Reshoots & pickups

Because of the production, it basically halted at Pinewood and they went over to do reshoots in LA because he wasn't invited back. They just kill him off by having him scream down one of the corridors when the alien's chasing all the prisoners. So yeah, he gets no death scene. But yeah, certainly for British television, anyone who's familiar with British television, that you're going to see a lot of people you grew up with, ultimately. From Charles Dance, obviously the most...

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Fantastic storyboarding. Aliens, what, 16 million maybe? Yeah, something like that. So then it's gone from that to 50 million for Alien 3. And I don't know if that accounts for the reshoots. Well, 20 million of that they'd spent before they even started filming, didn't they? Because they'd spent 7 million on, according to the figures I've come across, they spent 7 million on sets for versions of the movie that were then abandoned. So the sets were just destroyed.

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So after everyone else had gone home, he just got Sigourney Weaver and the cameraman, basically a skeleton crew, and just did it anyway. And it's like, Jesus Christ. So it didn't... Because they'd said, during the reshoots, like, Terry Rowland said, OK, we need... And he and Dave Fincher decided, OK, what we need to fill the gaps, we need A, B, C, E and F, right? And then they go, oh, you can only have, like, B, E and F, right? And then they shoot it...

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I tried to convince people that I was the mark and try mark, but it didn't work. There you go. Look, they kept my name on it. Actually, there's a story to this limousine. It originally was white, and they wanted to, the studio did say, let's change it to black and reshoot this part because they thought black was scarier.

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Right, Samantha's in the booth to the left. Okay, this is a very interesting thing that there's a rumor on the internet that we had to reshoot this because he came in and takes a box of Lucky Charms and spits them out. And then we showed it. There it is, Lucky Clovers. This is the only thing we ever shot. This was always shot this way, but there's a rumor that somehow Kellogg or whoever does Lucky Charms saw

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him take a bite and spit it out and said, we don't like that. And we don't like the movie, so you have to reshoot it and put a different cereal. And at the end of the movie, when the kid says, fuck you, Lucky Charms, and gets him with a slingshot, that was my way of getting back at the cereal company. And none of that is true. We always had Lucky Clovers for copyright problems. And we always shot this. And this is the only thing we shot.

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I don't know. Look, that's my way. That's not consistent. All right, all right. That is not consistent amount of blood. I think you were doing continuity, Jim, that day. So I'm glad you pointed out now. It's a little late. Look at the amount of blood there. Can't reshoot it. Now he's clean. Well, we love that. I love that. I love that scene. The idea that every movie where they just wash off and the suit's now all clean. Here it just stayed there. People didn't want to see a bloody guy for the rest of the movie. I get that. Mm-hmm.

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With Kevin. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. I did not know that. Life was real. You know, I felt for the first time that I belonged somewhere. This was the reshoot? No, not yet, because I'm still there. Only on the high angle shot. We do this high angle crane shot that we couldn't afford on the first run. Cleveland sounds good to me. But we get married. Right. This is the reshoot. Yeah. This was reshoot. Oh, right, because Dave, the first time he kissed her...

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It was so not sexual that we felt we had to reshoot it. I don't think that was the problem. I don't think that was the problem. The audience has walked out on the kiss. They said, what is that? I don't think that was the problem. It's like he really hates women. I think. There was a weird thing about the testing and then Jennifer did a great job. It was very good. Yeah. And Dave nearly killed himself because he does not have a lot of upper body strength. No, that was great. As you could see when he showed the shirtless scene.

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And she was the harbinger of the new look. You know, the skull head. That's right. And when they had to reshoot the scenes at the end, she had to wear a skullcap. She wasn't gonna do that again. Right.

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The American Humane Society was involved. Which ones were those? Not the ones in England. They were on set documenting everything, when we did the reshoots here with the Rottweiler, and having a representative there when the dog's face was shaved, for finger and grip marks. The Society was responsible for insisting on the sedative for the dog, cos Fox just sent over a hammer. It is good to say no animals were hurt in the movie, and then we'd go out and just beat animals all night long. But it wasn't for the movie, it was just for fun. I loved Harold Ramis' comment that no animals were hurt during this movie, but many hundreds were eaten.

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So this, uh.... What's interesting about a lot of this movie is we would always put fake snow down. The foam and stuff. - The foam, and that's really... We had a Wisconsin ski... A bunch of guys who worked for this ski resort in Wisconsin put down snow. But... - That poor statue. Yeah, the statue was a running gag, and this guy... A lot of this movie was made on an extremely small budget. At the time, the picture was at one studio... ...and that studio didn't wanna make the movie, because of a $2-million difference... ...and it went over to Twentieth Century Fox. And we still were... We still made the film for a little above $18 million... ...which at the time was still a small budget. So we had to make things stretch, which we'll talk about through the picture. One of the great things about working with Pesci, I have to say... .IS his improvisational skills were terrific. And it was because of his training with Scorsese that... ...even on a picture like Home Alone, really comes in handy. He's a very funny guy, Joe. - Yeah. And his comedic instincts were really something I'd never seen before. Little snippets in pictures like Raging Bull and Goodfellas. But his ability to improvise was just phenomenal. And then John Heard. I cast John Heard because John Heard was someone I was always a big fan of. He was in this picture... It was called Cutter and Bone. Now it's called Cutter's Way. And his performance should've gotten an Academy Award. I've never seen it. It's Jeff Bridges and John Heard, and he is just amazing in that film. I was a huge fan, and it was always a dream to work with him. He also did this old film called Head Over Heels. And he was kind of a leading man back in his day. He's just a wonderful actor... ...and another guy who didn't really know why he was in this movie. At the time, he was sort of like, "Why am I doing this?" I remember feeling a certain amount of discomfort from him. He was like, "Why do I have to do this? Why am I in this kids' movie?" You know? "I'm a good a--" Understandable. No one really knew what this movie had the potential of becoming. We had always hoped it would be successful, but we never knew. Um.... Pfft. I always knew. You always had an idea. - I always knew. Now, this scene. Do you remember coming in on a Saturday to rehearse this scene? Yeah. - We had to rehearse this because it was so... Which was so chaotic with everybody. We ate so much pizza. I didn't wanna eat lunch. And this is something that was interesting. We... You'll notice that there's a rare shot in the film where... There's your brother. - Yeah, there he is. How are you guys--? He's working now, right? He's doing very well. Oh, yeah. He's doing very good, very well for himself. Un, this is typical of the style of this movie. Not the vomiting, obviously... ...but the separation of actors in certain scenes. Because Macaulay's time was so valuable... ...we needed to shoot Macaulay separately... ...and sometimes other kids as well. So you'll always see... I tried to block sequences where I could sort of keep Macaulay off by himself... ...and keep the other actors in another space... ...so I could shoot people separately. Child labor laws again. - Child labor laws. And we're-- And Kieran had to reshoot the chair in the face, I remember. Oh, yeah. - Like, he had to come back later. He was upset he had to get his hair cut like Fuller again. Oh, he was? - Ha-ha-ha. Well, he-- We made a special, very light rubber chair... ...so when it... - Yeah, that's... Yeah. That's-- I remember that. Catherine O'Hara was someone who I had, uh... ...Just loved her work on Second City TV. - Yeah. I mean, I was, uh... Aside from Saturday Night Live at the time in the '70Os... ...Second City Television was the-- Sort of the place where you learned about comedy. And for me it was... I was just such a huge fan... ...SO It was, again, a real honor... ...to be able to work with her on both of these films. Yeah, no, she's incredible. Even just the stuff she's doing now. She's still--? Oh, it's great. It's great stuff. Both of his kids are still going to school here. I guess he missed the family.... You got a pretty good cast. Yeah, it's kind of interesting for a film that... But we treated it... The weird thing about this film... ...and the reason I think the film has kind of stood the test of time for a lot of kids... ... IS because we always treated it with respect. We never felt that we were making a movie for kids. We were making a movie for the parents as well. It had a lot of appeal. And you never-- You wanted to... You wanted the photography to have a certain elegance about it... ...and the camera to be moving. And it was really never... So many times today, people try to make kids' movies... ...and they always cheapen them. And we never-- I mean, certainly we got cheap with our jokes. Let's not pretend that we didn't. - Ha-ha-ha. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, it's Three Stooges, you know? - Anything for a laugh. I

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Paul M. Sammon

close to Robitu's arm, was the last shot that was done during production in Houston. And at that point, there was a skeleton crew left, and I remember everyone applauded loudly. Kirsch and his wife then took off and took a drive across country by car to decompress for a couple of weeks, and then we immediately started to shoot in L.A. for pickup shots, and the

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