Independence Day (also known by its promotional abbreviation ID4) is a 1996 science fiction film about a hostile alien invasion of Earth, focusing on a disparate group of individuals and families as they coincidentally converge in the Nevada desert and, along with the rest of the human population, participate in a last-chance retaliation on July 4 – the same date as the Independence Day holiday in the United States. It was directed by Roland Emmerich, who co-wrote the script with producer Dean Devlin.

While promoting Stargate in Europe, Emmerich came up with the idea for the film when fielding a question about his own belief in the existence of alien life. He and Devlin decided to incorporate a large-scale attack when noticing that aliens in most invasion films travel long distances in space only to remain hidden when reaching Earth. Principal photography for the film began in July 1995 in New York City, and the film was officially completed on June 20, 1996.

The film was scheduled for release on July 3, 1996, but due to the high level of anticipation for the movie, many theaters began showing it on the evening of July 2, 1996, the same day the action in the film begins. The movie’s combined domestic and international box office gross is $816,969,268, which at one point was the second-highest worldwide gross of all-time. It holds the 24th highest worldwide gross of a movie all-time, and was at the forefront of the large-scale disaster film and science fiction resurgences of the mid-to-late-1990s.

Trivia:

The abbreviation “ID4″ was invented due to undisclosed legal problems (long since resolved) with the title “Independence Day”.

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Bill Pullman used the memory of a decayed tooth which was pulled from his mouth in order to come up with a terrified expression when speaking with the alien invaders.

 

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To achieve the effect of flames traveling down the street, they a had miniature tilted upward and had the explosives at the bottom with a camera mounted on the top.

 

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Two scenes, one where a replica of the bus from Speed (1994/I) crashes through a billboard for the movie Stargate (1994), also directed by Roland Emmerich, and one where a theater whose marquee reads “Coming Soon: Independence Day” is destroyed, were filmed but didn’t appear in the final cut.

 

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In the Special Edition, during the scenes where David is searching for his ex-wife’s telephone number, his computer screen displays humorous street names such as “Heresheis Avenue.”

 

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As is the case with many 20th Century Fox Films, the film cans for the advance screening prints and show prints had a code name. Independence Day was “Dutch 2″.

 

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The final sentence of the President’s speech was not in the original script and was added at the last minute for dramatic effect in an effort to convince 20th Century Fox not to avoid a legal battle to earn the right to name the film “Independence Day.”

 

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Fox first wanted to open the film on Memorial Day and change the name to ‘Doomsday’ to avoid the fierce competition on July 4th.

 

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The film initially was green-lit with a budget of US$69 million from the studio.

 

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The advertising campaign cost US$24 million. The airtime for the trailer shown during the Superbowl alone cost US$1.3 million.

 

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Director Roland Emmerich got the idea for the film while fielding a question about the existence of alien life during promotion for Stargate (1994).

 

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The President’s speech was filmed on 6 August 1995 in front of an old airplane hangar. The hangar once housed the Enola Gay, which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima exactly 50 years earlier on 6 August 1945.

 

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The man in the office building that is destroyed in the initial attack is played by Volker Engel, the movie’s visual effects supervisor.

 

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Will Smith’s squadron were stationed at El Toro air base. This is the same name as the air base from which the Flying Wing Bomber flew out of to drop the A-bomb on the Martians in the movie The War of the Worlds (1953). El Toro Marine Corps Air Station was a real air base in Orange County, California, from 1943 until its decommissioning in 1999.

 

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Matthew Perry was originally offered the role of Captain Jimmy “Raven” Wilder but pulled out at the last minute. His father John Bennett Perry plays a secret serviceman in the movie.

 

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On the Special Edition DVD, delete scenes are replaced that explain apparent inconsistencies in the Theatrical Version: – Upon arriving at Area 51, Russell Casse searches frantically for a doctor for his son Troy. He states that he has “a problem with his adrenal cortex”. Since we’ve seen Troy vomiting and feverish earlier, he could be suffering from either Addison’s Disease or Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, both which affect the Adrenal Cortex and have vomiting as a symptom. – Miguel refers to Russell by his first name for most of the movie. A deleted scene reveals that this is because, as Miguel tells Russell, “You’re not my father. You’re just the guy that married my mother.” This also explains why Miguel looks very little like Russell. – When David is driving to Washington DC to alert Constance, he tells his father, “She always keeps her cell phone listed for emergencies.” When he calls her, she answers the phone and says, “David! How did you get this number?” A deleted scene explains how he tracked her secret cell phone number down by searching for various aliases she’s used in the past – in this case, it was her married name. – When Jasmine is first seen dancing, it soon cuts to her saying, “I came to get my check and I got talked into working.” If one wonders where her son is while she’s working unexpectedly (no time to call a sitter), a deleted scene shows him and Boomer the dog in the manager’s office waiting for her. This is part of the reason she quits – her boss yells at her for “bringing that kid in here.”

 

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The White House interiors were originally built for The American President (1995), and were subsequently used for Mars Attacks! (1996).

 

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Dr. Okun is a reference to Jeffrey A. Okun, one of the visual effects supervisors from director Roland Emmerich’s previous film Stargate (1994)

 

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Producer Dean Devlin said that well over half of the dialogue in the scenes Jeff Goldblum shared with Judd Hirsch and Will Smith was improvised.

 

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The line, “Eh, fuck my lawyer,” was improvised by Harvey Fierstein and the expletive was dubbed over with “forget” in the final cut.

 

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An entire scene in which Jeff Goldblum explains the nature of the alien signal had to be cut to avoid possible controversy that would have arisen from a shot in which Harvey Fierstein planted an unscripted kiss on an unsuspecting Goldblum.

 

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Footage of fiery debris was captured on film after a pyrotechnics malfunction occurred on set. The footage was used as the falling wreckage of the “Welcome Wagon” helicopters.

 

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Over 70 mock news broadcasts were created for the film.

 

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The orientation of the bent street lamps and overturned cars as seen through the tank’s night vision makes them resemble the Martian spaceships from The War of the Worlds (1953).

 

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Traditionally, Roland Emmerich’s regular film crew gives the crew or cast member the nickname “Evil” if their name appears in the credits at the same time the music turns ominous. With this film, Julie Moran (who appears as herself) received the honors.

 

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Holds the record for most miniature modelwork to appear in one film. It is said more minatures were used for this film than in any other two films combined. Due to the advances in digital technology since this film’s release, most experts believe this record may stand forever.

 

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The initials of several model shop crew members can be seen as graffiti on a wall behind the tank that’s parked on the freeway in Houston.

 

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During the alien’s initial attack, the shots of cars landing on other cars was achieved by using cranes that released actual hollowed-out cars onto cars loaded w/ explosives.

 

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Director Trademark: [Roland Emmerich] [SkyNews] In any Roland Emmerich movie in which news broadcasts are depicted, his foreign news station of choice is SkyNews. Here, it appears in Russian. SkyNews is owned by NewsCorp, the same company that owns 20th Century Fox, which released this movie.

 

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Originally Russell Casse, Randy Quaid’s character, flew his crop duster in the final battle, because the military had rejected him as a pilot. He appeared with a missile attached to the crop duster, then flew the crop duster into the alien ship. But when it was screened to test audiences, they felt it was too comedic, so they re-filmed the scene.

 

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The alien spacecraft miniature was 65 feet wide.

 

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The White House which exploded was built at 1/12 scale, just to be blown up. Nine cameras filmed the explosion at various speeds, one of which was 12 times faster than normal, then played back at normal speed to make the explosion seem larger on film.

 

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The movie features, thanks to special effects, 3,978 F-18 Hornets, 52,278 pieces of debris, 3,931 alien attackers, 1,549 missiles, and 22,014 light balls.

 

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The Macintosh laptop that David uses is shown as a Powerbook XXXX, a prototype model with no designation. Despite this, clips from the film, showing the laptop with its prominent Apple logo, were used a series of Powerbook ads at the time. The ads’ slogan was “What kind of laptop would *you* choose to save the world?”

 

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Cameo: [Dean Devlin] producer and co-writer is the voice of the fighter pilot alongside the President’s plane who says, “I’m on it,” targeting the alien ray only to be blasted out of the sky a moment later.

 

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Cameo: [William Fay] co-executive producer can briefly be seen on the TV in the Oval Office as a SETI employee during the “Operation Welcome Wagon” scene.

 

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Director Trademark: [Roland Emmerich] [44] The number 44 is seen on the headrest in Russell’s F18 cockpit, several TVs are tuned to channel 44

 

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According to producer/co-writer Dean Devlin, the US military had agreed to support the film by allowing the crew to film at military bases, consulting the actors who have military roles, etc. However, after learning of the Area 51 references in the script, they withdrew their support.

 

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On the DVD commentary, visual effects supervisor Volker Engel reveals that the fire engine seen tumbling through the air was simply a model purchased at a toy store.

