Original subtitles

Hi everyone, this is film critic and author Lee Gambon, joined by film critic

and historian and filmmaker Paul Anthony Nelson, here to talk to you about

endangered species.

How are you, Paul?

I'm great, Lee. I'm very excited to jump into this crazy little movie.

Yeah, it is a crazy one. It's one that's kind of slipped under the radar, I

guess. I've got the old VHS tucked away somewhere in a box.

Nice! Yeah, it's one of those movies where you're like, oh, my God, I

this one. It kind of falls into this great interesting wave of these sort of

semi -sci -fi kind of Cold War thriller, government conspiracy movies that were

sort of happening at the period.

Yeah, well, this film kind of faints to the left in a certain way, doesn't it?

It kind of starts off like it's going to be a UFO film and then, yeah, then

turns into something else.

Yeah, definitely. Very interesting, bizarre, but fun film. Really well

beautifully performed, and it looks great. It's a really good looking film.

Great direction, everything about it, I think it works really well.

I love when we're sort of looking over the film and sort of comparing notes,

etc. You open with this sort of discussion on the idea of the sort of

juxtapositioning of cows and cattle with humans. And that's really interesting

because... A lot of films where there's kind of either germ warfare or something

going on where nature or the environment is affected generally has animals as a

cautionary tale. So animals are presented as a cautionary tale. And

ultimately, there's this kind of speciesist element to these movies where

really only matters if people are affected.

So pretty much nearly a decade before this film was released, in the mid-'70s,

Peter Singer...

He was Australian, an Australian philosopher and animal rights activist,

book called Animal Liberation. And that would be quite a bit of an influence on

a lot of films popping up during this period on the way animals were seen in

eyes of legal law, the way animals were sort of seen in regards to relation to

human, what...

Being was more important and more valid etc.

And you see that pop up in a lot of things whether it's film or even TV

Something that's quite interesting is around this period

In the 80s, you'd have TV shows sort of dealing with it. So there's an episode

of Highway to Heaven, of all things, that talks about pollution and that the

death of many seabirds in this one episode is used as a cautionary tale and

cautionary warning to humans who will also eventually die from irresponsible

business and commerce and pollution.

And so what this is doing here with endangered species is talking about the

thing. There's this marriage between animals dying and humans dying, but it

really only mattering if humans are the victims. So that's quite... interesting

sort of opening.

But yet it's the animals that kind of kick off the investigation as well.

It's different in the way it's like now it's killing people.

It doesn't really go to that until about halfway through the movie.

The cattle deaths are the investigation for the most part which is probably a

bit of a distinguishing factor as well.

They obviously care about the cattle in this movie.

It's not quite as a species.

As other films.

I was shocked to see Zelman King's name there as executive producer.

Zelman King of the Nine and a Half Weeks, Wild Orchids, Red Shoe Diaries,

erotic drama universe of the 80s and 90s.

Kind of a fascinating name to have on this.

So now we're introduced to Robert Urich.

So he was a TV star at the time. He was the star of Vegas.

an action show that was on sort of 78 to 80 playing the character Dan Tanner,

who was named after the famous Santa Monica restaurateur because Aaron

and the other executive producer were fans of the restaurant.

But this seems like it was an attempt to make him, to sort of launch him as a

movie star.

This was his first lead in a feature film.

playing a hot -tempered, alcoholic, arse -kicking, mob -busting street cop. Very

old world. And now I think we're being introduced to the new world.

Not necessarily these guys, but there's a lot of 10 -gallon hats there. I can't

help but think there's something phallic in it.

There was a TV movie from a couple of years earlier called Incident at

Crestbridge, which starred Eileen Brennan. And she entered the small town

her husband and they witnessed Bordello brothel, home of sex workers, being

completely devastated by a bunch of local roughs who were just revolting and

vile. set it aflame and no one pays attention and no one cares. So that

her. So she actually becomes the sheriff. She gets appointed as the

this small town and has to deal with all the sexism and misogyny that she faces

as well as all the women of this town. And it was a really cool, interesting TV

movie that really reminded me a lot of this, re -watching this and revisiting

this and seeing what Jo Beth Williams has to deal with throughout the film,

throughout the course of the movie.

But, yeah, just going back to what you were saying about the lead, the lead

character, and he's sort of this ex -alcoholic.

Alcoholism and recovering from being an alcoholic as a hindrance is something

that's used a lot in ecological horror films. And this film kind of has a bit

a tap into that kind of sub -genre as well.

If you think about films like Kingdom of the Spiders with William Shatner and

Piranha with Bradford Dillman and...

Orca with Richard Harris.

These are alcoholic men or people who are trying to shed the booze or they're

battling the booze. And it's kind of all about them having to step up as better

men. And there's usually something to do with having a child or having a woman

come into their world who forces them to step up. And in this case, of course,

you have this really interesting, strange relationship that he has with

rebellious teenage daughter, played by Maren Cantor, who's just phenomenal.

She's so wonderful, and we'll talk a lot about her later.

But, yeah, it's really interesting, that kind of thematic thing, where it's

basically this sort of complicated and put -upon guy, self -put -upon guy,

who's, you know, really kind of...

broken, having to sort of man up, I guess, quote -unquote man up. And it

this amazing, strong woman, this woman that has to fight constantly throughout

her life, to get him to do that in order to sort of take on what's going on with

this sort of government conspiracy thing that's happening.

cattle. And going back to what you're saying, absolutely this film isn't as

as other films because cattle is their world, it's their commerce, but

that's another thing, that's another factor that these animals are used as

something for people to make the end of the means.

Yeah, and keep this town afloat.

Something other than Hoyt action, keeping this town afloat.

It's striking to me.

So this came out the same year as Poltergeist, which, of course, Jo Beth

Williams is one of her most famous roles as Diane Freeling.

This was shot a couple of years earlier, yeah?

Yeah, it was shot in 1980.

So it's really interesting because it was shot at the same time Aaron Cantor

doing Ladies and Gentlemen of the Fabulous Dame.

So there was a sort of interesting delay with these movies.

So Carolyn Pfeiffer, the producer of the film, is going to be popping up on this

commentary with some wonderful insight.

And she had some great insight into the production history and casting, etc.

But she told me some great stories, and you'll hear them. But initially, as you

were talking about Robert E. Richards' casting, that wasn't initially the way

they were going to go. They wanted to go old -school, classic Hollywood, sort of

leftover cowboy types.

They were looking at people like... Robert Mitchum. They were looking at

like Burt Lancaster.

They were looking at, you know, all these kind of classic Hollywood guys,

would have added a totally different angle.

Because, you know, this is a guy that's kind of young. Robert Rich is kind of

young. Yeah. He feels a little bit older.

Yeah, like he seems like he's been aged up a little bit.

They put the grey on the temples and, you know, he's this sort of hard -bitten

retired cop and you sort of think, you've retired quite early. But you

now that you say that, you notice in his line deliveries, he is going for a kind

of a Mitchum quality.

It's the top -off type. It's really interesting.

Do you think Robert Mitchum might have done a couple of scenes, shower scenes,

that Yurik does later? I'm not sure.

It's interesting, though. Mitchum's career during this period is quite

interesting because he was doing TV movies like Killer in the Family, which

amazing, and things like Night Kill.

There was a horror film he did like Night Kill. So he was doing really

interesting sort of dark work.

I mean, he was always...

you know attracted to sort of grim stuff but but that kind of new wave that

these actors who are sort of you know seasoned let's just say that we're

to sort of fall into these kind of films that were usually indies or, you know,

films that were kind of sitting out just outside the studio system. So it was

something that they had to sort of gravitate towards in order to keep

And the people making these movies were fans. They were massive fans. I would

have grown up with these people as kids, you know.

Yeah, yeah, like movie buffs.

Yeah, I mean, Mitchum would be, I think it was the next year that he was in The

Winds of War, which was that massive big -budget miniseries.

sort of through, I think it was 83, 84.

So he would sort of transition more into doing more kind of this large -scale

television stuff and appearing in movies less and less until kind of, I think

there was a micro -resurgence in the 90s with films like Dead Man.

Absolutely.

No,

no, okay.

Oh, I was just going to say, you were talking about the Western iconography

we got to introduce, you know, Joe Bethlehem getting inducted as a sheriff.

