Richard Stanley Knows the Ups and Downs of Hollywood Moviemaking

his perspective. In the nineties, he wrote and directed the film's Hardware and Dust Devil, blending the science fiction and horror genres. His next film was the third adaptation of H. G. Wells novel The Island of Dr Moreau, a terrifying morality play on scientific ethics, starring Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer. The troubled production went quickly downhill, and Stanley was removed from the project only three days in. The chaos was captured in the documentary Lost Soul, The Doomed Journey of

Richard Stanley's The Island of Dr Moreau. Following the fallout, Stanley produced several documentary films and covered events in Rwanda and Uganda. He returned to mainstream movie making with the two thousand nineteen film Color Out of Space and Escalating Extraterrestrial Spiral, based on the HP Lovecraft short story and starring Nicholas Cage. Richard Stanley is one of the most intelligent and articulate filmmakers I've ever met, and articulate about

the actual work itself. So I wanted to know how with such an interesting background, Stanley first found his way to film. I started messing around with some super eight cameras from early childhood. I think it wanted into my life.

When I was about four years old, Dad brought home a sixteen millimeter Prince of King kong um Um kind of fancied himself as a filmmaker and there was sixteen million meter equipment lying around and I remember playing on I say, as a toddler, and cong caught my attention very early, and I kind of it was a gateway drug to the Ray Harry Housing movies. And by the time I was ten, I was messing around with claymation

dinosaurs like a lot of other kids. Have you know that I ordered a copy of the film Fearlessly Scrapbook. That's why Harry completely important. Yeah, I ordered a copy from online today, We're inspired by you. The Ray Harry House and the film Fantasy scrap Book was really the first time I saw raised artwork, as well as the drawings by Willis O'Brien and Mario Laranaga and some of the other folks. And it's just such incredible work that even in black and white reproductions, I was mesmerized at

an early age. I see my own children. So we have quite a few kids running around, and my son a couple of them have four boys and two girls, and the oldest son who's about six. When I think about it, and I get honest about it, I shouldn't be surprised by his fascination with all things horror. He wants to watch Alien, and he wants to watch the monster come shooting out of John Hurts Thorax in the middle of Alien, and he and and he loves and when I think about when you mentioned Harry Housing in

this book. When I was a child, I had a friend, my best friend, and his brother, Kevin and Keith Cornelius lived behind me, and they would subscribe to Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Famous Monsters was hugely significant, absolutely massive. I saw my first copy when I was four years old.

Famous Monsters and the other warrant titles Creepy and Erie and Vampirella that came at the same time in the late sixties early seventies, just had covers that was so bright and so i popping that they completely jumped off the stands into your life and my family. We didn't have the money, we didn't have the resources to buy, but they would buy, like the Latex, like the rubber claws, the hands of the creature of the Black Lagoon. They'd

buy Frankenstein's sutured hands. They'd get the headpiece with the bolts for Frankenstein. They get and we would make movies. He had a Brownie, he had a little Super eight, and we go in the background. We would take two picnic benches and we laid them on their side so that the legs of the bench were there, and for a child, you could lay down in between, and we'd put some sheets or towels down and that was the

casket of Dracula. We made a casket for Dracula, and we'd see the hand come up and gripped the side of the coffin. Slowly. We'd film We're obsessed and we were very young, we were six and seven, with the maccabb and all that other stuff. And I'm wondering, why do you think, I mean a lot of kids just love that. Is it just the drama? I guess so.

And there's also a sense of taboo about it. Um. The harder that people try to sense of things or take things away from you, the more it bestows value, and the more you feel that you actually need them. I mean, to some extent, horror movies were never any fun anymore after I was old enough to watch them. Do you understand what they were trying to do to you? Yeah? At the moment you hit eighteen, you've got other concerns. There's a woman in your life, and you have to

make money, and life goes out. But and somehow it's not important. But up to that point there a kind of a forbidden fruit in a way. They also speak some kind of truth that you can't get from the adults or the school teachers. I think that my kids, if they were like me, it was forbidden And it was also just the chance to completely occupy someone that was not you. You know, you really could play a character. But to get back to um, your you go to

the South African College of Music. Correct well, I got I got a job there basically shooting for their archival section when I was a teenager who had got me posted to some of them what they used to call

the homeland states in Apartheite era South Africa. I should make a note that growing up in Apartheite era South Africa, which was essentially a police state, the horror movies, in the genre movies and particularly the horror comics of that period of the nineties seventies were really the place that I acquired my social conscience from. It definitely didn't come from my school teachers, or from the government, or from

my parents, God bless their souls. All of that was coming from the comic book writers and California in places who are doing a lot of LSD at that point in time, and who were writing yeah, super challenging material or very politicized at that point in time, and all of it came through UM, through the genre. So I was super glad for that. Basically ended up was a cameraman in UM in the Truant sky shooting tribal dance and initiation rituals, which was another area that's always drawn me.

