The Gremlins' New York Adventure
Joe Dante's monsters take a bite out of the Big Apple
by Bill Warren
STARLOG magazine, May 1990 |
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As the world knows by now, Joe Dante's Gremlins unexpectedly clawed and snickered its way to big money and big fame for Dante, even more than for Chris Columbus, who wrote the film. And as Dante himself says, "After I had finished the first picture, I thought the last movie I would ever be caught making would be the sequel. First of all, they never thought there would be a sequel-until it made a lot of money. And when a movie makes a lot of money, there's going to be a sequel, whether you kill everybody off or not, as we all know."
So now, here's Dante, literally flat on his back with his feet on the air, trying to catch a few minutes of rest on the supercolossal lobby of "Clamp Centre," the biggest set for Gremlins 2. Around his swirls more activity than at rush hour at Grand Central Station. Gremlin puppeteers, dressed in black from the waist up, looking like ninjas in blue jeans, carry their gaudily-dressed, big-eared little charges onto the set for the film's climax. (And if you think we're going to reveal what that is, you're reading the wrong magazine.) Sawing, banging and loud thuds sound from all parts of the huge set, 150 feet wide, 250 feet high. Mechanical FX expert Ken Pepoit, who first worked with Dante on The 'Burbs, stops by to say hello, then hurries back to direct his own crew. There are strong odors of glue and sawdust in the air.
And Gremlins, of course, there are Gremlins everywhere, Gremlins galore, Gremlins by the dozens, by the hundreds, Gremlins wearing flowered hats, Gremlins in leather jackets, transvestite Gremlins, hardhat Gremlins, chorus line Gremlins-Gremlins getting ready for a night on Manhattan. Which is what the whole movie is designed to set up-and which the heroes must prevent.
"Madness let me do it," Dante jokes. What really happened, of course, was that Warner Bros. wanted a sequel, but neither Dante nor his partner and producer Mike Finnell liked any of the concepts that the company suggested. It wasn't until "high honchos of Warner Bros." approached Dante & Finnell with a good deal-if they would agree to make the movie, they could do anything they wanted-that they finally relented. They talked with several writers, always with the idea of sending the Gremlins to New York in mind, and it wasn't until Charlie (River's Edge) Haas had the key idea that they clicked onto the project.
Mike Finnell says, "We weren't going to commit to doing this unless we could come up with a story that was interesting, that topped the first movie, that interested us enough to get through the two years that it would take to make. Although the first movie was contemporary, it could have been set in the '40's," he explains, but Haas' idea was what they were looking for. "This was urban, very modern, very up to date. It provided a framework that we thought would be interesting, the Gremlins in the '80s and the satirical opportunities that provided.
"Even though studios think audiences want to see what they have seen before, I think the opposite is true. All the biggest hits, historically, have been something new, different."
And what Haas came up with was Clamp Centre itself. "Charlie came up with the idea of a 'smart' building, a futuristic kind of building, in New York City. And the only reason we could figure out to make this was to make it as different from the first movie as it was from other movies."
With Chris Walas busy elsewhere, Dante and Finnell had to find someone else to do the Gremlin effects, and the obvious choice was Rick Baker, but he had to be talked into it. "There's really no makeup involved," Finnell explains, "it's all puppets, and we thought that maybe would be a challenge for him. Part of the problem was that he didn't want to simply do what Chris Walas had done, so we gave Rick the opportunity to design new creatures that do different things, and top the first movie, so it became a challenge for him." Baker hesitated a while before undertaking the job, but take it he did.
Gizmo, of course, returns, more actively than before, but all the other Mogwais and Gremlins are new. In the first film, all the Mogwais and Gremlins were basically identical, but here there are plenty of variations. The first four "offspring" of Gizmo are (in the script, anyway) Daffy, a bit like Daffy Duck, George, the Edward G. Robinson of these pesky critters, who bosses around his pal Lenny, an amiable but strong goof, and the villain of the piece, fiendish Mohawk, who isn't even cute as a Mogwai. And after he undergoes a genetics experiment, Mohawk is a true monster.
In Clamp Centre
"Clamp Centre," where all the Gremlin activity takes place, is the giant building owned by the Donald Trump-like Daniel Clamp, played in Gremlins 2 by John Glover. Rather like Trump, but not close enough for legal action, of course. This fictional building-the exterior is the Kalikow Building on Park Avenue-is so tall that its upper floors, where Clamp has his own offices, are above the clouds, and look down on the Art Deco pinnacle of the Chrysler Building.
