Larry Cohen

by Michael Doyle

  The cops would not have been very interesting characters because they only have one element to them: find the monster and kill it. You’ve already seen that approach a million times before in countless horror movies. This is exactly what the cops always do. Firstly, they don’t believe that whatever it is out there killing people actually exists. Secondly, when they are finally convinced that the monster is real, they simply go out and attempt to destroy it. That’s the familiar generic pattern we all recognize and it’s almost a given. I thought it would be far more intriguing to move into the story from a different angle and tell it from the point of view of this kooky criminal who wants to be a jazz singer. He becomes the guy who discovers the location of the monster’s lair in the Chrysler Building and decides to blackmail the city into signing away a million dollars to him. He also demands immunity from his crimes — a “Nixon-type pardon,” as he puts it. Quinn is basically a nobody, who wants to become a somebody. He tries to make use of this monster for his own devices, and I thought that was a very unusual and original story that hadn’t been told before. Also, it would demonstrate that people sometimes have an opportunity to exploit a situation and make a success of themselves at the expense of everyone else’s tragedy. Quinn didn’t have any compunction about doing that. He wasn’t what you would call a conventional good guy, but he wasn’t a total scumbag either. He was kind of like this blundering child-man; an entertaining, endearing loser that I think people liked.

  Quinn is indeed a richly complex creation. He has greed and stupidity, but also a profound humanity that immediately reels you in.

  Absolutely. Part of that character was arrived at in the writing, but a huge part of it was a mixture of Moriarty’s brilliance and some good fortune. On the first day of shooting, I discovered that Michael could play the piano. I noticed he was wearing a walkman and I asked him what he was listening to. He said, “Oh, just some songs that I wrote.” When I heard them, I said, “Wait a minute, do you play the piano?” He goes, “Sure.” That immediately got my imagination working. I said, “Why don’t we make this guy an aspiring jazz singer and piano player? Yeah, he wants to try and break into nightclub performing but nobody will give him a chance. He’s frustrated by his lack of success and decides to join in on this robbery. If he’d gotten the job, he would never have gone out and committed the crime and none of this monster business would have ever happened to him.” Moriarty quickly warmed to that idea. So, our next move was to quickly locate a nightclub or bar that had a piano in it and was open during the day. We found a bar in the East Village, and the next day we shot the scene with Moriarty playing scat-piano as Candy and David look on. Michael had prepared the song he plays in that scene and he loved the fact it wasn’t in the script. That addition helped to give his character a little more depth and shading, but it was a completely fortuitous thing. Of course, Moriarty’s performance is simply extraordinary.

  Personally, I think it’s one of the best performances ever to grace a horror film.

  Oh, I agree with you, it’s remarkable. Moriarty’s performance has drawn incredible praise from some incredible people. I was talking with Steven Spielberg at an event and he told me how much he loved Michael in Q. I was surprised that Steven had seen the picture, but he apparently caught it one night on cable. He asked me, “How did you get that performance out of Michael Moriarty? I’ve never seen him do anything like that before.” I explained to him the way we worked, and he seemed very impressed. That was a major compliment, but I find that Steven is very apt to compliment people and make them feel good about their work. He tries to say something nice as he knows how much it will mean coming from him.

  Q marked the first of five collaborations you have enjoyed with Moriarty who is a fascinating actor. What continually draws you to him?

  Number one, he’s an exceptional talent and, number two, he’s accustomed to my improvisational style of working. You can’t give most actors new lines of dialogue on the set that are not written in the script, because they can’t pull them off in the moment. When they are right there acting in the scene and the camera is rolling, you can’t suddenly start feeding them new stuff to do and say without them getting terribly confused. But Moriarty is so much in character, and his concentration is so intense, that if you give him new directions he can implement them immediately. When we were working on Q — and on all the other films we’ve done together — I would often call out lines to him right in the middle of a scene. I would just yell things like, “Say this, say that,” and he would integrate them effortlessly into his performance. Then, in editing, I’d just cut my voice out of the soundtrack so you didn’t hear me coaching him. I can talk him through scenes and give him new stuff just at the very moment it comes into my head. Moriarty can pick this material right up and put it directly into the scene like an improvisation. I can’t tell you how many other actors I’ve tried that with who have gotten totally befuddled. They just can’t do it. But Moriarty is amazing in his ability to just wing it and collaborate with me throughout the whole picture. Michael has earned a reputation in the business for being “difficult,” but I always kept him interested and entertained. There was always new material going into the scenes, and he is an actor who — if he grows bored with the project — will give you less of a performance. But if you can keep him hyped-up and stimulated about what is going on, then he’s happy and churning out his best work.

  Despite the outrageous speed with which Q happened, were there any other actors that you considered for the principal roles?

