NO SPIDER PIT SCENE EVER FILMED....AND MORE! in Kong

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NO SPIDER PIT SCENE EVER FILMED....AND MORE!

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HalLane		#41	[-]
Apr 17 12 12:56 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I dunno about Doug Turner, but Mike Price posts here on occasion, in fact several times this past month alone in the Poverty Row forum. A judicious pm might lead to some info.
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G Vallejo		#42	[-]
Apr 17 12 2:44 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Good idea! I'll PM him. Let's not all send him a bunch of messages at once. A perfect Monster has no end...
Ken	shot numbetrs	#43	[-]
Apr 18 12 12:45 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I think, maybe, the shot numbers are based on a the script that is available from a few sources. The script I have, (with missing pages sent to me by Jim Danfortrh. He is a great guy!!! ) mentions what was shot for "Creation" or the test reel and incorporated into the film.The photocopy of the script shows quite a few sequences as shot and subsequently dropped. The spider sequence is shown as shot. An article in Cinemagic , by Paul Mandell, has an interview with a cameraman who talks about various scenes that were shot and they are not included in the finished film. I am a film editor and have worked on many projects where scenes or whole sequences are dropped for various reasons.Sometimes these sequences have taken days and involved special equipment and cost lots but, if they don't progress the film, they are are gone. So I believe the spider sequence was shot for the demo reel, but when it came to the final film it was cut, as Cooper says, because it stoppped the action and flow of the film.
cosmicjim	a bundle of questions continues	#44	[-]
Apr 18 12 2:04 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Was it the shooting script, though, that included that sequence? The version I've seen is pretty descriptive. I can agree that the footage, if it existed, is pretty likely vapor or ash (unlike The London After Midnight mythologists, I can accept the idea of lost footage), but the information I recall reading from those who were there suggests that it was indeed a reality at some point. It would be interesting to compare stated running times of the film pre-release and later on, but the sequence may have been under a minute, so not measurable in that sense. If any of you have library microfilm access that might help this quest, apparently the March 17 (?) 1933 Washington Post includes an O'Brien interview. It would be great if someone could duplicate that and post it here; the only other newspaper interview I have is his post-MJY Oscar syndicated newspaper interview, which is pretty good. Last Edited By: cosmicjim Apr 18 12 2:09 AM. Edited 1 times.
JadeExecutioner		#45	[-]
Apr 18 12 5:13 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Ken wrote: I think, maybe, the shot numbers are based on a the script that is available from a few sources. The script I have, (with missing pages sent to me by Jim Danfortrh. He is a great guy!!! ) mentions what was shot for "Creation" or the test reel and incorporated into the film.The photocopy of the script shows quite a few sequences as shot and subsequently dropped. The spider sequence is shown as shot. Exciting, and most certainly one of the sources for the test reel shots counting in the book, I'd say. Do you know who wrote the annotations on the script?
BijouBob8mm		#46	[-]
Apr 18 12 8:18 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	with missing pages sent to me by Jim Danfortrh. He is a great guy!!! I've always thought Danforth was a somewhat under-appreciated talent. His book has increased my admiration for him even more. Wish I'd been able to track him down for my article on John Carter from a couple of years back; would love to have talked with him about his attempts to get the books onscreen.
BartPierce	Could you publish these quotes here?	#47	[-]
Apr 22 12 6:09 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	RE: "In his e-book, Jim Danforth talks about Orville Beckett showing him stills taken from the live-action Dunning shots for the spider pit scene when the two men were at Film Effects of Hollywood." ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Bob, Is it possible you might publish Jim's Beckett comments here? I'd like to look for the photos and his comments would help. ... and yes I'll post them if I find them. Bart
BijouBob8mm		#48	[-]
Apr 23 12 10:58 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I'll have to grab the e-book and look it up to share here. (It's fairly brief.)
JadeExecutioner		#49	[-]
Apr 24 12 9:00 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	G Vallejo wrote: Sorry, another question In the Lost Nightmare article, there is this long quotation describing the precise content of the test reel, that comes from "Spawn of Skull Island, by Orville Goldner and George Turner, revised/expanded by Doug Turner and Michael H. Price". Do you know where these gentlemen got this description, because it's never said clearly? Is it entirely based on Mr. Goldner's and some other crew members' memory? Or some production documents of the time that the authors had access to? I don't know where they got it, but it's very specificity makes me tend to believe they had access to some document. What's interesting is that it mentions an exact number of shots in the test reel. In The Making Of King Kong it's "about 147 scenes" (pg 74 of the paperback) and in Spawn it's whittled down to 138 (page 117). Since neither Goldner or Turner said they saw the scene or the test reel, I would tend to think they had access to some documentation of the test reel/RKO greenlight meeting. They also mention exactly what pre-production sketches were shown to executives (like Kong busting out of Madison Square Gardens, and the spider pit), so they must have been going off of something. What correspond to the description of the test reel in the finished film, from "The remaining nine men, including Denham and Driscoll, race madly through the jungle... to the end :"Driscoll steals past the still-breathing body of the Tyrannosaurus, frightening away a huge vulture...” is 116 scenes (203 shots). It is roughly 9:30 minutes long. It includes two shots of Kong's full-size bust. Was this bust completed at the time of the test reel?
G Vallejo		#50	[-]
Apr 24 12 12:20 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I would say not. The only things completed for Kong at that point were the test reel scenes which were all filmed on a budget specifically set aside for the test reel. Once the project was greenlit (based on the success of the test reel), then production began in earnest. They didn't even have a completed movie-length script at that point, so I doubt the bust was made until later. Don't forget, the falling sailors' scenes were added much later. A perfect Monster has no end...
