March 21 - Hollywood, CA, - King Kong was the Ape of the Hour at a special screening of “Skull Island” a DVD extra on the soon to be released 2-Disc Special Edition DVD of King Kong and Paul Davids’ documentary on the origins of Sci-Fi movies called The Sci-Fi Boys.
Tony Timpone, editor of Fangoria Magazine, was the host for the evening. He introduced the bonus feature: “Skull Island,” a “documentary” which tells about the history, evolution, and demise of the infamous Skull Island - King Kong’s home. The feature is a typical study of the life and history of a long mysterious place, shrouded in legend, much as you see on The Nature Channel or in the pages National Geographic. “Explorers” and “researchers” from the WETA workshop in New Zealand discuss how the geography and location of the island allowed for dinosaurs, long extinct on other parts of the world, could flourish and adapt to the unforgiving terrain of the island. Several “expeditions” to the island in the early to mid-parts of the 20th Century uncovered ancient ruins of an advanced society along par with the Incas. But the dangerous and frequent earthquakes made remaining there impossible. The current human inhabitants have been reduced to living among the dead of the ancients and striking up a deadly bargain with the largest of the indigenous animals for survival.
Sci-Fi Boys is a documentary made by Paul Davids - himself a self-professed Sci-Fi boy. The project took three years to complete and it is about how one 35 cent magazine, Famous Monsters of Movieland in the 1950’s and 60’s, united a generation of filmmakers and transformed moving making from the schlocky science fiction exploitation films of the 60’s to the blockbusters of today - including Peter Jackson’s re-make of King Kong. Innovators such as Ray Harryhausen and Ray Bradbury are interviewed along side those that came after Rick Baker, Peter Jackson, and Stephen Sommers. It’s a yearbook of sorts highlight contributions each Sci-Fi Boy made to cinema and the exciting future digital technology is going to provide.
After the screening, a panel of distinguished guests, moderated by Paul Davids assembled to answer questions from the audience. Paul Davids gave some opening remarks:
“I found it quite a thrill to see Peter Jackson’s interpretation of Skull Island. I think we all learned something knew from that documentary. For example: Skull Island sank into the sea in 1948. It’s the same thing that happened to the lost continent of Atlantis. I was just thinking that maybe someone should have told Dino DeLaurentiis about that because he sent a camera crew to the island in 1978 and I heard that all they found floating in the ocean there was Rick Baker in a gorilla suit. Thank you for being with us tonight, Rick. You survived to be the pilot who shot down Kong in Peter Jackson’s film.
We’ve seen the back-story to the King Kong legend now we’re going to see a film that I made, The Sci-Fi Boys that gives a very different back-story; not just to Kong but to the genre of Science Fiction Cinema and Special Effects films. In the beginning was the blank silver screen and it needed magic. Our cinema fore-fathers lo, in the days of silent films created the first special effects. And behold they saw that it was good. Willis O’Brien, who did the effects for the original 1933 King Kong, awed the audiences of his day. But he left room for future inventions. So other men would come along to take dominion over the dinosaurs of the jungles and the medusas and harpies of Greek mythology and of the alien spacemen and their flying saucers. One such man is one who some of us consider a prophet named Ray Harryhausen. Prophet Harryhausen heard the words that there was going to be great flood. And by that I mean a flood in special effects of course in theaters all across the world. And so he created amazing effects in color and Dynamation, with creatures more life-like than in our nightmares: the skeletons of Jason and the Argonauts, [and] the Cyclops of the 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
Baker with Kong Poster
And then along came Forest J Ackerman. Thank you for being with us tonight Forry. Our Uncle Forry was the scribe who wrote the scripture about those miracles in his 35 cent magazine on newsprint: Famous Monsters of Filmland, inspiring kids to make monsters. Some of those kids are now adults whom you all know: Dennis Muren, Rick Baker, Steven Spielberg, Jon Landis, Steve Johnson (thank you for being with us Steve), Joe Dante, Bill Malone (who’s with us here tonight as well), and even Peter Jackson. And then there was me. When I was barely a teenager an 8mm film I made was one of the winners of the first Famous Monsters Amateur Movie Contest. And those couple pages of publicity in Forry’s magazine really went to my head. Because of that I had to come out to Hollywood and became a Production Coordinator on The Transformers shows that a lot of you grew up on. And then I was the Executive Producer and Co-Writer of the movie Roswell (flying saucers). That early experience of being the 8mm prize winner led me to other kids who were doing similar things: kids like Dennis Muren who animated clay dinosaurs, Donald F. Glut who at age 15 turned himself into an incredible Dracula, (and Don is with us tonight too, thank you Don), Bill Malone who today actually owns the original Robbie the Robot, and also a very young Leonard Maltin, a very young critic. I think he started when he was around 12 who is now a renowned Cinema Scholar.
