Alamy
Maybe you think of
"Jurassic Park"
as the movie that surpassed "E.T." to become the biggest Steven
Spielberg film ever, as well as one of the biggest hits of all time. Or
maybe you think of it as the film that, through its landmark CGI
dinosaurs, helped usher in the age of digital filmmaking. Or maybe you
just think of it as the movie that scared the pants off you when you saw
it in theaters two decades ago (the film marks its 20
th anniversary on June 11) and every time you've watched it since on TV.
However you regard it, "Jurassic Park" has seemed a ubiquitous,
inescapable fixture of pop culture for 20 years. And yet there are still
things about it you may not know, such has how Spielberg chose his
cast, how several teams of effects artists came together to build those
pioneering dinosaurs, and whether or not it would really be possible to
clone dinosaurs from ancient DNA as the geneticists in the movie did.
Read on to unearth these and other not-quite-fossilized secrets from
"Jurassic Park."
1. Spielberg, a lifelong dinosaur enthusiast who
preferred the prehistoric lizards in "King Kong" to the big gorilla,
learned about Michael Crichton's dinosaur-cloning tale from the author
himself a year before he published his 1990 bestseller. The pair had
been developing a screenplay based on Crichton's own early medical
career. That project evolved into the long-running TV drama "ER."
2. That preexisting partnership with Crichton helped
Spielberg to win the bidding for the movie rights to "Jurassic Park."
Several other directors were in the running, including Tim Burton,
Richard Donner ("Lethal Weapon"), Joe Dante ("Gremlins"), and (according
to Spielberg) James Cameron.
3. Laura Dern, who played Dr. Ellie Sattler, recalled in
Entertainment Weekly's recent oral history of "Jurassic Park"
how Spielberg pitched her the movie: "I know that you're doing your
independent films, but I need you to be chased by dinosaurs, in awe of
dinosaurs, and have the adventure of a lifetime. Will you do this with
me?" Her "Wild at Heart" co-star Nicolas Cage, who said he'd always
dreamed of being in a dinosaur movie, urged her to say yes.
4. Richard Attenborough, who played park impresario
John Hammond, was best known as a director of biopics ("Gandhi,"
"Chaplin"). Before that, he'd been a celebrated actor, but he'd put
acting on hold after 1979, when his directing career took off. "Jurassic
Park" marked his first role in 14 years, and it resuscitated his acting
career at age 69, leading to prominent roles in "Miracle on 34
th Street" (as Kris Kringle) and "Elizabeth," among others.
5. To cast Hammond's granddaughter, Lex, Spielberg
auditioned a number of girls and asked them to record their screams.
Ariana Richards
recalled that she won the role
because she was the only one whose taped scream was loud enough to
awaken a sleeping Kate Capshaw (a.k.a. Mrs. Spielberg) and send her
scurrying down the hall to see if her children were all right.
6. Joseph Mazzello, who would play Lex's brother, Tim,
had enjoyed some success as a child actor ("Presumed Innocent"), but
when he screen-tested for a role in Spielberg's 1991 film "Hook," the
director told him he was too young. He recalled that Spielberg told him,
"Don't worry about it, Joey. I'm going to get you in a movie this
summer." Looking back, Mazzello (who would go on to star in Spielberg's
World War II mini-series "The Pacific" as an adult) called the "Jurassic
Park" consolation prize a "pretty good trade."
7. For the animatronic dinosaurs, Spielberg hired Stan Winston
on the basis of his work creating the alien queen in "Aliens." Winston built the life-size lizards, including the
Tyrannosaurus rex
and triceratops. Spielberg hired stop-motion puppeteer Phil Tippett to
animate model dinosaurs that would be superimposed in post-production,
and Dennis Muren (fresh from creating the molten-metal morphing effects
in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day") to see if dinosaurs could be created
using computer-generated imagery.
8. In fact, the dinosaurs Muren created on the computer
were the first major flesh-and-blood CGI creatures in movie history.
When he screened for the rest of the filmmakers an early test of
wire-frame dinosaurs in motion, Tippett realized he was out of a job. "I
think I'm extinct," he told Spielberg, who liked the quip so much that
he put it in the movie. (Actually, Tippett stayed on as an adviser to
the computer animators, using his knowledge of paleontology and
pantomime to instruct the effects artists in how dinosaurs should move.)
9. Spielberg also showed Muren's test footage to
legendary stop-motion monster animator Ray Harryhausen. "He was
absolutely enthralled and very positive about the paradigm changing,"
Spielberg recalled. "He looked at the test and said, 'Well, that's the
future.'"
10. The velociraptors, however, were done
Godzilla-style, with puppeteers in lizard suits. The man-sized
velociraptors were much bigger than the real species, though shortly
before the movie's release, paleontologists discovered a larger related
species, the Utahraptor. Winston joked, "We made it, then they
discovered it."
