The Lost Boys ('87) vs. Fright Night ('85): Battle of the 80s Vampire Movies Part 1

<v Speaker 1>Welcome everybody to this surly you came to be Serious
<v Speaker 1>the podcast for real?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, d If you try to stop me or vamp
<v Speaker 2>out in any way, I will stake you without even
<v Speaker 2>thinking twice about it.
<v Speaker 3>Last five, Hello everybody, and welcome to the Surely you
<v Speaker 3>Can't Be Serious podcast Blame Boys.
<v Speaker 1>With your co hosts James D.
<v Speaker 2>Graves and Jason Collivin.
<v Speaker 1>All right, everybody, welcome to the Halloween edition of the
<v Speaker 1>Surly you Can't Be Serious Podcasts. We are here tonight
<v Speaker 1>and next week. Comparing Fright Night nineteen eighty five and
<v Speaker 1>The Lost Boys nineteen eighty seven. Super jazzed to be
<v Speaker 1>talking about these movies, Jason, what do you think? Man
<v Speaker 1>oh Man?
<v Speaker 2>Completely fired up? Love these movies. I saw one. I
<v Speaker 2>saw Lost Boys in the movie theater definitely, and Fridy
<v Speaker 2>Night I caught up on HBO, I think and watched
<v Speaker 2>it a bunch. Love them both. Though, very excited to
<v Speaker 2>be talking about these what about you?
<v Speaker 1>Super excited to talk about these as well? Because I
<v Speaker 1>was like nine and eleven when these movies came out.
<v Speaker 1>I wasn't seeing them in the theater, but you know,
<v Speaker 1>as soon as the folks are away, I was pulling
<v Speaker 1>them up on the satellite.
<v Speaker 2>The gigantic satellite dish in the back of Yees, it's.
<v Speaker 1>The gigantic satellite dish that I had to go out
<v Speaker 1>and hand crank to a notch inside of a steel pole.
<v Speaker 2>Huh.
<v Speaker 1>But I'm pretty sure through some glitchy kind of snow,
<v Speaker 1>I caught both of these movies.
<v Speaker 2>These movies are great because they combine not horror, but
<v Speaker 2>you know, sort of thrilling stories with comedy and a
<v Speaker 2>sense of style and scares. For sure, that's just a
<v Speaker 2>great combination.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, they had kind of resurrected the vampire movie, which
<v Speaker 1>had become a mockery in the early eighties. You had
<v Speaker 1>Once Bitten and Love at First Bite and several other
<v Speaker 1>just kind of cheesy vampire movies that were coming out,
<v Speaker 1>and these two movies made vampires cool again.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. I don't know if you remember this movie, but
<v Speaker 2>there was a movie called The Hunger that starred Susan Sarandon.
<v Speaker 2>It was actually the ex wife of Chris Sarandon, the
<v Speaker 2>head vampire from Fright Night.
<v Speaker 1>Right right, Yeah it was. It was not a good movie.
<v Speaker 2>No, it wasn't. Okay, awesome, let's get into it.
<v Speaker 1>Man, Yeah, let's jump in, all right. So these two movies,
<v Speaker 1>like we said, resurrected the vampire movie and made it
<v Speaker 1>cool again. They retained some of the comedic value that
<v Speaker 1>had come along, but they definitely made vampires scary and
<v Speaker 1>exciting again. The first of these movies to come out
<v Speaker 1>was Fright Night. So do you know the story behind
<v Speaker 1>how this movie came to be?
<v Speaker 2>Well, I've heard a little bit about Tom Holland, who
<v Speaker 2>wrote and directed this movie. He was working on a
<v Speaker 2>movie that you and I both love from our childhood
<v Speaker 2>called Cloak and Dagger.
<v Speaker 1>Yea.
<v Speaker 2>The story that I heard from that was that he
<v Speaker 2>was working on Cloak and Dagger and got the idea
<v Speaker 2>of sort of a horror movie fan becoming convinced that
<v Speaker 2>he was living next door to a vampire, and imagined
<v Speaker 2>it sort of as a Hitchcockian Rear Window type of story.
<v Speaker 2>What do you know about it?
<v Speaker 1>Yes, it is actually based kind of upon a movie
<v Speaker 1>from nineteen forty eight called The Window. Rear Window was
<v Speaker 1>based upon a short story called It Had to Be
<v Speaker 1>Murder by a guy named Cornell Walich. The Window, which
<v Speaker 1>is about a boy who sees the murder, is also
<v Speaker 1>based on a Cornell Woolwich book called The Boy Who
<v Speaker 1>Cried Murder, Okay, And what happens in the window is
<v Speaker 1>there's this boy who, you know, is constantly lying. He's
<v Speaker 1>a younger boy, maybe ten twelve something like that, constantly
<v Speaker 1>lying to people about what's going going on, creating tall tales.
<v Speaker 1>And one of these tales gets him in big trouble
<v Speaker 1>and he decides to or is forced to sleep out
<v Speaker 1>on the stoop of his apartment complex. And when that happens.
<v Speaker 1>The night that that happens, there's a murder by his
<v Speaker 1>neighbors downstairs, and so when he tries to tell everybody
<v Speaker 1>about it, no one will believe him because he's the
<v Speaker 1>boy who Cried Wolf, right, He's told all these tall tales.
<v Speaker 1>So while he's witnessed this murder, he's trying to convince people,
<v Speaker 1>and the murderers are trying to get him. So sounds
<v Speaker 1>pretty similar, pretty similar. That's pretty similar to Fright Night,
<v Speaker 1>and also pretty similar to Cloak and Dagger. It was
<v Speaker 1>the same type of deal. You know, boy who has
<v Speaker 1>this active imagination about action adventure sees this very action
<v Speaker 1>adventure kind of murder and nobody will believe him. Meanwhile,
<v Speaker 1>the murderers are trying to chase him down. All super
<v Speaker 1>similar and just you know, you know how my brain works,
<v Speaker 1>I'm always making these connections. The actor that portrayed the
<v Speaker 1>Boy in the Window back in nineteen forty eight, Bobby Driscoll.
<v Speaker 1>You know him if you saw him. He was the
<v Speaker 1>kid in Treasure Island. He was also in Song of
<v Speaker 1>the South. He's in a bunch of Disney movies. And
<v Speaker 1>he also was the voice of Peter Pan, which of
<v Speaker 1>course is one of the three inspirational things for the Lost.
<v Speaker 2>Boys, right the Lost Boy, Yeah, for sure.
<v Speaker 1>Sadly though, the other connection is he's this famous child
<v Speaker 1>actor who then gets hooked on drugs, falls out in Hollywood,
<v Speaker 1>nobody will put him in anything, and ultimately dies due
<v Speaker 1>to his drug addiction, which is sad almost identical connection
<v Speaker 1>to what happened to Corey Haim too.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yep, that is sad. Back to Fright Night and
<v Speaker 2>the genesis of Fright Night. So what you were saying
<v Speaker 2>about the boy who cries Wolf combined with Rear Window,
<v Speaker 2>combined with you know, old style vampire horror movie, he
<v Speaker 2>thought the idea was good, sort of had a genesis,
<v Speaker 2>but he didn't think it was enough to go on.
<v Speaker 2>His thought process was, okay, so what's he gonna do?
<v Speaker 2>I mean, who's he gonna tell? So he believes there's
<v Speaker 2>a vampire next door? Who am I gonna tell? And
<v Speaker 2>he couldn't quite solve that problem. So he's talking to
<v Speaker 2>one of his friends who was the head of the
<v Speaker 2>story department at Columbia Pictures, a guy named John Buyers,
<v Speaker 2>and he said, well, you know, what would you do
<v Speaker 2>if that would happen. John's like, I would tell Vincent Price.
<v Speaker 2>And he's like, yeah, you know, that's it. And at
<v Speaker 2>the time, I don't know if you may remember this,
<v Speaker 2>but I definitely remember. You know, Friday night, late at night,
<v Speaker 2>there was sort of on my local TV station or
<v Speaker 2>some cable channels, there were these horror movie marathons, and
<v Speaker 2>they would have these hosts that would sort of take
<v Speaker 2>you to commercial and stuff like that.
