,736 --> 01:09:19,238
a sense of drama, a sense of performance,

1323
01:09:19,572 --> 01:09:21,292
a sense of storytelling
that I had picked up

1324
01:09:21,616 --> 01:09:22,656
in all my years of acting.

1325
01:09:22,867 --> 01:09:27,288
So I think it was really a nice
combination of personalities

1326
01:09:27,622 --> 01:09:30,792
and skills and intellects
that came together

1327
01:09:31,125 --> 01:09:33,836
in the editing room making from beyond.

1328
01:09:34,170 --> 01:09:35,689
- I had been a foley artist, let me see,

1329
01:09:35,713 --> 01:09:38,383
for six years by then,
'cause I started in 1980

1330
01:09:38,716 --> 01:09:40,843
working on the shows
Dallas and knots landing,

1331
01:09:41,177 --> 01:09:43,054
and from beyond was
some of the feature work

1332
01:09:43,388 --> 01:09:44,907
I'd been doing, 'cause I'd transitioned

1333
01:09:44,931 --> 01:09:47,433
pretty much into features
completely by then.

1334
01:09:47,767 --> 01:09:52,522
And this was one of the
independent films I worked on.

1335
01:09:52,855 --> 01:09:56,943
It was during a time when I
was doing both big features

1336
01:09:57,276 --> 01:10:00,113
and then independent features,
and this was an independent

1337
01:10:00,446 --> 01:10:02,949
that I did where I was the
only foley artist on it,

1338
01:10:03,282 --> 01:10:07,453
which is unusual, because
normally, two foley artists

1339
01:10:07,787 --> 01:10:09,706
work on a film, but on some of the smaller

1340
01:10:10,039 --> 01:10:12,250
independent films, they
will often have just one.

1341
01:10:12,583 --> 01:10:16,295
And this was one of those
times when it was just me.

1342
01:10:16,629 --> 01:10:18,089
And so the way the process was,

1343
01:10:18,423 --> 01:10:20,758
was we had what we would call reels,

1344
01:10:21,092 --> 01:10:24,095
and the reels are only 10
minutes of film at a time.

1345
01:10:24,429 --> 01:10:26,349
And they were on black
and white vegetable dupes,

1346
01:10:26,681 --> 01:10:27,801
they're all black and white,

1347
01:10:28,015 --> 01:10:30,309
they're kind of fuzzy,
muddy-looking things.

1348
01:10:30,643 --> 01:10:33,396
So I didn't see any of the special effects

1349
01:10:33,730 --> 01:10:35,690
and I didn't get to hear any of the music.

1350
01:10:36,899 --> 01:10:39,152
I'm basically working with
a black and white dupe

1351
01:10:39,485 --> 01:10:41,612
that's kind of muddy
looking, where I'm seeing

1352
01:10:41,946 --> 01:10:43,706
the performances and
I'm getting a basic idea

1353
01:10:43,948 --> 01:10:46,784
of what it looks like, and
that's all I have to work with.

1354
01:10:47,118 --> 01:10:50,163
I don't have a digital color
print like anybody has now.

1355
01:10:50,496 --> 01:10:52,307
So if there are any film
students watching this,

1356
01:10:52,331 --> 01:10:54,333
it wasn't like that back then.

1357
01:10:54,667 --> 01:10:56,061
What we were basically doing is looking

1358
01:10:56,085 --> 01:10:57,754
at a very dirty black and white film,

1359
01:10:58,087 --> 01:11:00,214
and we're only looking
at 10 minutes at a time.

1360
01:11:00,548 --> 01:11:02,550
So you have to really kind of imagine,

1361
01:11:02,884 --> 01:11:05,386
I'm working on 10 minutes of film,

1362
01:11:05,720 --> 01:11:07,197
and I'm not looking at the whole film.

1363
01:11:07,221 --> 01:11:08,621
I don't know what's happening next,

1364
01:11:08,848 --> 01:11:10,725
because back then, it's low budget,

1365
01:11:11,058 --> 01:11:12,894
I don't get to see the whole film first.

1366
01:11:13,227 --> 01:11:15,188
So I'm only seeing 10 minutes at a time

1367
01:11:15,521 --> 01:11:19,066
and I've got to assume I know
what's gonna be happening next

1368
01:11:19,400 --> 01:11:22,153
and I have to keep track
of what shoes was I wearing

1369
01:11:22,487 --> 01:11:25,114
for her before, and what
shoes is she wearing now

1370
01:11:25,448 --> 01:11:26,842
when she changes clothes and she gets

1371
01:11:26,866 --> 01:11:30,203
into the sexy night thing,
and they do this s&m stuff.

1372
01:11:30,536 --> 01:11:32,330
And sometimes, when you have a lotta time,

1373
01:11:32,663 --> 01:11:33,891
you can write down what you're using,

1374
01:11:33,915 --> 01:11:35,476
but when you're working
this fast, you can't,

1375
01:11:35,500 --> 01:11:36,500
so you have to remember.

1376
01:11:36,793 --> 01:11:38,878
One of the things that's
important to understand...

1377
01:11:39,212 --> 01:11:41,214
And in my book, the foley
grail, idiscuss this

1378
01:11:41,547 --> 01:11:44,717
a little bit... about mixing
what I call hybrid sounds,

1379
01:11:45,051 --> 01:11:48,095
where some of the editorial sound effects

1380
01:11:48,429 --> 01:11:50,640
are mixed with what we do in foley.

1381
01:11:50,973 --> 01:11:53,476
That was what happened with
some of the creature sounds.

