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126: The Unmaking of an Epic · Movie Meltdown

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Speaker 4: What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown.
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Speaker 2: Once again, I am Brian and I'm.
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Speaker 6: Doing the intro solo this week because we have a
1:04
Speaker 6: special guest.
1:06
Speaker 4: But before we.
1:08
Speaker 6: Get to that, I did want to mention that Movie
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Speaker 6: at slap-radio.com. And while you're there, subscribe to Movie Meltdown.
2:21
Speaker 6: And I guess you can look at some other shows too. Alright,
2:24
Speaker 6: so with that we are going to take a short
2:25
Speaker 6: break here and be back with this week's guest, Mr.
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Speaker 2: Dave Conover.
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Speaker 6: He's a friend of mine and an author who's written
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Speaker 6: about what I think is one of the most interesting
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Speaker 6: stories I've heard in years. So, we'll be right back,
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Speaker 6: and Dave will tell you about the unmaking of an epic.
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Speaker 7: Thank you.
3:05
Speaker 2: Oh, the time is now, the time is here. Now's
3:13
Speaker 2: the time to abide a cheer. The tasty life where
3:16
Speaker 2: the price is right.
3:17
Speaker 8: Well, look in here, you'll dig this site.
3:20
Speaker 2: The moment's handy for a piece of candy. Just name
3:22
Speaker 2: your brand, they're all so grand. Hey, what do you
3:24
Speaker 2: think of a nice cool drink? Oh, big box filled
3:28
Speaker 2: with a popcorn trill. Let's chase what's mean with an
3:31
Speaker 2: ice cream treat. Invest yourself, it's time to eat.
3:34
Speaker 7: So come on, folks.
3:36
Speaker 1: Let's join the band as we all head for the refreshment.
3:39
Speaker 5: Wing Kong is coming. A monster, all-powerful, beating down all weapons,
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Speaker 5: smashing all barriers.
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Speaker 2: You won't believe your eyes.
3:48
Speaker 5: Here he comes.
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Speaker 2: Switch it.
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Speaker 5: Ranking out of the dense jungle, King Kong comes to
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Speaker 5: claim his human sacrifice. The first white girl he has
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Speaker 5: ever seen. She looks like a trainee doll in his huge,
4:05
Speaker 5: hairy paws he tramples toward his cage. Listen to her shriek.
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Speaker 5: Hear the din, the confusion of pursuit that is trailing
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Speaker 5: him into the depths of mystery. King Kong is coming.
4:22
Speaker 5: The picture that staggers the imagination.
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Speaker 8: Hi, this is Tom Kane, the voice of Yoda.
4:36
Speaker 2: And listening to Movie Meltdown, you are good.
4:55
Speaker 7: All right.
4:59
Speaker 3: We're here with the author.
5:21
Speaker 6: Dave Conover? Do you need to go by David? Is
5:23
Speaker 6: there mix-ups out there?
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Speaker 2: Dave is the casual term I always use. I went
5:28
Speaker 2: with David on the cover because it always looks better.
5:31
Speaker 2: It looks more professional. Definitely.
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Speaker 6: You've worn many hats in your life, I'm assuming. Do
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Speaker 6: you bill yourself with anything other than that right now?
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Speaker 6: Are you author, or how do you come across now?
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Speaker 8: Now I am.
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Speaker 2: I've always written, but not prolifically. And It took me
5:48
Speaker 2: a long time to kind of find my niche as
5:50
Speaker 2: a writer. Being a huge film fan, and some people
5:55
Speaker 2: call me a film historian, I would call myself that.
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Speaker 2: Most of my future projects are going to be of
6:03
Speaker 2: a writing nature, whether they're blogs or books. So I'll
6:08
Speaker 2: go by author. I like that.
6:09
Speaker 6: I just go with movie geek.
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Speaker 2: And that too.
6:12
Speaker 6: That applies to most people.
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Speaker 2: Convention guy, you know.
6:17
Speaker 6: Well, this may be surprising to listeners of our show,
6:20
Speaker 6: regular listeners anyway, because usually the only books we talk about,
6:23
Speaker 6: we have a running theme of pop-up books. One of
6:26
Speaker 6: our crew is quite taken with pop-up books, and we
6:29
Speaker 6: have an ongoing review of those. But, you know, usually
6:33
Speaker 6: it's just movies and podcasts and audio-related stuff.
6:39
Speaker 2: I don't like to read.
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Speaker 8: It makes my brain hurt.
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Speaker 6: But from day one, this story was kind of fascinating.
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Speaker 6: It's funny that this, I mean, you... You've joked about
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Speaker 6: this several times now that, yeah, this was several years ago,
6:51
Speaker 6: and you were at your old job, and I just
6:54
Speaker 6: came in and started talking to you about stuff. And
6:57
Speaker 6: at some point, it turned into like an hour-long pitch
7:00
Speaker 6: of the story, including props.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I get rolling. It's dangerous for people.
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Speaker 6: You brought out photos. You brought out drawings. And I
7:09
Speaker 6: was fascinated with it. I was like, this is an
7:11
Speaker 6: amazing story. Why isn't there a book like this? why
7:15
Speaker 6: isn't this movie out there? So yeah, I definitely fell
7:17
Speaker 6: right in with all of that stuff, which is why
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Speaker 6: I wanted to go ahead and sit down with you
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Speaker 6: here and try to pass the word along to other
7:24
Speaker 6: people as well. But I guess to start sort of
7:27
Speaker 6: at the beginning, at least from your take on it,
7:29
Speaker 6: how is it that you learned about this?
7:31
Speaker 2: I learned about War Eagles from an issue of Famous
7:34
Speaker 2: Monsters of Filmland magazine by Forrey Ackerman, which half of
7:39
Speaker 2: working Hollywood will credit Forrey Ackerman for getting them into
7:42
Speaker 2: the businesses. which, of course, started publication in the late 50s,
7:44
Speaker 2: all through the 60s and 70s. I was a little younger,
7:47
Speaker 2: so I started reading it in the 70s. And it
7:50
Speaker 2: was summer of 77. I can't remember the issue number.
7:54
Speaker 2: But summer of 77, an issue came out. The new
7:57
Speaker 2: Ray Harryhausen picture was coming out. I was a huge
7:59
Speaker 2: Harryhausen fan. It was the last Sinbad movie. It was
8:03
Speaker 2: the Sinbad and the... What was it? The Eye of
8:06
Speaker 2: the Tiger?
8:07
Speaker 6: Eye of the Golden Tiger?
8:08
Speaker 2: Eye of the Golden Tiger?
8:08
Speaker 5: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: Not one of my favorites, obviously. But it's a cool movie.
8:11
Speaker 2: But that was on the cover. And I bought anything
8:15
Speaker 2: related to Harryhausen projects, who I was a big fan
8:19
Speaker 2: of already. And inside, they always had a section called
8:23
Speaker 2: Rare Treats, or you axed for it. And this was
8:26
Speaker 2: in Rare Treats, and Ford would occasionally pull out some
8:28
Speaker 2: images that were kind of unusual. And on the cover
8:32
Speaker 2: of the Rare Treats section was this production drawing of
8:35
Speaker 2: a giant eagle tethered to the ground with these men
8:39
Speaker 2: standing around it who were sort of dressed in not
8:41
Speaker 2: really Viking outfits, but sort of South American native type outfits.
8:46
Speaker 2: It had a ring through its bill. He had a
8:49
Speaker 2: little caption that explained that this was from The Ill-Fated
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Speaker 2: War Eagles, which was a Willis O'Brien production that was
8:57
Speaker 2: a casualty of World War II. And I was fascinated
9:01
Speaker 2: instantly because my favorite movie was and is the original
9:05
Speaker 2: King Kong. and Willis O'Brien was the director of special effects,
9:09
Speaker 2: and Marion C. Cooper was the producer, and this was
9:11
Speaker 2: apparently a film both these men were going to work on,
9:14
Speaker 2: and I just was stuck with it, and it seems
9:17
Speaker 2: like over the years, maybe one or two images popped
9:20
Speaker 2: up briefly afterwards, but almost immediately in the aftermath of that,
9:25
Speaker 2: I decided I'd try to give Foy a call. He
9:28
Speaker 2: was a big hero of mine, but he was also
9:30
Speaker 2: a guy who was kind of famous for being pretty accessible,
9:33
Speaker 2: and I was a pretty hardcore geek already, and there
9:36
Speaker 2: was a local science fiction club, and there were guys
9:38
Speaker 2: that knew for it. Because he had been in not only,
9:41
Speaker 2: you know, the publisher of FM, but he'd been in
9:43
Speaker 2: sci-fi fandom for decades. And everybody had his number.