<v Speaker 1>Elvira.
<v Speaker 2>I watched Elvira.
<v Speaker 1>Elvira. Heck, yeah, I'm turning into that. Even if the
<v Speaker 1>movies are terrible, I'm still gonna watch her hand or
<v Speaker 1>two some.
<v Speaker 2>Elvira was awesome.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so Vincent Price had, you know, he had obviously
<v Speaker 1>been a huge horror guy back in the sixties and
<v Speaker 1>seventies and kind of this similar pattern. And also a
<v Speaker 1>guy who we know from Star Wars, Peter Cushing, right,
<v Speaker 1>which is how we get Peter Vincent as the character.
<v Speaker 1>You got Peter Cushing with Vincent Price, and both of
<v Speaker 1>those guys were in these some of them really pretty
<v Speaker 1>cheesy horror movies. But he fully wanted Vincent Price to
<v Speaker 1>come in and play the part of Peter Vincent. But
<v Speaker 1>Vincent Price was like, listen, I have been categorized as
<v Speaker 1>this horror guy. I don't want I'm not going to
<v Speaker 1>do those things anymore. Not, you know. Plus I'm old
<v Speaker 1>and I just don't want to do horror movies that morning.
<v Speaker 1>Plus Michael jack rap at the end of a song,
<v Speaker 1>I'm not going to do a horror movie.
<v Speaker 2>Michael Jackson has already screwed me out of all this money.
<v Speaker 2>I'm not interested in doing ay of that stuff anymore.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So, I mean, Peter Cushing plays Grandma of Tarkin, who
<v Speaker 2>is like second in command on the desk star in
<v Speaker 2>Star Wars.
<v Speaker 1>He not only kills Tattooini's he also kills vampires. You
<v Speaker 1>don't know how hard I found it signing the order
<v Speaker 1>to terminate your life. Yes, so Tom Holland. He had
<v Speaker 1>written several screenplays and had some that became movies. He
<v Speaker 1>had written Psycho two, which was originally supposed to be
<v Speaker 1>just like a straight to cable but what he thought
<v Speaker 1>to himself is, I've got to write a script good
<v Speaker 1>enough for Anthony Perkins to come on to play Norman
<v Speaker 1>Bates again. And then once Anthony Perkins was in, then
<v Speaker 1>they were like, oh, we're going to devote some time
<v Speaker 1>and money to this, and it was actually was a
<v Speaker 1>pretty well received sequel.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and it's good. I liked it.
<v Speaker 1>He also wrote Class of nineteen eighty four, which came
<v Speaker 1>out in eighty two, but was about the violent gangs
<v Speaker 1>in high school and had in it as one of
<v Speaker 1>the major parts Roddy McDowell as a teacher. He's the
<v Speaker 1>teacher that brings the gun to school. Right, Oh cool, okay,
<v Speaker 1>and so kind of on the success of those two movies,
<v Speaker 1>they had wanted somebody else to direct, but he was
<v Speaker 1>like the other movie that he had done that he
<v Speaker 1>had written was called Scream for Help, and he was
<v Speaker 1>not happy with the way that it came out. It
<v Speaker 1>didn't do very well, and so he was kind of
<v Speaker 1>emphatic about directing this one. Well, at the time, he
<v Speaker 1>had at least had he had done about like two
<v Speaker 1>hundred commercials directing. He'd done acting work. He was actually
<v Speaker 1>in The Incredible Hulk, which I was just like, Wow,
<v Speaker 1>he's like a karate guy in The Incredible Hulky. But
<v Speaker 1>he's like, you know, Nope'm not gonna let you do
<v Speaker 1>this unless I'm the director, which just meant basically that
<v Speaker 1>they said okay, but they devoted very little money and
<v Speaker 1>or attention to it.
<v Speaker 2>They were going to let him direct, but they weren't
<v Speaker 2>going to give a lot of time and attention and
<v Speaker 2>money to the project.
<v Speaker 1>Right, which, as it turned out, worked out very well
<v Speaker 1>for him because he basically ran the show once he
<v Speaker 1>was directing it. There weren't studio executives in there kind
<v Speaker 1>of picking a part what he was doing. They were
<v Speaker 1>all concerned with Perfect which had John Travolta and Jamie
<v Speaker 1>Lee Curtis, which I mean, if I was a betting
<v Speaker 1>man in nineteen eighty four eighty five, I'd been like, yeah, sure,
<v Speaker 1>that movie's definitely going to be a success. You're doing
<v Speaker 1>another vampire movie. That's nice, Okay, whatever.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I heard this story too, so perfect with John
<v Speaker 2>Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis. Yeah, and the slugger's wife, right,
<v Speaker 2>which was a Neil Simon story which I've seen some
<v Speaker 2>baseball movie Honey good and I love baseball. So hey,
<v Speaker 2>I was gonna mention one thing before we got rolling
<v Speaker 2>too far away. When we're talking about Elvira. Cassandra Peterson
<v Speaker 2>is the actress who portrays Elvira. Of course she wears
<v Speaker 2>a wig and all that stuff. Did you know she
<v Speaker 2>is in Pee Wee's Big Adventure. He goes to the
<v Speaker 2>biker bar and he's like, I'm trying to use the phone,
<v Speaker 2>and they all decide they're gonna kill him, right, and
<v Speaker 2>I say we can stab him and then we kill
<v Speaker 2>him and he says, ah, sir, we let him go.
<v Speaker 2>And there's a woman biker and she's like, I say,
<v Speaker 2>you give him to me and they all laugh. That's
<v Speaker 2>Cassandra Peterson Alvirah herself.
<v Speaker 1>I'm gonna pluge p already on all things Pee Wee.
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna plug Adventure every chance I get.
<v Speaker 1>Hey, everybody, thank you so much again for tuning in.
<v Speaker 1>We are overwhelmed by your support. I wish I could
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<v Speaker 1>So if you'd like to buy a cup of coffee,
<v Speaker 1>give us a little bit of support, please check out
<v Speaker 1>our Patreon page. So that's how Fright Night was conceived.
<v Speaker 1>And then a couple of years later, you've got Fright
<v Speaker 1>Night that's come out, you've got the Goonies that has
<v Speaker 1>come out, and so a couple of writers think, hey,
<v Speaker 1>that'd be a good idea. Let's combine the stories of
<v Speaker 1>Goonies and Peter Pan who stays young forever, with vampires
<v Speaker 1>because that's how they stay young forever, and so we're
<v Speaker 1>to write a Goonies style vampire movie. And their names
<v Speaker 1>were James Jeremiahs and Jan Fisher. And I was surprised
<v Speaker 1>to learn they were paid four hundred thousand dollars for
<v Speaker 1>the script. Four hundred thousand dollars. I looked at their history.
<v Speaker 1>She's got seven writing credits, three of which are Lost
<v Speaker 1>Boys related, and the other four are like an episode
<v Speaker 1>of Ironside and Golden Girls. I mean, she's got no
<v Speaker 1>other writing credits. He doesn't have any other writing credits
<v Speaker 1>other than this, And they get paid four hundred thousand
<v Speaker 1>dollars for a script that they ultimately completely changed.
<v Speaker 2>I know, man, it sounds odd. I mean, it only
<v Speaker 2>takes one pitch to head a home run.
<v Speaker 1>Right. So they had different guys that they had considered
<v Speaker 1>to make this movie, one of whom was Richard Donner, right.
<v Speaker 1>And Richard Donner, of course, had been the producer on
<v Speaker 1>The Goonies and Superman, oh yes, and the director of Superman.