1382
01:11:53,810 --> 01:11:56,854
The creature sounds are a
combination of designed effects

1383
01:11:57,188 --> 01:11:59,232
by editorial, so the sound editors

1384
01:11:59,565 --> 01:12:02,318
are putting in some designed
and library effects,

1385
01:12:02,652 --> 01:12:04,946
and then what I was doing
in foley was supplementing

1386
01:12:05,279 --> 01:12:07,031
or enhancing what they're also doing.

1387
01:12:07,365 --> 01:12:08,616
So some of the goopier sounds

1388
01:12:08,950 --> 01:12:10,590
and some of the strange things like that,

1389
01:12:10,660 --> 01:12:13,204
anything that sounded really mechanical,

1390
01:12:13,538 --> 01:12:14,807
or the

1391
01:12:14,831 --> 01:12:15,998
And the stuff like that,

1392
01:12:16,332 --> 01:12:17,875
was completely sound effect designed.

1393
01:12:18,209 --> 01:12:19,710
I had nothing to do with any of that,

1394
01:12:20,044 --> 01:12:21,884
there would've been no
way to do that in foley.

1395
01:12:22,088 --> 01:12:25,424
But the goopier things and
the weird stuff like that,

1396
01:12:25,758 --> 01:12:27,260
I would've done on the foley stage,

1397
01:12:27,593 --> 01:12:29,887
using things like
dippity-do and hand lotion.

1398
01:12:30,221 --> 01:12:32,640
And I do mouth noises, too, you know,

1399
01:12:32,974 --> 01:12:34,976
like Stuff like that.

1400
01:12:36,310 --> 01:12:38,437
A year later, when I worked on predator,

1401
01:12:38,771 --> 01:12:40,971
I also did stuff like that
for the monster for predator.

1402
01:12:41,232 --> 01:12:42,792
So I did some similar things like that.

1403
01:12:42,859 --> 01:12:44,579
When you're working on
a really big feature,

1404
01:12:44,694 --> 01:12:48,114
you have time and you can think
about what you're gonna do.

1405
01:12:48,447 --> 01:12:50,767
But what's really fun about
working on an independent film,

1406
01:12:50,950 --> 01:12:52,827
where you don't have
as much money or time,

1407
01:12:53,160 --> 01:12:55,162
is you have to think fast.

1408
01:12:55,496 --> 01:12:57,790
So this one was only, I think,
a two or three day thing.

1409
01:12:58,124 --> 01:13:00,334
This wasn't two, to three,
to four weeks like you have

1410
01:13:00,668 --> 01:13:02,795
for a big feature, where
there's a lot of money.

1411
01:13:03,129 --> 01:13:05,798
Well, the nice thing
about having limited funds

1412
01:13:06,132 --> 01:13:08,050
is you have to think fast and be creative,

1413
01:13:08,384 --> 01:13:12,221
so you grab or think really
fast whatever is there,

1414
01:13:12,555 --> 01:13:13,995
and you have to be really inventive.

1415
01:13:14,181 --> 01:13:17,643
And I think that's really kind
of a challenge and more fun.

1416
01:13:17,977 --> 01:13:20,271
- The first time I met Stuart,

1417
01:13:20,605 --> 01:13:25,401
it was kind of, in a way, assumed
that I would do the score,

1418
01:13:26,527 --> 01:13:29,196
but nothing was really set
in stone at that point.

1419
01:13:29,530 --> 01:13:33,534
And I remember I went over to his house,

1420
01:13:33,868 --> 01:13:38,080
we were gonna have dinner,
and so we're having dinner,

1421
01:13:38,414 --> 01:13:40,625
everything's going well,

1422
01:13:40,958 --> 01:13:45,254
and we're discussing music
and film, and theater,

1423
01:13:45,588 --> 01:13:46,631
and all these things.

1424
01:13:46,964 --> 01:13:49,884
And then it somehow came up

1425
01:13:50,217 --> 01:13:53,888
in the conversation that I was a big fan

1426
01:13:54,221 --> 01:13:57,141
of frank zappa and the
mothers of invention,

1427
01:13:57,475 --> 01:14:02,271
and Stuart's eyes lit up,
and that was the point

1428
01:14:03,564 --> 01:14:07,026
that I knew something
was really connecting.

1429
01:14:07,360 --> 01:14:11,197
And we spent the better part
of the rest of the evening

1430
01:14:11,530 --> 01:14:16,327
singing frank zappa songs
from the album freak out,

1431
01:14:19,246 --> 01:14:23,376
to lumpy gravy, to all these albums

1432
01:14:23,709 --> 01:14:25,586
from the early mothers of invention.

1433
01:14:25,920 --> 01:14:28,673
And we hit it off, our sense of humor

1434
01:14:29,006 --> 01:14:33,803
and the sort of

1435
01:14:34,720 --> 01:14:36,138
snarkiness of zappa,

1436
01:14:36,472 --> 01:14:38,182
and the brilliance and all this.

1437
01:14:38,516 --> 01:14:43,312
So like I said, we sang a
bunch of songs from the albums,

1438
01:14:43,688 --> 01:14:47,191
and we just connected
in a major, major way.

1439
01:14:47,525 --> 01:14:50,528
What was obvious from the
outset with from beyond

1440
01:14:50,861 --> 01:14:55,658
is that it did not have
the sort of humorous aspect

1441
01:14:57,910 --> 01:14:59,829
that re-animator did.

