'Jurassic Park' & 'The Lost World', VFX Supervisor, John Rosengrant

0:00John RosengrantI, and it was big. But I'm, I mean, a big breakthrough for us was coming up with the telemetry device and how to control the T-Rex. And in a lot of ways, that big, giant T-Rex was easier to control than the raptors because we ended up building, in one-fifth scale, this telemetry device that replicated all the joints of the full-size T-Rex. And so in real time, if you moved the head, you had a puppeteer on the head or the tail or the torso, and he's moving that, and it's sending a signal to the, through the computer system to the full-size T-Rex, and it's replicating that movement. And so all of that technology w… was big. I mean, that was, Stan ended up hiring a lot of great people: Craig Barr, Tim Nordella, Roy Ball.

1:08Jawad MirJurassic Park. Obviously, you know, you had, we talked about this, you had worked with…

1:14John RosengrantYeah

1:14Jawad Mir... Worked in the past with similar films and sim… similar team and all that. How, aside from being that little factor, what, when you first heard, when you first heard about dinosaurs, what was your reaction at the time? Like, you know, because up until then, there hasn't really been a dinosaur film per se, other than if you wanna call Godzilla, which was, you know, way back in the '30s.

1:38John RosengrantYeah. And…

1:38Jawad MirIt came…

1:38John Rosengrant... What was that Baby or something that

1:41Jawad MirYeah

1:41John Rosengrant... Disney film. Yeah. That was…

1:43Jawad MirOh, right. Yeah.

1:44John RosengrantYeah.

1:45Jawad MirLand Bef… Land Before Time had come out actually two years before that, which was Lucas and Spielberg and Don Bluth. But other than that, hasn't been anything. What was your feeling as an audience member, as an individual…

1:57John RosengrantYeah

1:57Jawad Mir... About this whole dinosaur thing?

1:59John RosengrantWell, we first heard about it, we were finishing up, Terminator 2, which is another classic film. But we heard about that, and, Stan told us, you know, that there was a possibility of Jurassic Park. And we were real excited because I would say probably most all of us grew up as dinosaur fans. And one of my first experiences was going to the New York World's Fair, and they had that exhibition where you got in the Ford Mustang convertible or the T-Bird or whatever it was, and they took you back in time, and it was those big animatronic dinosaurs. And I had also gone to the, New York City, the museum, the, like, Natural History Museum.

2:55John RosengrantAnd, you know, was looking at all the bones and all that. As a, as a little kid, but I think that's where our passion for dinosaurs starts, as a little kid. And, it's just remarkable that these things walked the Earth at one point in time. At least it was to me. And then to hear about this movie, Jurassic Park, where they wanted to do dinosaurs for real and make 'em cool, and it just was very exciting. And we had all been, and I say we, I meaning the team at Stan Winston's, w… were really into dinosaurs at that time, and there's lots of information coming out. There was a book by Gregory Paul and Robert Bakker's, findings and books, and Jack Horner, who ended up being on the film as sort of a consultant. Not sort of, as the consultant. And, so all of these things were sort of gelling and coming out at the same time, and it was really taking a new look at the way a theropod, a T-Rex or, you know, would move and how they were really built.

4:14John RosengrantAnd the tail didn't drag on the ground like when we were little kids growing up to see that. It was a counterbalance. So there was all this information that, we were chomping at the bit to incorporate into the design of the dinosaurs.

4:33Jawad MirRight. It's so fascinating. I don't know if you have seen, there's an Apple series called Prehistoric Planet where they actually, it's kind of like a nature series with dinosaurs in it. Like, it's all visual effects.

4:46John RosengrantI think I've seen some of, some of that. Yeah.

4:49Jawad MirYeah. And then there's one coming on Netflix, which is, executive produced by Spielberg with Morgan Freeman narrating. I think it's called Life on Our Planet but sort of deals with life on our planet from the dinosaur age up until now.

5:03Jawad MirAnd just seeing the types of dinosaurs and the detail and the texture, imagining how they actually shot this entire series, you know, without the dinosaurs, just kind of going out in the…

5:16John RosengrantOh

5:16Jawad Mir... In the wild, obviously storyboarding. You know, it, the fascination of dinosaurs, I think it sort of faded away in Hollywood for, after probably Jurassic Park III, and then it kinda got back in with The Lost, Jurassic World.