 

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After the climatic battle, one of the F/A-18s that returns to the base can be seen with the tail code of ‘VM’. This is the designation for Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 314 (VMFA-314) Black Knights, the same squadron that Will Smith flies with in the film and that gets massacred by the city destroyer that took out LA.

 

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Between principal photography and the re-shoot of Russell’s scenes in his F18, the cockpit mock-up was used in The Rock (1996) and had been repainted. Therefore Russell’s F18 is darker than the other planes.

 

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In the briefing room scene at Area 51 behind Hiller and Grey there is a night vision pan of the base. What you are seeing are actual shots of the real Area 51 taken by a conspiracy theorist from a place called “Freedom Ridge”. The ridge was commandeered by the U.S. government in the late 90′s and is no longer accessible to the public.

 

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The phrases said by the pilots when firing their missiles is NATO brevity code for the types of missiles being launched. “Fox One” means a semi-active radar-guided missile (AIM-7 Sparrow), “Fox Two” is an infrared-guided (heat-seeking) missile (AIM-9 Sidewinder), and “Fox Three” is is an active radar-guided missile (AIM-120 AMRAAM).

 

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In the special edition Vivica A. Fox’s character quits her job as a stripper. When she leaves, she says to her boss, “Nice working for you, Mario” in a sarcastic tone. This is a jab at producer Mario Kassar, who forced Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin to cut some scenes from their last film, Stargate (1994).

 

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“Everybody Wants To Rule The World” by Tears for Fears was originally picked to play during the film’s introduction before it was replaced by R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It”.

 

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The line “Elvis has left the building!”, which Will Smith yells toward the end of the movie, is translated “Last train to Mikkeli has just left!” on the Finnish DVD. Mikkeli is a town in Finland.

 

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Production designer ‘Patrick Tatopoulos (I)’ presented director Roland Emmerich with two concepts for the aliens. Emmerich liked both designs so much, he came up with the idea to use one design as the actual alien and the other to be a bio-mechanical suit the aliens could wear. Both of Tatopoulos’s concepts appear in the film.

 

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In the scene where Cpt. Hiller (Will Smith) is talking to Gen. Grey (Robert Loggia) about retuning to El Toro, the giant screen behind them is displaying some sort of night vision display and the bottom of the screen is endlessly rotating through various numbers and stats. At one point, instead of numbers, the screen reads “And now I see with eye serene the very pulse of the machine – Wordsworth”, an excerpt of a William Wordsworth poem entitled “She Was a Phantom of Delight.”

 

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The scene in which Will Smith drags the unconscious alien across the desert was filmed on the salt flats near Great Salt Lake in Utah. Smith’s line, “And what the hell is that *smell*?” was unscripted. Great Salt Lake is home to tiny crustaceans called brine shrimp. When they die, the bodies sink to the bottom of the lake (which isn’t very deep) and decompose. When the wind kicks up just right, the bottom mud is disturbed and the smell of millions of decaying brine shrimp can be very very bad. Apparently, nobody warned Will.

 

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The street names seen on David’s laptop screen (Ashford, Volker, etc.) are the names of prominent crew members.

 

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The names of the pilots on the status screen aboard Air Force One during the first retaliation attack are the last names of several of the film’s associate producers and video unit team.

 

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Not a single real fixed wing aircraft was actually in the air at any time in this film.

 

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The main helicopter used during the “Welcome Wagon” operation was a Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane which was outfitted with an array of flashing lights. In the DVD commentary, producer Dean Devlin said that when they first test-flew the helicopter with the lights on, over 150 calls were received in Orange County from callers who spotted the helicopter and, unsure of what it was, reported it as a “UFO sighting”.

 

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On the Bonneville Salt Flats, cast and crew wearing long pants still managed to get sunburns on their legs; the white salty surface reflected the sunlight up their pant legs.

 

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When Will Smith enters the squadron locker room, the extras (pilots) watching television are real pilots from VMFAT-101, the Marine Corps FA-18 Training Squadron.

 

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VMFA-314 “The Black Knights,” the squadron Will Smith belongs to, had been stationed at MCAS El Toro until 1994.

 

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Spanish television advertisements for this movie, showing the large ships hovering over New York, were mistaken by some Spaniards for real disaster news footage much as Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio play sparked alien-war panic.

 

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Jeff Goldblum’s character is a passionate environmentalist. Roland Emmerich would later make an entire film about environmental disaster in The Day After Tomorrow (2004).

 

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Shot in 72 days, an unusually short period of time for such a big blockbuster.

 

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Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich penned the script in four weeks. It was sent out on a Thursday, and they started fielding offers the next day. By Monday, they were in pre-production.

 

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According to the liner notes from the recent La La Land Records limited release of the complete score by David Arnold, the drum rhythm heard during the invasion scenes near the beginning of the film are Morse Code letters D-I-E.

 

Innerspace is a 1987 science fiction comedy film directed by Joe Dante and produced by Michael Finnell. Steven Spielberg served as executive producer. The film was inspired by the classic 1966 science fiction film Fantastic Voyage. It stars Dennis Quaid, Martin Short, Meg Ryan, Robert Picardo, and Kevin McCarthy with music composed by Jerry Goldsmith. Though not a box office success ($25,893,810 of dosmetic gross revenue), it did win an Oscar, the only film directed by Joe Dante to do so. It was subsequently novelized by Nathan Elliott.

Trivia:

The patients in the doctor’s waiting room with Jack are played by Andrea Martin and Joe Flaherty, Martin Short’s co-stars from “SCTV Channel” (1983).

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The computers in the lab display Apple 2 assembly language listing from the ROM monitor.

 

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Cameo: [Chuck Jones] as a customer in the seen in the supermarket queue eating carrots. He utters the line regarding buying the aspirin, “At eight hundred dollars a bottle, who’d want to?”

 

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The filmmakers used two different shopping malls for the scene where the doctor injects Tuck into Jack’s rear. The opening scenes where the doctor runs in and heads for the elevator were shot in the Northridge Mall in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles (also the epicenter of the ’94 quake). The scene where he reaches the top and rams the syringe into Jack was filmed on the top floor of the Sherman Oaks Galleria, another mall several miles away.

 

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Some similarity to the pod in this movie and the one in Explorers (1985), also directed by Joe Dante.

 

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After Scrimshaw and Canker are shrunk 50%, there are a few scenes where they are seen with full-size actors. These shots were actually filmed using forced perspective. For the car scene, the rear of the car is actually twice as large as a normal car rear, and was about 20 feet away. During the scene half size hands and double-size heads were used. Using this method, the film-makers didn’t have to worry about compositing two separate shots in post production, so the shots could be completed quicker. Even in the final scene with the suitcase, the case was twice as large, but the hand that closes it was real, closer to the camera in sync with the closing. (It took about 20 takes before it was perfect.)

 

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This was the first film commercially released in Dolby Stereo “Spectral Recording” (SR). SR is a vastly improved noise reduction system which replaced Dolby’s original “A-type” noise reduction used for decades in all professional analog recording mediums (including all previous Dolby Stereo movies).

 

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Director Cameo: [Joe Dante] as the first employee in the Vectorscope Lab attacked by the techno-terrorists.

 

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When they are shrinking Tuck Pendleton, the lab’s instrumentation shows a reading on the screen that is five interlinked hexagons (two top, three bottom). This is the symbol that the “Combined Minature Deterrent Forces”, or CMDF, also used in the movie Fantastic Voyage (1966).

 

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During the Cowboy/Putter changeover, Robert Picardo had to do quite a bit of work. After Putter has been changed, we see Lydia asking how he got into the room, etc. The first time Robert goes off screen he’s actually rushing behind camera, tearing off his breakaway clothes and getting into the bath. A make-up assistant is behind a fake wall at the head of the bath, having just changed the Putter Wig to the Cowboy one. Before the Scrimshaw meeting, Picardo’s voice was overdubbed with Short’s. During the meeting, Picardo used his own voice (with a Short-esque lilt), as the filmmakers didn’t think Short “trying? the Cowboy’s voice would be convincing enough to make the scene work.

 

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The gas masks worn by Fiona Lewis and her henchmen are US M-17′s.

 

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William Schallert was cast as Jack’s doctor as an in-joke since he had played a doctor in The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957).

 

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The license plate on Mr. Igoe’s car is “SNAPON” this is a reference to Snap-on tools; an automotive mechanic tool that features a snap mechanism for different attachments, similar to his hand.

 

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While getting Jack pumped up to jump out of the back of the freezer truck, Tuck chants “nam myoho renge kyo” at him three times – this is the mantra chanted by adherents of Japanese Nichiren Buddhism.

 

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Amy Irving was married to Steven Spielberg at the time, and when he showed her the script, she desperately wanted to play the role of Lydia Maxwell.

 

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The only film directed by Joe Dante to win an Academy Award.

 

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After Gremlins (1984), this movie marked the third collaboration between Joe Dante and Michael Finnell with Steven Spielberg.

