All language subtitles for Lost.Soul.Doomed.Journey.Richard.Stanley.2014.720p.2ch.subs

[MUSIC]

- Most of the projects
I initially worked on

were very strange movies,

so you couldn't really hang
them on any kind of peg.

But then I discovered
that certain things

in my work scared them.

If I talked about the
supernatural or something

or there was a murder or
something in the story,

this would scare people.

Although they might be
not be relevant to it,

or they might be
misinterpreting it

and I was able to
pick up on that.

- I first heard of Richard
Stanley in the early '90s

when Hardware was coming out.

At the time we were used to
horror directors

having beards and
looking like your dad,

and then here was this sort of
young, hot guy.

He had the long hair
and a very mysterious look

and the wide-brimmed hat

that became associated
with him over the years,

making this brand new film that
was unlike a lot of the films

that had been leading up to it
in the '80s.

- I was very struck by
Richard Stanley's vision.

It was kind of different
from anything else

that had been going on.

His use of color and light
and music

and really creating this unique
dystopian vision for his story.

- I still think it's one of the
most important genre films

of the '90s,
but woven throughout it

was this sort of esoteric
witchiness

which is sort of a trademark
of Richard Stanley's works

and his life in general.

Richard Stanley was
casting this spell on you

when you watched his films.

- I was brought up
by a strong mother

who was involved in witchcraft,
anthropology, and stuff,

stayed on the road
the whole time,

but she was a very good mother
in that she was very unstable

and gave me a kind of
disastrous upbringing

that was largely responsible
for what I am today.

- It was a huge hit.

I mean in genre terms
it was definitely a huge hit,

and it was definitely
something where

this guy was the
next best thing.

You know, this was somebody
you wanted to see

what he was going to do next,

and it was largely because
of the success of Hardware

that Miramax worked
with him on Dust Devil.

- Miramax's view on Richard?

Uh...

Good question.

Um...
I think that they like Richard

in a way that they like what
he was with Hardware.

- After Dust Devil,

Richard gets the opportunity to
direct The Island of Dr. Moreau.

- We just thought that
Richard Stanley

doing Island of Dr. Moreau

was one of the most
exciting projects

we'd heard of in a while.

He was someone who had
worked on the independent side,

but now he was getting
the backing of a studio.

- This is going to be
a huge project,

and this is going to propel
Richard Stanley

into the super stardom that
he deserves as an auteur.

- Okay.
Well, here we have a mound of

rather tatty surviving artworks
from Dr. Moreau

that gives some brief glimpse

into the workhouse
of filthy creation.

A lot of the beast people are
going to be wearing masks

just the same as
human beings in,

I guess, pagan tribes and
faiths wear animal masks,

we wanted the beast people
to be wearing human masks.

And the sloth-people,
they weren't very bright.

I originally wanted them
to be stop-motion

or something like that.

I wanted a couple of
stop-motion creates in there.

I think it happens in a
rather different way

in the Frankenheimer movie.

One of the shots used
would have never gotten in

the finished New Line version,

mutant baby sucks
a mutant nipple, happily.

I'd first come across the book,

in fact,
the same copy I've got here,

which is a first edition
in my father's bookshelf.

When I was very small,
four or five,

I remember being drawn to it,

probably because
it was bright red,

and it's got some
interesting plates in it.

And I'm being warned off
by my parents,

who consistently told me
it was too scary,

which, of course,
drew me to it very strongly,

and I read it
as fast as I could.

It's a book about humanity,
about man and nature,

man and God,

civilization

and essentially what it means
to be human.

It's a vast, complex book

written right at the height
of the British Empire,

and I think spurred
by Darwin's theory on

the Origin of the Species

and in the book
Moreau's been hounded out

of conventional society in
London by anti-vivisectionists

who have been obviously
appalled by what he is doing.

A flayed dog escapes from
his laboratory in London,

which causes a controversy
in the newspapers,

the Moreau horrors.

He's forced to try to find
a place in the world

where he's able to work
in isolation

without conventional society
looking over his shoulder.

To a large extent he
is a metaphor for God.

He is the creator-being.

He created the beast-people.
They're not experiments.

They are things which
had never existed before.

In a curious footnote,

Wells was a close friend at that
point in time of Joseph Conrad.

And about one year later,
Conrad turned in a book called

Heart of Darkness

which caused Wells and
Conrad to fall out bitterly

as Wells' claimed that Conrad
was essentially

ripping off Island of Dr. Moreau

and that the character of Kurtz
in Heart of Darkness

was based on Moreau,

certainly structurally
there's similarities

between the two books.

The narrator spends the entire
story journeying towards

the island in
Island of Dr. Moreau

and eventually getting up
to finally addressing Moreau

and asking what it's all about

in the same what way
that the narrator Marlow

journeys upriver to find Kurtz.

- Certainly with
Heart of Darkness,

Kurtz's character has retreated
from mankind per se

and certainly civilization.

- Conrad defended the
accusations of plagiarism

by claiming that,
in fact, he had based

the character of Kurtz,
not on Dr. Moreau,

but on the celebrated
African traveler

Sir Henry Morton Stanley.

- What's interesting,

as far as Richard's concerned,
that his great-grandfather,

Henry Morton Stanley,

was considered to be one of--

the main basis of
Kurtz's character.

It seems, of course, that
Stanley did kind of give him

this megalomaniac texture,

and it seems like he was
less than gentle

with the locals, shall we say.

- The book was first adapted
to the screen in 1932

by Erle C. Kenton under the
title Island of Lost Souls.

Wells was still alive
at the time

and was bitterly disappointed
by the film adaption.

He felt it was a terrible
bastardization of his work;

and to some extent he's right,

although Island of Lost Souls

is probably the most
effective screen adaptation.

Charles Laughton chooses to play
Moreau as a gloating sadist

who spends much the movie
twatting his mustachios

and reclining chaise lounge.

It's a very memorable portrayal,

although very far from
the humane,

god-like figure
envisioned by Wells.

It also compresses the narrative
in a way which

I think every subsequent
adaptation copied

in that they're always only
interested in the beast-people

overthrowing Moreau,

and that's usually
the end of the movie;

whereas, in the Wells' book the
beast people liberate themselves

just after the halfway mark
in the book,

and things really become
problematic

once the beast people

try to run the island
for themselves.

Wells knew that simply by
giving control of the island

to the beast folk things could
not possibly get any better.

Things would only backslide
into anarchy and chaos.

After Island of Lost Souls,

there were a slew of
illegitimate adaptions,

such as Eddie Romero's
Twilight People

from the Philippines,

"Test Tube Terrors,

Half Man, Half Beast...
All Monster"

and Terror is a Man
with Francis Lederer.

The next official adaptation
happened in 1977

and was directed by
Don Taylor

and featured Burt Lancaster
in the Moreau part,

but Lancaster actually
did a pretty good job.

Unfortunately,
the movie's pretty ham-fisted.

I saw the Don Taylor version
at my local cinema

when I was a kid.

It has the distinction
of probably being

the first movie I ever saw

which angered me so much.
I wanted my money back.

I was a big fan of the original,
and I was deeply disappointed.

Amongst other things,
was confused by the fact

that there was a woman turning
into a panther on the poster

of the movie, which never
happened in the film.

And I guess from
that moment onwards,

the germ of the idea
started to gestate in my mind,

and I was determined
to do it justice,

to try and adapt the story
in a way

that could actually work
for the screen.

Shortly after Dust Devil,
my second film,

I found myself washed up
in London without a bean.

I had never been paid my
second half of my fee.

The films rights
were a complete mess.

To get it back and finish it,

I had to basically borrow
resources and leverage

pretty much everything;

so I was probably
$40,000 in the red.

Even then, I knew on
the back of Dust Devil,

I didn't have the
political clout

to be really able to get
Dr. Moreau made.

I mean, after Dust Devil,
I was finding it hard

just to get gigs.

- He had written a script,

and we had a quick
conversation on the phone,

and he at that point said,

"Can we actually put together
some sort of basic image?

It would be of the
script cover,

to try and drum up
the interest."

And we then thought perhaps
actually extending that further.

We recreated a couple of scenes

from the imagined
finished product.

- I sincerely believe
that if Wells was alive now,

he would write it differently.

There's no way that Wells now
would set the story in 1895.

Plainly, the story would
be set in the present.

It's not a story about the past
but is about the near future.

- The images...the first one
we produced was

actually an image of Dr. Moreau
with a newborn creature,

one of the lambs,

with what actually looked
like a halo around his head.

So the whole point was to almost
sort of play on the whole virgin

and baby Jesus image.

- The dog-men are not entirely
obeying his orders too,

because we can
see behind Moreau's back,

some of the dog-men
are actually

licking the blood off the
surgical instruments,

and way in the back in the
background in the tank,

we see a big, three-eyed,
intelligent Cthuloid octopus.

There were going to be
sea creatures as well.

- From that we decided
actually..we produced

a series of 12 images echoing
the Stations of the Cross

which began with
this basic birth,

birth of the baby Jesus,

and then with the sort of
crucifixion scene the end,

which was actually
Moreau's own death.

- Moreau was originally
conceived

was actually nothing like
Marlon Brando.

I think I had originally talked
to Jurgen Prochnow

about playing the part.

I wanted Moreau to be something,
a little bit of a New Ager.

In some of the earlier pictures,

we see he's still got the
long hair and beard.

I was making him into some
type of a composite of

Timothy Leary and John Lilly

the dolphin
communication expert.

As important as the character
of Dr. Moreau

were the beast-people.

They were going to be civilized,
at least more so

than we've seen in the
previous Moreau versions.

They've decorated themselves.
They've got piercings.

They've got some degree of
beast-person civilization.

There is no cat-lady in book.

The panther woman was added

in the in the
Erle C. Kenton movie

in the process of making
it more Hollywood,

and we, in return,
retained her.

In reality, Aissa, our cat-lady
is drawn from another novel.

We stole it from
Outcast of the Islands,

the Joseph Conrad novel.

