Hi, everybody.

I'm Leonard Maltin and welcome to the Movie Guide Today Guy Davis and I will be talking about Jurassic Park.

Hey, everybody, welcome to the Movie Guide with Malton and Davis.

I am Brendan Danna of the Fourthinger discount Network, joined right now by Guy Davis.

Hello, and he is back the Lenda Malton, how are you?

I'm here, I'm back.

I am anxious to be talking movie some more, especially with you Guy.

Thank you very much.

Lenna.

It's great to have you back and great to be talking with you.

Same here.

I'm in a i'll call it my sick bed, so I'm getting much better.

But I've been out of commission for about a month because of a strange fluky thing where I got a scratch on my leg and it became infected.

Oh and uh, I I don't notice things.

My daughter said, your foot is all swollen.

I said, it is, called our doctor, and the doctor said, get to the emergency room now, and I did.

And I spent eight fun filled days in the hospital and I've spent three weeks since then recovering and recuperating at home with my Florence Nightingale Alice and uh, my daughter, granddaughter.

I'm being well cared.

For, Lenna.

This is not to damn play any medical conditions you may have been wrestling with recently, but it sounds like you suffer from condition of being male.

That's that's certainly true.

That is certainly true.

You're feeling a bit indestructible, like we all do.

Yeah, up to up to a point.

In date and date, but we are.

We are very very happy that you took the time to rest, recuperate, get your strength back, and get ready to talk about dinosaurs.

Oh yeah, boys, he took out that bedspread he's got behind him.

As this is a temporary set up here.

My daughter was determined to get the least expensive you know, bedding she could for this rental hospital bed, and so this is target's finest.

I don't know the thread count, but it's colorful and it's nice.

I've got the same one.

It's with it.

I was about to say, here I can.

I was convinced that you were a mature gentleman who nonetheless was in touch with his and had prehistoric bed linen.

But no, we were serving that badanda who really does have that DNA.

Yeah, but Jurassic Park.

That's what we're here to talk about, not just dinosaurs in general, but very specific dinosaurs, because well, dinosaurs may be extinct, but the Jurassic Park slash World franchise seemingly never will.

Be no no, no, and no matter how snarky or outright hostile the reviews seem to be.

For each new chapter of the saga, people can't stay away, People can't stay away.

And my wife and I watched the original Jurassic Park, which we're going to discuss now in some detail, and we were just swept away, absolutely captivated, as if we'd never seen it before.

And I, of course, I'm the king of the jump scare suckers, so it was just it was made for people like me and for everybody else too.

I was about to say you, you would have been like a long tailed cat and a crimple of rocking chats with this.

This is jam packed with jump scares.

And I'm sorry to interrupt you, but you're right in what you say about.

You know, critics do to get a little bit snoky about sort of each subsequent iteration of the Jurassic franchise, and it's mainly because Steven Spielberg said the bar so high with this first one.

Am I right?

He certainly did.

He said it as high as you possibly can.

I said to Alice about ten minutes in, when the story is just ramping up.

You know, I said, we're in the hands of a master here, a master filmmaker, which is to say, a master manipulator.

Oh yeah, and that's not a negative word in this case.

He lays the groundwork, He sets everything up so beautifully and so carefully that the payoffs are bound to be exciting, satisfying, sometimes unexpected, and sometimes ironic and even funny.

No, he's the absolute puppet master Spielberg, and he's sort of working at the peak of his talents here in this regard.

Now, yeah, we're talking about Jurassic Park today, the original nineteen ninety three film based on the Michael Chrichton novel.

Because Jurassic Park Rebirth, the seventh film in the franchise, has well, it's been the centems for about a week or close to a fortnite.

Now, why by the time this show hits the airwaves, done very well in its first five days, made some like three hundred million dollars worldwide.

You put the Jurassic name on just about any movie, and it tends to do very, very well.

But yeah, so we thought we'd go back to where it will begin.

We have to rewind a little bit and remind people that when this film came out in nineteen ninety three, the idea of CGI computer generated imagery was still new and still in what I would call an experimental phase.

Some exciting things had already been been done.

But Spielberg, being the guy he is, the master filmmaker he is, he sort of knew that some of it had to look real, not almost real, not movie real real.

So he turned to Stan Winston, who died much too young, a really interesting, colorful guy, Stan Winston, who had made The Terminator come to life, who had so many incredible credits.

A lot of the reason that this movie works is that what the characters are feeling with these dinosaurs, breathing on them, you know, being right next to them, it's because they really were.

They really were.

They built full scale dinosaurs and dinosaur torsos and heads, dinosaur tails, and they combined that with stop motion animation, which was in the hands of another master, Phil Tippett, who grew up watching the silent film in the Lost World by Willis O'Brien, the man who made King Kong, so he was weaned on all of this stuff and the story and the screenplay that David Kepp wrote with Michael Crichton, who's source novelist is on.

I call it the templar the Cancom.

It's a template that always works if you do it right.

I think Marion Cooper, the co director and producer of the original Cancom said, follow the three d's keep your monster, dark, distant, and dangerous.

I hope I'm quoting that right.

And the approach of the first Dinosaur when Jeff Goldblum is in his vehicle, this is not a spoiler.

Is two plastic cups of water on a dashboard, sitting on the dashboard, and you see them cycle ever so slightly from the thunderous effect of a dinosaur stomping on the ground coming closer.

