'Harry and the Hendersons', Director, William Dear

0:06Jawad Mir"Harry and the Hendersons" is a very special film, for me because when I saw it as a, you know, teenager, and I saw it again very re… and I saw it again very recently, and I couldn't believe that the amount of lines that I remembered. I knew exact… I knew exactly who was gonna say what and in what tone, you know, and then how Melinda Dillon would say, "George" all the time and just little things. And I think I may have seen it more than once for me to remember that much. But, yeah, so I wanted to chat to you about that. But before that, I wanted to get a sense of how did you start in filmmaking and what's your background and just to kinda take me on that journey.

0:54William DearWell, I was born, I like to, you know, do a lot of family films, work with a lot of children. And, they sort of, are looking at this old guy, so I tell them I was born in the first half of the previous century. And, you know, they're probably wondering if I fought for the North or the South, you know? So, no, back in, early, in the mid…'40s, after World War II, I was born in '44, so in the late '40s when I was, becoming, an age of awareness, my mom was managing the Uptown Theater in Toronto. And we…

1:29Jawad MirOh

1:29William Dear... We had a radio at home and a 78 record player, so the, my only window to an outside world was this movie theater, and it was one of those grand old movie palaces. It has since been torn down. My weekends were spent in a movie palace, you know…

1:44Jawad MirYeah

1:45William Dear... Watching whatever movie was on over and over again. And if it, if I liked it, I watched it. If I, if it terrified me, I would hide in my mother's office, you know. I was very afraid of some science fiction movies. I don't know why. I looked at them later and thought I must be mental, you know? If you ever saw It Came from Outer Space, you'll wonder why it scared me, but, that big eyeball in 3D just freaked me out. Anyway, that was my window to a world. I didn't know what a motion picture was. I mean, I didn't know how it was created. I didn't know anything about a script or a camera or this and that. And but it was a window to a world that, was, you know, I was to… totally taken by it. It was, you know, just post-World War II. It was war movies, Westerns, and musicals, basically. Very few dramas being made. And, I sort of, just fell in love with movies, watching these movies over and over, you know, on this big screen. I was the, I was the first kid in Canada to ever see 3D because they ran it at the Uptown Theater, and they wanted to test it the night before because it required two projectors at that time.

2:52William DearAnd I was, one of maybe 12 people in the audience, so that was an amazing experience, I mean, seeing 3D. Again, it was just this love of movies and love of storytelling. And I've always been, I hate to use the word an artist, but I've been, someone who can paint and draw, and I love those skills. And so this was yet another extension of those skills, you know, being able to write, being able to draw, being able to recreate, you know, and, change that vision, alter that vision, focus that vision, you know. And the same thing applies to movie making. You know, you take the audience on a certain, ride, and you give them a close-up here and a wide shot here, and you sort of are... You are, you are drawing that picture before their very eyes, and telling them a story and using, you know, every year it gets more and more amazing, but using what visual tools were at hand, you know.

3:55William DearAnd now it's just, it's astounding. I mean, cartoons are like live action movies with charac… characterized people, you know. And you accept the reality that the animated character lives in as a real world. It's, it's quite amazing. It's just, I'm fascinated by the technology and how it's, grown and, made movie making, kind of an anything goes, you know. Back in the early days of,.. Well, let me go back to my history. So growing up in this movie theater, that was in the '40s. My parents then moved to Detroit. My dad became a stagehand, in the IA, and his dad was a stagehand in the IA. So when I became 16 years old, I, 18 years old, I joined the union, and I was a stagehand in the IA, which was means I was an apprentice for, like, two years, and you got the lowest jobs on the totem pole. In that time, right from about 11 years old when we moved to the States to being 18, I met a friend named Robert Dyke who makes movies, and his dad, he had, he had a love of movies, and his dad had an eight-millimeter camera.

5:08William DearSo it was amazing because we could create our own little movies. So we'd see every Harryhausen film, and we'd come back, and we'd build the creatures, and we'd do some stop motion animation, and we just, you know, we sort of out of a love for movie, fostered that. Then when I started working as a stagehand and could actually see how the business functioned, you know, and got very few... Like I said, as an apprentice, you were low person on the totem pole. So the first summer I ever worked, I got one day on a commercial that shot with a 35-millimeter camera, and I was just fascinated by the size and everything and the mechanics of this 35-millimeter camera, you know. And, the benefits we learned later on to being the lowest guy on the totem pole was it was the '60s, and one of the lowest jobs pay-wise and, eating into your day-wise was being a spotlight operator. And so, you'd get, like, $26 for a show, sometimes $28 for a show. But the, what you were, the shows you were running spotlight on were The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, any new rock group you can think of, you know?

6:14William DearSo I mean, looking back on it was like, yeah, you can't buy that for, you know. I'd pay $28 for that, so. Anyway, so they, it was a, it was an education. Being, you know, I went to college as an art major, theater minor, and then would spend my summers and my vacations working in the business, and just wanting and wanting and wanting to, you know, be more and more a part of this business. I then joined the camera union out of Chicago. It's all one union now. And, that allowed me to sort of, put my name up for union jobs. And I found out that when a movie would come to town, in Detroit, in probably any town, they'd bring their own movie crew, their own camera crew, and for every person they brought, they'd have to hire a local union repres… member. And usually what they would do, knowing, the union knowing that guy would never work, he was just there as a formality, sitting on a chair and picking up a paycheck. So I actually flew myself to California, when I heard a production was coming to Detroit, get a meeting, it was probably much easier to do then, with a producer, and say, "Look, they're going to man from Anu out of Chicago.

7:26William DearThey're gonna give you a guy who's gonna sit on an apple box for six weeks. If you put me in that position, I will work my ass off for you." And, the first person I went to on that was Paul Schrader, and his first movie after Taxi Driver that he got to direct was Blue Collar. So I was the second unit director of photography on Blue Collar. Then they, we came back with George, he came back with George C. Scott, and we did Hardcore. And it was just, it was fascinating to actually, you know, you know, stick my toe in the water. That was my first s… Blue Collar was my first ever legitimate screen credit. And, it's just, it was a determination to wanna be a movie maker, you know? I think to, like I said earlier, use the tools at hand to best tell a story. And for me, that was, that was movies. TV was still in its, you know, three-channel infancy back then. I fortunately, as the low guy on the totem pole, also got to work live TV shows, which is something I'll treasure forever because it's just, it's such a lost, art, you know?

8:29William DearWe used to flip hand-painted, hand-lettered cards in front of a camera, you know? And they would, before they had electronic type and chyrons and all this stuff. So I mean, it was just a fascinating world of education. You know, education in learning more and more about what I had decided, you know, to sort of do in my life, to do with my life, to, be fortunate enough to do.

8:55Jawad MirI'm actually from Toronto. And, I, yeah, I have been living in Toronto for a good 33 years, and Uptown was a place that I used to go to watch movies. Uptown and Eaton Centre and Varsity in downtown Toronto, those three.

9:11William DearVarsity, yep.

9:13Jawad MirYeah. And yeah, it is a shame because Uptown was... I mean, it had three theaters. I don't know, back then in the, in the '40s or '50s, but in the '90s it…

9:22William DearIt was an auditorium.

9:23Jawad MirYeah, it had two in the basement and the giant auditorium on the top. And it's still, honestly, I've been to so many movie theaters since then. There hasn't been anything like that in terms of size, in terms of high ceilings, in terms of screen size. Yes, there's IMAX and all that stuff, but that was, that wa… And it used to be packed because it was right in Bloor and Yonge, right? Like where everybody…

9:46William DearYeah

9:46Jawad Mir... Everybody's schmoozing and stuff.

9:48William DearYep.

9:48Jawad MirSo it used to be packed at any time of the day. It's great to see that your mom, was a manager there and you're from Toronto. And your story is interesting, right? Because that's the... One of the things that you mentioned that back in the day you could get a meeting with a producer like, you know, rather easily than probably now. And…

10:10William DearYeah

10:10Jawad Mir... And it is, it is, although we have more tools now, you know, in the last... Like when I started films, it, I, it was like literally like a digital age was coming in. You know, I shot stuff on 16 millimeters, eight millimeter, and then the digital camcorders came in. But now it's like, you know, you have a phone and you can... And these phones, especially the most recent ones, like, you know, you can, with apps, you can, you can shoot pretty darn good stuff. But one thing technology has sort of taken away is that art of storytelling, the simplicity of story. And which brings me to your film, Harry and the Hendersons, because I was, I was watching it again last week, and I counted, aside from extras, there was like 11 or 12 characters, you know, with four or five being the major ones, the Harry f… the Harrys family and... And it was simple. It was a simple premise. It wasn't like, you know, a gigantic plot, like five stories going and there's, you know, a Bigfoot running around and how their stories are interconnected and all that.