5:30John RosengrantYeah.

5:31Jawad MirDo you, do you feel that we are going to see, with the interest of dinosaur ever, always being there, do you feel that we're gonna see another potential Jurassic series in the next 10 to 15 years, or maybe even earlier?

5:45John RosengrantYeah, I don't know. I really don't. I think maybe people are a little oversaturated with them now, you know. 'Cause how many Jurassic World series did they make? Three, four of them?

6:00Jawad MirYeah.

6:00John RosengrantYeah.

6:00Jawad MirNot too crazy about it.

6:02John RosengrantAnd may… maybe you have to come up with a completely new concept To get people hooked back in. I mean, the idea of Jurassic Park was genius. That you build this park, and you use the DNA, and you recreate these dinosaurs. And I mean, that was new, and I think that added to the attraction, that people love dinosaurs. But I think it's the storytelling and the story. You know, Michael Crichton paired up with, Steven Spielberg, really delivered something original and new. And then it gave all of us that were involved with the special effects the chance to really shine, and to try to bring these things to life. And, you know, with the new technology of CGI, which when we started the film, that was not on the table at all. That was…

7:02Jawad MirWow

7:02John Rosengrant... There wasn't, no… nobody was talking about that. It was gonna be regular visual effects, and Phil Tippett and his group were gonna do go-motion dinosaurs, which is a version of stop-motion that had a bit of a blur on it.

7:19Jawad MirYeah.

7:19John RosengrantAnd the rest was gonna be animatronics. And so that's, that was the game plan anyway. And…

7:31Jawad MirYeah, no, I've, I…

7:32John Rosengrant... It turned…

7:33Jawad MirI… I've seen that documentary over and over again where the part where, you know, the stop motion, they even show some of the test footage and how ridiculously terrible it looks. It almost looks like Godzilla from the '30s and the '40s. But I'm just so grab that, glad that technology came in. I mean, that just changed everything, right? It just... Now obviously that is also connected to T2 and The Abyss. You know, the Liquid Man or…

7:59John RosengrantIt's an outgrowth of those. I think James Cameron pioneering and trying, striving to, create a new arena with effects. He was al… he's always been like that, pushing that envelope. And I think…

8:16Jawad MirIs.

8:17John RosengrantHe, yeah, still is. I mean…

8:20Jawad MirYeah

8:20John Rosengrant... He's not gonna quit. And then I think it was the perfect storm with, Steve Williams and all the guys that were working for Dennis Muren at the time. And just watching that whole thing take place and explode, and it became the perfect balance, I think, between the animatronic dinosaurs. We're not making these things run and move in the same…

8:51Jawad MirYeah

8:51John Rosengrant... Way that they could. So it really, it was a nice marriage of the two to

8:58Jawad MirRight

8:58John Rosengrant... Cover all of the bases and to get it, get the story across.

9:04Jawad MirSure. For sure. What was the biggest challenge that you as an individual faced working on Jurassic? I mean, I've seen some of your behind the scenes photos. I don't know if it was Jurassic Park one, The Lost World, Jurassic Park III, where you're in, sort of like a half raptor suit, like the legs.

9:21John RosengrantYeah. That was, that was in one, and two, and three.

9:28Jawad MirYou were, you were essentially the raptor in all three films.

9:32John RosengrantYeah. We figured out that was a neat way to, get the legs moving and, you know, you could feature the toes and all of the, all of that stuff. Good organic way of doing it. I'm sorry, what was your original question?

9:51Jawad MirJust asking in terms of your challenges that you…

9:54John RosengrantOh, challenges

9:54Jawad Mir... Yeah.

9:56John RosengrantWell, it just was a lot of big, huge dinosaurs, and it was due in about a year, which sounds like a lot of time. But when you think about the size of these things, and we were sort of reinventing things. I mean, we had done the queen alien, which was big. I mean, she's 12, 14 feet tall.

10:19Jawad MirYeah.

10:19John RosengrantT-Rex was 18 feet tall to the top of his nose, and, he was a lot longer than that.

10:27Jawad MirYeah.