We thought since there's this
connection between

Conrad and Wells,

borrowing characters from
another Conrad story

was vaguely in our agreement.

I was determined
on some level

that I would provide
that moment,

that we were going to see
the girl turn into a cat

and be an animal.

She would run on all fours.

She would become furry
and underneath her chilaba

is furry all over
and has a tail.

The dog-people
take the opportunity,

while the master is away,
to chase her up the wall,

drag her down, and kill her.

Being civilized, they then
proceed to not just to eat her

but to cook her and then
serve her to the castaway.

When he realizes what's
happened in his absence,

he immediately shoots a
couple of the dog-men.

The dog-men really love him.

Not only that, they've
got very short memories,

because they're dogs;
so they don't really remember

that they've killed and cooked
the cat-lady to begin with.

They don't really understand
why he's killing them.

We also rationalize that
Montgomery would

undoubtedly be
sleeping with the beast-people

if he's been on the island
for decades.

I know in one version we had
the thought of the pig-lady

biting Montgomery's dick off
during the final party,

which...later in the story,

the beast-people get into
Montgomery's stash.

So suddenly we're dealing with
humanized animals on drugs,

which is a very
appealing thought,

and then one starts wondering
how they would behave

and what they would see.

And these were to prove to be
controversial elements

later in the
development process.

Here we see the muscular
satire character

cranking the handle
to lower the lift cage.

All the way down the shaft,
there's other creatures

living in the different
layers of the complex.

We see them through the
cage of the elevator,

and they're peeking out,

and we notice
that there's babies

and fires burning down there.

Here the bear-man reaches
for the conch shell

with a Lord of the Flies touch

and then picks up the
conch shell and blows it.

Yes, there was going
animal vision in this movie,

just like toad vision
or droid vision.

Of course, we're going to see
point-of-view shots

from the beast people.

I remember making phone calls
until I ran out of change

from a phone booth
in South London,

and I remember it was
close to Christmas,

and it was snowing,
it was close to a bus station,

but somehow I just
on the remains of my

dwindling change,

I managed to basically
get Ed Pressman

of the Edward R. Pressman
Film Corporation

interested in Dr. Moreau.

Ed had produced
a lot of fine movies,

notably Badlands
with Terrence Malick,

Conan the Barbarian
for John Milius,

Das Boot for Wolfgang Peterson,

and Bad Lieutenant
for Abel Ferrara;

so Ed had pretty good taste

and was the right man
to be the producer.

- Island of Dr. Moreau
came out about

by the initiative of
Richard Stanley.

It was a wonderful script,
and he was a good filmmaker.

His agent at the time,
Jenne Casarotto,

represented the estate
of Wells, H.G. Wells.

- Right from the beginning
there was always that problem

that I was working
on something I didn't own.

I needed a big company
to pick it up,

because somebody actually had to
negotiate with the Wells' estate

and try and get hold
of the rights,

which were pretty confused.

Mike DeLuca was at New Line
at the time and liked it,

and we thought of it
as a modest budget sci-fi film

that would be done for
$5 - $8 million.

- Ed immediately wanted
to Americanize the script

which was something
I was quite opposed to.

I felt all of Wells' work
is inherently British,

and one of the problems
with the Wells' material

was that Britain has never
really shown any interest really

in adapting it.

In the end, Ed convinced me
to allow them to do this,

provided that they hired a
screenwriter to work on it

who I thought would
do the work justice.

And so we ended up
with Michael Herr,

the writer of Dispatches,

the classic book about
the Vietnam War,

which is probably one
of the best books

about war ever written;

who also provided the voiceover
to Apocalypse Now

and was a perfect choice
for Moreau

and brought an awful lot to
the Montgomery character,

giving him some of that
hard-boiled,

acid-drenched shtick.

He is the single
greatest screenwriter

I have ever worked with
and a very fine man.

He hates...I can't say "hates."
It's a strong word,

but he probably does
hate Hollywood

and hates the movie industry.

Whether or not he hates the
human race in total

is a harder question.

- As the company started
with virtually nothing

and as we made our
way in the business,

we began to have as part of
our wherewithal obviously

production, acquisition,
and financing

that allowed us to buy
films and to make films.

- Bob Shaye had created
something that was very edgy.

It was all House Party,
Nightmare on Elm Street,

Ninja Turtles.

It was drive-in, grindhouse,
Saturday matinee-type fare.

As artists and executives
and a studio,

they were often maligned
by the big boys,

as being, you know,
niche and crap, you know,

Pink Flamingos and Freddy.

I mean, these movies make money,
but they don't gain respect.

- Mike DeLuca, who was president
of our production company,

he was charged with the idea

of going out and
putting together projects,

and then presenting
them to myself

to decide whether we wanted
to go ahead with it or not.

- In the mid-90s,

Mike started to bring
in directors

who were unknown at the time,

like David Fincher,
Paul Thomas Anderson,

you know, Mike really
gave these guys their start.

I think New Line started to
go through an identity crisis,

because, you know,
with all due respect,

when you're used to having
Robert Englund in the commissary

metaphorically and now you've
got Robert De Niro

and Dustin Hoffman
with Wag the Dog,

there was this sort of euphoria

that now the minors are
playing with the majors.

So suddenly, they're remaking
The Island of Dr. Moreau,

but they want to turn it
into an art film.

- I wasn't particularly
enthusiastic

about the project,
frankly.

Mike DeLuca had in it,

was interested in it and
sort of liked classic horror.

It all left me pretty cold.

- Pressman had me going and
meet the New Line people

and wanted to get me on
the picture as the producer.

- So we had, I think,

basically just one meeting
in my office.

- I did meet Richard Stanley
at that point in time.

I didn't really know
what to make of him,

and he showed up in a hat
and white linen suit,

said that's what he's going
to wear for the whole picture,

never take it off.

- I had no doubt going into it
that Richard would be fine.

I thought he was very smart.

He's an odd character,

but I've worked with many
odd characters as directors.

- I thought that Stanley was
a somewhat unusual guy.

He almost got away with
not doing anything goofy,

and then he did do
one thing goofy.

When my assistant came in and
offered everybody refreshments,

he said, "Yes, I would
like a cup of coffee."

"How do you take it?"

And he said either
three or four sugars,

and when I heard that, I said,

"There's something
going on here

that I don't think
I completely understand,

but nobody takes four sugars
in a cup of copy

and walks out
as a solid citizen.

- He was like me,
an absolute stranger to L.A.,

nothing in common
with anyone here.

I mean, I think that's really
why we became friends,

just instantly we had
a good rapport.

I think when you're an artist

and you have worked for years
with no budget,

and when finally
you get to do it the way

you've always known you can,

you know to the detail
what you're going to do

and how you're going to do it.

- And the really first thing
came down to who

was going to be Dr. Moreau,

and Ed figured a way of
getting to Marlon Brando.

- Someone had the idea of Brando
playing the role of Dr. Moreau,

which changed the whole
character of the movie

and increased the budget
enormously.

- We had just made
a film with him

where he was already
totally impossible.

So I was pretty incensed
with DeLuca for choosing

Marlon Brando in another film.

There was no particular
reason to have him,

and he was an incredible
pain in the neck.

- The very next thing
I heard was that,

yes, Brando was prepared
to be Dr. Moreau,

the money was in escrow,
and that the film was green lit.

It was going to be directed
by Roman Polanksi,

which came completely
out of the left field.

I hadn't seen that coming.

I responded by firing all guns

and demanding
that I have the right

to at least one meeting
with Marlon Brando,

that I had written
the damn script.

Apparently, he was
very unhappy about this.

I was told that by Mike DeLuca,

the chappy from New Line
just before the meeting

that Brando was going to really
rake me over the coals.

And I remember feeling a bit
confused as to why --

What Brando and everyone
had it in with me for.

Certainly, New Line
couldn't wait to get rid of me.

Knowing that the odds
were stacked against me,

I resorted to witchcraft.

At that point in time,

I was friendly with this
warlock chappy in England,

Dr. James Featherstone,
commonly known as "Skip."

So Skip had been shown
to demonstrate his ability

to fix things,

to do invisible mending before.

So I said, "My God, Skip,
you've got to help me.

You've got to save my movie."

At the exact same time,
I went into the meeting

on the other side of the world,
Skip convened his coven,

cut his arm, drew a sigil
and did some sort of routine

to fix it and make it all,
all right.

Simultaneously,
I was driven with the big,

old limo that was part
of the contract.

Brando's house was at
the top of Mulholland,

on the left; Jack Nicholson's
house is on the right.

Brando's house was surrounded by
a very dense bamboo enclosure,

which screened the house
from the road.

The bamboos were
full of CCTV cameras,

and eventually,
the gates slid open,

and I was admitted
into the compound.

He had these trained
Dobermans padding around

and which were trained to attack

anything he pointed his
laser pencil at,

because I have fond memories of
Brando drunk pointing at things

with his laser pencil and
getting the attack dogs [ch-ch]

to attack the little red dot.

New Line sent a lady named
Ruth Vitale with me.

I stayed pretty quiet during
the first part of the meeting.

Ruth was sweating and
found it very stuffy in there,

and Brando turned on
the air-conditioning.

She remarked at one point that
"If you turn that up any higher,

I'll fall asleep,"
and he kept doing it,

and after about 15 minutes
or so Ruth was fast asleep,

at which point we
began the conversation.

So I'd done enough research
to be able to engage him on,

I guess, environmental
and scientific grounds.

And then there's the
whole weird

Sir Henry Morton Stanley
connection

which feeds back into
the character of Kurtz

to begin with.

He was still pretty
interested in Kurtz.

So we were able to slide
backwards into the gestations

of the character, the initial
argument between

Conrad and Wells,

and he was extremely nice
to me during the meeting.

I was never really sure why
he took a shine to me

the way he did.

It was very confusing for
New Line because

it was not the outcome
they'd been expecting,

and it was confusing
for Ruth Vitale

because she had
slept through it.