11:15Jawad MirAnd that's missing nowadays. It's, it's barely, it's, it's, it's not there as much as it used to be, you know, back in the '80s and the '90s and even '70s. So having said that, how did you come on board in Harry and the Hendersons? How did it all start?

11:32William DearWell, it, I was, again, I had, moved to, moved to California. Had done, a couple of movies in Detroit, local movies on 16 millimeter. One, I don't know how you would word, use the word, classic in this genre, but one is a, regarded as somewhat of a classic in the grind house, very low budget…

11:57William Dear... Motorcycle mania world of the '70s, the shoot 'em up, you know, biker movies, and that's called Northfield Cemetery Massacre. We shot that in Detroit. And, I got an opportunity to, work with Michael Nesmith. He scored that movie. And I remember screening on an old… screening it to him on 16 on an old stand-up Moviola, the whole movie. He stood there and watched it, and he… at the end of the movie, he said, "This is a terrible movie." And I said, "Yes, it is. You know, but we made it, and we're real proud of it. Would you like to score it?" And he said, "Yes. Yes, I will." And he wrote a very good score for it, and he and I struck up a relationship, and I moved… that moved me to California. That was the opening of a door that, you know, where I sat my family down and said, "We're gonna leave Detroit, and we're gonna go and, you know, pursue my dream and, move to California." So Nez and I worked together for quite a few years. We did a piece called Elephant Parts, which was music and comic videos and everything.

12:59William DearWe won the first Grammy ever for a music video. And that led me to sort of expanding my reach in California. And in doing commercials, I would do commercials too. They were like, to me like a... That's like going to the gym for a movie maker, you know. You're in and out in three or four days. You get to use the newest technology. You know, it's,.. It was a, it was a great experience. I met Allen Daviau, and Allen Daviau, he's passed, in the early days of COVID here. An amazing cinematographer. He shot E.T. And he shot a lot, a lot of the early Spielberg movies. Right. He shot the short Amblin, that the name Amblin… Yep. Yep., Spielberg's company was, Yeah... Named after. Well, Allen recommended... M… m… amazing stories were started, and Allen recommended, as we'd done the numerous commercials together, we'd... I shot the dummies campaign. The,.. We shot for 11 years on, Vince and Larry telling everybody to buckle up, the two crash dummies. And that was, we were later, I don't know what you'd call, installed into the Smithsonian because of that project.

14:02William DearAnd Allen was a big part of, you know, setting the look for that project. But Allen recommended me to, Amazing Stories, and I don't know if it was directly to Spielberg or Amazing Stories. And they reached out to me and sent me a script and said, you know, "Would you… We'd like your impression of this. You know, we're thinking of you as possibly directing it." And it was a good script. I liked the script. It was, it was called, at the time it was called Mommy Dearest, which the movie Mommy Dearest was already out, and I thought, "Why, if you're gonna do an original piece, why put someone else's title that will immediately conjure some other image, you know?" Yeah. And so ultimately the title became Mommy Daddy. But I remember going in and telling my version of what I wanted to do with the Mommy Dearest script, turning it into Mommy Daddy, and had read... I had done sort of all my, due diligence and read everything I could about what was happening of, at, you know, with Amazing Stories. At that time, it was first season. Yeah. And what I heard Steven say on one of the interviews was he was looking for filmmakers who would take these ideas and bring themselves and innovate into, you know, what was happening.

15:11William DearSo I added the second mommy to the Mommy Daddy movie, which was the legend of old Ra Amanka, the o… the original dummy that had been, escaped some s… some s… carnival years ago. And I remember telling the whole story the way I would like to tell it sitting at that table, and at the end of the, of the meeting, Steven Spielberg looked at me and he said, "Well, I didn't like the second mommy." And that was my whole contribution to what I would do with this. He said, "Until you got to the end. Then I understood it." He said, "So, when do we shoot?" And it was that fast. I was… My heart thing almost exploded out of my chest…... You know, like an alien movie. And then they... I think this meeting was probably May-ish or something like that. And they looked up and they said, "August the fourth." And I thought, "Oh, that is so far away. This will never happen. This is too good to be true," you know… Right... To just be in this moment. But sure enough, it did happen.

16:12William DearAnd, we shot, the amazing story, called Mommy Daddy, got to use a lot of great character actors in it. And, Bronson Pinchot, who was kind of an ersatz Spielberg in the characterization of the director in the movie, came on board and was really good in it. And one night in the editing room on Amazing Stories, I was going through a cut, and I think the editor had gone home, and Spielberg came into the editing room, and he said, "How's your, how's your p… how's your cut going?" I said, "Pretty good." I said, "I'm feeling pretty good about it." He said, "Well, screen it for me." I said, "Okay." So we threw it up on the, on the, standing there again on an old stand-up, Moviola, and we screened a, it was about a twenty-two minute, cut of, Mommy Daddy. And Steven made some notes and suggestions, and they were good, and they were smart. Yeah. And then he said to me, he said, "Have you got a film you'd like to do?" And I said, "Well, I have a movie called Harry and the Hendersons.

17:15William DearAnd it's… I only have, you know, about half the script done right now. But I'll have it done probably in the next two weeks because, you know, this whole, experience has inspired me to really, you know, move as forward as I can." He says, "Well, why don't you tell me the story?" And I said, "Well, I would much rather bring you the f… completed screenplay in a couple of weeks." And he looked at me and he said, "Why don't you tell me the story?" So blah. You know, I spilled out the story of Harry and the Hendersons to him, to him in the editing room there. And, he said, "Okay." He said, "My office tomorrow morning around ten o'clock." He said, "We might be able to get this financed. I know some people." And he was, he was very glib about it and everything, you know. Right. But then... And I went home that night thinking I have maybe a movie deal here on this movie that I really wanna do. And the origins of Harry and the Hendersons were in working with Michael Nesmith. We had a co-writer and a raconteur of crazy stories named Bill Martin.

18:20William DearAnd Bill Martin had written, along with his writing partner, Ezra Rapaport, he had written, they had written a half-hour, sitcom called Harry and the Hendersons. And their vision of Harry was Fred Gwynne with hair glued to his face, and that was, that was the creature. But it was a very three-camera-ish sitcom thing. And I remember reading it and saying to Bill Martin, I said, "Look, I think this is a movie. You know, th… this should be, this should be a movie." And they said, "No, it's a sitcom." I said, "Well, I, that's my view." I, and I was making enough money at the time that I said to them, "You know, let me buy this IP. Let me option this and see what I can do with it, you know?" And we weren't talking big amounts of money back then. You know, maybe 3,000, $5,000, something like that.

19:04Jawad MirOkay.

19:04William DearAnd so I basically bought the ownership of the story for that much money, and then turned it into a screenplay, and then, through this turn of events that I explained, because of amazing stories, I had something in hand that I could, you know, work on and take to Steven. And so, Bill Martin, I try to be loyal to whoever I work with. Bill Martin and Ezra and I s… set about writing the story, and I realized at one point that they couldn't get the television, out of what they were doing, and I took it over and, you know, tried to make it into a bigger, you know, bolder motion picture. And that's basically, that's, that's how Harry came about. It was just a series of very fortunate events that had taken a lot of, like time and hard work to sort of be in that fortunate coincidental position, you know, where everything's... The perfect storm of, someone aspiring to make movies and that moment when all of a sudden you're faced with that reality, you know?

20:10William DearIt's, it's going to happen, so.

20:12Jawad MirYeah, no, that…

20:12William DearSounds a little corny.

20:13Jawad MirNo. It's not corny at all, because it's true. And, you know, everybody talks about luck and hard work, which one is more. And I, you know, I believe that luck comes when you work hard, and if you're not gonna work hard, luck may come, but it may go. Like, you know, you might get lucky once, but if you're not working hard to prove yourself, then it's gonna go away. You're gonna lose that opportunity. And that's the hardest part. And you know, I didn't know that Allen, was a DP on this cam… on this film until I saw it recently, you know, a couple of months ago, a couple of weeks ago. And now that you mention it, you know, it had that feel of his cinematography, of, that was in, you know, ET, that was in other films. And, a… a… and what was it like working with him, aside from being a friend? Like, just as a cinematographer and his eye for things and light and framing.