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JadeExecutioner		#51	[-]
Apr 24 12 6:35 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	yes of course. Would it had been the same for the shots involving the full size Kong hand? Not done at the time of the test reel?
Tim Smyth		#52	[-]
Apr 24 12 10:00 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Actually they might have had a hand made for the test reel, as it is featured so predominantly in the scene with Driscoll in the cave, it just wasn't the nice hand, with all the big stop motion joints in it, that held up Fay. Tim
Tim Smyth		#53	[-]
Apr 24 12 10:04 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	G Vallejo wrote: this ed guy makes an interesting observation.......mmmmm??? He mentions that the film is flipped on the very last scene with the log falling. We knew that. Unless they had some special reason for doing so, it's just an editing mishap. Maybe they were cutting and pasting late one night and that's what we got.... More than likely the log just came down wrong end first during the shooting, and it looked better to reverse the cut, and right the wrong. Tim
G Vallejo		#54	[-]
Apr 24 12 10:38 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Could very well be, Tim. My point was like yours: it's probably some innocuous reason that has nothing to do with the spider scene, cut or not. A perfect Monster has no end...
JadeExecutioner		#55	[-]
Apr 25 12 9:14 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Tim Smyth wrote: Actually they might have had a hand made for the test reel, as it is featured so predominantly in the scene with Driscoll in the cave, it just wasn't the nice hand, with all the big stop motion joints in it, that held up Fay. I came to the same conclusion. The shot of Fay in the hand of Kong at the end, the big head and her reaction shot are most certainly later additions. What's left belonging to the test reel amounts to around 105 scenes? If the counting in the Making of Kong book is accurate,then the chase before the log,the spider pit and the snake scaring Faye would be something like 30 or so set-ups?
BijouBob8mm		#56	[-]
Apr 25 12 11:15 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Is it possible you might publish Jim's Beckett comments here? I'd like to look for the photos and his comments would help. ... and yes I'll post them if I find them. It's a short, passing reference but here it is, from the bottom of page 361 of Jim's e-book DINOSAURS, DRAGONS AND DRAMA, under the heading "Picking Up Pointers": Whenever possible, I hung around the Film Effects of Hollywood matte department and talked with matte artists Howard Fisher and Cliff Silsby. It was interesting to compare their precise, careful style with the much looser style used by Albert Whitlock. Because of his involvment with KING KONG, I was also interested in talking to Orville Beckett. "Becky" showed me some stills he had from the filming of the live-action Dunning shots for the KONG spider-pit sequence (which was cut from the film before it was released).
Aupperle		#57	[-]
Apr 25 12 1:48 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	BijouBob8mm wrote: It's a short, passing reference but here it is, from the bottom of page 361 of Jim's e-book DINOSAURS, DRAGONS AND DRAMA, under the heading "Picking Up Pointers": Because of his involvment with KING KONG, I was also interested in talking to Orville Beckett. "Becky" showed me some stills he had from the filming of the live-action Dunning shots for the KONG spider-pit sequence (which was cut from the film before it was released). As I mentioned in an earlier post if they got as far as filming live action Dunning shots for the spider sequence they would have needed completed spider animation.
G Vallejo		#58	[-]
Apr 25 12 2:51 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Danforth doesn't have the pictures, so we still don't have any actual proof, but if we can track down Orville Beckett's estate, he might very well have them tucked away somewhere. If he hung onto them long enough to show them to Danforth, and I'm assuming that was decades later, then he probably kept them after that, too. Maybe they're tucked in a box somewhere or in some scrapbook passed on to his family. If we can find the pictures, which is a historic cinematic find in itself, then we've got the best possible proof the animation was completed... and since The Making Of King Kong has always claimed it was part of the test reel, we can take the matter as being as settled as it's ever going to be--short of finding the footage itself. By the way, Mr. Price has not contacted me as of yet, and it was over a week ago that I messaged him. I won't bug him, though. A perfect Monster has no end...
G Vallejo		#59	[-]
Apr 25 12 3:29 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	One more thing to establish is who was Orville Beckett? I checked the Kong entry for his name at IMDB, and he was not listed. At the bottom of the crew list was "Crew verified as complete" but one can only trust IMDB so far. There is an Orville Beckett listed, but for three movies from 1950... Danforth seems to indicate he knew of Beckett's association with Kong prior to meeting him. I'm at work so I can't check my books, but if anybody know more about him, please chime in. A perfect Monster has no end...
JadeExecutioner		#60	[-]
Apr 25 12 10:18 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	One thing for sure is that the most efficient shots from the test reel are still in the finished film. Don't you think though that the Creation surviving footage looks very primitive compared to what is going on in the test reel, spiders or not? Actually, if they used that Creation triceratops chase into the test reel, it must have looked very crude compared to the shots we know of Kong shaking the log and what follows, shots of extreme sophistication topping one after another. And how did it match? The test reel is a really serious affair. It's the T-Rex Kong fight. It's what sells the film. First stop motion characters to display this level of expression and emotion. Incredible interaction with human characters. And obviously one challenge met after another. Sorry my english is very bad. But as long as we get no official source for the test reel content and the inclusion of Creation footage, it seems difficult to believe any of those pseudo counting of sequences are real. They don't even remotedly match what subsists. The balance of shots is easy to see, frankly. I think the test reel counting is wishful thinking and that we probably miss 10 or so (fantastic) shots. Everything in the counting is not coherent with the filmmaking, really. Give me the source.
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NO SPIDER PIT SCENE EVER FILMED....AND MORE!