If it hadn't been for the regrettable geopolitical circumstances, I think I might have stayed in South Africa and become an anthropologist. When we know in your childhood, when you're growing up your mother was an English anthropologist and you moved to South Africa. Was it Cape Town? Is at the city you grew up in? Yeah, I grew up in Cape Town. When my mom initially quit England and went to Africa, she went first to m Zimbabwe. She went to Bulawayo first because it had the word away

in it. It was a sufficiently long way from hub. Yeah, post war England. She just wanted to get the hell out, more or less pected a random but because she trailed with her an interest in witchcraft and in the fairy culture, the fairy folklore of the West Country, I think she um I saw a side of Africa that the other um colonial um European settlers were oblivious to. She pursued that doggedly and ended up writing a cornerstone book on

African mythology. But accordingly, in the first few years of my life, for the first three or four years she was dashing around to one bunch of tribal people after another, and always trying to find the sangoma or the the traditional healer. Um I guess instilled a set of values in me where I came to see these people as figures of extraordinary value and power. What about your dad? What did he do? He was basically a travel writer.

UH had a gig for UM mobile oil that ready worked for him where he was writing UM kind of little travel brochure things for mobile and return for free gasoline and doing star rating guides for hotels and campsites. So that kept him on the move and kept the gas tankful. That's pretty much yeah, what he did the whole of his life. Now, um, when you go and shoot the tribal dances and initiation which was which was did you accompany your mother? Were you working with your mother? Then?

Now I was out of my own by the time I actually got to start shooting material in the tran

sky and the other Homeland places. This was when I was in my early teens, and my mom's interest in tribal witchcraft and tribal magic um I guess um influenced me hugely, mostly because it was something that none of the other kids had any real interest, and when I went to when I was old enough to go to school and mix with um other European kids, I was shocked to find that they didn't believe in any of the stuff or had only the the most horrifying kind

of prejudiced notions about it. Now, when you're there, described briefly if you can, about these tribal dances in initiation rituals. And how did what I'm assuming was the richness on any level style, wardrobe, music, the choreography itself. How did this What effect did this have on you in terms of your own film career? Did you bring some of the things you observed to your other films? Almost certainly, and in a way it actually pushed me into filmmaking.

At the at the top, I wasn't sure I wanted to be a filmmaker. But the more time I hung out in the on the wrong side of the tracks in South Africa with long hair and a camera, the more trouble I got into was the arm authorities, and the more I was construed as basically having a political context because that's the only way they saw things back there, and eventually did to me basically fleeing the country, Um

when I ended up finding asylum in London and in England. Um, the only thing I had to show for myself was a bunch of deeply weirdly dressed people, um dancing and doing strange things a number of yeah, spectacular locations, which I was eventually able to translate into a job making music videos for the Yeah, the music business. It gave me an end, you know what I was going to say. Then at some point you go and make music videos for Public Image limited s Express Noir Desire. These are

all African. Ban's South African. These are British bad Son. If you went back to this when you went to London, Yeah, public Image, it's John Lyden's bound. Yeah. The first It was the first proper union shooter I ever did. When I graduated from a Super eight coverare to a full Union Crew and honey Wagon and you know the makeup fans, the full Monty. It was a terrifying day, but it was the potential for getting drafted into the the angle in war that propelled you don't want to leave and

go to London? Correct? Yeah. I was in the cadet school for two years and I was supposed to go straight into the South African Defense Force and become an officer, and I'm going to the Golden Bush War. The family had a long military tradition that was just like what you did at a certain age as you were supposed to go in the army. By then, I developed a

huge antithesis for the Apartheit regime. The notion of having to pick up a gun and defend them kind of stuck in my craw And I didn't really believe the propaganda anyway, which was telling us that the Russian Army and the Cubans were across the border in Angola. Unless we confronted them, they would be Russian t sixties. Who's on the streets and Pretoria in twenty four hours or whatever the bullshit was at the time. I chose not

to believe it and upstakes and left. Now, when you're in you go to the UK and you're there, and then you make your way to Afghanistan to film the Soviet Afghan War. What was the impetus for that? Why did you want to go do that? And I'm assuming put yourself a tremendous risk. Correct, Yeah, it was a crazy time. I don't regret it. Unfortunately, the cameraman was very badly injured. UM he did make a full recovery. So I regret the cameraman's injuries, but I'm glad that

we took that decision. It was an insane thing to do. Basically, it came out of three years of doing music video work in London and it had gotten to the point that in order to pay everyone's rent and keep everything moving, we had to do pretty much one music video a month, which meant the quality started sliding. We weren't able to pick the bands and the songs as well as I would have liked. UM I was on a particularly lousy music video shoot. I've got a generally in my career,

