Jurassic World is close to us, so I wanted to take a moment to remember someone that won’t be here to see it happens.
Meet Stan Winston.
If the name doesn’t ring a bell, he’s the guy that worked on every non-CGI dinosaur from Jurassic Park/The Lost World/Jurassic Park III. And many don’t even realize how many there were!
Oh, but that is not all.
He is also the guy that created and gave ”life” to some other movie stars…
The characters of The Wiz? Stan Winston.
The Dog-Thing from The Thing? Stan Winston.
The Terminators of the original Terminator trilogy? PLUS Terminator Salvation? Stan Winston.
The Alien-Queen of Aliens? Stan Winston.
All the monsters of The Monster Squad? Stan Winston.
The Predator from Predator I and II? Stan Winston.
Pumpkinhead? Stan Winston.
The iconic hands of Edward Scissorhands? Stan Winston.
The Penguin looks form Batman Returns? Stan Winston.
And
so
many
MORE…
“I don’t do special effects. I do characters. I do creatures.”
Happy birthday, Stan Winston (April 7, 1946 – June 15, 2008)
You didn’t make special effects, you sir made the World special.
I always got the assumption it was creative differences related to plot because of this:
“As many of you know, Universal Studios and Imagine Entertainment had
optioned the series to develop motion pictures from it, and though we
had the pleasure of working with many fine people in connection with
this plan, it did not work out. It is, more than ever, abundantly clear
that television is where the vampires belong.”
Also, in a comment about character backstories in the same post, she replied:
Nope! Not that I’ve been made aware of. AR didn’t give us a reason why Universal was no longer involved. She just announced to us 11/26/16 that she had the rights back [X] and was developing a VC TV series. So I would assume that Universal rights expired, and they didn’t choose to renew. AR might have raised the renewal cost, too.
I hope we do get the backstory on that someday, but my guess is we never will. Probably the same kind of development hell that happened w/ movie!IWTV from ‘94, the rights were jostled around for almost 20 yrs bc, from what I understand:
the material was/is very difficult to adapt with all the problematic and taboo stuff in it.*
the filmmakers wanted to please the VC fans, but they also wanted to make something that people who had not read the books would want to go see! That’s probably one of the reasons for Banderas!Armand, btw. I’m sure the filmmakers had to choose between satisfying the VC fans and reducing the taboo stuff enough to make it more palatable for non-VC fans (Louis, an adult vampire, being seduced by a teenage-looking vampire, might have been too much to ask for in 1994 it might still be too taboo now).
casting was tough,several first choice actors declined.
*@moral-cipher and I were talking about this, and the way ppl criticize canon, and that’s fine, I encourage it! But it is a very problematic series and just about every character is dysfunctional, every character has suffered or has caused suffering in others. The new motto for VC fandom might as well be:
~VC: If you’re looking for a perfect cinnamon roll, you’ve come to the wrong fandom.~
“TV makes it possible to roll it all out….no compromises”
But I can’t find anywhere she directly comments on her reasoning…
I wanna point out that AR is sort of a TV junkie and it really does make more sense to make it a series. Every time she brings it up lately she’s like ~GOLDEN AGE OF TELEVISION!!~ But you get so much more TIME, which really helps. I haven’t read/watch ASOUE but everyone seems to be enjoying that? I can say that having read A Song of Ice & Fire and watched Game of Thrones, that’s like UGH THAT IS WHAT WE NEED, like it’s so fleshed out with so much attention to detail, that is the way to go.
BUT ALSO don’t forget that VC isn’t linear, and I think that’s going to be a challenge for TV because it’s a little unusual, and it’s got to be able to appeal to more than like 300 LOSERS ON TUMBLR YOU KNOW???????? (jk i love you guys <3) There are networks out there that aren’t going to be afraid of the PROBLEMATIC STUFF, but still might have a hard time wanting to do a non-linear series, so it’s going to take a little smushing around and rearranging. WHICH CAN BE DONE! but I think it’s a big reason why there haven’t been more movies. To do these stories right it’s gonna take a huge budget and a lot of faith that the mainstream can enjoy it, and some of this stuff is just really like, unconventional and fucking whacky so I think we all have to be a little patient and understanding of that. 😀
[X] Interview with the Vampire concept art by Mark “Crash” McCreery
(Warner Bros., 1994) Haunting head & shoulders portrait of Tom Cruise as the vampire “Lestat” struggling on the ground while blood is gushing from his slit throat. Accomplished in pencil on a leaf of 14 ¾ in. x 8 in. artist’s illustration paper. Fine.
