WHAT WENT WRONG - Jurassic Park

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

Guest host Steven Ray Morris joins Chris & Lizzie to break down 1993’s four-quadrant smash hit, Jurassic Park. Join them as they excavate the alternate casting options, how an actual hurricane shut down production, and why Steven Spielberg’s dinos still look so good 30 years later. For more from Steven on the Jurassic Park franchise check out his podcast See Jurassic Right.Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

All right. And welcome back to what went wrong, your favorite podcast ever. And we did finally get a review that said we were the best podcast with no qualifiers. Took you guys long enough, but we really appreciate it. You know, recently we've had a couple of attacks on our credibility. One came from my own family. But we want to hold ourselves to the highest standard. So we have brought a subject matter expert in, for today's episode, and I'm going to hand it over to Lizzie to introduce him because he's making me nervous just being on the Zoom right now. So let's go over to Lizzie Bassett. Lizzie, who do we have with us today? Well, today, Chris, we have a certified Jurassic Park expert because, yes, we are talking about the one and only OG Jurassic Park. Here with us today is Stephen Ray Morris, who you may know as the producer of my favorite murder. He's also the host of the percast and most relevant to today's conversation, the host of C. Jurassic, right? So Stephen, thank you for coming and having all of my homework already done for me. I think you asked me, would you be okay speaking on this?

I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I don't mean to do that. Thank you guys so much for having me. Oh, my gosh. I'm just very excited. It's the movie's 30th anniversary this year, and it's kind of finally sinking in that it's actually happening. Yeah. Well, and also, technically, I asked you if you wanted to see a list of questions ahead of time,

and your response was, I mean, I know everything. Oh, yes. Oh, God. Which I loved. That was my Aries coming through, my son. Oh, my God. Thank you guys so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Of course. We appreciate you being here and my wife wanted to mention that she's been listening to my favorite murder for, I think she said seven years. She said basically before it was as well known, obviously. It is seven years. Then I think she started right at the beginning and she was very excited. Yeah, she is an OG listener. And I've heard a lot, you know, as a result of that. And so if I ever need to dispose of a body or learn anything about Jurassic Park or cats, I will be talking to you, Stephen.

And nothing else. Stephen, you versatile man. Yeah, I try to, you know, I try to keep it, you know, of all the quadrants, you know, the four main quadrants, murder, cats, dinosaurs, and I guess. Podcasting. Carly Ray Jepson. Yeah, yeah, podcasting. Oh, Carly Ray. Got it.

Okay. Lizzie, why don't you kick us off? Absolutely. So we are talking about Jurassic Park, which was released June 11, 1993, directed by, oh, Penny Lane. We can hear Stephen's cat in the background. Directed by Steven Spielberg, of course, based on the novel by Michael Crichton with a screenplay by Crichton himself and David Kep, which we will get into a little bit, starring Laura Dern as Dr. Ellie Sattler, Sam Neal as Dr. Allen Grant, Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm, Richard Attenborough, excuse me, Sir Richard Attenborough as John Hammond. Joseph Mazzello as Tim, Ariana Richards as Lex, Wayne Knight, Samuel L. Jackson, Bidi Wong, Bob Peck, and many, many more. And Stephen, you might appreciate this. This is the synopsis, according to IMDB.

A pragmatic paleontologist touring an almost complete theme park on an island in Central America, is tasked with protecting a couple of kids. After a power failure causes the park's cloned dinosaurs to run loose, they really bury the lead in that one. The movie kind of buries the lead. I mean, it takes a while to get there. It's about a pragmatic scientist. Yeah.

Wait, why is he pragmatic? What about Alan Grant is like, I feel like, warnery is really more of an accurate description of him rather than pragmatic. That's true. He's not, like, particularly handy, is he? I mean, I feel like all scientists in the field are pretty handy, you know? That's true.

That's true. If you're brushing dinosaur bones with little tiny brushes, you're pretty handy. Okay. that's fair. So I want to get sort of first reactions from Chris, I know you rewatched it for this podcast. Stephen, I don't know when the last time you watched this was. But I guess I'll start with you, Stephen. What was your sort of first memory of watching Jurassic Park and why have you connected to it so much? Well, I mean, it's very funny where I'm like, I feel like this movie probably just plays in my head when I'm sleeping at this point. But no, it's always good to rewatch it. And I always feel like every time I do rewatch it, I notice new things. I remember. I saw it with a live orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl, and it was just like 10 new things noticed kind of thing. But no, I saw it when I was six years old, and I feel like for our generation,

parents either thought you were too young or you were too old. And it almost was like, because Jurassic Park really is, you know, setting aside the rest of the franchise or whatever, Jurassic Park in and of itself is such a singular, you know, one of the biggest movies of all time, that it really is like a flip of the coin if you got to see it in, in theaters if you were our age. And so for me, it feels very apocryphal where it is like this thing of seeing it with my

parents and then me getting so scared that I like start to cry, but then they ask if I want to leave. And then I'm like, no, it's too beautiful. Like, I want to stay. Like, it just feels very, I mean, you know, I think I remember seeing other movies before this, but I don't know if, I mean, truly, I think this was like the first memories, you know, in that kind of impactful way of like, this is not only like, you know dinosaurs and that's real but also even just like the power of movie magic and all that

stuff too so also it looks amazing 30 years later this really looks good so i i was four when this came out so i my mom did not take me to see this which i'm surprised by because she did take me to see fight club and gladiator so that was or maybe not fight club but definitely gladiator which i was too young for um but i i know i had a vhs of this that i watched pretty much incessantly Chris, what about you? Yeah, I was obsessed with dinosaurs as a child. No surprise to most of our listeners, I'm sure. And so I got to see it pretty much immediately

when it came out on VHS when I was four and a half or five. I think it was five by that point. And we watched it. Similar thing, terrified, loved it, had nightmares, wanted to rewatch it over and over again. So very similar to Stephen's experience. And I will say two things. Yes, it holds up brilliantly.

Across the board, it's just a great movie. not just from a CGI and animatronics perspective. But I do think it's when I was, I never thought the movie had a main character growing up all the way until I rewatched it now. And I do think Alan Grant is the, he's the very obvious protagonist now that I'm older. And it's like, oh, okay, yeah, that actually makes sense. But as a kid, it felt like such an ensemble. And it is an ensemble piece.

But watching it now, I was like, oh, yeah, he's the one that has an arc here with the children. And that's really, really wonderful. And I didn't notice that before. So, yeah. I absolutely love this movie. And I did see Jurassic, The Lost World, in theaters with my dad. Oh, cool. And I was very into that movie.

And then I saw Jurassic Park 3, and I didn't know how I felt about it in theaters. But we'll get into that later. Let's stick with the first one. You know, your comment about, you know, Alligrate is the protagonist. You know, he has the arc, but I find it very interesting that during a pandemic rabbit hole, I realized that most of the astrological signs of all the actors, there is no Aries or Leo amongst the main cast other than Wayne Knight.

And so that makes sense that it would feel very ensembley in general because there's not, you don't have any Aries or Leo trying to like bustle for the main spot. And so that's kind of how far deep I went during the pandemic where I know all the actors' signs, you know. Okay. Well, I have to know, is Wayne Knight a Leo or in Ares because I'm a Leo? He's a Leo. Okay. Thank you.

Love Wayne Knight. Love Wayne Knight in this. Also, one quick thing before we dive in, I had never noticed until this watch that when he sprays out the shaving cream at the beginning, he doesn't put that on his own pie. He puts it on the pie of the family next to him. I was like, what a piece of shit. It's a great character beat. It's really good. Yeah. Yeah, so good. It's so good. All right. Well, let's start with Michael Crichton. If you have never read a Michael Crichton novel, you undoubtedly still know his work. Sphere, Congo, the Andromeda Strain, Eaters of the Dead. which was turned into the 13th Warrior, which is a guilty pleasure at mine. I love that movie. I love that movie, too.

It's so good. And many, many more. Timeline, starring Jerry Butts, just saying. Yeah, I mean, it's endless. And we're going to get to a couple other very important ones as we're talking about this. But Stephen, I'm wondering if you could kick us off with just a little mini history on Michael Crichton

prior to Jurassic Park. Sure. And if not, I can jump in as needed. No, for sure. Well, I mean, you know, it's an interesting story because, or to me I find his story very fascinating because he's he's somebody who grew up, went to medical school and basically Harvard Medical School. And essentially when he was doing his, I believe it was when he was doing his residency or

kind of in that area where he like got disillusioned with doctors and scientists and things like that that his books inspired so many people to become those things because he was such a stickler for like, you know, getting the science right and everything, but he himself had like lost faith in that. And it's, and it's funny because actually during medical school, he was like writing these like crappy, pulpy detective store novels as John Lang, which I don't think it came out until later in life that these were made by him because he's sort of like it was unbecoming that like during medical school, he's also writing like dime store detective novels. But like Andromeda Strain his first book and especially Terminal Man, you can really tell that he

He's just like, yeah, I mean, you just, it almost feels like that person who, like, discovers that your parents are real people and that I feel like he discovered that doctors and those people around him aren't perfect, that they're not, that they're not, yeah, these like objectively biased people. And so I think that really pours into all of his work where it's like, yeah, all of his characters are scientists and they, you know, it's the hubris of man and all that, you know, all that jazz or whatever. So, you know, he writes all the, you know, he's just churning through all that stuff. He also, uh, he's just churning through all that stuff. He also, uh, created ER, you know? Yeah. He directed Westworld, the sexy version of Jurassic Park. Yes. But yeah, I mean, that's kind of his general trajectory, is that he quits medical school or, you know, after the residency, and then he's just like, yeah, I'm just going to be a writer. I had also heard a rumor really quick that he was unable to draw blood himself and he always had a nurse do it.