What a What a fantastic way to visually give you the creeps.

It's really a masterclass in building tension and implying a threat, isn't it.

Yeah, And Spilberg does that so well.

It's almost like he's showing everyone, not just you know, the audiences and the viewers.

But even his fellow film Where's like, step back for a second, let me show you how the Master does it, And it's almost like he had something to prove, and it's something I wanted to talk about.

I wanted to talk about Spielberg's career at this stage, because I mean, he's genuinely regarded as one of the most successful filmmakers in the history of Hollywood.

But even he's had his ebbs and flows, his ups and downs, and he was not coming off a bit of a rough patch.

But his nineties didn't start all that great.

He made a film called Well.

He had a great success in nineteen eighty nine with Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, but he followed that up with a movie called Always that seems to have been kind of forgotten even by Spielberger.

Fisheronado's It's a that was a pet project of his.

It was yeah, remake of a film called Guy, A guy named joe Yed who directed that.

By the way, do you is it William Wiler?

No, Now it looked I think Victor Fleming.

Victor Flemer, I was going to start throwing out I was just going to throw out names until you just now you got to right the nineteen.

Forties movie with Spencer Tracy and Van Johnson and Irene Dune.

I think Irene done.

I should have all this in front of me, but I don't.

Anyway, It's a film that he always liked, and he decided that he want to remake and put it in a modern setting, sentimental film.

Yes, and audiences were not attracted to it and had a good cast Holly Hunter, Richard Dreyfuss, good director Lasa Halstrom who made My Life as a Dog and other very good movies.

But it just didn't click.

Now his follow up, Hook actually did.

I mean Hook made a fair bit of money.

I think it made something like three hundred million dollars worldwide as well, but I think a lot of people regarded it as kind of insubstantial, maybe a bit goldie.

It has its fans, I think, you know people who.

Can I can't find any offhand, but I take your word for it.

I'm sure they exist.

I'm as naughties kid as it gets.

And yeah, I never really liked the film Hook.

So it's that when nineteen ninety three rolled around, Spielberg was like, as I said, I'm going to show you how it's done.

He had one of the great one two punches of all time.

If you ask me, I mean you've got the smash at the Jurassic Park.

I mean it costs something like sixty million dollars to make and has to this date grows something like a billion dollars worldwide.

Follows that up with Schindler's list, which was he'd made adult quote unquote movies before that.

But this struck me as he's working in another gear.

Now, He's really kicked it up a notch.

And everyone seemed to agree.

One seven oscars, including his first, be Best Director.

So yeah, but he was editing one while shooting.

The other, that's right, Yeah, which is even.

Just staggering to contemplate, absolutely staggering.

This is a man who has a brain that can hold a lot of information and sort it and file it and utilize it and draw upon it.

And any man who asked for one to two punts like that is not to be underestimated in any way at any time.

But we're talking about Jurassic Park, and it feels like a real return to the crowd pleasing form that he displayed in his early work, like Jaws and raised the little Lost arc.

I mean, it's interesting to speculate what actually might have been though, because this was a very, very hot property.

I mean, Michael Crichton was, of course a best selling author, but he started Jurassic Park apparently as a screenplay, tried to work it out that way and couldn't couldn't quite crack it, so it turned it into a novel, which then became the subject of a huge bidding war in Hollywood.

Well, the appeal of it was obvious, oh yeah, but the execution of it was not so obvious.

How would you make this believable?

And I think the people who were bidding on it were counting on these new fangled CGI tools to make that happen.

But Spielberg was one step, as usual, ahead of everybody else.

He said, CGI is fine, We'll make use of it, but it's not the only way we're going to depict these dinosaurs.

We're going to make them seem like they're sitting right next to you in the theater.

Practically you mentioned earlier about yeah, the culmination of cutting edge CGI practical effects.

Probably the best special effect that this movie has is the actors reacting to the dinosaurs.

And the actors are all not only perfectly cast, but they all deliver.

They all deliver exactly what you want from them.

And yes, they're reacting to nothing.

They're reacting to a ping pong ball or something.

I once said that to Tommy Lee Jones, who is a notoriously cantankerous fellow to interview.

He said.

He said, well, that's what making movies is.

He said.

If I'm standing on Fifth Avenue, supposedly, you know, looking at some monster, but I'm really looking at as a teamster eating a donut, I have to have just forefanned the rest.

That's as jah.

Classic Tommy Lee.

I think when you think about Jurassic Park, and I'm going to defer to Dando here in a little while, because, as I said, he is wearing his Jurassic Park Jenny's and he is just a big, big fan of this movie and this franchise.

There's a lot of memorable stuff in the original og Jurassic Park, but the image that I remember the most is Sam Neil getting his first glimpse of a a bronosaurus right down theres Rachiosaurus I'm sorry, pulling off the glasses in disbelief, the wide eyed gaze of just amazement.

And he's really just he's talking for us, or he's acting for us in that regard, because I think we're gonna feel the same way the minute we see that dinosaur as well.

But yeah, he's our surrogate and he's just expressing it so well.

And I think that's what you take away from Jurassic Park, that sense of wonder and that sense of amazement and later that sense of fear, because it's it's about an hour or so into the movie before things really start to get hectic.

