FROM THE VAULT: The NeverEnding Story (40th Anniversary Edition)

Jordan and Alex explore the beloved (yet terrifying) classic of children’s cinema. You’ll learn the many ways the kid who played Atreyu nearly died on the set, the true fate of the horse that sank in the quicksand, the insane lengths they went to build Falkor the Luck Dragon, and Steven Spielberg's secret role in helping finish the movie. They’ll also discuss how the Oracles left some viewers scandalized, why the “Childlike Empress” wore dentures, the ingenious effects that helped create The Nothing, and why the author of ‘The NeverEnding Story’ book hated the movie so much that he sued the studio. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello everyone,
and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings
you the secret stories and little known, behind the scenes
details about your favorite movies, music, TV shows, and more.
We are your foreman of facts. My name is Jordan
Runta and I'm Alex Saigel, and today we are going

(00:22):
to talk about truly one of my all time favorite
movies as a kid, The Never Ending Story. And you
know how little kids get into this routine where they
watch movies over and over again, That's how I was
with this movie. They were showings of this movie in
my house horribly daily. Oh yeah, I couldn't get enough
of this movie. It was just always on. It has
to be part of my genetic code at this point.

(00:44):
Like whenever I see storm clouds off in the distance,
I think of Madridded nothing. Whenever I see a beautiful
white horse, I think of our tax and his demise
and the swamp of sadness. I tray, you still the
coolest kid who's ever lived, as far as I'm concerned.
And it was really only after revisiting this movie for
this episode that I realized the Ending Story is kind

(01:04):
of terrifying. Yeah, it's dark, So we're really hitting our
personal kinder trauma trifecta this summer. We've got I know,
we we we gotta save some of these for season two. Man,
we're gonna run out of all this. Yeah, who friend
Roger Rabbit and the never ending Story. Sorry to all
of our listeners for all of the repressed nightmares that

(01:25):
these episodes may have dredged up. Don't worry, We're not
sleeping either.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
This is one of those.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Movies that I assumed that everybody of our age group
had a personal connection with, like you know, the Lion
King or Beauty and the Beast or something. But after
talking to you, I'm starting to get the sense that
that's not the case. What's your relationship like with this movie?
Non existently?

Speaker 2 (01:46):
I yeah, I mean as far as fantasy stuff, growing up,
it was Princess pooh.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, oh we should totally do that too. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
I think the bigger thing for me was Star Wars.
I mean that guy was a Star Wars kid. Didn't
know that, but oh yeah, oh oh yeah yeah. In
many ways, I pined the death of my childhood on
two late nineties properties, which is Batman and Robin as
we've talked about many times and the prequels. Oh yeah,
but no, I get back to never any story. I

(02:14):
think I have literally seen this movie once.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
I think we've watched it in like teacher has a hangover,
we're going to watch movies day in like middle school,
and then I just never revisited it. In fact, I
remember being exposed to that scream O band or Metalcore
or whatever the band to tray You more than the
actual child's character tray You, which is hilarious.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Wow. Do you have any images burned in at Morse Dying?
For sure? I mean I think I actually I confused
the rock dude from this movie with the one from
Return to Oz because I saw a Return to Oz
way too early, and I remember like being like, I
have the wheelie guys for me, is like, which is common,

(02:59):
Like everyone was like, what the are those things doing
in a child's movie? But I think I saw that
at like six or seven and was like, oh goodness, Well,
I guess we'll see over the course of this episode
what horrifying memories shake loose from your subconscious. It's time
to dive in to our never ending episode. You'll learn
the many ways that the kid who played a tray

(03:19):
you nearly died on the set, the true fate of
that horse that sank in the quicksand the insane length
they went to build Falcore the Luck Dragon out of
airplane pieces, and Steven Spielberg's secret role in helping finish
the movie. So here is everything you never knew about
The never Ending Story. Wow. Given the popularity of The

(03:45):
Never Ending Story of the movie, it may surprise fans
to learn that the film was actually based on a
nineteen seventy nine children's novel by German author Michael Ende,
who hated the film adaptations so much that he sued
the studio. Well, let me backtrack a bit. The book
was phenomenally popular in Germany and around the world, but
especially in Germany, where it stayed at the top of

(04:06):
the literary charts for three years and sold more than
a million copies before being translated into twenty seven different languages,
including English. It sold quite well in the States as well.
I think it sold something like one hundred thousand copies.
The utopian themes of The Never Ending Story book were
embraced by anti nuclear activists at the dawn of the

(04:26):
eighties and I've seen reports that people would line up
around the block and camp out in sleeping bags in
order to hear the author, Michael Ende speak. So this
was a big deal. And doing a film adaptation of
this book was basically like making Harry Potter or something
in the early eighties. This was a big deal. Michael
Ende seems I think that's how you say his name.

