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00:00Science fiction storytelling exists from the beginning of filmmaking and persists through
00:09two centuries. In the early 80s there was this wonderful explosion of highly imaginative,
00:15highly ambitious science fiction. Suddenly all sorts of stories that were prohibitive
00:21because technologically they weren't possible and were suddenly possible now. When I think of
00:25science fiction I think of stories in any medium that tell us what we could be and warn us about
00:35where we're going. Escaping when you're a little kid or a teenager into the world of science fiction
00:43is a great way to start to come to terms with your own personality, who you are, where you fit in the
00:49world and they become really important benchmarks in how you remember your youth. For the next decade
00:57or so across the 80s that amalgamation of science fiction and fantasy seemed to be the driving force.
01:06Science fiction became direct, straightforward, provocative, clear.
01:11Any idea that anybody had, if you set it on another planet or set it in the future, set it in dystopia,
01:21you could get the money to do it. Art shows us what can be and what ought to be. That is what science
01:28fiction at its best is all about, is showing us the world of tomorrow and how human life can be better
01:38in the future than it is right now. That's the magic of sci-fi now.
01:57I loved the worlds that existed in all of these science fiction movies and I wanted to explore them
02:03as fully as I could. Something that is of course hugely important in science fiction because it
02:07doesn't exist anywhere around us are the visual designers, the guys that decide what the buildings,
02:12what the landscape should look like, the objects, the spaceships, the creatures, it's all choices.
02:19Sid Mead, Ron Cobb, Ralph McQuarrie, just the visionaries of science fiction and they have dreamt up so
02:26many iconic things. They're quite instrumental in bringing life to a lot of what goes on on the screen.
02:43Can you imagine a life for the characters and the movie itself beyond the frame you've seen?
02:50Worldbuilding became enormously important during 80s science fiction. So you have
02:56concept design and production design who have to go and build interiors and build these kind of
03:02planets physically on sets and creating locations that work. You have concept designed around
03:12props and imagined future technology to create an accurate picture of the future
03:20in different ways. Make, you know, a straightforward film extraordinary.
03:25Dune, a world beyond your experience, beyond your imagination.
03:38Dune, that's a huge best-selling book with a dedicated fan following. Back in the 80s,
03:44those marketers, they had no idea. They couldn't figure out how to sell the real hard sci-fi,
03:51even though there was huge demand for it. People weren't ready for them. The precedent hadn't been set.
03:58Dune takes place on four planets. I could never keep them straight. I've had more fun with sand at the beach.
04:07David Lynch's Dune is this brilliantly evocative story about
04:113,000 years into the future. And it's all about the planet Dune, Arrakis, the source of spice.
04:18The spice extends life. The spice expands consciousness.
04:25You know, the metaphor is it's about the Middle East and about discovery of oil and how everybody
04:31wants to get their hands on it and occupy it. I mean, the drug metaphors are quite clear,
04:35you know, throughout.
04:35Thoughts acquire speed. The lips acquire stains. The stains become a warning.
04:39It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
04:43But it's this wonderful kind of messianic adventure story full of great detail.
04:50So the design of the technology and the spacecrafts and the hardware is Lynchian.
04:57Wonderful sort of gothic sensibility or art deco.
05:01When you get David Lynch making anything, he is fascinated by the textures of existence and life.
05:11That thing that came in, we were just like, oh lord.
05:16That thing was so ugly.
05:18Yeah.
05:20Who's going to clean up the messes in science fiction? Who's the guy with the mop?
05:25And of course, we were obsessed with this idea of what the worms looked like.
05:29They were the great challenge of making Dune work.
05:32And very wisely, Lynch called upon the talents of Carlo Rambaldi, who was the great puppet creator.
05:40The worms. It's a little...
05:41And then we had t-shirts on the show that said, I rode the worm. And it was ridiculous, you know.
05:48I am Chani, daughter of Liet.
05:53From my dreams.
05:54For the first day of working on Dune, I was a little scared. That's a huge project.
05:59I will love you forever. You are my life.
06:04That was a lot of fun. And he was very diligent. He worked hard.
06:12And he really wanted to do the best job he could.
06:16The pain!
06:17No! Enough!
06:18Enough!
06:18Sting felt pretty silly in that blue thong, I got to tell you. He was kind of like, oh my god.
06:26I just used to crack up whenever I saw myself on that movie going, Mwah! Deep!
06:36The steel suit is built for you.
06:39With a Fremen suit in good working condition, life can be sustained for weeks.
06:44Even in the deep desert side.
06:46It took about half an hour to get on.
06:49And then basically we wouldn't take them off, but they'd zip down to here.