1442
01:15:00,162 --> 01:15:02,915
It had a lot of the lovecraft quirkiness

1443
01:15:03,249 --> 01:15:06,585
and weirdness to it, which is great,

1444
01:15:06,919 --> 01:15:11,716
but it was in no way that
sort of comedic horror

1445
01:15:12,341 --> 01:15:16,345
type of feel that I had
created for re-animator.

1446
01:15:16,679 --> 01:15:19,056
Now, what definitely came out

1447
01:15:19,390 --> 01:15:23,686
that was extremely
important in from beyond,

1448
01:15:24,020 --> 01:15:28,816
was the element of
sexuality and/or sensuality,

1449
01:15:29,859 --> 01:15:32,570
which was the entire domain of the film.

1450
01:15:32,903 --> 01:15:35,156
The whole idea that this other dimension

1451
01:15:35,489 --> 01:15:37,867
was related to this pineal gland,

1452
01:15:38,200 --> 01:15:41,620
a sexual thing that got
people's juices flowing,

1453
01:15:41,954 --> 01:15:44,373
or however you want to interpret it.

1454
01:15:44,707 --> 01:15:47,918
What I had to think of from
a musical standpoint is,

1455
01:15:48,252 --> 01:15:52,965
how do I make the music feel both

1456
01:15:53,299 --> 01:15:58,137
sensual and sexy,

1457
01:15:58,512 --> 01:16:03,392
and at the same time, scary and horrific?

1458
01:16:03,893 --> 01:16:06,187
So, how do you marry all those things

1459
01:16:06,520 --> 01:16:09,607
was the first question
that came to my mind,

1460
01:16:09,940 --> 01:16:13,027
and that was my jumping-off point.

1461
01:16:13,360 --> 01:16:16,655
When you're in that dimension
and the resonator is on,

1462
01:16:16,989 --> 01:16:20,409
there had to be this... you had to feel

1463
01:16:20,743 --> 01:16:23,120
like you were in this other dimension.

1464
01:16:23,454 --> 01:16:27,875
And that's where I brought
in a few electronics

1465
01:16:29,168 --> 01:16:30,544
or synthesizer, let's say.

1466
01:16:30,878 --> 01:16:34,090
Mostly bell-type things and all that,

1467
01:16:34,423 --> 01:16:37,718
which helped create that atmosphere.

1468
01:16:38,052 --> 01:16:42,848
Behind that, those few
bell-like synthesizer things,

1469
01:16:45,351 --> 01:16:49,021
I had strings, real strings in this case.

1470
01:16:49,355 --> 01:16:53,067
And rather than use like
a typical whole orchestra,

1471
01:16:53,400 --> 01:16:58,197
it was really mostly
strings and some percussion,

1472
01:17:00,491 --> 01:17:04,703
and along with the synthesizers,

1473
01:17:07,081 --> 01:17:08,281
to help create that dimension.

1474
01:17:08,582 --> 01:17:12,586
So really, those were the
ingredients that that I used.

1475
01:17:12,920 --> 01:17:16,632
So you had the atmosphere when
you were in the dimension.

1476
01:17:16,966 --> 01:17:21,178
That atmosphere could be
somewhat easily blended

1477
01:17:21,512 --> 01:17:26,308
into being in that from beyond dimension,

1478
01:17:27,143 --> 01:17:30,521
so sonically, it was more
of an atmospheric thing.

1479
01:17:30,855 --> 01:17:33,524
But what was equally important was,

1480
01:17:33,858 --> 01:17:38,529
how do you get the sexuality

1481
01:17:38,863 --> 01:17:41,240
and sensuality aspect of it?

1482
01:17:41,574 --> 01:17:44,118
And that was the secondary part.

1483
01:17:44,451 --> 01:17:49,165
I think the sequence in the
film that most demonstrates that

1484
01:17:49,498 --> 01:17:53,210
is when Barbara crampton is, you know,

1485
01:17:53,544 --> 01:17:55,754
she's in this like dominatrix,

1486
01:17:56,088 --> 01:18:00,217
you know, outfit and all this,
she's feeling her sexuality

1487
01:18:00,551 --> 01:18:02,678
and all this stuff is going on with her.

1488
01:18:03,012 --> 01:18:07,600
Yeah, that was... it had to
have both that atmosphere,

1489
01:18:07,933 --> 01:18:12,396
but it had to have this lovecraftian

1490
01:18:12,730 --> 01:18:15,816
sexuality, sensuality aspect to it.

1491
01:18:16,150 --> 01:18:20,821
So in that case, I played
down the atmospherics,

1492
01:18:21,155 --> 01:18:22,595
even though there was some in there,

1493
01:18:22,698 --> 01:18:26,535
but played this really sort
of undulating sexuality

1494
01:18:26,869 --> 01:18:29,205
and sensuality in the music.

1495
01:18:29,538 --> 01:18:34,293
So those were the devices
I used, as opposed to

1496
01:18:34,752 --> 01:18:38,589
where it eventually went, when...

1497
01:18:38,923 --> 01:18:40,382
The part of the film where

1498
01:18:40,716 --> 01:18:43,385
it's this all hell breaks loose type thing

1499
01:18:43,719 --> 01:18:44,845
towards the end, right?

1500
01:18:45,179 --> 01:18:47,848
That's when, again, the use
of the strings, real strings,

1501
01:18:48,182 --> 01:18:52,978
are so important, 'cause there's
a lot of movement in those,

1502
01:18:53,312 --> 01:18:55,856
and that's not meant for atmosphere,

1503
01:18:56,190 --> 01:19:00,069
that's meant for action
and the the intensity

1504
01:19:00,402 --> 01:19:03,614
of what's happening, and the resonator,

1505
01:19:03,948 --> 01:19:06,909
and when things are going
haywire, so to speak.

