Jurassic Park Turns 20 Today! (June 11th)

[scallenger 483]

Maybe it is overdoing it to have yet another Jurassic Park related thread, but I think this one is warranted. Today (June 11th) is the actual day Jurassic Park premiered (in the United States, at least), 20 years ago, in 1993. This movie will forever be important to me because it basically got me into everything I admire and aspire to be today. It also was what made me become a John Williams fan (and that of film scores in general), and I don't think I am alone here in saying that. Seeing the film in theaters again recently (5 times, haha!) was something I always wanted to experience again ever since 1993. It did not disappoint. For me the film is just as exciting, impressive, wondrous, tense, and fun as it always has been. It sure isn't perfect, but it's perfect for me.

The digital soundtrack remaster/expansion will be the release of the year for me, no matter what else ends up getting released this year. It was something I basically always wanted to happen ever since those handful of cues missing from the CD album aggravated me to no end. I did a fan edit using the DVD channels when I was very young, thanks to this site, and actually some of my amateur work of this can be found on YouTube uploaded by other people (it had been uploaded to an old, now defunct, fan site). It's a pretty crappy rip in hindsight (what the hell did I do, make it all mono?!), but it was sufficient for quite some time before I found better alternatives. And now it's 99% obsolete as of a couple months ago! Amazing.

In celebration, here is one of my favorite clips from the film, featuring one of my favorite music tracks that was originally left off the soundtrack album... but no longer! Enjoy!

If Jurassic Park 3D was still playing in theaters around me, I probably would go see it today after work. Since it's not, I may watch it on BluRay when I get home, unless I'm too tired. Regardless, I know what will be blasting in my car today...

[Incanus 5,714]

Happy birthday JP!

A film that introduced me to John Williams' music and the rest is history.

Journey to the Island

[Luke Skywalker 1,795]

happy anniversary!

[Thor 7,494]

Congrats to one of my alltime favourite films that I must have seen more than 30 times over the years. I saw the 3D version yesterday, and am currently doing an article on that for montages.no.

[scallenger 483]

Here is an article that went unnoticed by me in April when JP came to theaters in 3D. It actually features a LOT of newly revealed factoids I certainly have never heard before (although it does also cover a lot of stuff I did know, so you just gotta skim through it all to find the good stuff).

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2013/04/04/jurassic-park-oral-history/

Here are the best highlights below. A couple here and there I did already know but this time had more details than I previously knew (and included the Williams quote even though it didn't say much, lol):

According to Spielberg, other interested directors may have included ­Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon) and James Cameron (Avatar).

TIPPETT Another thing that was really important is that they locked me in a room with Gary Rydstrom for a week. Before we started doing the actual performances, I wanted to have the dinosaur voices, or as close as we could.

With preproduction under way, Spielberg selected screenwriter David Koepp to help Crichton adapt the book, based on a ­recommendation from Robert Zemeckis, who was directing Death Becomes Her, co-written by Koepp.

DAVID KOEPP Screenwriter Steven was looking around for somebody to take a fresh shot at Jurassic so I read it and got a meeting and told them how I thought I’d do it. I do remember that I wanted to start it in a sort of a globe-trotting way, I wanted to give it this feel of international dimension.

SPIELBERG David basically took it from a banquet to fast food and that’s a compliment because the movie feels like a drive thru. The scenes are tight. The story David wrote is a page-turner. There’s just enough science to make it credible and then it’s a downhill race from then on.

KOEPP The problem turning the book into a movie was that there’s vast amount of scientific exposition and how on earth do you get that in a movie? I remember Steven and I were wrestling with that very issue, about the DNA, and one of us said, “What are we supposed to do? Have a little animated character called Mr. DNA?” And the other one said, “Yes! That’s exactly what we’re going to do!”

SPIELBERG Yeah, that was my idea. When I was a kid, the AV kids used to wheel in the projector and show these Frank Capra produced and directed documentaries on the mind, the heart and the sun. I just remember all the interstitial animation that was done to illustrate the science and thought, “Why don’t we do all this in a 2-minute animated handbook for the audience?” It would be easy for everybody to understand how this is even possible to bring dinosaurs back.

LAURA DERN Dr. Ellie Sattler I was talking with Nicolas Cage, and we had just done Wild at Heart together, and I said to him, “Nic, they want to put me on the phone with Steven Spielberg, but they want to talk to me about a dinosaur movie…” And he was like, “You are doing a dinosaur movie! No one can ever say no to a dinosaur movie!” I was like, “Really?” And he’s like, “Are you kidding? It’s a dream of my life to do a movie with dinosaurs!” [Laughs] So he was such an ­influence on me. Then I talked to Steven and he goes, “I know that you’re doing your independent films, but I need you to be chased by dinosaurs, in awe of dinosaurs, and have the adventure of a lifetime. Will you do this with me?” And I was like, “Sure.”

SAM NEILL Dr. Alan Grant I was in L.A., on the way to a job in Canada, and my agent called and said Steven Spielberg would like to meet with you in half an hour. So I got a cab and I went over to Steven’s house and we sat in his hallway and I looked at his art and we talked about this thing Jurassic Park. It was all very surprising. So I went to Canada and two days later, I had the part. And three or four weeks after that we started shooting in Hawaii. So it all happened real quick. I hadn’t read the book, knew nothing about it, hadn’t heard anything about it, and in a matter of weeks I’m working with Spielberg.