There's a very strong
possibility

that it was may have
been voodoo

or some kind
of magical interference

on Skip's behalf,

but the next thing I knew
Roman Polanski was out,

and Brando was only going to
do the movie if I was onboard.

Brando's a big name,
but he's not big box office.

So then it was necessary for
us to bring a box office draw.

So we immediately
went after Bruce Willis

for the role of the castaway.

Bruce was looking for
something different to do

at that point in time.

It was immediately
pre-Sixth Sense

and really liked the script,

and like everyone else,
wanted to work with Brando.

One of the serendipity things
is I ran into James Woods

at a restaurant,

got on well with James Woods

and gave him the script.

Next thing you know, James Woods
was in for Montgomery.

We had pretty much
the dream cast,

which was Marlon Brando,
Bruce Willis, and James Woods.

We then set out to
find the island.

After a lot of globetrotting,

I ended up in far-north
Queensland,

and I chose Cape Tribulation,

because there's a huge
triangular mountain/volcano

thing in the middle of it all,

which I figured I could use
to anchor together

the geography of the island.

I found a way of selecting
the different locations

so the volcano mountain

was always vaguely
in the background

and matched into another atoll

so that we could create
the illusion

that it was all one place.

Simultaneously, a colossal

makeup effects effort
was going on

where we had the attention
of all the kids

at the Stan Winston studios.

- I was one of the few,

if not the only person
in the studio,

who knew who Richard was.

You know,
I had seen Hardware.

I had seen Dust Devil,
and, you know,

I was interested in his quirky
little movies he was making,

and he came in with these
very psychedelic drawings of,

you know, animal people running
around with machine guns

and hospital scrubs
and everything

and very colorful and very,
like, out there,

and we had a team of folks

that set out to design
the characters.

Crash McCreery does these
amazing detailed pencils,

and he did the Sayer of the Law.

He did Lo-Mai.

I did designs for Buffalo Man
and the pig-ladies.

Everybody chipped in and
just bashed ideas around

until we settled on things.

- He was, you know,
right off the bat,

he was showing me
the storyboards

and the character designs
from Stan Winston,

and he was so,
so excited and so passionate

and it had been so many years
in the making at that point.

- We talked about the character,
and he said,

"You know, it's actually,
I want to...you know,

the story is that he is
Brando's favorite.

He is the master dog.

Basically, he's the only
one that understands art.

He knows Shakespeare.

He knows how to recite poems,"

and I got really excited,

because I thought
"God, you know,

this is like actually the
best part in the movie."

- In the meantime,

New Line tried in different
ways to contain the material.

I remember being called into
an emergency meeting

of which they were really
going to draw the line

and try to get me to
humanize the cat-lady.

When Prendick
initially seduces her,

she's got six nipples

and her pubes kind of grow
all over her thighs

and up her chest and stuff,

and there's this
celebrated moment

where he's working his way down
from one nipple to the next

and realizes along the way
that she's not human,

which really upset them,
really upset Ruth Vitale.

She said that it would upset
menopausal women

all over America.

We went through a couple
of successive drafts

with Walon Green,
writer of The Wild Bunch,

at which point I could
justifiably say that,

even leaving myself
out of the equation,

the finished product was
from the combined talents

who brought the world
The Wild Bunch,

Apocalypse Now,
and The Time Machine.

It was a script we were
extremely confident in,

that we thought would be some
sort of milestone in the genre.

- We'd shot some
background footage

that was going to work
on monitors,

and we spent a day in a hospital
doing bits and pieces.

- There was a scene
with Barbara Steele,

which was filmed in
Los Angeles.

Barbara Steele
and an orangutan.

- Just a very low-key day
with a small crew,

and I could just tell by
the way that he was shooting,

what he was shooting,
how he was relating to the crew

that...once he had actors
and a big crew,

it might have some problems,

and we all sort of said "uh-oh"
to each other silently,

because we were all
supportive of him

and wanted him to do well.

- I think Richard was in
a rather swish initially,

but when it was suggested
that I go over to Los Angeles

and work with him in hotel,

I think they then decided
they'd actually have to move

him to a slightly cheaper hotel.

- So they said, "You know,
as a savings, Richard,

you know, we'd like to put you
in the Oakwood Apartments.

You know, it's a lot cheaper,
and you'll be able to cook,

and do you mind?"
And he said, "That's fine."

- A small but telling problem
was that I don't actually drive.

I'd been living in London
for 20 years

and was suddenly
plumped down in the city

were there was no such thing
as public transport.

This issue of trying
to get from A to B

continued throughout
the production.

Meetings would happen
without me,

no one telling me
they were going on

and point in fact I became
increasingly paranoid.

Thinking that I was being

deliberately kept out
of the meetings.

- About 2:00 in the morning
of that same day,

I got a call from Richard
saying it's an emergency.

"I have to move.

I can't stay in that place
one minute longer,"

And I said, "Where are you?"
He said, "I'm in Hollywood.

I've walked from Burbank
to Hollywood,

and I don't know where to go
and what to do."

And I said,
"Where are you in Hollywood?"

He says, "I don't know."

So I think that is when
I said to myself "uh-oh".

- A number of things went wrong
in the preproduction period.

Really,
the beginning of the end,

the death null was um...

When Bruce divorced Demi,

and decided for
various complicated,

personal, legal reasons

that he could not leave America
for the next six months.

I then made
another strategic error.

I met Val Kilmer.

- Val Kilmer
was a big star then.

So the film, all of a sudden,
became a $35 million movie,

which at that time was like
$70 million today.

So it was a big movie which
was far greater in its demands

and its ambition.

- All of which worked okay
until I was urgently summoned

from the island to a meeting
with Val in Tokyo,

where Val was for the
Batman Forever premier.

Val was then at the
height of his powers,

surrounded by adoring
Japanese fans

and behaving, I thought,

very arrogantly indeed
towards them.

And Val had decided that his
life was too busy to devote

as long we needed him
for to do Dr. Moreau.

Val demanded 40 percent
fewer shooting days.

I was told
in no uncertain terms

that after the
Bruce Willis debacle

that if Val left the ship,

New Line would probably
close the project down,

and we'd go back
and turn around.

At this stage I was already
building the big house

on the island and was
determined to go ahead.

I knew that we had to
somehow solve this.

I had a very bad dream that
night in the hotel in Tokyo.

I remembered one of those
nights waking up

and feeling that there
was something in the room

sitting on my chest

and that sense of being
unable to scream or breath

and something banging
on the door --

bam, bam, bam, bam, bam --

The door seemed to be
trembling and shivering,

and yet at the same time,
I was really being crushed

or suffocated, in the bed.

It was a very unpleasant
nightmare,

what they call the old hag
or nocturnal sleep paralysis.

- Richard came back,
and he seemed a bit flustered,

but he wouldn't tell me
what he was flustered about.

So I think he'd been getting
a bit of a hard time from Val.

- Val calls up Mike DeLuca
and says,

"I want to talk to you,"

and he sets a breakfast for
DeLuca at the Bel Air Hotel.

Val is sitting there.
Val says,

"I'm very busy and
I don't have a lot of time;

so don't talk to me.
Just listen."

And he goes on to say,
"I know I took this role,

but I don't like
the role anymore."

- I then came up with
the idea of talking Val

into switching roles with the
James Woods' character,

to no longer being
the lead man,

but playing the part of the
Moreau's apprentice

or his sidekick instead,

which automatically gave him
40 percent fewer shooting days.

It meant that we had to say
goodbye to James Woods,

which was very unfortunate.

We then needed a
new leading man,

and we ended up with an
individual named Rob Morrow

who was then hot from
Quiz Show

and from a television show
called Northern Exposure.

- I was planning on taking
the summer off,

and I kind of got a
sudden call

from my agent at the time,
Arnold Rifkin,

and there were this there movie
they were doing --

I was familiar with the
H.G. Wells story,

you know, and so as soon as
they said it, I was intrigued.

You know, next thing I know,
I was flying down to Cairns

to shoot the movie.

- I was doing the budget
with some production people

from New Line,

and when we got to the
director section of it,

as a half-joke I said,

"Well, we better put in
a contingency

of a million and a half
for another director,

because I don't think
this is going to work out."

- I guess I thought that I
could always run to Brando

for backup
if I got into trouble.

- What I suggested and
what they agreed with

is we go down to Australia
way far in advance

and just basically live there

and let him settle in and
get used to the place

and wander around and
not have a lot of pressure.

- There was no television or
radio or phones or anything.

There was just
absolute pristine beauty.

- I thought Richard's script
was fantastic.

And here was this guy
with long, black hair,

a white Panama hat,
a white linen suit,

and I believe sand shoes,
carrying a carpet bag,

and that was all his luggage.

This is a guy who's coming
to direct our film

for months and months
and months.

We knew as soon
as we met the guy,

hello, we've got something
different coming on here.

- I know that when I was
originally asked

to go over to Cairns,

part of the whole idea,
I think,

it was felt that Richard
was feeling quite isolated

and that within
the storyboard process,

he'd actually have somebody
he knew quite well

who he could work with

and sort of act
or sort of solve

the stresses
he may have been under.

- We then started going after
the beast-people.

- Hands down, the worst audition
that I had ever done,

had ever been involved in,

had to walk around making
stupid animal noises --

pigs, all that kind of stuff,

um, I said these stupid lines.

There was just no kind of
process as an actor

that you can get your
teeth into.

I rang my agent straightaway
afterwards and said,

"Don't ever sent me for
anything like that again.

That was shit.

This is not acting,
blah, blah, blah, blah."

Then I got a phone call a couple
of...about two weeks later

from the actual makeup,
Stan Winston's makeup crew,

saying, "We need you in
tomorrow for a plaster cast

and da-da, da, da-da."

And I got the part.

- Everyone in the cast was
a peculiar shape or size.

You know, there were
very tall people

playing animals that were tall.

There were short people
playing animals that were short.

There was fat people,
thin people.

The prosthetics then enhanced
their particular physicality's.