1506
01:19:07,243 --> 01:19:08,661
So those are some of the elements

1507
01:19:08,994 --> 01:19:12,373
and how I dealt with them.

1508
01:19:12,706 --> 01:19:14,106
- And then the next thing you know,

1509
01:19:14,208 --> 01:19:15,876
in true Charles band tradition,

1510
01:19:16,210 --> 01:19:19,255
I think it came out
about four months later,

1511
01:19:19,588 --> 01:19:22,424
and now that one did show in the theaters.

1512
01:19:22,758 --> 01:19:24,593
I remember, 'cause I
saw it at the theater,

1513
01:19:24,927 --> 01:19:28,722
and it had a full-page ad in the la times,

1514
01:19:29,056 --> 01:19:32,643
with the guy, you know, Ted
sorel and his bubblegum,

1515
01:19:32,977 --> 01:19:34,812
Mr. Bubblegum makeup.

1516
01:19:35,145 --> 01:19:39,733
And it was just so incredible
seeing all of our hard work

1517
01:19:40,067 --> 01:19:44,863
and all the beautiful art
direction, the color palette.

1518
01:19:45,239 --> 01:19:46,490
- From beyond didn't do great

1519
01:19:46,824 --> 01:19:49,076
in theatrical release, either,

1520
01:19:49,410 --> 01:19:52,454
and it was almost absolutely
known that, I mean,

1521
01:19:52,788 --> 01:19:56,166
Charlie was ready to put
it out on vhs immediately

1522
01:19:56,500 --> 01:19:58,419
after it was... it didn't
go straight to video,

1523
01:19:58,752 --> 01:20:00,796
but in Charlie's mind, it was straight...

1524
01:20:01,130 --> 01:20:03,966
It was in video before it was in it.

1525
01:20:04,300 --> 01:20:08,887
- We thought from beyond
was gonna be a smash hit.

1526
01:20:09,221 --> 01:20:10,861
But then again, I've always thought that.

1527
01:20:10,931 --> 01:20:13,392
Almost every... on a
lot of movies I've done,

1528
01:20:13,726 --> 01:20:16,270
I've always thought,
"this is gonna be it."

1529
01:20:16,603 --> 01:20:19,898
Because re-animator was
such a surprise hit,

1530
01:20:20,232 --> 01:20:24,320
I think if we had... I
mean, certainly empire

1531
01:20:25,779 --> 01:20:28,907
was not able to release it theatrically.

1532
01:20:29,992 --> 01:20:34,204
If I had taken it to
Paramount or somebody,

1533
01:20:34,538 --> 01:20:37,333
and had them put it out for real,

1534
01:20:37,666 --> 01:20:40,210
it probably would've done
it still did tremendous,

1535
01:20:40,544 --> 01:20:44,506
not theatrically, but it did
tremendous video business.

1536
01:20:44,840 --> 01:20:45,840
I mean, fantastic.

1537
01:20:47,509 --> 01:20:50,554
If my deals had been
honored, I would've been

1538
01:20:50,888 --> 01:20:53,974
a multimillionaire out
of the gate, you know?

1539
01:20:54,308 --> 01:20:56,977
As it was, I wasn't.

1540
01:20:57,311 --> 01:21:00,314
But I did get to make more movies

1541
01:21:00,647 --> 01:21:02,441
and that was sort of the point.

1542
01:21:02,775 --> 01:21:05,486
- They knew that if they
took what they liked,

1543
01:21:05,819 --> 01:21:07,579
what they had cut
together, they knew that if

1544
01:21:07,780 --> 01:21:10,449
they took it to the
ratings board like that,

1545
01:21:10,783 --> 01:21:12,534
the movie that you know,

1546
01:21:12,868 --> 01:21:14,745
that it wouldn't be that movie anymore.

1547
01:21:15,079 --> 01:21:17,039
They would say... once
you... here's the thing.

1548
01:21:17,373 --> 01:21:19,875
You can put out any
movie you want unrated,

1549
01:21:21,043 --> 01:21:23,921
you can do that, but you
just have limitations.

1550
01:21:24,254 --> 01:21:27,966
And those limitations are
usually from private entities,

1551
01:21:28,300 --> 01:21:32,262
like movie theaters, say, "we
don't put out unrated movies

1552
01:21:32,596 --> 01:21:34,116
in our movie theaters, we just don't."

1553
01:21:34,264 --> 01:21:36,517
Some newspapers will say,

1554
01:21:39,019 --> 01:21:43,482
"we allow ads for movie releases,

1555
01:21:43,816 --> 01:21:45,943
but there can't be any graphics."

1556
01:21:46,276 --> 01:21:48,487
So here in la, the la times,

1557
01:21:48,821 --> 01:21:53,617
the ad for re-animator was
black and white, words only.

1558
01:21:54,326 --> 01:21:57,371
And at the time, the other
competitive newspaper

1559
01:21:57,704 --> 01:22:00,582
was the herald examiner.
Remember that thing?

1560
01:22:00,916 --> 01:22:04,795
And they didn't care, so
whatever the artwork was,

1561
01:22:05,129 --> 01:22:06,922
they printed it.

1562
01:22:07,256 --> 01:22:10,175
So you could do it, you
just kinda were forced

1563
01:22:10,509 --> 01:22:12,189
to put one hand behind your back, I guess.