But that's really interesting that you bring that up because Westerns were not

really being made by the early 80s. There were definitely some being made

sure that were kind of the carryover from the revisionist period of the 70s,

which was very Western heavy.

But by the early 80s, you got some Westerns, but it was kind of what...

the Western tropes and archetypes were doing for other genres. It was kind of

informing other genres.

So what was happening was while they were not being made because the action

really took off by the 80s, which was sort of the direct descendant of the

Western, you still have elementary motifs that are very, very grounded in

movies where you have, you know, the outsider coming into the town, you have

rivalry between the sort of old school and the new school, you have this

community conversation that keeps going as a through line to what we've made.

movies, and also what this character of Harry, James Williams' character, has to

deal with as being the new sheriff in town.

So you've got this kind of litany of Western motifs that pepper this film.

But what's interesting is this film, and we'll talk about it a bit more, also

comes in during a wave of what I like to call the quote -unquote poor white folk

movie wave.

which is huge. Like, if you think about it, like all the whistleblower movies,

all the kind of farming community movies, and I'll talk a bit about them

but thinking about films like, you know, Country and Places in the Heart and

Norma Rae and Silkwood, Coal Miner's Daughter, all these movies about the

of poor white folk that was happening during this wave of movies corresponding

with what's going on with Reaganism and the formation of Reaganism, where, you

know,

conservatism married with commerce and banks buying out properties and farms

basically exploiting um middle america uh these movies were commenting on that

and being kind of reflective of what was going and being you know offering a big

up yours to reaganism which was basically all about greed and and you

exploiting the underclasses so these movies all sort of paved a way through

and this film is really bizarrely inserted in that as well because it's a

town suffering and they're suffering at the hands of government yeah there's so

many crossovers with different films going on at the time because you've got

that sort of stuff you've got the there is a very

1970s paranoia about your government in this running throughout this film as

well um and even though in this film the threat winds up being kind of

government adjacent it's still you know it's paramilitary it's government

officials working a little something on the side um and even the ending of the

film you know kind of couldn't be more 70s it's you've won the battle but not

the war um but it also crosses over and i guess maybe we'll talk about this

further later when um Maren Cantor's character sort of becomes more

But it even crosses over with the kind of tomboy trend of, you know, Jodie

Foster, Christy McNichol, short -haired, sporty girls who, you know,

wisecrack and undermine their fathers and adults in general,

authority in general, and also like baseball.

You know, Tatum O 'Neill fits into that as well.

Yeah, yeah.

So it sort of crosses over with that as well. But it's interesting with the

Western iconography. You're absolutely right.

I mean, you know, it's set in a Western town. Everyone gets about a 10 -gallon

hat. I love that Harriet is called by an androgynous name. It's called Harry.

So it's like they can... It's almost like as long as they call her Harry,

can think of her as a man.

It's really interesting.

I also like that, you know, Hoyt Axton's character could be...

you know, the rancher in a western who's seemingly a friend of the sheriff at

the start and then as things kind of threat, as his, you know, as the

tends to get closer to him, he starts turning and we see that he's actually a

really bad guy. Like, that's quite a common character in westerns as well.

So, yeah, there's a lot of subgenres being explored here.

Interesting that this turns out to be a horror film because, Or a horror film

with Thor.

It is a bit of a genre mash in many ways. Like, there's a little sci -fi,

there's a little action, there's a little thriller, there's a little

There's a little Zellman King erotic drama.

But, I mean, look at this. I mean, that looks like a Western shot, doesn't it?

That panorama in the background.

By the way, these are the hills of Sheridan, Wyoming and Boulder, Colorado

standing in for Buffalo, New York.

I think some of the town scenes were probably more Buffalo. Am I right?

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, but this is otherwise kind of very Midwestern America.

And one of the major things that Carolyn Pfeiffer talks about is the best fun

she had.

on this shoot, which was a pretty grim shoot, as she goes into detail about,

exploring these beautiful locations and finding these beautiful locations and,

you know, being there in that beautiful open space.

And this film, you know, the location itself, though it's cliche to say, is

definitely a character unto itself in this film.

And it sort of feeds into the sort of... the barren sort of...

ideals of small towns, how small towns eat themselves up and how small towns

don't have any kind of places for people to move. People are sort of stuck in a

permanent rut. So when you have these kind of progressive characters like J.

Beth Williams' character, she's stuck, unfortunately.

But then you have someone like the Maren Cantor character who's also someone who

wants to move and move forward and she's frustrated. There's also nowhere for

her to move as well.

So it's kind of these interesting sort of...

They're kind of on par with this cattle, you know. There's a really great film

from the early 70s, I'm sure you're a fan of it, Bless the Beasts and

which marries the idea of these misfit boys at a summer camp who are considered

no -hopers.

with buffalo, because buffalo are looked upon as pathetic, useless animals.

And so, in a sense, you've got these characters who are kind of wandering

aimlessly, much like these heavy cows.

You've got that sort of parallel, these kind of heavy -footed characters who

have not much footing. There's not much...

um distance for them to go or to travel um and i think the writers are sort of

commenting on that it's really interesting but going back to your

that was really fascinating because A, on the production history level, and

Carol and Piper talked about this, the studio really wanted to change the

character. They wanted to sort of, I guess, quote -unquote, Hollywood her up

not have it so sort of tomboyish.

Right. Yeah, and you see the character transition throughout the film, and

talks about that. But also, it's playing on that trope of...

the young girl who has to become kind of like a tomboy or more like one of the

boys in order to survive this kind of landscape.

And that's reflected in Jo McWilliams' character as well. And that goes way

to, like, really classicist westerns. And also, like, I guess...

um westerns that are kind of uh hybrid as well like musical westerns like

calamity jane um and if you think of like you know doris j is kind of an

archetypal um tomboy uh there's films such as um by the light of the silvery

moon and stuff where she plays a tomboy who has to sort of i guess quote unquote

learn to be a lady um and she's still got that embedded in her but the tomboy

craze as you pointed out is very huge when you get to the late 70s early 80s

part of the fabric of what teenage girls can be. So you've got hyper -feminine,

and then you've got tomboys, and you've got, you know, hyper -sexual, and you've

got nerdy. So it's basically this great exploration of teenage girls on a

spectrum, which is awesome.

So, yeah, I mean, if you look at Maren Kantash, her first audition was for

Alan Parker's film.

I think everyone in that sort of age bracket auditioned for that, even people

like Madonna.

So she was auditioning for that for one of the lead roles, one of the lead four

girls. And then after that, she landed the role in Ladies and

Gentlemen of the Fabulous Stage, a classic punk feminist film.

She plays the guitarist in the band, The Stains, alongside Diane Lane and Laura

Dern. And she's, you know...

very girly and that and you know punk and you know awesome and wonderful but

also incredibly you know of course very urban and angry so there's this kind of

cool i love her i love her voice that kind of scratchy awesome voice yeah it's

just this coolness about her this great character

that kind of really gets your attention in this movie. Like everything she's in,

she really, you know, pricks up your ears. And I really love, I respond so

to this idea of her being really attracted to older men. I think that's

interesting because it adds to her sort of up yours to her dad and sort of plays

against the sexlessness of a tomboy, that the tomboy is sexless until

she becomes quote -unquote feminine.

But this is someone who's completely comfortable with being a tomboy and

in, you know, the cropped hair and, you know, the flax and stuff, but still will

pick up dudes. Yeah. It's really interesting, yeah.

Well, she's from the big city, you know, just sophisticated.

Yeah.

I love Paul Dooley. Can I just say that? He makes me smile every time he turns

up in something.

And it's interesting because, again, because we talk about director Alan

as someone that...

famously worked a lot with Robert Altman early in his career. He was a second

assistant director on California Split and Nashville and sort of graduated to

-writing the Buffalo Bill and the Indians and then

became struck out on his own as a director. And Paul Dooley is someone

particularly at this time, was very identified as being part of the Altman

You know, in films like A Perfect Couple and A Wedding.

And in 1980, he was in My Homeland of Malta as Wimpy.

Oh, he was too, yes, of course.

Let's not forget, hey.

That's right, hey.

So, yeah, very identifiable.

In this film, I find the cast, if they're not outside of Robert Urich, if

they're not Altman adjacent, they're Amblin adjacent.

as these two in the frame here, you know, Acton would be in Gremlins a

years later and Jo Beth in Poltergeist.