9:47
Speaker 6: That's still funny now.
9:49
Speaker 2: I can't remember the area code, but I think it
9:51
Speaker 2: was like 606. Moon fan. You just dial that up,
9:54
Speaker 2: and he'd very likely answer. and he was one of
9:57
Speaker 2: the first guys you know i knew that had an
9:59
Speaker 2: answering machine and he always had a great you know
10:02
Speaker 2: had a great line running on the answering machine and
10:04
Speaker 2: you'd get through that and you start talking and if
10:06
Speaker 2: you felt like it you pick up the phone he
10:08
Speaker 2: did he picked up the phone because i was asking
10:10
Speaker 2: a question that didn't have to do with boris karloff
10:13
Speaker 2: or lon chaney jr you know the usual crowd and
10:16
Speaker 2: I asked him what was War Eagles, and he told
10:18
Speaker 2: me what he knew, and kind of elaborated on it
10:22
Speaker 2: a little bit. Said material had just come up. There
10:24
Speaker 2: was at least one script floating around that people thought
10:27
Speaker 2: Willis O'Brien wrote it, and it was going to be
10:29
Speaker 2: a big picture like King Kong at MGM. It involved
10:32
Speaker 2: Vikings riding eagles and dinosaurs, and somehow the Nazis got involved.
10:39
Speaker 2: He didn't really know about the end of the picture
10:41
Speaker 2: at the time himself either, just that it... It was big,
10:45
Speaker 2: and he was a fan as well, a huge fan
10:46
Speaker 2: of this material. So that's what started it. I talked
10:49
Speaker 2: to him. Over the years, we would actually have met
10:52
Speaker 2: him a couple times locally in Louisville. He'd be at
10:54
Speaker 2: different conventions. We'd talk. He said he was digging up
10:57
Speaker 2: more material. He might one day do a book or
10:59
Speaker 2: an extended article in one of his magazines. Later, we
11:04
Speaker 2: met much later in life at other conventions. He still remembered.
11:07
Speaker 2: And I met him at his house, so I went
11:08
Speaker 2: to the Acker Mansion a couple times. Wow. That was
11:13
Speaker 2: one thread of War Eagles. And then a few years later,
11:17
Speaker 2: I think it was 1982, Cinefix magazine, which has sort
11:21
Speaker 2: of become the big industry magazine for special effects. Back
11:25
Speaker 2: then it was more of a history mag. They had
11:27
Speaker 2: a whole issue devoted to Willis O'Brien's life, and Don
11:30
Speaker 2: Shea wrote that. He was the publisher as well. And
11:34
Speaker 2: it had a pretty, for the time, a pretty exhaustive
11:37
Speaker 2: article in there about War Eagles, which exhaustive meant like
11:41
Speaker 2: four pages.
11:43
Speaker 6: Considering there was nothing dug up on that point.
11:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, it had some paintings, and it actually had a
11:47
Speaker 2: couple of shots from a test footage, and I was like,
11:49
Speaker 2: there it is again. And I'm like, this was just
11:52
Speaker 2: always fascinating to me, this sort of what-if movie.
11:56
Speaker 5: Yeah.
11:57
Speaker 2: And, uh, I always thought, even back then, somebody should
11:59
Speaker 2: do a book about this. Before he might, but, you know.
12:02
Speaker 6: You know how that goes.
12:02
Speaker 2: And I got a little older, and, uh, over the years,
12:05
Speaker 2: more would pop up, and, uh, I went to work
12:09
Speaker 2: for Wonderfest as the, uh, programming director. And, uh, I've
12:13
Speaker 2: had people as guests over the years. Ray Harryhausen, one
12:16
Speaker 2: of my biggest heroes, spent a lot of time with
12:18
Speaker 2: him here. And, uh, Bob Burns is a great collector
12:22
Speaker 2: and historian as well. And over the years I would
12:24
Speaker 2: talk to them and get their input because Ray Harryhausen
12:27
Speaker 2: was actually the only living person in the War Eagles
12:30
Speaker 2: production office. He met Willis O'Brien when he was a
12:32
Speaker 2: kid there and more and more would come up. And
12:35
Speaker 2: I started just consciously keeping what I would find. And, uh,
12:39
Speaker 2: Clues would pop up about scripts existing in certain archives.
12:45
Speaker 2: I'd follow those up, and I began sincere research on
12:49
Speaker 2: the book project in 2003 based on what I accumulated
12:53
Speaker 2: to that point. But that turned out to be more
12:55
Speaker 2: or less the tip of the iceberg.
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Speaker 6: And how much, I mean, you have kind of mentioned
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Speaker 6: how much the story itself is partially about the movie
13:05
Speaker 6: and the movie that never happened but also the the
13:07
Speaker 6: you refer to it as a detective story of.
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Speaker 2: Yeah your take on it because it was an unmade
13:12
Speaker 2: film it's a strange situation i had a professional writer
13:15
Speaker 2: ask me when i did a talk a couple years
13:17
Speaker 2: back he says how do you research an unmade movie
13:20
Speaker 2: and i it ain't easy yeah i pointed to the
13:22
Speaker 2: other people on the panel i said well you got
13:24
Speaker 2: to know guys like bob burns and bill stout and
13:27
Speaker 2: ray ariels and uh There's a common passion that ran
13:30
Speaker 2: with these people who really wanted to see this movie
13:32
Speaker 2: made for decades. And that was the angle I chose
13:36
Speaker 2: to pursue because it couldn't be a film history. It
13:40
Speaker 2: was an almost film. But there was a lot of
13:43
Speaker 2: work put into it, and a lot of the work
13:45
Speaker 2: was primarily visual. And so I started calling it a
13:49
Speaker 2: forensic investigation because you had evidence. There was no body.
13:54
Speaker 2: For a while.
13:55
Speaker 6: It's a cold case.
13:56
Speaker 2: Yeah. It was literally a very old cold case. But
14:00
Speaker 2: an amazing amount of material had survived, largely by accident
14:04
Speaker 2: or by the actions of collectors who saw it in
14:06
Speaker 2: a garbage can or took it out of a building
14:08
Speaker 2: before it was condemned.
14:09
Speaker 5: Nice.
14:10
Speaker 2: And things like that would come to light. And this
14:13
Speaker 2: weird connectivity started up because... If you have an esoteric interest,
14:18
Speaker 2: you generally will find other people eventually, and it turns
14:21
Speaker 2: out everybody knows everybody. Weird coincidences start to happen, and
14:24
Speaker 2: that's what started happening, is people would start popping up
14:27
Speaker 2: out of the woodwork. Well, I've got this, and I've
14:29
Speaker 2: got this. That started to snowball pretty heavily by 2005, 2006.
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Speaker 2: A lot of material came to light, and a lot
14:37
Speaker 2: of material was hidden away in studio, not studio archives.
14:40
Speaker 2: MGM really didn't have anything. Mostly university archives. USC had
14:45
Speaker 2: the scripts, and some private collectors ended up with a
14:48
Speaker 2: lot of the visual material.
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Speaker 6: It's amazing how much it works its way into the
14:54
Speaker 6: populace there.
14:55
Speaker 5: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: And then it sits in a drawer. Yeah. Unless somebody
14:59
Speaker 2: comes asking, that's where it stays.
15:02
Speaker 6: And then you come along.
15:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, I came along at USC, and they're like, well,
15:05
Speaker 2: we think we have some material. Yes, here's a file box.
15:08
Speaker 2: And then they're like, well, there's a lot of material here.
15:11
Speaker 2: And no one had ever been there. And I knew
15:13
Speaker 2: guys in Los Angeles who lived near the university. Yeah.
15:16
Speaker 2: have speculated for years about War Eagles, but they never
15:19
Speaker 2: went over to the university. And I just walked in,
15:21
Speaker 2: and they said, well, you're the first person to ever ask.
15:23
Speaker 2: I was stunned. And I called my friends out there,
15:26
Speaker 2: and I said, well, it's all over at USC, and
15:28
Speaker 2: I don't think any of them have ever yet walked
15:30
Speaker 2: through the door over there. It's just like, well, they
15:32
Speaker 2: just took it as that's what it was. So it
15:35
Speaker 2: was nice that it kind of fell to me to
15:36
Speaker 2: kind of be the historian of this film. It was
15:38
Speaker 2: kind of my niche, and that was the key, was
15:41
Speaker 2: kind of sticking to that. And because it was a
15:43
Speaker 2: lot of the people involved in King Kong, there happened
15:46
Speaker 2: to be a lot of supplemental personalities and stories that
15:50
Speaker 2: you could track down and learn about.