We all have roots that went back to our boyhood. We were the Sci-Fi Boys because of Famous Monsters. I suppose that because of that that it was inevitable one day I would make the film that you’re about to see: The Sci-Fi Boys. As it says in the good book: It was written.
I’d like to say a few words about the people that I think you’ve come to know as family tonight. We have Forry Ackerman, Rick Baker, the kid from Texas that Rick Baker discovered while promoting Star Wars in that state Steve Johnson, [and] Basil Gogos the legend. Basil created most of the covers of all the early Famous Monsters magazines and he also created the key art for The Sci-Fi Boys. He’s come out from New York to be with us tonight.
Well I have some questions for the Sci-Fi Boys here then we’ll open it up to questions from you [the audience]. I hope I get a question out there from Bob Burns who’s also here with us. Forry Ackerman: I want to say that author Stephen King wrote an article about you called “The Importance of Being Forry.” He said that you were the best and you are the best. You’re often imitated but never duplicated. Robert Lesser in the book Pulp Art [: Original Cover Paintings for the Great American Pulp Magazines] say you are possibly the 20th Century’s greatest and best know science fiction art fan. Your vast collection in the genre has only been exceeded by your encyclopedic knowledge. You are recognized world-wide as an authority on science fiction and horror films. You’ve won a number of Sci-Fi International Hugo Awards and are perhaps best known as the creator and editor of the magazine Famous Monster. Forry you were born in 1916, correct?
You can't have Kong with out the dinosaurs
Forrest Ackerman: Correct.
Paul Davids: And in November you will celebrate your…
FA: 90th Birthday.
PD: 90th! He’s such a young man. So in fact you were at the premiere of King Kong, you told us, in 1933. None of us were. Tell us what it was like to be there.
FA: Well I was 15 years old at the time. Up the avenue a bit at Grumman’s Chinese Theater I saw the original King Kong. There an extraordinary thing happened. You were just used to watching it on the square screen like we had this evening. And then the last reel when all hell was breaking lose with Kong in New York, climbing the Empire State [Building] and the airplanes buzzing, the screen opens to the left and to the top and we had this huge vision of King Kong at the climax. That only happened in two other films: In Hell’s Angels when the zeppelins were over London, and in that gentle fantasy the Portrait of Jenny in the last reel [the screen] opened up in both directions. You don’t even see that in DVDs of the original King Kong. That was just something done at the theater. When I walked out of the theater I was looking at the big bust of King Kong and it rolled its eyes and chopped on some of the natives. After the film had its show the manager of an eatery on the highway up to San Francisco acquired that big bust of King Kong and for many years on the top of his eatery. But it wasn’t Beauty that killed the Beast. It was salt air and rain and wind. Finally the fur all disintegrated and Kong fell into the sea.
PD: So that was the true end of the original Kong. I have another question for you before I move to our other guests. Could you have ever imagined 73 years ago that there would be another Kong as realistic as Peter Jackson’s?
FA: No, unfortunately in between there was King “Wrong.” Can you imagine making a King Kong without any dinosaurs? That’s like making the Frank Sinatra story and he doesn’t sing.
PD: That helps me [move on to] Rick Baker, who doesn’t deserve the blame. He rescued the Dino DeLaurentiis Kong. I remember there was a 50ft mechanical Kong that moved like this [makes robot motions with his arms] on the set.
Rick Baker: It wasn’t that good…
PD: Rick came to the rescue with a suit where he could give a performance. Rick is actually the only person who had been in the two major remakes of King Kong, because he is also in Peter Jackson’s Kong. I’m not including Godzilla meets King Kong. I’d like to ask you to tell us something about the journey from being inside that sweaty Kong suit in 1978 to be in the bi-plane and shooting down at Kong in 2006.
RB: Well what I want to do is cut the two films together and shoot myself. I remember when Jon Landis [told] me they were going to re-make King Kong. And I thought: how ridiculous. They’re probably going to get some idiot and put him in a gorilla suit. And I was right. Peter and I and Fran have been friends for ….we met at a Science Fiction and Fantasy film festival in Spain. We actually accidentally sat next to each other and started talking and he mentioned who he was and we became fast friends, because we had that same Famous Monsters connection. What I really enjoyed about the film, which I thought was great, was really fascinating it was to see how many of us had that same childhood. We tell that same story about having the 8mm Brownie camera and you would have to click that shutter and try to get as close to one frame as possible. Peter and I became fast friends because of that. I think that same youth that we had.
Brody and Watts in King Kong
A long time ago back when I was doing the Disney version of Mighty Joe Young they were going to do Kong at Universal. And Peter was saying “I want us to be together in the bi-plane and kill King Kong.” And Peter remembered that. It was really a thrill. It was fun doing both of them. I thought the Kong I did was garbage at the time and I was embarrassed by it. It was still fun to hop around in a gorilla suit and bash buildings and stuff. It was fun being an old man sitting there thinking no one’s going to believe this. “The pilot is 55 years old? They couldn’t find anyone younger to kill this guy?” It was really fun to sitting in the bi-plane, firing flashes at a green screen, with Peter Jackson behind me firing guns. His shells were hitting me in the head. It was a lot of fun.