<v Speaker 1>And yes, I mean he's a big hitter. I mean
<v Speaker 1>he's he's he's one of the one of the big
<v Speaker 1>directors of the eighties for sure. But ultimately who they
<v Speaker 1>ended up with was Joel Schumacher, who's got an interesting story.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I don't know if you've if you've looked
<v Speaker 1>into his story, but he started off involved in a
<v Speaker 1>lot of drugs, basically, but managed to get over his
<v Speaker 1>drug habit and got into the fashion world and worked
<v Speaker 1>at this department store. I believe it's called like Henry
<v Speaker 1>Baddell or something like that. Forgive me because it's like
<v Speaker 1>a New York City thing, Kenny Bloomingdale's basically. But he
<v Speaker 1>was a window dresser for this store. He'd put all
<v Speaker 1>the clothes on the mannequins out there in the storefront,
<v Speaker 1>and one day Woody Allen is walking by, he sees it,
<v Speaker 1>and he's like, who did this? He gets Joel Schumacher.
<v Speaker 1>He's like, I want you to come help me with
<v Speaker 1>costuming from a next movie. And suddenly he's in the
<v Speaker 1>movies making wee. He wrote the script for a movie
<v Speaker 1>called car Wash, and then in seventy nine, John Landis said,
<v Speaker 1>you guys are not willing to spend enough money on
<v Speaker 1>the incredible Shrinking Woman, and I'm not going to direct it,
<v Speaker 1>And so they said, all right, see you later. We'll
<v Speaker 1>go get Joel Schumacher to come in and direct The
<v Speaker 1>Incredible Shrinking Woman. And I don't It's been decades since
<v Speaker 1>I've seen that movie, but I remember watching it all
<v Speaker 1>the time on TV as a kid, like it would
<v Speaker 1>seemed like it was just always on and I loved it.
<v Speaker 1>Love Lily Tomlin thought it was a great movie. But yes,
<v Speaker 1>Joel Schumacher directed The Incredible Shrinking Woman.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, that's very interesting. So I remember him from DC Cab.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, the other mister T movie of the early eighties.
<v Speaker 2>DC Cab and say almost Fire.
<v Speaker 1>So when they get him aboard to direct The Lost Boys,
<v Speaker 1>he's like, Nope, don't want to do this goonies thing.
<v Speaker 1>Don't want these to be kids. My guess is that
<v Speaker 1>he'd seen Fright Night at this point and was kind
<v Speaker 1>of turned on by the idea of sexy vampires, and
<v Speaker 1>so he's like, we're going to have our vampires be young,
<v Speaker 1>rock and roll looking sexy vampires.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Well, let's back up one second, because before Joel
<v Speaker 2>Schumacher came on, Richard Donner was set to direct Lost Boys. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>and he was going to direct it as a goonies
<v Speaker 2>go vampire type of movie, but it took a little
<v Speaker 2>bit longer than he wanted it to. He was kind
<v Speaker 2>of tired of hanging around, and when it finally came
<v Speaker 2>time to release it, he had another project that he
<v Speaker 2>was going to go work on. You might have heard
<v Speaker 2>of it.
<v Speaker 1>Leith a Weapon Yeah, yeah, lethal Weapon. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>And so it worked out. I mean, I am so
<v Speaker 2>glad that we got The Lost Boys from Joel Schumacher. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and we got leith a Weapon with Richard Donner, right.
<v Speaker 1>And then Schumacher brings in another writer to rewrite the script.
<v Speaker 1>That writer's name is Jeffrey Bohm. And Jeffrey Boehm is
<v Speaker 1>the one who wrote leth a Weapon two and leith
<v Speaker 1>a Weapon three and also wrote Indiana Jones and The
<v Speaker 1>Last Crusade. I mean, he's a stud as far as
<v Speaker 1>I can see. I mean, he's written some fantastic scripts.
<v Speaker 2>Wrote Interspace, which is a flavor of mind.
<v Speaker 1>Oh. I love that movie. Yes, Tuck Pendleton, Machine zero Defects.
<v Speaker 1>What's amazing is how many people that were in this
<v Speaker 1>movie were like unknown actors at the time that they
<v Speaker 1>got cast in this movie. You've got You've got Key
<v Speaker 1>for Sutherland, You've got Jason Patrick, You've got Alex Winter,
<v Speaker 1>You've got Corey Hame. Corey Feldman was pretty well known
<v Speaker 1>at this point, it was, but this certainly didn't hurt
<v Speaker 1>his career at all. And and then you've got some
<v Speaker 1>real veterans out there. You've got Diane West, You've got
<v Speaker 1>Edward Herman, Edward Herman, I always get him, and Fred Munster.
<v Speaker 2>And then you've got Bernard Hughes as a grandpa.
<v Speaker 1>Need the TV guide, No, need a TV Bernard Hughes,
<v Speaker 1>who I remembered from a TV show when I was
<v Speaker 1>a kid called Mister Merlin. Did you ever watch Mister
<v Speaker 1>Merlin played? It was like supposed to take place in
<v Speaker 1>modern times, except he was Merlin, the magician from from
<v Speaker 1>King Arthur Days.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, right right.
<v Speaker 1>And then of course he was also the crotchety old
<v Speaker 1>doctor in Doc Hollywood, which is another favorite movie of mine.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so let's back up. Let's talk about the cast
<v Speaker 2>of Lost Boys for real quick, because you're absolutely right,
<v Speaker 2>these guys were unknowns at the time.
<v Speaker 1>They tried to get Jason Patrick, and Jason Patrick said.
<v Speaker 2>No, no, no, no no. Yeah, like Richard Dreyfus, they
<v Speaker 2>had to chase him. Right, let's all say it together together.
<v Speaker 2>I'm not doing this movie. They went after Jason Patrick,
<v Speaker 2>who I don't know if you know this or not.
<v Speaker 2>He is Jackie Gleason's grandson, Jackie Gleason of Smoking the Bandit.
<v Speaker 1>Damn no way that you could come from my lawins.
<v Speaker 1>Well we get home punch o Mama right in the mouth.
<v Speaker 2>Jason Patrick was Jackie Gleason's little possum pack.
<v Speaker 1>So so yeah, so he turned the movie down. He
<v Speaker 1>didn't want to be flying around and biting people on
<v Speaker 1>the neck and stuff, and so he said no. Key
<v Speaker 1>for Sutherland obviously, I mean is the son of Donald Sutherland,
<v Speaker 1>who was a huge actor in the seventies, and so
<v Speaker 1>I always kind of had that same kind of idea
<v Speaker 1>that hey, he's just a he's following in the family business, right,
<v Speaker 1>But it turns out like Keifer Sutherland didn't really grow
<v Speaker 1>up with Donald. He lived in Canada with his mom.
<v Speaker 1>He ran away from home when he was fifteen years
<v Speaker 1>old and really decided to go out and be an
<v Speaker 1>actor and just did it on his own, and he
<v Speaker 1>told his folks about it after he had already started
<v Speaker 1>having some success with it. But I saw this interview
<v Speaker 1>where they're talking to Jason Patrick and Key for Sutherland
<v Speaker 1>and the interviewer says, you know, I heard that you
<v Speaker 1>guys both turn this down, and Keifer Sutherland was like,
<v Speaker 1>I didn't turn it down. I would have done a
<v Speaker 1>Campbell super commercial at that stage because he hadn't done anything.
<v Speaker 2>He had done At Close Range, right. Joel Schulmacher was
<v Speaker 2>moved by his appearance at the very end of At
<v Speaker 2>Close Range. It's a courtroom scene and basically he was
<v Speaker 2>emoting just using his face, right and stand By Me,
<v Speaker 2>he had filmed, but it hadn't been released yet, so
<v Speaker 2>he hadn't really didn't have a lot to stand on, right,
<v Speaker 2>so to speak.
<v Speaker 1>Here's a story on that real quick. It's totally sidetrack,
<v Speaker 1>all right, sidetrack Okay, So he was in that movie
<v Speaker 1>with all of those guys, including Corey Feldman, but also
<v Speaker 1>River Phoenix, right and stand By Me, and he knew
<v Speaker 1>how to play the guitar. River Phoenix was learning how
<v Speaker 1>to play the guitar. And if you don't know, stand
<v Speaker 1>By Me is based upon a Stephen King story called
<v Speaker 1>The Body, and that's what the original name of the
<v Speaker 1>movie was going to be, was The Body. And so he's,
<v Speaker 1>you know, between takes when they're not working. He's working
<v Speaker 1>with River Phoenix on the guitar and he's like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>do you know the song stand by Me? That's a
<v Speaker 1>simple one, it's a good one to start off with.