11. Sound designer Gary Rydstrom
combined a variety of animal cries to make the various dinosaur roars.
The cow-like brachiosaurus' bellow was a blend of donkey and whale.
Whale sounds were also used for the Tyrannosaurus rex, along with the
sound of a tiger, an alligator, and a baby elephant. For the sound the
T. rex made when it killed the lawyer, Rydstrom used a recording of his
own Jack Russell terrier grappling with a rope toy, played at
half-speed. The most complex was the velociraptor, a mix of tortoise,
horse, goose, walrus, dolphin, and African crane.
12. For all the work that went into creating lifelike
dinosaurs, the lizards got just 15 minutes of screen time in the
127-minute movie.
13. The iconic shot of the water rippling in a cup in
the car as the stomping T. rex approaches was inspired by Spielberg
watching his car interior vibrate as he listened to bass-heavy funk band
Earth, Wind and Fire. To create the water effect, he placed guitar
strings under the dashboard and had a crew member pluck them.
14. Sam Neill, who played Dr. Alan Grant, has a scar on
his left hand from the scene where he tries to distract the T. rex with
a burning flare. Some flaming phosphorus fell from the flare and got
trapped under Neill's wristwatch.
15. Before the last day of shooting, Hurricane Iniki,
the most powerful storm in Hawaiian history, hit the set. The cast and
crew were trapped in their hotel on Kauai. Spielberg helped bide the
time by telling ghost stories to the kids. Others passed the time
reading the only piece of literature they could find, a Victoria's
Secret catalogue.
16. When the movie went into post-production, Spielberg
was already in Poland shooting "Schindler's List." He supervised the
effects work on his dinosaur thrill ride while filming the horrific
Holocaust drama.
17. Despite the hurricane, the shoot finished 12 days
ahead of schedule and on budget. It cost $63 million to make and another
$65 million to market.
18. In its initial release, "Jurassic Park" earned $357
million in North America and a total of $914 million worldwide. That
was enough to surpass Spielberg's "E.T." to take the record as the
biggest hit movie of all time, a record it held for nearly five years,
until "Titanic."
19. The film won Oscars for Best Visual Effects (shared
in part by Winston, Tippett, and Muren), Best Sound Editing, and Best
Sound Mixing (Rydstrom shared both of those). At the same Academy Awards
ceremony, Spielberg won Best Picture and Best Director, Michael Kahn
won Best Editor, and John Williams won Best Score -- all for
"Schindler's List."
20. Spielberg directed a sequel "The Lost World:
Jurassic Park" in 1997. Joe Johnston filmed "Jurassic Park III" in 2001.
A "Jurassic Park 4"
has been on the drawing board for a decade but has yet to emerge with a cast or a workable script. It has a director, Colin Trevorrow ("Safety Not Guaranteed").
21. Even before Spielberg began filming "Jurassic
Park," Universal Studios engineers were at work building "Jurassic Park:
The Ride," an attraction at Universal Studios in Hollywood that opened
in 1996 at a cost of $110 million (nearly twice what the film cost to
make). Universal has since added an expansive "Jurassic Park" section to
its Islands of Adventure theme park in Orlando, Florida.
22. To this day, Dern says she's recognized as "the
girl who put her hand in the dinosaur poo." She adds that kids have
refused to shake her hand, "as though I hadn't washed."
23. The CGI dinosaurs of "Jurassic Park" have had a
far-reaching legacy, having convinced some of the world's most
imaginative filmmakers that the technology finally existed to put
whatever they saw in their mind's eye onto the screen. They led Winston
and James Cameron to form the Digital Domain effects house, and it led
Stanley Kubrick to collaborate with Spielberg on "A.I. Artificial
Intelligence," the robot fable he'd dreamed of making for decades
(Spielberg would finish the film in 2001, two years after Kubrick's
death). They inspired George Lucas to make the three "Star Wars"
prequels and Peter Jackson to make "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy,
"King Kong," and the "Hobbit" trilogy.
24. In April, Universal released a 3D version of
"Jurassic Park" in theaters. The conversion from 2D cost $10 million,
and it earned the 20-year-old film another $45.4 million in domestic
ticket sales.
25. Could scientists really clone dinosaurs from DNA in dinosaur blood found in mosquitoes preserved in amber?
Probably not.
For one thing, even petrified DNA would probably have degraded too much
in the 65 million years since the last dinosaurs died out. Plus,
there's no contemporary equivalent to a dinosaur egg in which to
incubate the embryos. Still, Jack Horner, the paleontologist who served
as a consultant on the film, said he thought it might be possible to
genetically modify a chicken embryo to activate dormant genes for
dinosaur-like traits. Not quite the same thing, alas.