15:52
Speaker 6: I guess, again, that part of it's an interesting story
15:56
Speaker 6: on its own, but the plot is pretty interesting as well.
15:59
Speaker 2: The plot's interesting. By today's standards, you've seen some.
16:04
Speaker 8: Of it before.
16:05
Speaker 6: But it predates all of that.
16:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is 1938, and the concept is Marion C. Cooper's.
16:11
Speaker 2: A lot of people were always trying to give it
16:13
Speaker 2: to to willis o'brien but he was a collaborator as
16:16
Speaker 2: always but the concept is cooper's and it was uh
16:22
Speaker 2: his twin interests were film and aviation and in film
16:25
Speaker 2: he was interested in spectacle he made king kong so
16:27
Speaker 2: he wanted to try to top king kong and he
16:30
Speaker 2: wasn't having much luck with with producers they wanted to
16:32
Speaker 2: scale down everything he wanted to do and he said
16:35
Speaker 2: i've got to come up with something huge and he
16:37
Speaker 2: did and uh There are various drafts of the story.
16:43
Speaker 2: His version and the final draft are very similar, so
16:46
Speaker 2: I'll go with that. It's about an Army aviator. This
16:50
Speaker 2: is before there was an Air Force.
16:52
Speaker 7: It's 1938.
16:52
Speaker 2: It's an Army aviator. The world is on the brink
16:55
Speaker 2: of war, as they were in 1938. They all knew
16:59
Speaker 2: who the aggressors were. They knew it was Germany, but
17:01
Speaker 2: nobody really talked about it much in the United States.
17:03
Speaker 2: We were very isolationist about that. Cooper was not. Cooper
17:07
Speaker 2: was a very blunt, forceful man, and he had fought
17:09
Speaker 2: them before. So his movie is almost a battle cry.
17:15
Speaker 2: An aviator is based in the New York area, and
17:18
Speaker 2: he takes a plane out. He's a test pilot. He
17:20
Speaker 2: starts stunting around downtown New York and flying around the
17:23
Speaker 2: Statue of Liberty and terrifying people and flying them down
17:26
Speaker 2: the street. His superiors are tired of this behavior, so
17:29
Speaker 2: they finally strip him and basically throw him out. And
17:33
Speaker 2: he's upset about his future, and he's a very... basically
17:37
Speaker 2: you can imagine jimmy stewart in this role as a
17:39
Speaker 2: young kind of shy and stuttering pilot a very talented
17:43
Speaker 2: guy an aviator himself yeah he wasn't and uh would
17:46
Speaker 2: very likely have taken this as a role at that
17:49
Speaker 2: point but he stumbles across some guys who are going
17:53
Speaker 2: to do big advertising stunt it's this is the period
17:55
Speaker 2: of lindbergh so they were doing lots of uh aviation
17:58
Speaker 2: themed things flying around the world and doing crossings of
18:00
Speaker 2: the ocean and They want to do a circumpolar flight.
18:03
Speaker 2: They don't want to fly an equatorial route. They want
18:06
Speaker 2: to go from pole to pole, and that's their advertising
18:09
Speaker 2: theme because they sell a medicine called bicarbrome, which is
18:14
Speaker 2: kind of like an alkyl seltzer, and it's to help
18:16
Speaker 2: cure hangovers. So there's some weirdness about pole to pole,
18:22
Speaker 2: like from your head to your ass. I'm not sure,
18:24
Speaker 2: but something's going to cure you, and they want him
18:27
Speaker 2: to fly. In this version, he's going to fly to
18:29
Speaker 2: the South Pole first, And they've got a very nice,
18:32
Speaker 2: tricked-out experimental plane set. He's got to do broadcasts. He
18:38
Speaker 2: takes off and flies down as far as he can
18:39
Speaker 2: go and dumps his partner and starts heading down over
18:42
Speaker 2: the pole himself. Is that Ted Zucker's voice? Anyway, it's
18:47
Speaker 2: a voice from our past back there. Anyway, he hits
18:51
Speaker 2: something in the air over this polar area. It's like
18:57
Speaker 2: a crater. It's all this fog, and suddenly the temperature's
18:59
Speaker 2: going up. It's almost tropical in Something collides with the plane,
19:02
Speaker 2: and he crashes. And what turns out what collided with
19:05
Speaker 2: the plane was a giant eagle that destroys anything that
19:08
Speaker 2: comes into this valley. But he survives the accident and
19:11
Speaker 2: crawls out, and he's rescued by this girl. It's a
19:14
Speaker 2: beautiful girl, of course. He learns by accident, actually speaks
19:19
Speaker 2: a form of archaic English and understands what he's saying.
19:23
Speaker 2: She takes him to her settlement, and they're a lost
19:25
Speaker 2: tribe of Vikings there who've been there for hundreds of years.
19:28
Speaker 2: in this beautiful valley that is heated by volcanic action.
19:31
Speaker 2: It's just this big bowl. And of course, in classic
19:35
Speaker 2: venture tradition, they have dinosaurs roaming around.
19:39
Speaker 6: That happens a lot. Yeah.
19:40
Speaker 2: And in this case, there are other animals. And the
19:42
Speaker 2: further up the walls you get, the more it becomes
19:44
Speaker 2: more like a sort of European forest and the temperature changes.
19:47
Speaker 2: They have these giant eagles that they... domesticated and learned
19:51
Speaker 2: to ride on and their culture is wrapped up with
19:55
Speaker 2: these are the war eagles and they have to ride
19:58
Speaker 2: down into the valley a couple times a year to
20:00
Speaker 2: do the harvest because it's tropical down there and all
20:03
Speaker 2: the food grows down there it's always a very dangerous
20:06
Speaker 2: time and the dinosaurs are around so he goes down
20:08
Speaker 2: with them He tries to prove himself to be an
20:11
Speaker 2: equal warrior. They're very good-natured guys. They're all like Thor.
20:14
Speaker 2: And they just don't have much confidence in this outlander.
20:19
Speaker 2: He's in love with the princess, naturally, and he decides
20:22
Speaker 2: he'll prove himself. So he wants to try to tame
20:24
Speaker 2: the White Eagle, the White Stallion. And he does so.
20:28
Speaker 2: It's a pretty fun sequence where he jumps off a
20:30
Speaker 2: cliff and lands on him. They tussle in the air.
20:33
Speaker 2: He tames White Eagle, which no one has ever done.
20:35
Speaker 2: So he proves himself to the men. And he wants
20:38
Speaker 2: to go down to the harvest. There's a pretty harrowing
20:42
Speaker 2: sequence where these allosaurs attack and kill eagles and riders
20:45
Speaker 2: and people. He's like, why do you people live this way?
20:48
Speaker 2: Why can't you figure out a way to get rid
20:49
Speaker 2: of these animals? They're too terrified. The girl is brave,
20:54
Speaker 2: so they track them back to their lair, which is
20:56
Speaker 2: a cave which is near the volcano because they're reptiles.
20:59
Speaker 2: They sleep in there all night. And he devises a
21:01
Speaker 2: way of breaching the cave wall and letting loose all
21:04
Speaker 2: this lava and destroying the allosaurs. He saves them. And
21:08
Speaker 2: they're very thankful for all this, and therefore he gets
21:10
Speaker 2: to marry the princess. It was a great big party.
21:12
Speaker 2: And over the months that he's been there, his radio
21:16
Speaker 2: still works occasionally, and he'll tune it in. And he
21:19
Speaker 2: wasn't one to really like the outside world much, and
21:21
Speaker 2: so they're always kind of fascinated and horrified by what
21:25
Speaker 2: they hear. He's expecting to play this music during this
21:28
Speaker 2: big party, and instead there's an announcement that war did
21:31
Speaker 2: break out while he was gone and that Europe has
21:34
Speaker 2: been conquered. and that America is next. And New York
21:38
Speaker 2: has been given an ultimatum. They have three days to
21:40
Speaker 2: capitulate or they will be bombed. And the reason they
21:43
Speaker 2: can be bombed is because the bad guys, who are Nazis,
21:47
Speaker 2: although they're not allowed to say that in 1939 because
21:51
Speaker 2: of the production code, they have developed a real weapon,
21:54
Speaker 2: and it's a secret weapon that they were working on,
21:56
Speaker 2: which is kind of like an electrical neutralizing ray that
22:00
Speaker 2: shuts out all electrical impulses. You can't start an engine.
