Ray Harryhausen Q + A
The following is a transcript of Ray Harryhausen's introduction to a screening of Jason and the Argonauts as well as the question and answer period conducted with the special effects legend immediately after the screening. It was transcribed from a shoddy personal recording and as such there may be a few instances where I was off on a word or two and had to take a few liberties to fill in the blanks. Mr. Harryhausen was incredibly funny and charismatic throughout the session and the entire experience was a delight.
INTRODUCTION TO THE FILM.
The whole picture was shot in Italy, and the interiors were shot in a studio in Rome. Jason and the Argonauts should have been shot in Greece, of course. When we investigated all of the various monuments there, they never bothered to rebuild some of them. Italy had them restored, and Italy was a much more colorful place. So, we shot a lot of it up North, and then we went down to Naples, where there are Greek temples of five thousand years old. I think you'll all enjoy the picture, Jason and the Argonauts. It's one of my favorites and most of the fan mail I get they say, Jason, many people love it. And I just want to say, we had the good pleasure of having that wonderful composer Bernard Herrmann on it.
Q + A
I have a little surprise for you. Perhaps you may recognize one of the...
[Drowned out by startled dork gasps]
This was one of the skeletons that was in The Incredible Voyage of Sinbad and I made six more to fight Jason. He has every joint that a real skeleton would have, and actually, I'm a people shrinker. I shrink the humans down to this size instead of building them up to the size of a normal skeleton. We had seven of them. Three are in Berlin, three are in my own collection and one has been dismembered for some other character.
Recycled!
Recycled? Cannibalism! [Laughter] I'm glad you enjoyed Jason so much.
If you redid the film today, with modern technology, what major changes would you make?
I'd rather not. [Wild applause] Of sixteen features, I think Jason was the most complete. We had a disadvantage because we had to make the pictures for very low budgets. The Beast from 20, 000 Fathoms only cost $200, 000 to make the whole picture, and today you'd spend millions on it. So, it's a different world, and I think this is a sign of that period, the Sixties, and I'm grateful that it holds up so well. Thank God for DVDs and laserdiscs. You can all see them again. These were made before some of you were born!
My question concerns your association with Bernard Herrmann. Knowing that Mr. Herrmann had an erratic character, I was just wondering if your collaboration with him was smooth through all the four films, or did he give you a little trouble sometimes?
Oh, we got along very well. We were both born in June. [Laughter] He was ten years older then I was. But, we got along very well and he was a delightful person under me. He's a Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll. He's got a lovely heart underneath it all. I think that if you've read his biography, you'll understand. I only wish I had read his biography before I knew him. [Laughter] He was rather irascible and when we first chose him for the 7th Voyage, the picture was incomplete when we showed it to him, but I showed him a lot of my drawings. He had a reputation that if he didn't like something he'd say "Why did you show me this crap?!?" He didn't say a thing when he came out of the room after watching the first rough cut. He said, "Yes, I'd like to do the picture." It wasn't complete, there were very few creatures in it, he had to imagine them. I think his contribution to the film was enormous. I feel grateful that we had him for four of our films.
I don't have a question; I just wanted to tell you something. I have a four-year-old son, and of all the movies I own, yours are the movies he likes the most.
When these pictures were made they were considered B-pictures because they were made for very tight budgets. I'm glad to see that the pictures over the years have survived, and many of the so-called A-pictures that came out about the same time disappeared long ago.
Two-part question. First of all, did you find the transition from black and white to color made it more difficult to achieve a sense of realism? And secondly, when is your next movie coming out? [Laughter]
I retired twenty years ago. [Laughter] The black and white we did in the early days, I'm glad to report that a new color process has been devised and some of our black and white films are going to be colorized. It's a delight. I saw some of the tests and they look very promising. So they'll have a whole new life and I'm grateful for that.
You recently went to New Zealand to visit WETA FX. What do you think of the work they're doing down there?
After we did 1 million BC for Hammer, they wanted to do King Kong, and I'm rather grateful that they didn't get to it. They wanted me to work on it, and I rather hesitated about trying to remake a classic such as Kong. Peter Jackson has a love of Kong as much as I have, and I think he'll do a good interpretation, but there will always only be one King Kong. [Applause]
Do you have a favorite creature from all of your movies?
I can't, the others get jealous. [Laughter] Even the seven skeletons get jealous if I pick just one of them. No, I think Medusa. I like the complicated ones, like the Hydra. That was a problem, keeping those heads going in stop-motion. If I answered the telephone, I'd forget whether the third head was going forward or backward, but somehow I managed to get it. [Laughter] But don't look too closely.
Which animator do you think nowadays follows your legacy?
Well, it's a whole different world today. Phil Tippet has been doing some wonderful work. Most studios have had to give up dimensional work and they had to go into CGI, because they think that CGI is the cat's pajamas. I think it's a wonderful tool, but only a tool, and there's no reason it can't be combined with stop-motion animation.