06:52But we'd squirm out of the top of them. And you literally avoid liquids.
06:57So that you wouldn't be the one saying, I have to go to the bathroom and make everybody wait half
07:01an hour while you go over to where the bathroom is in Cherubusco Studios.
07:06Your ears and nose and your scalp and your skin and your body were just filthy.
07:12So it was quite a commitment to clean every night.
07:16I think David at a certain point was like, holy crap, this is a big project.
07:22Because he would go, well, we'll fix it in post. And I remember saying, uh-oh.
07:26You know, you know.
07:32After a while, man, it really just became like everybody would get off work and hit the bar.
07:37When people saw the movie, Dune, they would be handed a glossary sheet.
07:47There was a lot of dazzle factor with it, but the characters themselves, it was hard to,
07:52for me, and it was hard to relate it sometimes.
07:56I will kill him!
08:04Why Dune didn't land, I think is debatable, but it didn't. And some people still love that movie,
08:11and some people it never landed with, no matter how much time passed. I think David, in a way,
08:16felt out of his element. With the other films, I think he had much more control. The struggle is
08:23what's more common in show business, is people struggling to get that vision out. And I don't
08:28think he had ever experienced that obstacle before.
08:37The genius of Star Wars is it just imbued character into everything, into its planets,
08:42into its cities, into its characters, obviously. Nothing Star Wars touched didn't involve character
08:48and feel. So the Falcon, which is the heart of all great movie spaceships, became an extension of Han
08:55so. She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've made a lot of special
09:00modifications myself. The tools that we had were capable of certain levels of finish. And then it
09:07was an artistic interpretation of how the illusion was going to fit into the bigger story, which was really critical.
09:18There's something about the real feel of the thing and seeing it that brings you into it.
09:24If you look at it as something that's a visual effect and it doesn't quite work, you're out of it.
09:28When it works, it really does work. The job of a visual effects supervisor at ILM is to be able to
09:35fulfill the vision of the director. Also, the effects supervisor should contribute something to the film,
09:43if they can, if it's inappropriate, that possibly the director didn't even know he could do.
09:48Always, always, it starts with the idea of the finished shot. I'm motivated by the finished shot.
09:59The shots that are magic are the ones that have good design embodied in them.
10:04Star Trek II, the Battle in the Nebula, that was all shot in cloud tanks here at ILM. Beautiful taste is
10:15being exhibited there with the compositions of where the ships are, the shot designs, how they're lit,
10:22how the clouds swirl. That's just some of the most beautiful work that ILM's ever done.
10:27Miniatures were defined to a certain extent by how they had to be used. If you look at the Star Destroyer,
10:36scale notwithstanding, the model had to be incredibly highly detailed to stand up to that kind of macro
10:43photography. And when we started blowing stuff up, we had to build things in a little bit larger scale,
10:51so that we could photograph them at high-speed photographic rates. The bigger the model,
10:58the more properly scaled the explosion appeared to be.
11:07Every optical composite was a performance. The way that we used to put together a shot of a bunch
11:13of spaceships, you didn't shoot them all at once, you shot them one at a time. There's a really
11:17remarkable shot in Return of the Jedi, and it's remarkable for the huge number of separately
11:23photographed spaceships that are all in there. It was intended to be a wow moment,
11:27and it really accomplished that. It's kind of overwhelming when you think about
11:32the mechanical complexity of all those separately photographed elements.
11:39The thought process that goes in to breaking down the barriers that we have for this component and
11:44that component and how do you do this, those are strong. What Star Wars did, both in terms of the
11:50visual effects but also George's approach to the storytelling aspect of it, was it opened up the
11:56door for genre films that people had been afraid to make before. It's driven by the story. We came up with
12:07this system called GoMotion, which is kind of a joke. We didn't know what to call it, so we call it the
12:13opposite of stop motion. The first time we used GoMotion was on the Tauntaun, and it totally worked. It gave a blur to the thing
12:25that was effective. Then on Dragon Slayer, we developed it further.
12:32In Jedi with a two-legged walker, when the Ewoks rolled the logs down the hill, GoMotion allowed me to do that.
12:43Now that was really complicated.
12:49You get into the zone, you know, it's a form of meditation. Just shut the world out and
12:57be in the zone, you know, and do it, do what it tells you. I'm walking by and it's shh,
13:03very quiet. It'd be Dennis Mirren at the camera, click, and then all these hatches opened up,
13:12and out came John Berg and Phil Tippett, and then move it ever so slightly, and then disappear down the
13:20hatch. Click. Matt painting the way of adding on to a set by painting on a, for example, on a piece of
13:36glass, not only is it a budget saving device, it's an opportunity to enhance. You're working on something
13:46that is supposed to be invisible. Ghostbusters 2 was the film I was working on where I said to myself
13:51at the end of this, we've really reached the end of traditional visual effects. We can't keep doing
13:57it this way. The ideas are getting bigger than the toolbox we have.