22:03
Speaker 2: You can't run a radar. You can't move your guns.
22:06
Speaker 2: And if you're high enough up, you can pretty much
22:08
Speaker 2: bomb at will. And they've got it mounted in this
22:12
Speaker 2: giant Zeppelin with a landing field built onto the top
22:17
Speaker 2: of it. So it's the Death Star. It's the Death
22:19
Speaker 2: Star of 1939. The big ray cannon and fighter planes
22:23
Speaker 2: roaring off of it. And they're headed for New York.
22:26
Speaker 2: And they only have three days. He can tell that, well,
22:30
Speaker 2: the eagles are there. They're biological. Nothing can affect them.
22:34
Speaker 7: And.
22:36
Speaker 2: There's a taboo against leaving the valley, but they admire
22:39
Speaker 2: him and they decide they'll join forces. So they all
22:42
Speaker 2: mount up and begin this trek. They have three days
22:45
Speaker 2: to get up to New York, and they do so.
22:47
Speaker 2: And they arrive pretty much in the nick of time
22:49
Speaker 2: as the Zeppelin is breaking the clouds over New York Harbor.
22:53
Speaker 2: And this huge dogfight ensues. And a lot of people
22:56
Speaker 2: are killed, but they eventually manage to board the Zeppelin
22:59
Speaker 2: and knock out the Ray, short-circuit it. And then all
23:02
Speaker 2: the good guys on the ground, who happen to be
23:04
Speaker 2: his old flying partners... They get to start their engines
23:07
Speaker 2: and roar into action. It ends right there with the
23:11
Speaker 2: action still happening. There's this huge hyper-patriotic image where the
23:16
Speaker 2: eagle lands on the shoulder of the Statue of Liberty.
23:19
Speaker 2: It's all in scale now because it's a giant eagle.
23:22
Speaker 2: He jumps off and is standing next to it. His
23:25
Speaker 2: friends go roaring by in their aircraft right past the
23:27
Speaker 2: Statue of Liberty. He's saluting them. I always joke saying, well,
23:31
Speaker 2: if this had been made and actually reached production, there
23:33
Speaker 2: would have been a big banner across the bottom of
23:36
Speaker 2: the screen that said, Buy War Bonds, because this was
23:38
Speaker 2: very much an incitement to action. And that's the plot
23:42
Speaker 2: in a real wrapped-up nutshell version. Definitely.
23:46
Speaker 6: And just, yeah, I mean, so many of those are
23:49
Speaker 6: interesting all on their own, especially mixed together, and by
23:52
Speaker 6: the time you get to planes fighting with giant eagles
23:55
Speaker 6: over New York City, it's like, it is, it's an
23:57
Speaker 6: amazing idea.
23:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's this huge, you know, Pulp Fiction adventure.
24:01
Speaker 8: Yeah.
24:02
Speaker 2: Very appealing, you know, to, to current generation. It's just
24:05
Speaker 2: at the time it was really an extreme idea.
24:08
Speaker 5: Yeah.
24:09
Speaker 2: Both politically and technologically. But Cooper was about pushing limits
24:13
Speaker 2: in all areas. So, um, that's not surprising considering who
24:17
Speaker 2: it was. MGM was probably shaky about it from the start,
24:21
Speaker 2: but they did go ahead and finance production and they
24:24
Speaker 2: worked almost two years on pre-production for this film. And, uh,
24:28
Speaker 2: various drafts of script written by good writers, uh, A
24:32
Speaker 2: lot of technical tests. They were going to shoot it
24:34
Speaker 2: in Technicolor, which was a big first for this kind
24:36
Speaker 2: of a picture. Also stop motion in Technicolor had not
24:40
Speaker 2: been done. And they got pretty far into it. They
24:44
Speaker 2: did one full test, about five minutes of an action
24:46
Speaker 2: sequence with the Allosaurs and the Eagles. And they were
24:49
Speaker 2: preparing to shoot a very elaborate second test. When they
24:52
Speaker 2: kind of pulled the plug on that, they thought the
24:54
Speaker 2: script was getting a little too ambitious. Had Cyril Hume
24:57
Speaker 2: come in and doctor it up. And he's the writer
24:59
Speaker 2: who later wrote Forbidden Plan. He's very talented. And it
25:04
Speaker 2: kept working. But eventually in September of 1939, Hitler actually
25:09
Speaker 2: did invade Poland, and the world finally paid attention to
25:12
Speaker 2: what was happening. And nobody remembers that about a week
25:16
Speaker 2: after the Germans invaded Poland, Russia also invaded Poland. It
25:20
Speaker 2: was the time they had a non-aggression pact. And this
25:23
Speaker 2: probably really set Marion C. Cooper off because he had
25:27
Speaker 2: fought both of them before.
25:28
Speaker 4: Yeah.
25:29
Speaker 2: He was an aviator in World War I. He was
25:31
Speaker 2: shot down and put into a German POW camp. After
25:35
Speaker 2: he got out, he went right to work in Poland
25:38
Speaker 2: with their air corps, flying against the Russians. He was
25:42
Speaker 2: shot down, put into a prison camp, escaped, got out,
25:47
Speaker 2: started making movies, started getting involved in risky business ventures
25:51
Speaker 2: because he liked danger. And when the opportunity to engage
25:56
Speaker 2: in real danger again presented itself, He decided to do
26:00
Speaker 2: that instead of making movies. He's like, I have to
26:01
Speaker 2: go fight the bad guys. And that's what he did.
26:04
Speaker 2: And so War Eagles was a casualty of that. There's
26:08
Speaker 2: only one audio interview of him that exists that mentions it.
26:12
Speaker 2: And he does say, he says, oh, I thought I
26:13
Speaker 2: had a brilliant script, great idea, all the right people.
26:17
Speaker 2: And I was at MGM. But he said, I knew
26:19
Speaker 2: this was going to make about three years to make,
26:22
Speaker 2: and I didn't have time to do that and fight
26:24
Speaker 2: World War II. So he had to abandon it.
26:29
Speaker 6: So what was his fate, I guess, as that went on?
26:33
Speaker 2: Cooper, you know, he went into combat. He planned bombing missions.
26:38
Speaker 2: He worked for Claire Chennault, who ran the Flying Tigers earlier.
26:41
Speaker 2: He was intimately involved in a lot of aspects of
26:44
Speaker 2: the war. Pacific Theater. Retired as a brigadier general in
26:50
Speaker 2: the reserve. But he went back to filmmaking and continued
26:53
Speaker 2: to make really good movies. Actually, his career improved Because
26:57
Speaker 2: he had always been in partnership with John Ford.
27:00
Speaker 8: Yeah.
27:00
Speaker 2: And they were... Cooper was extremely loyal to his friends.
27:04
Speaker 2: And he went back to work with John. He's really
27:06
Speaker 2: famous for... I think he bailed out of... I guess
27:10
Speaker 2: one of the reasons he left one of the earlier
27:11
Speaker 2: studios he was with. He was with... I don't know
27:15
Speaker 2: whose track it was. Maybe Zanuck. Because they wanted to
27:18
Speaker 2: make this movie called Stagecoach. But they wanted to use
27:21
Speaker 2: this unknown actor named John Wayne.
27:24
Speaker 5: And.
27:25
Speaker 2: They didn't want to do it, so he left. He
27:27
Speaker 2: ended up using John Wayne. Of course, he was right.
27:29
Speaker 2: His instincts were always good about that. He did continue
27:32
Speaker 2: to work with John Ford. He did a lot of
27:36
Speaker 2: Ford's great pictures in the 50s. The Searchers, which is
27:39
Speaker 2: probably the best Western ever made. She wore a yellow
27:42
Speaker 2: ribbon and all those pictures like that. He was an
27:44
Speaker 2: executive producer on all those. He invested heavily in aviation.
27:48
Speaker 2: He was a founding board member of a lot of airlines.
27:53
Speaker 2: They did Mighty Joe Young. later on but he never
27:55
Speaker 2: really topped Kong and his ambition was to do so
27:58
Speaker 2: and his only real chance to top it was War
28:00
Speaker 2: Eagles and so he you know he never really reached
28:04
Speaker 2: that pinnacle again but still a very successful career was
28:07
Speaker 2: there any reason.
28:08
Speaker 6: He never came back to it did he just miss
28:10
Speaker 6: the window once World War II happened they.