That is a rumor. It may not be true. I want to qualify it, but I did not come across that. That's interesting. I mean, I believe that. I mean, again, I feel like his, it could, because, you know, that's almost like his books in that way are kind of like, yeah, like an immersion therapy of like, I'm going to get really into the things that I was like too afraid to do or dissatisfied with. But yeah, I haven't heard that either. That's interesting.

So he wrote, I believe, 28 novels. Many, many of them were bestsellers. Like Stephen said, not all of them were under his name. There was John Lang. There was also Michael Douglas. interestingly is another pseudonym. But he, as Stephen pointed out, not just an accomplished novelist.

Very importantly, he was an accomplished screenwriter and director, I think, beginning with Westworld. There may have been one prior to that, but that's kind of a big breakthrough. And that's a really important one, because you might remember from Jurassic Park, the line, yeah, but John, if the Pirates of the Caribbean break down,

the pirates don't eat the tourists. So that's pretty much exactly Westworld. I think you can definitely see the seeds of Jurassic Park in Westworld. And we're going to come back to that one again for some... When we start to talking about the interest in CGI because that was the first film

to use 2D computer generated images. Not the first to use digital animation, interestingly. That was 2001 a Space Odyssey, which I did not know. Oh, interesting. Yeah. He also directed The Great Train Robbery starring Donald Sutherland and Sean Connery. So he'd, like, he'd done a lot.

Yeah, I mean, it's very interesting because I think that there is like a pre-90s Michael Crichton that maybe we don't have as much familiar or like, you know, I think everyone's familiar

with Jurassic Park and you think about Michael Crichton writing Twister as well, that screenplay, taking over directing for timeline and, you know,

all that stuff. But yeah, no, he's been around for a long time. So Jurassic Park, the book, is published November 20th of 1990. It had a 12-week run

on the bestseller list at launch. But he had the idea for the novel in the early 80s, which again makes a bit of sense to me. That's not so long after Westworld. I wonder how long this idea was kind of like germing. That's not a word. Gestating.

I don't know. Michael Griton, you do it. Germinating. It was germinating. It did not begin as a novel, though, interestingly. It began as a screenplay. And Stephen, I'm wondering if you know sort of the earliest stages of this as a screenplay. Well, I know that originally it was supposed to be the story about a graduate

student who clones the dinosaur. And it's very interesting because, again, as far as the development of the movie and the book, you know, Spielberg and Michael Crichton had been friends and or at least, you know, knew each other for many years. And so it is interesting that Spielberg, and it, it was no accident that Spielberg ended up directing it, but it was just one of those things where I feel like Spielberg talks about, you know, he's, you know, Spielberg's, you know, starting to direct TV, you know, Jaws and meets Michael Crichton in some capacity, like on a, you know, set. It was on the universal lot. He was asked to give Michael Crichton a tour. And so he gave him when he was there under contract. If you want to hear more about that, listen to our episode on Jaws. But yeah, so that idea of like,

you know, what are you working on? And it's just that feels such a, yeah, I mean, it definitely feels like a different scope. And maybe it was like the appeal of having it be. I think in some interviews, he said it's like, well, what's the reason? You know, it's almost like he wanted a more compelling reason for why somebody would make a dinosaur. And it's like, oh, well, capitalism, money, boom, here we go. Right. And interestingly, from what I read, it sounds like he also was kind of going ahead and writing the story without quite having the scientific connection that he needed to be able to pull it off in terms of where were they pulling the DNA from, that that was actually a pretty late addition to it.

Yeah, I mean, I always say that, you know, because we live in a world where, I mean, especially now, there's not, it's, Jurassic Park has kind of had like a huge shadow over all dinosaur movies. And it, as somebody like, I don't know, Chris, like, if you love dinosaurs, it's like, you know, there's other ways

you can see dinosaurs. And it feels like, you know, it's, what is it, Matt Damon in the, the Mars movie, you know, you get a science this bitch up or whatever. It's just like, you know, you just yada, yada, yada until you get to that. But, you know, it's like either science,

fantasy, time, travely stuff, you know, it's like, how do you get to, There's not that many ways to put dinosaurs and humans alternate histories, you know. So, I mean, I feel like for Michael Crichton, it was probably just like, hmm, dinosaurs. Okay, well, is there any way? You know, I remember in AP bio, my thing, or no, was IB bio where, like, you had to write some sort of paper. And I was, like, trying to show, like, how you actually couldn't make dinosaurs. You know, it was just like, I was just all in, you know, sort of thing.

But, you know, there's only so many ways you can get dinosaurs and people. in contact with each other. Well, one thing I wondered is if he had ever thought of doing the, taking the sphere concept, which he used later, which is a human ship travels through a wormhole and ends up in our timeline, a human ship from the future, because that's what that new movie 65 is literally doing that's coming out this march with Adam Driver.

His ship crashlands 65 million years in the past. And I actually looked it up. Air was breathable for humans. 65 million years ago, which I didn't know. We should continue. Adam Driver. Adam Driver and dinosaurs. It looks fun.

I'm going to see it. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to watch it. It looks fun. Yeah, I'm definitely going to watch it. Okay, well, so at some point, obviously, it pivots from a screenplay back into a novel. But to Stephen's point, Stephen Spielberg is involved in this from a very early point, earlier than it might seem when you kind of look at a timeline in terms of when the books, rights and stuff are sold. According to a paleobiologist George Pointer Jr., he and his wife's paper describing their discovery that Amber could preserve some intracellular structures in genetic material is what gave Michael Crichton the final idea of how they were going to actually generate the dinosaurs in this, although theirs was a fly, not a mosquito.

But it's super interesting to me because according to George, Michael Crichton had already written basically, all of the book before he contacted this guy and came to look at the lab and see how they were doing it. And almost simultaneously, the film crew contacted him to come look at the lab. So that should give you an idea of how quickly this thing was in production as a movie. A couple of sources said that pre-production on the film actually begins in 1989 before the book even comes out, which does track with what the paleobiologist was saying. So Spielberg and Universal optioned the film, as we said before, the book came out. This is not that uncommon. We've seen that happen a couple other times,

especially with someone like Michael Crichton, who was a proven bestseller at this point and experienced as a screenwriter. He was paid $1.5 million for the option, an additional $500,000 to write the screenplay. And even though Steven Spielberg had been talking to Michael Crichton on the set of ER, actually, or not the set, they were working on developing ER at this time, and was very interested. there was another director who almost got the rights to this and apparently missed it by a couple of hours. It is a what went wrong alum. I know Stephen knows this, but Chris, can you guess?

James Cameron? Yes. Jimmy C. And he's the only person who I kind of also trust with it. I know, like, that's sacrilege, but, you know, I could trust him with the technology and maybe the storytelling a little bit. I prefer Spielberg personally, but I think.

Well, I mean, you could see it. I think it's pretty easy to see a James Cameron version of Jurassic Park. Yes. The book is definitely a lot more, you know, cynical and stuff like that. I think, you know, Spielberg juzed up with a bit of hope and wonderlust and stuff, you know. But, yeah, the material itself totally tracks. I feel like I also heard, like, Tim Burton or, like, Joe Dante at some point or another. Oh, no, Joe Dante.

And it's just like, I don't know if I could see those versions. And I know that eventually Tim Burton directed Mars attacks, but I think dinosaur attacks, which is the same brand of trading cards, you know, there could have been a Tim Burton's dinosaur attacks at some point. But after Jurassic Park, it's like, can you really go back to that? Can't be a version of dinosaurs, I don't know. No, you can't. But do I want to see Jurassic Park directed by Joe Dante?

Kind of. I mean, I don't know if it's going to be good, but I might want to watch it. The way that James Cameron tells it, he was partway through the book. He hadn't even finished reading it. And he got to the scene where the T-Rex escapes and attacks the windshield at the car. And he put the book down and immediately tried to get a hold of the publisher. And he learned that he'd been beaten by Steven Spielberg by only a couple of hours into acquiring the rights. So as we said, Spielberg had quite a big head start. I don't know if it really was a couple of hours because it sounded like he'd been in discussions on this for a while. I think the headline should be James Cameron's slow reader misses out on it, the opportunity to direct Jurassic Park. So, I mean, he was envisioning, you know, as Stephen said, I think we know what a James Cameron Jurassic Park would look like, but he said he was envisioning a very R-rated version, which to your point may have been closer to the book. It would have been aliens with dinosaurs, which could have been cool. But even James Cameron conceded that he was not the right person to direct this and that Stephen Spielberg had made it accessible to kids, which I think is why all of us have a strong connection to this from when we were younger.