21:06William DearI, it was, it was, as everything was in those, and still is, it was an education, to see just basically how he understood. I, one of the things I insisted on in Harry when I, when I went to Rick Baker, and we can talk about the whole Rick Baker thing, is that the actor's eyes, I needed a hole. I needed holes in that suit so the human inside could come out, and the only holes I really wanted were the holes for the actor's eyes. So you're seeing Kevin's

21:36Jawad MirYeah

21:36William Dear... Kevin Peter Hall's real eyes in Harry. And Allen really understood about lighting the actors and lighting their eyes and, you know, really getting into a close-up, you know, for emotional reasons and whatever. And that's why I wanted the creature to be able to, be as good as a human would be, given that situation with a lens right in their face. And I loved the way Allen just rendered people and found, a way to help focus the audience onto whether it was the emotion in the eyes, like in the scene in Harry when John almost shoots him

22:10Jawad MirYeah

22:10William Dear... In the house. I mean, it was... People were weeping at,.. As we were shooting it, you know? We were, it was, it was amazing, you know? And that was the one scene early on in the shooting that I realized, I think everybody realized, that this was just not a guy in a suit anymore. This was, this was a living being, you know? And then back to Allen, like all, you know, phases of this kind of thing, you know, you can guess how long it's gonna take to do something, and then it takes longer, and then some other department is upset, and this and that. So I would say, not to any discredit at all, but Allen took longer to light than a lot of cinematographers, and that kind of pisses off the, for the…

22:58Jawad MirThe crew

22:58William Dear... In-office production people wondering why we aren't making our day here and this and that. Even John Lithgow came to me once and said, you know, "Why did we even..." Am I allowed to swear on your podcast?

23:08Jawad MirYeah, go ahead.

23:10William Dear"Why didn't we even, why did we even fucking rehearse, Bill? It's been an hour and a half, you know, and it's a scene in a kitchen." But Allen was meticulous, you know, and, it was, it was his way. And, you know, quite honestly, I was feeling very grateful to be working with him being Spielberg's cinematographer. So I wasn't going to push too hard. You know, I could relay, you know, the concerns and the notes I was getting, you know, from, Sid Sheinberg, the head of Universal, and different people…

23:38Jawad MirRight

23:38William Dear... Going, "What's going on?" You know, "Why are we adding days here?" Blah. But, it was a great experience. And he was the right cinematographer for that movie. It hit, you know, he brought the heart through the l… He found a way to pull heart out through the lens, like I try to pull it out through the story and in the performance.

23:58Jawad MirAnd 100%, and no discredit to the editor of the film, but one of the things I, you know, I loved about Harry and the Hendersons and other films that are really great, you get so involved into the characters and the visuals. Not visuals in, like, a ooh-ah type of approach, but you're just so embedded in it that you forget about the editing. Like, that's one of the things I noticed with Harry and the Hendersons that normally I would like, "Oh, you know, that was a long shot," or, you know, "There was a cut from here" that I did not feel at all, because it was just so character-driven story. And Kevin Peter Hall, you know, it's incredible that same year he did Predator. And completely two opposite, you know, characters. And one where he plays like a monster, and here he plays like a, you know, lovable, you know, Bigfoot. And how was it like working with him? And, you know, was he working on Predator at the same time? Or was it before? I know they came out the same year.

24:59William DearYeah, no, Predator came after Harry. It definitely... Because he was a... He became the big guy in the suit. You know, he was the, he was the guy you went to if you had a big guy in a suit. And I think that's, that's why he was an instant choice for Predator. He was, he was such a gentleman. And so again, he was so grateful, you know, to be a part of it. And as the affection for Harry grew, the pride, you know, and the commitment in Kevin grew. You know, it was, it was again, like everything, a learning experience. And he, again, he was the right person. I re… I remember John Lithgow coming to me one day and, pulling me aside and saying, "Bill, you're asking me to be way too broad." You know, because he had been nominated for that time for two Academy Awards…

25:43Jawad MirRight

25:43William Dear... In Terms of Endearment and Garth and

25:46Jawad MirYeah

25:46William Dear... Or Garp. And he said, "You're asking me to be way too broad." I said, "John, you know, your co-star is eight and a half feet tall. He's completely covered with hair. If you think you can be too broad, you know, you know, I..." You know, and we kind of dispelled the whole thing, you know, which was, kind of interesting. The studio, just a note on that, they thought it would be funnier. This is the kind of thing you have to fight, and I, that's, underline the word fight, is that they went, "Well, why don't you, instead of John Lithgow, who's 6'4", why don't you go with Danny DeVito? You know, 'cause then you got the little guy and you got the Bigfoot, and it like..." I said, "Yeah." But, with John Lithgow, I have two beings, two beings that are almost eye to eye, who can look each other in the eye, you know? And John Lithgow can realize this is more than a creature from the woods, you know? And Harry can realize this is more than a human or a hunter that I have to fear, you know? And, so I won the, John Lithgow, Danny DeVito fight there.

26:46Jawad MirGood for you. And I think although Danny DeVito is a wonderful actor, I don't see him, not, probably because now that I've already seen Harry and the Hendersons so many times. But I just don't see that. And, you know, Kevin Peter Hall's makeup and all the prosthetics and everything, how long did that take each day? I mean, I would imagine, especially back in that day, what was tha… that like?

27:11William DearWell, it was, surprisingly quick due to Rick's ingenuity. I remember, someone at the... When it came Academy Awards nomination time, and Rick was gonna be nominated for Harry and the Hendersons, somebody in the makeup community brought up the fact that this was not makeup and should not be, categorized as makeup. You know, this was a, this was a complete suit and was not makeup. And I remember I was called on to speak for Rick at the Academy to defend my position on why I thought it should be considered under the makeup, banner and qualify for a Academy Award nomination. And I remember saying to them that, it isn't a suit, you know, because it's Kevin's eyes and Kevin was articulating, you know, most of what was going on with any kind of head movement. You know, a little, mouth, 'cause the mouth was a prosthetic out, that hung below his chin. But I basically argued that this was a makeup and it was just like any other makeup.

28:14William DearLike, you'd put old makeup on an actor, you wouldn't, you wouldn't say, you know, you were changing them there.

28:19Jawad MirYeah.

28:19William DearI said, "You can't, you can't take the whole body suit and try to make that into makeup character." We're talking about Harry's face. And I said, "To Rick's credit, one of the things that was so amazing is that the rig was so well-built that we would do makeup on Kevin Peter Hall's eyes, and then they could put the suit on, and then do whatever, kind of adhesive they would need between the suit and around his eyes." So it took only about 20 minutes to get Kevin ready to go.

28:47Jawad MirWow.

28:47William DearAnd I thought that was an amazing thing. And I actually brought that up to the Academy that this is a makeup, but it's an advancement in makeup. Because, you know, the actor really is running the show as far as Harry's face, and the actor is in makeup. And to Rick's credit, you know, it was smartly done, that the production did not have to wait, or Kevin didn't have to come in three or four hours early, you know, to do, you know, to do all these pro… prosthetics. So I hope that sort of answers that.

29:17Jawad MirYeah. No, it doesn't. So did the film re… remain... His nomination remain as it was, or

29:24William DearYeah, no, he got, he got the nomination and he won his second Oscar. So that was his second Oscar.

29:29Jawad MirOkay. That's great. No, he... Yeah, I think the film wouldn't have been the way it wo… it turned out, has it... The actual presentation of, Harry was just, you know, perfect. Like, his eyes and his mouth and his teeth and obviously the height that, Kevin possessed. And that was, that was really, played really well. One comment I wanted to make, before I ask the next question. What I... I saw the trailer again, and it's just amazing that, how it didn't show anything, which was great. You know, kinda like it did…

30:02William DearYou say that's great. No, we went round and round about that. And Sid Sheinberg, president of Universal, said we were wrong. We, he said, "Well, you should, you should show Harry." But we were, we were playing kind of the ET card where you don't show…

30:19Jawad MirJohn

30:19William Dear... The creature in the tr…

30:21Jawad MirYeah

30:21William Dear... Yeah. And w… right or wrong, I don't know. I look back at it now and I think we made a mistake. I think we should've, we should've shown Harry on, both on the poster and in the trailer. But I, it's, that's hindsight. You know, that's 40 years ago.

30:36Jawad MirYeah. But do you think that not showing Harry in the trailer hurt the film from a box office standpoint?