I've taken a first on, last off policy. I'd like to get their first thing in the morning before the crew arrives, and UM I like to stay until after all the cable is washed and all the lenses have gone safely back into their boxes and everything's wrapped. So UM I was coming out of the shoot and the last van to UM to leave the location. UM the driver was grumbling about the stick shift on the van and said, this thing is as hard to drive as a BTR sixty, which I recognized as a lightweight Soviet

troop transporter used in the invasion of Afghanistan. And I asked him what the funk you'd been doing driving a BTR sixty to begin with, and he told me that he was a g hardy uh, that he was down his luck and M London was trying to doing odd jobs essentially to try and save up enough money to go back to Afghanistan and fight the g Hard And I was in such a vile mood after the promo shoot that day, I said, look, if I give you the Boddy to go back to the g Hard, will

you take me with you and allow us to bring cameras? So, um, that's pretty much. Yeah, how it happened. It was the spur of the moment. I've been obsessed with Afghanistan for a long time ever since, so I guess reading about it as a kid and the works of Robert E. Howard or U. Rudget Kipling's um Man, it would be king. So when you arrive in Afghanistan, when you first give him this is eighty nine? Correct? Yeah, what do you mean?

Is there a lot of is it very furtive? Are you sneaking around and you're having to kind of here with this guy. You're accompanying him, are you? You're still with him when you get there. You we're following him. But you had yeah, and we had to. We had to trick our way over the over the border and UM coming well. First we tried doing it legitimately the first way. The first trip we made in we did with the Red Cross was the United Nations and UM we drove in trucks of flower to UM a bunch

of locations in Ningraha Province. So we came in first ULL saying legit un food delivery. That was the first time that I was in country. UM had my first um yeah vision of Afghanistan, saw the light and the space of the place and got the smell of it. But UM, on the first trip out with the u N, we deviated from the path. When you're around doing those kind of runs for around the u N, you have to really stick to the agreed course and we UM we made a stop on the way which freaked them out.

So after the first food run we were stripped of that position and grounded back in Frontier Province, Pakistan. We then volunteered our services to the Moderate Guerrilla Party to the Jamati's dummy under armored Chamasud and they took one look at us and refused. So we volunteered ourselves to the Who the heck would I want to take us today? Over there? You couldn't give it away, but yeah, we have.

We've eventually gotten in with the servietive party. Instead was the Hespis Love Me under Gilbert and Heck Mattia, who are kind of the bad guys and in cahoots with the CIA at that point in time. But they took us and we were able to cross the borders through a secret crossing at a place called now Our Pass and entered the country indefinitely, stayed through till after the end of the Soviet occupation. Now the give me the timeline. How long do you last in that area before you

decided to go home? And where is the home you go to? Do you go back to London? Yeah? We got zapped after about three months. Um shot. Yeah, meaning we got blown up by some kind of missile. It hit us on the second day of the Siege of jelal About. I don't really know what it was, but that um this was it was early in the going. You hadn't been there for very long. Yeah, I know it was about the Russians left on Valentine's Day on February fourteenth, This would have been about three months after.

It was the onset of the civil war. Essentially there was it was, you know, um, our side, the Western backed, Saudi backed muja hidden versus the remaining socialist back to Afghans who were cornered inside of the city of Jelalabat and under massive siege. But they had also been heavily armed by the retreating Soviet forces, so there was a full on confrontation. Unfortunately our side word where I found out later also not taking prisoners and doing terrible things

to some of the folks they were capturing. So um, no one was surrendering. So and when folks know that they're fighting to their deaths um, they put everything they've got into it. So it's a terrible scene and I think approximately a thousand people a day were getting killed and in the first week of the civil war. Yeah, because thereafterwards devolved into a civil war, which is basically between it was a struggle between the different Afghan warlords

