Production design

It's so cool, our different worlds. The sets are really amazing. Yeah. They really are. Polly definitely kept an eye on that stuff. Jim Brooks, too. He would look at dailies and sometimes have comments like, you know, the house is too clean. Why don't you have her put something on the floor and pick it up like real people do?

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And by this time, you and I had the unspoken thing. Where I did a take and I just looked at you and I went, yep. And you were just like, yeah, daddy. That's the one. Or I'd be like, ah! And you'd go, got it, watch, I'll do it. This was a big scene because this was sort of like, staging always was a nerve-wracking thing for me. And one day I came to the set with Laszlo. So funny. I know, that's totally Gerald. And this dude. Bitches, man. Bitches, man.

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But I came to the set, and I was like, Laszlo, what if we have them like magpies up against the fence, and then they're going to be rapping in the background, and he's, is that cliche? And he's like, no, no, that's good. And this was the scene that the next day Laszlo came to the set and said, I get the movie. Wow. I also remember this was the scene. These guys were great. We were, you know.

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This was Jim Belushi's first movie as well, wasn't it? Yeah. And John, who had shot the Blues Brothers in Chicago, was around the set quite a bit, and...

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I just came on the set and was frank, you know? Which is a reason I should always do that kind of work, but I don't. This was truly a labor of love, I think. I don't think, I know. We worked real hard, but... Yeah, by the time we started shooting, you were frank.

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John McTiernan

This is Shane Black, he is a writer. I cast him because I wanted a writer on the set. And I just, I loved his work. And he's got a great wise-ass manner.

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John McTiernan

The production designer hadn't done any research about, had no idea that the trees lost their leaves, that the west coast of Central America's deciduous. And I didn't know at the time to check stuff like that. And then I since learned a whole lot about how much research we got to do on the location and weather and that sort of thing. But he didn't know anything about it, so. Two weeks in or something, the leaves started dropping off the trees and he stood there like wondering, "What the hell happened."

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Malcolm McDowell came onto the film kind of late. We thought we were going to have an actor named Bryan Brown... ...who is an Australian actor. And he had conflicts in his schedule. He couldn't do it, so we brought Malcolm in. He showed up on this day for the scene that we've just seen... ...and I said to him, "We're gonna do a liftoff... ...with you getting in the helicopter. And it's gonna take off, and you're gonna come set back down." So he said, "Right." He got a little pale. And yet, the helicopter lands, and he runs out and he jumps in it... ...and it takes off and circles around. And then it lands after we've got the shot. And Malcolm gets out, goes over to the edge of the building... ...and throws up. What I didn't know was that his agent had made a deal... ...that he never had to fly in the helicopter. And they didn't tell me this. I'm glad they didn't tell me. Malcolm was terrified of flying, and helicopters and anything like that. But when he got to the set... ...and he saw Roy Scheider and Daniel Stern doing it... ...he didn't have the nerve to say that he was afraid. So he actually went ahead and did it. And his wife at the time, Mary Steenburgen, said: "How did you ever get Malcolm to fly in the helicopter?" And I said, "Because I didn't know. If I had known... ...I don't know what I would've done." And I can't imagine why we ever made a deal where we said: "Oh, no, he's not gonna get in a helicopter." Because, as you see, he's actually up in the air here. This is no computer background.

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Oliver Stone

This is an NVA base camp, but you see how clever it is. Production design was wonderful by Bruno Ribeiro, but they just folded in the landscape. There's an entire little village here that you can barely see. Everything's tucked away. And the soldiers move warily because we knew there would be traps around here. And they were just here. You can see the smoke, and they just split. We missed them by maybe a minute.

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So do you remember the rapport between the two of them while you were actually shooting? Did they get along well? Did they actually become friendly? As far as I know, again, I only see them there on location or on the set. We're not going out and partying together. And, of course, Bobby was in every shot, so he didn't have as much time to go out with people either.

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Just feels like she's not acting. The door, by the way, I love that door, and that design was done by Linda Spheeris who was the set decorator. So here we have the first family scene... Which, by the way, Jan Kiesser, I feel when I look at it now after all these years and see the kind of lighting he did, but as you go... As you look at Some Kind of Wonderful, you can see the kind of camera moves and lighting that I think sets it apart from the usual teen genre movie that someone like Jan Kiesser shot. But I think John Hughes, in having this scene coming off the opening montage, it's a pretty interesting counterpoint where you've seen him out in the world and seen a montage of what he's dealing with and then you go back to this kind of typical family conflict. It kind of is an interesting dichotomy so early in the movie to me, having a look at it now after all this time. Anyway, John Ashton, who we meet here, who, I think, managed to pull off a great performance as Keith's dad, and the conflict and tension that a lot of sons have with their fathers is set up right here.

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Barry Levinson

So what we did with the production designer Ida Random, we covered that over and made it a black, like a dance floor almost, and thought that would be a good place to stage it, sort of a rather strange Ginger and Fred sequence.

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