14:08The Abyss is a film that's made on a frontier in terms of the physicality of how they made the film,
14:15literally underwater. And it's a film made on a frontier of technology and filmmaking ability.
14:22And in classic Cameron storytelling sense, it's, it's a mix of things.
14:28Here's the bottomless pit, baby. Two and a half miles straight down.
14:32Mary Liz Mastrantonio and Ed Harris, the two lead characters, are an estranged couple.
14:41Under extreme circumstances, love flourishes.
14:46You can do this.
14:46It's a lovely inversion of Aliens in a way. The Navy Seals are the bad guys and the Aliens are the good guys.
14:56Wouldn't you have liked the picture better if they hadn't had Aliens down there and just spent more
14:59time with the rescue? I just think they just put in another element that was more fun.
15:03It doesn't work for me. Aliens was a cakewalk compared to the Abyss.
15:08Jim Cameron, he doesn't suffer fools. But the reason why he's known as being a taskmaster is because he's
15:14done the work. Then he expects all of the crew to work as hard as he is.
15:20Crew members actually had t-shirts that said, life's abyss and then you dive.
15:26It was almost his ethos as a filmmaker. I will make the impossible. I will find a way of doing these things.
15:34They shot it in this nuclear silo, in Gaffney, filled it with water, filled it with chlorine.
15:40They had to put black beads across the top of the tank to stop the light getting in but allowed
15:46you to get out of the water in case of emergencies. It's dangerous filmmaking like that. You can get
15:53the bends just in the Olympic swimming pool or at 18 feet deep if you jump up too quick. They had to
15:59take their time at the end of the day to safely get out of that set.
16:04That sequence where they had to basically breathe in water. I was like that when I saw them. I just,
16:14I couldn't believe it. And he breathes the liquid oxygen. That's fate. So he has to hold his breath.
16:19We all breathe liquid for nine months, bud. Your body will remember. Perfectly normal.
16:25A Navy SEAL demonstrates you can breathe liquid oxygen. And that is a real demonstration of the
16:32effect of the experiment. There were five rats. There were five takes. The fifth rat struggled.
16:39Cameron had to give it CPR. See, he's fine. It's a she. But the endurance test for the filmmakers and
16:45for the cast was beyond difficult. Everyone had experiences on it which were kind of make or break
16:53moments. They had safety divers. They're called angels. Okay, that was a good take, Ed. I'm going to
16:57print that, but let's do it again. Ed Harris, you know, a tough guy. He had to swim underwater for
17:03about 40 meters. And there are scenes where he's just in the brink of not being able to breathe anymore.
17:10Cameron himself has an incredible story because he would forget. He would just stay underwater.
17:14And he had weights and everything. He would keep himself at the bottom of the tank. And Cameron
17:18pulls on his oxygen mask. Nothing. And he goes, I'm in trouble. And that's when a safety diver thinks
17:25he's in distress, as he is, and comes out with a respirator and puts the respirator in wrong.
17:32Pulls water straight into his lungs. And he starts to push away because he's going to drown.
17:40And the guy holds him closer because he thinks he's struggling because he's lack of oxygen. And the story
17:46is Cameron punches him. The only thing, last thing he can do is punch the guy and break through into
17:51the surface. His assistant and the safety diver were fired on the same day. And he was back down
17:58at the bottom of the tank within hours. That's James Cameron for you. That's the abyss for you.
18:07Shortly after the Lucasfilm computer division had been sold off as Pixar, we saw that there was a lot
18:12of value in that tech and that this had a big future in visual effects. Star Trek 4, that hallucination
18:20scene was just about the first foray of the ILM computer graphics department. And that was always
18:27the carrot for me and the promise back in the early 80s that this is what it could do, you know, and
18:32we're there. But it's moved too quick. And I think there hasn't been enough recognition that it needs
18:38to fit within the imperfect world of reality. But I can make it perfect, you know. No, don't make it perfect.
18:48Sometimes understanding those limitations becomes key to capturing a feeling.
18:57Creature effects are a huge part of the science fiction experience.
19:00It is so important that we believe that the creature is real.
19:03Creature effect is a team of people working together. Whether it is all of the puppeteers
19:14doing Jabba the Hutt. Whether it is one guy in a suit in Predator. That giant space worm in the asteroid
19:24in Empire Strikes Back.