What is the importance or influence of Willis O'Brien on your work?
Well, obviously, when I saw Kong my jaw was down to my navel. Nothing like it had been put on the screen. And that score... I had always appreciated the fact that the music was so important in this kind of film, this type of fantasy film. And we got the best composers possible for our major productions. In the beginning, we made pictures on the cheap and we had to use canned music and tracks from other films. Somehow it worked. They're not ideal, but I think when we got Bernie Herrmann, he was our first true composer, we got Miklos Rosza and Laurence Rosenthal many other very top-grade composers. And that's very important in this type of picture. Max Steiner's score for Kong was almost like an opera. He made leitmotifs for each character. That was the first time it had been done and we've tried to borrow those traditions. And I think that we've had some very good fortune to have the late Bernard Herrmann and others to compose them.
Mr. Harryhausen, I just wanted to wish you a belated happy birthday. [Applause] I have a question about the skeleton scene in Jason and the Argonauts. Like the lost spider scene in Kong whatever happened to that scene where the skeleton looks for his head? I assume it got cut out for some type of reason.
We cut it out because it slowed the action down, the whole pace of the film. So, we cut it out. I wish I'd kept it. I left it in the cutting room.
Mr. Harryhuasen, after you retired was there any movie that you saw on screen that you said, "Oh, I would like to have a hand in it"?
Yeah, well, wishful thinking. I loved Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. and some of those, but that goes back some time. Recent pictures are very dynamic. You have to have an explosion every five minutes. We couldn't do that with Greek mythology. [Laughter] Young people have been brainwashed today to want something to happen every second right from the beginning, so, that's how the special effects pictures can reign supreme without story, which is unfortunate. But perhaps it will change.
What was the hardest monster for you to create?
I think the Hydra was one of them. The longest scene, it took four months to animate the five-minute sequence you just saw in Jason with the skeletons. That had to have split timing and I had to have a skeleton to meet all the swords of the actors so that it looked convincing, and of course the sound effects department put in the clashes of the metal, and that helped, too. I think that was the longest, and I tried to avoid those types of scenes in a film. Medusa was a problem. She had twelve snakes in her hair and the heads and tails all had to writhe and each frame of film had about 25 moves to make. That could get a little tedious sometimes. Apparently most people like her. I based her on Joan Crawford. Not that I feel Joan Crawford is Medusa. [Laughter] She had that bone structure and I played around with little features. I did a lot of research. I found out that the classic concept of Medusa was just a woman with a pretty face and snakes in her hair. For our purposes, we made her as ugly as possible. We gave her a bow and arrow so she could be wicked from a distance so I wouldn't have to animate little rattlesnake tails and little rattlesnake bodies and gossamer gowns. [Laughter]
INTRODUCTION TO THE FILM.
The whole picture was shot in Italy, and the interiors were shot in a studio in Rome. Jason and the Argonauts should have been shot in Greece, of course. When we investigated all of the various monuments there, they never bothered to rebuild some of them. Italy had them restored, and Italy was a much more colorful place. So, we shot a lot of it up North, and then we went down to Naples, where there are Greek temples of five thousand years old. I think you'll all enjoy the picture, Jason and the Argonauts. It's one of my favorites and most of the fan mail I get they say, Jason, many people love it. And I just want to say, we had the good pleasure of having that wonderful composer Bernard Herrmann on it.
Q + A
I have a little surprise for you. Perhaps you may recognize one of the...
[Drowned out by startled dork gasps]
This was one of the skeletons that was in The Incredible Voyage of Sinbad and I made six more to fight Jason. He has every joint that a real skeleton would have, and actually, I'm a people shrinker. I shrink the humans down to this size instead of building them up to the size of a normal skeleton. We had seven of them. Three are in Berlin, three are in my own collection and one has been dismembered for some other character.
Recycled!
Recycled? Cannibalism! [Laughter] I'm glad you enjoyed Jason so much.
If you redid the film today, with modern technology, what major changes would you make?
I'd rather not. [Wild applause] Of sixteen features, I think Jason was the most complete. We had a disadvantage because we had to make the pictures for very low budgets. The Beast from 20, 000 Fathoms only cost $200, 000 to make the whole picture, and today you'd spend millions on it. So, it's a different world, and I think this is a sign of that period, the Sixties, and I'm grateful that it holds up so well. Thank God for DVDs and laserdiscs. You can all see them again. These were made before some of you were born!
My question concerns your association with Bernard Herrmann. Knowing that Mr. Herrmann had an erratic character, I was just wondering if your collaboration with him was smooth through all the four films, or did he give you a little trouble sometimes?
