THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 29, 1994 TAG: 9410280093
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 119 lines
IT ISN'T CHEAP when you want to re-create ancient Egypt and set it in outer space. With its new sci-fi project ``Stargate,'' MGM, the grand studio from yesteryear, is placing a hefty bet that it can blur your images of past and future - and still sell tickets.
Let's talk figures.
Director Roland Emmerich put the budget at $55 million to $60 million. For just one scene, 1,500 extras were hired. Kurt Russell, who took the starring role of Col. Jack O'Neil after Sean Connery turned it down, asked for - and got - $7 million.
It was the morning after the premiere, and cast and crew, when not swapping war stories or comparing budgets, agreed on one thing: The money for ``Stargate,'' which opened Friday, could only have been raised on the basis of a past success. The script has been around since 1974. Screenwriter Dean Devlin says there were 47 drafts before the film finally went before the cameras.
In this case, the impetus was director Emmerich's ``Universal Soldier,'' the 1992 futuristic actioner that pitted macho robots Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. When it grossed more than $100 million, Emmerich saw a chance to at last get his dream project financed.
Impetus No. 2: Russell was coming off his big victory in the Wyatt Earp wars. Just ask. He's glad to talk about it. ``Tombstone,'' Russell's little Western, was made for a mere $25 million and took in $65 million. More importantly, it outdrew the Kevin Costner epic ``Wyatt Earp,'' which lost $70 million, putting it among the biggest bombs ever.
Russell claims Costner ``played hardball'' by renting all the costumes and most of the horses, leaving the ``Tombstone'' crew strapped. Still, ``Tombstone'' opened first. Despite some good reviews, Costner was old hat.
`` `Wyatt Earp' was never a threat to `Tombstone,' but `Tombstone' was always a threat to `Wyatt Earp,' '' Russell said. ``The trouble is that one of the other of those films should have been a great movie, and the one should have been `Tombstone.' As it is, both were made in a rush and both suffered.''
Nonetheless, ``Tombstone'' got Russell top money for ``Stargate'' - not that he's all that serious about the new sci-fi adventure.
``I think it has a camp element,'' he said. ``People may laugh at it. If it strikes the right audience, it could be a big hit. They'll say things like `Hey, that guy's helmet is real cool.' If not, well, I'm just paid on salary.''
Russell is no stranger to sci-fi, having starred in ``The Thing,'' ``Escape from New York'' and ``Big Trouble in Little China.''
``The real risk with these films,'' he said, ``is that you can't see them when you're reading the script. You have to put your entire trust in the imagination of the filmmakers. As an actor in this type of film, you don't usually know WHAT they're doing.
``I feel good about this one, though, because I took my 14-year-old son to see it, and he said he'd recommend it to his friends.''
On the other hand, co-star James Spader is no sci-fi kind of guy. For the most part, he's played snooty Yuppie types, often with villainous bents. He's coming off a success with ``Wolf,'' in which he stole scenes from Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer. He won the best actor award at Cannes for ``sex, lies and videotape.''
``I read the `Stargate' script, and it looked like a helluva lot of fun, even though it's very different from anything else I'd done,'' Spader said. ``I thought I'd get a free trip to Egypt, so I took it. As it turns out, it was filmed outside Yuma, Ariz. But it still was a real challenge.''
He plays a rebel scientist who believes the ancient Egyptians could not have engineered and built the pyramids without help. He believes that help came from another planet in another time. Russell is the macho military man who wants to stifle the idea. With the help of ``stargate,'' a device discovered at the pyramids, they travel back 8 million years to a planet ruled by, of all people, Jaye Davidson from ``The Crying Game.''
Spader vividly remembers the first day of filming.
``They picked me up in this Lincoln town car and drove out into the desert,'' he said. ``I thought we'd get stuck in the sand. They had laid this kind of road under the sand. We drove for miles. Then, we switched to a dune buggy for a few miles more. Then, over the top of a ridge, there were thousands of extras in costumes lined up across the next dune. And there was the city of Nagada on the planet Abydos. I said `Wow! I'm in a REAL movie.' This is the way they used to make movies. It was like stepping into another world.''
His two stars bought different acting styles to the project, Emmerich said.
``James likes to talk a lot about motivation and what he's going to try. He likes a lot of rehearsals, and prepares extensively. Kurt, on the other hand, acts from instinct. He just rushes in and wants to get it done.''
Spader said those differences helped. ``Kurt and I were playing totally opposite characters. We laughed a lot. We also argued a lot. We had a good time. But I don't feel I have any real sense, even now, of making a science-fiction movie. All the sci-fi stuff was added after we finished shooting the film.''
To move the tons of equipment across the desert, the moviemakers used a honeycombed, rubber-like material like that used by the troops in Desert Storm. When rolled out and wetted down, it forms an instant road. The set for the city was eight stories high - one of the largest exterior sets ever built for a movie. It was so hot that each of the 1,500 extras had pockets sewn into their costumes to hold bottles of water.
A major problem, according to the filmmakers, was keeping the desert sand looking pristine and untouched. Ten huge wind machines, augmented by whirling helicopter blades, were used to smooth over footprints and tire tracks. Dune-buggy enthusiasts, who drove out from Yuma to watch the filming, were major pests. As a last resort, the producers paid ``sand sweepers'' to brush the sand with brooms. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by MGM
James Spader is no sci-fi regular
Col. Jack O'Neill (Kurt Russell) and team enter the strange and
mysterious world of Nagada in "Stargate," the si-fi epic that opened
Friday at area theaters.
Kurt Russell got a salary of $7 million for "Stargate"
B/W photo by MGM
James Spader, left, stars with Jaye Davidson in ``Stargate.'' by CNB