The pig-women had their
real breasts out

and then a sows
three other pairs of breasts

prosthetically underneath
their own,

and there was some very
bizarre looking creature around.

- We had the shortest
man on earth,

Nelson de la Rosa,

who we came across in
the daytime TV show

in Santo Domingo,
Dancing in the Mahow Mahow.

- A friend of ours was watching
some Spanish talent show

and saw him,

and he had this little act
that he would do.

He'd go on stage and dance.

We saw him,
and we were like, wow,

he would be great to
do monster makeup on.

So called up his agent,
and me and a friend of mine

got to go to the
Dominican Republic

to life cast him,
to body cast him.

Come to find out like he was
a huge celebrity over there,

like Michael Jackson celebrity.

And, yeah, we just spent
the day in our hotel room

body casting him
and head casting him,

and he was so excited
to do this movie,

but I think he was expecting
to be like a main monster.

- Richard was focusing
on the creatures.

He was a great student
of anthropology.

- We had a dehumanizing process
that we were working on,

something that we came up with,
with a guy called Peter Elliott

who was the animal behaviorist
of Gorillas in the Mist

and various other
gorilla movies.

And we started a training
program to train our extras

and our beast-people to
act like proper animals.

This went on for actually
months before

the movie was due to shoot.

- I'd start by getting them
to look at footage

and rehearsing them
as the real animals,

on all fours,

like pigs being real pigs

and the fact that
they're rooting

and the sounds they make

and getting to know
as much as possible

about the real animal,

and we'd have stuff like...

The most immediately
visual one, I guess,

is the guy playing the hyena.

If you look at their
backbone and everything,

they've got that sort of
primeval thing

which gave him that sort of
lovely hunchback,

which gave him that shape,

and it gave him a nice arc
to the way he used his head.

I think they were initially
a little apprehensive

but once we started rehearsals,

they threw themselves into it,
completely.

- Also, we were working with the
local aboriginal community

and with the
Trobriand islanders.

I wanted to make certain the
locals didn't come to hate us.

So I wanted to make certain
that we gave a lot of work

to the local community and
appointed the Buffalo Man,

it was a guy called
David Hudson,

as the main go-between with
the aboriginal community.

- He was very interested
in who I was

and aboriginal language,
and the didgeridoo,

and just culture in general.

You've got to understand
where this bloke's coming from.

He comes from London.

He's in now rain forest country.

He's on the Great Barrier Reef,

but we all got on very well
Richard and I,

he was very,
very easy to work with.

His direction was precise.

- He was definitely very
passionate about the picture.

- He showed me all the props,
I mean, "Look at this.

You know, this is my movie.
Isn't it cool?"

When people say he's crazy,

I actually experienced
Richard as really a nice,

warmhearted guy,

like a kid that was so happy
that his dream came true.

He was like a kid
in a candy store.

- He was great.

He was affable, and he
was clearly enthusiastic.

He was young.
He was green.

- He was so happy,
you know,

just was grinning ear
to ear and just like

"Oh, I can't wait
to get started."

It was really...that was
the best part

of that film, definitely.

- I could see that he liked
what I was doing

during the rehearsal
and um, he...to me,

actually, it seemed that he
knew exactly what he wanted,

like, what kind of look
he wanted for the movie.

- He rented a house out in
the suburbs of Cairns

in north Queensland,

a fabulous house,
like a tree house.

It was all wood with
branches sprouting out

and walkways going here
and a fantastic place,

but he would hardly
ever come out of it.

- He wouldn't really interact
with us in the normal way

he would do in pre-production.

He would come on surveys
and talk to people,

but as a leader
and as a director,

he really didn't get involved.

He stayed in his house.

- We'd have to drag him
to look at locations

and even meetings.

He wouldn't come to meetings,

and Tim Zinneman,
the producer,

used to send me around
to try and drag him back,

because I had the closest
rapport with him, I guess.

We were friends.

I really liked the guy a lot,
but I kept saying to him,

"Hey, Richard, you've got
to go to meetings

if you're going to make
this movie," and he --

"Well, can't they come
around here?"

and I'd say, "No, it
doesn't work that way.

You've got to come to
the studio and talk."

- He would take a scene

and then he would have
the sketch artist

do the drawings
for the scene

and have them Xerox'd,

and then he'd give them
to the crew

as a way of communicating,

as opposed to having
production meetings.

- I think he did have visions,

whether they were clear,
I'm not so sure.

He would probably say he did,

perhaps I misinterpreted
some of what he was saying,

but I never thought
they were exactly clear.

- What I was lead to believe
was that they were pretty much

behind him, you know,

and he knew that they were
nervous about his youth

and the fact that this was
such a big film.

- I think we managed
to live the dream

for a surprising amount of time.

- None of us had any idea
what ended up --

what was coming.

- I guess the beginning
of the end

was Marlon's daughter,
Cheyenne, committed suicide.

Brando was then on
a project in Ireland

called Divine Rapture,

which he was to come directly
from that set to Dr. Moreau.

Divine Rapture closed down,

never to resume shooting,
was never finished.

Brando was understandably
extremely upset,

because his entire family was
self-destructing around him.

Not knowing whether he
would make it for Day 1,

in fact, knowing he
wouldn't make it for Day 1

and whether he'd ever be able
to show up as Moreau,

obviously,
it threw the entire future

of the project into doubt.

We figured the only thing
we could do

was to maybe shoot
the scenes in the water

and to start with
the boat scenes

and the stuff that happens
before they get to the island

in the hope that by
the time we island

and got to the lab scenes,

well, then a Dr. Moreau
would be found.

- Up until the time I left,
everything was still in place,

but Richard had already said

that he felt then
that the project

was going to be
taken away from him.

- I no longer had any
real power.

I didn't have any money
in the project

and if Brando wasn't
going to show up,

I couldn't bring Brando
to the project.

- The closer we got
to production,

the more isolated
he made himself

and the more unavailable
he made himself.

- It was clear quickly
that he might have been

in over his head.

You know,
not because of anything,

except a lot of forces that
were not aligned for him.

- Things began to darken
around the island.

Things started to go wrong.

My PA got bit by
a poisonous spider

that was living in a web
underneath a lamp shade.

She reached in to switch
the lamp shade on,

and it bit her hand,
which caused her flesh to melt.

It was incurable.

Back in London, Skip,
the soothy warlock

who had first fixed
the whole thing for me

during the Brando meeting,

he was a pretty
brilliant biochemist.

Skip believed that the clay wall
in his laboratory

had been too thin,

that he had accidentally
become irradiated

during his experiments,

but what happened was that his
bones started to crumble.

One morning his hip dislocated,

and his leg literally popped
out of the socket.

In hospital when they operated,

he then caught
necrotizing fasciitis,

this flesh-eating parasite.

During that time every single
one of Skip's fixes came undone.

Over in Ireland,
when I phoned my mother

to tell her what was going on,

her house had been
just been struck by lightning,

and three fire balls had
rolled through the lounge.

One jumped in the telephone,
one jumped in the Hi-Fi system,

and she says the other
one went out the cat door.

Shortly before, her next-door
neighbors claimed they saw

a hyena run across the road.

Again, a hyena in Ireland
doesn't make any kind of sense.

I noticed for the first time
that the accommodation

where we were staying
had hyena print wallpaper.

That the wallpaper
was kind of looking at me

with a hungry
kind of look in its eye.

The relationship with Val
also became tense.

This started with different
attempts to read the script.

- We all met at Richard's house,

and we're trying it
do this first scene.

So I start, you know,
being all feared

and this like Tempest thing,

and Val is just there
sitting there,

smoking a cigarette,

"Wait, is this it?
No. Wait, wait.

We can always cut it down,
but he's still talking.

Okay, okay.

Is this it?
Is this it?

He's saying all that?

He's saying all -- and this
the first scene in the movie,

and he's saying all that?

Okay. Okay."

So I already know
that something like,

he didn't like it.

He did not like that the movie
would start with me

doing The Tempest,
and he's like "Richard, look.

I don't understand why
this character M'Ling

has to be in the first
scenes anyhow.

I don't get it."

And Richard was like
"Well, he's your assistant."

"But look at his --
look at the makeup.

I mean,
he looks like a monster.

I don't buy it,
and you know what,

I don't need an assistant."

And Richard stood his
ground and he said like,

"No, it's in the script."

- By the time Kilmer
changed parts

and took on this other part
of the drug-fucked assistant

to Marlon Brando's Dr. Moreau,

he was playing up
a bit on the set.

He was just kind of a bit
rude and abrasive.

He...that was his
character, though,

so ergo maybe that was the way
he prepared to be an asshole,

to, you know
act like one off camera.

- So we started having strange,
petty disagreements.

- We were shooting
on a pier dock,

and it was one of these
scenes that had

endless been sketched
and re-sketched.

- Richard says
"Okay. So let's do this,"

and Kilmer said,
"Okay. One second.

One second.

I would like to know how you're
going to cut this together."

And Richard said,
"Well, you know,

the Prendick's character,
he's in the ship,

and he's going to
get hit on the head.

We don't know who hit him,
and we just cut to black.

Camera goes back,
and you look at him,

and you're like "What
are you doing on my ship?"

or something like that,
you know.

And then Val,
always with a cigarette,

always really super cool.

I'm not even being sarcastic.

He was always really cool,
you know, just

"Yeah.

That's not going to work, man."

So Richard, you know,
"It's like a classic thing.

Someone gets hit,
and we cut to black,

and then there's
going to be a time jump."

"Nah, that's not
going to cut together."

- Richard went to give him
some direction

and Val said,

"Richard, directors stand
behind the cameras,

actors are in front
of the camera,

now go stand
behind the camera."

- And I was sitting,
listening to this,

and I could I'm like,
"Oh my god."

I really felt for Richard
because I thought this is --

this is not really --

I mean, this is not about
the shoot anymore.

This is a power game.

- I think at that point Richard
just completely lost it

and forgot all about
the sketches

and really couldn't --

He was having a hard time
getting through the day.

- I think it was like,
late in the movie,

the scene we were shooting.

