Larry Cohen

by Michael Doyle

  Why choose the Chrysler Building as the location of the monster’s nest?

  The Chrysler Building wasn’t originally specified in the script. It was just written as a skyscraper because I didn’t want to be committed to a building that I might not be able to deliver. My thinking was the original King Kong had made the Empire State Building famous, so I wanted to do the same thing for the Chrysler Building and give them their big monster. In fact, when we did decide that we wanted to shoot there, the management of the Chrysler Building actually turned us down the first four or five times we approached them. I kept sending my people back again and again, offering them more money each time. Finally, they agreed to let us use it. I believe they were experiencing some financial difficulties at the time and warmly welcomed the $18,000 we paid them for the privilege of filming there. I was very happy because that was the building I always wanted for the movie. It’s a beautiful construction and you may have noticed that it has this peculiar bird-like quality to it. The whole exterior facade of the Chrysler Building looks like feathers and has these bird-like gargoyles, engravings and motifs all around and inside the structure. My reasoning was that if a giant bird was going to pick one place to nest, this would naturally be it.

  Were the management of the Chrysler Building present during shooting?

  No, we were mostly left alone. They never even viewed a copy of the script. The management didn’t know what the hell we were doing, although they did insist that we only shot on the top floor. I went up all eighty-eight floors, and, of course, as soon I saw the ladders going up even further I just had to explore. The only way you could get up to the very top of the building was by using these narrow, rickety ladders that you climbed hand over fist. You’d reach a level and then realize that you could go up even higher still; then you would get on a third ladder and that would go all the way up. After that, you were inside the pinnacle and could literally feel the building swaying from side to side in the wind. It was an amazing experience. We were now on a level that was not open to the public, but I knew this was where I wanted to shoot the movie. It wasn’t an observation deck or anything — nobody ever went up there — we hadn’t received permission to shoot this high up. So, I tried to get as much footage as I could on the first day. I knew that if we were discovered, I wouldn’t get a second day’s shoot. By the time they did find out about it, we were pretty much finished there. The management said that if we insisted on shooting on this unauthorised level, we’d have to insure ourselves for a couple more million dollars, which we then did. I remember Dennis Rief, our insurance broker, wrote the policy on the roof whilst the management looked on. It was a dangerous place to be. No question. I should also mention that the needle at the top of the Chrysler Building doesn’t have any glass in it. All those openings you see in the film are not covered, so it would in fact be possible for a bird to fly in and nest there. The tops of most other skyscrapers are completely enclosed, but when you get to the summit of the Chrysler Building there’s nothing there. It’s basically a windswept platform eighty-eight stories above the street. That makes it a difficult place to shoot because there are no guard rails or gates to prevent you from just falling out and hurtling thousands of feet to the ground below.

  What safety precautions did you take?

  [Chuckles] Well, we actually hired a stuntman, whose main job was to walk around behind me at all times on the platform and hold onto my belt. People were concerned that since my mind was occupied with the details and distractions of directing the various scenes, I might inadvertently fall to my death through one of these openings. As you can imagine, for everybody on the crew it was quite terrifying. I think people were a little nervous about going up there — including me — but I tried my best not to let anybody know that I was scared. I just led the way. Of course, I never anticipated that anybody would actually follow me up there, but I think this crew of macho guys didn’t want to lose face. I really had my doubts that I could get them to accompany me with all the lights and equipment, and shoot on that dangerous perch. On one occasion, we actually had a power failure and the entire level was plunged into total darkness. I suddenly shouted, “Everybody freeze! Don’t move! Do not take one step!” One small step in any direction could have been fatal. There was no way we could climb back down, so we just stood there in the dark for about twenty minutes and looked down below at the city lights. Finally, the crew worked out what the problem was with the cabling and the lights came back on again. But that was a very tense twenty minutes we spent there. Very tense!

  Was there anything in the screenplay that you weren’t able to realize?

  No, and interestingly enough, we ended up developing more gags and more sequences than I’d ever imagined in the script. When we got to the top of the Chrysler Building, I saw there was reconstruction work going on. I noticed that the steeplejacks, who were trained to work on skyscrapers, had placed these metal baskets all around the pinnacle. The steeplejacks would stand in these baskets as they were doing their repair work and since the baskets were hanging down on all sides of the building, I thought it would be great to put guys in there with machine guns and have them shoot at the monster as it flew by. Nobody else was ever going to have the guts to stand in those baskets, so we hired the steeplejacks because they were accustomed to being up so high. We put them in police uniforms, gave them machine guns and they climbed in the baskets. Then we had a helicopter circling the structure, filming them, and these steeplejacks were firing off blanks. Unfortunately, in the daylight, you couldn’t really see the flashes of gunfire coming from the machine guns, so we had to put them in later. Another potential problem that had escaped our attention was as the steeplejacks were firing the guns out of the baskets, cartridge shells were continually being ejected from the weapons and were raining down eighty-eight stories to the streets below. Fortunately, a series of canopies had been erected around the lower floors and they collected all the shells before they hit the street. Frankly, that could have been disastrous for us and resulted in somebody being seriously hurt or killed.

  That’s another example of God being your production manager.

