Earlier this year, I came clean about the horrible, terrible affliction the Cap'n lives with every day: an addiction to supplements on DVDs and Blu-Rays. In order to help myself (and others), I thought it would be in our best interests if I shared some of my favorite "making of" documentaries found on various discs.
As I said previously, of late there have been some really clever, well designed, and revelatory documentaries (or "extended featurettes"), so I'll be focusing on those as opposed to feature-length "making-of" docs like Burden of Dreams of Hearts of Darkness. Mind you, those are fantastic in their own right, but they tend to have their own releases (or, in the case of Hearts of Darkness, are included as its own disc on Apocalypse Now's Blu-Ray set), whereas the longer pieces listed below are sometimes buried behind EXCLUSIVE INTERACTIVITY POCKET BLU BLAH BLAH BLAH. Don't let the noise and the trivial extras scare you away, because many of these longer pieces are every bit as good as the stand-alone docs.
The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of 12 Monkeys - directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe (Lost in La Mancha), The Hamster Factor is a nearly 90 minute look behind the scenes of Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, focused primarily on the director's working process. Gilliam, who has a partially deserved / partially exaggerated reputation as a "difficult" perfectionist, may do himself no favors by giving the documentary its title: the "hamster" in question is holding up an otherwise perfectly executed and technically elaborate shot because the rodent refuses to do what Gilliam wants in frame, slowing production to a halt. That's one of the many confounding, fascinating elements about making an already confounding, fascinating film.
Beware the Moon - While it balances "making of" stories with a "locations then and now" host structure, Beware the Moon is as thorough document of the making of An American Werewolf in London as you're likely to find. Not only has writer / director / host Paul Davis managed to track down most of the original locations, but he also assembles as many surviving members of the cast and crew to discuss Werewolf's origins, its filming, the special effects, and its peculiar balance of horror and humor. Among the heretofore unrealized tidbits was the fact that John Landis had the idea to make An American Werewolf in London while working as a production assistant on Kelly's Heroes; Rick Baker had already committed to The Howling when Landis finally pulled him back into Werewolf, after finding out the makeup effects artist would be using his designs for Joe Dante's wolf film; and the queasy feeling Griffin Dunne felt after seeing his "corpse" makeup design for the first time.
One By One We Will Take You: The Untold Saga of The Evil Dead, Life After Death: The Ladies of the Evil Dead, and Discovering The Evil Dead - Taken together, this nearly 86 minute story of Sam Raimi's debut film covers nearly every angle of its inception: from the attempt to raise money by knocking down investors' doors, to the extended filming in Tennessee, to the film's release, subsequent success, and controversy after being labeled a "video nasty" in England. While Raimi, Rob Tapert, Bruce Campbell, and much of the cast and crew appear in the first two docs, the third featurette is equally as interesting because it focuses on the film's appearance in Great Britain, and the subsequent trial that Raimi faced after the film was deemed "obscene."
The Making of the Alien Legacy (The Beast Within, Superior Firepower, Wreckage and Rage, and One Step Beyond) - If you haven't seen this epic set of documentaries (which total nearly 12 hours in length) and consider yourself a fan of the Alien series, I highly recommend checking the fifth disc of the Alien Anthology Blu-Ray. I highlight the Antholgy version over the Alien Quadrilogy version if for no other reason than Wreckage and Rage: The Making of Alien 3 is included in its full, uncut format, restoring footage devoted to the battles between director David Fincher and studio executives at 20th Century Fox. Exhaustive might be the best way to put the docs in perspective: nearly everything you can think of about the making of Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien: Resurrection is covered in detail, warts and all.
These comprehensive stories are not without controversy, divided opinions, embittered participants (Michael Biehn's explanation of why and how he discovered Hicks wouldn't be in Alien 3 is a great example), and various takes on why certain things didn't work, especially in the third and fourth films. That doesn't mean everything on Alien is roses, however: there's a protracted segment about the approach to the script with writer Dan O'Bannon on one side and producer / co-writer Ronald Shusett on the other. In totality, while it will take you a few viewings to get through, you'll learn so much more about the series than you ever thought possible. (This does not, by the way, include the BD's "enhancement pods," which extend all four documentaries by nearly an hour apiece!)
While I'd love to continue, this is going a bit long; also check out Empire of Dreams: The Making of the Star Wars Saga, Indiana Jones: Making the Trilogy, The Battle of Brazil: A Video History, Inferno: The Making of the Expendables, Fear of the Flesh: The Making of the Fly, Dangerous Days: The Making of Blade Runner, 30 Days in Hell: The Making of the Devil's Rejects, and Orson Welles: One Man Band.
Tomorrow: a Retro Review of Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man.
Next Tuesday: a Retro Review of Neil Young's Human Highway.
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