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The House of Gozer Podcast

Join these OG geeks as they discusses the latest news, rumors and reviews from the world of Geek Pop

01/09/2024

01/09/2024

Patrick Swayze's fame caused problems during filming "Road House" (1989). A pickup truck containing a group of middle-aged blonde women attempted to drive right up to the star's trailer to meet the actor. During the big fight by the river, a raft of Swayze-loving ladies sailed by. A female extra playing a waitress was too busy staring at Swayze to watch where she was going and tripped, spilling all of her drinks on another extra.

Marshall R. Teague, who played Jimmy, initially didn't get along with Swayze, but while filming their big fight, both men quickly realized they shared a dedication to realistic stunts, which improved their relationship. They developed so much mutual trust that they improvised a lot, and allowed each other to throw real punches and kicks. When Jimmy swings a log at Dalton, Teague mistakenly thought it was a breakable prop log. By the end, Swayze was covered in bruises and had two broken ribs and a busted knee. Speaking of Teague, he told a story that he took his mother to the premiere of the movie. When the fight against Swayze's character happens and he says the line, "I used to f**K guys like you in prison!," his mother jumped up and proudly shouted, "That's my boy!"

Due to a knee injury he sustained during filming, Swayze turned down the roles of Gabriel Cash in "Tango & Cash" (1989) and Mike Harrigan in "Predator 2" (1990). He chose to make "Ghost" (1990) as his follow-up instead, as it was a less physically strenuous role. The knee injury ended up being a blessing in disguise, as "Ghost" ended up being a big hit, and received critical acclaim. "Tango & Cash" was a box office flop, as was "Road House." (IMDb)

Happy Birthday, Patrick Swayze!

01/09/2024

The Superhero Comic Con is a 4-day pop-culture event held annually in San Antonio, Texas

01/09/2024

01/09/2024

Children can get free admission into Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex throughout the month of September.

01/09/2024

01/09/2024

01/09/2024

Netflix's anime series takes the Terminator saga to Japan, starring Rosario Dawson, Timothy Olyphant, and Sonoya Mizuno. Read the Empire review.

31/08/2024

"Michael Rennie was ill the day the earth stood still..."

After Claude Rains turned down the role of Klaatu, Michael Rennie received top billing in "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951), the first post-war, large-budget, "A" science-fiction film. It was a serious, high-minded exploration of mid-20th century suspicion and paranoia, combined with a philosophical overview of humanity's coming place in the larger universe.

The Army, displeased by how they were represented after reviewing the script, refused to cooperate with the filming. The studio then approached the National Guard, which had no qualms about seeing the Army depicted in a less-than-flattering light, and gladly offered their cooperation.

Patricia Neal has admitted in interviews that she was completely unaware during the filming that the film would turn out so well, and become one of the great science-fiction classics of all time. She assumed it would be just another one of the then-current and rather trashy flying saucer films, and she found it difficult to keep a straight face while saying her lines.

This was Rennie's third film for 20th Century Fox; though he was under contract to the studio for seven years, and while he had important supporting roles in all of them, Klaatu was the only lead role he was ever given.

31/08/2024

Gear up and roll out. in 4DX theaters and cinemas SEPT 18.

31/08/2024

31/08/2024

Ke Huy Quan, up until 2022, was best known for playing Short Round in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" (1984) and Data in "The Goonies" (1985). Quan stopped acting due to a lack of opportunity in the late 1990s, when he received his film degree from USC School of Cinematic Arts. He went on to work as a stunt coordinator and assistant director. He returned to acting as Waymond Wang in the film "Everything Everywhere All at Once" (2022), a role for which he received critical acclaim, and which earned him an Academy Award for best supporting actor.

Quan admitted that although he felt very good about his audition, it took two months to receive word that he had been cast; he said he took the time to brace himself for rejection.

To prepare himself for his grand return to the silver screen, Quan hired various coaches, including one for dialogue ("I haven't spoken written dialogue in a long time"). A movement coach was also key to finding a way for the audience to determine which Waymond they are seeing at any given time. "They kind of move a little differently. I hope the audience can just distinguish which version they are," the actor said.

