Film #47: Jurassic Park
Director: Steven Spielberg
Production Designer: Rick Carter
Concept Designer: William Stout
One day, I received a mysterious package in the mail. I had (and still have) no idea who sent it to me. It was a type-written draft of a yet-to-be-published novel. There was a Post-It note stuck to the front page. It read:
“Read this manuscript. Don’t read the very last page until you have read the entire novel.”
What the heck…?
So, I am reading this manuscript for a novel. I am relating to it. It’s got dinosaurs. I’m the Dinosaur Guy. The people described in the book are all friends of mine. I can tell you what clothes they would be wearing. A lot of the story takes place in a theme park. I just spent two-and-a-half years designing theme parks for both Disney and Universal.
If it were to become a movie, this seems like a perfect movie for me to production design. Now I am becoming worried and anxious. This all seems like too perfect a fit. There’s an old unwritten Hollywood axiom: The more perfect you are for a film, the less likely it is that you will get it.
Then, I get to the last page of what I now realize is the as-yet-to-be-published novel of Michael Crichton‘s Jurassic Park. On that last page, Crichton acknowledges me and my work as an inspiration for the book.
I now know I am totally screwed…This is not going to happen. I am too perfect for the job.
I discovered that Steven Spielberg will be directing the film of this Crichton novel. I decided to try to get the job of production designer anyway.
Another HUGE strike against me. A lot of the people who run Hollywood are like big babies. They typically want what they think they can’t have. If you actually go after a job, the chances become even greater that you will not get that gig. Nevertheless, Jurassic Park is such a perfect fit that I feel I at least have to try to get the job, despite the odds against me.
A big part of the problem was my expertise in the subject matter. The producers did not want some so-called dinosaur expert telling Steven Spielberg what he could or couldn’t do with his dinosaurs or how they should look. But I knew that. I’ve worked in The Biz. I knew that Jurassic Park was not a documentary — it was a popcorn movie. I wasn’t about to burst Steven’s bubble on anything. But, from the producer’s point of view, better not to hire me and avoid that potential issue…just in case…
Obviously, I didn’t become the production designer for Jurassic Park. My friend, the brilliant Rick Carter, King of the Visual Metaphors, got that gig.
I had lunch every other week with Rick and fed him ideas for inclusion in the film. Later, I was happy to see that all of those ideas of mine made it into the film’s final cut.
Then, I did the single stupidest thing I have ever done in regards to my film career. At our last lunch together, I began quoting Marlon Brando‘s views on “Movies as Great Art” from his interview in Playboy. According to Brando, no film ever made qualifies as Great Art. He argued that no movie has ever come up to the artistic level of the works of Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Beethoven, or Mozart — truly and inarguably Great Timeless Art.
When approached by Rick (in regards to my opinion on the subject), I sided with Brando, cruelly and stupidly dismissing films as a lesser art form (“It’s called The Movie Business –— not the Movie Arts“, I reminded him) and the work that Rick did as not being anywhere near as important as, say, the one-man show I currently had on display back then at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
What a smug little jerk I was. What a thoughtless, arrogant thing to say. I behaved like a total asshole, and it immediately (deservedly so) ended our friendship. I have regretted that lunch and my abhorrent behavior that day ever since. What in the hell was I thinking? More evidence, I guess, of me being “on the spectrum.”
Shame on me.
It’s kind of depressing how many of us are on the spectrum. Having to be right, even when we are, is no excuse to be right. It gains us nothing and often worse. The human ego is such a fragile thing, and there we go, recklessly, even unintentionally, giving that ego all the cause it requires to dismiss us.
Well that explains it! 🙂 In the early nineties I worked for a 3D software company and did frequent trips to California in order to demonstrate the capabilities of our animation product. As was often the case, my workstation was installed in a closed office, far from prying eyes, and I typically had to leave the room while certain executives would come to view the demo images.
On one such visit to a certain visual effects studio, I had brought along my tattered copy of your book The New Dinosaurs (my reference bible) to show that our software could faithfully model various creatures. I was promptly ordered to take the book with me when exiting the office and to please leave it in the hotel room the next time! 🙂
Hi Daniel,
Sorry if I caused you any discomfort or embarrassment, my friend…
I am not the same person I was back then.
No embarrassment at all Bill. I would also often show up with a graphic novel by Moebius or Mezières, again to pick an element from the book (like Valérian’s spaceship) and interactively demonstrate the modeling and shading techniques of our software. These models were promptly erased at the end of the demos.
When it happened I simply thought that it was a reaction on the studio’s part to prevent any copyright infringement situation.
One more anecdote from that time, when I once again brought along your book as a reference for another presentation. It was to a certain cigar-chomping expert, head of his namesake studio that I had managed to meet after months of trying to get a visit at his studio. Despite my best efforts to impress him with our software, he insisted his studio would never use a 3D package such as ours, as he was dedicated to practical effects. I held my ground and promised him I would buy him a top quality bottle of scotch if he did in the next few years.
Him: “YOU will buy me the bottle… don’t you mean the opposite?”
Me: “Oh no sir, I’ll happily buy it for you, because you will be spending some good money in software licenses with us!” That got me a solid handshake and a hearty laugh.
Barely a year later I was back to pour him a glass and toast to his continued success in the changing industry. 🙂