  Well, we didn’t escape entirely unscathed. A nearby television station heard the sound of our gunfire which had carried down to the streets. They reported on the news that the sound of machine guns being fired was coming from the top of the Chrysler Building. Then somebody mistakenly believed that the United Nations Building was coming under attack. The New York Daily News quickly sent some photographers over — their building was close by — to see what we were doing. The next day they put a big headline in their paper: “Hollywood film crew terrorizes New York City!” It was ridiculous! The article urged that something be done about Hollywood film crews arriving in New York and terrifying their citizens. Then, the New York Post had a similar headline that implied we were spreading panic throughout the city. We didn’t terrify anybody! I actually had a camera crew down on the street to shoot the reactions of the people, but there were no reactions. Nobody was afraid or ran away, they were simply curious. In fact, some of the shots you see in Q of people running away from the monster in terror were lifted from God Told Me To. We even hired some off-duty cops as extras, who showed up in their uniforms, but it didn’t matter as we were still considered dangerous. The Daily News had published a lie and it was a damaging lie. The Mayor of New York then became involved and various people were trying to ascertain blame so they could cover their own asses by denying they’d granted us the necessary permits to fire our machine guns. It appeared that certain individuals were afflicted with sudden memory loss. The person in charge of the Motion Picture Division had also been criticised for what we did. She actually called me up and said, “Finish your picture, but you can’t shoot any more scenes on the streets. No more gunfire or chase scenes. Just finish your movie and get out of there.” [5]

  There is more gore in Q than in most of your other films with decapitations, severed limbs and the open flaying of victims
being explicitly shown.

  Some people were disturbed by the gore, but originally there was an awful lot of comedy in the movie. When Sam Arkoff became involved with Q, he wanted more moments of horror in the picture. We had already started shooting when I went to Sam and said that I needed some money to finish the film. Back then, Sam had just sold American International Pictures and was looking for another project to be involved with. Now people like Sam — who was a good-natured fellow — also love to get you in a situation where you really need them. That way, they can sock it to you in the deal. When you’re already shooting a movie and need more money, you are in a vulnerable position. Sam realized this and soon took the foreign rights to Q. However, he did give me the money I needed to complete the picture. Afterwards, Sam wanted to sell Q as a horror film and insisted on more gory moments like the faces being skinned, the chests being cut open with knives, and the decomposed bodies. So, I gave Sam what he wanted. Interestingly, the amount of gore and blood you can now view on TV in shows like CSI makes Q look fairly tame in comparison.

  Do you have any other amusing stories from the shoot?

  Let me think about that. [Pause] Oh, here’s one: the turret of the Chrysler Building wasn’t large enough to maintain the monster’s nest, and so we needed a bigger area. Our solution was to rent an abandoned police headquarters situated in Little Italy, downtown Manhattan. It was deserted at the time and there was nothing in there except for guard-dogs and rats. We went up to the top of the police headquarters turret and discovered that it matched our requirements. The same Asian gentlemen who had built the monster’s claw then came in and brought real twigs and branches, and actually constructed the monster’s oversized nest. The nest was very complicated to build. Its branches were carefully weaved together to make it look like a real nest. When it was in place, we brought in the huge artificial egg and placed it in there. We then put up the lights, and our camera-man, Fred Murphy, shot the sequence. When we were finished, I told everybody to wrap-out and they started removing all the lights, and the dressing, and the large egg. Unfortunately, the crew did not remove the nest. They figured that nobody was ever going to climb up into the turret of this abandoned building again, so they left the nest where it was and walked away. I didn’t actually know about this because I was long gone by then. About four months later, somebody decided to transform this building into very expensive condominiums. In scouting the premises, they had ventured up into the turret and suddenly discovered this huge nest. The next thing that happened was the New York Times published this small article on the front page saying that anthropologists were flying into the city from all over the world. Apparently, a gigantic nest had been found in the roof of the former New York Police Department headquarters. Experts were coming in to examine it as the nest had clearly been constructed by a mysterious and unusually large animal. I quickly realized exactly what they were talking about. To be honest, I thought the whole thing was very amusing, but I never said or did anything about it.

  What about the title card that is seen at the end of some versions of Q — but not on others such as the 2003 DVD release — which states that Quinn has been awarded the million dollars he was promised by the authorities?

  Firstly, I thought this guy was pretty adorable, and it would be great to see him come out on top. So, I put in the title card at the end saying, “Jimmy Quinn sued the city of New York and got $1 million tax free.” I felt the audience would be happy to see this small-time crook finally make it big. Without that ending card, the movie really gives Quinn his one moment of notoriety and importance before allowing him to disappear into obscurity again. Secondly, I don’t know why the title card is on some prints of Q and not on others. It could be that the title card only appeared on the CRI, which is the duplicate negative, and maybe the version you saw was from the original negative that was in the vault. They very seldom take the original negative out of the vault and use it. They use all the prints from the duplicate negative, which is safer, because if any damage does occur they still have the pristine original negative. In some instances, when companies have been making copies for home video in later years, they may have gone back to the vault and got the original negative and made the video and DVD copies from those. That is possibly why the DVD release doesn’t have the title card on it at the end. I don’t know.