But yeah, but Dooley is very, very, sort of ties, seems to be a

signifier back to Rudolf's ties with Altman, as is the film's

Paul Lohman, who shot California Split in Nashville, which were the two films

that Rudolph worked on as second AD.

Yep, and Carolyn also worked with Altman as well.

An amazing career, you know.

She worked with everyone.

But yeah, Altman was one of her mentors and someone she worked with.

But let's hear from her now.

As I remember, this project came to us...

Truth Almond King, who we had worked on with Rhodey. He was like a friend.

And an actor and a director in his own right who had a different career as time

went on. And I think the young, all over the papers at that time was this

cattle mutilation issue.

I mean, it was popping up in papers all over the states.

And there were all these.

hypotheses as to what it was. Was it aliens? Was it germ warfare testing?

Was it cults? So it was very much in the media, so to speak.

And the two young writers, I think, took it to a pitch to Zalman, and we had

done Rhody based on a pitch from Zalman. I won't go into Rhody.

And Alan and I just became intrigued.

And he, we pitched it, my memory is we pitched

it to David Beigelman, who was then himself,

David Beigelman himself, who was then running MGM.

And David bought the project, and Alan and John Binder wrote the screenplay.

And then it seemed to us, of course, we were impatient young filmmakers.

that it took a really long time to get greenlit. But there was a writer's

going on.

And so it really, we had to wait around for a year.

And it took us a while to finally get the greenlight from MGM.

And during that time, we did go out on some scouts.

And the scouts were looking for an idyllic small town

in cattle country.

set against a beautiful mountain range.

And because of seasons

changing, we scouted. My memory is that we went on three scouts. I actually

could have been two, but I'm pretty sure it was three.

And we did Texas, we did all over the Midwest, which was...

really fabulous because I hadn't seen so many parts of the country. So we were

in Montana, New Mexico, Wyoming, Texas, South Texas, North Texas,

West Texas, you know.

And it was, you know, one of the fun parts of being a filmmaker, if you get

scout locations, is that you just get to learn so much and see so much. So that

was a very delightful part of the process.

And then we started casting, and Alan really wanted it to be, to

have a very naturalistic feel.

He wanted natural lighting. He didn't want to make characters with a lot of

makeup. He wanted it to be, I mean, to feel really real.

And so I know, I'm sure we found Marin Cantor in

New York when we were back there casting.

And we just thought she was perfect. We absolutely fell in love with her to

play, you know, the rebellious young daughter of this tough New York cop.

The cop, we really wanted to be, we really wanted an older actor for the

Our first choices were Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, but the

studio wouldn't let us go that way.

Partial to Robert Mitchum, I don't know why.

But as I said, we weren't allowed to approach the older actors.

And instead, MGM had recently put Robert Ulrich under contract.

And so we were asked to meet with him and we were pretty much told that we had

to cast him.

I mean, the good news is that Bob was just like the nicest guy.

So he was a joy to work with and, you know, died.

so way too young. It was just, that part was heartbreaking.

But in this film, he was healthy.

He was very committed, very excited.

He and Jo Beth had good chemistry.

He and Marin got on fine. I mean, I'm not aware of any cast problems.

And the rest of the casting, some are what I call Alan favorites.

And then I was trying to remember how we came about casting Hoyd Axon, who I

thought was fantastic.

I do remember being told that we had a medical problem with Hoyt accident

because his cholesterol was so high.

And I remember them saying to me that the fat actually floated to the top of

test tube, which, of course, that was not true.

But somebody told us that, and I was very horrified. But anyway, Hoyt was a

to work with.

Then we started shooting. And about, I think it was maybe two weeks in,

Alan had hired a friend and a

cinematographer that he had worked with in earlier days, I think on, I don't

know if they were student films or amateur films or quite what they were,

his pal was...

a cinematographer named Jan Kiser, K -E -I -S -S -E -R.

And about a week or two weeks into the shoot, they shut us down.

And they wanted us to recast Marin.

And they wanted hair, makeup, romance, and

bright lights.

We were horrified.

I mean, we'd had such a pleasant experience working with United Artists

Rhodey where there was no studio interference.

We come from a situation with no studio interference to this. Suddenly, suddenly

they were interfering with everything. They wanted us to recast Marin.

And we really fought that. And they finally agreed. We did a test with her.

And we, you know, we put her in makeup and we...

somehow bought some kind of romance into the film that wasn't there originally.

I can't remember exactly or how we, I don't remember specific script changes,

but it was, otherwise they were going to shut down production.

They allowed us to continue with Marin, but it was a very, can you imagine for

such a young actress, it's like a devastating experience.

And we had to replace Jan, and we replaced him.

With Lohman.

And Lohman was fine. It was just a different approach.

Alan worked so closely with the cinematographers. It's such camaraderie.

And we finished the film. And, you know, everyone did the best they could.

But it really took the wind out of our sails.

And we think that part of what... Vigelman was fired.

I can't remember if he was fired before the film ended.

or if it was before the film opened. It may have been before the film opened

because his slate of pictures had not done well at all.

Do not ask me what those pictures were because I simply do not remember. This

was a long time ago.

And then we had Freddie Fields.

Now, they had both been top agents, and they had been partners in the same firm,

as memory serves me.

And then Freddie was...

You know, I don't, I mean, as far as he was concerned, it was David's film. He

didn't love the film.

He made us change the ending.

And the ending was a little darker, a little more ambiguous.

We're not quite sure who else may have been poisoned, including the sheriff.

A very Rudolphian ending.

And it got no support coming out. And it really is one of those lost films. And

frankly, I think the film holds

up really, really well considering how long ago it was made in terms of look

and even atmosphere.

I mean, I would say maybe the special effects, I mean, that would be the one

place I would look for a more modern feel.

But in terms of, you know, these people in cattle country, the way it was shot

and everything. I think it holds up really well.

So the guys in the cell, the scumbags, as Hoyt Acton calls

them, are, of course, a red herring.

But it's interesting with their bonfire, they tag the car, Satan was here,

which, as well as leaning into a certain...

phase that would hit the 80s pretty hard um satanists were often targeted as

possible perpetrators of cattle mutilation in the 70s um as you know all

sort of association with severed goat heads and all that sort of thing um when

they didn't point the fingers at ufos they're pointing it at satanists but of

course uh it was around 1980 that satanic panic would really

sweep the United States. It was kind of happening and it was bubbling up in the

70s and films like Race with the Devil and The Omen and sort of post -exorcist,

I guess, started to fuel those fears.

But in the 80s, they'd really go into overdrive. And yeah, so that sort of

into that. But I do also feel like this film and the writers in particular are

picking off all...

the alleged causes of cattle mutilations and going, nope, not it, nope, not that

one, until they get to the one that they feel is the main reason.

Yeah, absolutely.

And absolutely the idea of the threats that, you know, surface.

So obviously, you know, you've got Russia, perhaps, you know, war anxiety,

fear of communism, the fear of Russia being one step ahead of Russia, et

America being under threat.

Also, interestingly enough, J. Beth Williams stars in an amazing made -for

film called The Day After in 1983, which was all about that. It was all about

the sort of fear of nuclear warfare, etc.

And that was, you know, aired for Ronald Reagan in the White House before it

even aired for the public.

You know, he didn't want it to be aired.

But all this kind of interesting stuff that was happening. But yeah, the

panic stuff is really fascinating.

And cattle mutilation, the animal sacrifice and baby sacrifices, all that

was kind of big in the cultural zeitgeist. You had TV talk shows sort of

exposing Satanism and child abuse and satanic cults. You had all the cases

the primary schools, sorry, the elementary schools.

