Top 10 Films

20/12/2024

“I think I have a plan. What if we throw a bomb that way, the way we want to go? Then when it goes off, I mean, if it scares them away, we run like goddamn b*stards!... Pardon my French.”

Although Tremors was not a big hit during its theatrical run, and Kevin Bacon initially disowned the film, it became a huge smash in the home video market, and ultimately tripled its original box-office gross with VHS sales and rentals.

It was a film that Bacon would ultimately warm to. However, he originally resented his role in Tremors, agreeing to do the film only because he needed money for his new marriage and upcoming child.

When the movie wasn't a financial success, Bacon feared for his career and refused to acknowledge the film, even calling it the "worst thing I ever did."

However, by 2012, Bacon had changed his perspective, describing the filming of Tremors as "the single most fun time I've ever had making a movie in my entire career."

In a 2020 interview, he admitted, "When I was making Tremors, I was very depressed and at a low point in my life, and I kind of blamed Tremors for all that. I was bitter against it; I thought it was a career-killer...

“I never watch my movies more than once - some I've never even seen - but I've watched Tremors a dozen times. I love it so much, and I spent years trying to capture the same energy we had on the set of Tremors. It's one of my favorite films of all time."

20/12/2024

Kevin Bacon initially resisted the idea of being hypnotized for his role in Stir of Echoes, admitting, “Very uncharacteristically for me, I said, ‘no f*cking way.’” His hesitation stemmed from a strong aversion to the idea of someone else being in control of his mind, a discomfort rooted in bad personal associations with hypnosis.

Despite this initial reluctance, Bacon eventually reconsidered, influenced by his growing interest in meditation and alternative therapies. He noted, “Over time, I started to meditate, and I started to think about hypnosis as a mode of therapy.”

Bacon says the film suffered commercially because of comparisons with The Sixth Sense. "The problem for us was that The Sixth Sense was such a phenomenon because people went multiple times. It had, really, a terrible effect on Stir of Echoes."

He also thinks the title was a problem. "I think that they really wanted to hold on to the [original] title, but it’s not a title that really rolls off your tongue. People to this day will say, 'Oh, I loved your movie, ‘Stirring the…’ what was it? So I don’t think that really helped."

20/12/2024

Christopher Walken recalled receiving a bizarre phone call from Marlon Brando, which he initially thought was a prank. “I hung up thinking it’s a joke,” he told The Independent. “Two minutes later, a man phoned, and when he spoke, I knew it was no joke. It was him.”

Brando, in failing health and less interested in acting, reached out to Walken to ask about the choreographer he worked with on the 1981 film Pennies from Heaven.

Brando had an unusual idea. “He said he wanted to make a musical variety show from his house,” Walken recalled. “He would play the piano, and I would dance. He told me that he had lost 100 pounds by eating just Saltines and milk. I said I’d get in touch with the choreographer. I called him, and I said to him, ‘Marlon Brando wants to do a variety show’. He said, ‘What?'”

Unsurprisingly, the odd idea never came to fruition.

19/12/2024

19/12/2024

Jesse Ventura landed the role of Sergeant Blain Cooper in Predator while working for WWE (then WWF). During a trip to California, his agent, Barry Bloom, arranged a meeting with casting director Jackie Burch for the upcoming Arnold Schwarzenegger film. Ventura, despite showing up in his colorful wrestling attire, impressed the producers with his reading and was offered the highly sought-after role within an hour.

"I knew that if I got to California, [my agent] Barry Bloom would be bringing me in to meet people. Because when Hulkamania hit big, Barry Bloom kept sitting back, going, 'Wait a minute. There's this other guy, Jesse Ventura, who has got way more talent than Hulk Hogan. This guy's got talent beyond wrestling.'

"What happened there was, they kept booking me [for wrestling shows] out in California, and the one day I flew out there, Barry picked me up at the airport, and he said, 'At 2:00, we're going to go meet a friend of mine named Jackie Birch. She's casting the next [Arnold] Schwarzenegger film.' And he said, 'There's a part in there you're perfect for. Sergeant Blain Cooper, 6'4", 250-pound killer.'"

"I had on a durag, six earrings, my big long goatee, multi-colored hair," Ventura recalled in an interview with Chris Van Vliet on YouTube. "I looked as far from the military as you could possibly look. I looked like a one-percenter, a biker, probably. I'll never forget Jackie Burch - little short girl - she walked up to me and she looked at me like this, and she looked up and down, twice. And said, 'Let's go meet the executive producers.'"

Ventura says, "Within an hour, they offered me the part, and it was a sought after part. Everybody in California was going after that role. I had it."

At the time, Ventura struggled to get WWE boss Vince McMahon's approval for the project. After McMahon dismissed his call, Ventura remembers: "I said then, 'Don't interrupt him. Take this to him, when he has time. Maybe tomorrow, or the next day, whenever that happens. Tell him I've just been cast for a role in the next Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, and that I'm accepting.' And I hung up."