10:27John RosengrantHe's al… almost 40 feet long. So i… it's huge. And so at that point in time, the process of, digitally milling out the parts and all of that wasn't happening on Jurassic Park One. So we sort of had…

10:45Jawad MirYeah

10:46John Rosengrant... To build it up old school. You know, where you took the miniature one and you sliced it into sections, and then you took that…

10:54Jawad MirYeah

10:54John Rosengrant... Cross-section and you built wood, and you built an armature, and you scaled it up. You know, the way they built the Statue of Liberty or any other big sculpture back in the day. And we had just ton, probably ton of clay, you know, that we were putting on. And we had to devise these methodologies of melting the clay and getting it hot so that you could sling it up onto the models really quickly. So you had the T-Rex going on. You've got velociraptors in all their incarnations. There's puppet versions, there's, half versions, there's insert versions, there's legs, there's suits, there's... There, you know, we were using every trick in the book. But you had then the movie schedule. You know, things changed. The, sick triceratops was never supposed to shoot first.

11:53Jawad MirYeah.

11:53John RosengrantAnd it wasn't sh… supposed to shoot in Hawaii. So then, you know, all hands on deck. You're trying to get that thing done and shipped out. And I would've loved to have gone and been part of that, but I couldn't because I was still there in the studio prepping and finishing… Velociraptors, which were next up once they got back from Hawaii. I think it's just the scope was the hardest thing and, inventing new technologies. How we're gonna move these big dinosaurs. How we're gonna mold these dinosaurs, and you… you're breaking molds down to fit into the ovens. And we bought new ovens, and we had to raise the roof in s… Stan's shop to make the dinosaur even fit in there. And, you know, you had to calculate where you're gonna break the mold so that you can fit the...

12:53John RosengrantA… and because it was determined that foam rubber would be the most user-friendly and best way to, create the skins. I did lots of tests with urethanes and silicones, but they're too heavy, and these things weighed a ton as it was, literally. I think, more than a ton, easily. Trying to think what the T-Rex weighed. Maybe 10, 12,000 pounds. I mean, it was…

13:22Jawad MirI think so, yeah

13:23John Rosengrant... I mean, it was big. But, I mean, a big breakthrough for us was coming up with the telemetry device and how to control the T-Rex. And in a lot of ways, that big, giant T-Rex was easier to control than the raptors because we ended up building, in one-fifth scale, this telemetry device that replicated all the joints of the full-size T-Rex. And so in real time, if you moved the head, you had a puppeteer on the head or the tail or the torso, and he's moving that, and it's sending a signal to the, through the computer system to the full-size T-Rex, and it's replicating that movement. And so all of that technology w… was big. I mean, that was,.. Stan ended up hiring a lot of great people. Craig Barr, Tim Nordella, Roy Ball from the, theme park industry, and those guys brought their expertise.

14:31John RosengrantAnd something that Stan really wanted to create was, you know, sometimes you'll see things in amusement parks or whatever that kinda, St… Stan coined a phrase, wagga. You know, where the head is kinda wagga. And when you watch any big animal, when its head turns or moves, it stops on a dime, and there's no wiggling and waggling around. It's just steady and that's what we needed to replicate. So computer programs were, written and formulas were created to make sure that this stuff could ramp up and down electronically and be able to do just that, stop on a dime and not have all that extra weight. You know, there's the famous story that's been told a million times, so I'll, I'll go quick with it. The whole thing with the T-Rex wasn't supposed to go in the water, and the rain was supposed to be in front of it and yada, all that.

15:41John RosengrantLong story short, it ends up in the rain. And I get it, 'cause it makes it exciting, and it looks great putting it in the rain. But what happened was we weren't prepared for that because the skin, being foam ru… rubber, is like a giant sponge, and it sucked up a lot of water, and it changed the weight. The weight was the way the program was designed to help control it so it would move properly. And now it weighed I don't know how much more, because the skin soaked up all the water, and then it caused it to kind of freak out. And so we had teams of people in there at night drying the thing off and putting heaters on it and hair dryers and whatever it took. I went and bought all of the, went to REI or one of those camping places and bought all the silicone sealant that they had, and we were brushing it on the skin to help it, so the water wouldn't penetrate.

16:45John RosengrantBut these are all big learning curves.

16:49Jawad MirYeah, I bet.