So I think that's a good point. Yeah. Spoilers. Doesn't happen, like, walk away and get eaten by compis at the end of the book, if I'm remembering it correctly. It's, and he's, well, he's also mad at his grandchildren. Yeah, he's like a total piece of shit. He, like, walks off. He's like, all pissed at the grandkids and these little dinosaurs eat him. Yeah. And they also have, like, grenade, these, like, rocket launchers that they fight the Lost Raptors with. They're really cool. It was a great book. I read it a lot when I was little. Yeah, I have my original copy here, which was my dad's, and it's all, like, beat up to hell and all this stuff. And it's just, yeah, there's, I mean, it's insane.

And, no, we're not going to go down this rabbit hole, but it's just after six movies, there's still so much in this original book that you could adapt. You know, Ellie Sattler jumping off a roof from a Raptor into a swimming pool, a rocket launcher being fired at a T-Rex, eggs with glowing poison that Raptors eat. And then they, like, foam at the mouth and die. writing a baby tricerror. Like, there's just so much good stuff still in the book that, like, cinematically, like a cave with raptors and glowing eyes. Like, it's just, there's just still so much in that original book that is ripe for a... Well, perfect segue, Stephen, because Michael Crichton does write the original draft of the screenplay.

And then they bring in two, maybe three people and not entirely sure between him and eventually David Kep, who comes in and is the person you see with the co-credit on the... the screenplay. Kep had just written The Cult Classic Death Becomes Her, and he had five other screenplays under his belt, but Jurassic Park was absolutely his massive, massive breakout. Now, he would go on to write Mission Impossible, The Lost World, Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, Panic Room, Secret Window, War of the Worlds, many, many more. This man, rich. So rich. David Kep, rich guy, also eaten by a T-Rex in The Lost World. According to David Kep, he is brought in for basically a page one rewrite.

Chris, you know a thing or two about a page one rewrite. I'm wondering if you can explain what that term means. Well, I think it means that, you know, sometimes Josh Whedon would get brought in for a lot of these projects in the 90s. And touch up the dialogue would be, you know, what he's brought in to do. You know, or we need a character pass to help, this character's not quite working. We need to rework their arc. A page one rewrite means, you know, more or less strip it to its studs and take it from the top, you know.

And it might be that the structure works overall, but the characters aren't working. It might be that, you know, it needs to be restructured, et cetera. It's such a big novel that my guess is that they felt like it needed to be more focused when they brought him in, just based on, you know, what I've read. And that's oftentimes why new writers brought in. Like, you have not been staring at this forever. Give it a fresh look and then try to, you know, zoom in as much as you can.

And I do think after having read the book and watching the movie, one thing I really like is that the movie feels entirely of a piece of itself. It doesn't feel like it's leaving threads open constantly in the way that other adaptations do. And then when you read the book, it's much bigger in a lot of ways, but the energy is matched in the movie. So, Stephen, I don't know if I got that right, but that's kind of... No, I... That's a really well put in a way because, I mean,

and it's just like you said, to strip it down to put a focus, where it's like in Jurassic Park, the movie, it is all the characters you see on screen, and that's it, whereas in the book, you can tell there's dozens of other people. If anything, the Jurassic World movie has a similar structure to the Jurassic Park book where it's like, the power goes down, and then it's back,

and then it goes down again. It's that Spielberg kind of magic, and I'm sure David Kapp probably saw on that too, of like, you know, it's a much more cinematic structure, obviously, because it's a movie. But, you know, as much as Jurassic Park as an ensemble movie. In the book, you also have, you know, much more Henry Wu and, you know, Dr. Harding,

and you have their adventures. That is a whole other separate thing. And then you have, you know, Muldoon and Gennaro. Yeah, Gennaro. I forgot about Gennaro has a big storyline in the book. It's just this thing of like it kind of starts as a wide net and then narrows down until eventually it's just the kids and the, you know, the T-Rex, you know, basically by the end. Yeah, I mean, that tracks.

According to, I think, Crichton had said that the film only contains about 10 to 20% of what was in the book. So that makes sense. And to your point, there's a lot more in there that people could keep going back to mine. In an interview with Collider, Kep said that he was writing the screenplay, as he was writing the screenplay, he checked in with Spielberg to see if some of the things that he was writing were even possible from a budgetary perspective and also like a technological perspective. Because I mean, remember that like the idea of seeing a full-sized dinosaur moving at this point is kind of crazy. And he basically said, what are the limits? And Steven Spielberg said, your imagination, that's the only limit you have. We'll figure it out. Which I love so much.

I wonder if he wrote the objects in mirror closer than they appear, joke with the T-Rex reflected through the mirror. It's so good. Because that's such a hard shot to pull off from a CGI perspective at the time that I wonder if that was something or if that feels like a Spielberg joke to me personally. but, you know. He did write the T-Rex coming out of the tree, I believe, because a lot of the like full body shots, some of that stuff they really didn't know if they could do, which we're going to get into. One more thing from David Kep about Spielberg. There's two kinds of collaborators.

The ones that tell you everything doesn't work and the ones who try to actually make stuff work. And he will run with almost any idea you throw out there. You may run with it and realize it's not that difficult. He's a very positive inventor. He's a very constructive collaborator instead of a destructive one. I love that. That's why it's the best. Truly, and especially on this, as we're going to get into, spoiler alert, a lot of this episode is going to be about CGI.

Because that's a lot of what came out of this. But interestingly, the hold on to your butts line, which I always thought, oh, that must have been Samuel L. Jackson improvising on the spot. That is attributed to David Kep. And it's something that apparently Robert Zemeckis said constantly on the set of Death Becomes Her. And that's how. That's such a great thing. And I feel like I only learned that recently. That feels like a newer, maybe there's some anniversary of Death Becomesers.

something like that. But there's so many things like that that in Jurassic Park that, you know, it's like if you've ever watched a classic movie for the first time, they're like, oh, that's where that came from. Oh, that's where that came from, you know. Totally. So let's talk about casting a little bit. As we said, Joseph Mazzello plays Tim, but he had actually auditioned for Hook and was turned down because he was too little. But Spielberg liked him so much that he promised him he would get him a movie soon, which I love. He tells this little kid. Like, I promise I'll have something for you this summer. And then Spielberg turns around and is like, it's Jurassic Park. Wow. Spielberg liked him so much that he reversed the ages of the kids

from the book. Yeah, that's what the other. I forgot about that from the book as well. Yeah. So, Stephen, pop quiz, who are some of the other folks considered for Dr. Ellie Sattler? Ooh, that's a good question. I'm actually not sure about that one. I mean, it always feels like Laura Linney and Holly Hunter are all in the same area as... I was shocked they are not on the... Really? Interesting. I don't know, actually.

It's funny because I know it for a few of the other actors. She was extremely young at the time. Laura Dern? Yeah, she was 28. Which is insane. Like, I am now, you know, six years or seven years older than Laura Dern was in Jurassic Park. That's nuts to me.

Well, Chris, any guesses? These are some 90s, 90s leading lady class. There's three that I came across repeatedly. Not Sharon Stone. Not Sharon Stone. Yeah, that would have been a good guest. It would be like 80s. Demi Moore?

No. Renee Russo? Ooh. No, I'm so surprised you're not getting any of these. Hold on. Only one is blonde, and she was in another very big Robert Zemeckis movie shortly after. Oh, my God. Robin Wright.

Robin Wright. Yeah, yeah. That's it. Robin Wright. I love Robben Wright. Robin Wright, but no. And another one is not American, which is interesting.

French? French, yes. Oh, Juliet Binochet? Yes, Juliet Binoche, sorry. It was on the tip of Stevenson. We stole it. We tagged you that. That was the ALEU. Boom, we slammed it in.

She would have been fine. All right, and the last one, we are certainly going to discuss on an upcoming episode of what went wrong due to her appearance in two speed movies. Oh, Sandy Bullock?

Sandy B. Wow. Who I love, I don't know. I mean, maybe. Oh, she would have been good. I mean, I love Laura Dern. Laura Dern is the one. It's hard, but like, Sandra Bullock.

They all would have been great. They're all great. Yeah. They're all great. Wonderful actors. But see, the thing I think the magic, and I've been thinking a lot about, I mean, I think about Laura Dern all the time, I guess. But, I mean, I even have my L.A. Satler right here with me.

But I think about it a lot in relation because obviously Lord Dern came back, and Ellie Sattler was kind of the lead character besides Bryce Sous Howard and Chris Pratt in Jurassic World Dominion, that the thing about Lauren Durn that she brought to the table in Jurassic Park is that Ellie Sattler is like a troll. She's like a she's like a Loki in that movie. She's always kind of like testing all the characters and being like kind of, you know, she's the only character in the moment in Jurassic Park where she's like constantly being like, like assessing what's going on.

She's the only person that's not in her own head in Jurassic Park. I think Laura Dern, you know, being this sort of Lynch superstar kind of brings a weird energy to that character that I think, I don't know, I just feel like if it was any other actor sort of leading lady at the time, I think it would have felt more, I don't know, just on the surface. Whereas I feel like Laura Dern was kind of an eccentric. To me, she was almost like the Ryan Gosling of her day when, like, Ryan Gosling got a start in the Art House films, you know? Like if you were to do a gender-bent Jurassic Park. Oh, if we had Ryan Gosling in a Jurassic Park, I'd watch it every day. But I remember a long time ago I wrote like a gender-bent Jurassic Park article, and it was like Ryan Gossling would be Ellie Sattler, Elizabeth Moss would be Alan Grant. Oh.