to try to take power over the country. Once the once the Soviet army had retreated Um. Eventually the sheer chaos of that, which I think finally resulted in a tank battle in the streets of couple Um, led to the Taliban stepping in and saying, Okay, this has got to end. UM. Now we need Shario, we need strict religious government, and we need to clean this mess up. The civil war kind of created the conditions that enabled the Taliban to rise. So you were there for how

long total? UM? I was probably in country UM, not much more than four months in total, and I was probably I was probably stuck in Pakistan for about eight months between are waiting trying to get in. There were two different trips in and we've spent most of our time trapped in Frontier Province on the wrong side of the border. After falling out of Afghanistan, it was a I didn't mean to actually leave when I did, but the Romain was severely engined and had to had to

be taken to surgery. And then UM because of a series of insane events, I've lost my I D I'd lost my backpack and passport and had no way of proving who I was. So yeah, I ended up in a jail cell in Pakistan. Uh was sprung by the British embassy and his lamabouts who gave me a fresh set of travel documents and got me back to London via ab Abu Dhabi is Stadfold and that finally Heathrow

writer director Richard Stanley. If you enjoy conversations with genre bending filmmakers, listened to my episode with William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist the films that I've made. I'm more interested in spontaneity than anything else, so I don't rehearse. I would talk to the actors and find the things that move them, either that caused them to laugh or cry or be frightened, and I would use those things from time to time in the making of the film

to suggest, whenever it was necessary, some emotion. But I would never tell an actor really how to do it. Here the rest of my conversation with William Friedkin in our archives at Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Richard Stanley tells us his critique of the Island of Dr Moreau, film that got made without him. I'm Alec

Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Writer director Richard Stanley had written a low budget horror screenplay when he received a call from a high powered Hollywood producer while I was away in in insane series of events, the screenplay for Hardware, which had been written a while before and been pushing around, had gotten passed from hand to hand to hand and had somehow come into the

hands of Harvey Weinstein. Uh. Yeah, Harvey wanted to make hardware, which I first found out about while I was still in Frontier Province. A very um angry man managed to get through to me on the switchboard at the Saudi Red Crescent Hospital and in um Frontier Province, who was a producer named Tricks Warrel and Tricks was freaked out because he had been through share hell to actually reach me on the telephone. So every third word was an F word. You don't have fucking hard've been looking for

a mate, etcetera, etcetera making this fucking movie. And I was trying to explain that hardware was getting set up at Mirrormax. And I remember, because the had been long and um the hospital was full of people who had lost their eyesights, or children with berlins or missing limbs. Tom hearing this guy swearing down the phone at me was seemed somehow offensive, and my reaction was simply to hang up on him, and then I tried to ignore it for a while. I'm looking. I'm looking at the

one liner here on hardware. You shoot this movie it's released in you must have gotten to it pretty quickly. You must have shot it in eighty nine, or it's released in September where you shot it in ninety. Dylan McDermott is your lead, that's right? And what was when? When? So so? Harvey Weinstein, I would presume and tell me if I'm wrong. He's putting everything together, he's passing the script onto the cast, he's producing the film. Uh, you're

in the Harvey business. Harvey's in control. Correct. Well, thankfully not because it wouldn't have been hardware otherwise, but well, it obviously became a grapple, the match for control over what really happened, with some different schizophrenic forces trying to change the material. I fell into it right after the war, So I hard ware is what I had in place of therapy. Um, that's my way of working out the

the PTSD. Essentially, Mirrormax put their money through a company called Palace Pictures in the UK who brought on a super tough, m young producer Joanne Seller, who had never produced a movie before, but then did a bang on job and produced the hell out of hardware and were She was also strong enough to be able to keep Harvey at base so that me and Harvey didn't kill each other or achieve some kind of state of critical mass because these insane directives from Mirrormax were coming in

on a daily basis, only we had fax machines in those days. Like I think after three weeks in they decided they didn't like John Lynch, the actor playing um Shades, the space jockey of the movie, and suggested can we write John out of the movie and replace it with a dog, and that because we gave Dylan the dog, it would make him bore acceptable to a younger audience to pay less money. Well, we don't want kids to like this this guy because it's it's an R rated

movie with shoot a good X rated film here. Uh, Well, what's the matter if the kids like the dog? Or it just got more more and more crazy as it went log I think most of Harvey's directors whether he wanted more kids in the movie, younger kids and was constantly trying to push it towards a younger audience than it was intended. So this is your first film. I don't I don't want to dwell too much on Morrow,