It's only even eight to ten minutes of actual dinosaurs in the movie, and.

There's not a whole lot, but yeah, the dinosaurs are used very very sparingly, but very very effectively, and the.

Actors, again, the actors make it all seem genuine.

There's not a false moment in this movie.

And so you've got to hand it to Sam Neil, who is so likable, so so appealing, and his his part could have been played very differently, Oh absolutely, and Laura Dern.

Every bit is equal, and there's a there's a you know, there's an undercurrent of sexual tension there that they don't overplay.

It's just there.

She loves him, obviously and loves to have kids with him.

He winds up being fatherly to these two kids he could live quite happily with on this a Jurassic Park.

But they make that work too, they really do.

Yeah, I kind of love that curmudgeon the aspect of Alan Grant, the character played by Sam Neil and how he h Yeah, it comes to embrace a sort of more paternal role, but it's a far cry from the very beginning of the movie where he's terrifying this small child with a tale of what of a loss of reptible do to you?

And then the ever unpredictable Jeff Goldbloom it comes in and sort of writes his own ticket for how he's going to make that character different from whatever it says on the script.

That means that doesn't mean he's making up his lines.

That doesn't mean he's not following the program.

It means he's being Jeff Goldbloom.

He's putting a spin on it that is going to be quirky and unique and uniquely his.

You can't undervalue what Jeff Goldblum actually brings to this production.

Mainly because I was doing a bit of re search about this and finding that the people who are developing screenplays for this, I mean Crichton did a first run out and thought, I've gone as far as I can with this.

You need someone who's a bit bettery character to sort of flesh these people out.

A lot of the screenwriters who worked on it, they wanted to merge the characters of Alan Grant played by Sam Neil and Ian Malcolm played by Jeff Goldblum into one character because they figured, really, all that Ian Malcolm is doing is just sort of he's mouthing exposition, is loading it up with scientific jargon.

He's not that interesting.

And then when Spielberg met with Jeff goldwom, he realized, oh, I've got the perfect actor to actually bring this guy to life, to make him real, not just make him real, make him memorable and make him fun and make him a vital part of the whole thing.

This is a bit of a reinvention for Jeff Goldbloom as well.

I think, I mean we've all seen that meme or certainly that image of Ian Malcolm lying on his recovery bed with his shirt off.

Yeah, Jeff's clearly hit the gym.

Yeah, so it remade him as a little bit of a sexymal, sort of the thinking woman sexy.

So yeah, cannot be cannot be undervalued.

But yeah, the well, one complaint I had about this film not about the film, but about relationships to the film.

They never made an action figure for Richard Attenborough.

And where would this film be without Richard Attenborough?

They have now, they have now I'm told that.

Yes, yeah, yeah, because my child he wanted the old man.

He couldn't have his Joesse Park set without the old man.

So he's got the old man.

Well, there had to be the old man of course.

And this is Lord Richard Attenborough by this time, oh yeah, and a man of a great distinction, first as an actor and then as a filmmaker as well in the UK.

And Spielberg picked him.

Why well, watch the performance then you'll understand why he again, he takes something that could have been played broadly or even condes sendingly.

Is so many variations on a character like this, who, after all, is in many ways the villain, you know, of the piece.

He's the one who has set all of this in motion.

The best of intentions, best of intentions.

Well, not always the best of intentions.

Yes, property, I get the felling.

He wants to make a buck, just like the rest of Yeah, that's right, that's right.

Apparently in the Apparently, in the novel Hammond, the character of John Hammond is a lot more sort of conniving and millennias.

Yeah, yes, yeah, so you brought some heart to the character.

Again.

Yes, it's in astute move by Spielberg bringing in this rather jolly looking gentlemen Attinburgh is a good enough actor disorder.

You can see and sense the steel underneath this.

Yeah, sort of jovial figure.

And also you know, he's got that love for his grandchildren, which humanized him a bit.

But yeah, he's he's a villain, but a complicated villain.

Yeah, exactly, Well, he's got there's a nuance to his character.

That's what separates this from a slucky.

I want to I want to throw the mic over to Dando for a mom because, as we've been alluding to, he's a big Jurassic Park fan, a big Jurassic fan.

I think every kid at the nineties became one.

Yeah, tell us about the first time we saw it.

We mentioned on our podcast various times my uncle Darren he's going to introduce me to Star Wars, introduce me to Jaws, introduce me to Jurassic Park.

I remember I went at his house and he had the VHS setting on the shelf and I saw that logo.

I want to seeing that logo and going, that's that's cool, and he goes, yes, Jurassic Park.

He goes, I want to watch it.

Probably shouldn't have watched it because, you know, a bit scary for a five six year old Brendan Dando, but I watched it and immediately just fell in love because Spielberg, he made this film.

He made it.

It was gruesome moments but not too gruesome.

It was scary at times, were not too scary, and it was loving but not too loving.

He had perfect combination, such a good blend where anyone over the age of maybe four, people under the age of four probably shouldn't watch it, but anyone over that can really enjoy this movie in their own way for various reasons.

And I think that that's why I just love this movie.

Because you watch it as a kid, you fall in love with it because you feel like you're watching real dinosaurs.

Guy I mentioned before the scene with Alan Grant seeing the Brachiosaurus for the first time, and the performance is so good where you genuinely believe that he's seeing a dinosaur for the for the first time.