1564
01:22:12,344 --> 01:22:15,013
But it didn't matter with
re-animator, just didn't matter.

1565
01:22:15,347 --> 01:22:20,018
People went, word of
mouth, boom, bang, zoom.

1566
01:22:20,352 --> 01:22:22,312
- You know, I'd just be quite frank,

1567
01:22:22,646 --> 01:22:26,233
I had a tragic, tragic,
tragic thing happen

1568
01:22:26,567 --> 01:22:29,528
in my personal life at this time,

1569
01:22:29,862 --> 01:22:31,780
just the day before the skivvies.

1570
01:22:32,114 --> 01:22:34,533
There had been crazy things
going on in this film already.

1571
01:22:34,867 --> 01:22:39,663
I mean, Ted had his prosthetics

1572
01:22:39,997 --> 01:22:42,958
and that kinda thing,
and he was butt-naked

1573
01:22:43,292 --> 01:22:46,295
in front of us for half
a day for no reason.

1574
01:22:46,628 --> 01:22:51,425
And I wanted to, you know,
just have a little laugh

1575
01:22:51,967 --> 01:22:54,261
for the day to get things outta my head,

1576
01:22:54,595 --> 01:22:57,139
'cause I was really
suffering at that point.

1577
01:22:57,473 --> 01:22:59,266
Something I don't like to talk about,

1578
01:22:59,600 --> 01:23:02,352
just some of those things
that happen in your life

1579
01:23:02,686 --> 01:23:04,126
that you just don't wanna deal with,

1580
01:23:04,229 --> 01:23:06,106
or discuss with anybody.

1581
01:23:06,440 --> 01:23:09,234
So I just grabbed it,
somebody showed it to me

1582
01:23:09,568 --> 01:23:10,068
and I grabbed it.

1583
01:23:10,402 --> 01:23:13,530
I said, "this will be
this will get a laugh

1584
01:23:13,864 --> 01:23:14,948
and it'll give me a laugh,

1585
01:23:15,282 --> 01:23:17,743
and I need a laugh real bad right now."

1586
01:23:18,076 --> 01:23:19,661
And so that's why I put it on.

1587
01:23:19,995 --> 01:23:23,415
I was supposed to be shot,

1588
01:23:23,749 --> 01:23:27,961
or edited, from the stomach up,

1589
01:23:28,295 --> 01:23:29,630
and that didn't happen.

1590
01:23:30,714 --> 01:23:35,385
I saw the film for the
first time on television

1591
01:23:35,719 --> 01:23:37,513
and I said, "oh, looks great."

1592
01:23:40,682 --> 01:23:43,477
Saw it again on ktla,
they played it again.

1593
01:23:43,810 --> 01:23:46,271
Saw it, "oh, yeah, great."

1594
01:23:46,605 --> 01:23:51,026
I didn't see the cut until 15 years later,

1595
01:23:51,360 --> 01:23:53,195
something like that,
almost 20 years later.

1596
01:23:53,529 --> 01:23:54,929
When I saw it, when I first saw it,

1597
01:23:54,988 --> 01:23:57,199
I said, "my god, what happened?"

1598
01:23:57,533 --> 01:24:01,745
It was a great time except
for that. I mean, for me.

1599
01:24:02,079 --> 01:24:06,833
I mean, it was a wonderful
time in Rome on the set.

1600
01:24:07,167 --> 01:24:08,752
We were doing great stuff.

1601
01:24:09,086 --> 01:24:11,380
I felt good about my performance,

1602
01:24:11,713 --> 01:24:14,550
I felt good about working
with the other actors.

1603
01:24:14,883 --> 01:24:16,802
I thought they were marvelous

1604
01:24:17,135 --> 01:24:19,388
and really did a wonderful job, you know?

1605
01:24:19,721 --> 01:24:22,724
As I watched it on ktla, you know,

1606
01:24:23,058 --> 01:24:24,309
I said, "wow," you know?

1607
01:24:24,643 --> 01:24:27,271
I thought it would get
a lot more playing time,

1608
01:24:27,604 --> 01:24:30,232
and certainly acknowledgement,

1609
01:24:31,692 --> 01:24:34,444
but I don't know, I don't know.

1610
01:24:35,779 --> 01:24:38,657
Maybe they should have
cut something.

1611
01:24:40,033 --> 01:24:44,413
We might have gotten a lot more
playing time, I don't know.

1612
01:24:44,746 --> 01:24:47,165
- You know, years later, Charlie band said

1613
01:24:47,499 --> 01:24:51,420
he wanted to do a spinoff TV series

1614
01:24:51,753 --> 01:24:53,073
that was inspired by from beyond.

1615
01:24:53,338 --> 01:24:58,135
So I was lucky enough to write

1616
01:24:59,177 --> 01:25:00,887
eight episodes of something

1617
01:25:01,221 --> 01:25:02,806
that he calls "miskatonic u,"

1618
01:25:03,140 --> 01:25:04,766
and we used the same color palette,

1619
01:25:05,100 --> 01:25:08,353
and paid tribute to Mac ahlberg,

1620
01:25:08,687 --> 01:25:10,480
who's a wonderful guy, and to Stuart.

1621
01:25:10,814 --> 01:25:13,442
It's certainly not a remake,
it's certainly, it's just a...

1622
01:25:13,775 --> 01:25:15,527
You know, we loved Stuart so much.

1623
01:25:15,861 --> 01:25:20,657
I was so close to him and he
was a very kind, funny mentor.