The steely lobby, austere and cold in style, is crammed with little shops and stores. As Dante points out, though the spaceship set for Explorers was this big, "it wasn't this complicated. This has layers. It's supposed to be like the inside of Trump Tower, except the real Trump Tower is dour, not really all that much fun. This is an idealized version where we actually have a Tiffany's and a 7-11. It's what these things should be."
And yet, it does feel soulless at the same time, with the dully-gleaming steel walls and the sharp angles. This extends to the offices of Daniel Clamp himself, way up there in the clouds. We see the set, not currently in use, after the Gremlins have gone ripsnorting through it. It is very austere, with Z-shaped chairs and more steel walls, cold, harsh and professional, just the kind of place aching to be ripped apart by Gremlins.
Production designer Jim Spencer, who has now worked with Dante on five films, had a very clear vision for the sets.
"Being that the picture's flavor is steel and concrete," he explains, "I decided to go with steel and aluminum walls that are very reflective. I wanted to make Clamp absolutely friendless, alone in the world, atop his aerie above the clouds. We used real steel for the walls because of its reflective qualities. The objet d'art hanging in there is an image of him, but it's a negative image. It's a cutout of his shape, and I wanted to portray him as a negative image, a 12-foottall negative of his image. If Donald Trump is gold, Daniel Clamp is platinum."
Effervescent John Glover, widely regarded as one of the finest character actors working, makes his first Dante-movie appearance in Gremlins 2. When he was cast, he rented the first movie, "but got too frightened and had to turn it off--I couldn't watch it." Glover is best known for his villainous roles, as in his vivid, amusingly nasty bad guy in 52 Pick-Up. To great astonishment from listeners, Glover cites Doris Day as the inspiration for his villains.
"What I recognized in her," he explains with delight, "was this incredible joie of how she played, and I take that joie and stick them in my villains. I try to make my villains noble and joyous, but that's how I try to live my life."
However, Clamp is not the villain in Gremlins 2. He's an isolated man, conducting most of his business interviews via TV screens set up by his officious underling Forster (played by Dante regular Robert Picardo). Clamp, who as the film opens has just bought the state of Vermont, "is a real estate developer," Glover says, "who also has TV networks, has written a book called I Took Manhattan, doesn't like black-and-white films, and has a line of jams and jellies. But I play a nice sweet man."
And his basis for this characterization is someone close to the film. "I didn't know at first how I was going to do this, until I spent some time with Joe, and then I realized that the way to play it was to be just as childlike as possible, because that's how Joe is, and he's our captain. He's incredibly gentle, supporting and encouraging. He makes it seem like we thought it all up ourselves. That's the sign of the best director in the world, right?"
No, Glover does not wear a tie, white shirt, jeans and sneakers. "I'm playing the essence of Joe," he says, but dresses as Clamp would dress, "expensive, very, very expensive. We went for the greys and silvers."
In Splice O'Life Labs
One of the greatest of all genre stars also makes his first film for Dante in Gremlins 2. Christopher Lee plays Dr. Catheter, who runs the "Splice O' Life-Designer Genes" laboratory in Clamp Centre. One of his men has captured little Gizmo after the old Chinese gentleman's home (yes, Keye Luke returns, but only briefly) is torn down by Clamp developers. It's awesome to interview Christopher Lee; you watch the face more familiar to you than those of your own family, and realize this really is Christopher migawd Lee, talking to you, about how he chose to play the not-big-but-significant role of this obsessed scientist.
"I got this script from Paris, sent express from here. It had a charming letter in it from Joe Dante," Lee explains in his deep, familiar voice. The letter said that Dante had seen a great many of Lee's films "-which is certainly true," Lee affirms, "'and this is not an enormous part, but I think we would have a lot of fun with it. I do hope that you'll be available.' I realized right away, from the conversation that we had [soon thereafter], he would be an obviously very entertaining director to work with. It really is a joy, not only because he has an encyclopedic knowledge of film, but it's quite obvious he's one of those very unusual creatures: He has a great deal of admiration, respect and affection for actors and actresses."
