Sequels & franchise

to make sure that people knew the daughter had to be older. Joel pitches a sequel. He goes, we've got to get Meryl Streep to play the daughter, and she's the new Cocteau. I'm like, oh, my God.

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Do you know why McDonald's turned us down? Just R rating. Yeah, R rating. Yeah, but Taco Bell, they're made for R rating people. In some regions, there was an alternate. I had to shoot an alternate with a different franchise. Pizza Hut is in the British version. Pizza Hut also works. Pizza Hut's better than McDonald's and Burger King. But Taco Bell's the best. And Taco Bell has really...

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90s cameos. See, I guess that food works for Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. And now franchise, you know, the idea of franchise even...

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how they make it is actually end up more fascinating than the final result yeah this is a this is a great example of that yeah well yeah and that's what i love about the idea of how this movie kind of originated with this wooden planet by you know vincent ward had these monks and stuff who were living on this world they created this kind of very bosh looking movie with this like you know cathedral like design and a world of very thin atmosphere where

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full of monks, which is a really striking idea, but at the end of the day, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. And it doesn't really belong in the Alien franchise, to my mind. Yeah, I think because down to the fact that Alien 1 and 2, there's always kind of based around sort of physics and reality to a certain extent, where things were believable, how you flick this switch and do that, and the monitors, and how things, and a sort of, you know, it wasn't clean like Star Trek, where you had this kind of sense of like, it's too far in the future, where...

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Well, we know there's other scripts, isn't there? Because during the genesis of this, I know David Garlis said they weren't really desperate to make a sequel, but everyone wanted a sequel, and they didn't know where to go with it, because where would you go after the second one? And they had other directors involved. I know they had Renny Harlin, who very much wanted to do the world of the aliens. He didn't want to be... But he found himself after a year not getting anywhere, because it was all just repeating what they've already...

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to sort of change the direction of the franchise at this point? Well, a funny thing happened was that this original film and then the second one were extremely violent and dark and edgy and full of drug-dealing children and just mayhem and mutilation. I mean, as R-rated as you can get, despite the fact that they're comic book movies. But somehow or other, kids were watching the first one on video or cable or whatnot.

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Back to the PG-13, looking back at it now, do you feel that that was a major factor in the problems you have with the movie? It was fatal. Having this be a PG-13 movie was absolutely fatal because it needed to be really rethought as opposed to sort of a sequel to the last movie. RoboCop 2 is in some ways even more offensive than the first one. I don't mean that in a pejorative way, but in terms of the violence and the tone of it.

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Any other movie has it, including these two sequels. So I see—when I watch this, I see—I love the sunglasses. I mean, Han Nguyen, who also is not with us anymore, fantastic costume designer. I mean, look at that. He just cuts such a figure. There's so much in this movie that just promises greatness, and then it doesn't pay off, and we're disappointed. But the humor in the movie is—

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Hyper on 2." Any luck? No. You know, I... The studio rejected my idea of a sequel, which was years... You know, now, you actually... You being in jail... ...coming back to take revenge on Joe and Danny... ...who live in the suburbs next to each other, and they've got their families. Gone straight. - Gone straight. And you've got your... - That's great. I see something there, but they... For some reason, the studio just won't go for it. Crazies.

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Look, honey, the kids are.... You had Ally Sheedy in the sequel. Ally Sheedy was in the sequel. Yeah. - Yeah. But we-- I think we were piggybacking movies at that point. We were just finishing Only the Lonely, and Ally decided to do it as a favor. We were mixing and matching cast. - That's true. Ha, ha. I did a little stint in that one, Ally did a little in that. Is that okay? - Yes. I'll wait. A bit of the New Jersey influence here. We had one of my favorite bands at the time... Still pretty big in England and places like that. Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes... ...recorded a version of "Please Come Home for Christmas." It was my opportunity to get to work with some great soul singers... ...and some people I'd always wanted to work with for the soundtrack as well.