<v Speaker 1>And he starts to teach him how to play it.
<v Speaker 1>And while they're sitting there playing it, Rob Reiner walks
<v Speaker 1>by and he's like, oh, stand by Me. I love
<v Speaker 1>that song, And like three weeks later that became the
<v Speaker 1>title of the movie.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, that is a great story that I've never heard.
<v Speaker 2>That is really cool. Just as a side note, the
<v Speaker 2>body stand by Me written by Stephen King. Yeah, fright night.
<v Speaker 2>There are a lot of similarities to Stephen King's story
<v Speaker 2>called Salem's Life.
<v Speaker 1>Back to the cast, Yeah, so we're still we're working
<v Speaker 1>on the cast of Lost Boy still okay. So ultimately
<v Speaker 1>Joel Schumacher met with Jason Patrick and convinced him to
<v Speaker 1>do it by saying that he would allow him to
<v Speaker 1>have some creative input on how to handle things, and
<v Speaker 1>Keifer Sutherland said he was actually kind of instrumental in
<v Speaker 1>the way that the movie turned out. Interestingly, he and
<v Speaker 1>Keifer Sutherland are very close friends. But whenever key for
<v Speaker 1>Sutherland broke off his engagement with Julia Roberts. She ran
<v Speaker 1>off to Europe with Jason Patrick and they were a
<v Speaker 1>couple out there.
<v Speaker 2>I know, I know that's awkward, but I've heard him
<v Speaker 2>talk since then their friendship has outlasted that little trade off.
<v Speaker 1>So the outlasted the runaway Bride, Yeah, exactly.
<v Speaker 2>Jason Patrick is also very instrumental in hiring Jamie Gertz.
<v Speaker 2>They yeah, they would not have hired her only because
<v Speaker 2>of Jason Patrick's insistence she had been in a movie
<v Speaker 2>with him called Solar Babies. When they were looking to
<v Speaker 2>hire an actress for the part of star, Schumacher was
<v Speaker 2>looking for someone a little more like Meg Ryan, blonde, right,
<v Speaker 2>that sort of shorter haircut. Burnett was not even on
<v Speaker 2>the board. But you know what, as a fourteen year
<v Speaker 2>old boy at the time, we're very thankful that they
<v Speaker 2>went with Jamie Gertz.
<v Speaker 1>Right, nothing wrong with Meg Ryan, but yeah, Jamie Gertz,
<v Speaker 1>she had her hot going on in this movie.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, majors.
<v Speaker 1>So they've got all of these newbies and then they
<v Speaker 1>they they said, let's swing for the fences and let's
<v Speaker 1>try to get Diane Weese to play the mom. Now
<v Speaker 1>she is just won the Academy Award for Best Supporting
<v Speaker 1>Actress for Hannah and her sisters. So they're just thinking
<v Speaker 1>there's no way. Nope, she totally said, yeah, sounds great,
<v Speaker 1>Let's do it.
<v Speaker 2>Let's do it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>This is the introduction the to Corey's right, Corey Felderman
<v Speaker 2>and Corey Ham became friends in this movie, and they
<v Speaker 2>did a bunch of movies together, you know, movies like Dream,
<v Speaker 2>A Little Dream, and Licensed to Drive and Some Fun
<v Speaker 2>Used to Drive.
<v Speaker 1>Heather Graham so pretty.
<v Speaker 2>But this movie gave us Alex Winter Yeah, Bill s
<v Speaker 2>Preston Esquire as a vampire.
<v Speaker 1>Yeap, how cool is that?
<v Speaker 3>Excellent?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, flip back to casting for Fright Night.
<v Speaker 1>Did you ever watch The Edison Twins?
<v Speaker 2>No, not familiar.
<v Speaker 1>I watched it all the time. Apparently that was Corey
<v Speaker 1>Ham's first big role. His sister was the one who
<v Speaker 1>wanted to be an actress, and he would just go
<v Speaker 1>with her to her auditions. But they noticed him there
<v Speaker 1>and so he got he got parts and various things.
<v Speaker 1>Started acting when he was ten in The Edison Twins,
<v Speaker 1>and of course he did Lucas, which is a huge
<v Speaker 1>one from the eighties. Charlie Sheen, who was up to
<v Speaker 1>be cast as Charlie in Fright Night. I know it's awesome,
<v Speaker 1>but Tom Holland looked at him and said, no, you
<v Speaker 1>look like a hero. You look like a superhero. You're
<v Speaker 1>too good looking. No, how't you go? We want somebody
<v Speaker 1>who looks more like the boy next door. And I
<v Speaker 1>think that they cast it perfectly.
<v Speaker 2>I did too. Walliaem Rexdale does a great job. He
<v Speaker 2>is whiny enough, but you can see him trying to
<v Speaker 2>become a man, you know what I mean. Yeah, Charlie
<v Speaker 2>Sheen just walks in the room AND's like, I'm gonna
<v Speaker 2>go kick his button. You believe it.
<v Speaker 1>So he had been he had had a failed audition, decided,
<v Speaker 1>you know what, I've met that casting director. I'll give
<v Speaker 1>her a call and see, if, you know, if I
<v Speaker 1>can take her to lunch. And so he said, you
<v Speaker 1>want to go to lunch? And she said no, but
<v Speaker 1>you have a part that you'd be perfect for. Why
<v Speaker 1>don't you come out in audition for this Fright Night movie.
<v Speaker 2>Let's talk about Chris Sarandon for a second. Okay, before
<v Speaker 2>Fright Night, I didn't know who this guy was. To me,
<v Speaker 2>He's he's always going to be Jerry Dandridge the killer
<v Speaker 2>cool vampire.
<v Speaker 1>To me, he's always going to be Prince humperdink.
<v Speaker 2>I've got my bride to kill, my wedding to plan,
<v Speaker 2>which pump.
<v Speaker 1>Like Jason Patrick, he was not excited about doing this
<v Speaker 1>movie and was going to turn it down. He had
<v Speaker 1>been in another kind of horror type movie called The Sentinel.
<v Speaker 1>It was not a good experience for him. And that's
<v Speaker 1>kind of ironic because both The Sentinel and Scream for Help,
<v Speaker 1>which was the Tom Holland movie that he was super
<v Speaker 1>disappointed about, were both directed by the same guy. Both
<v Speaker 1>directed by Michael Winner. So Michael Winner not a Winner apparently.
<v Speaker 1>So what happened was he read that he started reading
<v Speaker 1>the script and he couldn't stop, he couldn't put it down,
<v Speaker 1>and he said to his wife at the time, this
<v Speaker 1>is actually an amazing story. I'm just still a little
<v Speaker 1>worried about how it's going to turn out on film.
<v Speaker 1>And so within the next couple of days he's arranged
<v Speaker 1>a meeting with Tom Holland, and Tom Holland had so
<v Speaker 1>much love and devotion to this script that he was
<v Speaker 1>able to go through basically shot by shot with Chris
<v Speaker 1>Saranon about what was going to happen, and basically played
<v Speaker 1>the whole movie for him in two hours just by
<v Speaker 1>reciting it to him, and Chris said, I'm in let's
<v Speaker 1>do it.
<v Speaker 2>That's awesome. I love that. Love that story when a
<v Speaker 2>director is that passionate about a project and can sell
<v Speaker 2>an actor and say, hey, come do this with me.
<v Speaker 2>We're going to make this really cool project. It's great.
<v Speaker 1>Now.