but this is your first film Hardware. And you've got McDermott, who has made quite a few films and TV shows. I worked with him once and he's a very accomplished actor. What was it like for you to go from ritualistic dance who war torn a civil war Afghanistan and now you're making a movie with an American actor? What did you find was your strengths and weaknesses and directing actors

in narrative films. But I think the pleasure of coming surviving the events in Afghanistan stumbling straight onto set was that at least Hell held no fear for me. Other different circumstances, I would have found it a lot more intimidating. Uh, at least McDermot wasn't in the Taliban. Yeah, yeah, indeed, And UM didn't brought a lot to it. Um it was a mccab's state of affairs because Um. In fact, the character each he plays changed a lot in the

course of setting the movie up. Because Moe is very different in the Scriptum, I'd originally wanted Bill Paxton for the part for whatever crazy reason. Um, this was coming off the time of Near Dark. Um Mirrama's were really anti Paxxton kind of dug their heels and and Dylan was the best choice out of the very limited field. Term there is a term they gave us. I think there was three guys. They said you have to have one of these three in the movie other as we

won't make the movie. It was very very very um tight and um Dylan's came into it very pumped up, very clean shaven, short hair. Um moas written was originally a heroin addict dying of cancer, who has been irradiated the zone and as seriously not well, who has already had like one arm replaced the prosthetic limb and is on the way out, which Dylan did not seem that way. It was a powerhouse of energy and superbuff and just

didn't resemble the character as written. Um yeah, we essentially rewrote it on the on the spot and reworked it or so. Dylan came in as a card carrying Christian with his copy of the Bible. U immediately noticed that the main cyborg in the movie Marked thirteen was a publical reference, which is something that had escaped my attention up to that point. That that detail became a very interesting plot pivot. Now you do this film and uh, I mean, obviously there's all the legend and Laura about

Harvey and his hands on approach to filmmaking. Was the film was something you were genuinely willing to take credit force that you were filmed by and large or was it completely co opted by other people. Hardware is pretty much my beast. I'm happy with hardware. The worst that happened was we had lost a couple of scenes which were trimmed out afterwards in You're in Afghanistan And I'm assuming that Moreau, which was released in ninety six was probably shot in Have you seen Lost Soul? The Doomed

Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr Moreau? Have you seen the documentary? Oh? Yeah, several any times? The film is I mean, I'm a documentary junkie, and this is one of my favorite docs of all time. But what I realized was this movie is unusual in terms of it's almost like everybody involved in the film just wanted to get the funk out of there. I mean, nobody wanted to be there. They all everybody phoned it in. Frankenheimer phoned it in, Brando phoned it in. You know,

maybe not David Toulis or for Rusa Balk. Maybe they're trying to keep their head above order. Val Kilmer phones and and everybody just is coming for a paycheck. They're all there for the wrong reason. And and the film shows the film looks like there's so many missing scenes. The film looks like they just slapped this thing together, like let's just get this over with. Whatever we got,

we got shut down. Stop spending money. Initially, your work on the film before You're gone involves, you know, a lot of your greatest woric I mean the art conceptions and all the art design and things like that for what you wanted in the film. You were hired to do the film, and who hired who was producing Pressman, Yeah, it was a big ad ad pressman. Um it's my fault. I mean, I developed Island of Dr Moreau for years

and years and years. Um. At the point of the thing got going, Um, I made another movie between Hardware and Moreau, I made a movie called Dust Devil in um in the Mabia. By the tail end of Dust Devil, which I was convinced Dust Devil was the worst fucking thing that could ever happen to anyone. It was really a thousand miles of rough road and a nightmare experience

beyond hell. But by the end of Dust Devil, I was about yeah, forty grand in debt and basically on my ass in London and needed to sell a property fast in order to um basically payoff Dust Devil. Um that somehow that became Island of dr Burrow Um. I was in no position to hold onto Moreau. I mean m coppola could make Apocalypse now and next he was coming off the back of Godfather. I was coming off I was coming off the back of Dust Yeah, I understand,

I understand. That's Dust Devil wasn't the ultimate calling card, wasn't um. No, it didn't give me any power or leverage over the over the majors at that point in time. But what's the genesis? Meaning? Did you write the screenplay? Yeah? I write the screenplay. But how did somebody get the screenplay and say I'm gonna make this movie? Forget about Dust Devil? This guy that made Dust Devil pressman's talking to his investors or his backers. Everybody. Let's just put