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One of my favorite lines, "dangly ones." I Know. I don't know why that's a... People still, like, come up to me and say it. They'll say that sometimes. "Dangly ones." And I'll know exactly what they're talking about. I wonder how many kids who watch this today remember Johnny Carson... ...which was, again, a perennial, you know. He was sort of David Letterman and Jay Leno wrapped into one. But this was also right near the end. I mean, this... He only had about two, three more years after this. Yeah, yeah. Now, do people still recognize you from the film? Yeah? - A lot, yeah. You know, it just... It comes with the territory, but, yeah. It's a curse and a blessing. I have the... I pretty much have the same face. Right. - Just a little bit older. Only a little bit older. Yeah, here's the other one. Look at this. I mean, you have to say... You can't imagine, in dailies, adults just dying of laughter... ...because you were a ham. Yeah, I was a ham. - I mean, if you wanted to.... I love how I never brush the back of my head too. It's such a child thing to do. My son said to me that... Years ago, when he saw this movie, he was like... He goes, "Dad, it hurts much more to spray your armpits... ... than it does to put shaving lotion on your face." And considering I didn't even shave, either. Yeah. Do we--? Didn't we do--? We were... I think we even shot one of those kind of sequences for the second one... ... with, like, an electric razor or something like that. Yeah, yeah. But we actually never did that gag in the second one, did we? I can't remember. People accused us on the second one of just remaking the first one. Which, to some extent, we did. Yeah, that was what was enjoyable about it. It was fun because you actually got to push the envelope a little more... .In terms of how painful the stunts could actually be. Yeah, gosh, I mean, if John Hughes said he could write this on the weekend... ...I wonder how long it took him to write the second one. Just, like, a little bit of cut and paste and, boom, you're done. You're there. Sequel, bam.

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And during one of those breaks, she got to chatting with Michael Douglas. And she told him that she was producing a movie about Navy SEALs. And Michael Douglas said that she should think about Louis Teague as a director. Because Douglas had just worked with Teague a couple years earlier on Jewel of the Nile, the Romancing the Stone sequel. And he really liked him. Now, of course, at this time, Richard Marquand was still set to direct. So Brenda Feigen basically thanked Michael Douglas for the...

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And by the end of the year, Teague had another film in theaters, Jewel of the Nile, the movie I mentioned before, which was the Romancing Stone sequel. That movie gave Teague a massive hit on his biggest budget to that point, somewhere around $25 million. And so that really was kind of a big, big, big movie. Technically, on his resume, this is his next movie, Navy Seals. But he actually made a movie in between them.

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And he had also, his first big role in a movie, because mostly it had been TV, maybe some TV movies, but his first big role in a movie was with Charlie Sheen in Major League. He was Pedro Serrano, the Cuban player who was into voodoo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that was a really funny role. And then, of course, he's in the sequel also. But that film role came 11 years after his first TV credit. And then...

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in front of the others, it's a problem. So you have to do it in such a way. And it was a very big negotiation. So the reason why that scene had to be done in one take through the underground labyrinth of this world and then to emerge in the spotlight like a king, you know, king and queen, this was the highest he could aspire to. And he hit it at a very young age.

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of this world, or at least a little taste of it, because I didn't know anything about it, and I don't know if Lorraine did, but we had such a great, fun time that night that I think just right from the beginning, we were both sitting there with Martin Scorsese, and then here's these real guys around us, and we were kind of like the new kids on the block. And

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Paul M. Sammon

Okay? So don't worry mothers, or fathers, or children lovers. Maybe latex lovers should worry. To go back to the history of the film, what happened very briefly was that Orion made so much money unexpectedly on the first RoboCop. They made approximately $50 million in 1987. They immediately wanted to go into production for a sequel, particularly because they were in financial trouble at that point.

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Paul M. Sammon

sequel is, I think, a monument to the true beauty of behind the scenes Hollywood craft. Kirsch came in with very few weeks, no prep, did this entire film on the fly.

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Mark Amin said, I think I see something in the picture. Yeah, I think as the footage rolled in, it became clear there was a vision behind it. And I think we felt that as each day went on. Every setup is a decision you're making, Mark. And we quickly, you could feel everyone getting on board, understanding this world, which it really is its own world, which is also what makes it fun. It's totally out of time and space, like a cartoon. And...