In a March 2022 New York Magazine interview with Quan, he said that his entertainment lawyer is his "Goonies" co-star and fellow former child actor Jeff Cohen. Cohen, who played Lawrence "Chunk" Cohen alongside Quan's Richard "Data" Wang in the 1980s children's classic, graduated from UCLA's law school in 2000 and started the entertainment firm Cohen & Gardner in Beverly Hills. During a January 2023 Hollywood Reporter actors' roundtable, Quan said that it was Cohen who drew up his deal to appear in this film: "He's all grown now, he's an entertainment lawyer--he's my entertainment lawyer. So when the producer of our movie was trying to make my deal, he said, he would never have imagined that we would have to talk to Chunk to get Data to be in his movie. Yeah, it was just so sweet!" (IMDb)

Happy Birthday, Ke Huy Quan!

31/08/2024

Rather than rely on CGI, Tim Burton wanted the forty squirrels in the Nut Room in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2005) to be real. The animals were trained everyday for ten weeks before filming commenced. They began their coaching while newborns, fed by bottles to form relationships with human trainers. The squirrels were each taught how to sit upon a little blue bar stool, tap, and then open a walnut and deposit its "meat" onto a conveyor belt. "Utimately, the scene was supplemented by CGI and animatronics, but for the close-ups and the main action, they're the real thing," Burton said. Burton avoided using too many digital effects because he wanted the younger actors and actresses to feel as if they were working in a realistic environment, as a result, forced perspective techniques, oversized props, and scale models were used to avoid computer graphics imagery.

Author Roald Dahl disapproved of the 1971 film adaptation. Warner Bros. and Brillstein-Grey Entertainment entered into discussions with the Dahl estate in 1991, hoping to purchase the rights to produce another film version. The purchase was finalized in 1998, with Dahl's widow, Felicity ("Liccy"), and daughter, Lucy, receiving total artistic control and final privilege on the choices of actors, directors, and writers. Ang Lee, Terry Gilliam, Anthony Minghella, and Spike Jonze were among the Dahl estate's preferred directors for the project, but Burton would receive receiving enthusiastic approval from the estate.

Burton; "As a child, Dahl was the author who I connected to the most. He got the idea of writing a mixture of light and darkness, and not speaking down to kids, and the kind of politically incorrect humor that kids get. I've always liked that, and it's shaped everything I've felt that I've done."

During pre-production, Burton visitedDahl's former house in the Buckinghamshire village of Great Missenden. Liccy Dahl remembers Burton entering Dahl's famed writing shed and saying, "This is the Bucket's house!" and thinking to herself, "Thank God, somebody gets it." (IMDb/Wikipedia)

Happy Birthday, Tim Burton!

31/08/2024

Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Bailey star in Gareth Edwards' dinosaur movie, written by David Koepp. Read plot details and more at Empire.

31/08/2024

Channing Tatum's X-Men hero makes a magic sparkle circle escape in a new deleted scene from Shawn Levy's Marvel movie. Watch it here.

31/08/2024

Tim Burton, Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder reunite for a long-awaited Beetlejuice sequel. Read the Empire review.

31/08/2024

According to Anna Kendrick, the set pieces used for the woods in "Into the Woods" (2014) were so big and realistic that she and Chris Pine actually got lost while on the sound stage, and had to be rescued by a production assistant. Also, Pine was extremely shy about his singing voice, and noted that he would hold back during rehearsals. She only heard his actual singing voice when she was eating lunch in the recording studio. She was in a room by herself and she heard a "beautiful, crooning voice" coming from the hallway, but she assumed that it was a singer from a different project, since multiple records were being recorded in the studio. She then noticed that the singing wasn't stopping, so she poked her head out to see who it was. To her surprise, she discovered that it was Pine, who didn't know anybody else was there.

Kendrick was concerned about meeting Emily Blunt, assuming that she would be cold towards her. Blunt auditioned, and was considered for, Kendrick's role in "Up in the Air" (2009), for which she was Oscar nominated.The two ended up being best friends throughout the shoot, and Kendrick even found out that Blunt is a huge lover of fart jokes..

Before being cast as Cinderella, Kendrick believed she was going in for the role of Red Riding Hood, due to the part being played by a young twenty-something woman in the original Broadway production.