<v Speaker 2>One of the guys I think that does an amazing
<v Speaker 2>job is Steven Jefferies, the guy who plays Evil Ed.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. So he had just come from a movie also
<v Speaker 1>with Amanda Bierce in it called Fraternity Vacation, which is
<v Speaker 1>not a good movie. It's just one of those you know, dumb,
<v Speaker 1>it's a screen great yeah, spring break movie. I to
<v Speaker 1>believe it had Tim Robbins. Robbinson who of course then
<v Speaker 1>went on to Nucleus with Susan Strandon from Yeah from
<v Speaker 1>Bull Durham. Interesting thinking. So yeah, so Stephen Jeffries and
<v Speaker 1>Amanda Beers were both in Fraternity Vacation at the time
<v Speaker 1>that they got cast in Fright Night.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so Amanda Beerce was the last actor cast for
<v Speaker 2>Fright Night. Yeah, and I think Stephen Jeffries even said, Hey,
<v Speaker 2>I just got done working with this girl. They had
<v Speaker 2>played a couple in that movie.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and he's like, hey, she was good.
<v Speaker 2>She looks like the girl next door and they brought
<v Speaker 2>her in and she was perfect.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. You know.
<v Speaker 2>She was twenty seven when she did Fright Night, which
<v Speaker 2>I think was really good because over the course of
<v Speaker 2>the movie she goes from naive, scared prude team to sexy, active, sexy,
<v Speaker 2>passionate vampirius. You need a woman to pull that off,
<v Speaker 2>I think.
<v Speaker 1>And Stephen Jeffries, you know, he had been he had
<v Speaker 1>thinking he had been thinking that he was going to
<v Speaker 1>get cast in the role of Charlie Brewster and was
<v Speaker 1>actually disappointed when he found out that he was going
<v Speaker 1>to be evil ed. But he is one of the
<v Speaker 1>most memorable parts in the whole movie.
<v Speaker 2>Oh you're so cool Browster.
<v Speaker 3>I can't stand it.
<v Speaker 2>You know another movie he was in at Close Range
<v Speaker 2>with Keever Settlin.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, how about that fantastic? So Vincent Price said
<v Speaker 1>he's not going to be Peter Vincent.
<v Speaker 2>So they talked to Vincent Price. He turned him down.
<v Speaker 2>Of course, he was not well health wise, and he
<v Speaker 2>wasn't really interested in doing horror movies at that time.
<v Speaker 2>Roddy McDowell had been in Planet of the Apes in
<v Speaker 2>a movie that I used to watch a lot called
<v Speaker 2>The Black Hole. That they went to him and said, Hey,
<v Speaker 2>we're doing this horror movie. We want to play it
<v Speaker 2>as a Vincent Price type of character. And he said
<v Speaker 2>in his mind, he was like, I'm going to play
<v Speaker 2>this as like a bad imitation of Vincent Price. So
<v Speaker 2>they went to him and he was like, yeah, okay,
<v Speaker 2>I can think I can do something with this.
<v Speaker 1>What he decided was he was not going to be
<v Speaker 1>He was going to be the ham actor who could
<v Speaker 1>never do anything better than these bad horror movies. And
<v Speaker 1>they've had that character in that first scene that you
<v Speaker 1>see him in the TV and the he's got the
<v Speaker 1>spike and he's about to drive it into the He's
<v Speaker 1>got the spike backwards.
<v Speaker 2>That is so funny, and a lot of people don't
<v Speaker 2>realize that he's going to go stake the van Barness.
<v Speaker 2>The business end of the stake is bording the wrong direction.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, So did you know that there were actually TV
<v Speaker 1>shows called Fright Night?
<v Speaker 2>Really?
<v Speaker 1>Yes? So back in the seventies there were a couple
<v Speaker 1>of different shows. One was broadcasted by an LA station.
<v Speaker 1>One was by its sister station in New York City,
<v Speaker 1>but it was called Fright Night and the host originally
<v Speaker 1>when it started back in nineteen seventy they called him
<v Speaker 1>Sinister Seymour, but his real name Larry Vincent. Hey got
<v Speaker 1>to be the inspiration, right eight.
<v Speaker 4>It's like Peter Vincent's cousin, right, yes, yeah, And he
<v Speaker 4>would just he would make fun of the audience for
<v Speaker 4>watching the movies that they were putting on because they
<v Speaker 4>were just really the worst of the worst be horror movies.
<v Speaker 1>So he would call them four flushers. And it's a
<v Speaker 1>hard time. But then Larry Vincent died in nineteen seventy five.
<v Speaker 1>Another guy takes over for a while and eventually the
<v Speaker 1>show's looking like it's going to die out. But then
<v Speaker 1>in nineteen eighty one they decide to revive the show
<v Speaker 1>and do you know who the new host is? Tell
<v Speaker 1>me Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and they renamed it
<v Speaker 1>Movie macab.
<v Speaker 2>That is awesome, man, I love Elvira.
<v Speaker 1>What other podcast are you going to get that kind
<v Speaker 1>of information?
<v Speaker 2>That's awesome, man, that's awesome. Jonathan Stark plays Billy Cole,
<v Speaker 2>who he had been involved in like Second City. He
<v Speaker 2>was an improv type guy, mostly comedic type of stuff.
<v Speaker 1>When he came in to do his audition, he did
<v Speaker 1>the part where Charlie has brought the cop over to
<v Speaker 1>try to find the dead body or whatever accusing Jerry
<v Speaker 1>of murder. And so he looked at that scene and
<v Speaker 1>said to me, the way to play this is to
<v Speaker 1>play it funny. So I'm going to improv it a
<v Speaker 1>little bit and I'm going to play it up as funny.
<v Speaker 1>And that's what went in the part, and it was
<v Speaker 1>a great They did a great job with that scene.
<v Speaker 1>He and the cop, who was played by Art Evans,
<v Speaker 1>they did a fantastic job of kind of riffing off
<v Speaker 1>each other in that scene to make it funny. And
<v Speaker 1>that's and it went better that way. It went better
<v Speaker 1>to have them making fun of Charlie because that's really
<v Speaker 1>kind of what would happen.
<v Speaker 2>Right yep, for sure.
<v Speaker 1>And then, of course, an extremely well played performance of
<v Speaker 1>Hooker by Heidi Sorenson, who has also been in spies
<v Speaker 1>like Us Sharp Looking Lady.
<v Speaker 2>She was the Playmate of the Month July nineteen eighty one.
<v Speaker 1>Say it.
<v Speaker 2>Google Search when she did her part Okay, we have
<v Speaker 2>to talk about this. I don't know if this will
<v Speaker 2>make the final cut, but the director of the movie
<v Speaker 2>really wanted her to be stunning and something that would
<v Speaker 2>really catch Charlie's eye.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, so he wanted tode.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, exactly. So he went to the costume designer and said,
<v Speaker 2>do you think you could tell her to, you know,
<v Speaker 2>rub ice on her nips to try and you know,
<v Speaker 2>get Charlie's attention.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, And so she did and effective. Effective.
<v Speaker 2>We're giving it up to Heidi Sormson.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. So a couple of similar events happened in both
<v Speaker 1>of these movies. The breaking of Bones so key for
<v Speaker 1>Sutherland is plays David in The Lost Boys, and he's
<v Speaker 1>they did all of their own motorcycle scenes, right right,
<v Speaker 1>They all drove their own motorcycles. And so at some
<v Speaker 1>point between takes, he's on his motorcycle on the boardwalk
<v Speaker 1>and there's this kind of hot girl walking around at
<v Speaker 1>the boardwalk, and so he starts popping Wheelie's to show
<v Speaker 1>off for and ultimately loses control, runs the bike into
<v Speaker 1>the railroad tracks, which falls over on top of him
<v Speaker 1>and breaks his arm in three places. You will notice
<v Speaker 1>at some point in the movie that he a hand
<v Speaker 1>becomes gloved and stays gloved throughout the remainder of the movie. Well,
<v Speaker 1>Jamie Gertz didn't know about this, right, and so they're
<v Speaker 1>doing these motorcycles and because it's his right hand that's broken,
<v Speaker 1>they had to they had to revamp the do you
<v Speaker 1>like that pun nice vamp? They had to revamp the
<v Speaker 1>motorcycle and put the throttle on on the left hand side.
<v Speaker 1>And so she gets on the back of the bike
<v Speaker 1>ready to shoot this scene, and she's looking and she's like,
<v Speaker 1>why is it on the other side? And then she
<v Speaker 1>sees his arms. She's like, what happened to your hand?