16:49John RosengrantSo, a… and by the time we got to Jurassic Park III, we knew it was gonna work in the water, so we prepped that. So we knew what was gonna happen. And so we made the head, constructed it a little bit different, 'cause that head had to stick i… it down in the water and do all this. So we were prepared for it. We learned from our, I wouldn't actually call it a mistake. I'd call it our situation. And, the long story short is we got through it. The thing looks amazing in the movie, and I understand why you want it in the rain, 'cause it's just that much more dramatic. And…

17:34Jawad MirFor sure

17:35John Rosengrant... The whole big animatronic foot stepping down in the mud, I mean, that's, that's pretty classic, pretty amazing stuff.

17:46Jawad MirOne of the things you mentioned about the movement of the head, you know, there are scenes like, when T-Rex kinda goes like this, and the raptors go like this, and they'll kinda tilt their head back and forth just once or twice. And I was just watching something randomly online, and I came across a video of this

18:09John RosengrantSure

18:10Jawad Mir... Basically with gigantic piece of like, you know…... The hair and all that stuff hanging out.

18:16John RosengrantHis weird tongue.

18:17Jawad MirYeah. And it's, it's kinda going like this. I'm thinking in my head, "Where have I seen..." And it was very prominent movement. It just kinda kept going back and forth. Not that I've never seen that before, but it just kinda struck me that's exactly how a raptor would move. And I've never seen, I'm sure there are other animals and birds out there that do that, but that stood out for me more than anything else. And that's what…

18:39John RosengrantWell, that was intentional

18:41Jawad MirYes

18:41John Rosengrant... Because we were…

18:43Jawad MirFor sure

18:43John Rosengrant... Studying birds and their movement, and we were studying, you know, large reptiles and just animals in general because, you know, a big part of what we do, and Stan was always, and I've probably said this a million times, but I think it's relevant, is that we create characters, not special effects. And you want them to have personality. You wanna remember that T-rex or that raptor because of that head movement or whatever. It resonates with people is 'cause they've seen it. They've seen it on a bird. They've seen it on a, you know, a raptor, as in an eagle or a hawk.

19:28Jawad MirYeah.

19:28John RosengrantThey've seen it. On your dog it'll suddenly cock its head and when it's, sees or hears something that's not normal, you know?

19:39Jawad MirYeah.

19:40John RosengrantSo…

19:40Jawad MirSo

19:41John Rosengrant... We tried to incorporate tho… those kind of things into the characters' movements.

19:48Jawad MirYeah, no, it's, it's, again, it's something that, we talked about this earlier. It's been 30 years and people are still talking about. There's a whole new generation of fans. I mean, there's Facebook groups. There's Instagram accounts, like, dedicated to Jurassic Park.

20:02John RosengrantWow. Wow. That's incredible.

20:04Jawad MirYeah. I mean, if you ever went on Instagram, and I think there's this one guy. I came across his thing during COVID. It's called jurassic_belgium. He literally has full-blown Jurassic Park collections, like with…

20:19John RosengrantWow

20:19Jawad Mir... Miniature, like gigantic T-rexes. That's, but he's probably spent over 100, 200k on that collection alone. It's just a testament, right, to the impact, like a cultural…

20:32John RosengrantYeah

20:32Jawad Mir... Phenomenon Jurassic Park has had.

20:34John RosengrantYeah.

20:34Jawad MirDid you're, when you guys were working on it, before you saw the final cut, did you anticipate that it was going to become such a big, just a cultural phenomena, but at the same time it changed the film industry forever?

20:50John RosengrantNo. I don't think you realize. We thought it was gonna be a good movie, and, we were excited about it, but I think it exceeded everybody's expectations. And, it did become a cultural phenomenon. And I remember being in a restaurant or whatever, and you would hear the people at the table next to you talking about, you know, your work or the movie in general. And, you could tell it really had seeped into, you know, the culture of probably, I guess, everywhere in the world if this guy's in Belgium. It wasn't just an American movie. I mean, it made I think 933…

21:37Jawad MirYeah

21:38John Rosengrant... Billion. Yeah. Just shy of a billion…

21:40Jawad MirJust shy

21:40John Rosengrant... Dollars, and in merchandising it crossed a billion. So, I mean, it was highly successful, and like we're talking about, that's 30 years ago.