28:11
Speaker 2: Thought at the time they were like well we're not
28:15
Speaker 2: about to make a movie a fantasy movie where Germany's
28:18
Speaker 2: attacking New York in this atmosphere yeah but also a
28:21
Speaker 2: lot of people look at it and say that Well,
28:24
Speaker 2: the idea of a Zeppelin as a weapon was passe
28:26
Speaker 2: by then. And that's not necessarily true. The only reason
28:30
Speaker 2: the Zeppelin was a dangerous tool was all that hydrogen. Well,
28:36
Speaker 2: the reason that they put hydrogen in Zeppelins instead of
28:39
Speaker 2: helium is because the United States controlled helium production. And
28:43
Speaker 2: they weren't going to sell helium to one of their
28:45
Speaker 2: potential enemies.
28:47
Speaker 6: Sounds like us.
28:48
Speaker 2: And you could put a Zepp up so high at
28:50
Speaker 2: the time that no aircraft could reach it. Germany did
28:53
Speaker 2: have plans to actually attack New York during World War
28:56
Speaker 2: I using a Zeppelin. They call it a height climber,
28:59
Speaker 2: and everybody on board would have to have oxygen, which
29:01
Speaker 2: was unheard of in 1917, but they had it planned,
29:04
Speaker 2: and they could have done it, but they didn't implement it.
29:06
Speaker 2: Those actual Zeppelins were destroyed on the ground. Otherwise, they
29:10
Speaker 2: might have done it, and so they probably could have
29:12
Speaker 2: dropped a nuclear bomb on New York with a Zeppelin
29:15
Speaker 2: in World War II, but just didn't have time to
29:18
Speaker 2: develop that.
29:19
Speaker 7: Hmm.
29:20
Speaker 2: And Cooper was aware of all this. He was a
29:21
Speaker 2: member of the OSS, and he knew about all the
29:23
Speaker 2: developments going on everywhere. And he'd heard about the death ray,
29:27
Speaker 2: and he read Pulp Fiction a lot. I have a
29:29
Speaker 2: magazine that came out right before he did his synopsis.
29:32
Speaker 2: It's very likely that he read this article in Flying
29:35
Speaker 2: Aces magazine that talked about the death ray that was coming.
29:40
Speaker 2: It was very much what's in the film. So he
29:43
Speaker 2: was rooted into pop culture, knew a lot of references,
29:46
Speaker 2: read a lot, and put almost all of it into
29:49
Speaker 2: War Eagles. And his synopsis is about 11, 12 pages,
29:54
Speaker 2: and it's all there. And then MGM went about hiring
29:57
Speaker 2: writers to try to realize that. A lot of good
29:59
Speaker 2: people worked on it.
30:01
Speaker 6: So it's sort of floundered forever. I mean, you've said
30:05
Speaker 6: other people have taken up interest as time's gone on,
30:08
Speaker 6: but it's still... Yeah, the.
30:09
Speaker 2: Like I said, they just thought it was old hat. And,
30:12
Speaker 2: you know, you can imagine that for a few decades
30:15
Speaker 2: after World War II.
30:16
Speaker 6: Yeah.
30:16
Speaker 2: Well, we can't make a movie where the Nazis attack
30:19
Speaker 2: New York because that didn't happen. Yeah. The whole idea
30:21
Speaker 2: of an alternate history was not popular.
30:23
Speaker 4: No, no.
30:24
Speaker 2: So... In the 60s, Foy Ackerman, he'd always been a
30:29
Speaker 2: fan of this idea. He did tell George Powell, who
30:32
Speaker 2: was working at MGM at the time, I think in
30:35
Speaker 2: 1967 on The Power, he said there's this project called
30:38
Speaker 2: War Eagles, and it's probably still there. You can find
30:41
Speaker 2: scripts and things. If Powell would have been a logical choice,
30:44
Speaker 2: he made big epic pictures. He said he looked for it.
30:48
Speaker 2: He couldn't find any trace of it at the time. Now,
30:49
Speaker 2: that's very likely because MGM was already throwing stuff out.
30:54
Speaker 2: and had already probably divested themselves of a lot of
30:56
Speaker 2: the script material. He couldn't find it. In the 1970s,
31:00
Speaker 2: the early 1970s, Jim Danforth, who was a pretty well-known animator,
31:05
Speaker 2: he won an Oscar for special effects for When Dinosaurs
31:08
Speaker 2: Rule the Earth. He was interested in War Eagles, so
31:11
Speaker 2: he approached MGM, but he didn't have backing and he
31:15
Speaker 2: didn't have a lot of funding.
31:16
Speaker 6: Does he think he would do it animated?
31:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was going to be stop-motion, because he's really
31:20
Speaker 2: an incredible animator, one of the best. And he said,
31:26
Speaker 2: I want to look at this project. And MGM basically said, well,
31:28
Speaker 2: how much money do you have? And he said, well,
31:29
Speaker 2: I don't have anything yet, but let me at least...
31:31
Speaker 2: They wouldn't even let him see the script. It was
31:33
Speaker 2: like a shell game. They were like, we'll show what
31:35
Speaker 2: you have, what we have if you show us what
31:37
Speaker 2: you have. So it was frustrating for him. He had
31:40
Speaker 2: to walk away. He never had much confidence in the script,
31:44
Speaker 2: but he had only read fragments and didn't know the
31:48
Speaker 2: full story. Ray Harryhausen himself... Like I said, he met
31:53
Speaker 2: Willis O'Brien during production of this film. He was interested
31:58
Speaker 2: in doing it, and after his last film, his last
32:01
Speaker 2: film was Clash of the Titans in 1981. It was
32:04
Speaker 2: a very successful film financially. It made MGM and him
32:09
Speaker 2: finally a fairly wealthy man. He said, well, what do
32:12
Speaker 2: you want to do now? And he said, well, I
32:14
Speaker 2: kind of want to do this film you already own
32:15
Speaker 2: called War Eagles. And they were like, oh, you don't
32:17
Speaker 2: want to do that.
32:18
Speaker 8: That's old.
32:20
Speaker 2: Now, this was said to him in the summer of
32:22
Speaker 2: 1981 and in the summer of 1981 also saw the
32:26
Speaker 2: release of Raiders of the Lost Ark, which of course
32:28
Speaker 2: was a fantasy film with Nazis as villains. So obviously
32:32
Speaker 2: these guys didn't go to the movies, because they could
32:35
Speaker 2: have had something even better right there. They were like, no,
32:38
Speaker 2: that's old.
32:39
Speaker 6: You don't want to do that.
32:40
Speaker 2: And their attitude remained that, at MGM at least, probably
32:43
Speaker 2: to this day. It's an old project. There was a
32:46
Speaker 2: guy shortly after that who was interested. Al Taylor did
32:50
Speaker 2: a new script, and tried to talk to them, and
32:53
Speaker 2: they were just like, nope, not acceptable. So they wrote
32:56
Speaker 2: it off. And that's how it stayed. Over the years,
33:01
Speaker 2: there was always a lot of interest. Its reputation is
33:04
Speaker 2: one of the greatest films ever made. Various people got
33:09
Speaker 2: interested in the history of the film, including me, obviously.
33:11
Speaker 2: And attempts were made to get something off the ground.
33:17
Speaker 2: I was already working on this as a history book,
33:20
Speaker 2: just on my own. and had worked with everyone, Bob
33:24
Speaker 2: and Ray and Ray's agent. When Ray's agent, Arnold, called
33:27
Speaker 2: Bob one day and said, well, who in particular would
33:29
Speaker 2: be the best person to talk to about war eagles?
33:31
Speaker 2: And Bob said, well, Dave Conover, he knows all about it.
33:35
Speaker 2: And Arnold already knew me because I'd had Ray at
33:37
Speaker 2: my show. He called me and he said, well, confidentially,
33:41
Speaker 2: we're trying to get this made again. We're looking to
33:45
Speaker 2: get the rights secured. I had seen the paperwork that
33:48
Speaker 2: included Cooper's synopsis, and it predates all involvement with MGM.
33:53
Speaker 2: They're not mentioned. So it's the first dated paperwork. So
33:57
Speaker 2: all the lawyers go to work and realize, well, this
33:58
Speaker 2: means Cooper's concept predates MGM's scripts.
34:02
Speaker 6: We can license that, not the screenplay.
34:05
Speaker 2: And that's what they did. They decided, well, the rights
34:07
Speaker 2: to the concept have reverted to the Cooper estate. The
34:10
Speaker 2: rights to the MGM material remain in the hands of MGM.