<v Speaker 1>And he's like, I broke my arm in three places
<v Speaker 1>and she's like, are you sure you can drive this thing?
<v Speaker 1>And he goes, well, we'll see and takes off.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, I thought that was an interesting story. So
<v Speaker 2>Kei ver Solon broke his wrist. William Ragsdale injured his
<v Speaker 2>foot when he was running down the staircase during the
<v Speaker 2>last shot, filmed on Christmas Eve nineteen eighty four, just
<v Speaker 2>three weeks into principal photography. So this is the scene
<v Speaker 2>where he had to come down the stairs and meet
<v Speaker 2>Jerry the vampire right right, which that the scene is
<v Speaker 2>kind of goofy anyway, because anytime I call my teenager
<v Speaker 2>to come downstairs for me, he's like whistling a tune
<v Speaker 2>and coming down.
<v Speaker 1>Sure, moom, what's going on?
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, that never happens in my house. The director said, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>let's try it again, just do it faster. This is
<v Speaker 2>literally the last shot before they break before Christmas break. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and he stumbles and falls and breaks his foot when
<v Speaker 2>he's coming down the stairs.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. They he's he falls and he's like, I sprained
<v Speaker 1>my leg, guys, and so they could grab some iceenter
<v Speaker 1>icing it up. And the guy who's the sound guy
<v Speaker 1>comes over to Tom Holland and says it's not sprained,
<v Speaker 1>it's broken. He's like what, He goes, I heard it.
<v Speaker 1>I heard it break And they went up. Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and it's sure enough it was broken. So he had
<v Speaker 1>to postpone his more active scenes until later on in
<v Speaker 1>the movie.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, that's cool. Let's talk about location for a second. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>both of these have an interesting location, I think, yes. Well,
<v Speaker 2>Fright Night was filmed at the same Hollywood backlot as
<v Speaker 2>the Bourbs. You ever seen the Tom Hanks movie The Burbs.
<v Speaker 1>Love It Yeah, also has Corey Feldman and of course.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, same street. And then of course The Lost Boys.
<v Speaker 2>There's that shot in Santa Cruz, California. You have the
<v Speaker 2>Santa Cruz Boardwalk and you have that amusement right there
<v Speaker 2>setting heavy Lost Boys, and they were actually reluctant to
<v Speaker 2>have the movie film there because of the Murder Capital
<v Speaker 2>of the World line from The Lost Boys and that place.
<v Speaker 2>Santa Cruz had had a murderer in the seventies who
<v Speaker 2>was who had gone on a killing spree, and so
<v Speaker 2>they were real reluctant to have the murder Capital of
<v Speaker 2>the World story, But because the movie made the boardwalk
<v Speaker 2>look really cool and fun, they decided to do it.
<v Speaker 1>So from nineteen seventy until early nineteen seventy three, Santa
<v Speaker 1>Cruz was terrorized by two serial killers and one mass murderer,
<v Speaker 1>turning the once sleepy beach down into the murder Capital
<v Speaker 1>of the world. So there were actually three killers in
<v Speaker 1>a three year period, operating heavily at the time, so
<v Speaker 1>it really was the murder capital of the world. That's crazy,
<v Speaker 1>isn't that insane? Cruz.
<v Speaker 2>I think it'd be cool to go out there sometime.
<v Speaker 2>I think that from this roller coaster still there and
<v Speaker 2>still operates, and I know that every summer they have
<v Speaker 2>a free beach movie series that they show while they're
<v Speaker 2>out there, and Lost Boys is on that list. They
<v Speaker 2>always show the losts.
<v Speaker 1>So in addition to the two Broken Bone stories, we
<v Speaker 1>also have two going out in costume stories. Keifer Sutherland
<v Speaker 1>and Jason Patrick were in the midst of the scene
<v Speaker 1>where they're fighting each other and they're both vamped out
<v Speaker 1>and they broke for lunch and Keifer was like, man,
<v Speaker 1>I don'tant to eat the studio food again. Let's go
<v Speaker 1>get something to eat. So they went out in like
<v Speaker 1>full makeup, out driving to go get a burger or something,
<v Speaker 1>and somebody they pull up to the stoplight and some
<v Speaker 1>lady looks over at them and she she goes, you're disgusting,
<v Speaker 1>and then it's off and it was like, we felt
<v Speaker 1>like we were a success for the day. And the
<v Speaker 1>same thing happened to Nathan Stark. Yeah, John John Yeah, yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Jonathan Stark had been in that. He was he had
<v Speaker 1>finished up with the scene where he melts, and so
<v Speaker 1>they get done shooting for the day and he's like oh, hey,
<v Speaker 1>can I go shower off before I go home? And
<v Speaker 1>they're like, oh, now, the plumbing's messed up. You can't
<v Speaker 1>shower here. He's like, okay, well, I guess I'm just
<v Speaker 1>going to drive straight home. So he gets in his car,
<v Speaker 1>and of course he's almost out of gas. So he
<v Speaker 1>got to stop at a gas station, and he says
<v Speaker 1>the guy. He goes to a full service station. The
<v Speaker 1>guy walks up to his window and just turns white.
<v Speaker 1>He got the gas for him. Didn't say anything, but
<v Speaker 1>like as soon as he pulls off, he's looking in
<v Speaker 1>his rear view mirror and he sees the guy running
<v Speaker 1>for the phone, and it's like, sure, he's calling the cops.
<v Speaker 1>I'm gonna have the cops pull me over on the
<v Speaker 1>way to my house. He's talked about this before the
<v Speaker 1>Billy Idol haircut, so you had said, Hey, I've heard this,
<v Speaker 1>I haven't confirmed it. I've got it confirmed. I heard
<v Speaker 1>the story from Keifer Sutherland. Here it is okay, yeah, okay,
<v Speaker 1>so old Schumacher says to Keith for Sutherland, listen, I
<v Speaker 1>want these guys to look like rock and rollers, So
<v Speaker 1>let your hair get long, stay long, but I want
<v Speaker 1>it to be white, and so Keifer Sutherland's letting his
<v Speaker 1>hair grow really out. It's already pretty long. Then he
<v Speaker 1>does the white hair and he says, I looked like
<v Speaker 1>Rick Flair the rest. I look ridiculous with his long
<v Speaker 1>white hair, And he said so right at this time,
<v Speaker 1>Billy Idol had just gone out solo. He had just
<v Speaker 1>left Generation X, gone out solo and was super popular,
<v Speaker 1>and so he was like, I'll get the top cut
<v Speaker 1>like Billy Idol's hair, and I'll leave the back long.
<v Speaker 1>So that's how you get That's how you get David's haircut.
<v Speaker 1>He didn't invent the mullet, but he certainly made it
<v Speaker 1>popular for another few years after after that movie came out,
<v Speaker 1>the kind of Bosworth business up front party in the back.
<v Speaker 2>No, I definitely agree. It's it's Billy Idol mixed with
<v Speaker 2>a little bit of Ryan Bosworth.
<v Speaker 1>Very cool.
<v Speaker 2>And then the final fight scene is basically Billy Idol
<v Speaker 2>fighting Jim Morrison.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, because Jason Patrick really does. I have to think
<v Speaker 1>that's why they wanted him so bad. It is because
<v Speaker 1>how much you looked like Jim Morrison back then. Because
<v Speaker 1>they've got the huge Jim Morrison poster in the in
<v Speaker 1>the Sunken Hotel, they play the doors, people are strange,
<v Speaker 1>and the intro of the movie there's definitely a Jim
<v Speaker 1>Morrison bent going on there for sure.
<v Speaker 2>Find Okay, I've got something on production that both of
<v Speaker 2>these have in common that I thought was interesting. Go ahead, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>think back to nineteen eighty six. If you had vision
<v Speaker 2>problems and you needed contacts. They're not the soft, comfortable,
<v Speaker 2>easy going things that we have today. They're made of glass.