30:44William DearI do believe it did. At the time I didn't, obviously didn't believe it would. But now in retrospect I definitely believe it did. I think that if we'd have shown Harry, and again on, also on the poster. You know, we should have, we should have shown Harry on the, on the poster. It wouldn't have been as dramatic a poster as Harry and Danny DeVito, but it would have been, you know, it would have shown the creature. So I do have those kind of,.. You know, but it, those are, it's, it's, you know, afterthoughts. You know, you can't, you can't change it, and but we did get advice from someone saying, "You're making a mistake," you know? But Steve and I were both locked into, no, we're not gonna show the, we're not gonna show the creature. We're gonna make people come to the movie to see the creature. Now, right or wrong, I don't know. It did… it didn't gross what it should have, let's say what we thought it was gonna gross. And w… the hard lesson I learned, I think next week Universal was putting out, Dan, Aykroyd and Tom Hanks in Dragnet movie, and it was just, they just threw Harry under the bus and put all their energy n… the next week into Dragnet, and it made me realize, wow, you know, this is a business.

31:59William DearYou know, this is really a business. Even though Harry was a pride and joy…

32:03Jawad MirYeah

32:03William Dear... This is a business, you know? It's like, yeah. You know, you, it's like your kid just got thrown off the football team because some other, you know, more muscular kid came in, you know? And it's like, wow.

32:15Jawad MirY… yeah, but it's a, it's an interesting conversation, right? About showing and not showing. There was this, I don't know if you've seen Robert Zemeckis' Cast Away and What Lies Beneath that came out the same year, with Harrison Ford, Michelle Pfeiffer…

32:28Jawad Mir... And then Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt. And both trailers pretty much gave away the film to the end, and there was a lot of... I still remember when I used to run the website, there was a lot of conversation about that… that, you know, why would you do that? And I don't remember the exact quote by Robert Zemeckis, but paraphrasing it, he said that audience want to know what they're going into. That was his argument. And lo and behold, both films did financially really well. So I don't... I think it's case by case basis. I th… I also think it's timing. You know, in movie business, timing is everything, and I also feel that sometimes... And I think with Harry and Henderson, I'm just, based on what you just said to me, I'm just guessing, I'm not an expert. Because it wasn't, you know, Jaws... Well, I guess E.T. Was a family movie, so maybe my argument is wrong, that people play into that fear with Jaws of not being shown, you know, at least until the third act, more or less.

33:29Jawad MirBut I think…

33:30William DearYeah

33:30Jawad Mir... I think it's case by, f… film by film, basis. It's, it, I, you can't... It's tough to say. You d… you just don't know. You don't know what the audience will click with and what…

33:39William DearWell, I think, you know, I mean, I would go with what Zemeckis said there because it, at that point to, you know, people, there… there's a lot more options. So people want a little more definition of which choice, you know, to help them make the choice they're gonna make between the options.

33:55Jawad MirThat's a good point.

33:56William DearAnd so, yeah, I think we were, we were playing a game and we, you know, we could have been, we could have been a little smarter I think. That's all. Or a little more aware. It doesn't, doesn't have to do with smartness, but you know, like, you know, just... I do, I really regret that we didn't do Harry on a poster because I had Drew Struzan, who was just an amazing poster artist, you know, back before Photoshop.

34:21Jawad MirYeah.

34:21William DearAnd he did... Yeah, he's just astounding, you know? Raiders of the Lost Ark to…

34:26Jawad MirHe loved working…

34:27William Dear... To Harry Potter movies. You know, E.T., everything. Just astounding. He said, Drew Struzan, I've, remained good friends with him, and he said that the poster that killed, hand-drawn art for movie posters, and it really set it back, was the poster for Big with Tom Hanks. He said because…

34:48William Dear... What they did, all they did was they made Tom Hanks' face fill the poster…

34:52Jawad MirThat's it

34:52William Dear... From top to bottom, and had the word Big. And said that was, that was the death of art. I remember once I actually wanted to get up and kinda punch the guy in the nose, and he's dead now, so I can say that. But he's an... He won an Oscar for, Forrest Gump. Steve Tisch, producer. We were doing Wild America at Warner Brothers, and I said I would like to bring Drew Struzan in. Or, you know, reminded them of his, resume and to do the poster for Wild America. And, Steve Tisch said, "No. Absolutely not." He said, "When I see art on a poster, I think they're trying to hide the, hide the fact that a movie isn't good." He said, "We need photographs of the stars."

35:39Jawad MirWow.

35:39William DearAnd I was, I was brokenhearted. I was... 'Cause, 'cause it's, it's one of the most embarrassing posters of any movie I've done, you know? It looks like a National Geographic, you know, kids special on wild animals that aren't really wild. You know, it's just, it's not a, not a good poster. And I was so hurt, but that was, that was this fella's opinion, and he was in a very high position. He was in a position to say no, and it meant no. But that was his reasoning. Any art on a poster... And I wanted to say, "Well, what about his posters for Star Wars?" You know, Drew's posters for Star Wars. You know, but I thought, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna get into this fight here. They've decided.

36:16Jawad MirAnd I just googled the Wild America's poster and I remember seeing that pos… poster when it came out, and it feels like a TV movie, if anything. You know? It just seemed... And that's something you can pull off in Photoshop in like 10 minutes. Well, not back then, but now… nowadays you can.

36:37William DearYeah.

36:37Jawad MirBut yeah, Drew was phenomenal. I mean, I don't know if you know, there's a gentleman named Paul Shipper, who is in the UK, who was inspired by Drew's work, and that's what he does now. And he just did the, poster for Star Trek, the Picard season two or three I think. It... If you go on Paramount Plus, whatever that image shows, that's done by him and he's... And I was speaking to him… A month ago and he loves, like he had the same thing about how art and he had a conversation with Drew that, you know, Drew said the same thing, that this medium is dead. But I'm glad to see that Paul now, and I'm sure there are more others out there. I do think it's gonna come back, but not in the same way as Drew did. I mean, iconic posters like Goonies, you know, E.T. Like you said…

37:25William DearYeah

37:25Jawad Mir... Raiders, Star Wars. I mean, there's so many that he did. So many.

37:30William DearSo th… this other fella, the new fella, did he do Stranger Things? Because whoever did the poster for Stranger Things, really had Drew in mind, you know?

37:38Jawad MirYeah, no, he didn't, he… Paul Shipper didn't do Stranger Things, but you're right. I mean, I think the create… Duff brothers were mindful of that, and I think they knew that they, because they were making a show about the '80s, and that's what defined '80s in terms of film posters about Drew, they definitely, latched onto that feeling. And I, and you're right, I actually didn't think about it until you just mentioned it. The posters for Stranger Things is 100% like Drew. You know, inspired at least, for lack of a better word.

38:09William DearOne of his secrets was he would, he would put a line around people, you know, even though in real life, you know, in a photo instance, there wouldn't be a line, but he would put a line around where there was a detail of a hand or a head, and you could see it in his work. Just amazing. I was very fortunate on Angels in the Outfield. I h… again, I hated that poster because it was a very cold, dead poster with a ball g… ripping through a glove, which…

38:34Jawad MirYeah

38:34William Dear... I had seen in a previous illustrator's, annual, maybe a few years before, but did not wanna bust the art person who did it, at Disney because, you know, basically they were taking someone else's idea and, using it. But to me, the poster was just dead. And I got Drew, I got them to agree to have Drew do the poster for the video release and everything, and that became the poster that I like for Angels in the Outfield. And, Joe Roth, the producer at the time, gifted me with Drew's original, artwork for Angels in the Outfields.

39:09Jawad MirOh, wow.

39:10William DearSo I do, I do have that one piece, which is quite magnificent with, Chris Lloyd and Danny Glover and Joy Gordon-Levitt. And it was just, you know, working with Drew was a dream come true. I mean, it was, like, amazing.

39:24Jawad MirThat's…

39:24William DearI just wrote a poem there. Working was a dream come true. Okay, there we go.

39:28Jawad MirYou mentioned Angels in the Outfield. Again, watching it as a kid, and I think I gotta show it to my kids now, that was an amazing movie. I loved it as a kid, you know, when it came out. But I think you have this ability to... One of the things that's missing nowadays from films is the idea, the element of story that focuses on friendships and families, right? Like, the reason Stranger Things worked, at least the first couple of seasons personally for me, was that idea of friendships and, you know, in small town and all that stuff. And I think that's what you tackled on in Harry and the Hendersons, and that's what it worked for me at least, and same thing with Angels in the Outfield. So I appreciate the work that you've done and, you know, maybe you don't feel that way, but believe me, it has impact on people for sure.