(04:47):
He seems to have something of a persecution complex. He
said that the critical reaction to the book quote ranged
from amazement to black rage. You could enter the literary
salon from prison, from the insane asylum, from a whorehouse, everywhere,
but from the children's room. So yeah, mixed reaction. That's
a pretty incredible quote, to be fair. Yeah, no, it's true.

(05:08):
I mean, I guess yeah, it probably is. I mean,
I'm not I don't know any children's authors personally, but
it must be hard to get that sense of respect,
you know, that is afforded to people who have like
a gritty personal story that was told from you know,
prison diaries or you know something some kind of harrowing
personal memoir or some well speaking of arrowing personal memoir.

(05:32):
Oh yeah, you have a lot to say about this author. Yeah. He.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
His father was a surrealist painter in Germany. His work was,
like many others, shut down by the Nazis, and Michael
was twelve years old when the first air raid took
place above Munich, about which he has a delightful quote
that I was unable to verify but don't want to
know the truth about, frankly, because it can't be worse
than you assume.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Quote. I remember singing and careening through the blaze like
a drunkard. I was in the grip of a kind
of euphoria. I still don't truly understand it, but I
was almost tempted to cast myself into the fire like
a moth into the light, which imagine I can't do it.
I didn't have I didn't bring this prepared. But imagine

(06:18):
that in Werner Hertzeg's voice, I say doctor Evil. But yeah,
that works too close. Yeah yeah, yeah, Wow. Okay, so
so much about never ending story, like the swamp of
sadness and the nothing, just this impending aerial force coming
sweeping over the Okay, this is all starting to make
sense now. Wow.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
He was visiting his uncle during the nineteen forty three
Hamburg bombing, which was one of those horrifying carpet bombing
situations like Dresden. They blew up I think a petroleum
there's a petroleum refinery or something like that, and then
the whole town went up and it was like a
horrifying firestorm. Thirty seven thousand people died.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
Oh my yeah. A year later, his father's studio burns
up and he loses like the bulk of his work.
And then in nineteen forty five, the kid is drafted
into the Volkstrum, which was like the.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Quote volunteer German Army. A bunch of his classmates went
to war and died, three of them.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
I guess that's not a bunch. That's enough children dying.
And then he tore up his draft papers and joined
a Bavarian resistance movement. Cool.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, so quite the CV, even before he created one
of the most immortal children's books of all time.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
Wow. I guess what I say I'm saying is he's
earned that persecution complex. Okay, because he was literally persecuted.
I take that back. Thank you for putting me straight
on that. Well, back to slightly happier occasions in this
man's life. He sold the film rights to the never
ending story for fifty thousand dollars, which I find to

(07:51):
be a pretty low figure considering his popularity, and perhaps
this is what helped sow the seeds of resentment in
years to come. According to an interviewed he gave with
the German newspaper Dershpiegel, his first choice for director was
a Kira Kurosawa, the legendary Japanese director. His second choice
was Polish director Andrejta Is that how you say that?

(08:15):
I have no idea.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
I googled that. I mean Okira Kurasaw was would be incredible.
But I googled this guy Andres and he won like
an honorary Oscar he won the palmed Or Yeah, it's
just funny. It's like when Morris he was putting out
his autobiography and he's like, it has to come out
on Penguin Classics. Oh yeah, Like, way to pick two

(08:38):
of the most iconic, apparently twentieth century directors as the
guys to do your children's book.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah. I can't tell if this speaks to like the
high popular regard for this book or for the author's arrogance.
Maybe a little bit of both. Again, he really wants
that cred. He really wants that cred. He's not getting
it from coming in through the kid's door. He's sitting
at the kid's stable, so that's interesting. But ultimately they
got Wolfgang Peterson as director and more on him director

