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Production Notes |
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| Unlike what it says in the movie, "The Thing" is not really 100,000 years old. John Carpenter’s The Thing was actually born in 1938, the subject of a pulp-back novella by John W. Campbell, Jr., entitled Who Goes There? The renowned science fiction author was to find an admirer in Hollywood; director Howard Hawks, which would result in the screen classic, The Thing from Another World (1952). Both the movie and the director would years later turn out to be favorites of JOHN CARPENTER, and Thing co-producer STUART COHEN would also admit being a childhood fan of Campbell’s. All of which brings us to about 1976, when Cohen dug up, reread and , along with producers DAVID FOSTER and LAWRENCE TURMAN, decided that Who Goes There? would make a perfect feature, to which Carpenter, who had met Cohen several years before at USC, concurred. A deal with Universal, a script by BILL LANCASTER, and principal photography was begun on August 24, 1981. A twelve week shooting schedule saw the cast and crew on more than a half-dozen sound stages, some frozen down to temperatures in the twenties. The film’s star, KURT RUSSELL, for whom The Thing marks his third movie with Carpenter (Escape from New York and Elvis the two other), can best describe the trials and tribulations of working in an icebox: "When we were in the middle of summertime in Los Angeles, it was about 108 degrees and we were shooting on sets that were 20 degrees. So when you went outside it was literally like walking into an oven." In addition to space on the Universal lot, an entire separate unit was set up at Universal-Hartland, where ROB BOTTIN’s special effects work was underway prior to, during and after completion of principal photography. Special effects were supervised by ROY ARBOGAST, with ALBERT WHITLOCK designing the special visual effects, and Bottin responsible for the special make-up effects. On December 2, 1981, approximately 100 American and Canadian filmmakers traveled to a remote location near Stewart, British Columbia, to complete the final weeks of shooting. Why here? There were a number of reasons: It is the most northern ice-free port on the Canadian west coast; it is the only glacier in the Northern Hemisphere that affords access to vehicles by road; and most important, it was guaranteed to snow. Every hotel, motel and extra room in the area (pop. 1,500) was occupied by the film company. They made the daily trek to location by helicopter, or van and bus up a winding, restricted, radio-controlled mine road. And they got their snow, along with temperatures of 15 to 30 degrees below zero. The resulting difficulties of which few are as qualified to speak as the director. Carpenter: "We had a limited amount of daylight because we were shooting in November and December. We had lenses that would freeze up on us. It was physically difficult to get around. We had a lot of problems in filming. But not as many as I anticipated." One week of second-unit photography was also done in June of 1981 on the Taku Glacier on the Juneau Ice Field, Juneau, Alaska. |
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