19/12/2024

Of all the great creature effects Rick Baker did, one of his personal highlights is the Bigfoot from Harry and the Hendersons.

In an interview with The Irish Film & Television Network he said: “One of my favourites was a film that I got an Oscar for called ‘Harry and the Hendersons’ where we had a Bigfoot character and I was really fond of the character. It was the first time that we had done a radio controlled mask which I thought worked very well and I think it still stands up very well.”

In the interview he reflected on what drew him to a career in the industry. “I became interested in monsters and strange characters at a very early age and I grew up in front of a television set (the first generation to do so) where I was fascinated by science fiction and monster movies like The Wizard of Oz.

“And then I found out about this great magazine called Famous Monsters of Filmland which featured not only actors and directors but also the people behind the scenes like make-up artists and I just thought ‘That’d be a cool job to have’. So I knew from about the age of ten that it was what I wanted to do with my life.”

19/12/2024

Remember when Frank goes to the toilet, unaware that he is still mic’d up at the press conference? "That actually happened in our synagogue back in Milwaukee," David Zucker told Empire Magazine. "Halfway through the service the rabbi went to the bathroom and it came through the PA system."

Zucker, while recalling Naked Gun alongside Jim Abrahams and David Zucker, also remembered how everyone missed one of Priscilla Presley's best lines in movie theaters.

After Frank meets Vincent Ludwig’s assistant Jane Spencer, she climbs a ladder as he peers up from below. “Nice beaver,” he says — as she hands him a taxidermied rodent.

"That joke, it’s a great laugh and everything, but Priscilla’s reply — she says, 'Thanks, I just had it stuffed' — that always makes me laugh too," says Abrahams.

Adds Zucker, "I remember that line because no-one ever heard it in the theater. People were laughing so hard at, 'Nice beaver.'"

"Part of why the film holds up is because it’s a good story with a good ending, as well as funny jokes," says Abrahams. "It really took eight years for us to learn the moral of Airplane!, which is you need a complete story with a character arc where boy meets girl, loses girl, gets girl back... All the nuts and bolts of storytelling are really reflected in Naked Gun. We spent as much time working on the story as we did on the jokes."

Says Zucker: "In front of an audience it’s amazing: it still works. People really laugh. That’s the nice thing about it."

19/12/2024

By the time Bruce Willis came to make Die Hard 2, he wanted to ditch the jokey action hero persona for a more serious approach recalls director Renny Harlin. "Bruce had turned from a Moonlighting TV star to a movie star overnight with one movie. And it’s not uncommon that when actors get into that position, they sort of develop different goals. So Bruce had this notion from the beginning that he wanted to now play John McClane totally straight, that this movie had to be serious," Harlin told Empire Magazine in 2021.

"I said to him, 'That’s not the John McClane the audience loves. They feel like you’re their friend now, and they don’t want to lose their friend.' We had a major disagreement about this. He said, 'Those one-liners and jokey comments — that’s bu****it. With lives on the line, you can’t say that kind of thing.' I said, 'Yeah, not in real life, but this is a movie. This is Die Hard.' It came to a point where I had to go to [producer] Joel [Silver] and say, 'We have a real problem.'"

The trio had a meeting to discuss Willis' determination to play the role straight. "The outcome was that Bruce agreed to do as many takes as he wanted of the way he wanted to do it, and then we’d do one take the way I wanted to do it, with humour. He did it reluctantly, and not so happily, but he did it. And in the end, every single funny moment that could be caught — even a smile he might have flashed before he realised the cameras were rolling — was cut into the movie. The first question the executives asked, when they saw it, was, 'Do you have any more moments with humour?' I said, 'Unfortunately, I used everything I had.'"

Harlin remembers one scene in particular. "The little scene where he needs to send a fax to his buddy in LA, with the fingerprints of the bad guys. He finds a counter at the airport, and this lady has a little bit of starry eyes for this cool guy. And then Bruce shows the ring on his finger and says, 'Just the fax, ma’am. Just the fax.'

The director remembers Willis hating that line. "He said, 'That is so cheesy and stupid. I refuse to say it.' It took an hour there at the counter with me begging him and Joel getting involved to get him to say it once, out of 15 takes. But it’s in the movie and people love it. It’s not just funny, it shows he cares about his wife. It makes him relatable and really an honourable guy. Because it’s not just about saving the world — it’s about something much more personal."

18/12/2024

To create a sense of camaraderie and real-life friendship, Barry Levinson's diner scenes in the 1982 film were shot last, with a mix of scripted and improvised lines, after the actors had got to know each other and developed genuine bonds.

"The set was designed to invite good work," remembered Steve Guttenberg in 2022.