(09:04):
Wolfgang Peterson's director, Wolfgang Peterson. Fans of the podcast will
know him from our Air Force one episode, so more
on him soon. But together, Wolfgang Peterson and author Michael
Endey collaborate on the script, and the author later said
I worked as an advisor because I wanted a beautiful movie.
I trusted them. Then things went south in a pretty

(09:26):
big way. Michael ende claimed that Peterson later secretly rewrote
the screenplay, making major changes that offended him deeply, and
he's quoted as saying, I saw the final script five
days before the movie's premiere, and I was horrified they
had changed the whole sense of the story. And he
objected to numerous additions to the movie that were not

(09:46):
found in the original book, specifically the final scene of
the movie. You'll remember that the movie opens with the
nerdy bastion, the kid Bastian, getting tormented by bullies and
he hides out in the school's attic and reads this
enchanted book, and the adventures within the book kind of
formed the bulk of the movie. At the end of
the movie, after Bastion has developed confidence through what he's

(10:07):
read in this book, he flies into the real world
on the back of Falcore, the luck Dragon, and he
gets revenge on his bullies. So suddenly this fantasy world
enters the real world. Author Michael Ende violently objected to
that scene, saying that it undercut the meaning of this story,
and he angrily told producers, you're trying to do a
Disney movie, to which they basically said, yeah, yep, Shire

(10:30):
are exactly as we're trying to do. That's our bit. Yeah.
He also objected to this is my favorite part, the
twin laser shooting oracle statues, which he felt were a
little too voluptuous. He later said, the sphinxes are one
of the biggest embarrassments of the film. They are full
bosomed strippers who sit there in the desert. Sounds like

(10:52):
a Russ Meyers movie. So the author was pissed, so
pissed that he attempted to halt the movie by filing
a lawsuit against the movie's German production company for breach
of contract. When the suit was dismissed, he tried to
get them to change the name of the movie, which
also failed. Ultimately, he organized a press conference to coincide
with the release of the film, which he referred to

(11:14):
as quote the Revolting Movie. The makers of the film
simply did not understand the book at all. They just
wanted to make money, and he was so ashamed of
the final product that they refused to have his name
in the opening credits of the film, instead opting for
just a small mention in the closing credits. But yeah,
we'll talk about director Wolfgang Peterson's sort of take on

(11:35):
all this basically says most authors aren't happy with movie
adaptations of their books because it's really hard to compress
everything that happens in a novel into ninety minutes two
hours of screen time. Not to mention, this book is
so fantastical. There are so many elements that just technologically speaking,
couldn't be put on the screen anyway. So this guy

(11:56):
didn't take kindly to having his words and stories altered,
and it kind of needed to be to appear on screen.
Is that famous story about Vlatibourn Nabokov writing the screenplay
for Lolita, the original screenplay, and it was like I
think it was something. It was like over three hundred pages,

(12:17):
and they were like, we can't make this, we can't
lift this quote. That's great.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Well, I mean using that as a springboard, we might
as well do a lightning round of other famous authors
who were displeased with the cinematic adaptations of their work,
starting with probably one of the most famous one, Stephen
King versus Stanley Kubrick. Stephen King was a big fan
of Kubrick, but he disliked that adaptation of The Shining
calling it a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside.

(12:48):
Coming from the author of Christine, that's harsh, that's harsh words.
And he especially did not like Shelley Duvall. Hi, I'm
Shelley Duvall. Shelley Duvall's performance, which I don't think is fair.
This is a horrible quote. He told the BBC. She's
basically just there to scream and be stupid, and that's

(13:09):
not the woman that I wrote about. That performance is
a triumph. How dare you?

Speaker 1 (13:14):
King may have been unduly influenced by Kubrick's weird habits
during filming, one of which I just remembered that he
called Stephen King like late at night, asking him stuff
like do you believe in God? Wow?

