Do you have any anecdotes regarding The Stuff that pertain to your own unmistakable brand of guerrilla filmmaking?
[Chuckles] Here’s one: an assistant came to me one day and said, “I’ve found this great location where you can shoot the scene with the fashion show. There’s this furrier showroom in New Jersey and the owner will give us the place for free. He’ll also supply us with a dozen models, as long as the girls wear his fur coats.” That sounded great and I immediately had this image in my mind of the models parading up and down the catwalk in bathing suits and fur coats, eating The Stuff. The prospect of shooting the scene there without it costing us a dime made me very happy, so I quickly said, “Okay, let’s do it!” I didn’t even bother to view the place. My production people showed me some photographs and it looked fabulous. How could we possibly go wrong there? So, we all got in our trucks and drove out to New Jersey. When we arrived at the building, we discovered that there were, in fact, two tenants there. The first was indeed the furrier showroom, but, unfortunately, the second occupants were the New Jersey offices of the Teamsters. Needless to say, The Stuff was a non-union movie and we weren’t using any Teamsters on the production. Now, as many people know, the Teamsters are a highly unionized organization that is often considered to be allied with mobsters. As a result, people are often scared and intimidated of them.
But not you, right?
Being scared and intimidated is one thing, but showing people that you are is another thing entirely. Generally, the Teamsters close pictures down if you don’t hire Teamster drivers to drive all the vehicles and keep them on salary. If you don’t employ them and pay them huge amounts of money, the Teamsters often picket and sometimes block the movement of trucks and the transportation of equipment. They have an unpleasant history of being able to force companies to hire members of their own organization on various productions. Anyway, when we arrived there and realized this location was actually the Teamsters headquarters, oh, god! I mean, we weren’t just shooting in New Jersey — we were shooting right under their noses! Right in their own building! I said to the crew, “We’re not going home without shooting this scene today. Let’s just unload all the equipment and see what happens.” My thinking was that despite their fearsome reputation, the worst case scenario would be that the Teamsters would close us down. They’d make us pack everything up again and we’d have to scuttle back to Manhattan. I felt we should just seize the day because we had nothing to lose. We were already there and the entire day was ruined if we turned back. We had all these models and actors, so we went right ahead and set up. We started shooting the scene and, naturally, here come the Teamsters! They came swarming downstairs to see what was going on and couldn’t quite believe that somebody possessed the guts to shoot a non-union movie in their headquarters. It was like a scene out of On the Waterfront. They were these big, surly, tough-looking guys in short-sleeve shirts. Their shirts weren’t tucked-in and you could see the little bulge in their back pocket where they usually kept their guns. Everybody on the crew froze and said, “Larry, what are you going to do?” I then turned around, calmly walked towards the Teamsters and started singing “If I Was a Richman” from Fiddler on the Roof — only I changed the lyrics to “If I Was a Teamster.” [Singing] “If I was a Teamster; all day long I really wouldn’t have to work so hard; all day long I’d sit there in the truck; if I was a Teamster.” And this went on and on…
[Laughs] And what was their reaction?
These guys just stared at me as if I was fucking insane! I don’t think they could quite believe what was happening. They thought I was completely crazy because I didn’t show them any fear. I just kept singing and finally they cracked and started laughing. When they thought it was all over, one of them patted me on the back and said, “This guy has got the biggest pair of balls I’ve ever seen!” Then, they turned around, went back upstairs, and we finished shooting our scene. So, I got away with it yet again.
You earlier mentioned the use of slick advertising to push potentially hazardous products. You satirize that idea mercilessly in the film with your own fake commercials for The Stuff. Tell me about the creation of those adverts.
I always knew that the commercials would be an important element of the picture. We devised and shot a number of commercials and TV spots, and tried to make them as seductive and appealing as possible. We got some dancers and choreographed routines for them. We also had somebody come up with some memorable jingles as jingles are such an important element of commercials. [3] We then hired a few actors and celebrities to appear in the commercials as if they were representing a real product. One was Clara Peller, who was very recognizable on American television at the time. She’d featured in this famous commercial for Wendy’s fast food restaurant, playing a little old woman who would repeatedly say, “Where’s the beef?” It was one of the most inexplicably popular things on TV and everybody was doing takeoffs and jokes about it. We actually paid Clara Peller quite a bit of dough to come in and shoot a fake commercial. Basically, she sat at a table with Abe Vigoda [4] and said, “Where’s The Stuff?” And that was it. To be honest with you, it was a complete waste of money. It added little to the film, but it did end up costing an awful lot. We had been assured by the publicists that if we used Peller it would generate a tremendous amount of publicity for The Stuff. As it turned out, we hardly got any publicity at all based on her involvement. So, it was an entirely unnecessary expenditure. I could have spent that money on more special effects and less Clara Peller, or no Clara Peller! [Laughs] I mean, she was a nice little old lady who was more than eighty years old, and I don’t begrudge her the money, but it was a pointless addition.