Geraldo would do a big special on satanic panic. So that was a big thing

happening in the culture as well. But the UFO thing, the alien...

cattle mutilations that pops up um in a lot of sort of pop cultural landscapes

such as tv and film and comic books etc but also it's kind of um a lot of times

linked to a lot of what was happening in the touch me therapy fads as well um

there was this whole notion that uh if you weren't at peace with the aliens

are coming you're not in peace with yourself and things such as cattle

mutilations will be a manifestation of you not being at peace

And people exploited that in their, or used that in their writing and their

creativity. Someone like John Sayles, who actually had like a whole subplot

written for his screenplay for The Howling, which is all about a community

werewolves who were supposed to be getting in touch with their inner, you

their lycanthropy and their inner selves and coming to peace with their

werewolfism. And that whole film and that script is all a commentary on those

therapies and est and, you know, iridology and all these sort of things

people were going into.

and experimenting with, but also in touch with that is this cattle

idea. Obviously the werewolves themselves are farming cattle to sort of

their werewolves.

um needs to kill humans so they're feeding off cattle but there's a great

throwaway line where um uh slim pickens i believe or noble winning to one of

them says to john carodine's character you know keep watching the sky it's

ufos and carodine says yeah it's ufos i tell you that are doing this they're all

covering it up so d wallace doesn't figure out that's them these werewolves

doing it but it's interesting that um cattle mutilation becomes this sort of

that people actually studied and there were scientists researching it. And the

fact that the cattle themselves weren't bloodless, so they'd be mutilated with

organs removed and body parts removed, but no sign of

bloodletting. So all that kind of bizarre stuff was sort of...

freaking people yeah well when it when it first started in 1960 uh so the the

although there'd been the odd history of uh the odd mutilation

mutilated animal event throughout time in america there was there was an

isolated incident of a horse named um uh what is i've got it here uh

squiggy or something like that um

snippy and poor snippy was left bloodless and surgically altered in 1967

even then it was being blamed on ufos uh which was this was before it became an

epidemic when it was just kind of a one -time only event but it was in 1973 on

december 4th when seven counties across kansas and nebraska reported mutilated

cattle um and the those numbers grew to 38 cattle deaths across 11

counties. And it was alleged that the cattle's sexual organs had been

removed. So you want to talk about weird.

And again, it brought up this thing like bloodlet certain organs removed like

that. Oh, okay. Sudden Robert Urich nude scene alert.

I did not expect Vegas' Dan Tanner to be in the all together.

Just in a minute.

I'll let you collect yourself there.

So, cattle... I might need a sec.

Yeah, but this continued throughout the 1970s to the point where FBI and CIA

investigations were launched into why this was happening.

It was happening throughout the Western Midwest throughout the... through to

about 78, 79.

And I'm pretty sure she just squeezed his nuts and punched him then. That's

great. Good response.

Good on her. Good on her.

But, yeah, it became this sort of nationwide kind of

fear of this, what was doing this.

You know, I guess a lot of 70s...

Phenomenons like crop circles were coming around at the same time as well.

And, you know, you had TV shows like In Search Of and... Alan

Landsberg, amazing stuff.

I spoke to his... Chariot of the Gods. Yeah, she had amazing stories about that

theory. Actually, I have original scripts from that.

In search of.

Yeah, in search of. But that kind of stuff is really fascinating, all the

cryptoids and also the sort of suburban myths that sort of generated hysteria

and urban legends, like things like alligators in the sewers.

You know, all this stuff that was kind of legend, you know.

things that people sort of discussed and talked about. And also mums and dads

would threaten their children with it.

But, you know, things like Roswell, these are major events.

These are kind of really interesting stuff that was happening.

And films played into that. They played into that paranoia. And it's interesting

with the early 80s, you know, you have a wave of, like, science fiction movies

and they sort of vary from benign offerings like Starman and E .T. to

threatening films, you know, which really are.

talking about otherness and the fear of the other, like the thing that happened

in the remake of the 50s film. But it's kind of interesting that that's

happening at the same time as Cold War anxiety and work about Russia being the

threat.

And you have that with as varied as films such as War Games and all

the sort of action movies that we're dealing with to Broadway musicals like

Chess. So you have all this sort of stuff happening where people are kind of

talking about the Cold War and talking about Cold War anxieties and paranoia

films such as this huge epic TV film.

that I think rivaled even the American football game, the Super Bowl.

Oh, the Super Bowl, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, in spectatorship. So these are

events. These are major TV events and film events that talk about it and

capitalise on this.

But, yeah, Carolyn Pfeiffer sort of discusses the concept of...

the cattle mutilation as something that was really of keen interest to the

riders. So we'll listen to her talk about that now.

You know, I mean, I can only speak for myself because I don't remember what it

was with Alan. I mean, it just was a very intriguing

puzzle to solve.

So we never...

We made narrative decisions to have it be germ warfare testing,

but that involved the Russians, which ironically has come around again today,

too. Suddenly they're the villains again, big time.

But I think it was an intriguing narrative, an

intriguing puzzle to try and figure out what the heck was going on.

I did a film in Roswell, New Mexico, so I was near where that, the famous

sort of alleged spaceship landing that's being hidden by the U .S. government

was in Roswell.

But that was years later, a film that Sam Shepard directed that I produced.

You know, it was just in the air. We just responded to it in a narrative

fashion. It's not that, I mean, all I can tell you is at the end of the movie,

had so much cow paraphernalia from salt shakers. And I think I still have cream

pitchers and everything that you can imagine. They would have a cow made like

cow, look like a cow, shape like a cow. I got for Christmas and birthdays for

about three years afterwards.

But it was no more than the story.

And then making our choice.

I mean, and making our choice. And we just thought, we thought, and it was.

It really was in the newspapers all over the place.

And there were other projects in the air.

I never read anything else, but I did hear that John

Tarnikoff, he worked at MGM, a nice young fellow. He was our production

executive. John Tarnikoff, I think was, I'm not saying it right, but I know he

had been approached with other.

projects that also dealt with this phenomenon of cattle mutilation.

Yeah, about the cows.

There's this amazing line that I, as a vegetarian, really appreciated that Paul

Dooley's character says.

He says, you know cows have to be the most blameless creatures in the world.

eat them, we drink them, we wear them. They don't bite, they don't even shit on

the sidewalk.

Which I really, really love that. It's like, yeah, they are like...

incredibly blameless, like all animals. But it's a sweet sentiment, and it's one

that many films don't take the time to make.

So, this film is very horror adjacent.

As I was saying earlier, it's a bit of a genre mash.

And looking at, you know, Alan Rudolph is often thought as the director of kind

of ensemble relationship dramas, you know, films like Choose Me and The

and Mrs.

Parker and the Vicious Circle.

But the thing is, he started out in horror. His first two films, Premonition

Barn of the Naked Dead, which is also known as Terror Circus, which is also

known as Nightmare Circus, were straight up, like, kind of low -budget,

you know, kind of drive -in horror movies.

And then he aligned with Altman and then came out with Welcome to L .A.,

which... you know, in its own way, felt sort of lightly Altman -esque and

shared some cast members and a kind of a freewheeling kind of style. And then

from there, he went on to the female revenge drama thriller.

Remember My Name with Geraldine Chaplin, which again is kind of, you know, again

a little heightened.

And then from there went to Rhodey in 1980, in which I believe he teamed

with Carolyn, the film's producer.

Absolutely. And yes, you told me all about that.

Well, I first met Alan through Robert Altman because I had a PR company in

London, and Altman was a client. I handled all of his films from the

the English release of his films from MASH through Nashville.

So when I moved back to the States, I went to work with Shep Gordon

to create Alive Films, and Shep had a deal.

with ABC, I think it's called Midnight Special or something like that, to do,

they usually did concerts, artists, musical acts in concert, but they,

Alice Cooper's, Alice Cooper was TIP's big client at the time, and because

Alice, his shows that went on tour were like

little mini rock operas. You know, they all had a narrative and a villain, and

they had, they were all.

And so Shep had a deal with ABC to do

this particular show called Welcome to My Nightmare.

And Shep actually put me on as the producer.

And I had never produced anything before, but I'd been around a lot of

directors and producers and kind of knew my way around it a little bit.

But we needed someone to bring this musical show into some kind of, again, a

narrative. And I went to Bob Altman and asked him who he would recommend, and he

recommended Alan Rudolph. And that's how Alan Rudolph and I started working

together. Alan did not direct it, but he wrote out a little telescript so that

we would have – and it went on to win an Emmy for editing, of all things.

So anyway, so we would have a storyline to follow.

Then Alan started pitching me things, I think.

And I think what happened was with Rhodey,

I believe we were all having dinner at our house, my late husband and I,

Alan, his wife Joyce, Zalman King, and his wife Patsy.

And I think Zalman...

started telling us about this character called Travis Redfish that had been

created by these two young writers out of Austin, Texas called Big Boy Medlin

and Michael Ventura. And now they had just come to him about this character

taking this character who was like a running character in the Austin

or something.

They had a column about the adventures of Travis Redfish and making a film out

of it. And so out of that, The idea of Rhodey was born.