40:24William DearNo, I'm, I really, I'm appreciate you saying that. Tell you something about Angels in the Outfield is I was an unlikely person to get that movie. And th… this all came from me later from Holly Go… Goldberg Sloan, the writer. I remember wanting, reading the script and wanting the movie so bad. And what I used to do if I really wanted a movie bad, I was still living in Carmel working with Nesmith, is I would record the entire script into a cassette, and then on my various drives to LA or back and forth, I would listen to it over and over. So by the time I had the Angels in the Outfield meeting, I was, I could literally almost quote, you know, any line of dialogue in the movie, and I really knew the movie, you know, from top to bottom. I remember in the meeting saying to Joe Roth and, Roger Birnbaum and Holly Goldberg Sloan, I said, "There's one line in the script here," I said, "where, Joy Gordon-Levitt's character comes out of the dugout and raises his hands trying to create the illusion for Tony Danza that there's an angel there, that to give Tony Danza the confidence to throw that last pitch."

41:33William DearAnd I said, you know, "And then the team joins in behind him. And the audience," I said, "this is, this is probably the biggest moment in the movie." And they all looked at me like, "Are we talking to the wrong guy here?" You know, like, "What the hell is this guy talking about?" And I said, "This is, this is really an important... This will define the movie, th… this scene right here." And later we were in pr… I got the job, and in production, Holly said to me, she said, "You know, they called in many directors, many bigger than you know, and at, for Angels in the Outfield. And at the end of the meeting, they'd look at each other and go, 'That person never mentioned that one line,' you know, 'where Joey steps out of the...'" And he, she said it bugged them every time if, because nobody else brought up that one thought that this one line could be a defining scene in the movie. And she said, "Ultimately, that's how I got the movie."

42:26William DearBecause no one else addressed that portion. And one thing that sort of made that an extra special moment is when we premiered the movie, they premiered it in Pittsburgh, where the original Angels in the Outfield was filmed, at the stadium where the, where the Pirates played, and they had three screens, giant five-story hall s… sized screens. They had 35,000 people watching the premiere. It was the biggest, at the time, of any, of any premiere. And at that point, 35,000 people got up in the stadium and were raising their arms at that point.

43:02Jawad MirOh, wow.

43:04William DearYeah, that was, that was, incred… it's a very emotional moment for me. Very emotional moment. Never forget that.

43:14Jawad MirG… g… going back to Harry and the Hendersons, you know, late Melinda Dillon, who passed away I think last month, and what was it like working with her? I mean, she was in Close Encounters. Is that, is that how you sort of brought her on board from that movie? Or what was that process of getting her in the film?

43:29William DearThat and Christmas, and Christmas Story. Close Encounters and Christmas Story, you know? 'Cause she was the mom in Christmas Story, and it just…

43:36Jawad MirYeah

43:36William Dear... You know, she was just so fantastic in there. And to me she was... She just, she had that same quality that Lithgow had to be a very serious actor who could really give me something in this very unlikely situation of them, you know, having this fantasy creature, you know, become part of their lives, you know? And I didn't, that's again why I didn't want that easy Danny DeVito, you know, Harry, you know, seven-foot guy, three-foot, you know, five-foot guy, seven-foot guy relationship. I, you know, I wanted someone who would be real. And but she had that delight and, there was a crazy, a craziness, a crazy delight in her, just her nature, in her, in her body of work as a, as an actor. And of course that turn she did in the Paul Newman movie that got her an Academy Award nomination. I can remember watching that scene in the movie not knowing who she was, but just totally breaking down in tears.

44:33Jawad MirYeah.

44:33William DearAnd, you know, realizing how powerful this woman was. I had, I had hoped to have her in the movie The Perfect Game, which I'm really proud of. I don't know if you've seen it. It's, a movie made about kids in 1957 who aspired to play baseball. It is a true story, from, a Mexican, in this Mexican sports world. And it was the same age that I was in Toronto aspiring to be a filmmaker. So I really connected with that movie. But we had a part for a waitress, and I called Melinda and said, "Would you come be in the movie?" And she said, "Yes." And I was so thrilled. And the day before we were to shoot, she called up and said she couldn't do it. She said she felt that she was too old and had lost her charm. And I was so saddened by that, you know? And we got Frances Fisher filled in, and Frances had been in Wild America and a couple other things with me. And, she came and filled in for Melinda. But I was really sad that I wasn't able to work with her again, 'cause it was a really nice role.

45:33William DearIt sounds like a small role, but it was an important role in the movie.

45:38Jawad MirYeah, no, I…

45:39William DearThat's my second favorite movie is, Perfect Game. Next to Harry and the Hendersons, that's the movie that I treasure the most is The Perfect Game, so.

45:46Jawad MirI'm gonna check that out, especially the fact that you mentioned that it's set in 1955. So I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of personal elements, personal touch to that, film that you can remember…

45:55William DearYeah

45:55Jawad Mir... From your childhood. Before I move on to…

45:58William DearI shot it like a '50s movie. So I shot it very much like a '50s movie, so.

46:02Jawad MirYou did? Okay. I mi… I miss all that stuff from the '80s, '70s, '60s, and '50s. And it was really refreshing to see the way Alan, shot, Harry and the Hendersons. You know, there were less close-ups and was more wides and mediums, and there was not too much... You know, I... You notice those things now because if you look at all the new stuff that comes out, there are so many close-ups. And I... And I get it, like, sometimes you have to have, like, emotionally connected with that, you know, character, but sometimes it becomes too much that I personally, for me, I just feel suffocated. And I, again, it's necessary, but to a point. You know, to a certain degree. I wanted to make some comments before I go to the next question. There's a couple of things that I really noticed in the film that I really liked. You know, the fact that he, Henderson, he has his gun. He works at a gun store, and then he has a friend who's a Bigfoot, you know?

47:03Jawad MirThe contradiction. And that also there was a, there was a lot of times when he actually wanted to tell the world, you know, that he, that Harry is an, you know, Bigfoot or Harry are, they're, they're, they're as much as human as we are, but then he realizes that he shouldn't say anything, and he gets out of that. Like, those little things, they're very little things, but they do so much wonder to the entirety of the script and the film. And I thought those were really well inserted and that, you know, that feeling that you have that you wanna share this with everybody and y… you can't. And one of my favorite scenes in the film is the mouse scene, you know, where he's in someone's house, and this woman thinks it's a mouse, and she's about to go hit him. And then, you know, the way the camera, again, Alan, the way the camera just... She looks up, and it's such a high shot. It was phenomenally done. So I wanted to mention those three things just as a comment.

48:05William DearWell, that's good. The... It's funny, the mouse scene, we had a hard time making that work, you know? Because it was so corny. But, you know, to hit Harry's toe and then, you know, think it's the mouse and then look up and everything. But, and I remember there was a time we took that out of the cut and, but we put it back in. You know, there was, you know, various things happened during the edit. But that was…

48:26Jawad MirYeah, no

48:26William Dear... That was a hard scene to pull off because it was, it was silly, you know? I tried to... I learned this from Michael Nesmith years ago is, because of his Monkees experience and things he'd done. He said, you know, "The key is to take silly as far as you can without making the, it stupid, without making the, either the performance stupid or the actor stupider or the intent stupid," you know? But silly's okay. Stupid, no good.

48:52Jawad MirYeah.

48:53William DearUnless you're making a Dumb and Dumber movie, then stupid is perfect…... If you're making a Dumb and Dumber movie.

48:58Jawad Mir100%. You were talking about editing. Was there a scene that you cut out that you wish was in the film?

49:09William DearWell, that would be the scene that I was in, but, no.

49:13Jawad MirOh, you were.

49:14William DearIt wasn't... Well, it was, it, I'll tell you, it is not a scene I regret that we cut out. There's, no, there's nothing that I really regret that I can remember that we cut out that hurts the film. There was an extended scene. It was much like the scene where Harry sees the woman putting a chicken in a pot, and then looks over and sees a couple start to immerse themselves in a, in the boil… in the bubbling hot tub. You know, he was confused by the, by the, you know, the strange…

49:38Jawad MirThat was a great scene That was a great scene, by the way. That was a great scene.

49:43William DearWell, there was another scene where Harry looks in on a, on a party, and back then, I haven't heard of them recently, but the, it was a birthday party. He looks in the window at a birthday party, and this was him discovering human life…

49:55Jawad MirYeah

49:55William Dear... And the strangeness of human life. And a gorilla gram. A girl comes in a gorilla gram and sings happy birthday, and then takes off the gorilla head, and it's a blonde girl. And Harry was like, you know, you know, like, "W… w… what?" And then, he starts to walk away, and I came running out of the house, playing maybe the host of the party or whatever. And I was a little bit, the character played it, I played it a little bit drunk. And I'm coming out, having forgetting to tip the gorilla gram girl. And I mistake Harry for the gorilla gram girl.