The use of spoof commercials was later popularised by Robocop and The Running Man, but The Stuff was one of the first movies to play with that idea.
I never realized that, but you may be right. Actually, we didn’t even use some of the best ones we shot because there just wasn’t any place for them in the movie. I think the commercials definitely slowed things down; that was certainly the feeling with the executives at New World. I was originally going to have a series of commercials squeezed in between the prologue where the two guys first discover The Stuff and the scene where the little boy wakes up at night and goes downstairs to the refrigerator. I thought the commercials acted as a nice bridge and showed how that substance in the snow had suddenly established itself as a national phenomenon. The opinion at New World was that we needed to move the story forward much quicker and instead sprinkle the commercials throughout the picture. I felt it would have been a nice transition to have included them in the beginning. It would have set the premise up nicely, but it just wasn’t to be. Laurene Landon was in one of the commercials we ended up cutting, but her name is still in the credits. Brooke Adams’ commercial was relegated to the end credits because I didn’t know where else to put it. Paul Kurta, who was the production manager on a lot of my pictures, was doing a movie with Brooke and I asked him if he would approach her about doing a commercial. She agreed but, again, it was a waste of money. I’m not sure how many people would have recognized her, but Brooke had appeared in a lot of big movies, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. [5] By the time the credits had finished rolling and Brooke appeared, I think most of the audience had left the theater. Tammy Grimes, the Tony-Award winning actress, also did one, which is still in the movie. I called Tammy up and asked if she would do a cameo as a favor to me and she did. We paid Abe Vigoda to come in for just the one day to shoot with Clara Peller. You’ll find these people are all very employable. You pay them and they happily show up.
Can you tell me who designed the distinctive product packaging for The Stuff?
That was done by Larry Lurin, a friend of mine, who is a talented designer and art director. Larry had done some nice ad campaigns for my stage plays in New York and was also very experienced at doing motion picture posters. I asked him if he would design me some packaging for a new imaginary dessert. He agreed and I paid him a fee
. I thought Larry came up with a very slick, seductive-looking product. It looks exactly like something you would see sold in stores. As a matter of fact, I suggested to New World that we could manufacture and sell packages of The Stuff as a real product — a frozen dessert or yogurt housed in Larry’s container. My idea was that we could have placed this product in the lobbies of all the theaters where the film played, so people could buy The Stuff at the concession stand. Unfortunately, New World did not embrace my idea as it was obviously too complicated for them. They said, “Suppose somebody gets sick and they decide to sue us? We don’t even have insurance to cover the distribution of food, so it just won’t work.” You must understand something about the movie business: generally, people don’t want to do anything that may cause them any additional effort or problems. If you want to do something that is perceived as being out of the norm, or is going to complicate someone’s life in some small way and add to the working hours in their day, they do not want to do get involved. I care about my movies a great deal. They are something special to me and I’ll put in that extra time and effort to make them better or more successful. But for those individuals in distribution and advertising, it’s merely a job. They want to go home at five o’clock and just forget about everything. So, New World didn’t go for my suggestion, but it would have been a great idea.
It’s still a great idea.
I certainly think so. I had some very definite ideas about what approach we should take in marketing The Stuff. I always thought that the best way to advertise the movie would have been to take commercials out on TV for The Stuff as if it was a real product. We could have run those commercials for a week and people would have gone to the supermarket to buy The Stuff and would be told that no such product existed. We could have even devised some form of coupon system or given away free tickets to customers at stores as a prize and tied it in with the release of the picture. Then, after a week of playing these realistic TV spots, we could have had a different commercial on the following week informing people that The Stuff was actually a new horror movie about a food product that could kill you. It would have been an elaborate campaign, but I think we could have earned some serious attention that way. Again, New World did not want to do anything that was out of the norm. They also didn’t want to spend additional money on new commercials. So, they advertised The Stuff as they would any other ordinary picture. They didn’t really have a good hook on it in order to sell the film. The Stuff could have been a huge success if they had just gone with my ideas. When we were selling It’s Alive, we devised a commercial that fooled the audience into believing that it was selling an actual baby product. You hear some tinkling bells as the camera dollies over to a crib and a very pleasant voice announces: “There’s only one thing wrong with the Davis baby…” — then the camera moved to the other side of the crib and you suddenly saw this little claw reaching out as the narrator concludes — “It’s Alive!” It was at that moment the audience realized the commercial was for a horror movie, not some baby product. We should have applied that same approach to The Stuff, but we didn’t. It was a great idea, but a great idea is only great if it’s welcomed and used by people. Otherwise, it’s utterly redundant.