Sam Neil is seeing a dinosaur for the first time, and as a result, watching this movie, you think, hell, I know other movies they've had dinosaurs, but that's a real dinosaur.

These are real And he made you that in that one scene, Hammond Grant, they all made you believe that these dinosaurs, they are actually existing.

In nineteen ninety three, you're not watching a movie, You're watching real dinosaurs.

And I just think I think Attenburgh is ending to that scene where he just says, welcome to Durssic Park.

It's the perfect way to end that moment.

You're right, Yeah, there's a moment in it that I really really love, and it's again another Sam Neil moment.

I'm sort of stepping on the fact that I think he's the MVP of this movie.

But he's got a lovely moment.

I mean, he's got that iconic moment with the glasses, but he looks down and he sees a whole bunch of well, brachya saw a whole bunch of dinosaurs.

But he just has this lovely line reading of like they do move in hurts.

It's like everything he's been working on all think that his study is there in front of him, and everything he's been thinking about is validated.

It's such a beautiful moment.

It's not necessarily an unexpected moment, but Spillwit just a master of that and putting in these little grace notes and things like that I mentioned earlier about you know, there are other ways this movie could have gone.

Other movies as could have been because, as I said, it was a hot property.

You had various studios and various filmmakers sort of attached as packages.

You could have had a Tim Burton Jurassic Park.

You could have had a Richard Donna one.

You could have had a Joe Dante one.

This is the one I find most interesting.

You could have had a James Cameron one.

Apparently he was very very close to sort of making his pitch to Michael Crichton to divide the property.

I think Spielberg and Crichton had signed their deal, maybe just a couple of hours before then, but he wanted to make his His version would have been more in the vein of aliens.

It would have been monsters and not creatures, not animals.

Which which would have been a little too intense for for Baby Dando and maybe too intense for a lot of people.

I think you got the flavor balance.

Spielberg did just right with the scares, the thrills, the spills, but also the wonder.

Yeah.

So it's something that, as they say, the whole family can enjoy.

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Course some of it is done more broadly than others.

The character played by Wayne Nate, who is kind of the ah, what do you call him?

The sleeve bad.

Relief slash villain.

Uh, that's my wife, Alice chiming in and with an appropriate remark the cisculty or ebit right.

This is this is by way of educating a younger generation that when you see a guy who looks and acts like that, he's not going to be around for long.

You just you just know he's asking for trouble, and boy does he get it.

I may be opening myself up.

I hate here, but when I was watching it the revisiting it yesterday, I was kind of like, why not you could take it down a couple of notches.

I know that you're the comic relief villain, but essentially playing yeah, he's really yeah.

But Spielberg isn't afraid to do that.

He isn't afraid to do that.

In a film that has so much perception and so much subtlety in some areas, here's a character who's played very broadly, and that's going to appeal to people in the audience who don't appreciate subtlety and nuance.

Well, this was the Jim Carrey era, wasn't it true?

That's true.

Fun fact, by the way, Jim Carrey apparently auditioned for the role of the Malcolm that was eventually taken by Jeff Goblin.

Apparently, the people who were the casting agent said Jim was good.

No, Jeff Goblin, imagine that, though I know it.

Would have been a very different character.

We also get a pre pulp fiction Sam Jackson in this movie.

Yes, yes, doing superb character work with a lot of jargon.

He has just spew as if it's the second nature to him, and he does.

And as if you wanted any further proof of this movie took place in nineteen ninety three, a lot of smoking indoors, a.

Lot of smoking indoors, and an all Caucasian cast of principal character, which today would be more diverse.

Let's face it, but the film is so good, Oh yeah, in every possible way.

I can't think of a critique anything to mar that feeling of this is about as good as it gets.

This movie, to me, it's about a theme park, right, Drassic Park is a theme park.

I feel like this movie plays and plays out like you're on a theme park ride.

It's almost like going on a roller coaster.

They feel That's why as a child you're watching it, it's almost like you're going on a Durrassic Park ride.

Watching this movie, you're very slowly going up that first incline on the roller coaster and then all of a sudden, whoa.

It really is the gift that keeps on giving Jurassic Park.

So should it have kept on giving?

As I said, we're up to the seventh movie in the franchise.

It's kind of the lore of diminishing returns in some ways.

Although I think they all have their high points and their low points.

Do we are there any Jurassic Park sequels that we really enjoy that we feel live up to the original in any way?

I saw them all one by one.

Jurassic Park two was pretty good.

Spielberg made it himself.

Yeah he didn't, you know, give it to a secondary figure to carry out.

And these have got the original stars, and I remember being pretty entertaining.

Not great, but pretty entertaining.

Jurassic Park three about the same, about the same.

And I know that he hired Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, who were hot off of their success with films like Sideways and About Schmidt, to do some rewrite polish on it.

So a lot of the characters stuff at the beginning of the film is theirs.

After that I sort of shrug, but I get taken in and as the King of the jump scare, you know, Patsies.

I react every single time to every single rattle and every single hint of a possibility that something's going to come out at me.

I think in the newer films they rely too much on the CGI factor, and I think for me personally, it takes away the bit of the wonder as you're touching earlier.

When you can see that these dinosaurs are in the shot with the actors, it has so much more impact.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah, Spielberg really wrote the playbook, and you've had a bunch of other directors sort of following that to Yeah, the varying degrees of success.