19:26I love that that thing looks like an oven mitt. And it's just someone going like,
19:34chase it out and do that.
19:37They're really important decisions for how those films work or don't work. You know,
19:40if the alien hadn't worked in Alien and Aliens, they don't work at all. And if ET is absurd, then ET fails.
19:48They were still dynamic enough when presented the right way to immerse you in it and you forget all
19:54about the technology, which is a good thing, and you just follow the story. I think that was true
19:58of Yoda. I think it was true of ET. I saw an early ET without the sound effects and I, oh,
20:03I don't know about this. Do you see it with sound and music and fine cutting? You don't question anything.
20:09ET from home.
20:10ET's design was magical. In the scenes that I did with ET, I could suspend my imagination like that.
20:20It was just like working with another kid.
20:26When you see something on screen that you know for a fact was just a bunch of people pushing buttons
20:30in a dark room somewhere, it's a, there's a disconnect there. But if you see something,
20:34even if it doesn't look perfectly real, that's a practical effect, you're like,
20:37whoa, how do they do that? Where are the operators? What the hell? And so there is a connection there.
20:43There's a charm. It's a, it's a stylistic approach.
20:57The really, really renegade, seat of your pants, crazy comedy of the seventies found its way into
21:02like a big mainstream sci-fi Spielbergian thing.
21:13Ghostbusters. You've got this sort of ragtag New York story, but then into it, you have this extremely
21:20sci-fi techie supernatural insane thing. And it worked.
21:25I just worked with Bill Murray on stripes and Harold as well. And that turned out well.
21:37That's the fact. Yeah.
21:39My agent, Michael Ovitz at that time, sent me this sort of 80 page treatment that Dan Aykroyd had written.
21:47He had written it originally for Belushi and himself.
21:50I think he had spoken to Eddie Murphy at some time about doing with him.
21:56It was said in the future, there was multiple ghost busting groups on various planets and they
22:03competed with each other. These groups that worked like firemen and their service was to rid the
22:08universe of ghosts or monsters. And I said, look, it has this great idea in it, but it's almost impossible
22:16to make. I think it should happen today. And I think it should happen in a big city like New York.
22:22I really pitched the story of Ghostbusters.
22:26Staff is on call 24 hours a day to serve all your supernatural elimination needs.
22:30We're ready to believe you.
22:34I'm certain Slimer is my most lovable, endearing creation. And for those of you that don't know how he
22:41was made, I tried to look at it as a cartoon character. You know, Slimer was big. It wasn't
22:46actually a puppet. It was a device that a gentleman named Mark Wilson wore. He looked through the
22:50mouth. We shot against a black stage. I can get people in black suits, as many people around him
22:56as possible, to stick their arms in this puppet and muscle a smile. Even the tongue that comes out of
23:02his mouth and licks his lips, that's a tongue glove. The whole thing was just to make him as funny
23:06as possible. In the movie it works. I'm really happy with it. It's the most iconic thing I've worked on.
23:13Everybody knows Slimer. He slimed me. We came, we saw, we kicked its ass.
23:19It really boils down to the Ghostbusters themselves. It's charming.
23:25When Dan Aykroyd slides down that fire pole when they first go see this dilapidated firehouse.
23:30Wow, this place is great. I mean, they're all big kids.
23:33We should stay here tonight, sleep here, you know, to try it out.
23:38It's so crazy and wonderful and they're having such a blast and that just spills right over to us.
23:47It's the perfect Bill Murray movie. All that laid-back
23:51goofiness that only Bill Murray has.
23:54I'll take Miss Barrett back to her apartment and check her out.
23:57I'll go check out Miss Barrett's apartment.
23:59The addition to Ernie, I think, was really special in a lot of ways.
24:03If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say.
24:06Ernie brought in the outsiders and people that didn't really feel like a Ghostbuster, you know.
24:12It would be a Twinkie, 35 feet long, weighing approximately 600 pounds.
24:16That's a big Twinkie.
24:17I think I was very fortunate to be making popular movies in this era.
24:24It's an era of directorial power, which we didn't really quite have as directors prior to it
24:32and certainly after it.
24:33It's the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.
24:36My films, they almost uniquely have a kind of emotionality that made you feel good.
24:42It's the positiveness that made for repeat viewing.
24:46Let's show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown.
25:00George Lucas presents an electrifying new comedy, Howard the Duck.
25:04Howard the Duck is about a duck that comes from outer space, is sucked down accidentally by some
25:11laser pointed in the wrong direction.
25:18All he wants is to go home.