PD: I want to say unfortunately Ray Bradbury who we thought would be up here with us tonight…
RB: Bradbury died?
PD: No no no…. we though would be with us but he’s not feeling well tonight. There was a Ray Bradbury story Steve Johnson reminded me of, telling me a story about how you two [Baker and Johnson] met by synchronicity, an incident in Steve’s life where if he hadn’t stayed home from school on a certain day none of Steve Johnson’s monsters probably would have been created out here in Hollywood. Can you tell us how you met Rick Baker and how your career came about?
Steve Johnson: It’s like everybody else; I was playing with stuff as a kid, as you know. I was a really good student but I happened to be sick one day. My mother was in the other room doing laundry and or something and starting screaming “you have to come in here. I don’t care how sick you are and take a look at this!” So I came in and it was Rick on television with a Star Wars mask on. He was on a local television show called “Dialing for Dollars.” And he was going to be speaking at a convention that was coming up in Houston. I was 15 or 16 at the time and I had to get my mom to drive me down there. I was so nervous to meet him. Like it’s so cool to be here tonight sitting here with all you guys. I remember thinking of Rick as a rock star. Literally people were mobbing him for autographs. It was out of control.
RB: It happens to me every day. You get used to it after a while.
SJ: I had no idea what to expect from this guy. You were really nice. And actually you gave me a number. That sounds like a pick-up. I started corresponding with him and by then I something to support because I was sending pictures.
PD: You had mentioned to me that you saw a commonality and synchronicity to a certain Ray Bradbury story about a dinosaur and a butterfly. Do you remember that?
SJ: It was in the short story collection call The Golden Apples of the Sun. The reason it’s called the Butterfly Effect is the same concept. In the Ray Bradbury story these travelers travel back [in time] to hunt big game but they’re hunting dinosaurs. They have to go on a path and stay above the land so they don’t interfere with anything because of the Domino Effect of what might happen transcending all the way through time from then into the present. So after they come back after one of these trips one of them discovers that he’s stepped on a butterfly and everything’s different, the language is different, everything. Everything is transformed from stepping on that one butterfly.
Artwork from King Kong
PD: Basil I want to turn this conversation to you and first tell everyone about a new book that has just come out call Famous Monster Movie of Basil Gogos. [It’s] edited by Kerry Gammil with an introduction by Rob Zombie. Basil you have painted all three Kongs.
Basil Gogos: Yes I did.
PD: You painted two of them as covers of Famous Monsters: the original and the DeLaurentiis Kong. And now for The Sci-Fi Boys you have painted Peter Jackson’s Kong. Tell us about the different personalities of Kong as you feel them, as an artist.
BG: Today I think he’s alive. When Peter Jackson did King Kong, he’s literally alive. So did the other two fellows but when you see this one you believe that he’s there. Not only that but he has a great deal of compassion and love. All three {Kongs] did but this one really loves the little girl. And why not? Have they changed? Yes. He is more mature today. He exists as I said and he’s believable. [He’s] more believable than the other two fellows. And why not? It’s just beautiful.
PD: Kong is just one of so many dozens of monsters you painted on the cover of Famous Monsters. People have commented that you renditions of horror actors and creatures, that’s what lives on in our memory, about our visualizations of those monsters, as much as what we saw on the screens. How does it feel as an artist who’s done all kinds of paintings, men’s magazines [that] you’re going to go down in history for your monsters?
PD: Basil I went to the Timothy Yarger Gallery in Beverly Hills and I saw three remarkable paintings by Basil Gogos. Would you tell the audience what the three paintings are? The originals are there.
Jack Black as Carl Denham
King Kong is set to roar onto DVD Tuesday, March 28th in both a single disc version and the two-disc special edition. The single disc version is available at the suggested retail price of $29.98 and the two-disc special edition will have a suggested retail price of $30.98. Sci-Fi Boys is available exclusively at Best Buy stores March 28th.
The Two Disc Special Edition will include loads of features fans of the movie will enjoy. The features on disc 1 include The Volkswagen Toureg & King Kong and Wish You Were Here. Disc 2 features include Special Introduction by Peter Jackson; Post-Production Diaries; Kong's New York; and Skull Island: A Natural History.
King Kong – Two Disc Special Edition is available for pre-order at Amazon . The DVD is available for pre-order at AmazonUK for an April 10th release. Visit the DVD’s database for more information. Click here to read the second part of the special screening of “Skull Island” and the discussion with the “Sci-Fi Boys.”
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