I've got a lot of time for Jurassic Park three.

I think, yeah, that scriptwriting punch up that you alluded to from Payne and Taylor really really works.

But it's directed by Joe Johnston, who's sort of a third director.

He's a really good director.

Yeah, he's got, you know, the first Captain American film on his belt, Jamanji the Rocketeer, a bunch of movies like that, and I think he handles it really well.

It's got like a bit of a pulpy b movie energy that I really respond to.

You're a credit readers.

I'm a compulsive credit reader.

As the things go by, See how many puppeteers are credited puppeteers as because they were manipulating those real life life size dragon and dragon What are you not remnants dragon dragon body parts, which is why when they seem to be breathing, they are breathing.

When they seem to be wrinkling their their row, they are wrinkling their brow.

I watched the documentary last night, Interesting Park on the four K, and Spielberg made sure that everyone in that triceratops, the unwell triceratops scene, everyone who was controlling the dinosaur was you couldn't see them.

So the actors walked in and it was just this dinosaur that they felt was alive because they couldn't see any chords, they couldn't see any people moving joysticks around.

It was just a dinosaur that was breathing, its eye was twitching.

And I think that's just a genius move as well.

Well he knows how to do it.

Yeah, I think any good filmmaker is going to realize that you need a combination of CG and more practical stuff.

You need something tactile for the it helps the actors work better, and I think audiences may be audience of a certain age sort of respond better to it as well.

It's something I felt watching Jurassic World Rebirth, the latest in the franchise the other day, like we've kind of reached spectacle overload.

We expect, yeah, sort of peak a list special effects these days, and so if we're going to regain that sense of wonder, we're not going to get it from saying, oh wow, okay, that's a dinosaur.

You've come to expect that.

Now.

What you need is really really good actors creating characters that you're afraid will get eaten.

You will end up in the stomach of a t rex.

Well, when jj Amos got a shot at the Star Wars franchise, he did as many practical if they call them practical effects when they're actually shot on the stage, you know, at the same time as the actors are giving their performances.

And that was his nod to the original trilogy and to the trying to capture that feeling of this is not fake.

This is not people with joysticks, as you say, you know, just manipulating computers.

Yeah, well, they could do it in nineteen ninety three, why can't they do it thirty plus years later?

They could if they chose to.

Let's talk about our most valuable player of Jurassic Park.

Is that someone who really stands out to you in this movie.

Well, they're also good.

Yeah, they really are all so good.

But I think because he makes the least fuss, I'm gonna say sam Neil.

Sam Neil has nothing to prove, and it's still true today.

He's still the same wonderful actor he's always been and he's still working, Thank goodness.

He is yeah and looks to see.

He's incredibly well.

He is a silver Fox, second only to one Leonard Molton.

I would say, apparently he is the same age in Jurassic World Dominion from three years ago as Richard Attenborough was in your visual Jurassic Park.

I want to give a little love to an actor who sadly is no longer with us, but I think he made a really, really great impression in Jurassic Park.

He's an actor named Bob Peck from the UK.

He plays Muldoon, the sort of the resident big game hunter slash security expert at Jurassic Park, not a flashy performance, but very much just in keeping with the tone and the style of the film and just doing great work in terms of like, this guy seems unflappable and kind of invincible, and if he's worried about these dinosaurs, maybe you should be too.

It's a key role, and I just love what he does with it, And he has just a wonderful iconic line that we have repurposed many times in our podcast, What does he say, Nando?

Clever girl?

Clever girl.

I saw a character that I think this movie needed characters that you wanted to be eaten by dinosaurs.

Because you don't want Alan Grat to be eaten.

You don't want Laura Durn's character, but you need characters like him where you go.

I want to see a dinosaur eat somebody.

It's the dirty little secret, isn't it.

You know?

We I'm saying, Oh, look, we need characters that we care about and empathize with.

We also want to see that lawyer just get sitting on the toilet and getting eaten.

That was my That was my real sort of ah moment when I first saw it back in nineteen ninety three.

That was the moment when I realized oh, we've kicked it into an upper gear here.

This is upper rachel On stuff.

If you could have had a recording instrument or microphone in every theater around the globe at that moment, you would have heard such a cacophony shreaks.

It's funny.

When I showed my son this movie for the first time about two years ago, it would have been five.

I think, I thought, what ild is?

I put it on, and every time there's a scary bit with someone, like when Sam Jackson's arms on Laura durns shoulder, things like I was a skip it.

I'll make sure he's not looking, and I thought, you know what, I'll skip then Drew bit that kind of thing, and when a clever girl, I'll skip that scene, and then I'll put them on the t Rex scene.

I thought, well, no one gets eaten here.

And then all of a sudden, the lawyers on the toilet.

I went, oh, no, where's the remote?

Where's the remote?

And then too late grabbed him and my son is turning me and he goes, I think he's dead.

I went, yeah, he's dead, buddy.

I hate to break it tough.

He goes, should I have seen that bit?

I go tell mum, do not tell mum, But he just has this.

He immediately fell in love with it.

What it would have been thirty years later, thirty plus years later, he's five years old, and he fell in love with it just as the same way I did back in ninety three.

Yeah, this is a this is the film's gonna be around and cherished for a long long time.