25:19I got no intention of being stranded here.
25:22Then he meets up with this all-girl band, fronted by Leah Thompson.
25:26The Howard the Duck, George wanted to do it as a costume.
25:28I tried to talk George out of it, you know.
25:31It was like, I don't know if that's going to work.
25:35We didn't have the flexibility to do what we did today and it would be done with computer graphics,
25:40but it was going to be a gun in a suit.
25:44It was a challenge.
25:45My suit was animatronic.
25:46It went through 19 different heads at 50,000 each.
25:50It was put on and then hot glued shut.
25:53So therefore, I couldn't take a regular break.
25:55No lunch breaks, no breaks at all.
25:58So they would drop M&Ms down my beak.
26:01I was a natural.
26:02I could find my mark without seeing it.
26:05If you move shit, tell the duck.
26:08And I tripped over it.
26:10$50,000 mask gone.
26:12This is beginning to seriously undermine my self-esteem.
26:15Steve Gerber, who created Howard for the comics, was a friend of mine.
26:21A lot of people went in and thought, oh, Howard, cute, duck.
26:25I was expecting much more of a family film.
26:28And they had actually taken the more adult storytelling of the Howard the Duck comics.
26:35Must be mating season.
26:37None of it was G-rated.
26:41I love irreverent comedy.
26:43Kids are just little adults with a lack of discernment.
26:47For me as a kid, I was like, there's a talking duck and he's sassy.
26:52Well, sex appeal.
26:53Some guys got it and some guys don't.
26:57Howard.
26:58This is great.
27:00Leah Thompson was my girl.
27:02She hugged me and she go, oh, my man duck.
27:06You were great, ducky.
27:08Howard the Duck was my very first film, ever.
27:11Leah was the one that kept whispering to me,
27:13so don't be afraid to say no, because I did all the major stunts, except the airplane.
27:18Howard!
27:19Howard!
27:19Howard!
27:20One time!
27:23Well, they wanted Howard the Duck to be edgy and adult.
27:27But they thought, well, we've got to make it a family film, too.
27:30And I don't know that those two things really work.
27:33It's so lifelike and realistic.
27:35Bug off!
27:36Howard the Duck is a PG-rated movie that opens with a topless duck and duck boobs, if there is,
27:42in fact, such a thing.
27:44And there are a few blue jokes in Howard the Duck.
27:46Leah Thompson opens up his wallet and finds a sort of duck condom.
27:50No!
27:51There's a condom in the wallet?
27:52Why would they think that's a family movie?
27:55Crazy.
27:56Howard!
28:00Unfortunately, you've got this vibe that the Duck is going to do it with Leah Thompson.
28:04We could always give it a try.
28:07He's a little cigar-smoking horndog, and he gets the women on his planet.
28:12So he's here, and so went in Rome.
28:14And he came on to her, and she called his bluff.
28:18I just can't resist your intense animal magnetism.
28:22As an adult, seeing Howard the Duck wake up in a bed with a human lady,
28:26it's a little questionable.
28:28Of all the alleys in the world I could have fallen into that night,
28:32why did it have to be yours?
28:34But at the end of the day, it really is just a guy in a duck suit telling dirty jokes.
28:38And I think that's the ultimate problem of Howard the Duck.
28:41The Duck wanted to do it with the girl.
28:43This is not what you think. We're just very good friends.
28:54Arnold Schwarzenegger.
28:58Predator.
28:59It was at the height of the Rambo craze, and the height of the craze over aliens.
29:04And all of a sudden, some whiz kid just said, put them together.
29:10I think in the 80s, you saw a transition in these kinds of movies to something that was more superhero,
29:17superhero in a way, than hero. A branded physique.
29:21The heroes were all buffed up. It was a time where your physical appearance
29:27determined your masculinity in terms of buffness.
29:32I was fond of Predator because it felt like the most uniquely crafted Schwarzenegger film in which he
29:36was allowed to be more of an actor. He was allowed to be afraid and desperate.
29:40Payback time.
29:44We go down there expecting to do our jobs as a rescue team.
29:51Stick around.
29:52But we end up becoming the hunted.
29:56There's something in those trees.
29:58I think what's great about Predator in the storytelling is allowing the audience to understand
30:04who the characters were beyond Arnold.
30:08I think they did an outstanding job of giving everyone in the platoon their bit of time on screen.
30:15The question is, do you care about anybody that got shot?
30:22I just like great writing.
30:25I was the ultimate tough guy.
30:33Of course, the most special scene for me and the one where I'll brag and say I stole the film from Arnold.
30:39You're hit. You're bleeding, man.