34:13
Speaker 2: Not that MGM cares. No. They probably don't even know
34:17
Speaker 2: where the scripts are. Nice. They're not in the business
34:21
Speaker 2: of caring about that kind of stuff anymore. The reason
34:24
Speaker 2: those kind of rights do exist is due to... Disney
34:29
Speaker 2: got into a panic sometime, I think, in the 90s
34:33
Speaker 2: that they realized they hadn't renewed copyright on Mickey Mouse
34:37
Speaker 2: and a few other things. And they're like, oh my God,
34:39
Speaker 2: someone's going to start producing unlicensed Mickey Mouse material. Nobody's
34:44
Speaker 2: afraid of Disney. I don't know what their thinking was,
34:47
Speaker 2: but it was fueled by their lawyers. So they petitioned Congress,
34:51
Speaker 2: and I think in particular Sonny Bono, to let's get
34:55
Speaker 2: extended rights on work for hire. And with that kind
35:01
Speaker 2: of muscle behind it, that got passed pretty quickly as
35:04
Speaker 2: a copyright law. So now anything for a studio that
35:08
Speaker 2: was produced as a work for hire, meaning you were
35:11
Speaker 2: paid as a writer, belongs to them for 100 years.
35:14
Speaker 2: No questions asked. which means anybody who wants to make
35:18
Speaker 2: a script based on what's in my book without directly
35:23
Speaker 2: dealing with MGM, they're going to have to wait until 2039.
35:26
Speaker 2: So that pretty much cooled it. But they had the concept,
35:30
Speaker 2: and they decided, well, we can write scripts based on
35:32
Speaker 2: the concepts. Ray Harryhausen's group of people, Ray Harryhausen Presents
35:35
Speaker 2: at the time, was the company's name. They started commissioning
35:39
Speaker 2: some people to write different new versions of the script.
35:41
Speaker 2: They still were period films. And word got out, and...
35:47
Speaker 2: I started getting involved with marketing that idea. And then
35:50
Speaker 2: that publisher connected with them, was interested in doing my book.
35:54
Speaker 2: So I didn't have to look for a publisher. That
35:56
Speaker 2: was kind of nice. They would say, Oh, sure.
35:58
Speaker 6: Another nice coincidence.
36:00
Speaker 2: Well, that's first. It was nice. And then, uh, they
36:03
Speaker 2: were going to do novelization and, and, and just bring
36:05
Speaker 2: it out into the public a little more. And they like,
36:07
Speaker 2: they always like to have a book to point out.
36:10
Speaker 2: We have this comic or we have this novel and
36:12
Speaker 2: that's why they did it.
36:12
Speaker 6: A property.
36:13
Speaker 2: Yeah. And, uh, Karl Maycheck did the novelization. He was
36:18
Speaker 2: pretty well known to anime fans all over the world.
36:21
Speaker 2: He was a guy, you either loved him or you
36:23
Speaker 2: hated him. He was a nice guy. He's the guy
36:26
Speaker 2: responsible for bringing, essentially bringing anime to America. He worked
36:31
Speaker 2: with Harmony Gold bringing in Robotech, which was made out
36:36
Speaker 2: of three different Japanese shows rolled into one, but he
36:38
Speaker 2: did it. He did Robotech, Macross. He got Miyazaki's films
36:44
Speaker 2: into the country. He's the first guy to do a
36:46
Speaker 2: dub of My Neighbor Totoro. He had a big impact
36:52
Speaker 2: on that world. Some people like that, some people don't,
36:55
Speaker 2: but he was a nice guy. He unfortunately passed away
36:58
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago now. So his book didn't
37:04
Speaker 2: get read much and his screenplay didn't get seen much.
37:07
Speaker 2: Things didn't work out very well dealing with those people.
37:10
Speaker 2: I guess I won't say anything nasty about them. This
37:12
Speaker 2: is a public venue. So that didn't work out for
37:15
Speaker 2: a lot of people working with that group, that publisher
37:18
Speaker 2: in particular. So I never signed a contract with them.
37:23
Speaker 2: They all severed their business agreements shortly afterwards. But during
37:28
Speaker 2: that period, a lot of people were interested. Peter Jackson
37:33
Speaker 2: was interested because he's a huge fan and collector. And
37:36
Speaker 2: he was making King Kong at the time.
37:37
Speaker 5: Yeah.
37:38
Speaker 2: So he was very interested in the material. He's got
37:41
Speaker 2: copies of all the stills and artwork from me. He
37:44
Speaker 2: talked about maybe having Weta start doing preliminary work on
37:47
Speaker 2: an idea. At the time, the thinking was, well, he's
37:50
Speaker 2: doing Kong. And if it's huge, they're going to want
37:55
Speaker 2: a sequel. And he doesn't want a remake, Son of Kong.
37:57
Speaker 2: King Kong Lives. Or that. That's what you want to make.
38:01
Speaker 2: It is a masterpiece. King Kong Lives. I love that movie.
38:05
Speaker 2: It's audacious to make a movie called King Kong Lives.
38:08
Speaker 2: It's more audacious to put a nuclear heart into a
38:11
Speaker 2: giant's body.
38:12
Speaker 6: Jervic 7.
38:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's huge. I love that movie.
38:15
Speaker 7: It's awesome.
38:15
Speaker 2: For all the wrong reasons. But it's, you know, they
38:21
Speaker 2: want a sequel. So the idea was that, well, he
38:24
Speaker 2: remade Marion C. Cooper's greatest film. Now we're going to
38:26
Speaker 2: make the movie Marion C. Cooper could never do.
38:29
Speaker 6: Nice.
38:29
Speaker 2: And that was a good angle.
38:30
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's the way to pitch it.
38:32
Speaker 2: But King Kong was not as big a success as
38:36
Speaker 2: they planned. It was a very expensive movie. It wasn't
38:39
Speaker 2: kind of long. Critics didn't savage it at all. They
38:42
Speaker 2: all liked it for the most part. Some of the
38:44
Speaker 2: hardcore Kong fans weren't so crazy about it. It made
38:47
Speaker 2: half a billion dollars, but that still wasn't enough to
38:49
Speaker 2: let Peter make whatever he wanted. So now he's having
38:52
Speaker 2: to make Hobbit movies again. That's what studios will do
38:56
Speaker 2: to you. But he's interested. The Conrans, who did Sky Captain,
39:00
Speaker 2: which is very retro.
39:02
Speaker 6: I was thinking that as I originally heard the pitch.
39:05
Speaker 6: I was like that. It certainly falls into that category,
39:08
Speaker 6: that style.
39:09
Speaker 2: That's another film that was very unfairly forgotten.
39:12
Speaker 8: Yeah.
39:13
Speaker 2: They bungled the release. And promotion. And the promotion.
39:17
Speaker 5: Yeah.
39:17
Speaker 2: They promoted it fairly good in connection with Lord of
39:19
Speaker 2: the Rings.
39:20
Speaker 6: Yeah.
39:20
Speaker 2: Because the kids would come in that I worked with
39:22
Speaker 2: at the theater, and they'd say, what is this guy
39:24
Speaker 2: captain thing and I was like looks pretty cool and
39:27
Speaker 2: they were all excited but then they didn't release it
39:28
Speaker 2: until September and I'm like that's a dumb time to
39:31
Speaker 2: release a picture like that you know Angelina Jolie in
39:35
Speaker 2: an eyepatch it's pretty hot stuff but they blew it
39:40
Speaker 2: but they've been interested in doing it a lot of
39:42
Speaker 2: other people have expressed interest but it's been a matter
39:45
Speaker 2: of getting some producer there to write the checks and
39:48
Speaker 2: they're not looking at it seriously special effects companies have
39:53
Speaker 2: all said yeah because they want to work with Harry
39:55
Speaker 2: House and he'll be an executive producer on this but
39:58
Speaker 2: it's kind of run into the wall and seems pretty
40:01
Speaker 2: stagnant right now Ray is 90 he's slowed down considerably
40:06
Speaker 2: because of that he's in England not planning to return
40:08
Speaker 2: to the US anytime soon has other concerns so the
40:13
Speaker 2: efforts continue but at the level they're at right now
40:16
Speaker 2: I don't see it happening anytime soon.
40:19
Speaker 6: Well, how many, I know at the time you originally
40:22
Speaker 6: were telling me about it, you had already pulled out
40:24
Speaker 6: pieces that you had gotten. How many different pieces of evidence,
40:28
Speaker 6: I guess, at this point have you picked up and
40:30
Speaker 6: now have in your collection?
40:32
Speaker 2: Quite a bit. I have a lot of vintage studio stills.