Aubrey Plaza would be Nedgerie. Yes. I think Cape Blanchet was going to be Hammond. I can't remember everybody. Who is Malcolm? I can't remember. Maybe Julia Louis Dreyfus. That could have been fun.

Yeah. That could have been fun. So one more little guessing game. Sam Neal, shockingly, was cast pretty late in the game, only a couple of weeks prior to filming beginning. So there are three other names I saw come up repeatedly for who else was in the running for Alan Grant. It was Harrison Ford?

Yes. And... It's William Hurt. Oh, okay, that makes sense. Such an angry Jurassic Park. It's cold. Yeah. And then Richard Dreyfus was also under discussion.

Jaws like similar, you know, character. Different type of character, but I feel like... A significantly more neurotic, Alan Grant, I would say. Yeah, but I would love it. That has more Ian Malcolm energy to me more than anything. I agree. So, okay, I'll rattle the other ones off. Who else auditioned for Ian Malcolm, Jim Carrey, apparently?

Even though Jeff Goldblum was who they wanted from the beginning. But can you imagine... Kyni's Kim Carrey. You know, it's like, oh, God. The dinosaurs. I mean, he's an amazing actor, but no. John Hammond, Sean Connery was also discussed. That makes sense for great train robbery, but, I mean, you can't beat Sir Richard Attenborough.

And then Christina Ricci was discussed for Lex Murphy. It's interesting that across the board on these, though, he did go with the slightly smaller names. Like, he didn't put any blockbuster names in this, and I think that was intentional. I think he really wanted people to not be distracted by, like, Brad Pitt getting eaten by a dinosaur. They are. And at the time, Spielberg's name was enough for the poster. Like, that's all you need. So let's talk about making the dinosaurs and pre-production.

Now, as I said, nobody was really sure if they could pull off what this required. So Spielberg assembled what is probably the greatest FX team ever of all time. It is Stan Winston, who we've talked about before. I think we talked about him on The Thing pretty extensively. He has a master puppet creator. Just amazing. watch a ton of videos on YouTube from the Stan Winston School that are about the puppets that they built for Jurassic Park, and it's such a joy. Phil Tippett, who specialized in miniatures,

Dennis Muran, and then Michael Lantieri. Dennis Muran is industrial light and magic. So they started out by mixing miniatures by Phil with full-sized creatures by Stan. Michael would supervise on set, and then Dennis would lead ILM in post-production. Phil Tippett actually did stop motion animatic storyboards as they were kind of building this out. You can watch them. They're really cool. Very cool. Yeah.

And he took what Spielberg had drawn out early on and completely recreated it. You can tell that they had an immense focus on getting the movement right. One sort of piece of information that was fun is that Jack Horner, one of the world's leading dinosaur experts, who is also, I think, where they got the inspiration from Alan Grant. But correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, no, it definitely feels like it for sure. that guy, you know, it's interesting when certain fields in real life become like, you know, people, you know, how people are fascinated by chefs or whatever. And it's like, I think in the 80s,

when paleontology was sort of picking up again, you know, just paleontology has resurgence every once in a while. And it was just like, oh, dinosaurs may be warm-blooded and, you know, leading the charge. And so it's like, you know, it's almost like we need to find somebody to celebrity a phi. And I feel like he was that kind of focus, where he was the person giving the talking head interviews and things like that. Yeah, that makes sense. But they actually had him watching those very early animatics from Phil Tippett

to make sure that they were looking right and vaguely accurate. And one in particular showed the Raptors in the kitchen and it showed them almost like reaching, like had a long like lizard tongue that was like reaching for the ladle. And Jack Horner was like pissed.

He was like, no, they're more like birds than lizards. You take that tongue out of that dinosaur. Well, it was a forked tongue, which lizards have. So they don't have dread. The dinosaurs don't have forked tongues in the movie, so. No, and he was the one who was, I think, kind of adamant that they be more bird-like, which then they harp on in this movie. And in future discoveries, he was actually sort of, he was right.

And very vindicated on that, which is interesting. There were some main differences between dinosaurs and what you see on screen. But one little fun fact was that one of the dinosaurs they were designing in these early days was, of course, the Velociraptors, which we see are, like, huge in this. Yeah, they're much smaller. Well, they had never found one that was this big. But during, while they were filming, they dug up this thing called a Utah Raptor, which was the right size.

And so someone called up Steven Spielberg and was like, great news. We found the Raptor you made up. But they still kept calling it a Velociraptor, which is technically a different species, because it sounds a lot cooler than a Utah. I'm not going to call it an Utah Raptor. I mean, they eventually have made toys of all these, of all these variations. I definitely have my Lost World Kenner, Utah Raptor that I still, you know, still have her in the apartment. It sits courtside at the jazz.

Yeah. It's very involved. Okay. So at first they were expecting that there would have to be something practical in pretty much every single shot and that some stop motion animation would be necessary. but two very important movies in the history of CGI come out between when pre-production begins on Jurassic Park and when it actually heads into production. Both are helmed by James Cameron. Chris, what are they? The Abyss and Terminator 2? That's correct. The Abyss in 1989 and Terminator 2 in 1991.

We do have an episode on The Abyss, which I recommend listening to to get a little more context in terms of what we're going to talk about here. Dennis Muran, of our friends at Industrial Light and Magic, had worked on both. So what we're about to get into here, I did not realize that Jurassic Park was essentially the turning point in CGI, in terms of what we now know as CGI versus what was possible. David Kep said in an interview with Collider that Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 were sort of the jazz singers of the CG era, which I love. The jazz singer, of course, being the first ever talking film. So Spielberg in particular was very curious about the water tendril from The Abyss, which Dennis Muren had worked on. They'd never seen anything like it.

It was really incredible the way that it moved and all of that. But important things to remember, as we keep discussing, is that pretty much every CGI shot in The Abyss is locked off. That's also the same, I think, for the Terminator. That means the camera doesn't move. Yes, camera does not move. There are not handheld shots of the things that we're. we're seeing. And Spielberg and ILM had also worked together on the first ever computer-generated

creature, which was in young Sherlock Holmes, and Spielberg produced this. It is a stained glass window. It's a stained glass window night that fights jumps up. Yeah. It's like pretty derpy, but it was fun. Well, so they had gotten pretty good at this point adding motion blur to stop motion animation, but it still looked a little bit jerky in places. They basically, they couldn't quite get rid of that, like, little bit of jiggle. If you're not super familiar with what stop motion animation is, the best reference is probably Nightmare Before Christmas. So Dennis and his team at ILM proposed something kind of unthinkable for these full-sized shots of the dinosaurs as they're moving. He was like, don't use it. We're going to do it all with CGI.

And this shocked me There is actually no stop motion animation in Jurassic Park I want to hear from Dennis Muran and Mark AZ Depey who was a co-supervisor of Vex on this about their first attempt at creating entirely CGI dinosaurs Basically Steven Spielberg was like I'm not sure this is going to work I would need to see a test of this in order for this to happen

That's fair I think that's pretty fair Yes absolutely And the clip you're about to hear is from the making of Jurassic Park, which is a very fun, like 45-minute-long documentary on behind-the-scenes, narrated by James Earl Jones. There's a number of things that we had to solve at the start of the show. If we were going to risk what we were going to risk, because it was pretty difficult. We didn't know if we could do it, if it was going to be a disaster or whatever.

There was a lot of debate because we'd never made living creatures. We've done a lot of sort of stylized things like creatures of the water or made out of this liquid metal like in Terminator 2. But the big question is, could we make something come to life? Could it breathe and sweat and be believable? as a living creature. You can make an object look like it's chrome or make it look like plastic. I looked at all the footage of computer graphics work that have been done with dinosaurs and with animals of any type.

And there wasn't anything that the demon came close to looking real. So we started some investigating to see if we could do it. And initially all we did was build things out of bones just to give them an example of how it could move and the dynamism. The first test was he was going to create a herd of rampaging galomimimus. It was going to look like a museum of natural history run amok. with all these skeletons jumping off their steel supports and running through a field, which is all the first test was.

But I'll never forget the time that Dennis brought the first test down. The smooth outside of looking at National Geographic documentaries. It's really cool, too. You watch the test, and it's just like, I don't know. This is such a crazy turning point for what was possible. But even with this test, Spielberg was understandably still wary of using almost all CGI on the full-sized dinosaurs. So also because, like, they keep bringing up the water tendril in the abyss.