30:42I ain't got time to bleed.
30:44And it almost didn't come about. That scene got cut.
30:47You got time to duck?
30:49And I'll never forget, I can thank Montezuma's revenge because Arnold got sick.
30:55And Arnold couldn't shoot that day.
30:59Predator is the one everybody really talks to me about. The Razor.
31:03I'm gonna have me some fun tonight when I'm going up the hill.
31:10It still plays.
31:13When I die, that's when the platoon falls apart. That's when panic set in.
31:24These guys are really scared. They're really big and muscular and they're dying and they're really dying.
31:29The toughest guys in the world who already know that they're doomed.
31:36This now becomes an existential movie.
31:38There's something out there waiting for us.
31:42And it ain't no man.
31:45Kevin Peter Hall played the Predator.
31:47Kevin was the only one who probably truly could have did the part because he had to be able to pick Arnold up and make Arnold look small.
31:55And he certainly did that.
32:01John McTiernan knew what he was doing in slowly revealing that character.
32:06And it finally culminates in one of the great reveals in the history of sci-fi.
32:13And that's when the Predator takes off his bio helmet and reveals that face with those mandibles.
32:20And Arnold says, you're one ugly motherfucker.
32:26That is my favorite moment in that movie.
32:28When they have their final mano a mano battle, Predator reveals his face, drops his shoulder cannon.
32:35He's like, let's go.
32:37That's badass.
32:41It just comes together as a thrill ride.
32:43It's a perfect slice of what pulp does best.
32:47One of the prime examples of testosterone-driven, badass, sci-fi.
32:57Yeah!
32:58You son of a bitch.
33:00The Predator is the biggest black mark on my career for no good goddamn reason.
33:05They handed this design over that their production designer had done.
33:08And I immediately said, this is never going to work.
33:10It didn't matter how much time and money we had.
33:12It was impossible.
33:12They hired Jean-Claude because he's a martial arts expert.
33:17And they put him in this suit where he can barely totter.
33:20It was meant to be replaced and rotoed.
33:23So, of course, the guy's like, why?
33:25Why did you even hire me?
33:28No one had bothered to tell from production.
33:30And he gets in there and goes, what's the suit?
33:32And it's like, well, you're playing a monster in this film.
33:35He thought it was the real suit.
33:36He goes, I hate this suit.
33:38I look like a superhero.
33:40And then he found out he was going to be invisible for half the movie.
33:42And he was enraged about that.
33:43He didn't know about that, right?
33:44It's like, don't these guys read the script?
33:49I tried and tried to get him to let me do something else that I knew would work.
33:54And they're like, absolutely not.
33:56It was absolutely doomed from the beginning.
33:59They pulled the plug pretty quickly.
34:00I think it was thanks to Arnold who had formed a relationship with Stan Winston.
34:05On The Terminator, Stan was approached for the job.
34:08Why don't you call Stan for this one?
34:10That's a terrible Arnold impression.
34:12Knowing they had very little time, they decided to take an old school approach.
34:16It's just a man in a suit.
34:18But it's a man in a suit with a killer facial design and a killer finish.
34:25And one of the great creature suit performers of all time, Kevin Peter Hall,
34:29who had just done Harry from Harry and the Hendersons.
34:33Unlike the alien, the predator can express a little emotion.
34:37When it looks at you, you can almost sense its disapproval.
34:49Alien, one of the most unique and influential creature designs ever.
34:55Alien is one of the most frightening movies I've ever seen.
34:57Alien is about survival.
35:04Aliens is about something bigger.
35:09Aliens.
35:09Aliens. This time, it's war.
35:12It's a war film in space.
35:14Go it out! Go it out!
35:16God damn it!
35:17Aliens, the drafts, the running name that Jim had was called Grunts in Space.
35:23Cameron was writing Rambo 2 and Aliens pretty much simultaneously.
35:29And they kind of bled into one another and Aliens became a Vietnam film.
35:33Subconsciously, it was sort of about troops going under fire against an enemy they couldn't see.
35:39The other story was a story about mothers and daughters.
35:42The queen and her children fighting against Ripley and her adopted child.
35:49You instantly feel for and need to rescue this little girl who's seen her parents killed
35:55and has still come up with the wits to survive.
36:00There's a very mythic and primal thing going on here.
36:03This is now Mama Bear versus Mama Bear.
36:09Get away from her, you bitch!
36:13At the time of filming, obviously, I didn't really have any idea of the magnitude of the character Ripley
36:20or the character of Vasquez or my character.
36:24It was so important, especially in the 80s, and having the female be the center of it.
36:30The female's the one with the flamethrower.