21:51Jawad MirYeah, and then factor in the inflation, right? That one billion…

21:54John RosengrantYeah

21:54Jawad Mir... Is equal to, God knows, what, 3 billion now? Maybe even more.

21:58John RosengrantProbably.

21:59Jawad MirYeah, right? So it's, it's, yeah, it just changed everything. And, you know, you worked with Spielberg on the first two, and then you worked with Joe Johnston on the third one. Completely different directors. There's no comparison in a good way or a bad way, but they're just different individuals. And Joe has worked a lot with Spielberg on Raiders.

22:22John RosengrantRight.

22:22Jawad MirAnd obviously had done films like, Rocketeer, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. What was, what was working with two of those different brains and geniuses like on the set when you were working with Joe as opposed to Spielberg?

22:39John RosengrantJoe wanted to know everything that transpired in the first two movies. He was, r… receptive to hear the stories. And, you know, one of the things that was hard for us is, and we spent all this time with paint jobs and whatever, and then, like the velociraptors, you can see it in a few shots. They're, they're kinda like leopards. They're yellow. Yellow and black and brown. But in a lot of the movie they look gray because the blue light sorta cancels out the yellows. And, Joe was very interested in that stuff. He wanted to make sure that, we did film tests and whatever so that, 'cause he spent a lot of time, I think, with his art background on, with us on what colors things are gonna be and that type of thing.

23:39Jawad MirSure.

23:40John RosengrantAnd not to say that Steven wasn't concerned with it, but, Joe looked at it, I think, from, an artist point of view in that. And that was, I think it's also hard for Joe to have to step in after Steven, you know, created these first two movies, and then you're asked to helm it up. I liked Jurassic Park III. I think it's a, it's a, it's a good complementary movie to the other two. But…

24:14Jawad MirYeah

24:14John Rosengrant... You know, the first one, and it's usually… Maybe with the exception of Terminator and Terminator 2, I think they hold equal ground. But with Jurassic Park, it's the first one. It's the one that grabbed everybody's attention. It's, it was the groundbreaking film, and then the ones that came after it were in that mold. But the die had been cast, definitely, on Jurassic one.

24:47Jawad MirYeah, and I, it, Jurassic, The Lost World, Jurassic Park 2, and Jurassic Park 3, they had these certain sequences that were really cool. Like, the second one, it was the RV sequence, you know, with Julianne Moore falls on the glass and then…

24:59John RosengrantTo… totally

25:00Jawad Mir... She's freaking.

25:01John RosengrantYeah.

25:02Jawad MirAnd I still remember…

25:03John RosengrantAnd the two, the two T-rexes coming and attacking them.

25:06Jawad MirYes.

25:06John RosengrantWas…

25:07Jawad MirExactly

25:07John Rosengrant... Big as well. Yeah.

25:10Jawad MirThe moment that really threw me off the seat, I still remember it, sitting in the movie theater, that moment when, towards the end when, Julianne Moore is running away from the raptors, and then she's inside this place and she's digging, and then she looks outside and there's nothing there, and all of a sudden the T, the raptor comes in. Like that moment is, like, such a... You know, it just throws you off your seat. It's not, like, scary, but it just, you don't expect it.

25:39John RosengrantRight. Right.

25:39Jawad MirAnd then the part three one was the whole, I… I've always had a hard time pronouncing these dinosaurs. The pterosauruses? The flying ones.

25:49John RosengrantOh, the, pteranodons. Yeah.

25:52Jawad MirPteranodons, sorry. That shot when the pt… pteranodon looks in the camera and… ... And it just turns. Oh, amazing. Like, some of the sequences in that film was phenomenally done, and also the raptor stuff in b… part three.

26:06John RosengrantYeah. I think it's a, it's a, it's a good, it's a good complementary movie to the other two. And yeah. I mean, the first one is just, took everybody, took the world by storm, that one.

26:26Jawad MirYes.

26:27John RosengrantBut I think the next two, and they have sequences and they have, dinosaurs I think are well done in all of them. I feel, I feel good about it. I feel good about it.

26:39Jawad MirNo, you should.

26:41John RosengrantYeah.

