Tag: Naomi Watts

All right, this blog, like last week’s episode on King Kong 2005, wants to be as long as that film. Thanks to contractual obligations, I have to include all of Marchand’s unused notes, which he split between his computer and a legal pad for whatever reason this time. I am suddenly more appreciative of the glorious invention that is copy and paste.

Let’s get this over with, shall we?

My Notes:

• Yes, I borrowed Dr. Aoki’s pteronadon bot without permission. I don’t think he’s missed it yet. So, unless he gets transfer to Monster Island, I don’t think it’ll be a problem. As for flying Danny here on it, well, I couldn’t resist taking it for a test flight. I now know how to improve on the thing’s admittedly goofy design.
• I dare you to tell me you don’t like sand, DiManna!
• I am fine with Daniel calling me “Jimbo”…for now. (Yes, I’m being flippant).
• Nice job catching me before I corrected you, Marchand.
• Actually, Danny, the dinosaur Kong fights in the original isn’t a Rex. It’s closer to an Allosaurus. It’s just called a “meat-eater” in the novelization.
• Actually, Danny, I don’t think gorillas—even Kong—qualify as predators. At least in this film. Normal gorillas are vegetarians, but some do eat insects. Kong in this film was never seen eating meat. Therefore, he doesn’t qualify as a predator.
• Jackson himself didn’t say he treated this like filming on Skull Island itself in the 1930s. That was a crewmember. Watch that $5 blu-ray again.
• Mothra’s not a butterfly, Daniel! Her species is obvious! (Or was that a joke? I’ll forgive a joke. 😛 ).
• I can neither confirm nor deny that I am the Jimmy in this film. And yes, like the Doctor, I will explain later. Maybe.
• There were more than just the two crewmembers who survived in the 1933 King Kong, Daniel.
• King Kong (1976) is two hours and 14 minutes long. Over one hour shorter.
• “I had saw it on the big screen”? Verb tenses, Danny! I expect better from a writer. 😛
• Here’s the Roger Ebert review Nathan brought up (and yes, you misremembered what he said). Here’s the video review.
• They aren’t T-Rexes, Nathan. They’re V-Rexes. Both of you got it wrong!
• “PJ’s version”? Danny is on initials terms with Peter Jackson? I doubt it. 😛
• It wasn’t trailers but one of Peter Jackson’s video diaries on www.kongisking.net where he announced back-to-back sequels to the film. They were Son of Kong and King Kong: Into the Wolf’s Lair. And I agree: they would’ve been amazing! You can watch it here with a fan edit trailer. Sadly, it includes a stupid clip from the stupid Date Movie. Ugh!
• You got your Bugs Bunny cartoons mixed up, Danny. The one you were thinking of was “What’s Up Doc?” not “Show Biz Bugs” (which you called “Show Biz Bunny”). The latter is about a jealous Daffy Duck trying to upstage Bugs on stage.
• My whole backstory will be in my tell-all book, War in Space: The Jimmy From NASA Story. 😛
• My international man of mystery Schick gets me more luck the ladies more than you have, Marchand! 😛
• I’m happy to say, as promised in this episode, I am now one of Danny’s patrons on Patreon—and I used Nathan’s debit card to do it! 😛
• The sexist essay Nathan was referring to (and forgot to include in the show notes) was “The Myth Goes Downward: The Infantilization, Electrification, Mechanization, and General Diminishment of King Kong” by Paul Di Filippo. It’s from the book Kong Unbound: The Cultural Impact, Pop Mythos, and Scientific Plausibility of a Cinematic Legend.

Nathan’s Unused Notes – Blu-Ray Special Features:

• Jackson saw King Kong 1933 as a kid in 1970. It inspired his love of science fiction and fantasy and his desire to be a filmmaker. He made super 8 films and stop motion. There’s lots of SFX in his films because he was a “frustrated special effects guy.” Solitary. (-Sounds like me, except I work on robots and mecha. –Jimmy)
• Universal approached him in 1995 to remake either Kong or The Creature from the Black Lagoon.
• The first script was closer in tone to The Mummy (1999).
• Work was done in 1996 by Weta using lots of practical effects.
• Jackson and his crew visited the Empire State Building, and he signed his name on the peak.
• The film wasn’t storyboarded. It was all pre-viz. No finished script at the time it started.
• It had more miniatures than The Lord of the Rings.
• Started with T-Rex fight like the original film as proof of concept.
• Naomi Watts had to learn how to dance. Jamie Bell (Jimmy) had danced since age 6. (So…I can neither confirm nor deny that I, too, can dance. –Jimmy)
• Jack Black tapped into his inner-Denham by using an old camera to make short films. Boxer and criminal.
• First shot filmed was when Ann arrives at dock.
• The boat bought for the production had fish in it that had to be shipped out.
• Jackson got seasick, so he shot on sets.
• Jackson says the natives aren’t based on a particular civilization but are an amalgam of several from that time. They use their hair to make clothing. The actors came from Polynesia, Cambodia, etc.
• The dinosaurs weren’t paleontologically accurate but stylized and more evolved. The V-Rexes were a family (mother, father, juvenile). Some like the Wetasaur were made up.
• They used a massive computer system to from LOTR to make CGI extras. They don’t fight like Orcs but walk like New Yorkers—any differences? jokes Jackson.
• Weta wrote a new program called Building Bot to create missing buildings in NYC cityscape.
• The real Empire State Building took 14 months to construct. The digital version took 18 months. Irony. (Digital construction is harder than real construction. I should know. I worked at NASA. –Jimmy)
• Peter Jackson, Rick Baker, Frank Darabont, and other famous people attached to Kong flew the airplanes that attacked Kong as a nod to Schoedsack and Cooper doing that in the 1933 original. Jackson even shaved his trademark beard! (I’m not even sure that was Jackson. Like Jonathan Frakes as Riker on Star Trek: The Next Generation, he looks like a completely different person. Maybe he was dubbed over by the real Jackson? 😛 –Jimmy)
• Kong is a misunderstood monster. Weta watched Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame for inspiration.
• They made him a punch-drunk boxer and mountain man. They used an albino gorilla at a zoo for inspiration. (Can you say, “Kiko”? –Jimmy). His broken jaw was modeled after an inbred pug named Monster. It was toned down later (as you’ll notice in the first trailer). He was redesigned after the first trailer.
• The final reference used for Kong was Umagami the ape from an IMAX film. The filmmakers ultimately decided he should look like a real gorilla.
• Gorillas beat chests with open cupped hands while movie gorillas use fists. They compromised by having hands between open and clenched.
• Some mocap was dropped, but Serkis was used as reference.
• Jackson said this was always the film he wanted to make.

Nathan’s Unused Notes – The Film:

• The opening credits are like original.
• Opens with apes and monkeys in zoo next to a Hooverville. Then we go to Vaudeville clips. Cuts between that and images of Depression. Alcohol bottles smashed. Prohibition.
• Naomi Watts’ costume looks just like Fay Wray’s.
• I never knew there were that many nicknames for breasts in the ‘30s.
• “Universal is desperate for stock footage!” (4^th wall)
• Maybe it’s the writer in me, but I like that Jack Driscoll is a playwright in this. “If you really loved it, you would’ve jumped” (Denham to Jack).
• Jimmy?! Is that my producer?! Stowed away. Found in hold 4 years ago. Arm broken in two places. Wouldn’t say where he came from. He’s a prankster. Defaces Baxter’s posters. Jimmy can dance!
• Live animals in cage sign on Jack’s cage. Symbolic?
• Was it necessary to have the typing of Skull Island be in slo-mo?
• Ann and Jack’s relationship gets more development in this than original. All the characters get more development. Helps that it’s 3 hours long!
• Sure, hold the important map over the edge of the ship! Yep! There it goes!
• Is it just me or did the rock the Venture bumps into at 51 minutes look like a huge face? One definitely does later.
• Of course there are skulls on Skull Island.
• Jackson is a little overly fond of scary slo-mo in this film.
• Ann screams and then Kong roars. Appropriate.
• The wall and natives definitely remind me of LOTR. There’s a chasm as well as a wall. That helps explain how the creatures are kept out.
• Triceratops’ twitching tail homage to original?
• I love that Lumpy tries to kill a bug with a frying pan. Then he shoots them.
• “There’s only one creature capable of leaving a footprint that size…and that’s me!” (Lumpy)
• “Nobody’s gonna think these are fake”(4^th wall).
• These raptors are crazy. Going after prey that huge?!
• Wilhelm scream!
• Preston looks like he’s heard this speech many times.
• “I’m just an actor with a gun who’s lost his motivation” (4^th wall).
• We see Kong eating plants like a real gorilla.
• Kong blocks Ann’s way like in ’76.
• Running around barefoot in a jungle must be tearing up her feet.
• Water scorpions? Man, everything on this island is crazy aggressive.
• And Denham becomes a snuff filmmaker.
• Not all CGI. Some practical creature effects.
• Kong does pick up a man: Hayes.
• The iconic log scene recreated. Tries to account for surviving fall by having it get caught on vines.
• It’s hard not to invite Jurassic Park comparisons.
• Quietest. V-Rex. Ever!
• I love that Kong stands with one foot on V-Rex when he beats his chest.
• The shot of Jack and Ann running through the jungle looks just like ’33.
• The Broadway sign looks just like ’33.
• “The Beast”: a working title for ’33.
• “Kong’s unfailing ability to destroy the things he loves.”
• Kong starts grabbing every blonde he sees. From the real jungle to the urban/concrete jungle.
• The trolley attack references the train attack in ’33.
• The military attacking Kong makes me think of a Japanese kaiju film.
• Wow. The biplanes deploy without anyone talking about it. Dang!
• I wonder which cameos were in the planes Kong destroyed?
• Now the pilots see Ann. They only almost killed her once.
• The soldiers pose and smile over Kong’s corpse. Sensationalize.