Dust Devil out of your mind. And this guy in this script, they've got it. Meaning how did Ed find you or you pitched him? You know how it actually happened. Was Ed found me? Um Ed found me and said, I want you to direct Judge Dread was sliced alone. I was hugely down in my luck and in trouble, and he needed a break. Um I said, sure, but he has to keep his helmet on. We need to do Dread like he has the fucking covert book. Uh. This was a sticking point. Uh yeah, that's right, it's

it's a Dread had to keep the helmet on. And because I'm hardware owed and unacknowledged debt to two thousand a d and to Judge Dread. I felt I couldn't stab the Dread franchise in the back twice. I had to be kind. I had to stand by Dread, so I had to turn down the project. Um, but I didn't. I didn't want to let the opportunity go. So in the middle of it, I said, well, why don't we do Island of Dr Brow instead. So in that sense, were you similar to Brando and Frank and I were

and other people who they were. You were there for a paycheck. You just wanted to do a job and get a check and do your best work and get the hell out of here. Now, I always wanted to do round of Dr Brow. This was a und of Dr Brow was a personal obsession that probably came into my life when I was when I was a kid. And as I mentioned to my producers here, the Island of Dr Moreau is too horror films. What a star

is born is to melodrama, you know. I mean there's been three incarnations, Island of the Lost Souls with Charles Lawton, one of my favorites, Moreau with Lancaster Lancaster, and then your version, which, uh, and you've been dreaming about this for quite a while. Yeah, I mean I saw the Bert Lancaster version of Cinemas as a kid, and as a fan of the Wells novel, I came out so enraged.

It was probably the first time that I felt I wanted my money back after seeing a film, and I think that planted the seed in my head that I could do a better job. Um, From that point in time, I kept thinking about how to improve The mouse Trap and what a better Dr Moreau would look like, because I mean, there's all kinds of problems with the material. For whatever reason, they insistent always playing the beast people

as monsters. But the potential inherent within giving animals vote larynxes and vocal cords and what the hell would the animals say and do is so huge, and it's such tasty material that I really don't feel that the material has been well understood or has yet found its cinematic potential. Perhaps, and now that the effects and bow cap work has moved on to the point that it's reached, a better, more complex adaptation of Wells's book might finally reach the screen.

How deep into the pre production process did you go before you were separated from the material? Shall we say? How? Well? How far into where were you? I went all the way through. I went through the hall of prep, cast the film and we started shooting. Um. Well, the Brando

was the first to come aboard. The moment we had Brando, we figured he was basically an actor magnet that even though the script yeah yeah, So I immediately went after Bruce Willets for the male lead, and for a while Bruce was in and at the point when we had Bruce and Brando for Mr Montgomery Um the third lead,

I went after James Woods Um. So there was there was a point in time when Way Um and then this enabled us to put together a formidable cast of beast people with Ron Pullman as the Sayer of the Law, m Frousa Bulkers u Asia the cat Lady, Um Tomorrow Morrison as Um as a Zello the chief Dog, the Bill Hootkins as the bristly bear Guy Um. It was all of the beast people were tremendous actors, which is one of the biggest tragedies of the Frankenheim evosionists that

none of these people get to do anything. They're standing around the film and they've all lost everything, like every one of them's lust, their scenes, lust, their material, and it's just a huge number of geniuses on that set who are not getting the chance to express themselves. Richard Stanley, if you're enjoying this conversation, be sure to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app, Apple

podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Richard Stanley tells us what it was like to direct Marlon Brando in the Island of Dr Moreau. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing from my Heart Radio. The production snaff foods on the set of the Island of Dr Moreau were no secret, so much so the documentary film was made about the Troubled movie. I was curious about the circumstances leading up to Richard Stanley's termination as director of the Island of Dr Moreau and how

he learned he was being let go. Well, I guess, um the first inkling it was the middle of a hurricane as well. There was there was a tropical storm bright blowing in and we were in the one of the worst places in the world. We were in a place called Cape Tribulation, which is named that for a reason. Um Mount Sorrow as the big mountain brooding over it because the places broken the backs of all kinds of

folk in the past. Um and yeah, the production vehicles stopped responding to my orders, so I couldn't basically get an uber um. Um. Yeah. That was yeah, the end of the wedge then, um, yeah, we've censed it coming for a few days particularly was a hurricane. Because we've been desperately trying to shoot, but it had really reached a point where it was like horizontal rain. We were unable to go and get a shot off the set and washed away. How much did you shot before they