That is not a thing that exists in nature, right? Same thing with T2. It's, it's like a totally made-up thing that they can make up the way that it moves. That's not the case with this. We have some idea of how these things might move, right? Well, and I also think to the credit of Spielberg and everyone who's involved at ILM making this movie, obviously, you know, we don't, you know, there's so. little that we actually do know about dinosaurs and a lot of it is just extrapolating like

right you know so i think in a way that really you know and i'm just thinking about this now in this way that probably really helped make it believable for for us when we were kids and for everyone watching it was like okay they're birds reptiles let's find those analogs in modern animals and so regardless if that's actually what dinosaurs were like we're seeing relatable real-world animal actions that the, you know, there's a lot of people who talk about like, you know, looking at cats, you know, when they're animating other, like, fictional creatures, like, toothless and how to train your dragon and stuff where it's like, we're seeing these truths in this made up, well, I mean, not the dinosaurs are made up, but like in this made up fictional thing on screen, there's

things that are real about it. So we're, it's allowing our brain to buy into it in a way. Which is, that's always like the big trick was. computer-generated imagery in general, is just is it obeying the things that you understand to be true about the world in terms of physics and weight and interactivity? And obviously, motion is the biggest component of that. You know, our brains are so good at noticing

when something looks awry in the environment and in the way that something interacts with the environment. And it's true, like, not only as Lizzie's saying, this is the equivalent of going from Nintendo, you know, to PlayStation 4 in a way, You know what I mean? In terms of like they're making such a leap all of the sudden in one generation, in one movie. And then they're also doing it not with something that we have a conception of,

but we have enough of a conception of it that we're going to know if it's wrong, but not enough to know what is right. So they're really taking a jump into the unknown in a pretty amazing way. Well, and also the sort of the assist, going back to the basketball metaphors. But like there are so many other things. sound, you know, Gary Reidstrom's, you know, incredible, you know, game-changing work. Yeah, we'll get to it. And, you know, and again, like I was saying before, like the, like you were saying, Chris,

about, you know, real-world things. And, you know, the fact that, you know, the amount of CGI actually is very low in this movie. There's so many things that when we think about movies now and how much, you know, CGI is overdone and stuff, it's because it's like almost like laying it bare. And so it's opening it up to more scrutiny where Spielberg was like, smartly was, like, very protective of what CGI was actually in this movie. And so we almost take it for granted how much help the CGI actually had. That's, I think that is why, and I've always felt this way,

that's why this movie looks so good after 30 years, is that they do not completely rely on CGI. And Stephen, you hit on this, but one of my favorite things I learned in researching this was that when Spielberg watched the test with Phil Tippett next to him, Phil turned to him and said, I think I'm extinct, which Spielberg then ends up giving to Malcolm in the movie. Grant says, I think I'm out of a job. Malcolm says, don't you mean extinct? But the thing that I loved so much about this is that Phil Tippett doesn't bail. He doesn't give up. He wasn't like, oh, I'm out of a job and he left. He was like, all right, I'm going to turn myself into the motion director for the animators and figure out how to then connect my animators with ILM. And that is why this is why this is. looks so good is because they were so focused on the movement.

So let's get to filming. This filmed on Kauai. I think most people know that, but like not all of it. So much less was on location than I realized. They only shoot for about three weeks on location in Kauai. And then they ended up heading back to California for the desert scene and then soundstages for anything, like almost anything that involved the dinosaur, like the T-Rex paddock, all of it, it is inside. And that was very interesting.

The first day of shooting at all was the Triceratops. This is entirely practical. You can see this on the Stan Winston School YouTube page. It made me cry. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. And I, you know, what a magical thing for the actors to have, to walk onto the set and see that. Because it looks real. It looks real with just like a shitty camera pointed at it. Um, it is basically the way it was made, uh, on the side that you can't see, there's a giant pit dug underneath it. And there is one guy inside who's working the tail. And then there's a couple of people underneath it in the pit who are controlling all of the other cables. Um, and then someone with a radio outside controlling the eye, which I, it's like, it just looks amazing. Um, and they had a little microvesicle on the tongue, the thing that Laura Dern pops. They had to run in and read, fill it every tape so that every take so Laura Dorn could come in and just like pop it again. And this was the only Stan Winston puppet that actually went to Hawaii.

Everything else was inside. Something else that the CGI did was that it allowed for more experimentation with all of these on location shots in a way that was completely different than anything they had ever done before. So like that shot of Stephen, what's the big,

what's the big ass dinosaur they see at the very beginning? Oh, brachiosaurus. Brachiosaurus. That shot where you see them look up at it, that was like in the moment thing that Spielberg was like, I want to try this shot and just do it like this. And because they were doing it this way, they could do that. It was fine. Yeah, that's really incredible. Yeah, I mean, it is, I mean, you know, I think, you know, when a lot of people talk about what their favorite scene from Jurassic Park is, I think that truly is, just that moment, you know, in the car, Ellie's holding her leave.

You know, what species of variforman is this? And, you know, Grant turns their head. And, you know, just the buildup for it is just perfect. I think it's my favorite shot in cinema, I think, you know, I would say. It's pretty, I would feel, I wouldn't feel bad saying that that's my favorite shot in all of movies ever. I never noticed how wonderful Richard Attenborough's performances in that scene, too. I think when I was younger, it kind of went over my head. But this time, just how subdued he is when he's next to Grant on the ground.

and Grant says, how did you do this? And he just says, like, I can show you. And it's like, it's so good. Well, he knows that he got him. He hooked light and sinker. Like, you know, this one, you know, pit stop before the park opens. It's like, he's just, he's like, hey, hey, I got him, you know? Yeah.

Well, and also, like, it's no accident. I don't think that Steven Spielberg cast a fellow filmmaker in this role as the, as the park creator. Richard Attenborough, if you don't know, is an extremely accomplished director. He had done Gandhi somewhat close to this. And I think was actually in retirement and got they pulled out of retirement for Jurassic Park. But there's definitely some, like, I wonder, I wonder if Steven Spielberg was like working through some inner demons of like things he had required of actors and people on set previously in terms of like, you know, what is the final product worth in this case was the park worth the people? that they lost. Yeah.

So, Stephen, you probably know this. But Chris, what do you think the hardest shot in the whole film was to capture? If you don't know this, Stephen, you can guess. Yeah, that's interesting. I am not sure what would be the hardest thing. It's certainly not what I expected. Yeah, actually, I don't know this. That's as interesting.

Like, to capture, meaning like just to film or? To film. Hardest shot in the movie to film. Hardest shot in the movie to film. I mean, is it the water in the cup? Yes, how did you get it? Because I know that they had trouble doing that, but I didn't realize it was the hardest shot.

I mean... They said it was the hardest shot in the film. It's so fascinating. It's literally just a close-up on that cup of water. Yeah, but to get it to shake the way you want it and at the timing that you want... Like, those shots, insert shots, as they're called, suck.

They're so frustrating. They, like, take forever, and everyone has to shut up, but nobody wants to because it's like a boring shot that nobody's actually interested in, but it's important. Yeah, I can see that. Well, so apparently this was just physically,

incredibly difficult to recreate. What happened was Spielberg was driving in his car, blasting earthwind and fire, and he saw his own reflection in the mirror, and it was vibrating from the base, and he was like, ooh, I want that to signal that the T-Rex is coming. So, you know, he's like, he asks Michael Lantieri, and to Spielberg, when he described it,

he was just like, yeah, I was just like, can you do this? And Michael was like, yeah, sure, it's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. And then poor Michael Lanteri is like running around calling everyone being like, how are we going to do this? He's calling physicists and sound engineers and like nothing is working. Nothing is creating those concentric rings. Finally at home, he's messing around with a guitar laying flat and he had a glass of water sitting on the guitar. And when he plucked the string, the water did exactly what they wanted it to do.

So, Stephen, do you know how they did this? Well, they tied a guitar string underneath the car. But now my mind is thinking, how has nobody ever made like a commemorative bass guitar that looks like the Ford Explorer? Yeah, exactly. You know, four strings and it's like, do. Make it. Like, that would be so cool. But yeah, that's so.

But now, but yeah, that is funny to think about that, you know, in that shot, there's just somebody laying under. Like, even the idea that they actually put it in a real car and did that versus like, I don't know, just like a bit chunk of set and some glass. I guess that would make it, that's more work than just, well, we already have this car. Let's just put a glass in there and then just put the camera in there. I still don't totally understand how they did it, but they ran a guitar string under the dashboard of the car so that someone who was laying underneath the car could pluck the string and it would give them what they did. Yeah, they're using the hollow dashboard as like a guitar body and they're plucking out. It's pretty cool. So cool.

It's amazing. Well, let's get to the Raptor suits, which probably my favorite part of this entire process was watching these full-grown men cram themselves into the raptor suit. So they could only be in these for about 15 minutes at a time because the position was like so uncomfortable. And if you watch, I mean, there's no way. I have seen these and like them in Raptor practice is so absurd. It's amazing.

Yeah. This will be very brief, but I just love this so much. So you may notice a lot of the times with the raptors that you're not seeing full body. that's because my understanding is a lot of the Raptors are people. Is that sort of right? Yeah, I used to know like the percentage of like, I mean, and I'm sure there's people can point out every shot and what is what. But yeah, I mean, there's different versions.

There's, you know, bottom half. There's, you know, where the in the kitchen, there's like bottom rigs like that that are like hungover. John Rosengrant who worked on the movie, you know, there's shots of him like wearing, you know, with the legs. And, you know, if you look at behind the scenes books, there's like people crammed in, you know, in weird ways and stuff. But, you know, like all movies, there's, you know, there's not like, there's not

always necessarily one full body thing. There's different parts and pieces. And it's like, yeah, like, we're going to just have this part that's on camera be the focus. I was kind of shocked that things like that moment where they stand up in the kitchen and they start making the call to call the other raptors, that is a guy in a suit. Yeah. Stuff like that, that's where I'm just, my mind is blown by Stan Winston and his team.