Yeah, it really set the bar pretty high.

But people are always going to want new dinosaur toys, aren't they.

Dinosaurs never going.

Out of fashion, apparently apparently.

Yeah, that's the thing that they'll keep making these movies because I tell you what, they probably make just as much money from the merchandise as they do from the actual box office.

I wouldn't I wouldn't doubt that.

Well, I mean we talk about the you know, the mastery of the filmmaking, let's talk about mastery of marketing.

I mean, they spent pretty much as much on the marketing campaign as they did on the actual movie.

I think it was a sixty million dollar budget and a sixty million dollar marketing budget.

But of course you do see that dinosaur skull logo everywhere.

It's pretty much like the Nike swoosh.

There's even a shot lad in the film of what I think is the gift shop, yes, of the Jurassic Park, and it's sort of a meta moment in the movie, predicting what's about to happen in two hours when you leave as the theater.

Just the choice of colors as well, for some reason, the yellow, red, and black just works.

I don't know how many times hell on that to sit down and decide what color is a logo going to be, But the colors they went with just work.

Right.

Oh, we haven't mentioned someone very important.

To the success of this movie, John Williams.

John Williams, Yeah, oh yeah.

John Williams and Steven Spielberg have had a almost unbroken half century partnership, and Spielberg never hesitates to give John Williams credit for a lot of his film's success.

And he says that, you know, they say you write a film three times.

You write the screenplay and then it gets massaged and rewritten in the actual execution, and then it gets massaged and rewritten in the editing room, and then it goes to the composed There are variations on this, but that's the general run of things.

And John Williams always seems to find exactly the right emotional tone to set for a film in general and for specific scenes.

You may not be aware of it at the moment that you're watching the film the first time through, but when you hear that main theme for Jurassic Park, it gets you because you know what you're listening to.

Well, there's a track it's called Journey to the Island, and that's where you hear all the main Jurassic Park music on the soundtrack.

And my kids always wanted to listen to that and the car listen to movie soundtracks all the time because of me, obviously, but my wife she's not the biggest movie buff.

She came and watch Starred Rebirth with me, but she's not a dinosaur person.

She's not really a movie person.

Whenever I remember the first one put that on in the car, my wife turned to me and she goes, this movie just gives you goosebumps, doesn't it.

It really does it.

It really does.

It just makes you feel like you're there.

Yeah, And it's the kind of music that you can't imagine any other any variation on it.

It's like, oh, this is just right and just right for this particular project right exactly.

Oh, I haven't mentioned the fact that the film actually makes a verbal reference to King Kam.

Oh.

Yes, and it's just when Jeff Gold is being driven to the massive gates that welcome you to the theme park that is Jurassic Park in the movie, which those tall doorways are reminiscent of Skull Island in the nineteen thirty three film King Kom and King Kong, which was not the first movie to do stop motion dinosaurs, that was The Lost World in nineteen twenty six.

But the man named Willis O'Brien who was revered by buffs, you know, by aficionados of this kind of fantasy filmmaking.

He was the one who first animated cavemen and dinosaurs in the teens in the silent film Ror.

You can go online and find these films, these short films, and then was called on to bring them to a fuller realization in a film called The Lost World based on a novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, and that film and that novel set the stage for King Kong to follow, which is to say, we're going to a remote place, We're going to discover these prehistoric creatures, and we're going to bring them back.

We're foolishly going to bring them back to civilization, come what may, and then what follows of courses.

Have Indeed, over a century plus of cinema, it's one formula that never ever fails.

Five word formula.

Scared humans flee hungry beasts.

Yeah, in their environment, not the beast's environment.

Is this the first film to have Spielberg, Williams, Tippett, and Winston attached to it?

It's a good question because.

That there, explains by the movie is so great.

You've got this the icons that they are not the word icons, but the legends of the of each field, right.

And Dennis Muirn also, yeah, they're great man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The great cinema trographer Zen Kundy, who'd worked on Back to the Future and a lot of John Carpenter movies, shoots it beautifully.

He's longtime editor, Michael Kahan.

It's just it's the dream team.

It's the dream team of a list talent all working together in perfect, perfect harmony to create one of the great adventure slash monsters, slash scary, slash thrilling movies of shall we say all time?

Shall we give the little qualifiers?

I had a little half century, let's say the time.

It's an all timer, it's Jurassic Park.

Now, we could do a double feature with this.

There are many movies you could bear it well with, but it's spatly by itself.

So time for a variation in lieu of a double feature.

Leonard Dando, quick, name your favorite dinosaur trust aerotops, Leonard, you that one.

Favorite to find favorite in this context.

The one that is least scary.

Yeah, the one that would make you pull up your shades.

Alah, Sam Neil, don't go t Rex.

That's the cliche.

I know, he said, TX No one, I'm not going to go t Rex.

That's the obvious one.

No.

And Philociraptors not warm and color in any way.

Well, they're actually just beag chickens with feathers.

But Spilberg decided that doesn't look scary enough.

So yeah, that that little kid at the start was actually onto something.

It sounds like a big turkey, you're a big chicken.

Yeah, that's probably one negative of this movie.

We'll touch on it a minute, but yeah, let it.

What's your favorite dinosaur.

I like those the ones towards the end that Sam Neil and the kids come upon us.

There they're they're fleeing together like a flock of birds.