Dante directed Lee partly in terms of Lee's earlier roles. "He's taking characters that I've played in different films, all of which he seems to have seen, good and bad." Lee is playing Catheter as not quite a mad scientist, but with "the rather sort of dapper, neat outline that I'm trying to set. This fits in very well to this kind of set."
"The kind of set" is not the Clamp Centre lobby, but rather the Splice O'Life lab, also steely and gleaming, with live animals-including a binturong-in cages around the perimeter, tables covered with glass tubing and vials, a big spider in a cage, Rick Baker and his crew seated nearby, and a cow in a helmet. Zapping lights-where Dante says genes are being spliced off-stage-glitter down a metallic tunnel in the background. A brain-labeled "Donovan," of course-floats in a tank nearby.
Gizmo, not on stage at the moment, will be ina small cage, too. Lee, in persona as Catheter, and accompanied by his twin assistants Martin and Lewis, leans into the cage. Dante and his cameraman John Hora adjust and readjust Lee, the camera and the cage between takes, making sure the actor's eyes are visible through the mesh. Lee leans into the cage, and with a certain amount of controlled sadism, explains to the (presumably terrified) Gizmo that if he doesn't cooperate, he can still be experimented on.
In the Runover Column
Zach Galligan, Billy Peltzer kimself, is back. He and Kate (Phoebe Cates) have moved from Kingston Falls to Manhattan, and both of them are working at Clamp Centre. Kate is a tour guide, and Billy works in the art department, where his life is made hell by both Forster and Marla (Havilland Morris), his immediate boss. He's pals with Grandpa Fred (Robert Prosky), who hosts a horrible horror movie show, but who dreams of being a network anchorman. And then Gizmo and the resulting Grernlins return to Billy's life.
Galligan has been busy the last few years mostly with college, but has several flms coming out soon. Of the many people interviewed for this article, he is the shrewdest observer of Joe Dante; most say that Dante is unfazed by problems, but Galligan notes "if he's feeling pressure, which I would imagine he is, he doesn't make it other people's problems, so as a result, you have what you have here, which is a very relaxed set. His philosophy with acting is he doesn't pretend to know a tremendous amount about the subject. He's the first one to admit that he's not going to tell actors how to act, but he knows what's good and what's bad, so as a result, your performance is always your own, but Joe has taken only the good and left it in. Joe's good at creating an atmosphere where the director is very much open to suggestion from anyone on the set.
It has been several years between the two Gremlins movies, and Galligan has noticed some changes in Dante's style. "He plays a lot of shots in a master shot," Galligan points out. Dante always had a very cinematic style, the actor feels, "and I think it has been even more fully realized in this one. He would probably get nauseous if he heard me say this, but it's a very kinetic style of filmmaking, there's always excitement and action going on. He would say, [in a fine impression of Dante], "Oh, give me a break,' but it's the truth. Every frame will be jammed with stuff. As far as I'm concerned, all the dailies and rushes that I've seen, the film looks great. It looks much slicker and higher-tech than the last one."
The big difference between the two films, Galligan says, is technical. "There is so much less interaction between humans and Gremlins in this one." Shots have been carefully planned so most of the Gremlins effects can be done after work with the live actors has been completed.
Phoebe Cates is pleased with the way the puppeteers have been so cooperative with the actors. Often, she says, if "they can't have the actual effect, they'll have puppets for you to look at, to react off of. But what's hard is really the technical side of it sometimes, the breakdowns, the speacial FX not working. But the puppet part, the reacting part, we've gotten much more help this time around."
You may have thought Mr. Futterman, Dick Miller, was killed in Gremlins, but nope, he's back again, battling one of the movie's strangest Gremlins. "Steven Spielberg said, 'Futterman is the only really likable character in the picture, let's not destroy him completely,' " Miller grins. "For those who are real fans of the frst picture, they heard on the radio in the last scene, an interview in the hospital with 'Mr. Futterman, a survivor of a recent attack.' And I start to speak and they fade out, but you know that he's alive." He and his wife (Jackie Joseph) come to New York to visit Zach and Kate, who are living together in anticipation of getting married, when Gremlin hell breaks loose again.
And it's all being overseen on these giant sets at Warner Bros. by an exhausted Joe Dante. What, he's asked, would it take to get him to do Gremlins 3? "Nothing. Not a thing. They've already given me a great deal of money, they've already given me creative freedom. I can't think of another thing they could give me." And yet he saunters back onto his giant set to start telling big-eared monsters what to do.