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There were no laurels for him to fall back on. Everything was being built from this experience, and it became monumental for me. Like, wow, this guy's amazing. He was terrific. He got into it. He understood it. He brought his own personality to it, and I think that's the reason all the leprechauns work so well is it's Warwick. It's the character. Yeah. And that's why, you know, I'm disappointed they're not using Warwick in the new reboot of Leprechaun, but...

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And then Marshall would return to the fold for the Jurassic park sequels, as well as the Indiana Jones sequels that Spielberg and James Mangold directed. And Kathleen Kennedy was involved with the James Mangold, Indiana Jones movie as running Lucas. So it's all very, they kind of keep going in and out. Um,

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In that period between Amblin and Lucasfilm, when the Kennedy Marshall Company was thriving, some of the movies they made included The Sixth Sense, The Bourne Identity and its sequels, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, as well as more Spielberg collaborations like Munich and Lincoln. In recent years, Frank Marshall has also gotten into producing Broadway plays and musicals. As we record this, he has one.

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Darren Aronofsky

Euclid predicts AAR at six and a half. AAR hasn't been beneath 40 in 20 years. Explanations for anomaly, human error. Me and Abe Lincoln share the same birthday. So Max tries to reboot the computer and now we sort of introduce his sort of homemade brain

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Darren Aronofsky

And that's King Neptune, who's a character that I've dealt with in several different projects that I've written. King Neptune is actually the living King Neptune who's somehow lost his trident in this world of evil and is searching for it with a metal detector on the beach of Coney Island. And right there, he finds something else. It's not his trident, but it's almost as good. And it intrigues Max and brings him over. The original King Neptune that we cast was a...

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They wouldn't be just spewing gibberish. It's actually what this professor believed ancient Egyptian would sound like. Arnold was pretty good at it, but Anck was terrific. If we do a sequel, we'll bring her back big time.

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which I'm sure will be important in the sequel. Thank you very much for tuning in. Hope you enjoyed the movie. It was very, very, very informative.

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Stephen Prince

all that pulls him back to this world with such force and desire that he can't understand how it can be that he is dead. This melancholy is intensified by the muted color design, everything in earth tones, browns and greens. That spotlight jumps out at us because of its bright orange coloring. The ghostly faces of the dead are also exceptions to this muted design. The eye character feels empathy for Noguchi and his sad plight.

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as opposed to connected to, or the novel Red Dragon, which of course is the prequel to The Silence of the Lambs. That's the story of Will Graham, who's a retired FBI profiler, who's kind of brought back into the fold to help track down the serial killer. And as part of this, he has to consult Hannibal Lecter, who he put behind bars. And there's this kind of thing going on throughout that of Hannibal Lecter kind of trying to provoke people

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You notice in these sequences, the camera is near the ground so the ceiling becomes more important than the floor and one is shooting up people's nostrils. This was an approach David Fincher wanted, which I think is terribly effective indeed and makes it more distinctive than the other three, rather, in my opinion. I tried to keep it fairly shadowy, so that it looks moody. Where I could, I brought the light from the top because it's unusual for the light to come from the floor, but one had to be careful about it obviously. The difficulty was getting light into the eyes so we could see what the actors were thinking but not at the expense of the mood. I remember at Pinewood Studios when the sets were going up, Fincher would have us walk through the sets just looking at the scope of them. It was truly amazing to see these things go up. Norman Reynolds is a great production designer. He builds the world. It's very difficult to control him cos George would tell him on Star Wars "Don't build that. We're gonna paint it", and the next day - "It's too late. It's built." When they sent us over, we said "Why are we going to London?" They said "It's the sets, the set design, the artistry and the craftsmanship." And it really was very true. British actors is another good reason to go there. Somehow the British accent does a lot for these movies, I think. Vincent has had a deep, abiding interest in Luddite monks, and had done a great movie called The Navigator, where these monks dig their way through the earth, coming out into the 20th Century. It was a great movie. But, anyway, the original idea was that this was a wooden planet built by the Luddites and in the bottom of the planet, symbolically, the reactor was kind of hell. The technology that kept this thing going was emanating from the bowels of Lucifer. What drew me to the project first was that it wasn't a retread kind of sequel. It was a completely new idea, and some of it survived in the final script. David was entirely in control from the beginning. He put his stamp on it. He was the director and nobody ever questioned it. He was completely in control of the set and everybody hung on his words. He was definitely doing it. There was no weakness in it at all. He was very, very confident in what he was doing and wouldn't be swayed. He had this vision and that was what he was going to do. He came under quite a lot of pressure from 20th Century Fox to hurry up or do it the quickest way or the most expedient way, but he wouldn't listen. He would do what he wanted to do, quite rightly, in my opinion. As I say, his compositions are marvelous and the use of the frame, and so on. David had been a cinematographer before he became a director, so he knew lighting. He knew what was good and what was bad. That's not to take away from David Worley, the operator. His contribution was enormous as well.

