Friday, February 25, 2011

Fun Fact #6 and Others

Fun Fact: Steven Spielberg has to constantly be talked out of giving his characters whips.

Indiana Jones is the only character that ended up anywhere near Spielberg's initial concept, but with considerably less whipping. In the famous "Indy shoots the swordsman" scene, Spielberg originally intended to have Jones whip the sword out of his hand, and then whip his foe to death over several minutes. Seeing he would never win the argument against the whipping death, Ford faked a bout of dysentery and convinced Spielberg the pain and diarrhea were too severe to film the scene as written, which allowed him to just shoot the swordsman.

Other examples(by no means a comprehensive list):

Jaws:
Spielberg added a scene(later cut) to Jaws wherein Chief Brody whips his son repeatedly for not cleaning his plate.

Brody also later whips Hooper before Quint takes the whip away and throws it behind him without looking. The whip lands right in the shark's face.

Always:
In the film Always, Spielberg had Dreyfuss' character Pete Sandich attempt to whip Hap(Audrey Hepburn) to prove that she's not actually a supernatural being. After whipping through her spirit body several times, Dreyfuss says in an astonished voice "So it's true what they say, you can't whip an angel." This scene was kept in the script, but after Hepburn sustained numerous injuries while trying to film the scene, it was cut.

Amistad:
Oddly, Amistad contained only one instance of whipping. Martin Van Buren is seen whipping a hot dog out of a passerby's hand and eating it. Van Buren then quips "I'm a slave to Ball Park Franks."

Spielberg said he thought seeing any of the slaves get whipped might have been in poor taste.


This still from the original cut of Hook
shows Wendy and Tinkerbell's first encounter


Jurassic Park:
In the background of one scene, a dinosaur is seen whipping monkeys out of a tree and into its waiting mouth.The scene was cut due to the fact that a dinosaur living in an island park and who presumably has no job would be unable to afford a whip.

E.T.:
When Elliott investigates the strange noises coming from the backyard shed, he tosses a baseball into the shed and is immediately whipped across the face.

Spielberg envisioned ET as having an alien utility belt that included several lengths of whip.

Spielberg was never happy with the government agents holding guns, and in the director's cut the guns have been digitally removed and replaced by whips.

And another thing. Why was E.T.(an interstellar scientist) totally nude? Even if at home they run around naked as the day they were hatched, wouldn't a team of extraterrestrial botanists have some sort of protection from a foreign environment? Or at least some sort of short apron that would cover their genitals while allowing them to defecate through the open back? At least Spielberg realized they would need some sort of tool box or belt for their instruments and/or whips.

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