I was like, all these mutants
were coming around,

and I was having to shoot them
and fight my way out.

And I just remember
being on the beach,

and I'm coming through.

And I think I remember, no one
was really telling me anything.

They would just kind of
be like "Okay. Go out.

Work your way up there,"
and, you know,

then I just would find myself
just kind of

making up stuff to do.

- He probably would have
needed a good first AD

that does all these
things for him

so that he can have his vision

so that he doesn't have to get
into these fights, you know.

But then nobody helped him.

- That as my instinct always
to try to find the constituency

that would support him,

and ultimately,
I found that there was no one.

- Reports started coming
back from set,

which was near Brisbane
or someplace like that,

that Val Kilmer was sitting down

or somebody was sitting down
and wouldn't get up.

- The buzz is just,
you know,

you walk through the halls
and "Did you hear about" --

"Oh my god, did you hear that
Richard Stanley climbed

into a tree today and
wouldn't come down?"

- What? This was...wait.
Back the gravy train up.

When did he supposedly climb
this tree and not come down?

At the end of the shooting day,

he climbed a tree
and wouldn't come down,

after shooting a long shoot day

and needing to get up at 5:00
a.m. and shoot the next day?

No, I'm going to stay in a tree.
That's insane.

- I think basically
they all said,

"Look, he's the star,
basically.

He's what we what -- we hope
that we're going to make back

our money because Kilmer is in

it and now that's part
of the budget, basically.

And it doesn't matter
who directs it.

It's not about the vision.

It's about the name
and the stars."

- I remember looking at the,
overseeing the boat the day

before the shoot
was meant to happen,

and Murray Boyd,
the Australian location manager,

reassured me about the weather,
saying, "Don't worry, mate.

It's going to be flat
as a millpond."

Anyway, of course, on cue,
we were hit by a hurricane.

- It started to rain.

They called a wrap
and let's get off the beach

and move out of here,

and I noticed that the creek
was starting to rise

and that the rain got heavier
and heavier and heavier.

And I thought, "It couldn't rise
that much, could it?"

Well, it did,

and four hours later

the set was completely
up to Pacific Ocean.

We were floundering around
on the sea with Richard,

not really knowing
what was going on

or maybe was knowing
what was going on

but not able to convey his
directing to the right people.

- It became increasingly obvious

that we couldn't really
do anything;

that the only weather-cover sets
that we had that were completed

were Moreau's laboratory

and the interiors of
Moreau's house,

but we didn't have Moreau.

We couldn't retreat into
the weather-cover set.

- Rob Morrow was in the
captain's cabin of the ship,

talking by a radio phone
to his agent in L.A.

screaming to "Get me off
this laming picture."

- In those four days,

I started to sending SOS's
to my lawyer saying

"This is looking weird.

I mean, there's bad stuff
going on here.

There's bad vibes
between people."

- He was calling me
from Brisbane,

and he said, "We
don't know each other,

and I'm very happy to
be working with you,

et cetera, et cetera," just
kind of a little introduction,

and then all of a sudden
he almost broke down.

He said,
"This is totally insane.

I cannot, cannot continue.

You --
I don't know what to do.

I want to get to my family
in the United States.

I can't stand this.
It's complete insanity.

Would you please, please,
please let me out of this?"

- I think there was a part
of Mike DeLuca

that was amused by this.

I think there was a part of
several people's attitude

"Let's just see how far
this can go."

- Richard was really bad
on these days.

He was being hammered
by the DP,

and everyone was down on him,
and he was extremely nervous.

He was yelling at me.

- The day was just going by
and nothing's really happening

and finally I see Richard
walking around

and I'm like "Hey, Richard,
what's going on?"

And he's frantically
smoking his cigarette, right,

and he's like "You know,
I must be seen every day

to be attempting to
film something,"

and that was what he said,
and he walked away.

And I was like
"What's happening here?"

You know.

- The order finally come back
from New Line

down to...down to us to wait.

Basically, the production
was put on hold,

which was the prelude
to the end.

- I happened to be at a
restaurant where Val was

at another table.

And he sort of
summoned me over

and started saying how
this wasn't working for him

and, you know, something
serious had to happen.

And I must say I did agree
because it wasn't working,

and so I then called
Mike DeLuca at New Line

and woke him up at 4:00
in the morning or something

and told him my sad story.

And he was kind of
screaming at me,

and he said, "Well, what
do you want me to do?"

And I said,
"You better look at the footage

and draw your own conclusions,

but my view is you need
to make a change."

- I had to let Richard go.

That was the only time
in my career

that I ever had the
responsibility

of changing a director,

and it was very difficult.

- It wasn't handled well at all.

Sort of the call went
to his agent

and was done that way,
sort of.

Not the manly way,
you might say.

- They had to do it,
I suppose.

I kind of felt like
I was on his side,

and I could feel that they had
as well and thought

"I'd better be careful, or
they'll be firing me as well."

- Fairuza,
realizing what happened,

leapt up and gave an
amazing speech to Tim,

the line producer,

which explained to him
exactly why

it would be a disaster
beyond belief

if they went down that route.

- I remember thinking

"No. This isn't real.

There's some misunderstanding.

They're going to work it out."

"Don't panic, Richard."

- In the course of it all,

taking it a bit too far,

she threatened to cut her own
heart out with a sushi knife

if New Line closed
the project down.

- And I said,
"Well, I'm walking.

I'm not staying.

There's no reason
for me to be here."

- She ran out of
the sushi restaurant

and jumped in the limo
parked outside

and told the driver
to take her to Sydney.

She had insufficient grasp
of the geography of Australia,

I think, to know that Sydney
was on the opposite side

of the continent.

- I may have.
I may have.

I don't...I don't remember
how I got there.

- And the driver then drove her
clear across the country.

And he was a guy named Lewis

who had previously been
on the art department,

who had been fired
after some kind of punch up

in the art department

and had gotten back onto
the project as a driver.

- I was out of a job by the time
I had my second job.

I had three jobs,

the second was the
project running.

I got sacked from that because
while it was all in limbo,

Fairuza had contacted me
and said,

you know,
"What are you doing?

Do you want to come to Sidney?"

I'm like
"Sure. Let's go."

And when I got back
the production didn't know;

so I had committed
some film faux pa.

- I just remember feeling
absolutely

just bewildered and terrible.

I felt terrible for him,
and I did.

I felt like this was
the greatest injustice,

and we should call
the Hollywood Reporter,

and everyone should know
that this is what they're doing,

and, you know,
because he was my friend.

- I went and saw him
at his house,

and he was in the
middle of the room,

just sitting there,
paper spread out everywhere,

and it was a mess.

- He was very paranoid.

He was very freaked out.

I don't think he was sleeping,
I mean, beyond upset.

- He had become quite
immersed in the whole project,

to the point where he was
living and breathing Moreau

and then literally
just have that murdered.

I think he went
a little bit mad.

- Who wouldn't have
a complete mental breakdown

at that point
if that happened to you?

You know what I mean?

Because he was
really, really manic.

- I went back to my headquarters
and started shredding documents.

I was a little vindictive.

I'd also wanted to make it
particularly hard them

to make that film.

- In my mind, I was going
to leave with him

and that lawyers
were going to be hired

and that all the actors
would walk,

and we would shut
the production down,

because everyone
would be loyal to him.

- New Line eventually offered
to pay me my full fee

just to shut up
and go away.

In return for which
I had to agree

if the project was revived,
not to come within,

I think, 40 kilometers
of the location.

- We waited for ages for Richard
to come out of his bungalow.

I had been told from
the production office

just to make sure that
he gets on this plane.

Yeah, I remember that,
dropping him at the airport

like I thought I'd been told
was to make sure

he gets on the plane;
so he was there, on time.

But the next morning
I got a phone call saying

"Where the hell is
Richard Stanley?"

- I think he had a ticket home
from them,

and he didn't use it,

and they knew nobody
was on the plane.

He was supposed to be
on the plane out of there,

and he wasn't.

- Suddenly,
he was this missing person.

So they're just assuming...we
totally fucked this person over

so that must mean there must
be some revenge motive

to do something.

- I think he made a few threats
on his way out.

- I think he had, yeah.

- I had been told that some
of his aboriginal friends

had placed rocks around the
location to wish us bad luck.

- A casual remark
by Grace Walker

during one of the reckies

about how if New Line
tries to throw us out of here,

we could always blow
the whole place up,

had found its way back
to New Line

who were actually frightened
that we might try and blow up

the set or sabotage the
production in some way.

- And we heard that
Richard Stanley

had not worked out.

So, for most of us here,
what does that mean for us?

Are we going to
get a new director?

What does that mean?

- Production shut down
for a couple of weeks.

They didn't send us home.

We just sat around and repaired
things or painted more pieces

or whatever and waited for
production to resume.

- We had millions
of dollars invested,

and it wasn't like we
were a really big company.

So we had to continue with it.

And that's generally
my spirit anyhow.

No matter how hard
things are, finish it up,

and then see what happens.

- They had to have the same cast
because of the makeup effects.

They did life cast everyone.

They couldn't actually
recast the leads;

so they had to try to hold the
original actors to contract.

- My representation said,
"You'll never work again.

Not only will they sue you

and garnish your wages
for the next 20 years,

but they will ensure
that you don't ever work again

in this industry,
and they'll tarnish your name.

They'll destroy your
reputation, you know,

because you're not
allowed to just walk

on a multi-million dollar
picture."

You know, it wasn't just
what happened to Richard.

That was the beginning
of the nightmare.

- We met John Frankenheimer

at just a general
meeting kind of thing.

He was an
incredibly talented guy,

but he also had a few films
that were not successful.

He was sort of in
the discard pile

and was looking for again.

- All the other directors
turned it down.

They went to Philip Hoffman.
He turned it down.

They asked some other people.

They're like, "How much time
do we have to prepare this?

One week?

And we're working
with Kilmer and Brando?

We have one week
for this script,

and have no vision?"
It's like, "No."