We went, Jim Wyatt, who was a big agent at the time.

Actually, I lied.

Jim agent, Sue Mingus was a big agent at the time. She was Alan's agent.

She was out of town.

And Jim Wyatt was like this junior agent coming up. And she, while she was away,

she asked Jim Wyatt to handle Alan.

So we went to Jim and we said, and then Jim ended up running, you know.

ICM, and then William Morris, Endeavor, and this, that, and the other. But at

that time, he was a young agent. So he went to United Artists.

And everyone knew everyone in those days. So it was Claire Townsend, and I'm

trying to remember the name of the guys.

And we went in and did it as a pitch.

And it was, and they said, will you all step out of the room for a minute? And

Jim was with us.

We stepped out of the room, and the execs did their little confabbing and

said, yeah, we want to develop this. We want to make a deal. We want you to

write a screenplay, and we want to be shooting by – this was spring. We want

be shooting by fall.

And I didn't have an agent at the time, so I said, Jimmy, will you please

represent me too? And so he became our agent and was our agent until I left.

Los Angeles, basically.

And then eventually he retired.

And so Jimmy made the deal.

The guys wrote the script.

And we were shooting by fall.

That's the story of Rhodey. Now, it doesn't always happen that way, as you

know. But it was the opposite of Endangered Species. First of all, it was

comedy.

Once we cast...

Meatloaf. Meatloaf was easy to work with.

I mean, he did not give us any problems.

And I think he was thrilled to be doing it. I know that he had a reputation for

being a little difficult at times, but I remember nothing negative about him

from our film.

And then, you know, we cast everybody else, and then we used a lot of Shep's

clients, like Alice was his client.

And so it was not, I don't remember it as a film. And then we had Debbie.

Debbie Harry and Blondie.

And then we had a lot of Texas artists.

And shooting in Austin, it was shot in Austin, Texas.

I mean, it was just a very pleasant experience.

We had problems when it came time to release the picture.

And then United Artists was going through problems, and then they just

don't know if it didn't test well or whatever the heck happened, but it just

didn't, it never got a decent release.

And, you know, it was a fun movie.

And then after that, Endangered Species came into our lives, and so that's where

our focus went.

After Endangered Species, at the end of Endangered Species, Alan said to me, he

said he remembered we were in the car driving away from Boulder, Colorado, or

living location or something, and he said, you know, we need to find another

of making movies because...

This is just too hard after Endangered Species.

Then we were friends with Timothy Leary and his wife Barbara, and Timmy called

me and said he was doing this tour,

personal appearance thing with Gordon Liddy, and he'd love it if I could find

some way to record it.

So I went to Alan.

and asked him if he would do it with me.

And he wasn't wildly enthusiastic because he didn't like either one of

much, but he agreed to join in since it was a documentary.

And then Chris Blackwell of Island Records was a close friend of my

husband's, and he had just started making films, and I went to Chris, and

said yes, and he put up the money for us to shoot the documentary.

We came in on budget, on schedule. It was the first time Chris had had a film

done that didn't cause him problems.

And so then he came back to me and asked if we would form Island Alive with him.

And so that was how Island Alive was formed.

So just going back to what I was talking about with that kind of wave, with that

cycle of the poor white folk films or the rural movies that was talking about

farming communities and discussing farming communities and what happened to

these people during this period.

This film is totally, I think, on par with that, and it has that whistleblower

sensibility that still could Norma Rae -esque aspect to it. I don't know if you

feel the same way, Paul. I think you do.

But it sort of seems to have that sort of sensibility.

And also what it sort of does with these characters that have to sort of face up

against people who don't want to, you know...

learn the truth um or sort of deny the truth and that's something that's very

small town um you know these tropes that sort of pop up in all these sort of

small town films and you can look at that throughout all multiple genres like

the horror film does that really well um you know not listening to the character

who sort of sits on the fringes or the character who knows the truth but that

kind of the woman not listening to the woman well exactly that's right So it's

always about someone who kind of wants to whistleblower, whether it's Streep

Silkwood or Sally Field and Norma Raitt, et cetera, who want to help the others

and also the others that they're surrounded by.

are a community of very oppressed people, people who are kind of, you

-income, people who rely on one sort of industry.

So, for instance, if you look at Norma Rae, it's one industry. It was still

called the nuclear plant, which is obviously a very dangerous place to

Here, it's the cattle ranch. It's a cattle community.

So I actually asked Carolyn Pfeiffer, the producer, and, God, she was

to talk to. Just a brilliant mind and an amazing artist. And I wanted to ask...

her about that wave of films that was happening and if she was sort of aware

coming into this movie from that perspective and her response was really

interesting because she did talk about how when you are working um on a film

you're not thinking about that there'd be other people possibly thinking about

that but not normally so what happens is this sort of cultural um this zeitgeist

sort of stuff happens

in kind of a retrospect or from an outsider perspective.

So people like you and I, as critics, can see that. But if you're in the thick

of it and making these films, you probably don't pick that up. You don't

if you're making Cold Mind and Daughter that Sweet Dreams is also happening at

the same time.

So there's that kind of interesting thing where trends and stuff and fads

cultural explosions of one kind of umbrella story

type or thing.

is something that's kind of just something that's happening and no one

Yeah.

It's a creative... It's like a collective consciousness.

Yeah. That all gets born out of that. And there seems to be, in American

in the late 70s and early 80s, this more... this embrace of the heartland.

Yes. um you know yeah but even shows like you know tv shows

about and movies about truck drivers and you know like convoy and bj and the

bear and you know smoking the bandit and um but also you know whether it's

sensitive drama or sensitive dramas like tender mercy's cold minus daughter um

country things like that yeah but yeah there seemed to be this this very 70s

kind of let's let's you know, look out beyond the coast and beyond the kind of

the glamour and to, you know, the real, the real folk, you know, the heartland

of America.

And, yeah, Dukes of Hazzard is another, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, like

this sort of... Which is bizarre because it kind of, it's kind of like coming

out of the rural purge, which happened in the early 70s, where in television,

you know, CBS, which was like the country network, the rural network.

started to pull all their shows.

So Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, all these shows disappeared to make way for

urban landscape shows.

And then later, as you're saying, it kind of wanted to come back up. I think

things like Little House on the Prairie. The Waltons. The Waltons, yeah. People

wanted those kind of old -fashioned values back in there because what they

countering as well during the early 80s was excess.

Cinema of the excesses. Action movies were huge.

There was the sort of exploitation movement that was kind of portraying

the mainstream with your tna films you had also the hyper glamour films and tv

shows you know dynasty and stuff was sort of expressing itself on television

this kind of like counter to all this stuff yeah charlie's angels and yeah

oh yeah the bouncy tv yeah that's great but all that's really interesting that's

kind of like this sort of weird balance because These country films, these rural

films were huge. They were like, you know, and they're quite quiet and

quaint because, I mean, it's kind of their nature, being where they are. But

they also did big business, like, and, you know, really also were real actory

pieces, you know, and also sort of really...

celebrated certain performers, like people like Jessica Lange and people

Sam Shepard and people like Sally Field.

These people really had, this is SpaceX, Tommy Lee Jones. These people had real

earthy, you know, sensibility of that kind of

poor white person, you know, vibe, right? Do you know what I mean? Like

kind of, that rural.

um person and most of them came from that background you know jessica lang

certainly did sissy spacex certainly did they were all sort of country folk um

doing these films so yeah it's really interesting but yeah carolyn was kind of

like well you know this was um our film that we were making we came in from this

different perspective and yeah when you look back at it absolutely but at the

time most certainly not um something that was on the radar um and i'll

bounced to her now, but we are being introduced to Peter Coyote, and

interestingly enough, going back to what I was saying about Benign Alien, Peter

Coyote was in E .T., which was released in 1982, and he looks very different to

Keith. Yeah.

A little bit more of a different attitude.

Yeah.

It's crazy how, yeah, again, the Amblin adjacent casting as well.

I always thought Peter Coyote and Kevin Costner should play brothers in

something. Oh my God, I've got so many of those things, like Frederick Forrest

and Robert Forster should have played brothers.

That's crazy.

Yeah, Sybil Shepard and Kathleen Turner should have played sisters. Oh, yes.

Yeah, but let's jump to the wonderful Carolyn Pfeiffer.