36:33The females are the ones that are taking charge.
36:36Have you ever been mistaken for a man?
36:38No. Have you?
36:40It began this movement, a huge impact on the future of action movies and sci-fi movies.
36:48We did operate like, as best as possible, a marine crew.
36:54Al Matthews, Sergeant A-Pone.
36:56All right, sweethearts, you heard the man and you know the drill.
36:59Assholes and elbows!
37:01He was, in fact, a former Green Beret, so all of us Hollywood types, you know,
37:06would demure and divert him at all times.
37:10What are you waiting for? Breakfast in bed?
37:12Another glorious day, Nicole.
37:13The cohesiveness was really formed in and around training in the morning,
37:18and then also the rehearsal process.
37:21And at that time, Hicks was played by James Remar.
37:26Remar's involvement would have made it even more intense.
37:29Why he had to leave had nothing to do with his acting.
37:34However, it was quite shocking to lose one of the leads of your film.
37:41We all felt for Michael Biehn.
37:44Are you all right?
37:45He literally jumped into Remar's costume and created his version of Hicks.
37:51I'd like to keep this handy for Close Encounters.
37:54Bill Paxton was the glue of our set.
37:58Check it out. I am the ultimate badass.
38:02That's actually something that Sigourney Weaver said at his memorial.
38:05Yo!
38:07Stop your grinning and drop your linen.
38:09To say we miss Bill Paxton is a true understatement.
38:12Hold on, Newt.
38:17But sometimes I'm still in awe, like, oh my gosh, I was in a James Cameron movie.
38:22And they mostly come at night. Mostly.
38:24Sigourney just took care of me on set.
38:31When we were in the eggs with the queen alien in front of us and everything, that was a very scary
38:36situation with all the fire going on around us.
38:38Like, if you watch in the movie, she's going, like, pushing me behind her. That was a natural response.
38:46I'm sure for everyone on set, it was very difficult and they probably were a little bit concerned.
38:51Stop the effects!
38:52In the last few years that I've seen everyone, they've actually asked,
38:56did you have nightmares? Did we, like, affect you psychologically? And it didn't.
39:00They would show me the process of building something. They would show me then how it was going to work.
39:08Sometimes they'd throw something at me to try to get my natural reaction of a scare or different things like that.
39:13At the time, I was deathly afraid of dogs. So I just pretended, like, the aliens were dogs coming after me.
39:25This alien comes up and grabs me and it's terrifying. However, for me, it was my friend,
39:32who was a stuntman in a suit, and then they put the head on and off we go.
39:35To me, it was normal, which is so abnormal, really, if you look back at it.
39:44Jim really took her under a wing and made sure she was protected at all times.
39:49And Paxton actually formed a really sort of avuncular relationship with her.
39:55When you got Lance, Paul Reiser, and Bill Paxton together, there was trouble.
39:59Keeping us all lighthearted, which is nice.
40:01What do you want me to do? Fetch the slippers for you?
40:03Jim, would you, sir? I'd like that.
40:05I'm always amazed when I go to a convention, how many military people will come up to me and say,
40:10before they deployed, they watched aliens, because it brought that feeling of unity together.
40:15It is too bad.
40:18I had an amazing experience. It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
40:25Run!
40:27When you come out and you're up here on top, how much further can you go?
40:31I'm not bad for a human.
40:36Music gets us on a very visceral level.
40:44These beautiful, symphonic, gorgeous scores that are bringing you on a journey in advancing action.
40:56A good composer picks a range for a character.
40:59When they're sad, and when they're happy, and when they're in action, and when they're resting.
41:05Would anyone like to review that for us today?
41:09I think all good film composers are chameleons.
41:11If they're talented in a wide-ranging way for that career, you have to have a wide-open musical mind.
41:18What really changed in the 70s was really Steven Spielberg.
41:23Because he brought back the idea that big orchestras are great.
41:36And everybody followed suit, because those movies were making money.
41:40It's very easy to evoke the emotions of the film by listening to the score.
41:48The movie's already in your head, so when you drop that needle on that vinyl,
41:51and close your eyes, and you listen to that opening score for Superman or Star Wars,
41:56you're right there. You're back in the movie.
41:58That music is huge. It reminds you that this is a story about an entire galaxy.
42:13When you heard dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun.
42:21You know what's coming.
42:23John Williams, certainly what he produced or created was monumental.
42:28It made it an unbelievable impact.
42:33With the last Starfighter, the problem was you were in the footsteps of Star Wars.
42:39And if you go off and say, hey Nick, let's do this electronically, you're doomed.