The conversational style in Diner stemmed from Levinson's approach to the script and the improvisation he cultivated and encouraged on set.

"When I was writing it, I wanted it to be the most ordinary thing possible," the director is quoted as saying by Entertainment Weekly. "That's the way we talk about things. We don't just suddenly have all these profound things pop out of [our mouths]. The real, inarticulate nature of approaching something in the most mundane way becomes fascinating."

Spontaneity came from riffing on or extending a scene Levinson had written. "Sometimes it would be no more than we had a little bit of time left at the end of the night and I'd say, 'Why don't we just do a little thing here?'" he remembers.

One element that wasn't improvised was Eddie's football trivia test for his fiancée. This scene was inspired by a real-life quiz that director Barry Levinson's cousin gave to his wife.

Some actors found it harder than others. Tim Daly said: "I was so terrified. I didn't know what to say. I was so scared about it. I mean, my first few days, I didn't know that when you walked into a scene, you had to hit a mark. But I learned immediately that one of the beautiful things about film is that you can capture stuff that's not scripted that might just beautifully describe a scene, so don't edit yourself."

Remembers Kevin Bacon, "When I got to Baltimore, it became clear to me that we were going to be more fluid than [the script]. I have never really thought of myself as much of an improviser. On set, I felt really nervous about it because I was like, 'I can't really do that, and I'm not so good off the top of my head at being funny.' So, I made the choice that I was going to be the guy that listens."

One member of the cast was a natural though: Paul Reiser. Prior to his role in Diner, Reiser had built his career as a stand-up comic. Originally, Reiser character, Modell, had only a few lines in the script. Director Barry Levinson sought an experienced comedian to infuse humor into scenes, leading to Reiser's improvisational contributions greatly expanding his character's role.

Reflecting on his experience, Reiser notes, "What I ended up having as a contribution to the film was nothing to do with the script. It was all Barry pushing and guiding me along the way to just be loose."

This spontaneity resulted in one of the movie's most memorable scenes, occurring during the initial diner sequence where Eddie and Modell banter over a sandwich. Reiser recalls, "People still quote that scene back to me, 'Roast beef in your heart.' I must've said that one night, one time, late at three in the morning, and it lives on."

The dynamic between Guttenberg and Reiser, particularly Guttenberg's exasperation with Reiser, is what elevates the scene. "That scene came from how much we liked each other," explains Guttenberg. "Paul and I were able to have some fun with it, and we carried it. And Barry smartly allowed us to carry it again for when Paul doesn't have a ride home."

18/12/2024

"There’s great honour in being an entertainer," said M. Night Shyamalan in an interview with the BFI. "In my head, there’s not this distinct split between entertainment and art. I think a filmmaker should be someone with a very specific point of view, trying to entertain people.

"That’s not beneath us – it’s not beneath anyone. And I really think that the audience can tell if you’re making a film just to make yourself feel like you’re an artist. That’s the thing about entertainment. You have to subjugate yourself to a story, and when you subjugate yourself to something that you believe in, beauty comes out.

"And the audience can feel it. So, for example, when an audience says, 'that was slow, that scene was slow'. What slow means is, I don’t know where I am in the story. That’s what that means. They’re getting frustrated with the story structure.

"At that point, as a filmmaker, you have two choices. Either you go, well, the audience is stupid, you create an adversarial relationship with the audience, or you work with them. The film you’re making and the film they’re seeing is the same thing, and you need to listen to each other, like any relationship."

18/12/2024

Back in 2008, when Before the Devil Knows You're Dead came out, director Sidney Lumet spoke to the BFI and got chatting about Silence of the Lambs when asked about an audience's sympathy for unlikable characters.

He quipped: "Bless Jonathan Demme, who in Silence of the Lambs made a movie about a man who eats people and a girl who’s frightened of her own shadow and not only got you to care about the two of them but even had a perverse little romance going on."

17/12/2024

Spike Lee has a deep admiration for West Side Story, both the original and Steven Spielberg's 2021 remake. He told Film Ink that Spielberg invited him to the set while he was shooting his version.

“I was just amazed to see West Side Story, a most favourite film, and the fact that he invited me to pull up a chair right next to him. So I was sitting next to him, watching the monitor and just seeing him work. It’s just amazing to see a master anywhere.”

Lee has long praised the original 1961 film, calling it one of his favorites, and has expressed a desire to direct a full musical, believing the genre remains relevant.

"I do understand it is hard for audiences to deal with people talking one minute and the next they are breaking into song, but when you think about music videos, it shouldn’t be that strange.”