Because like, I would never have guessed that that stuff is completely practical. You're not seeing any CGI. Well, it just feels so fluid. I mean, even if it was, even if it was just an animatronic, it would probably be too jerky, whereas like it's a mix of the two and it just feels so fluid. And when, you know, you really believe that that is a, it's just an alive creature in that moment. There's no. Yes. You can watch the footage on YouTube and even some of that is scary. Like when it starts to move. You know, nowadays, people, I think, are realizing you, even if you're replacing things with CGI, which happens in a lot of the new movies, you can still do some puppetry and some heads and things to at least like, you know, I mean, I don't know how to act, but acting is very hard. And I imagine if you are actually afraid of a real thing in front of you, you know, then it, it, part you're those.

secondary bodily things are just going to, you know, work and you're just going to think that you're really in the moment. Totally. Well, and you mentioned that, you know, something that's like that size and animatronic might be sort of shaky. Let's talk about the T-Rex because they had some problems with the T-Rex. It was 9,000 pounds and 40 feet long. Wow.

I could not believe how many shots of the T-Rex that you see are. a puppet in this. A lot. Like, anytime you're seeing just its head, a lot of that sequence where it's around the car, that is a puppet. Yeah. That blew my mind. So from very early on, Stan Winston was explicitly like, the T-Rex cannot get wet. It is robotic. It's electronic. But we've all seen this scene. It's wet. It's soaking wet. It's very wet. The way they designed the T-Rex to move was based on her. weight. By the way, Stan Winston kept saying his weight, but as we all know, this T-Rex in this film was a she. So as it's raining, the skin is soaking up all of the water,

and it's completely changing the weight and therefore the movement of the T-Rex. So it would start shaking. They'd have to stop everything and dry her off. She also almost ate a crew member. Stephen, do you know this story? I know, I think it was, is it, was it where somebody was like trying to fix something in its mouth and it closed on? on them? They were finishing, gluing all of the skin onto it, and the only way that they could, because it's so enormous, the only way that they could get the middle part of it was to physically climb all the way into its belly. So, you know, the whole thing is made up of all these like hydraulics and plates, like metal plates and stuff inside of it. So this guy gets in it and they're like,

whatever you do, don't unplug it, because it has to stay in this position exactly as he's gluing all of the skin on. But somebody, it's unclear if somebody, like, tripped on the cable or some PA was like, launch break and just unplugged the T-Rex. But it started to collapse, basically, with him in it. And fortunately, he was able to kind of, like, curl up in a tiny little ball and not get smushed. But, like, I cannot imagine how terrifying that would have been.

Hey, that's kind of like when the car falls, you know, they stop perfectly, Tim and Grant, you know, and it falls around them. Yes, exactly. I also had never noticed that you can see the tracks that the car is on when you're watching the vines. There's like two vines that are behind it. I mean, barely, barely. But the T-Rex paddock sequence is an incredible combination of Stan Winston's robotics, like we said, and then some CGI. The full shots of the T-Rex are CGI, which is amazing. You cannot tell the difference. So it actually ends up looking so good that Spielberg decides to change the end of the movie. Originally, the ending was Grant killing one of the raptors and the other one kind of getting stuck in the bones and then just dying when it fell to the ground. But Spielberg loved the way the T-Rex looked and he was like, everyone's going to be so mad at me

if I don't bring her back for her shining moment at the end. So he changed it. And the ending with the T-Rex is entirely CGI. Yeah, I mean, it just feels like a very different movie because, you know, another animal helps out with the climax. It's not just the humans defeating the raptors. It's, yeah, this tag team approach. And I think it just changes the dynamic and vibe of this movie.

I mean, I think it works better because so much of Jurassic Park is the tension between loving these animals and being afraid of them. And so I think I think Spielberg was, you know, Spielberg is always somebody who always is really good about finishing films early. And, you know, other than Jaws, obviously, which is, you know, is the, but you know. Not his fault. Yeah, yeah. But you think about War of the Worlds. some other movies that he's done where he's very under budget or he does things early and stuff like that.

And Spielberg doesn't pivot for no reason, you know? No. Also, he finished shooting this early. He just crushed it every time. So one little hiccup that they had on set while they were shooting was September 11th, 1992. There was a Category 4 hurricane that hit Hawaii. They did not realize the storm was going to hit, which sounds kind of crazy, except you have to

remember, like, nobody has cell phones. They're not, like, looking constantly. So they didn't know that it was going to be a direct hit, basically. Remember the footage of the waves crashing in super high winds as the island is being evacuated in the movie? Some bonkers camera person was like, oh, it's a real hurricane? Fantastic. I'm going to go out and capture it myself.

So that is real footage of Hurricane Eniki that they caught just before it made landfall. But all of the cast and crew had to, like, shelter in place in their hotel. I think it was very scary. Like Laura Dern has talked about this. She was like, it was a really, it was a really terrifying thing. They also made T-shirts for the crew, casting crew that said, like, I survived this hurricane. But it is big. Like, it caused something like $3.1 billion in damage to the island.

It was one of the worst natural disasters in Hawaii's history. Because of this, not all of it is filmed on Kauai. I think the wide shots of Grant and the kids are actually. actually on Oahu because they ended up having to move. But it did not delay production too much, which was great because it hit very late in the process. But it did rob us of one scene. One actor never got to go to Hawaii, which is Samuel L. Jackson. While you're watching Jurassic Park, you may wonder why Arnold, his character, what's this

for character's first name? In the book, it's John Arnold, and then they, in the movies, it's Ray Arnold. You may notice that we don't get to see his character die. We get the arm that falls on Laura Dern, obviously, and you understand that he's dead. But I always thought that was just like a very clever choice. It was a clever choice, but they also had no choice. They did not have time to shoot his entire death scene. He was set to go to Hawaii for it.

It was a whole thing. There's a lot of speculation that that's why when Laura Dern is running out of that building, she has the big flashlight caught around her leg and she's limping. it's because she tripped over part of his body and there was like a whole sequence there that never made sense because they didn't have the death scene in. So I do wonder what that scene would have looked like.

I mean, I think we have sort of an idea from the book. But so apparently the only person who slept through the storm was Sir Richard Attenborough. When they asked how that was possible, he was like, I lived through the London Blitz in World War II. This was nothing. Wow. He was fine.

They finished shooting 12 days. ahead of schedule. Twelve days. I thought maybe it was like a week. But, yeah, 12. That's so far ahead of schedule. Yes. It's like two business day weeks.

Yeah. Spielberg does not run late. So very, very minimal onset injuries by what went wrong standards. There was the aforementioned T-Rex almost eating a crew member. And then Sam Neal did drop a little phosphorus from the flare on his arm. And it took a chunk out. And that's it. They're all fine.

That's a big difference from what we're used to talking about. So a couple more things here. You may have noticed that Spielberg had another masterpiece come out this exact same year, 1993, which was Schindler's List. That blew my mind. Chris, do you know about this? I knew that Schindler's List released the same year. I actually don't know the details. I assumed it's because he had enough time with the Jurassic Park, CGI to shoot another movie.

But this is crazy. So the deal was that he could only make Schindler's list if he had made Jurassic Park first. Sid Scheinberg at Universal told him, like, you can make your pet project, basically, after you've made Jurassic Park. Because remember, Jurassic Park was a guaranteed moneymaker. This was like, the book had already been a huge hit, you know, everything. Well, and it's, and, you know, during the scene in the projector room, you see concept art for, like a river thing, which is concept art for the Jurassic Park ride at Universal. So they were already planning the Jurassic Park ride at Universal that comes out in 96.

And you see concept art for it in the Jurassic Park movie. That is the thing that I was, like, as an adult, I didn't know that fact until, you know, like maybe a few years ago. And it was just like, wow, this is, you know, this was like, this was going to be a hit, no matter what. Yeah, they knew for sure. But Spielberg was up against actually time constraints on Schindler's list. because he could not miss the winter in Poland.

It was critically important that they have that while they were shooting that. So there was like a crazy amount of overlap between the two productions. He was working on them almost simultaneously for a large portion of time. So Spielberg effectively hands over post-production to someone who we see get a special thank you in the credits. And I should say, he hands over a lot of the kind of addition of VFX shots to this person. Spielberg had locked the cut prior to leaving for Poland and did it very quickly, by the way, which is like amazing when you think about how good Jurassic Park is. But he hands over a lot of the post-production VFX supervision to George Lucas.

Okay, but should be clear, that is what I said, which is he left because he had time with VFX to go shoot. Schindler's List because he did the same thing was after Ready Player 1 and he went and shot the post and did it because he had a tight window there where he could also go shoot another movie The Man's a Maniac. That's just, that's so much trust

because imagine like... Yeah, it's George Lucas, though, if you're going to leave it with somebody. True, true, but it's just that idea of like he's in Poland shooting Schindler's list all day and then maybe like a couple times a week he's getting like, I don't know,

a collection of beta tapes, or something mailed over to Europe to watch visual effects dailies? It's worse than that. So what he said about this was, quote, when I finally started shooting in Poland, I had to go home about two or three times a week to get on a very crude satellite feed to Northern California to be able to approve T-Rex shots.