JANET HIRSHENSON Casting director I read the book and I thought of Jeff Goldblum right away. There were several other people we taped for the part, though. Jim Carrey had come in and he was terrific, too, but I think pretty quickly we all loved the idea of Jeff.

JEFF GOLDBLUM Ian Malcolm A meeting was set up, so I went over there to Amblin. I’d quickly read the book in preparation and Steven said, “Since we scheduled this meeting, there’s an idea afoot to combine the two characters, to absorb your character into the Sam Neill character.” I said, “Well, geez. I hope you don’t do that.” I might have even advocated on the spot, and I came back and lo and behold I had a little part in it.

ARIANA RICHARDS Lex I was called into a casting office, and they just wanted me to scream. I heard later on that Steven had watched a few girls on tape that day, and I was the only one who ended up waking his sleeping wife off the couch, and she came running through the hallway to see if the kids were all right.

JOSEPH MAZZELLO Tim Steven had me screen-test with Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman for Hook. I was just too young for the role. And because of that, Steven came up to me and said, “Don’t worry about it, Joey. I’m going to get you in a movie this summer.” Not only a nice promise to get, but to have it be one of the biggest box-office smashes of all time? That’s a pretty good trade.

JOHN WILLIAMS Composer The sight of the animals as we saw them for the first time, I thought what I saw was awesome and that the animals were beautiful and inspiring and the orchestra could illustrate some of the sense of absolute wonder and breathtaking beauty of what our actors are supposed to be seeing.

NEILL We were all huddled into the ballroom of this hotel, which was completely trashed in the course of the hurricane. What kept morale up was that the only thing to read in the whole ballroom, the only thing anyone thought to bring in with them, was a Victoria’s Secret catalog. So that, in our darkest moments, cheered us up.

GOLDBLUM The lights went out, and I remember Steven Spielberg took a flashlight and held it above his head and shined it down on himself and said, “Love story,” and then put it under his chin and said, “Horror story.” “Love story. Horror story.”

RICHARDS Steven helped to combat boredom with both Joey and me. He took it upon himself to tell us ghost stories, and I think the ghost stories scared me more than the hurricane.

SPIELBERG Kathy Kennedy jogged to the airport. She found some guy about to leave on a small private single engine aircraft. She hitchhiked her way to Honolulu and she was trying to find a plane that could get our crew and cast back to Los Angeles. She bumped into this guy she kind of recognized and she walked over to the guy and said, “Don’t I know you?” and he said, “Hi Kathy.” It was the young man that flew the biplane in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He was the pilot that was in our movie and he just happened to be a pilot of a four-engine 707, a cargo plane and he was between flights. So Kathy arranged with him to send a large plane to the island the next day to take the cast and crew out. It’s once again something else that seems to only happen in the movies. And when things like that happen in the movies, the audience rejects that!

KENNEDY The T. rex went into the heebie-jeebies sometimes. Scared the crap out of us. We’d be, like, eating lunch, and all of a sudden a T. rex would come alive. At first we didn’t know what was happening, and then we realized it was the rain. You’d hear people start screaming.

MAZZELLO We were in that car, and I think the T. rex was only supposed to go down so far, and the Plexiglas was the only thing between the dinosaur and us. It came down too far one time, and it chipped the Plexiglas and broke a tooth. And if you pause on it, you can actually see in the movie that there’s a shot during that scene where the T. rex was missing a tooth.

NEILL I’ve still got a big scar on my left hand that I’m looking at right now from the flare. It dropped some burning ­phosphorous on me and got under my watch and took a chunk of my arm out.

KOEPP I remember the day it opened, I was in New York and I walked to the Ziegfeld [Theatre] to see how it was doing. The guy comes out and announces to the big line, “Ladies and gentlemen, the 7 o’clock show 
of Jurassic Park is sold out.” And ­people go, “Oooh.” And he goes, “Also the 10 o’clock show is sold out.” And they went, “Ooooooh.” “And also Saturday night’s 
 7 and 10 o’clock shows are also sold out.” And I was like, “I’m not an expert, but I think this is very good.”

SPIELBERG My reaction was “Thank God.” 
 I don’t often preview the movies I direct. 
 I did not preview Jurassic Park. The first 
 time I saw it was at a theater with the 8 p.m. Friday audience. I sat in the back with my agent Mike Ovitz and my wife.

KENNEDY That was a period of time where it was so fun to release movies because it was like a rock concert. You’d get in a limo and get a couple bottles of champagne and drive around town and see the lines around the block and people going crazy and getting dressed up. And then you go into the theater, and people were so excited. We’ve lost a bit of that with movies opening in so many theaters.

SPIELBERG I think people like Jurassic Park because it’s a helluva yarn.

[Smeltington 1,440]

Wow, fascinating quotes... thanks for curating those, scallenger.

[Brónach 1,302]

I feel old.

[nightscape94 965]

[Quintus 5,399]

Jesus, I'd just left school that summer.

Sigh.

Jurassic Park is the film I use more than anything else for timeline orientation purposes. It's the equivalent of my own Anno Domini.

[Ollie 1,059]

20 years.......

wow.