26:41Jawad MirYou should because, again, I mean, I think Spielberg never wanted to do the second Jurassic Park, but because, I mean, I'm just theorizing here, I don't know. I'm just telling based on the things that I know. Is because the film became so successful, he was starting a studio, and all those other things kind of factor played in. It still was an entertaining film. You know, so was the third one. I'm a huge fan of George Johnson. Like, I love Rocketeer. I think it's one…

27:09Jawad Mir... Of the best superhero movies, if you wanna call it.

27:13John RosengrantYeah. Yeah.

27:13Jawad MirThe Prehistorics and, Shrek the Kids. But you, did you ever, did you didn't work on the new Jurassic trilogy, right? No?

27:23John RosengrantI worked on Jurassic World.

27:26Jawad MirThe first one, okay.

27:27John RosengrantThe first one. Colin, Trevorrow wanted to, you know, have some animatronic, in the movie, and I think he did in the subsequent ones as well. Some outfit in Great Britain did 'em. But we did that Apatosaurus sequence when it was dying. And…

27:55Jawad MirRight.

27:55John RosengrantYeah. With, Chris Pratt and, Bryce Dallas Howard. And, you know, I felt like it was a heartfelt scene, and I think it definitely won them over, the two actors, too, because it was the first time that they got to actually touch and feel and interact with something. And they r… they realized that we were also reacting to them. Depending on what they would do, we would move it in a certain way. And I thought that sequence turned out well. I was real happy with it. But, you know, it's a different, set of movies in a way. And we went over and did, there was a, I don't know if you wanna call a mini movie.

28:56John RosengrantIt was something, Trouble at Big Rock or, I don't really know.

29:00Jawad MirYes. I've seen it. It's on YouTube.

29:02John RosengrantYeah.

29:02Jawad MirI've seen it. Yeah.

29:03John RosengrantYeah. We went and created and worked with ILM in doing an Allosaurus for that, and that was, that was fun. It was the sequence, you know…

29:15Jawad MirYeah

29:15John Rosengrant... Kind of like, "Hey, remember Jurassic Park? Don't forget, we got another movie coming."

29:20Jawad MirI think that was the reason behind it, the marketing

29:23John RosengrantI think it was. It was totally a m… a marketing thing. But so th… those were the two after the first three that we were involved in our involvement in both of them. Yeah.

29:38Jawad MirAnd, you know, looking back at your, this is more of a general question, and I think you mentioned to me last time that you're officially sort of retired.

29:46John RosengrantI am. I am.

29:49Jawad MirYou know, looking at your career, I said this last time, too, that you've been involved in some of the most iconic and incredible films, at least in my time or my era. Of course, you're a lot of people's era, the '80s and '90s. Especially those two decades were, like, huge in the way the movies pivoted…

30:11John RosengrantYeah

30:11Jawad Mir... To a different genre and, you know, a lot of animatronics came in, storytelling, visual effects, and all that. What film comes to mind, and I'm not trying to undermine any other of your project. I understand everything is very close to all of us that we have worked on something…

30:30Jawad Mir... That is ours. What stands out the most, if there was a top three, for whatever reason, that, you know, if somebody asked you.

30:38John RosengrantI would have to... I can... They all are your children, and you work extremely hard…

30:45Jawad MirThat's us

30:45John Rosengrant... On all of them. But Aliens, Terminator 2, and Jurassic, probably really jump forth as, seminal moments in my career. And, n… none of them were easy movies to work on either. They were hard, and T2 was extremely hard because I think it was ahead of its time in the way it was written. And there's a lot of effects. We did almost, I think it was 200 different gags or different things for that movie. And, you know, there's a lot of things that we did that you probably would just simply do CGI now. But it was at that time when CGI was still in its infancy.

31:40Jawad MirYeah. And I feel that the reason you probably picked those three titles, and correct me if I'm wrong, as human beings, you know, when we're going through something really tough, whatever it is, project or life and stuff, you know, it's tough. Right? You're, you're like…

31:56John RosengrantYeah

31:57Jawad Mir... "Okay, when is this gonna be over?" But when you look back at things in, you know, retrospect, it's because it was difficult to make those three films…

32:06John RosengrantYeah

32:07Jawad Mir... That makes it more memorable, because it was challenging. Is that correct… ... Assumption?