Generally, in my experience, and I've been working in the movie business for

like more than 60 years, my friend, so I worked on...

Fellini's Eight and a Half. I mean, I worked with Claudia Cardinale's

on Eight and a Half, on The Leopard, on The First Pink Panther, which was, of

course, like Edwards in an American comedy. But you're caught up in a way

that it's not... In my experience, it's

very ethereal. It's very much...

the sensibilities of the movement of the art.

It's not something that's been intellectualized and processed and

I mean, yes, I would say at the studio level or the distributor level,

you know, one is sensitive to what the audience is responding

to. And choices are made because of that. We know that there are many no

at this moment in time, certainly in the United States, about

things that you simply don't do or deal with or talk about

or say or whatever because of social sensibilities.

But I would say from a filmmaker's point of view, It's just much more

gut than that. It's not really so looking for the right words. And I

said intellectual before. In a way, that's what I mean.

These are just things that feel correct.

And sometimes, as you know, they happen in waves, inexplainably, that three

films are made on the same subject.

But if you go back to...

Neo -realism, then the New Wave, then the American Independent.

I mean, I think perhaps, I mean, it was coming out of, it was veering away from

studio -produced, mass -produced pictures, and there were more

perhaps, and you know better than I do, there were more perhaps, there were just

more coming from...

The stories of the filmmakers, rather than being mass -produced as

entertainment, so that suddenly this entertainment was also having more

commentary, and therefore it went into the hinterlands, if you like, Coal

Miner's Daughter. I mean, some of the directors were English, and then there

also the English movement of the kitchen sink films that were dealing with the

working classes.

I mean, filmmaking, moviemaking was...

It was just going through its forms the way art goes through forms.

Always love a Dan Hedaya sighting.

So the guy talking to him, he's just credited as mercenary in the film. His

is...

John Perry Barlow, and he's a guy who wrote lyrics for The Grateful Dead,

on Dick Cheney's congressional campaign in the 70s as a kind of political

consultant, and then was an early advocate for internet rights in the

through to the 2000s. Became kind of obsessed with the internet as a portal

thought and commerce, and sort of worked both sides of the

political divide. He's kind of a fascinating...

fascinating guy who was a little controversial at times. He even

the CIA how, testified that the CIA helped invent Facebook with Zuckerberg.

So yeah, he's just there.

But shall we turn our gaze to the great Jo Beth Williams?

Absolutely. So I...

I'm obsessed with her. I love her performance style. I think she's so

so strong and vulnerable, and there's a softness and gentleness to her, but also

this really sassy strength.

um earthiness just a really dynamic versatile actress she kind of reminds me

lot of what was happening sort of post 70s and coming into the 80s where it was

kind of method actors sort of strasburgian but also um they were

actors that plotted into these big blockbuster movies but bringing in that

beautiful theatrical sort of essence to the sort of sort of big blockbuster

showy movie so if you look at her in Poltergeist she's so brilliant like

such a complexity to her there's elements in Poltergeist that are very

stagey with the best intention of using that term.

You know, there's these sequences that are elongated that read like a play,

which I think she just shines in. Such a fabulous powerhouse of women in that

movie as well. Her occupying the same space as Beatrice Strait and Zelda

Rubinstein, etc.

But Jo Beth reminds me of those great women of that period, such as Bonnie

Bedelia, you know, all these actresses that were kind of, Gina Rollins, Jane

Alexander, just This is incredible. Jill Kleberg.

Yes, Jill Kleberg, absolutely.

Just that kind of real effortlessness in their performances, this real beautiful

effortlessness. I love that direction.

Yeah, this whole sequence with them sort of hooking up, that was instructed by

the studio, and Carolyn Pfeiffer told me all about that, and she'll talk about

that later. But, yeah, it's really interesting that that was something that

to be sort of inserted.

I mean, it's sort of mandatory, right? Hollywood saying, you know... Yeah.

But, yeah, I love Jo Beth. I just think everything about her is wonderful, and I

like how she plays off different men. Like, her and Craig T. Nelson in

Poltergeist have great rapport, and in this, I think there's really cool sort

of... back and forths um and of course as well it's her having to be

by this leading man but she's you know antagonized throughout the whole um film

but yeah let's hear um carolyn pfeiffer talk about the casting of joe beth

williams and also i asked um carolyn

about the idea of the character having to be pitted against men throughout the

film. And it's obvious she has to. I guess it's kind of mandatory. It

be sort of right if it was easy for her. It wouldn't make sense, in a sense.

But that kind of fight fuels her and makes her even more of a strong person,

feel. So, yeah, let's hear what Carolyn has to say about that.

Jo Beth was just, she was at the beginning of her career.

Our casting director, Mike Fenton, I don't remember how we got to her. I

remember if Mike suggested her or if she was on Alan's radar.

But however it was, we met her, we liked her. I don't believe we ever had anyone

else in mind other than Jo Beth. And she was a gem.

G -E -M.

She just was.

A pleasure to work with.

She always delivered. She was just really good.

And her career took off not because of endangered

species, but certainly I think her work in it must have affected her going

forward in the career that she had because she's just so good, you know.

So Carolyn Pfeiffer would go on to tell me the stuff about the character, the Jo

Beth Williams character, and what she had to face and what that deal is. But

then it was really interesting because she went off into sort of talking about

women in the industry behind the camera, so producers like herself and women

directors. It was really fascinating to hear that kind of in comparison to what

Jo Beth Williams' character sort of faces as a sheriff, as someone in power

who's not taken seriously.

It was what was going on at the time, my friend. You know, it just was.

I mean, and it was certainly before the Me Too movement. And it was,

you know, women were not really respected as equals.

And that's what I thought Jo Beth did so wonderfully well was to find that

balance of strength.

In the character and at the same time, vulnerability, you know. I mean, there's

that moment where she's getting mashed up in the bar and our hero saves her or

thinks he's trying to save her and then she gets really mad. But then later we

see her actually, you know, I can't remember the same character, but she

in and she really like...

flattens a couple of guys in another situation so she had the physical

to um and training uh her character to

to um to take care of herself it it would seem she was not you know you

knock her over so easily yeah i mean that that you know we've all come a long

way um and i that was

That even goes back, if you go back to characters, you know, the famous

Katharine Hepburn characters where, you know, these are really, really strong

women.

But they have to be cunning at the same time, you know, because they are women.

I will say when I started as a producer and made my way up through the years,

there were no women directors that I was aware of. And then occasionally someone

would come to the door.

And I would be even, myself as a woman producer, tentative,

worrying whether or not they could manage a male crew and or a –

I wasn't so worried about cast because generally actors I found would be

more open to female directors.

As the years went by, I too started to work with some women directors.

And I just will tell you that in my experience, they have to be better

prepared than many men directors, and they have to really know what they're

doing, and then they have to surround themselves with a crew that respects

and then they're fine.

But it's been a long time coming.

I'm part of a little program here in Marfa, and we screen films.

directed by women for the community. We have a lovely little theater, about a

200 -seater, and it's a pro bono place.

And we raised some money, and so we're able to pay a distribution fee.

There are a lot of women directors working around the world and a lot of

good ones.

And I know this because they may not all be making blockbuster commercial

pictures, but they're working in many countries.

We had been doing two or three films a month. We obviously slowed down during

COVID, but we're picking back up again.

So they're out there, you know, whether it be South America, Mexico, France,

Germany, Australia.

We'll just keep chipping away at it, dude. We'll just keep chipping away at

you know.

So I feel like the screenwriters were very, the original screenwriters of the

piece.

were very focused on this, fascinated with the phenomenon of the cattle

mutilations, but in particular the theory behind why they were happening.

There's a couple of great helicopter reveals here. That is definitely one of

them. But they're very concerned with the angle because the film

starts and ends is literally bookended by title cards that tell you...

As of 1969, chemical and germ warfare research and chemical

and germ warfare in general was banned by the US government.

But there seems to be a kind of a, whatever the 70s equivalent of the dark

was, kind of theories, conspiracy theories around

privately funded paramilitary groups.

who didn't want to see the US fall behind Russia in the arms race.

And we're seeing other countries, and particularly in the Middle East as well,

with that unrest beginning in, you know, also stoked by the US, beginning in the

1970s, were afraid that they were falling behind on that arms race and

well, if our government isn't going to step up our weapons game, we're going to

do it ourselves.