1624
01:25:22,326 --> 01:25:26,955
Both he and his wife,
Carolyn, who I just loved.

1625
01:25:28,332 --> 01:25:30,500
And so, when Charlie mentioned,

1626
01:25:30,834 --> 01:25:34,838
"would you like to do this
'miskatonic' program?"

1627
01:25:35,172 --> 01:25:38,800
I said yes, knowing
that there was a chance

1628
01:25:39,134 --> 01:25:42,179
that it might bite me in
the ass from the fans,

1629
01:25:42,512 --> 01:25:45,390
but luckily, they all responded
really well to it, yeah.

1630
01:25:45,724 --> 01:25:49,519
And I loved that we were able
to include that color palette,

1631
01:25:49,853 --> 01:25:53,523
and the resonator, we built
a new and improved resonator.

1632
01:25:53,857 --> 01:25:55,233
It's just such a good feeling.

1633
01:25:55,567 --> 01:25:57,611
And the first day that we filmed on set,

1634
01:25:57,944 --> 01:26:01,531
I actually asked Mike deak
to come and help us do,

1635
01:26:01,865 --> 01:26:04,117
you know, to slime up our monsters.

1636
01:26:04,451 --> 01:26:07,496
And there me and Mike
deak are, 35 years later,

1637
01:26:07,829 --> 01:26:09,790
with paint brushes,

1638
01:26:10,123 --> 01:26:11,750
painting slime on the puppets.

1639
01:26:12,084 --> 01:26:14,670
And I remember Mike said to me,

1640
01:26:15,003 --> 01:26:18,048
"you know, I feel like Stuart
is in the room with us,"

1641
01:26:18,382 --> 01:26:20,884
and I absolutely know that to be true.

1642
01:26:21,218 --> 01:26:23,553
- It was really funny,
because a lot of these movies

1643
01:26:23,887 --> 01:26:26,264
that I worked on, especially
in the early days,

1644
01:26:27,808 --> 01:26:30,102
I never thought of them as being...

1645
01:26:30,435 --> 01:26:33,313
Well, definitely at the time,
not anything like cult movies.

1646
01:26:33,647 --> 01:26:36,108
But I guess now, looking back, from beyond

1647
01:26:36,441 --> 01:26:38,735
has been on Turner classic
movies on the underground.

1648
01:26:39,069 --> 01:26:40,672
And I'm sitting there
watching this, going like,

1649
01:26:40,696 --> 01:26:41,736
"well, I guess I made it."

1650
01:26:41,988 --> 01:26:43,865
I mean, then a couple months ago,

1651
01:26:44,199 --> 01:26:45,879
dawn of the dead was
on, or day of the dead

1652
01:26:45,951 --> 01:26:48,912
was on, rather, and I go,
"oh, I'm actually on camera,

1653
01:26:49,246 --> 01:26:51,498
I'm actually being shown
on Turner classic movies.

1654
01:26:51,832 --> 01:26:52,934
Me, on Turner classic movies."

1655
01:26:52,958 --> 01:26:55,210
This is like, this doesn't belong.

1656
01:26:55,544 --> 01:26:58,880
I mean, but yeah, two of
the first films I worked on

1657
01:26:59,214 --> 01:27:04,010
are basically considered
cult films at this point,

1658
01:27:04,344 --> 01:27:05,655
and we didn't know it at the time.

1659
01:27:05,679 --> 01:27:07,264
I mean, the thing, too, is...

1660
01:27:07,597 --> 01:27:09,975
This is another story
that I'll throw out there.

1661
01:27:10,308 --> 01:27:11,327
Bill Butler and I, like I said,

1662
01:27:11,351 --> 01:27:14,229
were basically the heckle and
jeckle, abbott and costello,

1663
01:27:14,563 --> 01:27:17,774
and we were just relentless in
our comedy and saying things,

1664
01:27:18,108 --> 01:27:19,148
and we had no right to be,

1665
01:27:19,359 --> 01:27:20,839
'cause we were so new to the project.

1666
01:27:21,069 --> 01:27:23,780
But there was the thing
of, we'd go to see dailies,

1667
01:27:24,114 --> 01:27:27,534
and to make sure that there's
continuity for the creatures,

1668
01:27:27,868 --> 01:27:29,095
the makeups and things like that,

1669
01:27:29,119 --> 01:27:30,954
so they allowed us to go see dailies.

1670
01:27:31,288 --> 01:27:32,682
And we're sitting there with Albert,

1671
01:27:32,706 --> 01:27:36,543
and Stuart and Brian yuzna,
and we're watching dailies,

1672
01:27:36,877 --> 01:27:37,502
and bill Butler and I

1673
01:27:37,836 --> 01:27:39,963
turned into mystery science theater 3000.

1674
01:27:40,297 --> 01:27:41,817
We're throwing out all these comments,

1675
01:27:42,048 --> 01:27:43,151
we're making all these smart-ass things.

1676
01:27:43,175 --> 01:27:44,415
We're making fun of the actors,

1677
01:27:44,718 --> 01:27:45,778
we're making fun of our effects,

1678
01:27:45,802 --> 01:27:48,138
we're making fun of everything.

1679
01:27:48,472 --> 01:27:53,268
And years later, I thought
about it and I ran into Stuart,

1680
01:27:53,685 --> 01:27:55,479
and I asked him this twice.