fired you? Um? We shot for about two days. I shot some basically second unit stuff before the before principal photography started, So she didn't shoo, didn't shoot any of the principal photography. No, I mean we shot two days of principal photography that wasn't used in the eventual films. You did? You shot two days? Prince who was in those scenes? Val Kilmer and Rob Morrow and yeah some bits with some yeah throughs the bulk and Morrow eventually

left to be replaced by two lists. Correct, that's right. Yeah. By the time all this came down to Morrow couldn't take it anymore. He was pretty much broken on day one. Um, I think, but like all of us, by the circumstances, Um, we were on a tramp freighter at sea with a hurricane blowing in of off Endeavor Reef by tape tribulation of tribulation, not sorrow. Yeah, Yeah, it was on a tramp freighter full of live animals. Uh yeah, there was a puba on board. Um so I would live puba.

Um so yeah, Rob was I think on day one already in the on the telephone and the captain's a wheelhouse, desperately trying to get hold of his agent and trying to find some way out of there. So just two days of principle, you did the prep. You're you're, you're really kind of the starter's pistol has been fired and you're off to the races here. And who tells you? Who gives you the official? Was it ed? It d take responsibility and call you and say we're going to

replace you? Or how did you find it? It It was? It just some But I always say that Hollywood likes to take a note and they write down you're fired, and they put that note in a bottle and they throw off the end of the Santa Monica pear and they hope it gets to you. Yeah. I think I got it from Tim Zinnaman, the line producer faced the facer. My phone, It was my phone. Um. Then there was the followed a desperate scene in a sushi restaurant in Kent's, Queensland,

where um, I seem to recall Um for ruiser. Um stood up and passionately. Um defended me. Um cried real tears, explained to Tim the bottomless pits of chaos and everlasting hell fire that would be opened if they made that decision. Rue was one hundred percent right. Uh, one hundred percent didn't listen to her. I think she said, if you do this, I will cut out my heart with the sushi life right here. And it was. It was a flabboratory scene that but if it's pointless, they weren't gonna

listen to her. They didn't understand what they were doing and what was what was coming as a results, So then the documentary comes out a lost soul. And one of my favorite moments is for Rousa talks about going in to speak to Brando and she wants to talk to Brando, and Brando says, you know, what can I do for you? And she said, when we have these scenes together and I want to talk to you about the scenes, maybe we could chat a little about the

scenes and maybe run some lines. And there's a pause and Brando says, oh no, no, he said, I haven't even read the script, and uh, do you feel Um? Because I'm somebody who as much as I worshiped Brando, and I do worship Brando and I and I went to go meet him at his home once and at a lengthy meeting, a lunch that went on for four hours while I was trying to enlist him to do a TV movie with him with me because I knew he wanted money. So we were gonna do Cat on

a Hot Tin Roof for CBS. I was gonna play Brick, he was gonna play Big Dead. It was my one chance to work with the unensurable Brando. You know, this is Brando at a time when nobody would write a policy to hire him. And I went to his house and he was, you know, unhealthy, he was big. We talked a little bit about his acting career. He could tell he was pretty much done with though he didn't have any passion for that. I mean, Brandon was a guy who just stopped caring a long, long time ago.

Do you feel like you dodged a bullet that you didn't have to deal with that or were you really looking forward to working with Brando? Um? Now, I was vastly looking forward to working with Brando, and I feel that one of the great tragedies of the Island of Dr Burrows, that we were deprived of a potentially great um Swan song performance by the man. I'm super sorry that I've heard about the chance to try and direct him.

I did actually direct him a little with because um I also went up to Mulholland a bunch of times before I did. How did you approach him someone who? I mean when you when you go on a set. I'm not Marlon Brando, and I still go to want to set in the latter twenty years of my career, and people are reluctant to direct me. Well, they're too

eager to direct me. They really feel that they have to come in with a whip and a chair and feel like they've got to kind of tame me of what I well, what path I might go off on. And so relationships between actors, forget about how celebrated you are. Relationships between actors who are experienced and directors can always be potentially thorny. How did you approach him when you

talk to him? Well, I guess m We came into Morows through the character of Cuts, because Brando is still very hung up on Cuts from Apocalypse Now and kept trying to turn Moreau into cuts, suggesting initially that he should be wearing black, just be a face hanging in the shadows and disappear into darkness, which he'd done before on Apocalypse Now, and no intention going down that route.