17/12/2024

The scene where McClane climbs the ladder from the service tunnels onto the runway and nearly gets run over by Esperanza's plane was filmed in eight different locations:
- Granada Hills, California (McClane in the tunnel and climbing up the ladder)
- Los Angeles, California (Close-ups of Esperanza inside the plane's cockpit)
- Mojave Desert, California (Head-on view of the plane in the sky on approach)
- Alpena, Michigan (Exterior shot of the grating door on the runway)
- San Francisco, California (Rear shot of the plane on approach with runway lights in the background)
- Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan (Plane rushing towards the screen just after landing)
- Lake Tahoe, California (Plane rushing towards McClane in the foreground)
- Denver, Colorado (Plane rushing towards McClane as seen from behind the front landing gear).

Source: IMDB

17/12/2024

Bruce Willis: "In my mind, a big, exciting, thrilling, scary, violent film is no different from the newest ride at Disney World. You’re sitting in a darkened room with 100 or 200 people and these little flashing points of light on the screen are able to scare you, thrill you, make you jump. That’s the trick, that’s the art form."

17/12/2024

Casper Van Dien reflects fondly on his breakthrough role in Starship Troopers, noting its lasting impact as fans still quote the film to him.

He told Salon in 2023: "I just worked on a short and a guy on the crew shows me a pic and it's him and I as Troopers. That movie had so many people work on it. It was one of the greatest films for me. On set, I looked over and saw Paul Verhoeven, Ed Neumeier, Phil Tippett and Jon Davison, who all made RoboCop, and I was like, Peter Weller was No. 1 on his call sheet and I'm No. 1 on this. So, I'm Murphy!"

Addressing claims he didn’t realize Starship Troopers was satire, Van Dien laughs off the idea, emphasizing Verhoeven’s signature style, comparing it to the satirical edge in RoboCop. "Two actors said they didn't know it was. I looked at them and said, 'How could you not know this wasn't a comedy? Did you not see RoboCop?"

He praises Verhoeven’s brilliance, calling Elle one of the director’s best films—creepy yet darkly comedic—and believes Verhoeven deserves far greater recognition in the industry.

He told My Reviewer, "I love Paul. He, for me is one of the most passionate and incredible filmmakers out there. To make a film with him ... is just one of the most amazing things. I mean, look at his films, whether its Robocop or whatever, I mean Black Book, what an amazing film. I love him and I've learned so much from him, by listening and by talking to him and by watching. And you know he'll scream and yell and it's crazy but he's just passionate about filmmaking. He's just exciting to be around. I'm still awed by his ability to make amazing films."

16/12/2024

William Shatner once called Steve Guttenberg the luckiest human in the world.

“I was very fortunate in the 80s to build up this brand," remembers Guttenberg in an interview with The Guardian. "Bill Shatner said to me once: ‘If you can get a character that people identify with you, you’re the luckiest human in the world. You’re Zorro, you’re Captain Kirk, you’re Rocky, you’re James Bond. And you’re Mahoney!’”

16/12/2024

Michael Douglas, while reflecting on Romancing the Stone with Pl***oy magazine, remembered the studios were very reluctant to greenlight the film. "This was before Raiders of the Lost Ark and all of that, and I think it was a style that people couldn’t get a handle on: 'Come on, you have a thriller one scene and make people laugh the next or then go to schmaltz romance the next time. You just can’t do that'," he told David Sheff.

This was only the first obstacle he faced while making the film. The shoot coincided with the rainiest season in 35 years, leading to constant rain, mudslides, and dangerous conditions. The "rain and mud buried us - almost literally," he says. "We had a very close call on that picture. We were shooting the sequence where the bus comes down and hits the jeep and then we go walking down the mountain and begin the mud slide. We got hit with a major tropical storm in the middle of the sequence. The road just gave way, and a rock about the size of a car came down exactly where the camera crew had been standing.

"One guy broke his leg. Another broke his arm. Kathleen is still scarred on her knee; she got caught up to her waist in mud. It was one of those things, an act of God, because if it had happened five minutes earlier, we would have lost 70 people. And that was the first week. Roads washed out regularly, so we would rebuild them; there were times when I would have 80 trucks dumping gravel. Yeah, it was a challenge. But not as much of a challenge as getting the film started, I suppose."

Douglas explained that the film’s mudslide sequence was mainly shot with stunt performers but he did the final close-up shot when he lands face-first between Kathleen Turner’s legs. "I did the last part of it in one take, but there was a lot of preparation - lining Kathleen up with her legs spread, taking careful aim! That needed my classic mud-diving expertise."

Regarding the scene where his character smokes inside a wrecked airplane, Douglas clarified that it was actually just wet straw. "That was a scene we added later on. My character, Jack Colton, was being short-changed in terms of any kind of character development, and we realized we had to get some little pieces of information about who this guy was, where he was from, so we shot that scene after we finished the film.

"It was basically an ode to the Sixties, a combination of fantasies and dreams and finding one quick way of giving some idea of where this guy was from. His line about The Doobie Brothers’ breaking up sort of pegged him."