  Actually, yes, there were. I had seen a young comic named Eddie Murphy perform at The Improv in New York and was very impressed with his act. You could see right away that this kid was going to be a star, and I thought he’d be an interesting choice to play Moriarty’s character. This was just before Eddie broke out big with 48 Hrs and Trading Places. Nothing ever came of it, and Moriarty may have already been cast by this point, but Eddie could have done it. Of course, I don’t think Eddie could have played that part any better than Moriarty. No actor, not even Jack Nicholson or Al Pacino, could have done that. Michael just had this magic about him. Every sound, every gesture, every movement of his body was perfect. Moriarty completely inhabited that part and delivered an Oscar-worthy performance. I was happy with all my casting choices for Q, but I later felt that Bruce Willis would have been good for the part of the detective that Carradine played. This was before Bruce became a huge star. As I told you, I’d wanted Bruce to play Mike Hammer in I, the Jury but Armand Assante had already been cast. When it came time to make Q, I should have cast Bruce as the detective, but David Carradine was a name at the time and was being used to sell the picture, particularly in foreign markets. So, I went with David, although for the longevity of the film, it would have obviously been better to have used Bruce in that part. It certainly would have looked better on the DVD jacket all these years later. Can you imagine it? “Eddie Murphy and Bruce Willis in Q!” It would have been an interesting combination, that’s for sure. Naturally, I would never have been able to secure Sam Arkoff’s money if I’d cast two unknowns as the leads. Sam wanted recognizable names in the picture, and Eddie and Bruce had not done any real movies at the time. Back then, nobody had really heard of them.

  Why did you settle on using the Mesoamerican deity Quetzalcoatl as a suitable monster for a monster movie?

  I thought Quetzalcoatl would be an interesting monster to put in a movie. If you read any books about the history of Mexico you will come upon the worship of Quetzalcoatl. When the Spanish first came and conquered Mexico, they discovered chambers in these Aztec pyramids where human sacrifices had been made. These ceremonies usually involved the removal of the human heart and the Spaniards found thousands and thousands of human skulls all stacked up inside these pyramids. These remains had all been sacrifices made to an ancient God named Quetzalcoatl — The Plumed Serpent. I learned of this and realized that they had a fierce devotion towards this deity and were killing people in order t
o appease it. That’s exactly where I got the motivation of the priest who invokes Quetzalcoatl and brings it back from the netherworld in which it exists.

  Carradine’s Detective Shepherd theorizes that, “This thing has been prayed into existence.” However, there is a subtle suggestion that Quetzalcoatl is almost summoned to New York by the city’s violence and inequity.

  Oh, that may be so, but I think I was approaching the idea more from an architectural standpoint. I mean, New York would seem to be the perfect city for a giant bird to visit. If Quetzalcoatl were to see those images of the New York skyline with all its towers and skyscrapers, it would look like some kind of ancient city where you might come to worship. All those structures and edifices could potentially hold some sort of religious significance, if you didn’t know that they actually represented big business and industry. You might think that it was a holy place where the towers were actually temples or pyramids: monuments to some ancient god. New York City would be the perfect place for a monster-bird to come and maybe do a little eating! [Laughs] I mean, what other reason would he need? Several people have asked me how and why Quetzalcoatl chose to nest in New York. Originally, I did conceive a scene where some Mexicans jump out of a truck and place a giant egg up in the Chrysler Building, but I decided not to do it. I didn’t feel that we needed to know exactly why the monster was there. The most important thing was that it was there. I genuinely feel that some element of mystery in a movie is a good thing. The audience don’t always have to know the reasoning behind every single thing. But some people won’t hesitate to crucify you if they think something like that is just the product of bad writing.

  Interestingly, Shepherd also says: “It wouldn’t be the first time in history a monster was mistaken for a god. I guess that’s why I have to kill it. If you can kill it, it’s not a god, just a good old-fashioned monster.”

  Sounds great, doesn’t it? You know, if Quetzalcoatl is a god, then it’s as cruel and unforgiving and destructive as any other god. The one thing it isn’t is absent! I mean, it’s really here — indiscriminately snatching people off rooftops and eating them. In my mind, a god and a monster can be one and the same thing. It depends on your point of view, I guess. Both can dispassionately destroy you and both can take on many forms. There have been monstrous people like Hitler, who have cultivated a god-like image, but are finally revealed to be very vulnerable and very human.

  The gritty realism of the locations and naturalistic performances are heavily contrasted with the exploitative elements of Q and the primitive-looking stop-motion monster. Was that always your intention?

  The idea was always to take the Naked City aspect that had served me on God Told Me To and combine it with the monster movie concepts. Again, it’s that mixing of horror with the police drama and the depiction of street-life in New York City. I liked the idea that the locations were real and gritty, because that helped to ground the more fantastic elements of the story in reality. It also helped the actors, too, I think. Instead of having the picture shot in a studio, it was filmed in real places with real things and that allows you to do some interesting pieces of business. When you are shooting on a real location, you will always discover actual objects around you that you would never find in a fictitious environment where everything has to be designed or brought in to dress the set. Sometimes you’ll be out at a location and discover something that has been scribbled on the walls or some defect in the construction of a building, that you can put into the scene that makes it seem more realistic and immediate. In fact, we intentionally looked for various places in New York where the structures, patterns and backgrounds had a visible Aztec element or influence to them. [1] This was in keeping with the idea that Quetzalcoatl was drawn to the city by its architecture. Why spend money replicating reality on a set when you can venture out onto the streets and capture reality itself? You can’t build that stuff on a low budget. So, I prefer to work in actual locations rather than trying to create things artificially as there is no substitute for the real thing — even in a monster movie!