42:48So you had to respect that your palette was going to be a big symphony orchestra.
42:55It's pretty normal when I'm explaining what I want to do to a director,
43:00to just sing a melody or try to imitate the sound.
43:05When I played the theme to The Last Starfighter, I was sitting on a piano.
43:10They had to imagine it all from a guy playing a piano.
43:27Back to the Future turns out to be Alan Silvestri's very first orchestral score.
43:39Bob Zemeckis said, I need your score to make it feel like it's a much bigger
43:47movie than it really is. So Al put together what turned out to be,
43:52I'm told, the biggest orchestra ever assembled in Hollywood at that time.
43:57Al nailed it.
44:06My American movies are partially Bessel Polidurus and partially Jerry Goldsmith.
44:12Bessel is much more epic.
44:14You see the scenes through a filter and the filter is the music.
44:29Elmer Bernstein got to your heart in a way that very few composers managed to do.
44:35I trusted his laugh and his lack of laugh when it happened and gave me confidence in what I was
44:51doing. I love him and I really miss him.
44:55One of the things that you have to do when you make a movie and you have to show the rough cut to
44:58anybody is you have to put a temp track on it. Composers generally don't like to have to watch
45:02the movie with somebody else's music on it. The editor and the director are often what we call
45:08married to their temp track. And so now you find yourself unwittingly turning your movie into
45:15something that is cut to the rhythm of music that you're not going to use.
45:18The most famous example of a temp track would be 2001 A Space Odyssey in which Stanley Kubrick
45:26temped the entire movie with Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss, and then had a composer and immediately
45:33went, you know, I think the temp track is way better than what you did. And he
45:37threw out the score and went back to the temp.
45:39First, let me see your film in musical silence because that's how my imagination works in that
45:52blank slate place. Mr. Cameron and Gail Ann Hurd came to my studio and showed me the rough cut of
46:00the Terminator without a temp track. I was kind of blown away. There was a very primitive early sampling
46:07device called an emulator one. You could plug a microphone into this keyboard and make some weird
46:14sound and then reproduce it with the keyboard. And that's how I did the clank on Terminator.
46:24I had this cheap little mic and I hit a frying pan because I wanted this
46:28big anvil sound. And I got an anvil sample. It just sounded like dink.
46:37That little piece of technology was a key to establishing the sound for the original Terminator.
46:52Ben Jealous from Blade Runner. That was so strange and different and new.
46:58He created these ambient pads, which was a very progressive idea in that day,
47:03in a way that sound designers now very commonly do. He'd create these emotive kind of atmospheres
47:08that weren't music, but he used synthesizers and chimes and embedded them in scenes to create
47:14an ambience or feel.
47:16The soundtrack to Repo Man is a little more my speed than the soundtrack to Blade Runner.
47:34They started flipping the script a little bit by introducing modern rock music into
47:40what should be a science fiction film.
47:52Kirk Thatcher did the vocals for I Hate You and he wrote the lyrics. I literally wrote a song in a
47:58lunchtime, recorded it live in one take, and he's the punk on the bus.
48:02We just had a ton of fun doing it.
48:11Kirk Today, there's very little thematic music. Music is more almost like a sound effect.
48:23But in the 80s, there was a lot of use of melody and themes.
48:27There's so many great composers of that era who wrote themes and wrote melodies that you could hum
48:32when you left the theater. I love that. That's one of the joys of cinema.
48:37You can associate the moment in the score with the images in the film inside your head. By the way,
48:43that's how you know it's a good score. This moment with that moment will go together forever.
48:49It's just a beautiful thing. Present day ideas extrapolate it. And this thing goes on into,
48:54of course, costume. How do spaceships move and travel in the future?
49:01It's the natural evolution of a storyteller to think beyond the things that inspire them.
49:05Imagining the possibilities of taking it to the next step.
49:11For directors like Spielberg and Cameron and Ridley Scott, this became almost a challenge
49:18to create an accurate picture of the future in different ways.
49:23None of the work that any of us do is the end result. None of it. It all is part of a process.
49:30And we're all in this together.
49:31These brilliant filmmakers give us amazing, astonishing work. But our brains will build much more than they
49:37can possibly do. And that's what they should be doing. They're kind of lighting a match to a touch paper
49:42and going, OK, off you go.
49:54And you're moving all the way.
50:00We'll soon ten years.
50:01Once the event happens, we'll see people each new day
50:05And you end up in like that day, we'll come get a nation
50:09And they'll end up in the same place.
50:12They'll end up having that day
50:13They'll be fed.
50:15They'll go somewhere else
50:17And they'll be fed, they'll be fed.
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