50:34Jawad MirOh.

50:34William DearAnd I tip Harry, and he eats the money. So th… that was cut out of the movie. And it wasn't the greatest scene in the world. I…... Can't say I regret that it's gone. But, you know, there's about 10 seconds of it out there in a wide shot where I go out and pay him or something, but…

50:54Jawad MirRight

50:54William Dear... It was a scene, but it was almost too similar to the hot tub chicken scene, which played better, you know.

51:02Jawad MirYeah.

51:02William DearThis mistaken,.. But again, I wanted to see, I wanted Harry to see the strange, the strangeness of humans, you know? That they were not un… such an organized species on their own.

51:15Jawad MirAnd that was, that was really well, executed, especially even at the end when, you know, he stops John's character to, from hitting, and you know, just like, "You can't do that." Like, "You have to be a better human being." and what was so amazing about that scene is obviously, you know, he can't talk, but just through his eyes. And your decision of, you know, having his eyes being the s… the focal point, he just says so much. He says so much. So that was really cool, too. There's a thing…

51:49William DearAbout the eyes is that when Rick was creating the creature, the first day we had a full-on, full suit on Kevin, stand up, present Harry to me in Rick's studio. Rick had yellow contacts in Harry's eyes. And it changed the creature from peaceful and loving to kind of malevolent. You know?

52:09Jawad MirYeah.

52:09William DearThere was something wrong, those yellow eyes. And so we had quite a discussion on going with these kind of not blue, but kind of turquoise eyes. And Rick said, "A creature like that would never have eyes that color." I said, "Well, creature like that, we've never seen a creature like this before. So we get to choose what color," you know?

52:25Jawad MirRight.

52:25William DearAnd that was a decision that I stuck with, fought for, is that his eyes were also inviting. They, his eyes didn't put you off, you know?

52:33Jawad MirYeah. And w… speaking of the creature, what kind of research did you do, and did it ever pique your curiosity that, you know, do they exist?

52:46William DearYes, very much so. I did as much research as I could possibly do. Read everything on, you know, the people that, were pro Bigfoot, people that were, con Bigfoot. Learned some very interesting things like, how come that, most people that see Bigfoot and UFOs only have one tooth. And, you start to wonder, like, "Well, how come these, you know, how come these phenomenon don't come to what we regard as smarter, more intelligent people? They always come to someone who is kind of simple," you know? And it's, it sounds odd and a bit rude, but that was part of the, what I learned in the research. And I learned also that a Bigfoot, according to myth, whatever, could be standing 10 feet from you in the forest. And because that's his home and in his natural habitat, if he didn't move, you wouldn't even know he was there.

53:38Jawad MirYeah.

53:38William DearAnd in the very end of the movie, we got the Harry stunt suit, the backup suit, and Kevin in the Harry suit. And we got, Rick had a smaller animal suit that we modified to be a baby Bigfoot suit. And I remember standing everybody very still in front of the camera there…

53:54Jawad MirYeah

53:54William Dear... And then giving them a cue to come to life. And my co-producer on the movie, Dick Van, he said this, "Why are we doing this? Why are we wasting time doing this? I can see everyone standing there." I said, "Yeah, you can, 'cause you have two eyes." I said, "The camera has one eye. Camera only has one eye." And he goes, "Ah." And we went on a little bit about that and everything, but we got the shot and everything. I remember in dailies when the shot came up, it's like, Dick Van didn't say, "Oh, here's a shot where you're gonna..." He didn't say it. He just, it came up and you were watching the shot, and he was caught up in the moment of, Harry and them saying goodbye, Harry turning to leave. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, yet they were right in front of your eyes, all these creatures came to life.

54:37Jawad MirYeah.

54:37William DearAnd Dick Van said, "Holy shit. Holy shit." And then he realized, you know, that time back in Seattle on the set, you know, maybe even months and months ago, that he had, he had sort of fought that moment. But it was just,.. And that was also me, you know, coming up through camera and everything else. And, you know, and telling Alan that, "I think this will work." And Alan said, "Yes, the camera has one eye. It's, of course it's gonna work," you know?

55:03Jawad MirYeah, no. And some of the locations where you shot at, Seattle, and I think you also shot in, Oregon, in Bend, Oregon, they were just beautiful. And was that something that… Obviously, I mean, there's always, like, a location, you know, department, but y… was your desire always to shoot it in that part of the United States?

55:25William DearYeah, I really wanted to shoot it up in, up in Washington where, you know, you had the… the… the trees and the mountains. You... I… I wanted that kind of wilderness. And Seattle was... Seattle at that time was a very film-friendly city, you know?

55:39William DearThe only, the only thing Se… that Se… Seattle did to hurt us was it would take so long at night for it to get dark, that if we had night shoots to do, you'd have to wait till almost 10 o'clock at night to shoot.

55:52Jawad MirOh.

55:52William DearYou know? And that was, that made it hard.

55:55Jawad MirYeah.

55:55William DearEspecially with having kids in the cast, they have to stop by 12:00 and, you know, all those kind of rules and things.

56:00Jawad MirDid you, did you go through that part, of not having the actors present at the same time for the scene and you had to shoot them separately? Was that ever the case?

56:12William DearNo.

56:13Jawad MirNo.

56:13William DearNo.

56:13Jawad Mir'Cause it didn't feel like that…

56:14William DearI… I can't remember. I'm wondering if we ever did a pickup with anybody, w… where we had that situation. No, everybody was pretty much there, you know? And I wanted everybody to be there. I mean, I've had to do movies where you have to shoot, you know, one side of a scene and the actor isn't there and, you know, the other side of a scene when the actor finally shows up, maybe a week later or something. But no, everybody was pretty much there, and it became, even David Souchet, who played the Bigfoot hunter, LaFleur, he, you know, we became like a family and even h… although he was the, he was the black sheep in the Harry and Henderson's family there, you know? They were all family. And he loved Kevin and the whole process as much as anybody, so.

56:57Jawad MirYeah.

56:57William DearI think I'm wandering a little bit there, but...

56:59Jawad MirNo. I… it's all good. And I wanted to know, I'm pr… I'm guessing the answer's probably pretty simple but, you know, the dog in the film and having him getting accustomed to Kevin's suit, like, how, what was, what was like, th… that like? Because, you know, dogs obviously they sense things and but to see him in that, see it like this giant creature, which he's probably never seen before, was there something, like, the dog was trained or he got used to it over time or?

57:31William DearYeah, that's funny. I never... Well, we're kinda dog people. We've always had little dogs. The scene where little Bob jumps up over the, counter, that's something that our dog would do at home, so I put it in the movie, you know? He wanted to see what's going on the counter and he could jump high enough just to get that half-second glimpse of what…

57:46Jawad MirYeah

57:46William Dear... Was going on the counter. So, I didn't think about that. I, the dog was trained. We had a…

57:53Jawad MirYeah, of course.

57:53William DearThey... It was Zane Grey, the guy who wrote Tarzan, his daughter was the dog trainer.

57:59Jawad MirOkay. Okay.

58:00William DearAnd I remember, this is a little, just an offshoot story of the dog because, but I don't remember him having to sort of acclimate to this big hairy creature. I think, probably the dog had done enough movies with lights and people and everything moving around that it was part of what was going on. But I remember when Harry's down in the basement and w… wanted the dog, little Bob, to run to the door a… a… and really, you know, say there's something down there, you know, scratching and barking and everything. And, so the woman, so I guess, I don't know if this is right or wrong or terrible or what, the woman had a very small monkey. And so what she would do, she would put the monkey behind the door, and that would antagonize the dog. And so the monkey would think, "This dog is coming to kill me," but there's a door between them. And the dog would go, "If I can get that monkey, I'm gonna kill it," you know? So that's why in the, in the movie, little Bob, when he races towards that door where Harry's in the basement, he sm… you hear this thud. That's the little dog smashing right into the door. He wants to get that monkey. And I remember one of the crew members saying, "God, imagine how that dog feels."

59:04William DearAnd then someone else said, "Imagine how that monkey feels." You know? Here's this predator coming after you for, like, five takes, you know? So.

59:11Jawad MirYeah.

59:12William DearYeah, but li… we had a stunt double for the dog, which was just a stand-up dog where we would put little Bob for lighting and stuff.

59:19Jawad MirOh.