40:36
Speaker 2: That's where most of the material comes from. Some of them,
40:40
Speaker 2: I've got materials from my contributors. Mark Berry had gotten
40:45
Speaker 2: some studio stills. A lot of vintage studios still. Somehow
40:48
Speaker 2: a lot of this material survived. It survived at MGM.
40:53
Speaker 2: Most of it is from sequences that were actually cut
40:55
Speaker 2: from the script. That's why they survived. They were obviously
40:59
Speaker 2: put in a box that didn't say War Eagles. Because
41:02
Speaker 2: everyone thinks War Eagles basically is pitched a lot. A
41:06
Speaker 2: lot of material went to the furnaces. A lot of
41:08
Speaker 2: material went to auction. It just got chucked. But starting sometime,
41:19
Speaker 2: obviously around 1970, I would say. That's when Bob Burns
41:23
Speaker 2: received some of his material. They had a big auction
41:24
Speaker 2: at MGM. That's when he first saw the time machine
41:28
Speaker 2: for sale, but he couldn't afford it, so he had
41:30
Speaker 2: to track it for years until he could buy it.
41:33
Speaker 2: That same auction, they were just throwing stuff out, and
41:40
Speaker 2: a guy was walking by, a friend of Bob's, saw
41:42
Speaker 2: something on the market. He looked, and it was some...
41:46
Speaker 2: Photos of dinosaurs and things. He picked up another sheet,
41:49
Speaker 2: and it was like a slide strip, and it was
41:52
Speaker 2: color photos of dinosaurs. He said, well, Bob would like
41:55
Speaker 2: this stuff, so he just pulled out the garbage. This
41:57
Speaker 2: all turned out to be War Eagle's material. Over the years,
42:02
Speaker 2: Bob collected a few other images here and there. Material
42:05
Speaker 2: showed up at Larry Edmonds' bookstore in the 1970s.
42:07
Speaker 6: A lot of.
42:08
Speaker 2: Photographs of artwork, probably from the art director's estate. So
42:14
Speaker 2: roughly 20, 30 images showed up then. Some color, not color,
42:18
Speaker 2: but some actual stills of film of an eagle fighting
42:21
Speaker 2: an allosaurus, things like that, surfaced. Some of them were
42:24
Speaker 2: made public, some weren't. The armatures, they built several animation armatures.
42:32
Speaker 2: The armatures started to pop up in the 80s, I
42:34
Speaker 2: think late 80s. Well, one popped up, I think, maybe
42:38
Speaker 2: in the 70s. It was a A lot of the
42:40
Speaker 2: guys have gone on to become big special effects guys.
42:43
Speaker 2: Dennis Murin, Dan Forrest, various other animators. They found a
42:49
Speaker 2: box that belonged to Pete Peterson, who was one of
42:53
Speaker 2: Willis O'Brien's assistants. And in the box were a War
42:59
Speaker 2: Eagle armature. some of the creatures from the spider pit
43:02
Speaker 2: in King Kong, the giant being, things like that. And
43:07
Speaker 2: a War Eagles armature popped up then, which ended up
43:09
Speaker 2: at Jim Danforth. Now it's for the collector named Ron Borst.
43:16
Speaker 2: We knew there were other armatures. Well, there was an
43:17
Speaker 2: auction in 1989 where three of the Eagles were auctioned.
43:21
Speaker 2: They didn't even call them Eagles. They thought they were
43:23
Speaker 2: dinosaurs from 1 million B.C. The guys who really knew
43:27
Speaker 2: knew what they were, but nobody had any money, so
43:30
Speaker 2: One collector with deep pockets got all three for $ 1, 800,
43:32
Speaker 2: which is nothing by today's standards. Those Eagle armatures have
43:38
Speaker 2: auctioned over the last few years. One, about five years ago,
43:42
Speaker 2: to Peter Jackson, we spent around $ 16, 000 for it. The
43:47
Speaker 2: other two sold yesterday in Los Angeles. And I don't
43:52
Speaker 2: know the prices realized. They were expecting $ 50, 000 to $ 60, 000
43:56
Speaker 2: for the pair. Peter would probably be buying those, I
44:00
Speaker 2: would imagine. But I don't know if he was... He
44:05
Speaker 2: knew about it, I know that. Because he's an obsessive
44:09
Speaker 2: collector of all Kong and Willis O'Brien material. He has
44:13
Speaker 2: the dinosaurs from King Kong, he has one of the
44:14
Speaker 2: Kong armatures, he has Willis O'Brien's 35mm Mitchell camera. I mean,
44:19
Speaker 2: you name it, he's got it. Everything but the Kong
44:21
Speaker 2: armature that Bob Burns has. But he's got lots of... Well,
44:26
Speaker 2: he ended up with the paperwork for War Eagles when
44:28
Speaker 2: he got all this material from Forry Ackerman, somehow over
44:31
Speaker 2: the years, Forry had gotten hold of the art director's paperwork.
44:34
Speaker 2: So Peter ended up with that and was very generous
44:37
Speaker 2: and let me use that for the book. So a
44:39
Speaker 2: lot of different finds, a lot of sites. And like
44:45
Speaker 2: I said, the original scripts turned up at USC. Some
44:49
Speaker 2: original script pages turned up through the estates of various writers.
44:54
Speaker 2: And I found out about these and eventually obtained three
44:57
Speaker 2: pages from what looked like the last draft that Hume
45:01
Speaker 2: actually wrote himself. So I have the last typed page
45:06
Speaker 2: of the last draft, which is pretty cool. And it's
45:10
Speaker 2: got his weird obsessive corrections on it in pencil, where
45:13
Speaker 2: he's changing words here and there, right down to the end.
45:17
Speaker 2: He wrote the end, then scribbled out the, and then
45:19
Speaker 2: decided to write the again off.
45:21
Speaker 7: To the side. It's funny.
45:23
Speaker 2: And so that's cool. That's probably the coolest thing I own,
45:25
Speaker 2: is that.
45:26
Speaker 7: Nice.
45:27
Speaker 2: And since the script has always been central to my research,
45:31
Speaker 2: that's kind of nice that that was the piece that
45:33
Speaker 2: I ended up getting was a script page. There are
45:39
Speaker 2: still a lot of material. Like I said, it exists
45:40
Speaker 2: in the hands of various collectors, but they've all been
45:42
Speaker 2: very generous as far as letting me use it, make copies.
45:46
Speaker 2: The production designers' daughters, the Gleason's, have been really great.
45:51
Speaker 2: And they found material at home that no one knew
45:54
Speaker 2: was there. There were War Eagles drawings and other guys
45:58
Speaker 2: have found it in various places, everywhere from, like I said,
46:01
Speaker 2: buildings being ready to be condemned to antique stores. Art
46:05
Speaker 2: has turned up, and probably will continue to turn up,
46:08
Speaker 2: especially if the book's been printed. That's usually the key.
46:10
Speaker 2: If you want to write a book about something, as
46:13
Speaker 2: soon as you write the book, that's when everything else
46:15
Speaker 2: will fall into place. The floodgates will open, and you'll
46:17
Speaker 2: find out how wrong you were about everything. So far,
46:20
Speaker 2: that hasn't happened too badly.
46:22
Speaker 6: Well, I guess, if nothing else... Give everybody the details
46:26
Speaker 6: on it. It is just entitled War Eagles.
46:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's War Eagles as part of the series of books.
46:33
Speaker 2: My co-writer, my editor on this is Philip J. Reilly,
46:36
Speaker 2: who's been a genre writer for years and specializes in screenplays.
46:40
Speaker 2: And in the 1990s, he had a series called The
46:42
Speaker 2: Magic Image Film Books, which I bought nearly all of them,
46:45
Speaker 2: and they're all the classic universal pictures. And he used
46:48
Speaker 2: scripts provided by Forrest J. Ackerman, and he had a
46:50
Speaker 2: lot of production material. added to it. He had like
46:54
Speaker 2: the photo press books and the poster sheets and stills
46:58
Speaker 2: and he had some really good writers contribute to that series.
47:01
Speaker 2: He's got Greg Bank and Tom Weaver with production history material.
47:04
Speaker 2: And I said, well, this is ideal for War Eagles.