 

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Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan met on the set of this movie. They were married in 1991.

 

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Cameo: [Arthur Kane] Arthur “Killer” Kane, bass player for the infamous New York Dolls makes an appearance as a passenger when the Cowboy us first seen in the airliner.

 

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Luca Bercovici was the original actor to play Ingoe and his scenes were shot, but was replaced because the producers felt that he was not an intimidating villain as he was about the same height and body size as Martin Short.

 

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The scene where Jack (Martin Short)’s character is tortured with propane is thought to be Robert Picardo’s character of The Cowboy with Rob Bottin’s make up effects. In reality, it is Picardo and it is his real voice during the scene as it played out. They had tried to dub Short as Picardo’s voice of The Cowboy but it did not work and had Picuardo just do the lines himself, according to Director Joe Dante.

 

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The lab in the beginning of the film is the polar opposite of that of Victor Scrimshaw’s, Kevin McCarthy’s later on in the film. The lab seen when Dennis Quaid is miniaturized is in fact what a real lab would look like which is basically a poor man’s miniature home made pod. While the one later on seen during the scene where Ingoe (Vernon Wells) is miniaturized and injected into Martin Short is more high tech with all of the latest industrial tools with proper funding.

 

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John Hora who had previously worked as Joe Dante’s cinematographer on all of his movies, was cast as Ozzie after Steven Spielberg suggested him to play the absent minded professor. Director Dante and Producer Michael Finnell were very skeptical about that idea and Spielberg insisted that they give him a screen test to just to see and was cast after impressing Dante and Finnell.

 

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All of the cells seen outside the pod were in fact made out of Jello according to Peter Kuran, the special effects supervisor.

 

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Director Trademark: [Joe Dante] [Regular Cast] Robert Picardo, John Hora, Kevin McCarthy, Wendy Schaal, William Schallert and Henry Gibson all regular actors who have appeared in Joe Dante’s previous and future films. Hora was Dante’s regular Director of Photography for most of his films up to Small Soldiers (1998).

 

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The film was shot mostly on sound stages with the exception of one month of location filming in San Fransisco, Marin County and the Galleria Mall.

 

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The lab workers seen during the scene where Dennis Quaid is about to be miniaturized were in fact real laboratory workers, as actors would not have been suitable to performing what real lab rats do.

 

How to Make a Monster is a 1958 American horror film released by American International Pictures. The film is a follow up to both I Was a Teenage Werewolf and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. Filmed in black & white, with the last reel filmed in color.

Trivia:

This was advertised with the tagline “See the Ghastly Ghouls in Flaming Color!” However, most of the movie was in black and white with only the final two reels in color.

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Samuel Z. Arkoff wanted Bela Lugosi for the lead in this film. Lugosi was an influence to Arkoff years before. Unfortunately, Lugosi had died in 1956.

 

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Edward D. Wood Jr. claimed that the idea for this film was originally his.

 

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In one scene the visitors to the studio are told that they are going to be taken to the set of Horrors of the Black Museum (1959). This was an advanced plug for what would be the next film to be produced and written by Herman Cohen.

 

Empire of the Ants is a 1977 science fiction horror film by Bert I. Gordon. Based very loosely on Empire of the Ants by H.G. Wells, the plot involves a group of prospective land buyers led by Marilyn Fryser (Joan Collins), who wind up battling giant, mutated ants capable of human mind control.

As with most Bert I. Gordon films, the titular menace is mostly shown through photographically enlarged animal footage. This did lead to some problems, as the ants’ size would change in some scenes. Perhaps the most noticeable problem with the film is that the ants often appear to suddenly crawl off the ground and begin walking vertically up thin air. This is due to real ants being placed in a set lined with photographs of the locations where the scene takes place. Should an ant walk onto the rear photographs it will consequently appear to walk onto the sky. When the film called for the actors to interact with the ants, large mock-up props are used.

Trivia:

Director Bert I. Gordon created some of the special ant-effects by shooting magnified images of the Panamanian bullet ant.

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Inspiration for the phrase, “I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords,” where insect is usually replaced or substituted in an ironic sense. Though no character in “Empire of the Ants” says this line, “The Simpsons” (1989) character of newscaster Kent Brockman says it in the episode “Deep Space Homer” and is alluding to the theme of the film.

 

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As a promotional gimmick for the film theaters would display ant farms in their lobbies – though they weren’t allowed near the concession counters.

 

Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is based loosely on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. The film depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in November 2019 in which genetically engineered organic robots called replicants—visually indistinguishable from adult humans—are manufactured by the all-powerful Tyrell Corporation as well as other mega manufacturers around the world. Their use on Earth is banned, and replicants are exclusively used for dangerous, menial or leisure work on Earth’s off-world colonies. Replicants who defy the ban and return to Earth are hunted down and “retired” by police special operatives known as “blade runners”. The plot focuses on a brutal and cunning group of recently escaped replicants hiding in Los Angeles and the semi-retired blade runner, Rick Deckard, who reluctantly agrees to take on one more assignment to hunt them all down, while searching for his own identity.

Blade Runner initially polarized critics: some were displeased with the pacing, while others enjoyed its thematic complexity. The film performed poorly in North American theaters. Despite the box office failure of the film, it has since become a cult classic, and is now widely regarded as one of the best movies ever made. Blade Runner has been hailed for its production design, depicting a “retrofitted” future.^[2][3] It remains a leading example of the neo-noir genre. Blade Runner brought the work of author Philip K. Dick to the attention of Hollywood, and several more films have since been based on his work. Ridley Scott regards Blade Runner as “probably” his most complete and personal film. In 1993, Blade Runner was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

Seven versions of the film have been shown for various markets as a result of controversial changes made by film executives. A rushed director’s cut was released in 1992 after a strong response to workprint screenings. This, in conjunction with its popularity as a video rental, made it one of the first films released on DVD, resulting in a basic disc with mediocre video and audio quality. In 2007, Warner Bros. released in select theaters, and subsequently on DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray, the 25th anniversary digitally remastered definitive Final Cut by Scott.

Trivia:

Dustin Hoffman was the original choice to play Deckard, although he wondered why he was asked to play a “macho character”. According to Ridley Scott, Hoffman was interested, but wanted to make it a whole different kind of character. According to Paul Sammon, apart from Hoffman, other actors considered for the role included Tommy Lee Jones, Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Al Pacino, Burt Reynolds, William Devane, Raul Julia, Scott Glenn, Frederic Forrest, Robert Duvall, Judd Hirsch, Cliff Gorman, Peter Falk and Nick Nolte.

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Deborah Harry was reputedly the original choice to play Pris.

 

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Towards the end of principal photography an incident occurred which has become known as the T-shirt war. The majority of the crew didn’t enjoy working on the film, and didn’t like working for Ridley Scott, who they considered to be cold and distant. In an article in the British press, Scott commented that he preferred working with English crews because when he asked for something they would say, “Yes gov’nor” and go get it, but things weren’t that simple with American crews. Makeup supervisor Marvin G. Westmore saw the article and was disgusted. In retaliation, he had t-shirts printed with “Yes gov’nor my ass!” on the front, and either Will Rogers never met Ridley Scott” or “You soar with eagles when you fly with turkeys” on the back. In retaliation, Scott and several of his closer collaborators had t-shirts made with “Xenophobia sucks” on them.

 

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While the film is loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”, the title comes from a book by Alan Nourse called “The Bladerunner”. William S. Burroughs wrote a screenplay based on the Nourse book, and a novella entitled “Blade Runner: A Movie.” Ridley Scott bought the rights to the title but not the screenplay or the book. The Burroughs composition defines a blade runner as a person who sells illegal surgical instruments.

 

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Although Philip K. Dick saw only the opening 20 minutes of footage prior to his death on March 2, 1982, he was extremely impressed, and has been quoted by Paul Sammon as saying, “It was my own interior world. They caught it perfectly.” However neither Ridley Scott nor screenwriter David Webb Peoples actually read Dick’s novel.

 

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Exasperated crews often referred to the film as “Blood Runner”.

 

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The Bradbury, the building used in the final chase scene between Deckard and Roy, was the same building used in the 1964 episode of the original “The Outer Limits” (1963) titled “The Demon With a Glass Hand” starring Robert Culp.

 

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The ending title sequence in the theatrical cut of the film contains unused footage from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980). These were extra shots of the main title sequence, although none of the shots contain the road that was seen in The Shining.

 

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The Hades landscape in the opening shot was filmed using forced perspective. The miniature itself was only 13 feet deep and 18 feet wide. Almost seven miles of fiber optics and over 2000 lights were needed to illuminate it.