  What about the realization of Quetzalcoatl itself?

  We had some very good people that were animating the monster: Randy Cook [2] and David Allen. [3] Randy was the chief guy on Q and later worked for Peter Jackson over in New Zealand on The Lord of the Rings trilogy. He even appeared at the end of Jackson’s King Kong, playing a pilot flying one of the planes that is firing its guns at Kong on the Empire State Building. As for Dave, he was later nominated for an Academy Award for his excellent work on Young Sherlock Holmes. Sadly, Dave died several years ago, but both he and Randy were very talented artists that I suppose emerged out of the Ray Harryhausen [4] School of stop-motion animation. I thought for the money that was available to them to create the monster, they did a very good job. It turned out okay, but to be honest with you, I didn’t want the monster to be in the movie too much anyway. I always considered it to be secondary to the characters. It’s the characters that make the picture work, not the monster.

  I’ve always found the stop-motion animation in Q to be a lot of fun and firmly in keeping with the spirit of the film.

  The monster does have a quaint charm to it, that’s true. Back then, there was no CGI and that’s just how you realized something like that on film. In fact, all the special effects people were brought onto the picture after the shooting was over. All the aerial helicopter photography had been shot first, as well as all the stuff at the Chrysler Building, and none of it had been storyboarded. The special effects guys were not happy with the way I approached things. They kept complaining, “This is not how it’s done: we follow a certain procedure and carefully plan the special effects in advance. We like to storyboard and prepare everything and do it right.” I said, “Well, it’s a little too late for that. The movie is already shot and we’ve got all the elements. I know exactly where I want the monster to be in the action. It may not be normal procedure for you, but that’s the way it is.” They said, “You can’t matte the monster into a moving camera shot. The camera has got to be stationary.” I said, “But it isn’t stationary and you are just going to have to make it work!” And you know what? They went out and discovered that they could make it work. I mean, everybody has their own rules about how to do things, but when you tell them that they have to come up with a new set of rules they just do it. Randy and Dave did a very nice job and I was happy with the efforts of the special effects crew on Q. We also did some bluescreen shots, like the moment the monster suddenly sticks its head through one of the openings in the Chrysler Building and startles Carradine and Jim Dixon. All of that stuff was shot in the backyard of my house one night.

  Tell me more about the impressive aerial photography that depicts Quetzalcoatl’s point-of-view as it roams the skies in search of prey.

  Well, I think those sequences are some of the very best aerial photography that has ever been shot in New York City. When I started getting that footage on the very first day of shooting, I hired Al Cerullo. I was well aware that Al was the premier helicopter pilot for movies and had shot all of the stuff for Superman. As we flew about, I directed Al exactly where I wanted us to go. As great a pilot as Al was, it was still a hair-raising ride! We were moving between all those skyscrapers, going in and out and circling all around. It was particularly terrifying when we shot footage at night because we wouldn’t be able to really see the buildings. All we could make out were the little lights at the pinnacles of the structures. It was the only warning that we were hurtling straight into the top of one of these buildings. Fortunately, Al had a lot of experience of flying around New York and he knew where everything was. Still, we could have easily been killed as something can always go terribly wrong. Every time I watch Q, it makes me sad when I see the shot where the camera is flying towards the Twin Towers. It almost flies between them but, in reality, we got as close as we possibly could and then zoomed-in with the camera so that it looked like we’d soared between the two structures. Of course, the Twin Tow
ers are now gone because of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and it always affects me when I see them in the movie.

  There are some practical effects in the film, namely the oversized claw that is seen grabbing Quetzalcoatl’s unfortunate victims. Who created that claw?

  We hired some Asian gentlemen in New York who built that for us. We only used the big claw a few times: once in the swimming pool sequence where the monster grabs the guy and another time on the roof when Richard Roundtree’s character is killed. The claw was suspended on some kind of crane and was lowered down into shot. It was fixed so that it would open and close, but in order for the talons to lift anybody up we had to secure the actor in there. This meant we had to cut between the time the claw came down into the frame and the time it seized the victim and lifted them back up. We needed that time to stop and wire the actor into the claw itself. You may have noticed there is always a quick cutaway in there of somebody reacting to the monster’s attack. By the time we cut back to the victim, the actor is already attached to the claw and is simply lifted up and away. I thought those scenes worked rather well. We actually built a significant portion of the monster to be viewed on-screen, but I instantly knew that it wasn’t going to work. I had no desire to follow in the unfortunate footsteps of Dino de Laurentiis and his awful remake of King Kong. On that picture they created an artificial model that was laughable. So, we quickly decided to restrict ourselves to just seeing the monster’s claw. The fact is we had a small crew. We didn’t have a lot of money to realize what were some very ambitious effects. We simply had to make everything work with the minimum of preparation.