- I worked with John for

basically the last
decade of his life,

and he was --

I don't know. He was an old
school guy who was...

He was a good filmmaker,
a very good director.

While we were together,
everything he did,

he got an award for,
except for Moreau.

- He had a reputation for being
an enormously talented

wrangler of difficult actors

and had worked with some of the
most difficult actors around.

I mean, his background was
he knew how to make a movie.

That's all he cared about.

- A movie about monsters
wasn't exactly John's...

John would probably
not have picked that one out

if they said,
"Here. ten movies,

which one do you
want to direct?"

This one would not
have been on the list.

- Later on,
actually, I asked him

why he actually did the movie,

because we all knew that
he didn't like the script.

And so he told me that when
they offered him the movie,

he said to his wife,
"So what can we do?"

and his wife said, "Well, you
just ask them for something that

either they would not agree to
or we're really happy people."

So he asked, as far as I know,

he asked for a three-picture
deal and a lot of money.

- We're going to fly to
Australia and do this movie.

Well, get out a map.
Where is this?

And I got a rainfall map,
and I'm thinking rain?

I'm an AD.
I've got to shoot,

and I'm looking,
and it's color-coded,

and it gets bluer
as it gets to be rain,

and then there's this one dot,

little pencil,
the size of an eraser head,

purple, as dark as
it possibly could be,

and I looked closely at the map,
and that's where we were going.

And I mean,
it was a lot of water.

So I thought,
well, that's interesting.

We're going out to see the set
and we leave the hotel

the first day,
we're driving out,

and I'm looking at my watch
and thinking,

well, this is a half hour,
40, 55 minutes

on these little roads.

I mean, five minutes
away from the hotel,

and we're in jungle.

You're looking at jungle.

But 55 miles away,
you're also looking at jungle.

When you're in the jungle,
what do you see? Jungle.

And it's like...okay.

Well, we had to plant
some of this too,

because it's a
banana plantation, oh god.

So they had actually
gone to the jungle

and then planted some jungle

and then built this thing
an hour away from the hotel.

Every day an hour driving.

So it's two hours out
of my day to get there.

And they said,
"Why did you do that?

Well when it's clear,
and you look up there,

you can see this mountain.

It's the highest mountain
in Australia."

"Really? Okay."

That mountain was visible
for about an hour and a half

the whole time we were there.

And when it did come out,

we had to dig a hole this deep
to put the camera in,

because it was so close
to the mountain.

It was, like, all of it wrong,
all of it wrong, useless.

- I was always getting flack
about how far

I'd built the set from town

and how far everyone
had to travel each day

and blah, blah,

but I'd searched for months to
find this particular location

that we carved out.

We had carved it out
of the rain forest.

- We had one week to prep.

One we week had to get
to meet everybody, basically,

and to see what was going on.

- They said
I had to come to dinner,

and that our director --
our new director was here.

And this older gentleman
in director gear

with this jungle hat on
came into the restaurant.

- And at one point
during the dinner,

I actually asked him

"So, what's your take
on this this story?

Is there a certain vision?"

and he's like "Marco, vision,
that's an overused word.

I'm telling you,
it's not about a vision.

It's about, I'm trying to tell
a story here, okay."

"I mean, yeah, how are you
going to tell this story?"

"Oh, we're going to see.
I brought in my own writer."

So I'm like, okay, it's
going to be a different movie,

I guess, now.

- Initially, he's like "Listen,
I've just been brought in.

I don't what's going on.
I'm just a director.

I'm here to try to do a job.

I need all the help
I can get from you,

you know,
just be on my side,

and we'll get through this",
type thing.

Within three or four days,

that had changed
to name calling,

and it changed to
being screamed at.

This man hated my guts.

- But Frankenheimer was a freak.

He was a real freak.

I was on a production run and
had to drop some new script

around his place
one night and, you know,

they gave me the script,
and I knew where he lived.

Driven straight to his place,
knocked on the door.

Frankenheimer came to
the door, and he's like

"Oliver, you're late."

So I was like all right.
"All right, dude.

Here's your script, man."

- The first week
we went pretty slow

because we were still
sorting things out.

Script pages were coming in
on the fax from the U.S.,

and then we finally
brought out a writer

and then another writer.

- There was a writer there
all the time being like,

"Why don't we --"

"Oh, that's a great idea.
Yeah, let's do that."

"Oh god, here we go again."

- It was really...John had to
decide...had to figure out

how the story could be shaped
into a story he wanted to tell,

and it was not what the
previous director had planned.

- It was always drifting away

from what Richard's ideas
for the story were.

- He came to the set
and he said to everyone,

"Look, I did this
a couple times in my life.

I came in, you know,
somebody else got fired,

and I rescued their movie.

And it turned -- both
times it turned out well.

So let's see how this one goes."

- No bull shit.
Let's not muck around.

Let's get it happening.

Little did he know...he...
Things...

Nothing really changed
in terms of efficiency

when he got there.

I was only meant to be there
three, four weeks.

I was there for like six months.

It was great.

- If I knew this was going
to be totally insane,

and that we were
going to be hugely lucky

if we just finished a film

with a beginning,
middle, and an end.

- Everyone knew it was
a total tough shoot,

and it was a tough shoot.

- There was a lot of friction
between the actors,

some of the actors,
and John,

mainly because of John's
behavior towards them.

- John is...can be very strong,

and if he has a disliking
towards someone,

he would just let 'em have it.

He was kind of a little bit
of a tyrant that way.

He was that way in
all the movies he did.

It wasn't just this one.

- He's really, really one of the
last old school screamers.

You know, he would
bark out his orders,

and he was just
this rough, tough guy,

and you could imitate him.

- Things are going to
change around here.

- "Man, you're on Camera 1,

and Camera 2, you better be
ready to catch it the second..."

- "And then you're got
to throw the torch,

and the whole thing
goes up into flames."

- He wanted people
to do their jobs,

you know, and that...from the
guys doing to the lighting

to guys doing the special
effects makeup to the actors.

- And he was heavy handed
with the Australian crew,

which he would loudly
denounce at lunch and say

it was the worst crew
he had ever seen

and he wanted his
American crew.

- And the crew,

which they do a lot
in a lot of shoots

and still do is
make up crew t-shirts.

The t-shirt had on it,
as a quote

which was a quote from the movie
one of the dialogs of film

"You don't have to obey
these bastards.

They're not gods."

- He had no idea
what a didgeridoo was

or what the instrument meant,

because at one stage
he called me, and he says,

"David, I want you to
get that dickeridoo,

and I want you to
smash him over the head."

I said, "John, I'm not going
to do that with a didgeridoo.

This...a didgeridoo is a
sacred instrument to me

and to aboriginal peoples.

- He didn't seem like
he particularly

wanted to be either.

I know he didn't,

but he was there because
he wanted to work with

Marlon Brando,
like everybody did.

- Basically, he was hired
to work for two weeks,

and so I said, "But, you know,
you have to absolutely

be here on this date."

Of course, not only
did he not show up,

he was nowhere to be found,
and none of his lawyer,

agents, or anybody
knew where he was,

purportedly.

And then then about a week
after he was due to report,

he did show up,

and then John was
uncharacteristically

very nervous.

- And everybody's all
"Marlon's coming to the set.

He's coming to the set."

An hour goes by.

"He's coming.
Get ready.

Have everything ready."

And Frankenheimer was like
"Have the cameras ready."

- And then I don't hear
from him until about

3:00 in the afternoon.

He said, "Well, I'm ready.
Ready to shoot," so "Fine."

- And I look
and out of the jungle this...

this...this...

I couldn't really tell
what was going on,

but this person emerges
out of...

because we were in the middle
of this banana plantation.

This really thick jungle.

- In the scene he was
in a palanquin.

He was supposed to
be being brought in.

- I thought maybe it was
one of the creatures

or something that
I hadn't seen

that was like a
different design,

and it was Marlon.

- Release him.

Release him.

- And he was in a...

Looked like cheese cloth,

like a very, very thin linen

that he'd wrapped around
himself like a diaper.

He covered himself
in white paint.

- Don't you feel the heat?

Because I do.

I can't...I can't tolerate
the sun.

- It was explained that

the white face
was kind of a makeup

that he only wore
out in the sun.

So I talked to Frankenheimer
and asked

if the dialect he used
was also something

that he would change,

interior and exterior, and
Brando was a ham operator.

He was listening
to our phone call,

and he said, "If you
want to direct the film,

when I showed up on the set.
If you want to direct the film,"

he banned me from the set
for questioning this.

- The whole white-faced
thing was...

Was that mad
or was that genius?

Because the whole whiteface,
wearing sun glasses

meant that Marlon Brando's
stand-in

could do quite a lot of
the picture for him.

- Brando is in the palanquin

and he says,
"You know, John,

I think we need some peacock
feathers behind my head.

Wouldn't it look better if we
had some peacock feathers?"

And out of the corner of my
eye, I see the art director,

who's a wonderful guy
who could do anything,

running like hell to his car.

And so everybody
then sat around again,

and we're waiting for
peacock feathers

in the middle of nowhere,

and then about
20 minutes later, the...

Gracie, I think, was his name --
came roaring back in,

holding up the peacock feathers.

And I said, "Where the
hell did you get those from?"

And he had found a peacock
that was on the road,

out by a farm somewhere,
he'd remembered seeing it,

and he leapt on the peacock
and pulled all the feathers out.

- He was just delighted
by everyone,

expressed all kinds of glee

at seeing all these
wonderful faces

and the heads
and the monsters,

and he wanted to meet
everybody so...

I mean, everybody.

- I was dressed as a feral pig.

Someone else was
dressed as a goat.

Someone else was a bison.

Someone else was
dressed as a monkey.

So we although we feel
we met Marlon Brando,

he, I'm sure, just met a number
of grotesque animals

that he wouldn't recognize again

and shook trotters
and paws and claws with us.

- A typical day with Marlon.