The theory goes we're going to experiment on the effects on cows.

Because as Paul Dooley's Newsman character said very helpfully earlier in

movie, the thing he noticed was that the reproductive and nervous systems of

humans and cows were incredibly similar.

Which is why...

The theory goes that these organisations would do experiments on

cows. Now, as I said, there were two

independent federal investigations into this, and the FBI looked into it and

couldn't find any hard and fast conclusions.

They...

They made an investigation in May 1979, which would have been the year before

this was shot, which gives you an idea of where the screenwriters' heads were

at.

And it was particularly regarding cases that happened in New Mexico.

The 297 -page -long FBI report was inconclusive,

but they did come out with a figure that... By 1979, some 10 ,000 head of

had been mysteriously mutilated. And that's a credit that's used at the end

the movie. So they've clearly been tuned in to this

FBI report and all the stuff that was going on. And I think their aim was

trying to get this in front of a commercial audience to make, you know,

a genre film, to make people aware that... hey, this stuff is going on and

might be some pretty dark people doing it.

Unfortunately, the film only made one -fifth of its budget back, so the

didn't get out very far.

It grossed $1 .5 million on a budget of $7 million.

And I have a feeling that disappointed some people.

I mean, obviously the flop did, but that message getting out there on a wider

basis, the fact that it didn't hit the audience.

they intended um with the with the disappointment to a lot of people

the film but it's really i love what you're saying about how um the film was

message piece as well and that's something that happens a lot with these

during this period when environmental awareness comes as you know it comes to

the fold and comes to the fore of public consciousness so if you look at even

like even more independent films, such as Film Ventura's production of Day of

the Animals from William Girdler, that was all about the ozone depletion

affecting animals, right? And ozone depletion being a major concern.

And Linda Day George and Christopher George, the stars of the movies,

for that. They were trying to make people aware that aerosols and CFC

stuff will actually...

you know, destroy the planet ultimately and destroy the ozone layer. So things

like that was sort of really hand in hand with yet fun horror films and

sci -fi films and adventure films, but also these messages, these really

fundamentally important messages about the environment.

And also germ warfare. And a lot of eco -horror does that throughout the 70s

because people are becoming more aware about pesticides, the effects of

pesticides, the effects of genetic engineering.

Animal rights was becoming a big deal. So this film talks about how cows are

linked to us as we sort of share similar body types or DNA types, etc.

So that's really interesting because that sort of starts to feed into the

culture of film where people start to be caring and more considerate.

considerate to animals in film at the same time as working with animals in

So you have people like Carl Lewis Miller and Susan Bacalini and all these

people who were, you know, George Toth and all these people who were animal

trainers who also were activists for animals and cared about animal rights.

Frank Juanita Inn, who gave us Benji, et cetera. All these people were really

devoted to not only...

putting animals on the screen so people had a face to go with these animals that

people need to care about, but also cared about the actual welfare of

This is amazing.

This is where the film kind of tips into, like, okay, cool, now we get some

gore. But the gore effects are wonderful. I really love it.

Carolyn Pfeiffer mentioned that she wished, you know, they were better, but

actually really love it. I dig them.

They're kind of insane.

Yeah, it turns into, like...

butterfilm for a bit.

Which is cool. But yeah, I feel like...

Carolyn didn't mention this, but perhaps the studio could have intercepted and

said, you know, let's have some gore because this was early 80s and, you

the excess of visceral sort of on -screen violence was a big deal and it

got audiences in.

It also sometimes was used as a marketing tool.

So, for instance, if you think of kind of low -key, really smart kind of horror

films that were happening around the time, one of your favourites and my

favourites that is yet to have a Blu -ray release upon this date, which is,

know, March 2023, a film called Bowls, a .k .a. Murder by Phone.

That was advertised with, you know, the sensationalism of these people getting

killed by answering a phone.

But when you watch the movie, it's like really smart, like savvy tech horror

stuff. But the idea was let's sell it and market it as this whole concept of

excessive gore. People bleeding, bleeding from every orifice as they

phone. And this is great with Hoydak having this issue.

But yeah, like really interesting production history was shared by Carolyn

Fifar. So yeah, let's hear some more of it.

So I remember we started shooting and Freddie Hills was head of production

and Bigelman was over him.

And we were just waiting for someone to call. We were shipping the dailies back

as one did in those days to Hollywood.

And nobody was saying anything in the beginning.

And then we couldn't understand why we were getting no silence because we were

looking at dailies and we thought they looked great.

So one day I think somebody comes on set and says, you know, this is free cell

phone. You know, there's a.

Freddie Pilsen's on the phone, so I run to the phone, and I think he's going to

say something about the dailies.

But he says, hey, Carolyn, you know that piece of furniture in the newspaper

editor's office?

Could you have it shipped to me after you wrap that set?

And that's all he said.

So that was something that was like kind of shocking to me, frankly.

You know, I just thought.

I mean, they were very successful agents, and they handled great talent. I

I want to say, amongst the others, Judy Garland, you know, but that was just so

unfeeling to young filmmakers.

So that's my memory of the first call that we got from the studio.

You know, so we had a lot of interference. It's not a film that has

memories from that.

from that point of view.

But the things that were great about it was we loved these

little towns that we were shooting in. I remember my husband and I, I found

we were looking for places to house everyone, and we got really lucky

there was someone moving.

Out of the area. And they were leaving their house and their fading vegetable

garden filled with vegetables and fruit and looking for someone to rent the

house. And we rented the house and had all the

deliciousness of a summer garden that went with it.

You know, I mean, the crew, everybody was happy. I remember it was my first

in a helicopter. I got to go up in the helicopter. I was the only one who could

go up in the helicopter because I was the only one that insurance didn't

if the helicopter crashed or not. So the actress couldn't go up. Alan couldn't

go up.

But I could. So I remember that.

We then moved down to Boulder, Colorado, and we were shooting inside of an

old...

of some kind when we were shooting the silo.

And I can't remember if we were down there for a week or 10 days, whatever we

were down there.

And I thought that the set dresser did a good, I mean, the production designer

did a good job and the set dresser.

But I do remember them going over budget. And it was only my second

producer.

It was a big lesson to learn that one of the departments you have to really,

really watch is production design.

And so that was a lesson for me as a young producer at the time, where

you could go, you know, construction in particular, but everything in that

department were areas where you had to...

monitor extremely careful and we weren't on computers it was all at that time it

was all it was all manual you know you'd have you couldn't look at a couldn't

look at a sheet and see where you were every day you had to wait until at the

end of the week everything was like added up and you went in you had

with the accountants and the department heads and the production manager you

figured out where you were over budget so um all of that was i mean a big

learning experience for me i i I don't believe we went over budget. I have no

memory of having any budget problems. In fact, I sort of prided myself in the

early years of coming in on time and on budget on films.

And Alan was a delight to work with because Alan is, you know, if you have a

problem and you go to him, he will help you solve that problem.

And like on the moderns, we didn't have enough to build a room.

So, you know, we shot the scene in a corner, you know, things like that.

And it was low budget film. And I don't even remember the budget of Endangered

Species anymore.

So this film, I guess, would be one of the ripped from the headlines films.

And that's really interesting because that's kind of like decades old by the

early 80s. So ripped from the headlines movies pretty much originated.

in the 20s, and they really came into their own and flourished in the 30s. So

you look at a lot of pre -code stuff from the early 30s and then into the

and into the production code of the mid to late 30s, a lot of these popped up.

Films like Marked Woman with Betty Davis, a lot of the gangster pictures, a

of films about trafficking and gangster warfare and urban crime,

a lot of kidnap.

stories were ripped from the headlines and these are really kind of marketable

films and they were quickly made and churned out quickly and they kind of

screenwriters basically used the articles that were printed as blueprints

flesh out a story and would make these really economically written pieces based

on a column or like a 2000 word piece.

So this film is really interesting that it sort of follows that good cool

tradition, which was very popular in the 30s.

Screenwriters, of course, then would become, I guess, quote -unquote more

sophisticated by the time you get to the very late 30s into the 40s, where

things like that wouldn't be the go -to anymore. But this resurgence of it sort

of starts to prop up again when you think about things like this film.

A lot of things sort of pop up where they want to sort of look back at

periodicals and look at articles.

and also not just news articles

but pieces, so essays.