And it built a tremendous amount of resentment and anger that I had to do this, that I had to go from the emotional weight of Schindler's list to dinosaurs chasing jeeps. And all I could express was how angry that made me at the time. I was grateful later in June, though, but until then, it was a burden. I cannot imagine to go from one of the most, like, heart-wrenching movies ever made to a fucking dinosaur. Yeah, the cognitive dissonance there.

It's like, yeah, you can make both things, but to have to, like, work on them at the same time feels a little, like, yeah, that's a lot. Well, I mean, there's a reason why he, like, almost quit filmmaking after these two movies. Like, it nearly It just took everything out of him. Well, he took a four-year break until, you know, Amistad and Lost World and he tried to do it again. Exactly.

Stevie Baby, come on. Just one movie a year. Take a break. Take a breather. Take a vacation. He can't. They added over 50 CGI shots to the film, but I want to be clear,

in the context of what we're talking about, that might sound like a big number. But then you need to look at something like the Rings of Power. That had close to 9,000, 500 VFX shots in it. Yeah, there's nothing that, like, all movies now have, I mean, all movies now have color grading and stuff that, you know, really impacts how things look.

But like, yeah, no, every movie has some visual effect, you know, I, you know, when I first moved to LA, I worked in motion graphics and, you know, we do beauty passes and, you know, stuff like that where it's like, yeah, everything's touched up. You know, Phantom Menace has one shot that has no CGI in it, and it's just a close-up of a great with smoke coming out. You know, everything is touched by visual effects now, whether it's CGI or compositing or cleanup or beauty or, you know, any of that stuff. Totally. That's just crazy, though, to me that in 30 years, it went from 50 to 9,500.

Yeah. Because Phil Tippett's team was used to animating with real puppets, they started struggling with the computer animation that was involved in this. So they built something called a DID, aka a dinosaur input device, that was a dinosaur. skeleton that would input the physical movements they made with it into their computer. The difficulty of a handheld shot with this kind of CGI is also enormous, but they did it. And that's part of why this looks so good. If you remember the scene where all the little, are those gallomimus that are running. Yeah, the galamimuses.

When they're running at them, and if you look at the way it's shot, it's handheld. Yeah, it's a fully shaky runs. Yeah. No, and I will say to go back to when I worked in motion graphics, and that's, thing. Trackers are like, I mean, and I'm sure it's still the same today, even because that was like 10 years ago. But like people who know how to track really well, that's what makes it feel like it's

really in the environment. And so I feel like tracking is a very invaluable skill even today. Does that add up, Chris, to your experience? I'm sure it is. It is largely computer driven now. You have to know what to do, but it's the algorithms that can track motion. And now they put obviously devices on cameras that. can actually track the motion while they're filming.

And so you have that data. What I was going to say is if you guys want to know more about any of this, there's a great YouTube channel called Corridor Crew. It's awesome. And my favorite shot of the whole movie is when the T-Rex rotates the car with his nose in like the medium-wide shot and when the Jeep is flipped over. And that's actually a CGI Jeep. And I didn't know that they had built a CGI Jeep for this movie.

And it looks perfect. Like it's so well. It's so seamless. And because I just thought they were trying to make a series. CGI dinosaur interact with a real car, but they actually built a CGI Jeep as well, which was really cool. So anyway, go check up more a quarter crew. They talk a lot about all this stuff. Speaking of the Jeep real quick, Stephen, I don't know this. I didn't really come across it too much, but do you know why, you know, the classic sort of a blooper that everybody calls out on Jurassic Park

is that when the T-Rex shows up, the ground is level to the Jeep. And then when they end up coming back, it's like a hundred foot drop down to the tree. Do you know if there's any like reason behind them? No, well, yeah, yeah. This is like, you know, every franchiser, every, you know, community has their sort of, I don't know what the right word for it is, but that the pillar of the thing that people like to argue about over and over again, it's this, it's this thing because, you know, I think Spielberg and a lot of filmmakers pre-d-d-frame watching stuff, you know, it's movie magic.

And, you know, you can see. the strings on the Dolophosaurus that pull out the thing. You know, you can, a lot of those blooper, you know, exists in the movie. And so, but this is a thing that people have just like, you know, jumped through hoops, you know, in million different ways to try and figure out, like. To be really clear, yeah, it's the gerat, the Tyrannosaurus Rex steps, he breaks through the fence, stepping from his paddock across, like, a concrete barrier. Her paddock across a concrete barrier to attack our heroes.

And then as the Jeep is pushed over the edge with the heroes, it seems, and Stephen maybe you'll correct me, it seems as if it's the same area that the T-Rex just stepped from, except now there's nowhere to step to. It's a multi-hundred foot drop down to nothing. Yeah. Yeah. So, and if you just Google this, you will find, like, tons of people, you know, Reddit, right, you know, all that kind of stuff. But yeah, essentially, where the T-Rex steps out from is level, you know, with the ground on the other side where our heroes are. But it eventually slopes down. So it's almost like they're right at the apex of like a slope. So the, so Rexy or Roberta, however you want to call her.

She's Roberta, I think, in the storyboards. But eventually, like pushes that car so that it's now over a part of the paddock where it is a 50-foot drop or whatever. So essentially people have drawn these like schematic of like there's a little slope and you know all that kind of stuff. So what you're saying is this is not a continuity error. This is they figured it out. Well, that's how people have explained it.

And I think people have talked to Phil Tippett maybe over the years. Or, you know, I think a lot of people who worked on the movie have been asked about this. But, you know, I think at the end of the end of the end. Yeah, I could care less. Oh, I don't care at all. on the back of a pelican. Like, that sounds like, yeah, exactly, yeah.

But yeah, so people have drawn tons of, and I think actually, I wish I had it on me, I think there is even maybe a drawing in a making of book where it actually does show. It's like, there's a lot of back and forth about this. At this point now, it's like, I don't even know what the real answer is anymore, but it's just, it is to me, like,

the dinosaurs having feathers and the velociraptor with the right size, and then this sort of continuity error thing are like the two biggest, like, most talked about Easter egg issue, science trivia things that people talk about with Jurassic Park. Well, I had to ask because I knew it's high on people's list. No, it's worth talking about. Totally. So let's talk very briefly about the sound because I love the dinosaur sounds in this movie.

The sounds that they heard on set, obviously, were not the sounds that you hear in the film. So, Chris, can you briefly play what they did hear on set, which was Stephen Spielberg in a megaphone, making dinosaur noises that he believed would inspire their acting. All right, here we go. During these shots, Spielberg provided his own brand of motivation for the actors as they imagined the dinosaurs below. All right. Steven Spielberg bedroom noises.

Here we go. Yeah, I mean, I don't know that that would help me. Sam Neal said it was just very hard not to laugh when he was doing that, but that was during the first time they see the raptor paddock when they're feeding it. But so Gary Rydstrom, who you mentioned, was the sound designer. And, of course, with the movement, they're working with some clues from bones and, you know, things that we know. With sound, they have absolutely fuck all. They've got nothing.

They don't know what these things sound like. So I love that he didn't want to just use library recordings of animals because all of these things, like Stephen mentioned this a little bit earlier. But, for example, Dilaphasaurus is a mixture of swan calls, hawk, rattlesnake, howler monkey. like he's just layering these animals. But he didn't want to use library recordings because he didn't want it to be a sound. Anyone could possibly have heard before. So he made his like long-suffering assistant go out and record all of the sounds and more they possibly need. And there's footage of this man just walking around like a donkey paddock just slowly and sadly like recording any noise he can get.

He's like in a bunch of birds just like, you know, holding up a microphone. I don't know. That sounds, I mean, again, as a sound person, that just to me just sounds like the best day ever, you know. I don't know. I love all of that world. And that was very, I mean, I didn't think I would necessarily get into sound growing

up. But, I mean, Gary Radstrom definitely is a figure who I look up to and admire. And I love his work on this movie, obviously. Totally. It's amazing. It just, that cracked me up so much, the idea of being like, nope, I need you to go out and actually get the sound of a walrus. Well, they go to, I can't remember the name.

It's in San Francisco or where the SeaWorld was and everything like that. Like, I have a lot of friends you grew up going there. And, you know, they would just, they just went to the zoo and just were like, hey, buddy, can I get that, you know, sound? Yeah. Let me just get inside the paddock here. There's also, I think what qualifies is a very early deep fake in this movie, which is that the shot where Lex falls through the ceiling. This is always the shot that scared me the most. It still scared me when I watched it at 33 years old,

but where she looks up at the camera, as you see the dinosaur, the Blossaraptor, just about to get her foot. It's actually not Ariana Richards doing that. It's a stunt woman, but she looks right at the camera, and it's Ariana Richards' face, so I always thought it was her.

That's because they replaced her face for that one moment. They went in and did an OG deepfake on this and then kept that shot, which I love that they weren't like, oh, well, it's just not use that shot. Let's cut around it. They were like, no, let's use it and paste this child's face on this full-grown lady. Her arms are ripped.