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...put my film career on hold and become a sleazy club owner... ...and just set up a whole franchise of clubs called Exotica. Well, and fascinatingly, as you might recall... ...and a great theme of this film is not being able to touch in a club. I believe the year this came out...

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The good news is if we ever do the sequel to Forrest Gump, Haley's turned into this big star actor now. When he was that little and that young, he was a great actor. He just always had the fire, so it was fun to see him go. And Hannah too, little Hannah. She just showed up in Virgin Suicides. I love to see these young actors mature and become good adult actors.

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Can you imagine? This is almost 20 years later. She's still playing Ripley. Yeah, and you have to understand, this is take after take, after day after day with this emotional commitment. Very, very heavy. All the permutations from where that character started in the Ridley movie to where she sort of journeys, leading... This is, like, the culmination of it all. The future and the present and the past all sort of melding together. And you're right, she really... You see sequels, you see people kind of walk through them. She's... you know... She has a notebook filled with... She keeps herself up to the moment, connected with her character, for every take, every scene, every day of shooting. It's an amazing thing, especially in a genre like this, in sci-fi. It's not like Terms of Endearment here. But just as an acting exercise to play the same character for almost 20 years, as you grow as an individual and you see that character in so many different situations and grappling with technologies and the relationship of where she finds herself with regard to her humanity. It's fascinating and she is in this film. Her commitment to it is off the chart. These were the victims of the chestbursters. We had to come up with a very simple way to do this because of the numbers of them. We sort of took our cue from those T-shirts that came out after Alien and Aliens that just had these rubber bones applied to them and we made these slip-on appliances that had the broken-out ribcage and all the guts. We made a male and a female version and I think there were a couple of guys that ended up getting women's torsos on them. They were lucky. There he is, ladies and gentlemen. The beautiful and talented Mr Leland Orser. My friend and, if you knew him, yours. This is Leland Orser. I love this actor. I saw him in a very small character in Se7en of David Fincher. For this scene I used maybe four cameras because I had just one day to shoot this. I remember. I hate that because I prefer to shoot with a short lens very close to the character but I had no choice for this scene. I had quite a lot of material for this one. This is pretty rare I use many cameras, because I prefer to make a storyboard to be very precise, and usually for all my films I put maybe at the end one minute and a half in the garbage, especially with Amélie, the last. But I remember at the editing room you didn't have a lot of material. I prefer to shoot exactly what I need and it's better for everybody. You save money. You save time. You save energy. I don't understand a director - they make some film with three hours and you have to cut one hour at the end. It's so silly. I prefer to think before. That's the reason I like to make a storyboard, because it's a pretext to find ideas when you have the time to think. Because when you are on the set it's too late. You have to run. The master is the clock. It's too late to find ideas.

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the way he's behaved, and I did watch those two movies. What I found so interesting about Jack Vincennes was that he, you know, was living in this world where he was almost the big guy himself. Everybody knew him, certainly they knew him in the film business and the television business and this god-awful TV show that he was the consultant on. You know, he was an amusing guy, but I think that in a sense his character represents the

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