32:12John RosengrantI think it definitely plays a part. I mean, I fondly remember all of my involvement with The Mandalorian series and all of those, the spin-offs and... You know, there... But it's all different. Those three movies, I think, really broke a lot of new ground and, became important cultural events in moviegoing history. And yeah, you know, they were, they weren't a cakewalk. They weren't easy. I don't think any of them are, but…

32:54Jawad MirRight

32:54John Rosengrant... The… these had overwhelming amounts of things that had to be done. So that does play a part in it.

33:04Jawad MirYeah. Now, I wasn't... I wasn't in Canada when Aliens came out, but I remember specifically watching previews and Entertainment Tonight and talking about it to friends at school. Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park. I remember it was like those two films was something that, especially to T2, I think, more than…

33:27John RosengrantYeah

33:27Jawad Mir... Jurassic Park. Because I think there was that element of a teenage boy. A lot of, you know, young guys kind of related to that, plus the futuristic and…

33:35John RosengrantYeah

33:36Jawad Mir... Violence and all this. And it's, there hasn't been a good Terminator movie since Terminator 2. That's at least how I feel, in every aspect. So it, yeah.

33:47John RosengrantNo, I think between T1 and T2, that story was told. And…

33:52Jawad MirYeah

33:52John Rosengrant... Y… you know, I was... I've been involved with all of them, every single one of them on some level. And the first two were definitely special. I think the way James Cameron turned the Terminator into a good guy in the second one really, you know, turned it on its, on its head, but in a really clever way. And it's one of the few sequels that, I think in a lot of... Well, I mean, Aliens is, in a way, it's a sequel, but it's not.

34:31Jawad MirYeah.

34:32John RosengrantI mean, the first one is like a haunted house movie. The Ridley Scott…

34:36Jawad MirYeah

34:36John Rosengrant... One, a classic. And then what we did with James Cameron on Aliens, it was a kind of a war movie. And, you know, each one is different, but I would say Jim has two sequels in his pocket that, you know, definitely live up to the original.

35:01Jawad MirYeah. Represent. Yeah, Terminator 2, it's been a long time since I've seen it. I gotta, I got to see it one of these days. And even first Terminator, I was reading the scene, I think it was the alleyway scene where there was a fight between... I think it was, oh yeah, it was when the Terminator actually came in from the future, where… wherever…

35:26Jawad Mir... You guys shot in the alleyway. I read somewhere that there was no official permit to shoot there. Like, a lot of stuff that was pulled off…

35:35John RosengrantOn the first movie?

35:36Jawad MirYeah, on the first movie.

35:37John RosengrantI have a feeling a lot of that was run and gun, 'cause…

35:40Jawad MirYeah, it was.

35:42John RosengrantI think that was shot up at the, observatory, Griffith Park Observatory. And then when Reese comes, lands and comes in, it was shot in some horrible place in downtown LA.

36:00Jawad MirThat's the one where it was kinda like a run and go. It's just, you know.

36:03John RosengrantYeah.

36:04Jawad MirBy the time you're done shooting, you're still in the process of getting permission. But obviously, you can't pull that off now. I mean, with the names like James Cameron, Spielberg…

36:12John RosengrantNo

36:12Jawad Mir... You know, when you're, when you're starting out, you have to take those, initiatives and try to wing it and see what happens.

36:20John RosengrantYeah. I mean, people... I think that movie was made for about $6 million, the first one.

36:26Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

36:27John RosengrantSo everything was done on a budget. And Aliens was not... It sounds like a lot of money, but I think it was made for $19 million, which at the time, there were bigger movies being made for 30, 40. And, I think part of the reason that they granted that movie to James Cameron, besides that he wrote it and he had a success on his hands with Terminator, was that he was gonna figure out how to deliver a big-looking film for less money than the studio has been, was used to investing in those kind of big tentpole movies.

37:11Jawad MirYeah. Well, it worked out. I mean, we're still talking about these films and

37:15John RosengrantYeah, it sure did.

37:19Jawad MirI really, you know, appreciate your time, taking the time to talk about these films. It's always insightful to speak to you and learn about new stuff, obviously for the audience as well. So truly appreciate it.

37:35John RosengrantWell, for sure. All right.

37:38Jawad MirThank you so much, John, for your time.

37:39John RosengrantTill next time. All right.

37:41Jawad MirTill next time. Take care. Bye-bye.

37:42John RosengrantBye-bye.