Gali Mimus, Hmmm.

I like that.

But I feel like one negative of this movie is from a history perspective, is so many kids now think that that's what veloci raptors look like.

So many people now think that delaful sources have the frill neck when they didn't actually have that.

Spielberg was a genius in the sense.

Of you your information history from the movies exactly right, time and time again.

Yeah, even the ones that say based on a true story, no matter how much they claim research they did.

Don't get your information from the movies, get your entertainment from the movie.

I wonder what actual dinosaur enthusiasts thought about the movie from that regard.

In that regard, would they have been put off and annoyed and bothered by that?

Or were they just have to go on, you know what, It's just a movie, just go with it.

What do you think they would have.

Had defendzounds the kind of person you would you would ask someone who was a prig and it would say, well, they had this this scripture didn't exist at this time, you know, and someone who gets it would say it took the dramatic license.

That's the thing.

Hopefully it's going to piaue someone's interest enough and maybe you catch them at a young age or an impressionble age or whatever.

It's like, I think dinosaurs are my thing now when I think I'm going to do every reason and learn learn it that way, that's correct.

Yeah, and if you did that, by the way, let me put on my nitpicking hat for a moment.

Did you know that the Brachiosaurus and the Dilapasaurus.

I believe that's as they are the only ones that actually existed during the Jurassic period.

All these other dinosaurs Cretaceous.

The more you know, we don't care.

Well, there actually is a TV spinoff I believe, I'm Netflie called a Jurassic Park Camp Cretaceous.

So yeah, kids love it.

Yeah, they're trying to correct the record in some way.

But I think Jurassic Park sounds a little better than Cretaceous.

But in saying that, though this is John Hammond's baby, what sells better.

Drassy Park sounds better.

And he's making the dinosaurs he doesn't care what period they're from.

He's just gonna throw the dinosaurs in there.

Isn't that's I think he did a bit of an ass covering thing, but it's like, Okay, we'll throw on the Brachiosaurus just so we can call it Jurassic Park.

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But I think the Brachiosaurus is arguably, besides the t Rex, the most important dinosaur of the movie.

Explain well, I suppose that that's now with the long term payoff of the of it dying in the second of the new Jurassic World movies.

But it's the one that we fall in love with first.

It's the one that Alan Grant sees and he falls in love and he goes, these are real dinosaurs.

He's actually done it.

As Malcolm says, the crazy son of a bitch, He's done it.

This is real And I think because of that, we always have that love for that dinosaur.

That's the first one we see.

It imprints with it in prints on us, and it stills in a sense of wonder.

You're yeah, yeah.

But also we get the moment later on where it sneezes on is it yeah, Lex's in the tree and things like that.

But you touched on earlier Leonard Richard Attenburgh in this movie, right, and you've given him his credit.

But I think one of the understated stories of this movie is the tragedy of the John Hammond character.

He is so enthusiastic at the beginning of this film.

He thinks he's bringing wonder to the world.

People are gonna love it.

Obviously he's going to profit from it, but he's going to bring so much joy.

And in particular I love his delivery Richard of when he's announcing that we have a t rex and settlers.

She goes, did you say t rex?

And he goes, we have a t rex.

He's so he's jolly, he's so jolly and excited.

Yes, we've done it.

He can't.

He's so excited to tell these paeontologists, I've managed to bring these dinosaurs back to real life.

And as the movie progresses, he slowly realizes, Oh, what have I done here?

I should not have done this.

You only sitting there eating the ice cream, spared no expense.

And at the end he's just sitting in there in the helicopter looking over.

He's disheveled.

He's just a broken man looking at his cane.

Well, I don't see him as tragic.

I see him as a flood's.

I mean, he's there's billionaire tycoon.

He's clearly if you're going to reach that level of power and status and fortune, you're probably crack some skulls along the way, either literally or metaphorically.

But he's also a showman.

He's an impresario.

I mean he's got that, he's got that lovely sort of twinkle in his eye and that joy in his voice.

He does the show himself, doesn't he Oh yeah, he's really all for that.

But he's also talking about my first adventure was a flea circus, and talking about how, yeah, the seesaw moved up and down, and people wanted to believe, they wanted to believe that fleas were doing this.

Yeah, he's a showman.

He's not unlike Spielberg in that regard.

You're right one a sea plant that I never really noticed until as much older was.

They're on their way to the island and Alan Grant gets the seat belts and there's two female ones and he's trying to he's trying to connect them and he can't, and all of a sudden he just ties them together because he found a way, just like all the dinosaurs on the island were all female, but they found a way to reproduce.

He doesn't work around.

To quote Jeff Goblin, life finds a way exactly right.

Yes, So so you think he's more of a flawed character Leonard.

Yeah, because he dreams big and he has a grandiose vision for what would be in real life, for even in the fantasy world that they paint for us.

Here a hello an attraction.

But he's stubborn and he does not care to be told about the downside.

He doesn't want to know.

Until it unfolds before him.

Yeah, there's a sense of arrogance too, thinking he can play god, I guess, isn't there.

Well, Plus there's an arrogance as well, and he's sort of getting these guys on board to rub a stamp this project.

I mean, the main reason that Sam Neil and Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblim are there is because they need the investors want I guess approval from quote unquote.

Yes, yeah, they want a good housekeeping seal of approval.