 

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Only days away from the beginning of principal photography, production company Filmways Inc., who had promised to provide $15 million for the production, withdrew from the project, investing the money in Brian De Palma’s Blow Out (1981) instead. In only a matter of days, producer Michael Deeley was able to broker a $22 million three-way deal with Tandem Pictures, the Ladd Company (through Warner Bros.) and Hong Kong producer Sir Run Run Shaw (20th Century Fox, United Artists and Universal all turned the project down). The Ladd Company provided $7½ million and took domestic distribution rights. Sir Run Run Shaw also provided $7½ million and took international distribution rights. Tandem Pictures provided $7 million and took ancillary distribution rights (TV, home video etc). Tandem also provided the completion guarantee on the proviso that if the film went over its $22 million budget by 10% or more, they would pay for it but they could assume complete artistic control of the project. Ultimately, the film cost $28 million, and executive producers Jerry Perenchio and Bud Yorkin did indeed take over the project.

 

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Titles considered for the film include ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’, ‘Android’, ‘Mechanismo’, ‘Dangerous Days’, and finally ‘Blade Runner’. After the film had changed its name from ‘Dangerous Days’ to ‘Blade Runner’, Ridley Scott decided he didn’t like the new name, and tried to call the film ‘Gotham City’, but ‘Bob Kane’ (comic book creator of Batman) wouldn’t sell the rights to the name, so it returned to being called ‘Blade Runner’.

 

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Originally, the novel (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) was set in 1992, although later editions brought the date forward to 2021. The film makers initially identified the date as 2020, but settled on 2019 because 2020 sounded too much like the common term for perfect vision, 20:20.

 

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At first, Ridley Scott’s original cut, without the voice-over, among other things, was thought to be non-existent. It was in 1989 that Michael Arick, a sound preservationist and director of assent management at Warner Bros., stumbled upon a 70mm print of the film while looking for footage from Gypsy (1962). Several months later, the Cineplex Odeon Fairfax theater was having a classic-film festival featuring 70mm prints. The print discovered by Arick was set to be screened in May. However, no one had actually watched the print and everyone thought it was the International Cut, leading to a great deal of surprise when people discovered it was another version entirely. More screenings of this version resulted in sell outs, and Warner proposed releasing it as a Director’s Cut. Ridley Scott however said it was not a Director’s Cut, and said that a number of changes would need to be made for him to approve it. Ultimately, Scott and Arick were not given enough time to complete the project to Scott’s satisfaction, and the resulting Director’s Cut was still not Scott’s preferred version of the film. In 2007, Scott was finally able to release what he considered to be the definitive cut of the film.

 

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Philip K. Dick’s ideal choice for Rachel was Victoria Principal. Although almost one hundred actresses auditioned for the role, only three were seriously considered: Sean Young, Nina Axelrod and Barbara Hershey. For the auditions, the role of Deckard was played by Morgan Paull, who ultimately went on to play Holden in the film.

 

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The incept (birth) date of Pris (Daryl Hannah) is 14 February 2016.

 

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Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer)’s odd meld of “father” and “fucker” after he says to Tyrell, “I want more life” is deliberate. Hauer was instructed to pronounce it in such a way that it could be both; “fucker” was to be used in the theatrical cut, “father” in all versions of the film for TV.

 

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Translation of entire noodle-bar scene: Upon a seat becoming free at the counter, the Sushi Master (Bob Okazaki) shouts to Deckard (Harrison Ford), “Akimashita, akimashita! Irasshai, irasshai”. In Japanese, “Akimashita” is the past tense of “aku”, which means ‘to become free’; “Irasshai” means “Welcome”. So the Sushi Master is pointing at the seat and saying “It’s free, it’s free. Welcome, welcome”. When Deckard approaches the bar, the Master says “Sa dozo”, meaning “Come, please”, followed by “Nan ni shimasho ka?”, meaning, “What’ll it be?” When Deckard asks for four, the master replies, “Futatsu de jubun desu yo”, meaning “Two is enough” (he repeats this twice). When Gaff (Edward James Olmos) and a uniformed policeman approach Deckard, at first the policeman says, “Hey, idi-wa”, Korean for: “Hey, come here”. Gaff then says “Monsieur, azonnal kövessen engem bitte”. “Monsieur” is French for Sir; “azonnal” is Hungarian for “immediately”; “kövessen” is the Hungarian imperative “to follow”; “engem” means “me”; “bitte” is German for “please”. So a translation is “Sir, follow me immediately please”. When Deckard tells Gaff that he’s got the wrong person, Gaff says “Lófaszt, nehogy már. Te vagy a Blade … Blade Runner”. In Hungarian, “Lófaszt” is a rude expression. “Lo” means “horse” and “fasz” means “prick” or “dick”. (The “t” is added at the end because of the rules of Hungarian grammar.) This expression is basically the equivalent of saying “Bullshit” in English. “Nehogy már” means “no way” in English. “Te vagy” means “you are”, and “a” means “the”. As such, a close literal translation is “Bullshit, no way, you’re the Blade…Blade Runner”. Gaff then says, “Captain Bryant toka. Me ni omae yo”. This is based on Japanese, but is not strictly Japanese in structure. “Captain Bryant toka” is probably a version of “Captain Bryanto ga”, meaning, “Captain Bryant is the subject of this sentence”. “Me ni mae” means “to meet someone”; “omae” is the informal way of saying “you”, and “yo” is simply an exclamation. As such, the translation would be “Captain Bryant. He wants to see you!”

 

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Deckard’s apartment, drawn by set designer Charles Breen and built on stage at Warner Bros., was inspired by the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Ennis-Brown House in Los Angeles. Breen actually had plaster casts taken from the textile blocks of the Wright-designed house and used them for the walls in the stage set.

 

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This was one of the first major films to be reissued years later in a “director’s edition” in which the director was allowed to restore edited footage or otherwise make changes more closely reflecting his original vision. Today, such later “revision” of films is commonplace.

 

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When Deckard (Harrison Ford) stops Rachael (Sean Young) from leaving his apartment, he pushes her away from him. The expression of pain and shock on her face was real. She said Ford pushed her too hard and she was angry with him.

 

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In 2000, Moviemail voted Blade Runner (1982) the 4th best film of all time. Also in 2000, BBC viewers voted it the 2nd best film ever made. In 2001, Empire magazine voted it the 16th best film of all time. In 2002, it was voted the 8th best film of all time in Channel 4′s 100 Greatest Films poll. The same year, the Online Film Critics Society voted it the 2nd best science fiction film ever, whilst also in 2002, Wired magazine voted it the best science fiction movie of all time. Also in 2002, Sight & Sound voted it the 7th best film of the last 25 years. In 2004, in a poll amongst 60 prominent scientists, The Guardian also voted it the best science fiction film ever. In 2007, the American Film Institute (which is notoriously reticent to allow science fiction films into their top 100) listed it as the 97th greatest film of all time, and Empire magazine voted it the Best Science Fiction Film Ever Made in 2007. Also in 2007, it was named the 2nd most visually influential film of all time by the Visual Effects Society. In 2008, it was voted the 6th best science fiction film ever made as part of the AFI’s 10 Top 10 lists. Also in 2008, New Scientist readers voted it the best science fiction film ever made. It is currently ranked the 3rd best film of all time by The Screen Directory and the best science fiction film of all time at Futurist Movies.

 

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It has been always been rumored that Harrison Ford intentionally performed the voice-over poorly, in the hope it would not be used, but in a 2002 interview with Playboy magazine, Ford clarified this mistaken assumption; “I delivered it to the best of my ability, given that I had no input. I never thought they’d use it. But I didn’t try and sandbag it. It was simply bad narration.”

 

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Director Trademark: [Ridley Scott] [Mothers] Leon shoots his interviewer just as he is asked a question about his mother.

 

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As well as using Edward Hopper’s painting ‘Nighthawks’ for visual inspiration during the making of the film, director Ridley Scott also used the French comic strip ‘Métal hurlant’, especially the artwork of Moebius in the story, ‘The Long Tomorrow’. In fact, Moebius was asked if he would like to work on the film, but he turned down the opportunity to work instead on Time Masters (1982), a decision he has always regretted.

 

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Batty paraphrases William Blake’s poem “America – a Prophecy” when he appears in Chew’s laboratory. The original phrasing from the poem is “Fiery the Angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll’d around their shores: indignant burning with the fires of Orc.”

 

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Ridley Scott cast Rutger Hauer in the role of Roy Batty without actually meeting the actor. He had watched his performances in Turks fruit (1973), Keetje Tippel (1975) and Soldier of Orange (1977) and was so impressed, he cast him immediately. However, for their first meeting, Hauer decided to play a joke on Scott and he turned up wearing huge green sunglasses, pink satin pants and a white sweater with an image of a fox on the front. According to production executive Katherine Haber, when Scott saw Hauer, he literally turned white.

 

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Joanna Cassidy (Zhora) was at ease with the snake around her neck because it was her pet, a Burmese python named Darling.