So instead, I seem to recall we entered into a very lengthy roundabout discussion about the horror of whiteness, and the particular horror of the ship of the shade of white, going through Melville and Moby Dick and Edgar Allen Poe and um the whole colonialist underpinnings of Well, it's just the number of shock horror moments in post stories which come down to being white, like Madeline Usher and her white dress outside the door and Roderick and the House

of the Usher opens it, or the death of the characters in same manuscript found in the Bottle, or Arthur Gordon Perm surrounded by ice, the inhabitants of the black Island of Salal and Arthur Gordon Perm who have a horror of whiteness, the a bunch of different Yeah, Takidi lee is what the seagulls scream, and Arthur Gordon Perm keidy Lee, which is apparently the word for white in the post story, but even the seagulls scream and scream at the explorers. So this horror of whiteness theme and

yeahs coming around through Melville as well. Um was something was I think the way I lead it with some brando and that's actually why he's wearing that white gauze, the white zinc cream. In the movie. It went to the opposite of the black. Um, here's we've got to get away from Kurts and go the other way. The white zinc cream was because of that. It's meant to

be in the near future. It's meant to be in the original draft that Gottamp things after them a nuclear exchange legitimately worried about skin councer and the lack of the ozone layer, which but this reasoning has taken away in the Frankenheimer movies, so we never get an explanation as to wine Burrow is wearing this white zinc cream and these white veils when he's going outside. But there there is a legitimate reason for it. It's not just

because he's screwing around. Um. If there had been something resembling a script and if it hadn't been a complete abbot far On the actual set, um Brando was also coming off the recent death of his daughter's cheyenne and was in terrible emotional shape. Um, and he wasn't given a lot of help in um in Australia. I don't think he got a lot of moral support out there. I think by the time he reached the place and found that the island was a total shambles, that the

script had imploded. Um, yeah, he stopped caring. But there's there's the ghost of a performance and there, yeah, where you see that in the biography the that wonderful duck listened to me Marlon where once the daughter killed herself, it was just kind of much of the life went out of him. Um. So you take off several years before you're back on a set with Nick Cage and you're into the love crafty and vain there. I love

real Lovecraft as well. How did that come together? How did you put that film together after how many years of taking off a series of events. I've always been a lifelong Lovecraft fan, been huge him since I was a kid. Really feel that the man's time has come the term for whatever reason, A lot of the concepts and the Lovecraft stories are landing extremely well now in the in the twenty one century, and that there's probably some kind of crazy reason for that. So it's been

something of a crusade. It was. It was largely the commitment of Nick Cage that enabled Color out of Space to get made the Color out of Spaces of script you wrote, Yeah, I adapted Color out of Space from the classic HP Lovecraft story myself co writer. How did you connect with Nick? Yeah? I was put in touch with Nick and around about way it was actually I think the producer Josh Waller who managed to get a

copy of the script into into Nick's hands. Then he read the thing and it turned out he too was a Lovecraft fan, uh, connected with the material and wanted to be on Nathan Gardner. That then enabled us to get the Beast rolling. We only had Nick for four weeks. Um, um, we're basically able to put together a two month shoot in Portugal which I got the thing done. What's next?

What do you do next? Well, um, I want to make another Lovecraft movie and I've got a script and I think it's the best god damnthing I've ever written. I think my entire life has been leading up to it. And it's a movie called Dunwich. It's much horror away and it's going to take it. We need to go back on campus and we need to go back to Miss Quoton at university now in the present day, um um, confront the things that are in that story. And yeah, what I wanted to ask you is, what do you

consider making a Lovecraft movie? Yes, this is ending. I mean most of this is ending on a note I only dreamed of. I mean, it's very hard for me to pitch myself. And here I am with you. I am a great admirer of yours. I think you are. I mean, this is an overworked word, but you are a visionary. You are a visionary filmmaker. I will come and just play the butler. I don't care. I'll ring the dinner bell and say, you know, dessert has served,

my Lord, I don't care. I'd like you to read for Professor Armitage, who is the lead and he's also essentially the script's version of Richard Dawkins. I'm very interested in Dawkins, a series about religious memes, and consider that the Cosla Mythos is a perfect illustration of his series. I think you are an amazing filmmaker and I really want to explore this with you because I would love to work with you. I would love to work with you,

and I would love to work with you. Sir. I think you're a super fine actor and it's a run privilege, Director Richard Stanley. You can learn more about his work at the official Richard Stanley dot com. This episode was recorded at c DM Studios in New York City. Were produced by Kathleen Russo, Zack McNeice, and Maureen Hoban. Our engineers Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Daniel Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.