As we used to say.

The lawyers are breathing down his neck in the book.

They're going to Allen Grant and saying because he's funding all their projects, the pale intelligence projects.

So basically it's just why is he funding all this?

What's he up to?

So there's a degree of ruthlessness and a bit of manipulation in there, and I think he's also banking on if I show these people who are very, very interested in dinosaurs, who have made it their life's work, if I show them a real one, oh, they'll be so dazzled that they'll instantly just like, okay, green light, go ahead, do whatever you like.

So yeah, it's an interesting character development character work in that regard.

There's a lot more going on out on the hood than you might expect, mainly because it's such a great through ride, it's such a wonderful extravaganza that you might not necessarily think of it as empty calorie stuff.

But it's like, this is really high in popcorn Fair.

There's a bit going on underneath, Yeah, there is.

Can we touch on Martin Ferrero as well as the lawyer?

I feel like he is a representation of the executives at Universal.

The first and they saw the rough cut of this film.

We're gonna make a fortune with this film.

Well, my wife and I had the experience of watching Universal build something they're now called city Walk, which is there little not so little anymore.

It started off as kind of an outdoor mall with some shops and an eighteen screen theater, and we used to drive up and park right right alongside that.

The opening of the theater, and then they said, oh, people are coming, huh, all right, We're going to make more of this and more of this, and now it's a world class theme park.

So and one day we saw.

Lou Wasserman, who was the head haunch the.

Head haunter of the Coppo of Hollywood, the man who had built Music Corporation of America MCA into a giant success as an entertainment company with fingers in many pies, and we saw him enjoying the fruits of his success, showing some people around and he, of course and Sid Sheinberg then ran Universal's movie studio Vision.

They were the ones who opened the door for Steven Spielberg and his career.

Yeah, they've had a good, long, productive relationship, haven't they Spielberg, Yes.

Yes, And Missus Sheinberg aka Lorrange Gary is one of the supporting players in Jaws.

Yeah, that flies on Stave how to play the guy.

One of my favorite stories about Spielberg.

I'm not sure there's print the legend stuff, but when he was a kid looking to break into the industry, he basically snuck onto the Universal lot, found an empty office and sort of set up shop there, made it, sort of made himself at home.

It's like, that's the legend.

And as John Ford famously said, when the facts become legend, prince a legend.

Absolutely.

Speaking of legends, Jurassic Park, Yes, legendary movie.

Are you going to see?

Are you going to see Rebirth?

Leonard?

Or are you drassicked out by this point?

No, I'm curious.

I'm curious to see what they've done.

Because guy wasn't a huge fan.

I enjoyed it.

I mean, I'm not saying it's the greatest movie of all time, but I probably enjoyed it.

The most enjoyable Jurassic movie since the number three.

For me personally, I think it felt more like Jurassic Park three.

I didn't really like what they did with the Jurassic World franchise.

I know this is called Drassic World rebirth, but I'm just I'm not really a huge fan of the Chris Pratt era of the Jurassic Park franchise.

But I really enjoyed it.

But I guess it just depends on your nostalgia for the film.

Maybe I don't know, you just they could have something to do with it.

From what I understand from behind the scenes, this is a project that that Universal wanted to turn around pretty quickly.

They brought on the director Gareth Edwards, best known for Rogue One, Godzilla.

He's very adept with technical effects and he's able to work very well with CGI and all that kind of stuff.

So he got it done, got it done on time, got it into cinemas.

It's doing well he's very good at technical stuff.

I don't know he's all that good at human stuff.

I didn't really sort of have any connection with any of these characters.

I would have been happy if they'd all been eaten.

It probably would have been a more entertaining movie if more of them had, but look two weeks their own.

I was watching my wife, who I said, wasn't a isn't a big movie buff, you know, not a big dressy Park fan.

I was watching her and she was really enjoying it, and she was laughing at the dialogue.

And I'm thinking, maybe this is just a film more for the casual dressy Park fan as opposed to the hardcore fans.

But anyway, I really enjoyed.

I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it when you finally do see.

It, Lenard, I will not be shy.

I'm telling you.

Only hear YouTube.

Gentlemen.

Just tear it to shreds if you both don't like.

I think that'd be a fun yodh.

I don't go in gunning for a movie, do I have to tell you?

I really don't.

Why would I want to go in and spend my whatever fifteen bucks or twenty bucks and devote an evening of my life.

I'll ever get back to a film that's no good.

Well, I think this is this thing called hate watching is now become a thing online.

A lot of YouTube reviewer.

There's a lot of things online too, which is why not I'm not online very much.

They just they watched it, They watched the hate.

Anti social media.

I you know, I'd rather wait and see something I want to see, whether it's on the big screen or on my home television screen.

I think let dun and I and maybe you didn't have a very old school attitude called glass half fool, having said that if you don't like it, Leonard, we will rip into it like a couple of hungry, angry velociraptors.

I see it.

We would expect nothing less.

All right, everybody, Well, thank you for listening to our review of Jurassic Park.

Hope you did enjoy it.

Don't forget to continue to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening to this show.

Thank you for sticking with us over the past month.

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Welcome to the Movie Guide.

Thank you the Leonard Malton happy to be here, and we will catch you all in the next episode of The Movie Guide with Malton and Davis Halloha Adams.