 

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Although it is often claimed by fans that the moves Roy plays to checkmate Tyrell are from a famous game played in 1851 between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky, known as “The Immortal Game”. In the real game, Anderssen did actually sacrifice his Queen in order to force checkmate in very next move. However, Ridley Scott has stated that any similarities to the real game in the movie game were purely coincidental. In any case, the position of the pieces on Sebastian’s board do not correspond with the positions on Tyrell’s board.

 

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Ridley Scott and Michael Deeley were briefly fired from the production shortly after principal photography wrapped. Because the film had gone over budget, executive producers Jerry Perenchio and Bud Yorkin of Tandem Productions had stepped in, firing Scott and Deeley and taking over the editing of the project themselves. And although they did rehire Scott and Deeley (mainly due to the intervention of ‘Alan Ladd Jr’), they retained artistic control. After two disastrous preview screenings of the workprint, which the audience claimed was difficult to understand, Yorkin and Perenchio decided to record an explanatory voiceover and add a happy ending. Ridley Scott was not adverse to the idea of a voiceover (as is often claimed), but he had wanted a voiceover with Deckard musing philosophically on the implications of his actions. Yorkin and Perenchio however wanted a voice-over where Deckard literally explains aspects of the film to the audience.

 

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Outside of the eye scientist’s lab, on the left hand side of the door is some graffiti in Japanese/Chinese characters that reads: “Chinese good, Americans bad.”

 

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The brand of cigarettes smoked by the characters Rachael, Holden, and Pris are Boyard, French cigarettes.

 

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On the right side of the door to the eye specialist is the sign, “l a Eyeworks” which is a reference to a trendy eyeglass store in LA. The type-style is the same as the store.

 

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In the strange Japanese advertisement shown on the side of a blimp, in which a Geisha-like woman is swallowing a pill, the loud speakers play a line from a Japanese Noh play, saying “Iri Hi Katamuku,” literally “the setting sun sinks down.” According to special photographics effects supervisor David Dryer the pills being swallowed are birth control pills.

 

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Cityspeak was Edward James Olmos’s idea. He has since been amazed at how prescient it was vis-a-vis the increasing multicultural influence Los Angeles has experienced in the intervening years.

 

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Ridley Scott told NPR’s All Things Considered that he originally wanted Deckard to wear a 1940s-style hat throughout the film, but Scott decided against that once he saw Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones costume (including the brown fedora) for Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), which was shot directly before Blade Runner (1982).

 

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Philip K. Dick first came up with the idea for his novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ in 1962, when researching ‘The Man in the High Castle’ which deals with the Nazis conquering the planet in the 1940s. Dick had been granted access to archived World War II Gestapo documents in the University of California at Berkley, and had come across diaries written by S.S. men stationed in Poland, which he found almost unreadable in their casual cruelty and lack of human empathy. One sentence in particular troubled him: “We are kept awake at night by the cries of starving children.” Dick was so horrified by this sentence that he reasoned there was obviously something wrong with the man who wrote it. This led him to hypothesize that Nazism in general was a defective group mind, a mind so emotionally flawed that the word human could not be applied to them; their lack of empathy was so pronounced that Dick reasoned they couldn’t be referred to as human beings, even though their outward appearance seemed to indicate that they were human. The novel sprang from this.

 

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In 1969, Martin Scorsese and Jay Cocks met Philip K. Dick to discuss the possibility of adapting the novel into a film, but they never optioned the novel, and the project fell through.

 

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The first screenplay based on ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ was not written by Hampton Fancher as is often claimed, but by Robert Jaffe, whose company, Herb Jaffe Associates, had purchased the rights to the novel. According to author Philip K. Dick, Jaffe turned the novel into a comedy spoof, which Dick absolutely detested. Herb Jaffe Associates’ option ran out in 1977, which is when Fancher became involved. Fancher had wanted to do an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ ‘Naked Lunch’, but the deal fell through, and he turned to ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’.

 

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Over the course of a year, producer Michael Deeley turned down the project 8 times before finally agreeing to get involved.

 

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Ridley Scott actually turned down directorial duties on the project as he was about to begin work on another science fiction adaptation, Dune (1984) and was also prepping a version of ‘Tristan & Isolde’. Michael Apted, Bruce Beresford and Adrian Lyne also turned down the script. Eventually, Robert Mulligan was hired to direct the picture, and he and Hampton Fancher set about rewriting the screenplay. However, they disagreed about the direction of the project, and Mulligan left after three months. When Scott was presented with a revised version of the script, after he had left Dune (1984) due to a lack of progress, he decided to make it to take his mind off his brother’s recent death.

 

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The term replicants is used nowhere in Philip K. Dick’s writing. The creatures in the source novel are called Androids or Andies. The movie abandoned these terms, fearing they would sound comical spoken on screen. Replicants came from David Webb Peoples’ daughter, Risa, who was studying microbiology and biochemistry. She introduced her father to the theory of replication – the process whereby cells are duplicated for cloning purposes.

 

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In an infamous incident, author Philip K. Dick publicly denounced the film after reading an early Hampton Fancher script. In the February 15, 1981 edition of Select TV Guide, Dick mocked the script (calling it “Phillip Marlowe meets _The Stepford Wives (1975)_ (av)”) and Ridley Scott’s previous film, Alien (1979). He then mailed a copy of the article to the Blade Runner production offices. Ultimately, Dick would change his opinion about the project, largely due to the involvement of Jeffrey Walker, a publicist for the Ladd Company, who convinced Warner Bros. that Dick needed to be involved in the project (the original production company, Filmways Inc, had basically ignored Dick and kept him out of the loop). Walker kept Dick abreast of all major developments behind the scenes, and Dick eventually became a supporter of the film, even though Ridley Scott and he did not meet until after principal photography had wrapped.

 

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Ridley Scott initially toyed with the idea of setting the film in the fictional city of San Angeles; as if San Francisco and Los Angeles had become one massive population center. This idea was used in Demolition Man (1993).

 

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Syd Mead was originally hired to design vehicles and props. However, in his sketches, he would include backgrounds for contextualization, and Ridley Scott was so impressed with Mead’s work that he asked him to work on designing the environment of the film, as well as painting some of the mattes.

 

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According to Hampton Fancher he originally wrote the role of Deckard for Robert Mitchum and the role of Tyrell with Sterling Hayden in mind.

 

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Ridley Scott had decided to cast Frank McRae as Leon until he saw Brion James’s audition. After the audition, Scott’s secretary told him that James frightened her, and upon hearing that, Scott offered James the role.

 

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For the role of Pris, Ridley Scott had initially wanted to cast Monique van de Ven after being impressed with her performance in Turks fruit (1973), but she was unavailable.

 

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According to Paul Sammon, who toured the set in 1981, the level of detail on everything (what Ridley Scott refers to as ‘layering’) was amazing, even though much of it would never be seen on screen. For example, written on the door of a bus was “Driver is Armed; Carries No Cash”, whilst written in tiny print on the parking meters was “WARNING – DANGER! You Can Be Killed By Internal Electrical System If This Meter Is Tampered With”. Also written on the parking meters was the rate – 1 minute parking cost $3. On a magazine rack were to be found magazines with mocked up twentieth-first covers; these magazines included Krotch, Zord, Bash, Creative Emotion and Droid. A skin magazine called Horn had headlines reading “The Cosmic Orgasm”, “Hot Lust in Space”, “Tit Job Review”, “Scratch and Sniff Centrespread.” Crime magazine Kill had covers reading “Multiple Murders – Readers’ Own Photos”, “98 Dead in Spinner Dive”, “Death Penalty Snuffs 12 Jurors in Freak Accident.” Another magazine, Moni, had headlines “Earthlings: Pay Big $ to See Future” by M. Deeley, “Higher Tech” by L.G. Paull and “Illegal Aliens” by R. Scott.

 

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Ridley Scott and Jordan Cronenweth achieved the famous ‘shining eyes’ effect by using a technique invented by ‘Fritz Lang’ known as the ‘Shifting Process’; light is bounced into the actors’ eyes off a piece of half mirrored glass mounted at a forty five degree angle to the camera.

 

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For the scene in the bathroom where Deckard finds the snake scale, Deckard is played by Harrison Ford’s double Vic Armstrong as the scene was shot in England as a pickup, and Ford was unavailable at the time.

 

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Conflicts on set arose almost immediately upon commencement of filming. The first scenes to be shot where those which take place in Eldon Tyrell’s (Joe Turkel) office. However, after two weeks of shooting, director Ridley Scott decided he didn’t like the lighting for the scenes, and ordered everything to be reshot from scratch. This not only put the film two weeks behind schedule only two weeks into the shoot, but also created a major conflict between Scott and the camera crew, headed by director of photography Jordan Cronenweth.