<v Speaker 2>They're uncomfortable, they're difficult to put in. So both of
<v Speaker 2>these movies feature full on entire eye glass contact that
<v Speaker 2>were super cool. They are super effective in the movie,
<v Speaker 2>but very painful. Can only shoot for three or four
<v Speaker 2>minutes and then you got to pull them out. Not
<v Speaker 2>something I want to do very often. But they're very,
<v Speaker 2>very cool looking. Stephen Jefferies actually had some temporary blindness
<v Speaker 2>and had severe scratches because of these.
<v Speaker 1>So Jonathan Stark had Originally he was supposed to have
<v Speaker 1>those lenses in when he's coming up the stairs at
<v Speaker 1>him like the old Abbot Costello routine. Yep, but he
<v Speaker 1>kept tripping on the stairs. Just take them out, Just
<v Speaker 1>take them out. And Amanda Beers was like when they
<v Speaker 1>put hers in, She's like, this is unbearable. I didn't
<v Speaker 1>know how bad this was. It's really unbearable. And then
<v Speaker 1>they realized they hadn't sanded it down, so she actually
<v Speaker 1>had a rough edge on these glass contact lenses.
<v Speaker 2>Oh my gosh.
<v Speaker 1>But probably the most important thing that happened from these
<v Speaker 1>glass contact lenses is with Keifer Sutherland in Lost Boys.
<v Speaker 1>That moment in the movie where he sheds a tear,
<v Speaker 1>uh huh. It is because of the glass contact shooting
<v Speaker 1>and shooting and like it was supposed to be you know,
<v Speaker 1>you're done in seven minutes, and he was like on
<v Speaker 1>minute eight and it was just like I could not
<v Speaker 1>stop it from happening, just could not stop it.
<v Speaker 2>That's awesome, that's awesome. I heard him talking about it.
<v Speaker 2>So the scene where they're hanging upside down in the cave,
<v Speaker 2>so he's talking about the filming process, right, you know,
<v Speaker 2>this really long. He said. They were forty feet up
<v Speaker 2>in the air, dangling from the top of the cave,
<v Speaker 2>he said, which that took time to get them up there,
<v Speaker 2>set up ready to go. They had to put those
<v Speaker 2>stupid contacts in their eyes, uh huh. So they had
<v Speaker 2>all this effort. Plug their eyes. Okay, here we go,
<v Speaker 2>ready action, and you got like three or four minutes
<v Speaker 2>to get everything you've got and then okay, that's it.
<v Speaker 2>Get them down, take the things out of their eyes.
<v Speaker 2>So just a tremendous amount of effort to get that shot.
<v Speaker 2>But again it works. It's really good.
<v Speaker 1>We're kind of moving into special effects a little bit,
<v Speaker 1>so before we get there, I just want to tell
<v Speaker 1>one quick story. So Keifer Sutherland talks about how much
<v Speaker 1>he learned about acting from this movie. You know, obviously
<v Speaker 1>you've got a lot of young, very new actors, but
<v Speaker 1>you've got these handful of older, more experienced actors. And
<v Speaker 1>he says he can remember shooting the scene with Diane
<v Speaker 1>West where she's making the call. You remember when they're
<v Speaker 1>in the restaurant and she comes to talk on the
<v Speaker 1>phone to Sam because he's freaking out because Michael's, oh,
<v Speaker 1>he's coming to get me. Well, yeah, so she when
<v Speaker 1>she picks up the they're shooting the scene. When she
<v Speaker 1>picks up the phone, she takes out her ear ring
<v Speaker 1>and puts the phone up and Joel Schumacher's like cut
<v Speaker 1>and he's like, Diane, what's wrong? And she's like, what
<v Speaker 1>are you talking about? And he goes, well, you took
<v Speaker 1>your earring out? Is there something wrong with your earring?
<v Speaker 1>And she's like, no, I'm about to talk on the phone.
<v Speaker 1>That's what a woman does when she's about to talk
<v Speaker 1>on the phone, and she takes her earring out so
<v Speaker 1>that it doesn't smatch her earring. And Keifer Sutherland like
<v Speaker 1>was that was such an impactful moment because you have
<v Speaker 1>to bring the reality of your own world to whatever
<v Speaker 1>character that you're playing, and it was just kind of
<v Speaker 1>neat to see that play out.
<v Speaker 2>That's cool. I've got an I've got another little tidbit. Interestingly,
<v Speaker 2>the word Michael is said one hundred and eight times
<v Speaker 2>in The Lost Boys. Yeah, and there's you can go
<v Speaker 2>to YouTube and and and have a video of every
<v Speaker 2>time it said dings for you, Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael Michael.
<v Speaker 2>But in Fright Night, the word Charlie has said sixty
<v Speaker 2>two times.
<v Speaker 1>Yep.
<v Speaker 2>Just kind of interesting. They say the main character's name
<v Speaker 2>a bunch.
<v Speaker 1>Kind of like Titanic Jack Jack Jack Jack Jack Jack.
<v Speaker 2>Uh. So, before we move into special effects, I've got
<v Speaker 2>a couple of tidbits from Fright Night, that I will
<v Speaker 2>throw at you. So one of the sort of interesting
<v Speaker 2>things that they discover in Jerry's house is this painting
<v Speaker 2>of a woman who looks very similar to Amy. That
<v Speaker 2>was actually Chris Randon's idea. He wanted Jerry Dandridge to
<v Speaker 2>have a humanity to him. So the fact that Amy
<v Speaker 2>represented a long lost love of Jerry was an extra
<v Speaker 2>layer to that character that Chris Randon came up with.
<v Speaker 2>And also the fact that he when he first approaches
<v Speaker 2>Charlie in his room and give you something I don't
<v Speaker 2>have gives him a choice choice. He's got him up
<v Speaker 2>against the wall, he's totally overpowered him, and he asks Charlie.
<v Speaker 2>He says, forget about me, Charlie, if I kill you,
<v Speaker 2>that would give you something that I don't have a choice.
<v Speaker 2>What he say, forget about me? And Charlie pulls out
<v Speaker 2>a crucifix and you see that that scene, the emotion
<v Speaker 2>of that scene, it's like it saddens and disappoints Jerry.
<v Speaker 2>It's sad because he has to kill Charlie. Yeah, and
<v Speaker 2>even though he's a total vampire badass, he still has
<v Speaker 2>a humanity to him.
<v Speaker 1>So the apple bit, you know, he's always walking around.
<v Speaker 1>That was another contribution by Chris Sarandon, and He's like,
<v Speaker 1>I I had just had, you know, I wanted I'm
<v Speaker 1>looking for ways to make him more human or give
<v Speaker 1>him humanity, like you said. And so I started reading
<v Speaker 1>about bats, and I learned that ninety percent of bats
<v Speaker 1>are actually fruit bat type of bats. You know, they
<v Speaker 1>eat fruit for survival. And so I just decided that
<v Speaker 1>I've got some fruit bat DNA and my ancestry. And
<v Speaker 1>so that's why I'm always walking around eating these apples
<v Speaker 1>with the idea that I'm cleansing my palette after I've
<v Speaker 1>devoured a victim.
<v Speaker 2>Super cool, super subtle, and he even uses the apple
<v Speaker 2>to kind of draw Charlie out neat idea. I think
<v Speaker 2>here's something that I thought was really cool. Just another
<v Speaker 2>little tidbit from behind the scenes at Fright Night. The
<v Speaker 2>cast and crew members of Fright Night recalled that Roddy
<v Speaker 2>McDowell spent tons of time videotaping behind the scenes. He
<v Speaker 2>had his own little camera, little camcorder and videotaping. Nobody
<v Speaker 2>ever saw the tapes, and nobody knows where they are.
<v Speaker 1>We ready to move on to special effects.
<v Speaker 2>Let's try to go for special effects.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so the when they decided to do Fright Night,
<v Speaker 1>they're like, let's give Rick Baker a call, because who
<v Speaker 1>else you're gonna call if you've got a monster movie?