Speaker 2 (13:31):
Anyway, moving on another Kubrick boy Buddy and Kubrick did.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
Nabokov's Lolita too, and I don't think Avokov was particularly
happy with his adaptation of that either, so stracking out
right and left. Yes.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
Anthony Burgess, author of Clockwork Orange, was so upset by
Kubrick's film adaptation that he said he wished he had
never written the novel in the first place, saying the
film made it easy for readers of the book to
misunderstand what it was about, and the misunderstand will pursue
me till I die. I should not have written the
book because of this danger of misinterpretation.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
Uh famously misinterpreted by John Bottom, who is a big
fan of all the drugs man dressed like them on stage.
Boie did too, but I think he, I think he
understood that dressing like them and acting like them were
two very different things.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, distinction lost on Bottom. Cooper also pissed off Wendy
carlos Man. Hard guy to work with, hard guy to
work out.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
I mean that's yeah, that's my tremendous that's my ice
cold film take for this episode your Galaxy brain film
takes Stanley Kubrick hard to work, moving right along.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
Roald Dahl felt the movie version of Charlie and Chocolate
Factory was quote crummy, and thought Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka
was pretentious and bouncy.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
That's not really that sounds like a slur. Yeah, that
sounds like, yeah, I don't know racial somehow, just like
it sounds like a homophobic slur.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
Oh that tracks, and felt director Mel Stewart had no
talent or flare. No other Wonka movies were made while
he lived. You, Rold Doll, how dare you say that
about Gene Wilder's performance. Let's be real, that's why he's
so good.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
I watched the office scene like daily, the.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
Oh, that's so upsetting me nothing, and then just and
then later like just the tenderness's voice when he so
shines a good deed in the warry world, when the
tenderness in his voice when he just goes Charlie, it's
so good. It's upsetting. It's too upsetting to me. It's
like that anger. I watched that movie. That movie.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
We should, now, I don't know, we should. Oh that's
I watched that movie for me a lot, me too.
Oh yeah, because you're a candy door. All right, put
it a bit in that. We'll get back to it. P. L.
Travers famously hated the Disney version of Mary Poppins so
much that she wept at the premiere and forbade the
company from remaking any of her other books. And you folks,

(16:04):
you may remember Jesus ten years ago at this point,
saving mister Banks and Disney began to work on a
theatrical production of Mary Poppins in the nineties, and she relented.
She gave them consent on the condition that no one
associated with the film version be involved. Savage Forrest Gump
Winston Groom, the man who wrote that book, was so

(16:26):
pissed that he got screwed out of points on the
back end from that movie adaptation or mentions in the
Oscar acceptance speeches which.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
I get won six mentioned the nun I believe, don't
get greedy. Winston. He wrote a sequel book which I
know nothing about. What is it? Called A Good Day
to Forrest Gump? Forrest Gump harder Forrest Gump, forrests actually

(16:55):
Forrest Gump back in the habit.

Speaker 2 (16:59):
Yeah, opens with the line, don't ever let nobody make
a movie of your life story. Whether they get it
right or wrong, it don't matter. Ah and all right, jesus,
cool it. No, I don't want to know this about
cool Hand Luke. Don Pierce wrote the book Cool Hand Luke,
inspired by the two years he spent on a prison
road gang. He was supposed to write the screenplay, but

(17:20):
the studio gave it to a more experienced writer for polishing.
They did a lousy job, and I disliked it intensely,
he told the Telegraph Boy. Authors man, they do not
mince words. He thought the famous line what we have
here is a failure to communicate, which I believe is
firmly installed on the AFI top quotes one hundred list

(17:42):
A stupid line.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
That's what he called it. You gotta do it like
like like the foreman.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
Oh no, no, I can't do it. Here is failure,
failure to community communicate. See some men you just can't reach.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
So you get what we had here last week, which
is the way he wants it, where he gets it,
and I don't like it. Anymore than you man. Uh
you know how I know that whole thing is from
the Guns n' Roses song Civil War. It starts with
that more on them later, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
He even disliked Paul Newman because the guy was so
cute looking. He was too scrawny. He wouldn't have lasted
five minutes on the road. Pierce got a small part
in the movie and talked to Newman on the set
and saying he even asked me to dinner, then canceled
when his pr people realized he didn't need to be
seen eating with an X con. He continued, I didn't