 

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Although for many years, Harrison Ford refused to talk about the film, he did contribute to the 2007 DVD documentary Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner (2007) (V), claiming he has reconciled with Ridley Scott and made his peace with the film. In fact, Ford says the thing he remembers most is not the grueling shoot or the arguments with his director, but being forced to record the voiceover which executive producers Jerry Perenchio and Bud Yorkin insisted be in the film. Ford doesn’t actually mention any names, but in discussing the voiceover which was used in the theatrical cut, he says it was written by “clowns”. In actual fact, Darryl Ponicsan was initially hired to write it, but his version was tossed out. Then Roland Kibbee was hired and his version is the one that was used. According to David Peoples and Hampton Fancher, who had become close friends, when they first saw the film, they each thought the other had written it, and despite the fact that they both hated it, they told one another they loved it for fear of insulting the other’s feelings.

 

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Just prior to the film’s release, Philip K. Dick turned down a $400,000 offer to write the novelization of the movie. Instead, ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ was re-released under the name ‘Blade Runner’ and with the movie poster as the cover.

 

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The famous skyscrapers which shoot flames from their summits in the opening shot of the movie are oil refineries, and the flames are known as “sour gas”.

 

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The model of Tyrell’s Pyramid was 9 feet at the base and 2 ½ feet high. This was a ratio of 1:750. The model ultimately caught fire and melted.

 

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Model maker Mark Stetson built the Voight-Kampff machine seen in the film over a single weekend.

 

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For the first aerial shot of the city, showing the Asian billboard for the first time, a kitchen sink can be seen masquerading as a building in the far background of the shot.

 

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After Pris (Daryl Hannah) first meets Sebastian (William Sanderson, she runs away from him, skidding into his car and smashing the window with her elbow. This was a genuine mistake caused by Hannah slipping on the wet ground. The glass wasn’t breakaway glass, it was real glass, and Hannah chipped her elbow in eight places.

 

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The ‘snake scale’ seen under the electron microscope was actually a marijuana bud.

 

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The story of the spider being eaten alive by an army of baby spiders was a memory of Barbara Hershey, who told it to Hampton Fancher whilst he was composing the script.

 

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Originally, Tandem Productions didn’t want to have a written credit sequence at the start of the movie; they wanted rain effects on a black screen, with the credits narrated by Harrison Ford.

 

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Ridley Scott has always maintained that the film is a piece of entertainment, nothing more. In fact, when he met Philip K. Dick during the post production process, he specifically told Dick that he was uninterested in “making an esoteric film.”

 

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When author William Gibson went to see Blade Runner, he was preparing to begin his first novel, “Neuromancer.” However, twenty minutes into Blade Runner he got up and walked out of the cinema, because he was so shocked by the similarities between the film and his as yet unwritten novel.

 

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Among the folklore that has built up around the film over the years is the infamous Blade Runner Curse, which is the belief that the film was a curse to the companies whose logos were displayed prominently as product placements. While they were market leaders at the time, many of them experienced disastrous setbacks over the next decade and hardly exist today. RCA, for example which at one time was the leading consumer electronics and communications conglomerate, was bought out by one time parent GE in 1985, and dismantled. Atari, which dominated the home video game market when the film came out, never recovered from the next year’s downturn in the industry, and by the 1990s had ceased to exist as anything more than a brand. The Atari of today is an entirely different firm, using the former company’s name. Cuisinart similarly went bankrupt in 1989, though it lives on under new ownership. The Bell System monopoly was broken up that same year, and all of the resulting Regional Bell operating companies have since changed their names and merged back with each other and other companies to form the new AT&T. Pan Am suffered the terrorist bombing/destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 and went bankrupt in 1991, after a decade of mounting losses. The Coca-Cola Company suffered losses during its failed introduction of New Coke in 1985.

 

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The Blade Runner Definitive Cut project (which ultimately became the Final Cut) was initially announced in 2000, with producer Charles de Lauzirika placed in-charge in 2001 working towards a late 2002 release of a special edition DVD. Lauzirika worked on the project for seven months, assembling a rough cut of what became the Final Cut. However, rights issues between Warner and The Blade Runner Partnership (which owns the film) became a problem, and the proposed DVD was scrapped. Lauzirika continued to compile and develop supplemental content for the project on his own in the interim. However, in May 2006, all outstanding legal issues were resolved, and Lauzirika once more began work on a new cut of the film, which was released theatrically in October, 2007 and on a special edition DVD in December, 2007.

 

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In an essay titled “Notes on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, written the same year the novel was published (1968), Philip K. Dick speculated about a possible film adaptation of the novel. His casting choices were Gregory Peck for Deckard, Dean Stockwell as Isidore (Sebastian), and Grace Slick as Rachael. Dick suggested that the novel’s subplot about Deckard being brought to a phony police station run by androids could be eliminated, and proposed a new scene which would show Deckard making love to Rachael inter-cut with Isidore trying to do the same with Pris and comically failing. He further suggested that Deckard’s estrangement from Rachael following their lovemaking could be shown to aid him in his mission to kill Pris (who, in the novel, looks identical to Rachael).

 

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The outtakes link between this movie and The Shining (1980) was not the only element that connected the two. Actor Joe Turkel who plays Dr. Eldon Tyrell, also played Lloyd (the bartender who serves Jack) in The Shining (1980). Outtakes aside, Turkel is the only other common cast/crew link between both films.

 

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At one point in the film, Deckard buys a bottle of Tsingtao from a street vendor. Tsingtao is a real Chinese beer. The beer was created in 1903 and is still being produced today. It is one of China’s most successful beers and has also appeared in other films such as Gran Torino (2008) and The Crow (1994).

 

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Director Trademark: [Ridley Scott] [ceiling fan] There is a large ceiling fan in the scene with Leon and Holden.

 

Twilight Zone: The Movie is a 1983 film produced by Steven Spielberg and John Landis as a theatrical version of The Twilight Zone, a 1959 and 60s TV series created by Rod Serling. It starred Dan Aykroyd, Albert Brooks, Vic Morrow, Scatman Crothers, Kathleen Quinlan, and John Lithgow. Burgess Meredith, who starred in several episodes of the original series, took on Serling’s position as narrator, although unlike Serling he did not appear on screen, nor did he receive screen credit.

The film remade three classic episodes of the original series and included one original story. John Landis directed the prologue and the first segment, Steven Spielberg directed the second, Joe Dante the third, and George Miller directed the final segment. The promotional song from this movie, “Nights Are Forever”, written by Jerry Goldsmith with lyricist John Bettis, and sung by Jennifer Warnes, is heard briefly during the jukebox scene in the opening segment with Vic Morrow.

Trivia:

On July 23, 1982, around 2:30 am, actor Vic Morrow, and two child actors, Renee Chen of 6 years, and My-ca Dinh Le of 7 years, were killed in an accident on the set. While filming a Vietnam battle sequence (a hovering helicopter chasing and shooting at Morrow, who was carrying two Vietnamese children out of a deserted village and across a small lake), an SFX explosion sent the helicopter crashing down on top of them, killing all three instantly. It is illegal for children to work at that hour; Renee Chen and My-ca Dinh Le were not officially part of the cast, and their parents were paid in cash. Director John Landis, associate producer George Folsey Jr., production manager Dan Allingham, special effects coordinator Paul Stewart and pilot Dorcey Wingo were charged of involuntary manslaughter. The trial began on September 03, 1986 and the verdict was given on May 29, 1987. Landis and the four crew members were found not guilty.

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Mention is made of Lieutenant Neidermeyer getting “fragged” by his own troops. This was the fate given to Neidermeyer in the ending of Animal House (1978), also directed by John Landis.

 

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Cameo: [Carol Serling] as the woman who asks “Is there something wrong” when the flight attendants knock on the airplane restroom door, holding a copy of the Twilight Zone magazine in her arms. She was the wife of “Twilight Zone” (1959) creator Rod Serling.

 

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The name of Kathleen Quinlan’s character is Helen Foley. This was not the name of a character in the original “It’s a Good Life” episode, but the name of a character from “The Twilight Zone” (1959) {Nightmare as a Child (#1.29)}. Helen Foley was the name of one of Rod Serling’s favorite teachers as a child.

 

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In the diner, when Kathleen Quinlan is asked where she is from and where she is going, she answers with two town names that were used in old “Twilight Zone” episodes: “Homewood,” from “Twilight Zone: Walking Distance (#1.5)” (1959), and “Willoughby,” from “Twilight Zone: A Stop at Willoughby (#1.30)” (1960). The cook refers to “Cliffordville,” from “Twilight Zone: Of Late I Think of Cliffordville (#4.14)” (1963).

 

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Frank Marshall, producer of the latter version, plays one of the ground crew members checking the plane’s wing for damage.

 

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In the television series “3rd Rock from the Sun” (1996), one episode has Dick (John Lithgow) meeting the Big Giant Head (William Shatner) at the airport. Lithgow asks Shatner, “How was your flight, sir?” Shatner replies, “Terrible. I could have sworn I saw a man on the wing of the plane!” Lithgow said, “The same thing happened to me.” This was an intentional tip of the hat to “Twilight Zone” (1959) episode, “Twilight Zone: Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (#5.3)” (1963). Shatner played the disturbed passenger in that episode, and Lithgow played the disturbed passenger in this movie.