<v Speaker 1>But Rick Baker and Rick Baker said, no, I don't
<v Speaker 1>really want to do that, but you guys should give
<v Speaker 1>Richard Edlin to call. And Richard Edlin was kind of
<v Speaker 1>like his main guy had helped him out with Star Wars,
<v Speaker 1>and Richard Edlin and a lot of the guys who
<v Speaker 1>did the Fright Night stuff had just finished with Ghostbusters,
<v Speaker 1>which has some pretty cool special effects, right. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>you don't really think of it because it's such a comedy,
<v Speaker 1>but Ghostbusters actually had some really pretty cool special effects,
<v Speaker 1>and so it was a much higher budget film. And
<v Speaker 1>so they come over from Ghostbusters to do this movie
<v Speaker 1>and they do all kinds of cool stuff, just amazing
<v Speaker 1>things that they do with the bats. When Jerry gets
<v Speaker 1>stabbed with the pencil and he has his transformation, and
<v Speaker 1>Jerry cannot handle pain, right, He's he got some humanity,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and his choice giving and his apple eating,
<v Speaker 1>and then he's also got some monster and as I
<v Speaker 1>can't handle pain, and I'm a little bit petty. He
<v Speaker 1>was a little I felt like he's a little bit patty.
<v Speaker 1>I felt like the cooler vampires would have let some
<v Speaker 1>more of that stuff goes. But he was just like, no,
<v Speaker 1>I'm just a guy who's kind of a bully about things.
<v Speaker 1>So this is the way it's gonna be. But anyway, he.
<v Speaker 2>Destroyed Charlie's car for the fun of it because he's
<v Speaker 2>gonna kill him the next night. Anyway, right, what about
<v Speaker 2>you're gonna kill me, but you're gonna trash my car.
<v Speaker 1>Really? That car, by the way, was Tom Hollands car.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if you knew that Tom Hollins car.
<v Speaker 2>Oh cool.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. So Steve Johnson was one of the main special
<v Speaker 1>effects guys who's just hilarious. There's a great documentary on
<v Speaker 1>fright night and he the guy's funny. Like the first
<v Speaker 1>thing that he says is I love doing this movie.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, for one thing, they had a lot of cocaine.
<v Speaker 1>And so he was the guy responsible for the pencil
<v Speaker 1>through the hand thing. And he had seen you know,
<v Speaker 1>when you're a special effects guy, when you watch a movie,
<v Speaker 1>what are you gonna do but look at the special effects?
<v Speaker 1>Right right, So he had seen EXCaliber, And there's this
<v Speaker 1>scene where where Lancelot is naked and he gets a
<v Speaker 1>sword through like his abdomen and you can see you
<v Speaker 1>can see the sword going in and you can see
<v Speaker 1>the sword on the other side of him. Huh, and
<v Speaker 1>then the sword. He pulls the sword out, and you know,
<v Speaker 1>a point comes out, and the point isn't behind him anymore,
<v Speaker 1>and he's just like, how the heck did he do that?
<v Speaker 1>How did they do that special effect? And so it
<v Speaker 1>was this really kind of tricky thing. He turns just
<v Speaker 1>momentarily as he's pulling the sword, and he's like, they
<v Speaker 1>had to have a string on that point that they
<v Speaker 1>had in the back and a retractable blade for the front,
<v Speaker 1>and so when he pulls it out, the retractable blade
<v Speaker 1>comes out, and as he turns, somebody yanks that point
<v Speaker 1>off with a string, so you never see it. And
<v Speaker 1>so he went through that whole process with pencil in
<v Speaker 1>the hand. He's like, right, you're going to see the
<v Speaker 1>pencil going through his hand and then you're going to
<v Speaker 1>see him pull the pencil out of his hand and
<v Speaker 1>it's going to be awesome. And so he rigs the
<v Speaker 1>whole thing up. They do the scene. It works perfectly,
<v Speaker 1>and they start watching dailies now, but I think it
<v Speaker 1>was even after dailies, it's looked like they had done
<v Speaker 1>a pretty well one of their final edits. Yeah yeah,
<v Speaker 1>And he's watching with Tom Holland, and Tom Holland does
<v Speaker 1>an inter cut scene of Charlie's reaction as he's pulling
<v Speaker 1>the pencil out and he's like, you run the Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>He's like, everybody's gonna just think that it happened while
<v Speaker 1>you did the cutaway this with you know, you've ruled it.
<v Speaker 1>So Tom Holland's like, okay, okay, yeah, well we will
<v Speaker 1>take the reaction shot out for you and your special effect.
<v Speaker 2>That's a great story, and we don't have practical effects
<v Speaker 2>hardly anymore at all. These weren't computers. They didn't have
<v Speaker 2>green screens, and they didn't do all this stuff.
<v Speaker 1>So they looked real because they were real, right, and.
<v Speaker 2>We've lost that. I think anytime there's lots of times
<v Speaker 2>I watch a movie, I'm like, these stupid computer effects.
<v Speaker 2>They look like John.
<v Speaker 1>It's it's like watching American Werewolf in Paris after having
<v Speaker 1>seen American Werewolf in.
<v Speaker 2>London, exactly really exactly.
<v Speaker 1>The heck is that the actors had to endure hours
<v Speaker 1>and hours, like Chris Sarana to get into his makeup,
<v Speaker 1>like the full on monstered Out. Chris Arana took eight
<v Speaker 1>hours and they had to He had to do that
<v Speaker 1>for several days, and so he was just their bored
<v Speaker 1>and he said, can you guys teach me how to
<v Speaker 1>do something so that I can do something for you guys?
<v Speaker 1>Maybe speed this up a little bit and I'm not
<v Speaker 1>going insane while I'm just sitting here. And so he
<v Speaker 1>ended up putting the fingers. They showed him how to
<v Speaker 1>put the finger extensions on when he had the long
<v Speaker 1>pointy fingers. So Chris Sarana, you know, learned to do
<v Speaker 1>some special effects for the movie. And then they had
<v Speaker 1>they had Stephen Jeffries in the wolf costume. You I
<v Speaker 1>don't know if you call it a costume. I mean
<v Speaker 1>they they basically made him the wolf and that was
<v Speaker 1>like eighteen hours, yep, and pretty brutal. He had and
<v Speaker 1>he had that fa I mean, the most maybe the
<v Speaker 1>most memorable scene in the whole movie to me is
<v Speaker 1>the scene where they where he burns the cross into
<v Speaker 1>his forehead, which a cool scene, fantastic brilliant, brilliant scene
<v Speaker 1>they had to use. He had to go through the
<v Speaker 1>wolf process and it was miserable for him as well,
<v Speaker 1>but they did. They had a really great the transforming process.
<v Speaker 1>When that wolf is crawling along and he's half wolf
<v Speaker 1>and half man. It's I was sitting there going is
<v Speaker 1>this a machine? Is this a person? That looks real?
<v Speaker 1>I can't figure out how they're doing it. They did
<v Speaker 1>a really great job.
<v Speaker 2>With Yeah, it's heartbreaking. That's that scene is truly heartbreaking
<v Speaker 2>every time I watch the movie where Evil ed Is
<v Speaker 2>has been stabbed and is transforming back to the boy
<v Speaker 2>and he reaches out. I saw an interview with Chris
<v Speaker 2>saran and talking about the finger extensions right, and they
<v Speaker 2>are super effective. They look really cool. We can talk
<v Speaker 2>about some of the vampire lore that we see throughout
<v Speaker 2>these movie, but he talked about how the fingers tensions.
<v Speaker 2>Although they looked cool, it did make it difficult for
<v Speaker 2>him to go to the bathroom.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, that will do it for this episode. Please come
<v Speaker 1>back for our next episode where we will continue the conversation.
<v Speaker 1>We're going to talk more about the composers and the
<v Speaker 1>awesome soundtracks involved. Here. Some of the special stories involved you.
<v Speaker 1>You can't miss it. Come back for the second episode
<v Speaker 1>of Fright Night Versus the Lost Boys next week.
<v Speaker 2>Awesome.
<v Speaker 1>D it's been fun man. Yeah, see you guys next week.
<v Speaker 2>Oh you're so cool, Broaster, I can stand it.