Nathan’s Unused Notes – King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon by Ray Morton:

• Robert Zemeckis would’ve been the executive on Jackson’s 1997 script for Kong if it was filmed.
• The Frighteners poor performance shook Universal’s confidence in Jackson.
• Jack Driscoll was modeled after Arthur Miller (All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, A View from the Bridge).
• Jackson sought to combine elements of Cooper’s beastly Kong with de Laurentiis’s more romantic Kong. Saw him as a battle-hardened silverback. He told the Los Angles times he saw Kong as “a very old gorilla [that has] never felt a single bit of empathy for another living creature during his long…brutal life.” Kong intended to kill Ann, “and then he slowly moves away from that and it comes full circle.”

Nathan’s Unused Notes – “King Kong’s Melancholly” by Cynthia Erb:

• Jackson called Universal’s cancelation of his original Kong script “the blackest day in my entire career.”
• Argues that Jackson’s Kong is melancholy and shifts the emphasis from horror to mood and tears because Watts’ Ann cries more than she screams.
• Argues that the extended cut frames Kong as an invader and presents the U.S. as “a bullying global entity at a stage of late empire” a la Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
• Says Jackson’s Kong reframes history through a modern lens (9/11 allegory).
• Uses the “Depression” to set a mood of “depression.” Focused on objects, which leads to melancholy. Watts’ Ann is earthy, hungry.
• This Ann is less afraid of predatory men than of being put into a “standardized role.” An indication of modernity. She gets up to leave when Denham wonders if she’d fit in a size four dress.
• Says Black’s manic Denham makes him a character type called an intriguer or schemer, which also characterized Shakespeare’s Iago in Othello. This forms a “dyadic relationship” with the depressive Kong.
• Argues that Jackson’s Kong is driven not by a sex drive but by a “death drive.” Jacqueline Rose: “The death drive is identified by Freud in the moment when the child seeks to master absence by staging the recall of the lost object, but finds it can only do so by first making the object disappear. This allows the child to achieve its aim only by repeating the very moment it is designed to avoid.” Compares Kong to Norman Bates in Psycho. Compulsive repetition.  
• The Manhattanites and Islanders are paralleled in that both are shown to survivors in a harsh environment.
• Argues that the overzealous soldiers attacking Kong in Central Park, seeing him as an invader and New York as “sacred ground,” is an allegory for 9/11. Argues that this goes further with the skeletal Empire State Building in the morning, which parallels Art Spiegelman’s 9/11 memoir In the Shadow of No Towers. Kong seemingly mouthing “beautiful” on top of the structure recalls how American towers were seen as “utopian gestures…transcendental, sky-catching, awesome” (Mark Kingwell).

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Well, I’m glad that’s done. If you read the whole thing, congrats!

Join us next week for a (hopefully) much shorter episode on another epic: the 1959 Toho classic The Three Treasures, starring Toshiro Mifune. Then the “Kong Quest” enters the MonsterVerse with Kong: Skull Island in April with Dallas Mora of Geek Devotions as the guest host.

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