 

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In the opening title sequence, Rod Serling can be seen in the reflection of the eye.

 

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Anthony’s powers have the sound effects of the Tempest (1983) (VG) arcade game.

 

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Exterior footage of the airplane on which John Valentine (John Lithgow) believes that he sees someone trying to sabotage the wing is of the Global Airways Boeing 707, from Skyjacked (1972) with added storm effects.

 

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Director Trademark: [John Landis] [SYNW] spoken in German when Bill is being shot at on the building.

 

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Known for his meticulous preparation, John Lithgow had worked out certain scenes in his airplane seat in conjunction with the manufactured lightning outside the window. However, during filming, the crew member in charge of the lightning flashes would activate it too soon or too late, throwing off Lithgow’s timing. Although initially annoyed, he later came to value the experience after viewing the film, seeing that it added to his anxious, fearful character as he looked genuinely startled by the lightning.

 

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Nancy Cartwright appears in both the this movie’s segment about Anthony and in the television series “The Simpsons” (1989), the second segment of the episode “Treehouse of Horror II” in which Bart has magical mental powers, lampoons this segment of this movie.

 

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The first film by Steven Spielberg to not feature a John Williams’s music score.

 

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Smithee: [Andy House] The Second Assistant Director. Second Assistant directors work primarily on getting exterior filler shots or them work on action scenes, and the tragedy on Segment 1 might have had something to do with this “Smithee” credit.

 

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Segment 2, “Kick the Can,” features Steven Spielberg’s future mother-in-law, Priscilla Pointer, as Miss Cox.

 

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Of the principal cast and crew, eight were also involved in the production of episodes of the original television series: writers Richard Matheson and George Clayton Johnson, composer Jerry Goldsmith, and actors Murray Matheson, Kevin McCarthy, Patricia Barry, William Schallert and Bill Mumy. In addition Buck Houghton, who was producer of the original series for its first three seasons, has a cameo sitting in the diner in Segment 3.

 

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According to John Larroquette, who played one of the lead KKK members, he refused to wear a KKK hood because he wanted his face to be visible.

 

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According to John Larroquette, he requested to watch the filming of what would become the tragic helicopter scene, but his car was stolen the night before and he was unable to get to the set.

 

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This is the first collaboration between composer Jerry Goldsmith and co-director Joe Dante which would last for another seven films – one of the longest director/composer relationships on record. Within these collaborations would also include several productions by Steven Spielberg’s companies Amblin Entertainment and Dreamworks Pictures.

 

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Technically this is the second collaboration between Director Steven Spielberg and composer Jerry Goldsmith. Spielberg “allegedly” had a big hand in Poltergeist (1982) and oversaw the post-production on that film and this film. This film would be the only time that Goldsmith would work with director John Landis, who had worked with the late Elmer Bernstein during that time period and was his composer of choice. He would later work with George Miller on Babe (1995) and his score ultimately replaced when the film’s tone changed from it’s original dark overtones to family fare and was replaced by Australian composer Nigel Westlake. Goldsmith and Joe Dante would work together frequently lasting over seven films spanning two decades before Goldsmith’s untimely death in 2004. Goldsmith and Spielberg would not work together again except in a producing capacity, as John Williams is his personal composer.

 

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Before this movie became an anthology of four stories, Warner Bros. initially explored a single story film idea with the cooperation of Rod Serling’s wife Carol Serling. One of these ideas was Miracle Mile (1988) written by Steve De Jarnatt, who went on to make that film in 1988.

 

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Another story considered by Steven Spielberg for the film was one concerning a bully who has the tables turned on him during Halloween night but problems with the story ensued and was then scrapped.

 

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Steven Spielberg briefly considered Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street (#1.22)” (1960) about neighborhood paranoia that’s set off by a force of invading aliens from the original Twilight Zone series as a potential segment which he canceled because it involved nighttime filming with children and special effects. This was mainly due to the tragedy that occurred on the “Time Out” segment. He finally chose “Kick the Can” from the original series.

 

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For each of the four segments, each director (Steven Spielberg, John Landis, George Miller and Joe Dante), would use their regular production teams with Spielberg and Landis acting as producers of the film as an independent production financed by Warner Bros. and Richard Matheson hired to adapt and expand the three original stories from the original series.

 

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John Landis’ segment “Time Out” was originally entitled “The Bigot”, a story he claimed would retain political and social commentary of the best Twilight Zone episodes from the original series.

 

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The film originally started with Rod Serling’s classic voiceover, but it was replaced with one by Burgess Meredith, who starred in four episodes of the original Twilight Zone series – “Twilight Zone: Time Enough at Last (#1.8)” (1959), “Twilight Zone: Mr. Dingle, the Strong (#2.19)” (1961), “Twilight Zone: The Obsolete Man (#2.29)” (1961), and .”Twilight Zone: Printer’s Devil (#4.9)” (1963).

 

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The spotting sessions for Jerry Goldsmith’s landmark score began on December 22, 1982 and did not finish until January of 1983, as each segment was completed. Usually each music track has a slate number listed but in this case it was the initials of each director (Spielberg, Landis, Miller and Dante) for the music in their segment.

 

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During Jerry Goldsmith’s recording sessions for the score which took place from February 28 to March 3, 1983, with each recording day devoted to each segment of the film. Film it’s Prologue to the main segments to the Epilogue. Steven Spielberg attended most of these sessions. However, it was Joe Dante, who mainly supervised the entire sessions also filling in for George Miller and John Landis, were not involved in the post-production of the film which included the music. Dante and Goldsmith would become good friends and begin a fruitful collaboration that would last over the next two decades (1983-2003).

 

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Joseph Williams, who contributed the song “Anesthesia” for the film, is the son of legendary composer John Williams, who is Steven Spielberg’s personal friend and collaborator for the last four decades. Also Jerry Williams, who is John’s brother, was the percussionist on the score.

 

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Academy Award nominated composer James Newton Howard co-produced the songs “Anesthesia” and “Nights Are Forever” and was also the synthesizer programmer on this film.

 

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Just prior to filming, Dan Aykroyd, who plays The Hitchhiker in the film, married Donna Dixon, who is featured in the “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” segment which ends with Aykroyd’s appearance as an ambulance driver who comforts John Lithgow’s character.

 

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The original conception of the film ending was that after the segments had been completed, that each character would intersect with one another. This idea was scrapped, but it briefly appears as Dan Aykroyd’s character does appear at the very end of the “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” segment and comforts John Lithgow’s character from the segment by playing “The Midnight Special” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, which was also used in the prologue of the film.

 

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The giant, glaring eye that Helen (Kathleen Quinlan) sees when she opens a door is used as part of the opening sequence for the series “The Outer Limits” (1995).

 

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Last cinema feature of Murray Matheson.

 

Cocoon is a 1985 science fiction film directed by Ron Howard about a group of elderly people who are rejuvenated by aliens. The movie starred Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley, Hume Cronyn, Brian Dennehy, Jack Gilford, Steve Guttenberg, Maureen Stapleton, Jessica Tandy, Gwen Verdon, Herta Ware, Tahnee Welch, and Linda Harrison. The film is loosely based on the novel by David Saperstein.

The movie was filmed in and around St. Petersburg, Florida: locations included the St Petersburg Shuffleboard Club, The Coliseum, and Snell Arcade buildings. The film earned two Academy Awards.

It spawned one sequel, Cocoon: The Return, in which almost all of the original cast reprised their roles.

Trivia:

Ron Howard’s brother, mother and father all appear in the film. His wife appears also, as a receptionist/nurse behind a desk, and she was pregnant with twin daughters at the time. The reception area desk was used to hide that fact.

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Wilford Brimley was only 50 years old at the time of this film’s production. He had to have his hair dyed gray in order to make him look geriatric.

 

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The effects team revealed in interviews that the dolphins in the underwater scenes were animatronic, not live ones.

 

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Hume Cronyn was a Golden Glove boxer and lost sight in one eye. In the scene where he hits the young orderly, without depth perception, he actually hit the young man and knocked him out.

 

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According to Ron Howard, several members of the cast liked to get into hypothetical discussions about the chance their characters were offered in the film. Maureen Stapleton was dead against it, while Don Ameche said he’d be the first in line.

 

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In Say Anything… (1989), John Cusack plays Cocoon (1985) for a crowd of old folks at a retirement home.

 

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Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy playing the old married couple Joseph and Alma Finley had in real life also been married to each other for many years.

 

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The tinted map Walter gives to Jack showing him the underwater location of their search for cocoons is actually an infra-red aerial photograph of Bay County, Florida (where Panama City Beach is located) printed on a transparency.

 

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Dirctor Ron Howard had originally wanted Joan Bennett for the role of Bess MCarthy, but since she had been talked out of taking the role by her fourth husband, David Wilde, the role was offered to Gwen Verdon instead.