59:19William DearBut it never stood up. So we, stand it up, it would fall over. So that, the stand-in for little Bob nickname became Dead Bob. So they said, "Okay, bring in Dead Bob," and they just throw the dog on the floor and use that for lighting, you know? I think, I don't know why, over the course of the production, that dog would never stand up. I have Dead Bob…

59:36Jawad MirI really like that... Sorry?

59:41William DearOh, I was saying nothing. I can't remember where Dead Bob is right now, but I know he's around somewhere, so.

59:46Jawad MirI really like that scene in the end when David's character throws the dog and then Harry just catches him. I mean, j… the, just that shot of him throwing it, cutting it to the dog going in the air, and then him grabbing it, like, it was just, it, the t… the pacing of that was perfect. It was a really cool scene to watch, shot to watch I should say. But that was really nice. I really enjoy, and I actually, when I saw it recently, I went back and I watched it again just to kinda, you know, how it, how it was cut. It was, it was really nicely done. And…

1:00:23William DearYeah, that was a, that was an idea I had early on. I was hoping we could pull that off, and I w… I was quite satisfied with how that came out too with the throw and the catch, you know?

1:00:34Jawad MirYeah.

1:00:34William DearI wanted it to be totally unexpected. The guy throwing a dog was like, "" But I wanted, yeah, I wanted in… almost instantly a really satisfying and maybe extra satisfying resolve to this guy throwing a dog, you know? And…

1:00:45Jawad MirYeah

1:00:45William Dear... That was Harry catching it.

1:00:46Jawad MirI certainly had a gasp moment even after I watched it after a long time. Like, I knew it was coming, but just that moment when the dog is in the air, like, "Oh, what's gonna happen to it?" the museum in the film, was that constructed for the... I'm as… imagining it was for the film.

1:01:02William DearYes. Yeah, the, Wright Woods, yeah, place. That was an old building and they redressed it and everything and put that old Airstream out in the, in the back and everything. But that was, that was basically a set, you know, in a, in an old dilapidated building, you know, that was

1:01:20Jawad MirYeah

1:01:20William Dear... On the roadside there. With a nice mountain behind it.

1:01:25Jawad MirYeah, that was, that was a really nice touch. And were you, were you involved in the series that came out for three seasons?

1:01:32William DearNo, I was,.. Movie guys and television guys were not the, you know, there was not that intermingling that there seems to be now, you know, amongst the two crafts. And, I think because the movie didn't, gross maybe up to its potential…

1:01:50Jawad MirRight

1:01:50William Dear... They saw the benefit of doing a series, but they wanted to go with TV directors, people that would, you know, get, you know, get these 22-minute episodes out in a day or out in a five or six-day schedule, whatever it was. I remember watching, and I think I only watched one of them, and of the, it ran for two seasons, and I only watched one. And that was because they had taken the character of Harry and, to me, treated him like a family dog. He was not, regarded as, a person. You know, a being, you know, as we would respect members of our family. He was not regarded as a member of the family, in my mind, in what they did. It was more he was there for the, to set up or be the brunt of jokes, you know. And that, kinda hurt me a bit. I, you know, I was grateful again that they, had taken it and expanded it.

1:02:51William DearThey, there was a sound show that ran on the Universal tour for 15 years, the Harry and the Hendersons sound show, when they…

1:02:58Jawad MirOh, really?

1:02:58William Dear... They would have, you know, scenes from the movie and putting in the growls and putting in the sounds and all that. That's one thing about Universal is that back then, they probably still do it, but they would, they would amortize, you know, a current movie or something and turn it into an attraction if something had a... I think that came after the video was successful, that the Universal sound show came up. But someone reminded me recently that was, it was there for 15 years. And I remember going to see that, and that was fine because it brought back great moments of when we were, you know, putting the sound to Harry and stuff.

1:03:29Jawad MirRight. Yeah.

1:03:29William DearSo it created its own little world for a while.

1:03:33Jawad MirAnd what was your biggest challenge on the film?

1:03:39William DearWell, my biggest challenge... Well, my biggest challenge was really, that's I'm also a producer on the film, and I told them that I wanted to be a producer, and I would not, you know, stick my fingers in to what they regarded as producing. But my role as producer would be to see that the creature was believable. You know, to really, you know, do everything I could without just trying to throw money at the problem, which, you know, rarely is a good solution. But to do everything to really make this creature workable. And I said, "Then otherwise I won't step on anybody's toes, but I am gonna be very, strict in, you know, making Harry." So that's, that was my, you know, that was my biggest challenge, was to make the creature believable. Again, believable as a scary being, believable as a silly being, never really stupid. I remember showing up at Rick Baker's doorstep.

1:04:41William DearI had, again, 40 pages of the screenplay, and I had a small bust of Harry that I had made out of clay and made a casting of it. And one half of the face was Harry smiling, and the other half was the eye… eyebrows clenched down and Harry growling.

1:04:55Jawad MirWow.

1:04:55William DearAnd I remember putting my hand up half the face, and it would be the growling Harry, and the other half and the smiling. And Rick was kind of, you know, he was... He said, "You made this?" I said, "Yeah." He says, "It's really nice." And he said, he said, "Yeah, I, you know, I always fantasized." He had done Planet of the Apes or, no, not Planet. He had done, some other... I forget what it was, but he had done something where he had distinguished himself, a… as a person who could really understand, you know, the, that ape culture and the creatures. And he said, "Well," he said, "I would, I've always wanted to do a Bigfoot movie." And he said, "But you don't have a studio behind you. You..." This is before Amazing Stories, before anything, before meeting with Spielberg and all that. He said, "So the truth is you probably can't afford me, so, but I want, I wish you good luck with your, with your project," you know. So then later when we got the movie job, I went back to Rick as the person I went to because he was the only guy to do it, you know. And but we had the money, you know. I said, "Well, okay, you can't use that excuse now, so..." And Rick really, he embraced it. I think that was one of his favorite, still is one of his favorite creatures that he ever, you know, conceived and built.

1:06:00Jawad MirNo, he did a phenomenal job. And Bill, what are you working on now, if that's something that you can reveal? Or what keeps you busy? Are you working on any projects?

1:06:10William DearYeah, I'm working. We've got, a wide range of films that we'd like to do. But now films, with streaming and everything else, and theaters not being the primary outlet for films, it's very rare that, like this past weekend, that Cocaine Bear gets a shot at being a very low-budget independent film that gets a really big release. So now we have to think of films, where would they stream? You know, who could we… What would be the venue? Because they're starting to, not, probably not gonna spend the money to mount an advertising campaign to go out to thousands of theaters unless it's a very big movie. So we're doing films both from wacky comedies to, we have, we have a silly shark movie and, you know, in the Sharknado mode, but, we think it's, it's funnier and more sophisticated. I have a couple of teen comedies that I would love to get going.

1:07:11William DearWe have a creature comedy, which is like Harry Hen… in the Hendersons in a f… in a way, in that a family encounters this creature, and the creature, sort of tells them how to become a better family. And that's sort of… In a Goonies type world. And I'm being really vague on these. I have a Western series, a six or eight-part series that I'm writing that, oh, I'm a... I just love Westerns, and I, Time Rider, I haven't done a real Western since Time Rider years ago, and, I really miss it. But I'm writing that, and also I'm involved now in a project that I co-wrote with a guy named Ron Walters called Lusitania, and it's a strange take on why the Lusitania sunk so strangely, because the Titanic took 200, two, 2 hours and 45 minutes to sink. Lusitania sank in 18 minutes. And…

1:08:00William Dear... But it was carrying a lot of arms for the Brits, and there was, you know, secondary explosions going off everywhere and all kinds of things. So I'm, I'm involved in projects that range from, you know, Lusitania to the silly creature project called Blabbermouth, to Sharkaconda, to, we have one where the, called Crashing Vegas, where these four kids, and one is a movie maker kid and a makeup, artist, kind of guy wannabe, and they learn that the annual fishing trip their dads all go on has been a lie all these years, and the dads basically go to Vegas and party and, you know, screw around, gamble, get drunk, you know, do whatever. So the guy decides, two bags get switched. They find their father's bags with all the Vegas tickets and everything else, and they decide, the guy says, "Well, I've got molds of everybody's face, you know, I'll make us up as our dads. We'll just go to Vegas on their, on their dime." So it's called Crashing Vegas, and it's the four kids made up as their dads who go to Vegas, and it's kind of funny. And I like it that it's not a movie where when they put the makeup on, you then go to that actor…

1:09:05Jawad MirRight

1:09:05William Dear... Who they're made up as. Oh, I wanna... You know, this is the kind of thing that's like, wow, these kids are pulling off a scam. Is that nose gonna stay on through the whole scam, you know? Is that,... You know, you know, it's a, it's just a funny teen comedy. But I don't see many teen comedies anymore. There was an era when, you know…

1:09:24Jawad MirYeah

1:09:24William Dear... Role Models, American Pie, there was a bunch of teen comedies. Superbad, you don't see a lot of those anymore. So it's a changing, a changing world. But, so I have some fantasies going. I have a Western going. I have a movie for the faith-based community that I really love called Rosie's Christmas Miracle, and it's just a sweet little Christmas story, 'cause I do like Christmas movies. I got to do a movie called Santa Who with Leslie Nielsen, and I loved it, you know?

1:09:50Jawad MirYeah.

1:09:50William DearAnd in contrast to that, I did a movie, one dabble into horror with Crispin Glover called Simon Says, and I hated it. I mean, every morning was blood and body parts, and I'm thinking, "This is not me. I'm, I'm supposed to be making people laugh, you know? What's going on here?"

1:10:04Jawad MirYeah.

1:10:04William DearOh, it was a, not a good experience. And it was a l… again, a learning lesson for me, you know?

1:10:09Jawad MirRight.

1:10:10William DearJust because the horror genre is out there and could be profitable, not for me.

1:10:16Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, no, and you worked on The Rocketeer as well, right, as a story person?

1:10:21William DearYeah, that was a, that's not a, not a happy story with me. I basically, you know, re… re… the screenplay you see is my screenplay, and I ended up with a story credit. I walked it in as the director, and through the way the system works, I got replaced and, it's a heartbreaker for me, that one. That's a real heartbreaker.

1:10:47Jawad MirWell, that was a, that was a, it was a great, it was a great, a great script. I mean, I... And you're right about the teen movies and even, like, movies like Rocketeer, those are not really, teen comedies not made anymore. And I, one of the things I actually was reading about that, I mean, generally comedies are not being made anymore, like good comedies. Because comedies are supposed to, you know, poke fun at things, poke fun at people, poke fun at different elements. And a lot of times nowadays, everybody's kind of afraid to do that because of the way our society has become. And I hope, and I hope that changes because…

1:11:26William DearThat's a good observation

1:11:27Jawad Mir... Sorry?

1:11:29William DearThat's a good observation. That's very good. I, you know, it's, yeah.

1:11:34Jawad MirYeah, no, it's…

1:11:35William DearI couldn't agree more. Two…

1:11:39Jawad MirNo, I hope that, you know, obviously you have to be in certain, limitation, but who defines that limitation? Like, you know, what's the limitation of comedy? Like, what makes people laugh and what it doesn't? I mean, I, you know, films like, even films like, not like a teen movie, but like spoof films that came out in '90s, you know, Hot Shots and The Naked Gun, and then in the '70s, Airplane, like all that stuff. Like those, you know, don't get make anymore. I don't know if there's no audience for it or what it is, but maybe it's us that we miss it. But I certainly hope that the film that you're working on, the teen comedy, those, this start a trend, because I do think that right now is that time, 'cause there's always, like, a cycle of things, right? So hopefully…

1:12:27William DearYeah

1:12:27Jawad Mir... Hopefully you can initiate it.

1:12:28William DearYou know, one other thing, and it's like, and y… that you sort of hit on there is that because of our new viewing habits and because of, you know, whether it was the two-year lapse for theaters with COVID and everything, but comedies are, to me, always best enjoyed when you're in a full house of people that wanna see that movie, and you have that communal sharing of the laughter.

1:12:50Jawad MirYeah.

1:12:50William DearAnd I saw some observation on TV last week where someone said that, it was someone either on Colbert Show or something reflecting on the fact that if you're home with yourself just alone or with a few family members and you're watching a comedy, film, you don't have a tendency to laugh out loud as much as you do in the theater situation.

1:13:11Jawad MirYeah.

1:13:11William DearSo maybe that's, maybe... But it would take, of course, it's, it's kind of a catch 22 because it would take the theater audience wanting to go back to this comedy, to a comedy en masse to once again realize, "Yeah, this is, this is kind of fun laughing with all these people." And then you talk about how some comedies couldn't be made today. I tell people, "Yeah, watch Blazing Saddles." I mean, it is… It is like, it breaks every rule you can imagine, you know? And, but it is still hilarious, and I'm kind of grateful for the fact that it got to exist even though now you go, "Ooh, my goodness, did he just say that? Oh, damn, did he just say that?"

1:13:56Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, no, and I think you're bang on about the theatrical experience, and I think c… along with comedy, thriller and horror is something that you wanna watch with the audience too.

1:14:07William DearYes

1:14:08Jawad Mir... My m… I'm, I went to see the, what was it? The Lost World: Jurassic Park II when it came out. I wasn't too crazy about the film, but the experience, I remember I went on a Wednesday afternoon. The film was supposed to come out on Friday, but they had, like, a Wednesday showing and a Thursday showing. You know, sometimes they would have that. And it was a brand-new theater in Mississauga, the Coliseum. And I went to buy the tickets in the afternoon, and then me and my brother, then we went in the evening, and they had, I th… I'm willing to bet 30-plus screens, right? Every screen was dedicated to Jurassic Park II. And it was, like, literally, like, we didn't... And it was a massive multiplex. We didn't have room to walk, it was so tight. And we s… my brother and I sat completely, you know, far away from each other. But just that experience of people, you know, when the logo came up and the music kicked in, that you just fall into that.

1:15:08Jawad MirAnd even if the film is not that great at the end, the experience certainly, you know, stays with you, and it certainly has with me.

1:15:15William DearWell, I'm sort of hoping for that on a, not as big as Jurassic experience, but with the audience that would wanna see my Christmas movie. Because it's a perennial, it's a Christmas-themed movie, and it's, it's a very uplifting film, you know? And it's, it's a lot of fun. It's a, it's, it's a comedy. It's a comedy about Christmas. Not a silly comedy like Airplane, but a genuine, you know, again, human emotion comedy. There's a lot of emotion. My wife says to me, "If you're always making comedies, how come at the end I'm always crying?" You know? Maybe that, maybe that works out, you know? So...

1:15:48Jawad MirYeah, no, I certainly will keep an eye out, on your work and the ones that coming up, and obviously go back and see some of your older work, the ones that you've t… mentioned. And would love to, would love to be in touch again hopefully in the future and talk about more stuff and films.

1:16:05William DearOh, sure. I don't get these opportunities and, I find,.. Someone said to me the other day, he said, "Well, what are you gonna say?" I said, "I don't know. It'll, it depends on what he asks me. You know, something will come up, you know?" And, I find I just love to talk about this stuff. I just, I guess 'cause it meant so much and means so much to me. And, you know, such a…

1:16:27Jawad MirSure

1:16:27William Dear... A gift to have, created something that people will share, you know, in whatever, you know, for forever. Who knows, you know? I'm so grateful when people remember Harry, remember a title that I did, you know? I'm just

1:16:43Jawad MirYeah

1:16:43William Dear... Grateful that I could, that I could be the person who brought that, you know, to life, you know?

1:16:50Jawad MirAnd, you know, just to kinda wrap it up, I would say this with s… most sincerity, that movies like Harry and the Hendersons, or specifically Harry and the Hendersons, like, you know, I have such a vivid memory of watching that, going to the library and getting it from the library, because I was looking for Amblin projects, like what Amblin was working on or what they had done. And just watching it and for it to stay with me this long, that is a testament to your work and to what you did. So you should be very proud of that.

1:17:25William DearWell, I'm very grateful you're saying that, and I'm, I am very proud of it. I'm very proud of, Harry. I, you know, like I said, I'm... Harry and, The Perfect Game are my two best movies, I think. I hope you get to see The Perfect Game.

1:17:40Jawad MirI will check it out.

1:17:40William DearAnd, again, it's a... I'm not done yet. That's what I like to say. I'm…

1:17:47Jawad MirGood

1:17:47William Dear... I'm not done yet.

1:17:48Jawad MirGood. That's, that's the great attitude of a great storyteller and a... And I'm glad to hear that. And I'm, I'll watch The Perfect, Game and I'll, I'll send you an email and let you know what I think. And I hope you enjoyed the conversation and, you know, thank you for...

1:18:04William DearI wanted that. Thank you so much.

1:18:06Jawad MirGreat.

1:18:07William DearOkay.

1:18:07Jawad MirThank you so much. Nice talking to you. We'll be in touch.

1:18:10William DearYeah.

1:18:11Jawad MirOkay. Bye-bye.

1:18:12William DearBye-bye.