Oh, we got along very well. We were both born in June. [Laughter] He was ten years older then I was. But, we got along very well and he was a delightful person under me. He's a Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll. He's got a lovely heart underneath it all. I think that if you've read his biography, you'll understand. I only wish I had read his biography before I knew him. [Laughter] He was rather irascible and when we first chose him for the 7th Voyage, the picture was incomplete when we showed it to him, but I showed him a lot of my drawings. He had a reputation that if he didn't like something he'd say "Why did you show me this crap?!?" He didn't say a thing when he came out of the room after watching the first rough cut. He said, "Yes, I'd like to do the picture." It wasn't complete, there were very few creatures in it, he had to imagine them. I think his contribution to the film was enormous. I feel grateful that we had him for four of our films.
I don't have a question; I just wanted to tell you something. I have a four-year-old son, and of all the movies I own, yours are the movies he likes the most.
When these pictures were made they were considered B-pictures because they were made for very tight budgets. I'm glad to see that the pictures over the years have survived, and many of the so-called A-pictures that came out about the same time disappeared long ago.
Two-part question. First of all, did you find the transition from black and white to color made it more difficult to achieve a sense of realism? And secondly, when is your next movie coming out? [Laughter]
I retired twenty years ago. [Laughter] The black and white we did in the early days, I'm glad to report that a new color process has been devised and some of our black and white films are going to be colorized. It's a delight. I saw some of the tests and they look very promising. So they'll have a whole new life and I'm grateful for that.
You recently went to New Zealand to visit WETA FX. What do you think of the work they're doing down there?
After we did 1 million BC for Hammer, they wanted to do King Kong, and I'm rather grateful that they didn't get to it. They wanted me to work on it, and I rather hesitated about trying to remake a classic such as Kong. Peter Jackson has a love of Kong as much as I have, and I think he'll do a good interpretation, but there will always only be one King Kong. [Applause]
Do you have a favorite creature from all of your movies?
I can't, the others get jealous. [Laughter] Even the seven skeletons get jealous if I pick just one of them. No, I think Medusa. I like the complicated ones, like the Hydra. That was a problem, keeping those heads going in stop-motion. If I answered the telephone, I'd forget whether the third head was going forward or backward, but somehow I managed to get it. [Laughter] But don't look too closely.
Which animator do you think nowadays follows your legacy?
Well, it's a whole different world today. Phil Tippet has been doing some wonderful work. Most studios have had to give up dimensional work and they had to go into CGI, because they think that CGI is the cat's pajamas. I think it's a wonderful tool, but only a tool, and there's no reason it can't be combined with stop-motion animation.
What is the importance or influence of Willis O'Brien on your work?
Well, obviously, when I saw Kong my jaw was down to my navel. Nothing like it had been put on the screen. And that score... I had always appreciated the fact that the music was so important in this kind of film, this type of fantasy film. And we got the best composers possible for our major productions. In the beginning, we made pictures on the cheap and we had to use canned music and tracks from other films. Somehow it worked. They're not ideal, but I think when we got Bernie Herrmann, he was our first true composer, we got Miklos Rosza and Laurence Rosenthal many other very top-grade composers. And that's very important in this type of picture. Max Steiner's score for Kong was almost like an opera. He made leitmotifs for each character. That was the first time it had been done and we've tried to borrow those traditions. And I think that we've had some very good fortune to have the late Bernard Herrmann and others to compose them.
Mr. Harryhausen, I just wanted to wish you a belated happy birthday. [Applause] I have a question about the skeleton scene in Jason and the Argonauts. Like the lost spider scene in Kong whatever happened to that scene where the skeleton looks for his head? I assume it got cut out for some type of reason.
We cut it out because it slowed the action down, the whole pace of the film. So, we cut it out. I wish I'd kept it. I left it in the cutting room.
Mr. Harryhuasen, after you retired was there any movie that you saw on screen that you said, "Oh, I would like to have a hand in it"?
Yeah, well, wishful thinking. I loved Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. and some of those, but that goes back some time. Recent pictures are very dynamic. You have to have an explosion every five minutes. We couldn't do that with Greek mythology. [Laughter] Young people have been brainwashed today to want something to happen every second right from the beginning, so, that's how the special effects pictures can reign supreme without story, which is unfortunate. But perhaps it will change.
What was the hardest monster for you to create?
I think the Hydra was one of them. The longest scene, it took four months to animate the five-minute sequence you just saw in Jason with the skeletons. That had to have split timing and I had to have a skeleton to meet all the swords of the actors so that it looked convincing, and of course the sound effects department put in the clashes of the metal, and that helped, too. I think that was the longest, and I tried to avoid those types of scenes in a film. Medusa was a problem. She had twelve snakes in her hair and the heads and tails all had to writhe and each frame of film had about 25 moves to make. That could get a little tedious sometimes. Apparently most people like her. I based her on Joan Crawford. Not that I feel Joan Crawford is Medusa. [Laughter] She had that bone structure and I played around with little features. I did a lot of research. I found out that the classic concept of Medusa was just a woman with a pretty face and snakes in her hair. For our purposes, we made her as ugly as possible. We gave her a bow and arrow so she could be wicked from a distance so I wouldn't have to animate little rattlesnake tails and little rattlesnake bodies and gossamer gowns. [Laughter]
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