In her 2016 book "Scrappy Little Nobody," Kendrick revealed that both her shoes and the palace steps were magnetized for the scene in which the Prince pours tar on the steps to keep Cinderella from escaping, leading into the song "On the Steps of the Palace." (IMDb)

Happy Birthday, Anna Kendrick!

31/08/2024

In a new social media post, Ryan Reynolds is celebrating the stunt team on Deadpool & Wolverine and making a case for the Oscars to award their work. He shared:

“Stunt work doesn’t have a category at The Oscars and I hope that’ll change someday. So many films have smashed it this year. Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Chaplin were stunt performers as well as filmmakers. Telling stories with their entire bodies.”

Reynolds also listed Deadpool & Wolverine stunt team in his post.

31/08/2024

30/08/2024

The action packed drama of the giant SyFy hit series Battlestar Galactica has given television viewers fantastic new stars that have garnered a worldwide following of passionate fans. Today we are very happy to announce a new full scale convention dedicated to the wonderful cast of Battlestar Galact...

30/08/2024

On this date in 1973, "Westworld" was released.

Writer/director Michael Crichton said he did not wish to make his feature directorial debut (after one TV film) with science fiction, but "That's the only way I could get the studio to let me direct. People think I'm good at it, I guess."

Crichton's agent introduced him to producer Paul N. Lazarus III; they became friends and decided to make a film together. The script was written in August 1972. Lazarus says he asked Crichton why he did not tell the story as a book; Crichton said he felt the story was visual, and would not really work as a book.

The script was offered to all the major studios. They all turned down the project except for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, then under head of production Dan Melnick and president James T. Aubrey. Crichton said, "MGM had a bad reputation among filmmakers; in recent years, directors as diverse as Robert Altman, Blake Edwards, Stanley Kubrick, Fred Zinneman, and Sam Peckinpah had complained bitterly about their treatment there. There were too many stories of unreasonable pressure, arbitrary script changes, inadequate post production, and cavalier recutting of the final film. Nobody who had a choice made a picture at Metro, but then we didn't have a choice. Dan Melnick ... assured [us] ... that we would not be subjected to the usual MGM treatment. In large part, he made good on that promise."

Crichton, however, said pre-production was difficult. MGM demanded script changes up to the first day of shooting, and the leads were not signed until 48 hours before shooting began. Crichton said he had no control over casting and MGM originally would only make the film for under a million dollars but later increased this amount by $250,000. Crichton said that $250,000 of the budget was paid to the cast, $400,000 to the crew and the remainder on everything else (including $75,000 for sets).

Yul Brynner was suffering from financial difficulties by the early 1970s and in desperate need of money. With no other movie work on offer to him at the time he reluctantly agreed to play his role for a knockdown $75,000, which comes out to less than $500,000 today. Among the names originally considered to play the two human leads were James Caan, Lee Majors, Elliott Gould, Jon Voight, and James Franciscus. However, these all proved to be either unavailable during the filming dates or too expensive to hire. The then 42 year old William Shatner was also seriously contemplated by the studio, but the producers struggled with ideas as to who to cast alongside him. They eventually decided to cast two younger relative unknowns so as to make sure Brynner remained the star name in the film.

After making the film, Crichton took a year off. "I was intensely fatigued by 'Westworld,'", he said later. "I was pleased but intimidated by the audience reaction. The laughs are in the wrong places. There was extreme tension where I hadn't planned it. I felt the reaction, and maybe the picture, was out of control." He believed that the film had been misunderstood as warning of the dangers of technology: "Everyone remembers the scene in 'Westworld' where Yul Brynner is a robot that runs amok. But there is a very specific scene where people discuss whether or not to shut down the resort. I think the movie was as much about that decision as anything. They just didn't really think it was really going to happen." His real intention was to warn against corporate greed.

John Carpenter based the "indestructable" nature of his killer Michael Myers in "Halloween" (1978) on Brynner's character in this film. Similarly, Arnold Schwarzenegger used Brynner's performance as the basis of his performance in "The Terminator" (1984). (Wikipedia/IMDb)

30/08/2024

Michelle Yeoh said that the film "Everything Everywhere All at Once" (2022) was completely out of her comfort zone, "I was suddenly doing comedy, physical comedy, action, horror, every single genre all packed into one, and jumping in and out of it. It was such a gratifying experience. I've waited a long time to receive a script like that. Because, as you get older, the box gets smaller and smaller."