(18:44):
like the guy. I didn't like that whole Hollywood crowd.
I was never made welcome, and at one point he
got so upset with the film that he actually punched
someone on the set, which I don't know, dude, there's
some tough dudes on the on that set, but I
don't think you George Kennedy, you murder you yep. Ken
Kesey famously pissed at one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

(19:06):
that book takes place from the perspective of chief. It's
all narrated from his point of view and obviously in
the movie he is mute and not a point of
view character. Brett Easton Ellis, American psycho, should have been made.
I disagree with him, well, I mean I would agree
with him only inasmuch that Brett Easton Ellis should not
be famous because he's a piece of not that great

(19:29):
of a writer. E. B. White thought that Charlotte's Web
cartoon from nineteen seventy three was a travesty. Truman Capoti
hated Breakfast to Tiffany's spent the rest of his life
trashing it because he thought that Marilyn Monroe was the
only woman fit to play Holly go lightly and weird.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
Place to end up here. The author of I Know
What You Did Last sume we get through all these
iconic works of literature to land on I Know What
You Did Last Summer, Lois Duncan. Oh. I shouldn't have
made fun of her, That's sad. She based her novel
partially on the murder of her eighteen year old daughter
and was deeply offended by the slasherization of the movie

(20:07):
and its sequel. I think there's like five of them now.
This poor woman is getting checks based on the murder
of her daughter.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
Oh my god, Oh buddy, Alan Moore, who has written
some of the most important capital iye graphic novels of
the twentieth century. Watchman was his with a guy named
Dave Gibbons, and they explicitly worked on that with the
aim of showing what comics could do that other mediums couldn't,

(20:37):
between all the visual information contained in the frame and
the thought bubbles, and like, actually, I don't think there's
thought bubbles in that anyway. He was like, I want
to show what comics can do as a medium that
no other medium can do. So the fact that it
was adapted into a movie is hilarious to me. He
has disowned every adaptation and Viva Vendetta he called a
bush era parable by people too timid to set a

(20:59):
political satire in their own country. Fair and that League
of Extraordinary Gentleman movie he's also based on nol Moore
thing and a movie so bad Sean Connery left the
business after making it.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
I thought it was after finding Forrester.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
No no leaving Extraordinary Gentleman and it was, yeah, famously
so bad. He never didn't. I mean, I don't know
if that was he said. He said as much, but yeah,
it was his last movie.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
Now onto a segment related to call director Wolfgang Peterson. Yes,
Director Wolfgang Peterson defends his film adaptation of Michael Ende's book.
Peterson claims that the script was quote very faithful to
the book and that Michael Ende was a control freek
who let fame go to his head.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
Peterson said that he was treated like Jesus Christ in Germany,
which is quite a thing to say about an author.
He also said that the author didn't understand movie adaptations,
and you know, louies aren't books. Story was sacred to him,
Peterson said, And you cannot change that. So while I
was trying to work with him on the script, it
was difficult to make any changes. If I needed to

(22:07):
cut something out. He wouldn't understand that. There were a
lot of things that at the time we just could
not yet do technically. Maybe today it would be different.
The bottom line is he could not really understand the
process of making a two hour movie from his big
and very very rich book. He didn't understand it and
didn't want to understand it, which is all fair points. Yeah, yeah,

(22:29):
it's unfortunate that the author doesn't like the really beloved
adaptation of his book, But maybe he likes the checks.
Do you think you got points on? It was that
part of the deal back then. I almost I gotta
wonder if if you sue the studio that's making your movie,
I almostly apparently surrender some kind of Yeah. I don't know, Yeah,

(22:50):
that's fair. Let's talk about director Wolfgang Peterson for a moment.
He's making his second appearance on TMI. He would later
go on to direct my beloved large plane movie, Air
Force War, in addition to Outbreak Troy with Brad Pitt
and the two thousand and six Remakeup but Besign Adventure.
So this is really, as far as I know, his
only real foray into the children's film Realm. But in

(23:13):
the early eighties he was essentially Germany's answer to Steven Spielberg.
Remember this comparison, because we'll come back to it. He
just broke them through with nineteen eighty one's Doss Bout,
the World War Two drama set aboard a German U boat,
which earned him an Oscar nomination, And he'd spent three
years painstakingly recreating this German submarine and immersing himself in
this dark and gritty story, so he was ready for