Marlon would arrive...he
would arrive at 9:00 o'clock,

and he would go into the trailer

and then John would go in there
and start talking to him,

and the executives would
stand around in a circle

and scour and scowl

and look down and
not know what to do.

Hours went by, maybe an hour,
half an hour before lunch,

they would come out,
and they would tour the set,

and talked about the scene
we're about to shoot,

and Marlon would amend
a bunch of things.

- I remember Frankenheimer
trying to talk to him

about the scene,

and Marlon saying
"No, no, no, no, no.

Instead of it being
about violence

and all this pain
and suffering,

I think that all that
animal-people

should get together,

and there should be a
grand celebration,

like a Bar Mitzvah,"

and I thought he's
fucking with them.

- He was always playing
with the idea of being hot,

and overheated.

He wanted an ice bucket
on top of his head.

- Frankenheimer says,

"What?
An ice bucket on your head?"

He said, "Yes.

Something to keep
my head warm,

because it is so hot,
you know."

So Johnny, the prop guy,
found a --

it was a sauce pan
or something,

and we cut
the bottom out of it,

and it fitted on his
head perfectly.

And then Fairuza Balk's
character tips the ice in.

No one ever knew
that he wanted ice

or an ice bucket on his head
so we had to make it quickly.

- You had to just keep
taking away problems

that he created in order
to put the work off

and then finally
you got the work.

- This one day I said,
"Can we talk?"

And he said,
"What is it, dear?"

And I said,
"I don't know.

Just in terms of our
characters and how they relate.

I'd like to have some
time to do that."

And he said, "No.

This is all insane.

I'm getting paid.

You're getting paid.

None of the scripts
make sense; so why worry?

You know, just relax.
Just do what you're doing.

You're beautiful,
don't worry about it.

And I said, "But I mean,
how the characters relate.

Isn't there?"

"Nah, I didn't
read the script."

- He never would
learn his lines,

and he had Caroline,
his assistant,

read lines from the trailer
into this little ear piece.

And I remember one time a
take was going rather smoothly,

and then he stopped in
the middle of it said,

"God damn it, Caroline,
I told you not to act."

- Frankenheimer actually
called me at one point.

Again, it was one of those
"You don't know me,

but I have to talk to
the head of the company."

I said, "What is it?"

He said, "This is
complete insanity here,

and I have to tell you
I've dealt with some very,

very difficult actors
in my life,

but I have never ever
dealt with somebody

like Marlon Brando.

We're driving and
he stops the car and says,

"Let's fuck Bob Shaye."

And I said...this is
John saying to me

"Well, why?

He seems like
a pretty nice guy,

why should we do that?"

He said, "Well, he doesn't
know what he's doing,

and what I think we should do is
just close down the production,

and you and I are going
to rewrite the script

and we'll spend six or eight
weeks rewriting it,

because I have some ideas
about how Dr. Moreau

should be wearing
a hat all the time

and at the end of the movie,
he takes off his hat,

and he's actually dolphin.

So then I knew
we were in serious,

serious bad shape.

- John referred to Brando
as a genius;

after the movie, he didn't.

- Brando looked at me
and was like, "Oh, okay.

So you are the
German actor; right?"

"Yes, I'm the German actor."

"I do talk some German.

[UNINTELLIGIBLE]."

I had no idea --
Not German; right?

So I said,
"Mr. Brando, I'm sorry.

I did not understand that."

He said,
"You are German; right?"

"Yes, I'm German,"

"[UNINTELLIGIBLE]"

"Ah, 'katze' is cat
and 'dach' is roof;

so you are talking about

the cat on the hot tin roof;
right?"

"No.

[UNINTELLIGIBLE]."

"Ah, okay.
I got it."

And I have no idea what
he was talking about.

And then Zinnemann said,

"I think what he's talking
about is, you know,

it's better to kill two birds
with a stone, whatever.

He made something up.

I don't think know, and
Brando's like "Exactly.

He talks better
German than you."

"Mr. Brando,
we need you on the set."

"I've got to go now."

Last time I talked to him.

Never talked to
him again; right?

And the next thing I heard
actually is that he actually

did something very similar
to Nelson de la Rosa.

"Oh, you're the Spanish actor?"

"Si, Se�or."

"So I do speak some Spanish

[UNINTELLIGIBLE]."

"Si, Se�or."

I love this guy.

I want this guy in every scene,
every scene with me,

every scene."

Zinnemann,
"Sorry, Mr. Brando.

No, we can't do that
because he is not an actor."

"I teach him how to act."

"Okay, you know, but he
doesn't speak English."

"Ah, just dub him."

"I mean, but you know,

Marco Hofschneider is in
every scene with you."

"Well, I guess we just
have to change the script,

and that was it.

He took my part away.

I mean, Brando gave
him the part, but man,

you know, I was I thought
I had a problem with Kilmer.

No, I had a problem with the
smallest man in the world,

and I lost to him.

That's something.

- So Nelson was about
17 inches or something.

I think he stood this high.

Anyway, [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
he talked like this as well

[UNINTELLIGIBLE]

and he would draw you pictures.

and the pictures were
really kind of childlike.

He would say
these things to us,

and his sister would interpret,

and sometimes his sister
would just shake her head

and say "I'm not,"
and I said,

"You cannot...you're not
here to censor what he says,

because he was 27
years old or something,

and I said,
"You just need to interpret

so that he's part of
whatever's happening,"

and she said,

"Nelson wants to know
what you're doing later.

Do want to come
around to his room?"

"Okay.
We might just...you can censor.

That's fine."

- Very popular with the ladies.

They loved having him
up on their laps.

It was great fun going out with
him to Cairns in the nightclubs.

They'd be out queueing up
and looking for ID for people,

and then they'd see him,
and on he'd go,

but you'd have to kind of
dance in a circle around him

so that he didn't get
trodden on.

- We would go out,
and we'd go dancing and stuff,

and he'd get down but yeah,
he was very sexual.

- But even Nelson started
acting up,

once Marlon decided
he loved him.

- We were standing in
the elevator at one point,

and I said, "Hey, Nelson.
How was your day?"

"Shut up,"

and he actually hit me
in the nuts.

And I'm like "Oh, fuck,"
and I can't do anything.

It's like if somebody would see
you like kicking the smallest

man in the world around,
you're in trouble.

- He started getting lines
written for him,

and he started getting the same
costume as Marlon was wearing.

That was all Marlon,

saying, "I want to get him
as my sidekick."

- The guy who I had making all
the props, he was a genius.

He built this beautiful little
grand piano that we sat on top

of the grand piano
that Brando was playing,

and they played.

I think it's one of the
greatest scenes ever.

- And I think that's when the
whole Mini-Me thing developed,

which has gone into
South Park,

with Marlon
adopting this little guy.

- I said, "You know,

you really get along with him,"
and he said,

"Well, I'm telling you
this movie,

nobody's going to care about
anything except this young man,

because he's fascinating.
He is just human artwork.

- You know, I will say
that in Richard's defense

any day it's like, Marlon Brando
and Val Kilmer

were there to mess with the film
as much as possible.

Marlon was there with his
legendary contempt

for what he does for a living,

but he was a little more
fun about it

and he was also
respectful to all of us.

Val was best described
by someone

as a prep school bully.

- In the makeup room,
he came to me and he's like,

"You know,
I saw Europa, Europa.

You're a very good actor.
I like what you did there."

And I was like,
"Oh, nice. Thank you."

"Yeah, just to make
one thing clear, yeah.

If it's ever going to be
between you and me,

it's going to be me,"

and then he walked away.

- Val was next to the camera,
and he was sitting in a chair,

and then he sort of
started to squat down,

and he was off camera,
and he was doing his lines

and the focus puller
was right next to him,

and this guy had...I mean
we were in the jungle

for whatever, eight weeks

and his hair,
his side burns

had grown, you know,
he hadn't been trimming;

so they were scraggly,
and the guy's sitting there,

and Val was smoking
a cigarette,

and he starts to burn the
ends of this guy's hair,

during the take.

- I think that one
of the triggers

that sort of started the crew to
really not put up with any shit,

so to speak.

- Marlon, I guess,
did not like Kilmer,

was not a fan anyway.

There was one scene where
Marlon and Kilmer

were going to be together.

Val sits down,
tries to talk to him.

He says, "So have you
been out on the reef?"

And Brando just looks
at him and says

"The reef?
I own a reef.

I've got reefs
coming out of ass."

And that was it. That was
their whole conversation.

- Kilmer didn't like Brando.
Brando didn't like Kilmer.

They all didn't like
Frankenheimer.

Frankenheimer
didn't like them.

- When Frankenheimer
was on the set one day,

I remember him saying to
a few of us standing around,

"If I was to direct a film
called The Life of Val Kilmer,

I wouldn't have
that prick in it."

- Well, Frankenheimer
was equally powerless

to wrangle these massive egos.

- I think he started getting
depressed at some points.

I would go and cheer him up.

On night shoots,
I would go find him,

and we would chat a little bit.

- We had a late call.
It was a night shoot.

We got everybody,
all the beast-people,

in their makeups.

We're all truckin' out to set.

We're out, sitting around,
and we're sitting around,

and we're sitting around,
and nothing's happening.

Finally, we corral the AP,
and we're just like,

"What's happening?
What's going?"

He's like "Well, Marlon
won't come out of his trailer

until Val comes out
of his trailer,

and Val won't come out
of his trailer

until Marlon
comes out of his trailer,

and we're like "Oh, you've
got to be kidding me?"

- The actors were disheartened.

We had three-and-a-half
hour makeups.

You didn't know if they
were going to be shot,

but you still had to do
your best work,

because we couldn't leave any
edges up or anything like that.

You still had to put
in a major effort,

and then the actors go out
in the sun and get shot.

- Sometimes they didn't get
shot at all. Did they?

Most of the time
they didn't get shot.

- For days and days when you're
sitting around in a tent

waiting for Brando and Kilmer
to decide whether they're

going to shoot anything
that day.

Night shoots would finish
with huge alcohols,

and bottles of spirits.