In separate interviews, both Yeoh and Stephanie Hsu revealed that rock universe was their favorite even though neither of the actors are seen or heard here. The scene was originally going to see the dialogue voiced, but Yeoh suggested it be subtitled instead.

Cinematographer Larkin Seiple wanted to film the Desolate Rock Universe scenes on 15/70mm IMAX, but it wasn't within their budget. The remote shooting location eventually proved to be such a hassle that Seiple was ultimately glad that complicated IMAX cameras hadn't been added to the mix. Director Dan Kwan later said that not shooting this scene in IMAX was his one regret. There were even discussions about doing a special IMAX release of the movie where the only shots that would fill the entire IMAX frame would be from this universe.

For their performances in this film, Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan became two of ten performers to win an Oscar playing characters who spoke in a language other than English. The other winners are Sophia Loren, Robert De Niro, Roberto Benigni, Benicio Del Toro, Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Christoph Waltz, and Youn Yuh-jung. Yeoh's and Quan's wins are the first ones performed in Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin dialects). (IMDb)

Happy Birthday, Michelle Yeoh!

30/08/2024

After reading the script for "The Matrix" (1999), Carrie-Anne Moss stated that, at first, she did not believe she had to do the extreme acrobatic actions as described in the script. She also doubted how the Wachowskis would get to direct a movie with a budget so large, but after spending an hour with them going through the storyboard, she understood why some people would trust them. She underwent a three-hour physical test during casting, so she knew what to expect subsequently.

To prepare for the wire fu, the actors had to train hard for several months. The Wachowskis first scheduled four months for training. Woo-Ping Yuen was optimistic, but then began to worry when he realized how unfit the actors and actresses were. Yuen let their body style develop, and then worked with each actor's or actress' strength. He built on Keanu Reeves' diligence, Laurence Fishburne's resilience, Hugo Weaving's precision, and Moss' feminine grace. Yuen designed Moss' moves to suit her deftness and lightness.

When Moss saw the first cut, it was also the first time she'd ever seen herself in a movie before. She found it impossible after the film's release to go out wearing sunglasses as she was instantly recognized.

"I wouldn't play another character like Trinity out of respect to her and respect to the film. I don't want to be the leather-clad, kicking-butt girl with another name. It would be like cheating on Trinity." (IMDb)

Happy Birthday, Carrie-Anne Moss!

30/08/2024

The ‘TERMINATOR ZERO’ anime debuts with 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Now streaming on Netflix.

30/08/2024

In an odd twist of fate, Ian McDiarmid played an elderly, disfigured Emperor Palpatine in "Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi" (1983), and then went on to play a younger version of that character, some 20 years later, in the "Star Wars" prequels. According to McDiarmid, George Lucas originally cast him simply as the physical performance of the Emperor (similar to David Prowse as Darth Vader). This became evident to him when a producer told him that if he was able to get his voice close enough to Clive Revill's (who portrayed the Emperor's voice in "Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back" (1980)) Lucas would let him use his on-camera vocals in the final cut of the film. However, McDiarmid felt he could conduct a stronger, more wicked and demonic voice for the Emperor as opposed to Revill's more aristocratic Emperor. Lucas, and even Steven Spielberg, were so impressed with his take that it ended up becoming a signature trait of the character.

McDiarmid on digitally replacing Clive Revill in the DVD release of "Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back" (1980): "George (Lucas) felt that it was just and proper. When he made 'Empire,' we hadn't met, and he didn't have a particular idea of who would play the Emperor or how the character would develop. And he had no notion that he would do the backstory - Episodes I, II, and III. So whoever played the Emperor in a mask and added to Revill's voice wouldn't seem authentic to the people who are going to watch the entire saga in the right order. It wouldn't make any sense. Since I was the Emperor [in the other 'Star Wars' films], it felt appropriate that I should be inserted into 'Empire', and that's what George did."

The Emperor's chair in the film was mechanized so that it could rotate when the scene called for it. However, the mechanism never worked properly, so McDiarmid had to make it move by shuffling his feet. A piece of tape on the floor told him when to stop so it would not be visible to the camera. (IMDb)

Happy Birthday, Ian McDiarmid!

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