How was your second collaboration with Michael Moriarty? I understand that at one point he threatened to walk off the picture.
Yes, at the very beginning, on the first or second day. We were shooting in upstate New York and I had berated a member of the crew for some reason that seemed important at the time. Moriarty felt that I had been too hard on the guy and I don’t recall exactly what happened, but it eventually culminated with Michael deciding to quit the film. It was obviously a delicate situation, but I calmly told him, “Okay, Michael, leave if you want to. I promise I won’t sue you. Just go ahead and walk if you’re not happy. I won’t do anything to penalise you or harm you in any way. I know that we are going to lose a lot of money if you walk off the picture, but don’t worry about it. Just go ahead and leave if you feel you have to.” Fortunately, Moriarty didn’t feel like he had to. When he heard what I had to say, he calmed down a little, reconsidered his position, and decided to stay. Moriarty is a mercurial and often self-destructive personality, but I was very glad he decided to stick around.
Did you occasionally feel that you had to walk a careful line with Moriarty as not to upset him?
No, you just have to understand Michael. I knew he wasn’t going to walk off the picture, but instead of being adversarial I played along. There was one unfortunate incident that happened which did upset him a little. There was originally a scene in the movie that took place after Moriarty and Andrea flee the motel. Moriarty was to open the trunk of his car and be shocked to discover that The Stuff had infiltrated his vehicle. We were about to shoot Moriarty’s reaction shot when an idea came to me: I approached Michael’s son, Matthew, who was just a kid at the time, and said, “Why don’t we sneak you into the trunk for this next shot? We’ll cover you with fake blood, so that when your father opens it up he’ll see you lying there looking dead.” Matthew agreed and we covered him in blood, placed him in the trunk, and shut it down. We then started shooting the scene, but soon realized that the guy who had the keys to the car had gone into town to get something. He was gone and here was Moriarty’s kid stuck in the trunk and we couldn’t get him out. Well, Moriarty had to be told what had happened and he wasn’t too happy when he found out that his twelve-year-old son had been locked in a car. Some members of our crew started dismantling the vehicle, pulling out the back seat and everything, trying to get Matthew out of there. Fortunately, the guy with the keys came back and we got the kid out of the trunk without completely destroying the car. I was just trying to pull a little gag on Moriarty to see what his reaction shot would be when he suddenly saw his child lying there with all this blood over him. It wasn’t exactly the smartest idea I’ve ever had and, naturally, it backfired. As it turned out, they should have had a camera on me when I found out that the guy with the keys to the car had left. It was not a happy moment.
Was the shoot a fairly smooth one?
Well, you always encounter problems and challenges on any movie, but I guess it went okay. You can always do with a little more money. I do remember that when we were shooting the prologue where the old man, who is played by Harry Bellaver, one of the stars of Naked City, finds the Stuff coming out of the ground, we had a problem. We went out to New Jersey to shoot the scene and it was a beautiful day with no sign of rain or snow. But when we got there it suddenly started snowing and there wasn’t meant to be any snow in the scene. Then the snow quickly became a blizzard and I said, “Oh, my god! Look at the production value we are getting here! It would take twenty-five snow machines to reproduce this and we get it all for free! It’s going to look great on film!” My cameraman, Paul Glickman, then said, “Yeah, Larry, it’s going to look wonderful, but the equipment is not set up for a snowstorm. We aren’t prepared for this weather.” Pretty soon after those words left Paul’s lips, all of the lights started exploding and our electrical equipment blew up. The cables were not insulated and were left exposed in the snow. What eventually happened was we kept on shooting and as went along we kept on losing equipment. Everything kept blowing up, but we got the sequence done and it does indeed look good on film.
I like the brief exchange Colonel Spears has with the young boy shortly before they battle The Stuff: “America has never lost a war,” Spears contests. The boy then asks, “What about Vietnam, sir?” only for Spears to reply, “We lost that war at home, sonny.”
I put that in there to add a little political flavor to the mix. It also tells you something about the Colonel and his attitude to the Vietnam War. A soldier always does his or her best, but it’s our governments that have their own reasons for starting and ending any conflicts that we engage in with other countries. Of course, there’s also the strength of public opinion and feeling. I liked the idea of this guy having his own private army that was just waiting to go to war wi
th the commies. Instead the Colonel’s forces go to war against The Stuff! Something amused me about the idea that the only man capable of defeating this monster is something of a monster himself — a half-crazed racist with his own highly-armed militia. Again, I must say, I love Paul Sorvino’s performance as the Colonel. I think he’s very, very funny.
Larry Cohen Page 40