At 7:00 in the morning,

we were retiring back to
someone's room for the morning.

We were being paid above minimum
to work on a major feature film.

We were paid very
healthy per diems

to stay in a very nice hotel.

And I remember
with my per diems.

One week, I bought a
huge Scalextric racetrack,

and other people were buying
equally ridiculous things,

and every person's room
towards the end

became like a different
place to go visit

and a different place
to go and play.

- We'd quite often
would make up films

or sing songs or
a lot of chess playing.

- There was lot of sex going on

between people who
shouldn't be having sex.

There was a lot of drugs around.

- Yeah, I smoked a lot of pot.

- It was a party most of
the time, you know,

interrupted to go out,

put costumes on
and do some madness

that wasn't scripted,
and as it went on,

it descended into more
and more kind of madness.

- I think that we
actually forgot

that we had
normal lives elsewhere.

This became our normality.

- At one time I had ten extras.

As soon as John arrived,
and his comment,

I think, was "I can't make
this picture with ten extras.

I want a hundred."

And suddenly it was like
"Oh my god."

- They advertised
for feral's and hippies

and people with amputations

and anything they could
work with to make like,

a bunch of monsters.

- They were the hippies.
They had dropped out.

They were living on the dole.

They were living in the woods,
just sleeping in the woods.

They were all sleeping
with each other,

dreadlocks, unwashed,

tattoos,
piercings everywhere.

They were
The Island of Dr. Moreau.

- So there'd be lots of guitars.

- There'd be fire eaters
and people on stilts

and people spinning discs,
and they were all on acid.

It was the wildest thing
I'd ever seen.

- It was like we had our own
little freak show circus

at base camp all the time.

It was great.

- I got back in.
I was working as an extra now

so I was working with
this friend of mine, Dano.

He was part of the
household we were living in,

and basically, Dano, he would
just come and go from Cairns

and sort of spend his times
about and making didgeridoos.

He was back from
this fruit farm,

this organic fruit farm,
out in the tablelands.

He just sort of said,
"Oh, yeah.

This guy out there,
this crazy guy

that's just raving about how
Val Kilmer's ruined his life,

and he's just out there
smoking loads of pot",

and I was going, "what",
and all of a sudden,

I was listening to what
he was saying and going,

"just say that again",
and I saying,

"Oh, fuck,
he's talking about Richard."

- During that time,
I ended up staying

on a huge chunk of rainforest

owned by this farmer who
had lost the use of his legs,

a place called the Mary River,
which was a very nice spot,

no crocodiles,
Halcyon weather,

coconuts, cassava, yam,
and fish in the river.

So, yeah,
I got left in isolation.

And then one night saw a light
in the forest further down river

and realized that there
were other people down there,

camping down there.

And the next morning
I walked down the river,

and discovered that
they were extras from

The Island of Dr. Moreau.

- I was like, "Dude,
we've got to go and get him,

because everyone
is looking for him."

We walk up this river.

There is a big cast-iron bathtub

sort of by the side of the river
with a fire underneath it;

so someone was heating up
some water to have a bath,

and it's Richard.

Dano and I just kind of
walked up said,

"Dude, what are you doing?"
and "Come with us."

- I explained
that if I did that,

I would be breaking contract

and that would mean that
New Line could technically

refuse to pay me a dime,

and I was currently in
negotiation with them,

and it could be a bad idea,

but I did want to see
what was going on.

I was curious.

- So he basically jumped in
the car and back to Cairns.

No one from the house let the
secret out that he was there,

that was all pretty tight,

because we knew we were
sitting on something sort of

like, we knew something was
going to happen with Richard,

just being who he is
and the situation he was in.

It was like, "Okay, let's just
sit back and watch

what this maniac
is going to do."

- I'd come home with a script
with the new color pages in it

and amendments, and Richard
was there waiting for me

with a massive joint

and sort of ripped
into the damage

they'd done to his script,
you know.

- And then he throws
a wobbly to me.

He says to me "Dave,"
he says,

"I want to get onto the set."

And I was going

"And how do you envision that,
Richard?"

He says to me,

"Well, I want you to teach me
how to walk in a fashion

so that I'm just
one of the extras."

- I ended up borrowing
Lewis's dog-man outfit,

which is a some kind
of Stan Winston original

now 20 years on
fallen prey to

the leprosy that afflicts
foam latex.

But yeah, it was a full head,
dog man-mask,

and it came with a
chilaba and claws.

- He got changed in the van
so that no one saw him,

and we all sort of got
out with our costumes on,

these latex beast masks
and everything.

And then we sort of like --
maybe we just sat there and

smoked like a big fat joint
for good luck

and away he went and sort
of merged into the people.

- It got so hot
when we were working.

So I was trying to give them
breaks as often as I could,

and they would pull the head
back and drink some water.

And there was this guy,
one of them,

that would never do it.

I kept watching him, and he
would never take his head off,

and I thought
"That guy's nuts."

I started to think,
"Well, he's going to just die."

- There were 300 extras
in this tent,

but Richard was the only one
that wasn't taking his mask off.

- He was the bull dog-man,

and he did this great job
of jumping around

and doing this weird stuff,
and I looked to him and said,

"That was really great,"
and he goes "Oh, thank you."

"I really enjoyed watching you,
it was a nice job."

and he said,
"Oh, thank you."

and he had a completely
different accent

than anybody else.

And then I started to wonder.

- And I think that once
that rumor started,

that Richard Stanley was
in the background that,

I think, that just sort of
grew into stories

about Richard Stanley
and how he wanted

to sabotage the shoot.

- I did hear about it.

Look, maybe, I don't know.

It was the tropics, and
maybe he went a bit tropo.

- They'd been shitting
themselves leading up to that

thinking Richard's
out there somewhere,

and they imagined him doing some
sort of sabotage sort of thing.

But when it came to it,
there was no...

You know, we just drove
into set with him in the car.

There was no security really.

- There were a whole lot
of extras on set this night,

and it was where we
were meant to be lighting

Dr. Moreau's character
on the pyre.

Richard was on set.

- He was standing at the
back of the set,

next to a load of cans
that said "gasoline".

So he was, in effect,
standing behind

this huge arsenal of petrol.

- With a monster mask,
the first thing somebody does,

probably one of
the prop guys

"Okay. Hey, you over there.
Here's a torch.

You go over there."

- As a beast person on set,

I was constantly there
and being directed to

take up a hatchet
and smash the furniture

or to douse the place
in gasoline,

much of what I was doing
as a beast person

was capering up and down
and being destructive

and vindictive in
the background,

but as it was part of
the movie, it was okay.

- See, if he really was tropo,

he could have burned
the whole set down,

then and there.

That would have been
crazy cool.

- And I had the privileged
position of being able to see

what was going on
but at the same time

the very nightmarish position

of discovering that I was now
one of the beast people

on The Island of Dr. Moreau,

that I had completed a full arc
from creative figure to dog.

- Fortunately,
John Frankenheimer was

unbelievably professional,
a real trooper kind of guy.

He really understood
what the issues were

and did wrangle Marlo

and all these other maniacs
pretty well,

and at least we
came out with a film.

We lost money on the film.

I don't recall how much,

but not as much as
we would have lost

if we didn't have a film at all.

- My hopes were really high,
you know,

major picture, great role.

I really thought this is cool.
It's going to be great.

And I was very disappointed
by all the things that happened.

I mean, basically,
they gave me a great part.

I had a director that liked me
and that respected me to,

you know, to basically three
or four scenes in the movie.

- What people choose to do
in the name of politics,

which is basically
in the name of money,

there are no morals.

There are no...
There's no integrity at all.

They'd sell their child
down the river for money.

- I'm damn curious to...

I wish we could go back in time
or have an alternate universe

where Richard
gets to direct his movie.

- I think if Richard had made
the film for $8 million

with good actors and people
that were under his direction,

he's a good director.

- I think he's a very
bright guy.

He had a lot of good ideas.

I don't think that he
could handle a big...

At that point, a big crew.

- I'm sure there is a place
for Richard Stanley

with a terrific
independent company,

backed by people who
really believed in him.

- Basically, after Moreau,
he vanished in the wilderness,

and I didn't know
what became of him.

- I never heard from him again.

I often wondered what
happened to Richard Stanley.

- The perception of me in
Hollywood at that point in time

was I no longer existed.

My agent never returned
any of my phone calls

from the time the main
decision was made

to remove me from the project.

- You know, when you get
really, really hurt like that,

you're so gun shy
about ever putting yourself

in that kind of a
position again.

I saw him in London
a couple of years later,

and I remember him saying,

"I don't know if I'll ever make
another movie again.

I don't think I will.

I can't even bear the idea
of being behind the camera.

I just...it makes
me want to scream."

- Marlon Brando told me

that everyone in the
industry were hyenas.

That I should try to steer
clear of them

and try to make a better
life for myself.

Like the lead character
in Dr. Moreau,

I've found myself
increasingly unable to fit in

with the so-called real world,

and I find myself much
happier away from people

and up the mountain
where I am now.

I eventually moved to Monts�gur
in the French Pyrenees,

the scene of the last stand
of the Cathars in 1244,

who were a bunch of pagans
and heretics

who were basically slaughtered
by the outside world.

The various nation-states,
basically formed up

and decided to crush the weird
ones that didn't really fit in.

To a large extent,

we're still able to perform
our strange experiments.

We're still able to shoot.

I'd like to continue,

and maybe make something
a little bit longer.

Maybe next time around,
I won't feature dog-men.

Maybe I won't have a whole
lost civilization

or try to completely
monkey wrench

21st century culture and
technology in the same way,

maybe something
a little bit more modest

but still red and tooth and claw
would seem in order.

- You know,
it's part of my youth.

That's how I see it,

that it was like,
a crazy chapter

that became some lunatic movie

that's known as one of
the worst films ever made.

Yeah, that's not a
source of pride for me.

- I'm proud to be involved in
one of the worst movies ever.

It's awesome to see how much
effort goes into making

an absolute stinker,
you know.

Rock n' roll.