1681
01:27:55,812 --> 01:27:58,482
I go, "Stuart, if I was
on any other production

1682
01:27:58,815 --> 01:28:00,255
and there were a couple of jackasses

1683
01:28:00,525 --> 01:28:03,028
making fun of your
dailies the entire time,

1684
01:28:03,361 --> 01:28:04,863
how the hell did you let it...

1685
01:28:05,197 --> 01:28:06,437
Why did you let us stay there?"

1686
01:28:06,615 --> 01:28:09,451
And he said to me one
thing I'll never forget,

1687
01:28:09,785 --> 01:28:11,912
he says, "because you guys were funny."

1688
01:28:12,245 --> 01:28:14,664
And I was like, "you can't be serious.

1689
01:28:14,998 --> 01:28:17,584
I mean, you're doing... your
life, your career's on the line

1690
01:28:17,918 --> 01:28:19,061
and we're sitting there being assholes."

1691
01:28:19,085 --> 01:28:20,245
"Yeah, because you're funny."

1692
01:28:20,378 --> 01:28:21,773
And it was like, that's
the kind of guy Stuart was.

1693
01:28:21,797 --> 01:28:23,423
And I asked him that on two occasions,

1694
01:28:23,757 --> 01:28:27,177
and I got the same response,
which is why Stuart has always,

1695
01:28:28,261 --> 01:28:30,096
through the years, been just so endearing.

1696
01:28:30,430 --> 01:28:33,683
I remember kmb, I was working
there as a shop supervisor,

1697
01:28:34,017 --> 01:28:36,812
and Stuart came in and was
doing dreams in a witch house,

1698
01:28:37,145 --> 01:28:38,438
or something like that.

1699
01:28:38,772 --> 01:28:41,274
And he said to me, he's
like, "oh, Mike, you know,

1700
01:28:41,608 --> 01:28:43,419
I really wanna actually
work with you as a monster

1701
01:28:43,443 --> 01:28:44,963
in this thing, but they won't allow me

1702
01:28:45,278 --> 01:28:46,947
to take anybody up to Canada and stuff."

1703
01:28:47,280 --> 01:28:50,826
You know, it's like
from the time we worked

1704
01:28:51,159 --> 01:28:52,994
on from beyond, it was
always the same thing.

1705
01:28:53,328 --> 01:28:56,414
I mean, bill in his book
writes about it, this is true,

1706
01:28:56,748 --> 01:28:59,584
is that we came... we were
goofing around with Stuart

1707
01:28:59,918 --> 01:29:03,129
so much on set, writing this
pretend script, called...

1708
01:29:03,463 --> 01:29:05,063
Something that bill Butler came up with,

1709
01:29:05,215 --> 01:29:07,509
"queen of crisco mountain," about

1710
01:29:07,843 --> 01:29:11,054
these women on a prison
spaceship are making TV dinners,

1711
01:29:11,388 --> 01:29:12,740
and there's this giant mountain of crisco

1712
01:29:12,764 --> 01:29:14,641
that they had to climb up to escape.

1713
01:29:14,975 --> 01:29:17,036
And Stuart... and we all
thought it was funny as shit,

1714
01:29:17,060 --> 01:29:18,660
and we'd just keep coming up with scenes

1715
01:29:18,812 --> 01:29:20,212
in between shooting on from beyond.

1716
01:29:20,522 --> 01:29:24,067
I mean, it was like,
what director would allow

1717
01:29:24,401 --> 01:29:25,443
that kind of stuff on set?

1718
01:29:25,777 --> 01:29:29,322
But that's what I mean.
Maybe I was spoiled,

1719
01:29:29,656 --> 01:29:31,366
because that's not the way it works.

1720
01:29:31,700 --> 01:29:33,820
I couldn't pull any of that
shit on a Michael bay set,

1721
01:29:34,035 --> 01:29:34,536
that's for sure.

1722
01:29:34,870 --> 01:29:37,998
But back then... because back then,

1723
01:29:38,331 --> 01:29:40,208
when he asked for something
and like I said,

1724
01:29:40,542 --> 01:29:42,878
with that tentacle hand,
we tried to deliver.

1725
01:29:43,211 --> 01:29:44,564
It was one of those things
where it wasn't like

1726
01:29:44,588 --> 01:29:45,708
we were just being jackasses

1727
01:29:45,881 --> 01:29:48,049
and not holding up our end of it.

1728
01:29:48,383 --> 01:29:51,136
We were being jackasses, but
we are also trying to give him

1729
01:29:51,469 --> 01:29:53,069
everything he absolutely wanted to film.

1730
01:29:53,179 --> 01:29:54,598
So I guess that's why he maybe

1731
01:29:54,931 --> 01:29:56,808
tolerated us a little more.

1732
01:29:57,142 --> 01:29:59,644
- You know, it's really...

1733
01:29:59,978 --> 01:30:03,648
What makes from beyond magical

1734
01:30:03,982 --> 01:30:07,360
is it's imbued with
Stuart's sense of wonder

1735
01:30:07,694 --> 01:30:10,864
and his inner child, and his enthusiasm.

1736
01:30:11,197 --> 01:30:13,450
- So I remember when I
directed my first film,

1737
01:30:13,783 --> 01:30:18,580
I did madhouse for
lakeshore and lionsgate,

1738
01:30:20,165 --> 01:30:23,793
and he was the first person
I wanted to show my film to.

1739
01:30:25,879 --> 01:30:27,648
And I didn't much really
know what I was doing.

1740
01:30:27,672 --> 01:30:29,549
I knew what I liked to
see and I knew as a fan,

1741
01:30:29,883 --> 01:30:32,761
and certainly from being
directed, you know,

1742
01:30:33,094 --> 01:30:37,891
by him in regards to how to
even put together a film.