That BTS video is a new fandom treasure and like, back in the 90′s, Tom’s publicist Pat Kingsley would have tracked the source down and made them delete it. ;A; * I love that we’re getting stuff out of private collections now!
^I think this is one of my fave shots of Brad “where did I go wrong” Pitt from that movie… which is why it was so great to see him go from that to this BAMF later in the movie:
^YISSSS PLZ
^Height issues aside (and yeah I’m sure that was an issue!), here’s my take Tom Cruise’s eyebrow concerns. The lighting is different but you can still tell the difference in his makeup/hair. On the left is a still from an earlier scene that was shot and probably had to be discarded bc the blond was too bright, orangey, weirdly smooth (I think they were going for “pampered” and “golden”). Looks like they changed it to highlights and lowlights of blond and a mussier texture to mesh better with Tom’s own coloring. So he had good reason to be concerned about his eyebrows, he probably didn’t want more footage to be wasted.
^anne’s cringey 90’s look: Hey that was in style then bc BELIEVE ME I LIVED IT! But yeah she looks a lot better these days, current 90′s-inspired looks are very different from some of the actual 90′s looks.
*Even though it wasn’t an interview specifically, it was unauthorized bts footage.
“Kingsley was adamant about keeping Cruise out of the tabloids. At press junkets, she demanded that journalists sign contracts swearing not to sell their quotes to the supermarket rags. Then Kingsley expanded her reach and insisted that all TV interviewers destroy their tapes after his segment had aired.”
It’s so fun to see at least this shot from the other side of the door, lol…
I’ll transcribe it somewhat for y’all:
The narrator is all about the *~secrecy~* like of course Tom Cruise wanted to keep the secrecy of his costumes and makeup and whatever, so as not to spoil the surprise! We have closed sets all the time these days and back then. I don’t think that was just Tom, I think everyone involved in making the movie wanted that secrecy.
The narrator pronounces his name the way AR prefers, not the way it’s pronounced in the movie
AR wasn’t pleased about the casting at the time of this video, but when she saw the movie, she was thrilled with Tom’s performance.
Tom said: “The negative criticism? When it starts out, it kind of hurts your feelings and then I just go, well, I can’t help myself, y’know? I wanna play this character.”
Other actors AR had preferred to see in the role: Daniel Day-Lewis (he turned it down), Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich. She named River Phoenix, but I don’t think she meant as Lestat. But he had died by the time this video was made, and Christian Slater had taken his role as Daniel.
In the video John Preston (Anne’s friend, and therefore an authority?) said, “Tom Cruise will not allow himself to be photographed kissing a man,… he’s evidently very upset that Brad Pitt of all people looks taller than he does and we’re told that he’s wearing risers.” Yeah well Lestat is supposed to be a little taller than Louis. Heels were in fashion for men then, anyway.
Narrator: “There is word that Tom has insisted that a makeup person be on the set at all times” Well yeah, those contacts are uncomfortable, apparently, and with all that action the fragile prosthetics and fangs probably needed to be put back in place every few minutes, “to make sure his eyebrows look right.” Well that’s a valid concern! They actually weren’t all that happy with his makeup at first, as far as I know, some scenes were cut bc they changed his makeup, made the hair darker.
Narrator:
“But some insiders say this behavior is just another example of Tom Cruise’s well-known perfectionism, a perfectionism that proved wrong those critics who thought he was too light-weight to star in Born on the Fourth of July. He ended up getting an Oscar nomination for it.”
Tom Cruise: “I’ve gotta wake up every day and play this role. Is it going to be exciting? And I want to commit six months of my life playing the character.”
Narrator: “In the end it all comes down to this: with a [the audio sorta hiccups but I think it was a $40 million dollar] budget at stake, the fate of Interview with the Vampire is going to depend on Tom Cruise, his looks, his acting ability, and his demands.” Like they’re such unreasonable demands and he’s carrying the whole movie himself? He’s not even the vampire that gets interviewed!
So the story behind this song, is heart breaking and heart warming at the same time. Brian May, the guitarist for Queen, wrote this song for the 1991 Queen album Innuendo. The song was written about how even though Freddie Mercury was slowly dying from AIDS, he was still doing shows, writing, and making music with the band. When they were recording the song, they were worried the Freddie would not have had the strength to do the vocals, because it was getting much worse, and was bed ridden, but he recorded it, and killed it. There will be no one like Freddie Mercury. I don’t care what anyone says, Queen was and still is the best band ever to exist.
The Show Must Go On by Queen
“I’ll fucking do it, darling” he said and killed it in a single take that’s something you need to remember. This is a song that was a single continuous take for his vocals. No misses. No re-records. Not on this, not for Freddie.
I-want-my-IWTV 