Films would be inspired by essays or pieces. In the 80s, you actually have

resurgence happening in the early 80s. One that comes to mind just offhand is

something like Perfect, which is a totally different age and species, but

about the body, you know, and about the body doing something, you know, staying

healthy and staying well and wanting to be young forever, etc.

So this film's kind of about, you know, wanting to survive and not be, you know,

mutilated.

That film was based on articles as well about the health craze. So it's really

interesting how there's a sort of resurgence of something that was so

age. It's really cool.

Yeah, getting on that sort of thing. And I feel like Ellen Rudolph was a

fairly politically engaged person at this point.

His project after this...

interestingly, was a documentary called Return Engagement, which was about the

touring debate between LSD proponent Timothy Leary

and former Nixon staffer G.

Gordon Liddy.

And it was this kind of sort of Buckley -Vidal style

touring debate that these guys had. So he's clearly interested in the state

of of america and i think this has a very big nine post 1970s

sort of don't keep an eye on what your government are up to don't trust them

look you know look carefully even if it's not the capital g government

themselves there's government operatives that have their own back deals and

they're going rogue and organizing little things with with uh cashed up

and you know running their little

Yeah, running their little germ warfare plan in country towns, you know, backed

by rich ranchers.

Yeah, and also just jumping on your tailcoat about people involved with this

film who are political, it's interesting and kind of ironic that Peter Coyote is

playing the villain, you know, this government guy, because he as a person

very much...

into environmentalism and activism.

There's a really great documentary. When I was in my early teens, I was obsessed

with, like, 60s counterculture. Like, just crazily obsessed. And there was a

really cool documentary all about the hippie movement and commune living and

activism that came from the anti -war movement and the hippie movement, et

cetera, the flower child.

sort of movement, et cetera. And he pops up as one of the talking heads. He's in

there. Oh, wow. Yeah, and he talks about his involvement with the movement and

anti -Vietnam War protesting, et cetera. But he was a really fascinating figure

in that regard because I always thought of him, you know, as the guy that wants

to find E .T., you know, that was the thing. So it was interesting to see him.

as a real person.

So it's kind of like it's cool that he gets to play this villain because it's

kind of like maybe it's a bit cathartic, who knows? But also just kind of like

to point out how dastardly, you know, something that he's fought against for

of his youth and, you know, probably still does, is.

So it's kind of cool that he paints him as a little bit of a caricature, but

also someone who is quite threatening.

Hmm. Yeah, I think a lot of actors do that. I think a lot of actors play the

other type to highlight those kind of characters, those ugly characters, yeah.

It's like John Cusack nowadays spends a lot of his time sort of bagging

out tech billionaires on social media and you look at his role from the last

years and they're mostly playing evil tech billionaires.

So, yeah, I think that feeds a lot into, you know, why Coyote would play a

character like this. I love seeing Jo Beth Williams kick ass hand to hand as

well. I love this inferred background they have about her being in the army

something that her, it's briefly mentioned, but it's something her and

Yurik's character, have in common, that they're both vets.

Yeah, it kind of links them. And also, I guess, brings them together physically.

I mean, there's that early sequence in the bar where they're both taking on

other. But it's interesting as well, this early 80s thing. We talked a little

bit about TV.

There was a kind of rise in women police officers in television.

You had Cagney and Lacey.

You had all the... Policewoman with Angie Dickinson. Angie Dickinson,

absolutely. You had Chrissy Love.

You're under arrest, sugar.

Yeah, that's right.

Betty Thomas in Hill Street Blues. Yeah. Yeah, so you've got all these tough

women cops which are starting to pop up. So that's kind of interesting as well.

But I think that's cool that their physicality is matched at the bar. Yes,

And then it kind of makes them, I guess, sexual matches as well. So there's a

sort of physicality all the way throughout the film for these two

Now, I worked on the Blu -ray release of Ladies and Gentlemen of the Fabulous

Danes, and I actually pitched to Maren Cantor to talk to her about that, and

was more than happy to. And it was a really wonderful, beautiful interview.

She's such a wonderful, awesome artist and an amazing talent.

But she did not have fun on this set, and I actually wanted her to be involved

with this release, but she actually declined because she just didn't have

time in this film.

So Carolyn has talked to me about it, and you would have heard that, you know,

things such as the studio forcing them to change her

character, but also even after she was cast, she had to test for it, which is a

really horrible thing to have to happen to you. Absolutely.

So, yeah, all that kind of stuff is pretty foul.

So, yeah, and also just on top of that, the studio kind of...

pushing for certain things and as much as Carolyn Pfeiffer was always very

gracious and very happy at the studio Greenlit the film and Greenlit the

just the idea of them coming in and infiltrating and offering not even like

dramaturgical advice it was just like insert this, insert this change this,

change that which is pretty cold but I mean it's probably just very much common

practice in film but yeah I'll let Carolyn Pfeiffer now talk about

Yeah, the issues that poor Maren Cantor had and also what the film sort of

suffered with the studio influence and interruption.

She was perfect casting.

But if you really watch it, you'll see as the film goes on how her character

changes a little bit. That's because the studio was forcing us to impose these

things on her.

It was awful for Alan and me and awful for Maren to put a...

a young actor through that, to have them, you know, a week or two weeks into

shoot and then have them test again, it's just awful.

I mean, I can, in fairness to Begum, who did greenlight the movie, and we're

grateful for that, but I think that it was, he had a, I don't know what he

wanted. I think he wanted something that was more, it was, you know, it was too,

the tone of it was not Hollywood.

I mean, we were, You know, we wanted actors that looked natural. We wanted a

that was like a beat -up old cop who was at the end of nothing to lose and

wanted, you know, instead of this, like, great -looking, you know.

And I thought that Bob did a great job, so we're not picking on him at all.

But that was not the original intention.

It was, you know, so I think...

They wanted a lot more makeup.

They wanted love story.

They wanted, and it really, it was originally a little bit more mysterious

than that, more earthy than that.

And they were trying to turn it into more of like a Hollywood movie. And we

the best we could to find the compromise that we could all live with, you know?

So one thing I want to comment on is the poster art, the campaign for the film.

Doesn't really sell the film, obviously, and it sort of looks like it's kind of

in the war game.

You know what I mean? But before war games.

It looks more like a poster for something like Visiting Hours or

Oh, yeah, that's a great poster.

Yeah, I know, but this is like the shit version.

But again, it's sort of selling the UFO angle, though.

You know, it's this blurry kind of craft with lights shining down on this

computer -like box, and it's like, ooh, it's all very sci -fi.

And again, fainting to the left of what this film really is. And as we see here,

on the credit here, the 1969 congressional ban, the 10 ,000 recorded,

taken from that 1979 FBI report into cattle mutilations.

Wow. There's two eco -horror films that's come to mind that sort of play on

idea of government infiltrating the sort of the environment and

affecting the environment. And one is Piranha from Joe Dante, which is very

smart. savvy satirical film written by John Sayles, who I mentioned earlier, in

regards to the howling, which uses cattle mutilation as a subplot. But also

Rattlers, which is a sort of unsung film from 1976, which has the US government

experimenting and it sort of in turn makes snakes, rattlers,

rattlesnakes, turn more aggressive and also come out in mass.

So the government's always a shady thing in a lot of these sort of eco -terror

films, of course.

Seldom is it a helpful institution.

But the other thing about this film, and I think we sort of touched on it, and

Carolyn most definitely did, was the studio, yeah, sort of not knowing what

do with it. And I think that's something that's sort of very suggestive in the

fact that it was shot one year and delayed in...

release to do with this film you know and then and then you get a poster

like it's a sci -fi film when it's not really a sci -fi film and yeah and

there's you know it's kind of a tv star and and and yeah it's the kind of thing

they really needed to get behind um and didn't seem to kind of know what to do

with it um it's almost like you wonder if there was a regime change over those

over those years

I always don't understand why people get so scared about films that utilize

multiple genres. It's like they can't pigeonhole things. And I think that's a

cool thing. I think this film should proudly, you know, be proud that it is

sort of wonderful magpie's nest of different genres, genre tropes.

But yes, Paul, it's been a delight. And thank you very much to Carolyn Pfeiffer

for her amazing input. And thank you, Paul, for joining me on this commentary

for Endangered Species.

Thank you to Lee. Thank you to Carolyn.

And thank you very much. Hope you enjoyed it.