47:06
Speaker 2: So when the opportunity finally arose to publish and Phil
47:09
Speaker 2: was interested, we decided to pursue that same style because
47:13
Speaker 2: he's got a new series of books that are all
47:16
Speaker 2: about unproduced films. And a lot of them are all
47:18
Speaker 2: genre films like The Boris Karloff Cagliostro or the alternate
47:24
Speaker 2: script of Dracula's Daughter that James Whale was going to direct,
47:27
Speaker 2: things like that. And he always was interested in War Eagles,
47:30
Speaker 2: so we partnered up on this. So initially it's just
47:34
Speaker 2: called War Eagles. It's on the binding. But the title
47:37
Speaker 2: I always wanted to use for the book is War Eagles,
47:39
Speaker 2: the Unmaking of an Epic, which is what's on the
47:42
Speaker 2: title page because that's my production background. So I always
47:47
Speaker 2: call it War Eagles, Unmaking of an Epic. If you
47:49
Speaker 2: check on Amazon, that's what you'll find. You can type
47:52
Speaker 2: War Eagles or The Unmaking of an Epic on there.
47:54
Speaker 2: You can put my name in or Phil's name, and
47:56
Speaker 2: it'll pop up. It's on Amazon. It's on a lot
47:59
Speaker 2: of different online sites. You can get it directly from
48:01
Speaker 2: the publisher and Bear Manor Media, or you can buy
48:04
Speaker 2: it from me.
48:07
Speaker 6: Is there a way to get a hold of you directly?
48:09
Speaker 2: WarEaglesGuy at AOL.com. All one word, very simple. I'm happy
48:15
Speaker 2: to talk to anybody who knows anything more about the
48:17
Speaker 2: production or is interested in the book. You can always
48:20
Speaker 2: reach me there.
48:21
Speaker 6: Sounds good. Well, like I said, I think it's an
48:23
Speaker 6: amazing idea for a movie and, as it turns out,
48:26
Speaker 6: a book. So it was definitely good to pass that
48:29
Speaker 6: along to people and get the word out and hopefully
48:33
Speaker 6: find people that are interested as well and pick up
48:35
Speaker 6: a copy of the book. So thanks for talking to
48:37
Speaker 6: us today.
48:38
Speaker 2: Thank you. I really enjoyed it.
48:39
Speaker 7: Thank you. Tweet Audio, your source for high-performance, noise-reducing earbuds.
49:10
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49:38
Speaker 2: Dear Mr.
49:38
Speaker 9: Vernon, we accept the fact that we have to sacrifice
49:41
Speaker 9: a few hours a week to podcast about whatever you
49:43
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49:46
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49:48
Speaker 9: You see us as you want to see us, in
49:50
Speaker 9: the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions.
49:53
Speaker 2: But what we found out is that each of us
49:55
Speaker 2: is a podcast about other podcasts. A podcast about television.
49:59
Speaker 4: A podcast about films.
50:01
Speaker 2: A podcast about music.
50:03
Speaker 8: A podcast about books.
50:04
Speaker 2: Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, The Podcast Podcast.
50:10
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50:12
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50:14
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50:16
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50:18
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50:22
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50:25
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50:30
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50:31
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50:33
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50:34
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50:36
Speaker 3: And just stop by the website for our frequent updates.
50:42
Speaker 7: That's moviemeltdown.com. On by, on by, on by, on by,
51:05
Speaker 7: on by.
51:08
Speaker 2: It's part of your problem, you know, you haven't seen
51:11
Speaker 2: enough movies.
51:11
Speaker 6: All of life's riddles are answered.
51:14
Speaker 4: In the movies. And now, on with the show.
51:24
Speaker 1: We walk the streets at night. We go where eagles stare.
51:31
Speaker 1: They pick up every movement They pick up every loser
51:38
Speaker 1: With jaded eyes and features You think they really care
51:46
Speaker 1: I ain't no goddamn son of a bitch You better
51:51
Speaker 1: think about it, baby I ain't no goddamn son of
51:55
Speaker 1: a bitch You better think about it.
51:58
Speaker 2: Baby Alright, we are back.
52:00
Speaker 6: Thanks again to Dave for talking with us and sharing
52:02
Speaker 6: the process that went into writing this book. But that
52:05
Speaker 6: was still just an overview. I mean, there's so much
52:07
Speaker 6: more in the book itself, including all of that concept
52:11
Speaker 6: artwork he mentioned, pictures of some of the scripts that
52:14
Speaker 6: he'd uncovered as he went along, and the pictures of
52:17
Speaker 6: the stop-motion animation skeletons that surfaced in recent years. So,
52:21
Speaker 6: it's just an amazing book. And as most of our
52:23
Speaker 6: listeners know, I'm a little more of a movie guy
52:26
Speaker 6: than book-oriented, we'll say. So the fact that I think
52:30
Speaker 6: this is a book worth reading, that should say a lot. Again,
52:33
Speaker 6: that's War Eagles, The Unmaking of an Epic by David
52:36
Speaker 6: Conover and Philip J.
52:38
Speaker 8: Reilly.
52:39
Speaker 6: And with that, I'll say, okay, kids, get out your
52:41
Speaker 6: decoder pins. It is time for the Movie Meltdown Secret
52:45
Speaker 6: Circle reveal of an upcoming exciting feature.
52:48
Speaker 8: That tonight's message was really important.
52:50
Speaker 6: Now this one we've actually been talking about for a while.
52:53
Speaker 6: I brought it up several months back and mentioned it.
52:57
Speaker 6: I think I just ran across it sort of cross-referencing
53:01
Speaker 6: one of the actors and came across it and wasn't
53:03
Speaker 6: sure what it was and started reading up on it.
53:06
Speaker 6: And I mentioned it to Misty and Misty was like,
53:08
Speaker 6: oh yeah, I've been wanting to see that. She'd had
53:10
Speaker 6: that on her list for a couple of years. The
53:13
Speaker 6: movie is called Forget-Me-Not. It actually was made in 2009.
53:18
Speaker 6: The director is Tyler Oliver. And I was actually going
53:22
Speaker 6: to give you a big heads up on it because
53:24
Speaker 6: it had been through some sort of rocky path at
53:28
Speaker 6: least after it came out and making its way to
53:30
Speaker 6: the public. So at first I thought I was going
53:32
Speaker 6: to have to tell you you're going to have to
53:34
Speaker 6: go looking for it. You're going to have to go
53:36
Speaker 6: find yourself a copy in one way or another. But
53:39
Speaker 6: actually in checking today, it seems like just in the
53:42
Speaker 6: time that we've been talking about it to getting the
53:45
Speaker 6: show actually recorded, it's become available. So it's actually easier
53:50
Speaker 6: for everyone involved. So it is now available on DVD.
53:55
Speaker 2: I looked it up.
53:56
Speaker 6: It's actually available through Netflix. And another odd one, and
54:00
Speaker 6: I've heard this was coming, but this is actually the
54:02
Speaker 6: first time I've seen it. It did come up as
54:05
Speaker 6: a rental on YouTube, which I knew they were going
54:08
Speaker 6: to get into that because basically every online outlet is
54:11
Speaker 6: going to get into that. That's just kind of the
54:13
Speaker 6: way the business is going at this point. But yeah,
54:15
Speaker 6: that's the first time I've seen that. So for, you know,
54:18
Speaker 6: four bucks or so, you can go rent yourself a
54:21
Speaker 6: 48-hour window through YouTube and watch it. So that's a
54:26
Speaker 6: new interesting development in the movie world, too. So it's,
54:29
Speaker 6: you know, several options of how you can get a
54:32
Speaker 6: hold of a copy. But yeah, it'll be interesting to
54:34
Speaker 6: see what everybody thinks about this one. It seems very
54:36
Speaker 6: much like a typical teen horror movie, but Is it?
54:41
Speaker 6: It sort of takes a turn midway through that I
54:44
Speaker 6: think will be interesting to discuss. So you go find
54:47
Speaker 6: yourself a copy and see what you think, and we'll
54:49
Speaker 6: be talking about it in a few weeks now.
54:52
Speaker 2: Otherwise, that about does it.
54:53
Speaker 6: We will return next week.
54:54
Speaker 2: Same geek time, same geek feed. Thanks for listening.
59:40
Speaker 3: The closing in, the force of the spirit standing high
59:45
Speaker 3: in the sky The game was hard, the only way in,
59:48
Speaker 3: it's really impossible to play They made their way.
1:00:24
Speaker 4: They chose to fly.
1:01:00
Speaker 2: Now we're finally finished, sort of. You're never finished.
1:01:05
Speaker 8: No. This show is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced
1:01:07
Speaker 8: and edited by Brian Renfro, with opening music performed by
1:01:10
Speaker 8: The Empires. To help support the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com
1:01:15
Speaker 8: for ways that you can contribute or advertise with us.