That's your first clue that it's not Ariana is, if you look, that lady is jacked. Yeah. It is funny. Yeah, there's certain things in this movie, again, like the paddock example that we just talked about, where, you know, obviously having watched this movie, like, hundreds of times, you do notice these things, but certain stuff just don't, you know, like the CGI shot of the actual upside-down car. Like that's something I've never really noticed. We'll watch.

Like it never sticks out to me. And same thing with Lex's face. Like it's never a moment where I'm like, no. I would have to stop and like say, hey, I'm going to pay attention to this moment and see it. That never sticks out to me. There's just so many moments like that in this movie where you're just, it's so kinetic and full of life that you're never really sitting back and like questioning it or anything. Yeah. So Jurassic Park pulled in more than $47 million.

It's opening weekend on a budget of around 63 million, so it's doing great. It had a total worldwide gross of $978 million for just this movie. And Spielberg, I don't know if he still holds this, but at one point, I think he held the record for the most amount of money earned by a director for the, I think the points he had on the back end of this. He took home around $250 million on this movie. Wow. What? Yeah. Yeah. He cleaned up on Jurassic Park.

25% of gross profits internationally? I don't know. That's what it said. I saw it. That's what it being the internet told me was that a bunch of places said he made like 250 million. That doesn't sound right. I'm just going to throw a little bit of skepticism at that number for our audience. Just because that's, that would be 25% of gross profit seems. extremely high. Maybe it's possible. I would guess that number

maybe includes as a franchise what Steven Spielberg made. Because he would continue to make money off of the sequels and then home video

and all the way through the Jurassic World franchise. He's an executive producer, etc. So that would be my guess. But maybe. I don't know. I don't know.

It said he held a world record for it at some point. I don't know if that has and surpassed by Jimmy C. At some point, I'd imagine it has. But regardless, he made a lot of money on this movie. And good for him, he should have. The cultural impact of Jurassic Park is kind of not even measurable.

There's a lot of people that had inspired to really get back into the world of fantasy and sci-fi, a major one being Peter Jackson, that this was really the inspiration for him to begin even considering that he could do. Lord of the Rings the way that he wanted to be able to do it. I don't think I knew that, which is funny, because Lord of the Rings is probably the other, that was another big part of my personality in high school was Lord of the Rings. I had taken a break from Jurassic Park because JP3 was JP3, even though I have a lot of love for it now. Yeah, that's fascinating.

I actually didn't know that. That's really cool. Yeah. Well, don't worry. I saw the Fellowship of the Ring 13 times in theaters, so I was pretty cool. And also a big fan. It's weird that I was the coolest person on this podcast in high school. whatever

whatever that's another one that I think we will be covering shortly as well because a lot went wrong on that one but I'm glad he made it one that I guess maybe we might not be so glad drew inspiration from this

is George Lucas who started working on the Star Wars prequels based on this boy if these kids like the science in this movie they're going to love the intergalactic politics of the Trade Federation yeah Oh, no. Middiclorians is just Jedi DNA.

Exactly. Yeah. Well, that brings us to the end of Jurassic Park and what went wrong, which pretty much everything that went wrong, they just turned into a went right on this. Yeah. So, you know, outside of a hurricane. It is what he does, but, like, particularly on this. Even the hurricane, they got that great shot of the island being evacuated.

That's true. They pulled it off. So that leads us to the question we always ask at the end of these episodes, which is what went right? Steven, as our guest, you, and as the person I can safely say who knows more about Jurassic Park than anyone I've ever met knows about anything, please tell us than anything ever. One thing that what you think went most right on this project. Well, I mean, I was going to say, it's about the friends who made along the way. And I just, I mean, in my head, I don't know why I went personal because, I mean, you know, I just think Jurassic Park. has been such a big thing in my life,

and I'm just very thankful that it exists because, you know, some of my best friends I've made because of this movie. So I don't know if that's the sappier, not specifically to the movie example, but that's what I think of the most when I think about what went right. But also, I mean, again, we got a renewed interest in dinosaurs.

And, you know, people... You know, dinosaurs are a gateway drug to being interested in science. And I really do believe, you know, based on people that I know because on my Jurassic Park podcast, I also interview scientists and paleontologists and other people in the community. And I think what went right is that a lot of people got inspired to get into science and paleontology because of this movie. And that's what other movie with a job makes people want to do that job. And whether it is becoming a paleontologist or a scientist or a lot of people talk about, like you just said,

Peter Jackson who want to get into or, you know, making movies. Like, what a powerful thing that this movie inspired people to want to either make things or to become scientists. Like, that is awesome, invaluable. I love that. Also, Twister made people want to be stormchasers. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. For me, I'm going to say what went right is the movie's sense of humor, which is, I think,

drastically underrated, but one of the reasons I think the movie works so well is everyone is like there's so many good just dry deliveries throughout this movie that even just like when you got to go. Like the just there are so many great just understated. They don't throw the jokes at you, but they're very good and they come at the right moments to break the tension. And I think Spielberg's obviously great at that. So I will call out Jurassic Park has a great sense of humor. And I do think that balancing that is tricky, and the reason, in my opinion, some of the other Jurassic movies haven't worked as well has been maybe around balancing that, you know, humor and adventure with the thrills and the scares of the dinosaurs.

Well, it's funny that you say that. I just wanted to quickly say that, you know, we talk about this movie holding up as far as visual effects and things like that. But I would say the humor is actually, now that you say that, really holds up. I mean, I think we live in a, you know, a true crime era. Not that this movie is like a dark comedy or anything, but like laughing. Laughing as a fear response or laughing in the face of danger, I think, I laugh at danger. Like, I think that kind of holds up instead of being like, you be kai, you know, like that kind of stuff would age more terribly. Like being ironic in the face of danger or like you're pretending to not be afraid.

I think the idea of like embracing that fear in a funny way. No one wants to be the hero, which is what's so fun about it. like when the kids are trapped in the car, they're kind of looking at each other like, uh, neither of us are parents? Like, what are we doing?

Yeah, yeah. And it's a very human, very fun reaction. And it's all, and it's done well the way they set it up. The fact that they get, you know,

Ellie out of there and it's just Malcolm and Grant that is like, it's, it's, they set up the stakes and the human dynamics really well throughout the movie so that you, you do always get the jokes at the right time and they're based on the characters. Yeah. And again,

it's not like somebody doing something absurd. or cracking wise. Exactly. One-liners in the face of death. So I'll go with that. Well, weirdly, Ian Malcolm does have a lot of one-liners, but he pulls the, Jeff Goldblum pulls them off so well that you're right. They do just fit into everything.

Well, because he seems more comfortable with death because of the chaos theory thing than the rest of them maybe. Yeah. And I should mention, the book is like subdivided by chapters on chaos, chaos theory that, like, as a child, I just would skip through as fast as possible. So I appreciated that you have Jeff Goldblum. delivering that exposition in a fun way. Makes it digestible, yeah.

Very digestible. Always looking for our future ex-Mrs. Malcolm. Perhaps a parallel to Michael Crichton as well. Who knows? Had a lot of wives. My what went right, I would say, is the most inspiring thing for me

in researching this was the kind of the Phil Tippett conversation and the fact that he did not bail when it became clear that they were going to completely change the way that they were doing all the dinosaurs in this and that he made it exponentially better because he stuck around and he made sure that the movement looked right and that his animators learned an entirely new art form and changed the art form.

So to me, this was just really, this is far more groundbreaking than I realized. And it's just, it looks amazing. And put more practical stuff in your movies. I know it's expensive and the T-Rex could eat your crew member, but like, put it in. Hey, little danger helps, you know. He was fine. He was traumatized, but he was fine. But that's my request to filmmakers.

A little more practical. Well, Stephen, thank you so, so much for joining us. This was amazing. This was such a blast. It's always fun to go back and revisit this movie because it is where it started at all. And, you know, the other things wouldn't be here without it. And, you know, it really does just, like, it just inspires a lot, I think, you know, inside the movie and outside as well. Is there anything that you would like to plug or send listeners to?

I mean, just listen to See Jurassic, right? we're picking up again, you know, there's interviews with paleontologists and scientists as well as people who worked on the movies and just people getting in the weeds about it and, you know, people who you don't think would talk about Jurassic Park who maybe have a fascination with it. So we're there for all types. There's no, every way to watch Jurassic Park is the right way. So that's why it's called See Jurassic Right. Well, thank you again.

This has been a joy. And thank you to Steven Spielberg and Jurassic Park. delight. Thanks, everybody. Thanks again to Stephen Ray at Morris for joining us. Listen to C. Jurassic Wright. Listen to the podcast as well, I should say. Pet your cats. And as always, leave us a rating and review. If you have not, we do have a Patreon up. And now we have to do our patron call out, Lizzie. Yes. To our first. Full stop. Full stop. Favorite podcast, full stop. That's the fifth level. Lizzie, would you like to reveal the name?

Yes, I would. Thank you very, very much to Soman Chenani, who is, as Chris said, our first bull stop supporter. Hey! If you don't know who Soman is, he's not just our patron. He also is the author of the School for Good and Evil series, which is a massively successful Y.A. series. Thank you very sincerely from the bottom of my heart.

Your support means so much. We will see you guys in two weeks. for the next episode of What Went Wrong. Bye. Go to patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, video content, and more. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing music by David Bowman with cover art from Uthano Uos.