1743
01:30:38,350 --> 01:30:40,230
I just remember him coming
to the screening room

1744
01:30:40,518 --> 01:30:41,787
and the first thing that
he said when he watched it,

1745
01:30:41,811 --> 01:30:46,608
I was terrified, was, "well,
you're in the right business,

1746
01:30:47,150 --> 01:30:48,210
you know what you're doing."

1747
01:30:48,234 --> 01:30:49,234
I was like, "oh my god."

1748
01:30:49,361 --> 01:30:52,405
To hear Stuart Gordon say
that, it meant everything.

1749
01:30:52,739 --> 01:30:55,200
And you know, the last
time that I saw Stuart

1750
01:30:55,533 --> 01:31:00,330
was years later, when, of course,
John buechler passed away.

1751
01:31:01,539 --> 01:31:06,419
We had buechler's funeral
at my house in the backyard

1752
01:31:07,003 --> 01:31:10,924
and I saw Stuart there,
and I could kinda tell

1753
01:31:11,257 --> 01:31:14,260
that he was probably not feeling his best,

1754
01:31:14,594 --> 01:31:16,388
and I didn't know that that was gonna be

1755
01:31:16,721 --> 01:31:18,390
the last time that I saw him.

1756
01:31:18,723 --> 01:31:23,520
So I had heard about a year
later that he had sadly passed.

1757
01:31:24,187 --> 01:31:29,109
And I don't think anyone
could miss him more,

1758
01:31:33,154 --> 01:31:34,194
other than his own family.

1759
01:31:34,364 --> 01:31:39,035
I just really... I just
was really, really...

1760
01:31:39,369 --> 01:31:42,247
It was such a huge loss for
me and all of his friends,

1761
01:31:42,580 --> 01:31:43,581
certainly his family.

1762
01:31:44,916 --> 01:31:49,796
But he left an indelible
Mark on storytelling,

1763
01:31:50,130 --> 01:31:55,010
it is gonna take some big...
He's got big shoes to fill.

1764
01:31:56,344 --> 01:32:01,266
You know, he just was
such a unique artist,

1765
01:32:01,683 --> 01:32:03,643
that the world is really lucky

1766
01:32:03,977 --> 01:32:06,396
to have experienced all of his work.

1767
01:32:06,730 --> 01:32:09,774
- I think from beyond,
as with re-animator,

1768
01:32:10,108 --> 01:32:12,068
and even something like
chopping mall

1769
01:32:12,402 --> 01:32:14,195
Which is not a Stuart Gordon film.

1770
01:32:14,529 --> 01:32:19,284
But over time, these films
have developed more fans,

1771
01:32:19,617 --> 01:32:21,977
and people share them with their
children and their friends,

1772
01:32:22,287 --> 01:32:27,083
and they have become cult
classics of '80s horror.

1773
01:32:28,918 --> 01:32:33,840
And for me, still working
in the horror genre

1774
01:32:34,466 --> 01:32:39,387
all these many years later,
I look back on the legacy

1775
01:32:39,846 --> 01:32:42,223
that I have in these beginning films,

1776
01:32:42,557 --> 01:32:46,394
and I appreciate them
so much and I'm so happy

1777
01:32:46,728 --> 01:32:49,064
that I said yes to these movies,

1778
01:32:49,397 --> 01:32:52,025
not knowing if they were going to be good,

1779
01:32:52,358 --> 01:32:55,487
who were these directors,
who was HP lovecraft,

1780
01:32:56,654 --> 01:32:57,654
what did I know?

1781
01:32:57,822 --> 01:33:01,159
And I didn't think that
I was going to have

1782
01:33:01,493 --> 01:33:04,704
a career in the horror
genre going forward.

1783
01:33:05,038 --> 01:33:09,626
I just wanted to act and
people offered me a role

1784
01:33:09,959 --> 01:33:13,671
and I said yes, and I just
happened to be lucky enough

1785
01:33:14,005 --> 01:33:17,717
to work for Stuart, and to
have him continually hire me.

1786
01:33:18,968 --> 01:33:22,555
And I can't thank him enough,

1787
01:33:22,889 --> 01:33:25,475
and all the wonderful
people I've worked with,

1788
01:33:25,809 --> 01:33:27,161
I'm getting choked up talking about it.

1789
01:33:27,185 --> 01:33:29,562
But it's just, it's true.

1790
01:33:29,896 --> 01:33:31,376
They mean so much to me, these films,

1791
01:33:31,689 --> 01:33:35,568
and the fact that people still watch them

1792
01:33:35,902 --> 01:33:38,696
and they still love
them and that, you know,

1793
01:33:39,030 --> 01:33:43,451
I'm able to have a career really built

1794
01:33:43,785 --> 01:33:45,745
on the legacy of those early films,

1795
01:33:46,079 --> 01:33:50,750
because I really wouldn't be
here today and making new films

1796
01:33:51,084 --> 01:33:52,418
if it hadn't been for those.

1797
01:34:27,495 --> 01:34:29,455
- See, this is where I'm
supposed to say something

1798
01:34:29,497 --> 01:34:31,541
disparaging against the editor on camera

1799
01:34:31,875 --> 01:34:33,555
and pretend that, "oh, he didn't know it,"

1800
01:34:33,585 --> 01:34:35,712
you know, and then I get
cut out of the thing.

1801
01:34:36,045 --> 01:34:38,590
That was a joke.