  For the record, which is your preferred ending — with or without the card?

  I prefer the ending with the title card. I think it gives the picture a little laugh at the climax. Originally, Quinn was going to be killed by the Aztec priest at the end and sacrificed in honor of Quetzalcoatl. It was supposed to be a coming together of the various threads of the story, but Moriarty played that character so beautifully and made him so damn lovable and kooky and delightful, I just couldn’t do it. It would have been a mistake for Quinn to die and conclude the movie on such a serious downer. So, we shot that little scene in the hotel room where Quinn tells the religious fanatic that he won’t consent to his own sacrifice. He just says, “Fuck you,” and then the detective bursts in and saves him. I’m very glad we did that scene. I think the picture works much better with Jimmy alive and well at the end.

  What’s the story with your efforts to get Q distributed?

  We showed the picture to a lot of different places and everybody responded positively. At one point, Universal were very close to buying Q. In fact, Bob Rehme, who was the head of Universal at the time, really liked the picture. We actually ran the film three or four times for Rehme and he even visited us when we were shooting at the Chrysler Building. I was convinced Universal would buy the movie but then, for some unknown reason, one of the executives didn’t like Q and Rehme was talked out of it. We then took the film to MGM, who were very enthusiastic about it. They were going to give us $5 million and buy the picture. This was on the Friday but, over the course of that same weekend, the head of distribution got fired and the deal was lost. It was just incredibly bad timing, that’s all. If that person had held onto their job for another week, MGM would have bought the picture. We would then have made a huge profit up front because the movie had only cost $1 million to make. Q was eventually bought by United Artists, who gave it a decent distribution. I was pleased that Q was opening at the Rivoli because that was a terrific New York theater — the same theater where Jaws had opened. It did very good business and Q was the #1 box office film in New York City when it opened. I also think the movie played on 42nd Street at the New Amsterdam, where it broke house records. So, Q did very nicely, but it would have probably done even better if Universal had taken it as they would have been a better releasing company for the film. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now as I was pleased with the way Q was put out. We also had some beautiful full-page ads they took out in the newspaper and there was also the television advertising. I also thought that the poster art for Q was impressive. They commissioned a wonderful piece of art that was rendered by the famed illustrator who had done the poster for Conan the Barbarian. [6] United Artists couldn’t really sell Q any other way than they did. You had to have the New York skyscrapers clearly visible and, of course, you had to have the monster in there somewhere. I liked the image of Quetzalcoatl carrying this girl off in its claws accompanied by the slogan: “New York is famous for good eating.” I came up with that. I thought that line gave you a good indication of what the tone of the movie was. Upon seeing the poster, I felt people would clearly understand that Q was a horror film with a comedic aspect to it.

  In his review, Roger Ebert writes of an encounter between Sam Arkoff and critic Rex Reed. After seeing Q, Reed is reported to have said, “Who would have thought it? Amongst all that dreck was a wonderful performance by Moriarty.”

  [Interrupting] And then Sam is supposed to have said, “The dreck — or crap — was my idea,” something like that. Yeah, I know all about that. Actually, a lot of people still remember that quote. I thought the whole picture worked well as it was, but Sam didn’t have any creative input into Q
, other than to say he wanted more horror. He was never specific about anything. He just wanted it to be more overtly violent and horrific to counter the comedy. Sam was afraid that we wouldn’t attract the horror audience at all. Personally, I think you have to be careful about walking that line with these kinds of films. If people come to see a horror movie like Q and you give them a comedy, they are not going to like the picture. If you advertise the movie as a horror film, you better damn well give them some horror or you are in trouble. If you make a horror picture and you want it to be a success, you have got to scare the audience. If they don’t scream then you are not going to have a hit. I mean, the audience did scream to some degree watching Q as we had a few shocks and scares in there, but it was not to the same extent as It’s Alive. Now that film really did scare them!

  Ebert also posed a difficult question: “How did Quetzalcoatl get pregnant?”

  Well, that must have happened back in Mexico! That’s all I can say about that. [Laughs] You know, the big-budget American version of Godzilla made by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin basically stole from Q. I noticed that in none of the previous Godzilla movies did Godzilla ever lay any eggs. In fact, I always thought that Godzilla was a male monster. In Emmerich and Devlin’s version, Godzilla lays eggs in Madison Square Garden and, at the end of the picture, the last shot of Godzilla was the very same last shot as Q. You see another egg, which cracks open just before we cut to black and the credits roll. So, it’s rather obvious that they lifted that exact scene from Q. I mean, the basic idea of this monster coming to New York to lays its eggs is taken directly from Q. I remember that the Academy of Science Fiction and Horror had an awards dinner and I actually ran into Dean Devlin there. I walked over to him and said, “I hear you are doing Godzilla. I guess we both have a monster in New York now.” As soon as that sentence left my mouth, Dean turned and ran away! I was literally left standing there, wondering why he hadn’t responded to me. Then I saw Godzilla and realized they had stolen some of the concept of our picture. Fortunately, I didn’t sue them or anything because later on I did a picture with Dean called Cellular. I was smart enough to not make a big deal out of it and just let it go.