 

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Two firsts for the offspring of two famous actors – Tyrone Power Jr.’s (son of Tyrone Power) film debut and Tahnee Welch’s (daughter of Raquel Welch) American film debut.

 

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Maureen Stapleton is about 9 years older than Wilford Brimley.

 

Ghostbusters II is a 1989 science fiction comedy film and is the sequel to Ghostbusters. Produced and directed by Ivan Reitman, Ghostbusters II follows the further adventures of a group of parapsychologists and their organization which combats paranormal activities (“ghostbusting”). The sequel was originally to be called Ghostbusters II: River Of Slime.

The sequel had what was, at the time, the biggest three-day opening weekend gross in history ($29,472,894, which is equivalent to $50,864,510 in 2009), a record that was broken one week later by Batman ($40,505,884). Despite the record-breaking opening, the film has received mixed reviews from both critics and viewers.

Trivia:

In the scene when Egon looks up information about Vigo in the database, Vigo’s full name is listed as Vigo Von Homburg Deutschendorf. The actor who plays Vigo is Wilhelm von Homburg and the twins who play Oscar are William T. Deutschendorf and Henry J. Deutschendorf II. The twins are the nephews of singer John Denver whose real name was ‘Henry J. Deutschendorf I.

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Several pieces of material from the trailers did not appear in the film: – Egon uses a PKE meter to read a piece of floating crystal. – When someone says the Titanic just arrived, Venkman replies “Better late than never.” In the film, this is said by Cheech Marin.

 

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Dialogue including “There’s always room for Jello” was re-recorded for the finished film.

 

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Cameo: [Chloe Webb] guest on “World of the Psychic”.

 

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The kid who tells Ray that, according to his dad, the Ghostbusters are “full of crap” is played by Jason Reitman, the son of director Ivan Reitman. Reitman’s daughter plays the girl with the puppy in Egon’s lab.

 

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Originally, the producers planned on having the crashed Hindenburg appear as a ghostly blimp. They dumped this in favor of the apparitions coming off the Titanic.

 

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The scene involving a woman’s mink coat coming to life was originally written & storyboarded to be in Ghost Busters (1984).

 

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When Peter arrives at Ray’s Occult book-store, pretending to be a strange customer looking for a particular book, the gag was originally intended to be that Peter had previously made a prank phone call to Ray asking for the book, and Ray realizing it was Peter who made the call when he arrives at the store repeating the act. The prank call was not used in the final edit of the film, resulting in it seeming that Peter is just fooling around as he enters the shop.

 

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A scene of Egon and Ray experimenting on the bowl of slime, with them wearing head devices with multiple wires connecting to the bowl (which would have gone before the scene with the ‘dancing toaster’), was filmed but not used in the final edit, but a shot from the scene was a commonly used publicity still for the film.

 

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The shot of the Ecto-1 on the verge of breaking down at the start of the film is fitting in that while filming the bridge scene that’s seen in the montage, the car finally did break down.

 

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A scene featuring Ray driving Ecto-1A recklessly at speed, as a result of being possessed while examining Vigo’s painting, was filmed but not used in the final edit of the movie. However, some shots of the sequence (Ray running a red light; Peter, sitting in the back, pulling a surprised face) were used in the montage as the Ghostbusters go back into business. (This continued a trend of unused scenes being used in a montage. In the first film, a scene of Ray and Winston investigating a haunted fort, where Ray encounters a beautiful ghost, was filmed and not used, but instead used as a ‘dream’ in that movie’s montage sequence.)

 

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200 visual effects shots were used in the entire film.

 

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In the German dub of the movie Dana’s child Oscar is renamed to ‘Donald’.

 

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The original VHS (and laserdisc) release of this movie (and The Karate Kid, Part III (1989)) was in letterbox, causing complaints to video stores prompting them to call RCA/Columbia to find out if there was a problem in the printing. To make matters worse, it was not letterboxed in the film’s original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, but rather letterboxed AND panned-and-scanned into a 1.66:1 frame. So viewers who liked ‘full frame’ movies had to put up with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, and those who want films in their OAR had to deal with a picture that was cropped on the sides and panned-and-scanned in some shots. Neither type of viewer was satisfied with the original home video release. The DVD release in 1999 was the first time that the film was presented in it’s original 2.35:1 aspect ratio on home video.

 

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The joystick the team uses is an NES Advantage joystick with most of the body removed.

 

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The phone number on the side of Ecto-1 is JL5-2020. (555-2020)

 

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The cameo appearance of Slimer the green ghost of Ghost Busters (1984) was prompted by the fact that in the years in between the two films, the cartoon series “The Real Ghost Busters” (1986) introduced the idea that Slimer was living at the firehouse as the Ghostbusters’ pet. Because the original film and the cartoon series were so popular with children, they put Slimer in the film.

 

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During the montage sequence after the courthouse scene, when the Ghostbusters sign is being put up, the sign-maker’s phone number, (516) 374-2340, is visible. This was and still is the phone number for Five Town Neon Service Inc., also known as “Johnny’s Signs”.

 

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In the courtroom scene, the prosecuting lawyer is carried out of the room upside-down by her leg by one of the ghosts. In the trailer, you see the prosecuting lawyer floating out of the room upside-down as the ghost SFX have not yet been added.

 

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The pneumatic subway line that Ray finds when they lower him below the street actually exists under part of Manhattan. The line was built prior to any other subways in the area and was actually built without any City approval. It operated using compressed air and pushed Victorian New Yorkers a number of blocks in “elegant comfort”. When the City of New York found out about the subway line, they shut it down and the line was buried, including two beautifully appointed stations with extensive tile work and even full-size chandeliers above the tracks! Several decades later, when digging for the modern subway system, workers punched into the then unknown subway tunnel and found the station and the subway car completely intact and in remarkably good condition. It’s still there today.

 

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Bill Murray told Entertainment Weekly he was very disappointed with the way the film turned out. He commented “it was a whole lot of slime, and not much of us.”

 

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This film is the final theatrical appearance for actress Janet Margolin, (prosecution lawyer) who died three years later from ovarian cancer.

 

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In Peter’s apartment you can see the newspaper front pages from the first Ghost Busters (1984) movie, including the “USA Today” front page. Each one is framed on his wall. They are most visible when Dana (Sigourney Weaver) is still wrapped in a towel after getting out of the shower and Peter is telling her about finding slime residue in her apartment.

 

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Dr. Venkman teases Dr. Spengler about his lab assistant and Dr. Spengler responds “I think she’s more interested in my epididymis”. The Epididymis are the small tubes that connect the vas deferens to the testes.

 

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The Vigo character was based on Vlad III The Impaler and Grigory Rasputin.

 

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The term “proton pack”, was never officially used on screen until the Ghostbusters are in the subway tunnel and Egon says, “Before we go any further, I think we should get our proton packs.”

 

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The Ghostbusters TV Commercial, in which Louis and Janine are in bed when a ghost attacks is a rehash of scene from the first movie that was filmed but not used. Originally, before the Ghostbusters go on their first call at the Sedgwick Hotel, there was a scene with a honeymooning couple in the hotel who encounter Slimer in their bedroom and call the manager, who in turn calls the Ghostbusters.

 

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After the release of this film, Louis Tully, who has become the Ghostbusters’ accountant, was added into “The Real Ghost Busters” (1986) cartoon series. Also, there was an episode in which the “mood slime” was used.

 

Prophecy is a 1979 horror film starring Robert Foxworth, Talia Shire and Armand Assante. It was directed by John Frankenheimer and written by David Seltzer. A novelization of the film, written by Seltzer as well, was also published, with the tagline ‘A Novel of Unrelenting Terror.

Not to be confused with the 1995 film The Prophecy, this is an ecological fable about the evils of industrial pollution.

Trivia:

Filmed in British Columbia in 1978, this movie marked the beginning of “Hollywood North”, the major start to the development of a massive film production business in Vancouver and other parts of the province of British Columbia, in Canada. Since then hundreds of “American” movies have been filmed in the Canadian province.

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Horror author Stephen King is particularly fond of this film.

 

Battle for the Planet of the Apes is a 1973 science fiction film and is the fifth and final entry in the Planet of the Apes series. It was directed by J. Lee Thompson.

Trivia:

The scenes of Ape City in this film were filmed at the Fox Ranch, now Malibu State Park.

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Colleen Camp’s film debut.

 

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Roddy McDowall and Natalie Trundy are the only cast members to appear in 4 of the 5 original “Planet of the Apes” movies. Roddy McDowall appeared all except the first sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970). Natalie Trundy did not appear in the original Planet of the Apes (1968) movie, but appeared in all 4 sequels. ‘Roddy McDowall’ also starred in the “Planet of the Apes” (1974) TV series. It’s also noted that Roddy is the only actor to voice three different apes, Cornelius, his son, Caesar and Galen in the TV series.

 

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The final of five Planet of the Apes movies starring Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter.