Reshoots & pickups

Barry Sonnenfeld

Let me ask you a question. Why did you join MiB? We shot the first month of the movie in New York City... ...because of the impending actors' strike. We got all the New York shooting out of the way... ...So that if there was a long strike, we didn't have to reshoot... ...come back in the winter and shoot Men in Down Coats or something.

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Barry Sonnenfeld

I know what I saw. Tell me what I'm supposed to believe. This is a theme we'll hear throughout the movie as their love theme. I'm a member of a Secret organisation that monitors alien activity on Earth. Ben was an alien. So were his killers. I don't Know why they did it, but I promise I'm gonna find out. Okay. We're back in that diner on West 23rd. Okay. This is actually a reshoot. This is the first two days of shooting. We gave Rosario really long hair and a different outfit. We looked at the dailies and said she didn't look cute. We had made her look unsympathetic and cute... ...SO we Cut her hair and reshot the scene.

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Len Wiseman

Oh, and you weren't here for this whole... Were you very glad, because the other babe was there? Yeah. That helped take some of the pressure off... ...but the-- Well, actually, this whole costume, we had a "wardrobe flaw"... Her whole boob escaping. - ...aS Janet Jackson would say. Poor you. Poor baby. - I rushed in as soon as I heard. Yeah, you're really good like that. How have you done that? That's CG, right? That's CG, which I don't think you've even seen yet. We shot that practically, and it just looked horrendous. It looked like three blind mice kind of popping up. And this was all a reshoot that we did. - Oh, really? Yeah, this was all back in L.A. We had a good time. It was just blood and guts. That's me throwing the paint across the window. Oh, is that you? - Yeah. Can you do a bit, like, when my coat flaps around, you're flapping it? That's the prop guy. - Very hands on. Yeah. What were you thinking right here? - "Is it nearly lunchtime? Should I buff my bottom? Am I gonna worry about my camel toe?" Remember how many people were on camel-toe watch because of that suit? No, it became "CT." I would just yell out, "CT," and, "Okay!" There were four people who made it their mission. This is new. This is a new shot here that's just showing Speedman... ...dreaming about the Olsen twins. And so we had some flashes that were supposed to happen right there. This is in the original. Coming up, there's a section where Viktor takes out some of the implants... ...and you see him unhooking himself from that stuff... ... that we had cut out of the original. This isn't it, right? - Yeah, this is. These shots, though.... These, I did all those in post. None of those shots... We didn't take any of the lights down. lt was something we did as an afterthought... ...and just darkened it to make it look like all the lights went down. It actually worked okay. I was worried I wouldn't catch it. I didn't have my glasses on. I couldn't find the takes to put on the outtake reel, but... There weren't that many, because I'd been practising like crazy. Oh, it didn't show. - Oh, really? Look at that. Yeah, look at that. Look at that now. - I was so proud of that. lf someone throws something at me, I tend to duck and wince. The amount of windowpanes we had to replace in the background.

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Len Wiseman

So be it. Like, this scene right here, this scared me... ...because it had the potential of being really corny... ...having somebody crawl across... - And grab your knee, yeah. I was really happy with that, how that whole thing... The blade coming out. Michael does his own stunt here. What I think is cool is Michael starts out looking so pathetic... ...that you think, "Oh, dear. Poor thing." And then you'd expect the nice thing to come out. That sand was cold. Do you remember they buried hot-water bottles under the sand--? Well, you had hot-water bottles all over. You had them stuffed in your costume. - Because I couldn't wear anything. Other people could wear a thermal vest... ...or an undershirt underneath. I couldn't. The girls always get screwed, I must say. So they were so cute. And there was a sandy place. Scott's got, like, three hot-water bottles under there, buried. And I've got one under my ass. And that's Ildiko's mouth, isn't it? - Yeah. Was I was doing Van Helsing by then? Yeah. That was during the reshoots. The first attempt that we did, we had this blood rig set up... ...and her mouth was blocking the tube. So it just built up in her mouth to where... ...when she actually opened her mouth, it just squirted out... ...and actually, like, hit the perms. It was pretty violent. I should have kept that. You don't mean anything to do with hair? No, it's a whole bladders conversation. Oh, is it? Okay. - Yeah, it goes in that whole file. No, the perms are the support beams and stuff on a stage. Okay. You could stop showing off, because It's nearly over.

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Patrick Tatopoulos

This scene's been compared to the... - You know, that... I'm sorry, that insert helps so much, because the first cut... ...I didn't see that. And just showing those blades, I've noticed now in a few... Just in the theatre, when people are watching, and just by seeing that... ... you'd have few ooh's and aah's on a... Makes a big difference in whether you think he's just being whipped. Or you see those... Just that quick insert. And you know what's happening after that. And we shot that at the end. By the way, we shot the, for we have... You know, If anybody is interested, we shot the movie with a Genesis. And all the reshoot was done with the Red camera.

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Patrick Tatopoulos

He's a consummate actor. He flew all night from Germany... ... from a Valkyrie premiere to come to our premiere. Did he? I didn't realise that. Remember that we had to let him go for two weeks... ...In the middle of the schedule to do... - Valkyrie? Reshoots? - Probably. No, he was going back to do something in England. Oh, yes, he was going-- Yeah. For the Richard Curtis movie. So he went around the world twice in like two weeks. Now this is Bill... This is Viktor biting Sonja. Genetic memories. It's all that visual language we used from Underworld 7 and 2. lt was something we had to kind of keep going. Father, please... I wanted to believe your lies though I knew it could not be true.

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Christien Tinsley

You can rent out the home that they shot Terrifier 3's torturous sequence here. There was a moment in post-production that we had to come back and do a couple days of additional photography. And we weren't able to use Scott's dad's house. And so they built...

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Christien Tinsley

to these more mangled hand moments. Her opening this box right here, this moment, it's all additional photography. You know, when you watch a movie, you think that they're

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cemented his role. But why he's got an award named after him is he really helped found the Motion Picture Relief Fund for down-and-out old actors. He's also Leslie Nielsen's uncle for trivia fans. I mean, for me, the first time I really noticed him was, of course, in the other MGM horror film, The Mask of Human Chew, where he's in that room that's slowly closing in on you with a spike. Well, that's a famous reshoot, isn't it? Because they decided that it would be scarier if a chubby bloke were trapped in a spike instead of thin Lewis Stone.

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constant reiteration. Now here we're on the sound stage. We're going to go back and forth all through this because they shot the scene originally on the ranch and then must have realized that they didn't have enough closer shots and details. So they brought Mitchum back because he was already working on Stanley Kramer's movie, Not As A Stranger, by then. They said, can we bring you back for one Sunday to reshoot the stuff that we need for that crucial scene outside Lillian's house? So going

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in the desert surrounding the plant, and second-unit pickup shots of the car chases were filmed in mid-May. According to Tom Mankiewicz, director Guy Hamilton had a prejudice against American automobiles and delighted in showing them crashing and breaking down. Mankiewicz remembers filming the chase scene. Now, those little ATVs were new, too. They were just about a year old, those little three-wheelers. I guess they're still very popular.

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They didn't see dailies. We saw the dailies. We had a little portable projector, and I'm not sure if we were able to run sound, so we just ran picture dailies just to make sure there were no serious problems or we would have to reshoot something. We'd usually get two or three days at a time and watch them together. Right.

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While he was making this, he had just shot the cowboys, and he actually had to go back and do some reshoots on the cowboys while making this. And that made him not a national treasure, but a national hate figure, because he was the long-haired outlaw who shot John Wayne in the back. And it was actually billed...

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Civic TV is Channel 83. Videodrome was written and produced with the intention of opening in theaters in 1982, so the number 83 was meant to point to the future. However, the film was not completed by the end of 1981 as intended, and reshoots continued well into June 1982. The film was ultimately released in February 1983, which advanced the even more frightening thought that the future is now.

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We did some non-dialogue stuff with a double, and we had to reshoot it because his persona came through in his body, even in wide shots, you couldn't double it. Yeah, the body language, the mime, everything is perfect for him. Yeah, the one double scene we have here, you pointed it out. It was not up to par. Reshoot it. Well, I've been, you know, all throughout Europe doing appearances with Robert at one time or another, and it's always sobering to...

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Kenneth Loring

which two they have now violated, by the way. Yes, where the end credits once was scored with a young Zivkov singing, now it blares a jangling pop tune. Where it once had all the P's and R's printed wrong way round to give you a little bit of the Cyrillic flavour, now it's printed in an utterly undistinguished font. Well, they had to reshoot it, I suppose. Couldn't very well leave in a credit for The Boy Zivkov or Magda or Test Your Arm Man, names that mean...

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And the flute mirrors every drop of urine from his penis. Which was six. Six drops. You'd have to reshoot it though, huh? Now we are downtown again. Yeah, the music took on like a more dramatic effect. Here's Grady.

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You said, I want you to take these shirts home and hang on to them in case we need them to do reshoots. And I think what you knew is that if they ever got back to the lockup at Paramount, they'd be gone. Did you get them? I got quite a few of them. I still have them. They're kind of in a safety closet area. Well, after this, they go to Smithsonian. Oh, sure.

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Now, what is this, David? What did we do? Did we reshoot that? I can't remember. What is this? You put a beacon on the wall? This is David's car. An electric car. This is actually a miniature, isn't it? On a cart? This is on a cart, and they were different sized lights and carts depending on where we were. Right. And the camera was strapped onto the back of this. This was an actual car wash. And who came up with this idea? If you like it, it was my idea. Oh, you know what? This is from M-Spot. O.J. Simpson was in this?

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Macaulay Culkin

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 Kiery 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... ...9econd City TV 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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I thought actors liked that. To be tortured that way. I think this was our last second unit shot right here. Shot this, what, two months after principal photography? Yeah, the only reshoot. That was it? Mm-hmm.

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Tom Tykwer

We had to shoot clouds in different spaces and we reshot even clouds in South Africa to get the right movement into the clouds. And we endlessly processed on the way that helicopter vanishes into the blue and becomes just a pixel and that pixel slowly fades away. It is also very much representing my idea of the film to be something like a 180 degree movement from a person

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We had to use our computer to recolour his nose because for some reason the lighting that we were using didn't bounce too well off the rubber and it made his nose look black. No, we had nose rot problems. Did you have nose rot? There was a tense week where we were waiting on the verdict from Weta as to whether they could recolourise his nose or we had to reshoot. Right.

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Richard Curtis

This is, in fact, the scene which we reshot, the one which confirmed that it wouldn't work for Laura and Rodrigo. The one which the test audiences begged us not to do. Look at Laura's acting here. I think it would be stupid for anybody to talk now. Just look at her little face.

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She learned from the best. Have a good shoot. There's not much of a tailing sequence coming up. Because both of the limos broke down. And I couldn't afford to go back and reshoot.

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The discovery of the mother is great. I think it's... Nobody thinks about that we are going to find the mother here. This was very difficult because in the first screenplay it was different. The way that the mother and the kid was encountered, it was a kind of jump. But we decided to reshoot the sequence because we needed to introduce a more emotional weight in this meeting, in this encounter, which is this kind of strange hug, and how now the mother is losing the control and the kid is scared about that. I think it's a transition who implies, you know, the difficulty of this encounter. And how now the mother is a kind of... - It's also important, the use of the sound, no? To build the tension here. I want to come back to talk about Quique Chediak's work. The film was shot in 16mm, most of them. And these locations are really, really difficult to light and to work with. It's strange because it's a 16mm film, but it's not so grainy. And that was one of the reasons we had Chediak. He's really a master in this. Especially because we dealt with a lot of locations and always it's difficult to maintain a style in the movie with these changes. I think Enrique made a fantastic work in terms of using a specific light in every location to convey this feeling about the survivor process.

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Those were actually reshot on a parking lot somewhere where we got the truck and that, because we just, again, it was because of a time thing. We had to finally go to a location where we could shoot before 7. Otherwise, we just were not going to get the shots we needed. And here's the first real big reveal on Robert Joy. I just love what he did here with the Colonel Stevens character. Originally, this character was going to be Garber from Predator 2, but we couldn't get him.

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