(23:36):
something a little different, although I would argue that he
brought this same dark and gritty sensibility to this children's movie.
He later told Entertainment Weekly for their truly incredible Never
Ending Story oral history from twenty nineteen, Doss Boot was
a tough, tough movie to make. From the story point
of view. It was very dark and emotional material. My
son at the time was around ten years old, so

(23:57):
he didn't really care for Doss Boot very much. As
a father, I wanted to do something that my son
would really be interested in and that he could be
proud of. And that's when he got a call from
another German director, a guy named Helmet didel And this guy,
Helmet was the original director of The Never Ending Story,
but he was known for small scale dramas and comedies,

(24:17):
and once they started the ball rolling on the complex
practical effects and puppets and miniatures for this movie, he
found himself completely overwhelmed and basically resigned. He called Wolfgang
Peterson and more or less begged him to take it over.
Since Technical Tour Deforce Epics for sort of Peterson's whole
deal after making the Submarine movie so Wolfgang hopped into
the director's chair and proceeded to make a living hell

(24:39):
for his actors. I'm only sort of kidding. I compared
to Miss Spielberg a moment ago, but a more apt
comparison might have been Stanley Kubrick, a director who was
famous for pushing his actors to the brink of sanity
by demanding take after take after take. Your average director
would ask for five, maybe ten takes of a given scene.

(25:01):
Peterson was famous for going for forty takes basically every
scene in this movie. Wasn't Shelley Duvall going down the
staircase like one hundred and thirty in The Shining? Yeah,
something like that. Yeah, I mean, wasn't she reduced to tears?
I'm sure everybody on The Shining was reduced to tears? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't know if Peterson reduced people on the set
of a never running story to tears, but there were

(25:23):
some injuries. We'll get to that later. So he asked
for dozens and dozens of takes and basically every scene.
And partially this might have been a result of Peterson's
very limited English at that time and the resulting language barriers,
but he was also kind of a perfectionist, and these
long arduous days caused the budget of the film to

(25:44):
inflate considerably to twenty seven million or seventy six million
in today's dollars, making it the most expensive film to
be made outside of the United States to the Soviet
Union at that time, and amusingly, the previous record was
also held by Peterson for dos Boot, so he broke
his own record. Actor Noah Hathaway, who played a tray
you the Warrior Child, gave an interview in the News

(26:06):
Tribune in twenty fifteen in which he claimed that the
shoot was originally slated for three months, and instead because
of all these retakes, it stretched to a full year.
The shoot quadrupled in length and Halfaway says that two
of the scenes in the movie are tax death in
the Swamp of Sadness and the introduction of the giant turtle.
Morla took two months to shoot.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
That's a long time. I watch a horse drown and
I know from horse drownings. Alright, stares out the window
with your Scotch oh as you meditate on that, We'll
be right back with more.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
Too much information after these messages, this brings us to
a Tray You, or more appropriately, the young man who
played him, Noah Hathaway, here in a reputation as a
bit of a diva on the set, or at least
by one account. Special effects director Brian Johnson gave an

(27:11):
interview to sci Fi Now where he described Noah Hathaway
as quote, a bit of a pain in the urs. Frankly,
it was very difficult for Wolfgang to get anything out
of him. But perhaps he's being a little harsh considering
the kid nearly died several times on the set. The
whole process of making this movie was a nightmare for
this poor Noah Hathaway kid. He was one of apparently

(27:34):
fifty thousand Hope folks who tried out for the role
of a Tray You, and he wound up auditioning at
least ten times. That's insane. After yeah, that's it. Well,
I guess because you originally cast by the original director
and then once the director left and Wolfgang Peterson stepped
in and he had to start the process all over again.
So that was part of the problem. But Noah Hathaway
eventually got the gig, later citing his half Native American

(27:55):
heritage as a crucial factor in giving him a certain
look that producers were looking for to play the warrior child.
The name A tray You, by the way, has several
different origin stories. In A Never Ending Story novel, it's
revealed that a Trayu means son of all, because he
was an orphan and raised by all the members of
his village. But it's also possible that a tray You
was derived from the ancient Greek are treyus, meaning fearless,

(28:19):
or an ancient Sanskrit word for great warrior.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
It's all ancient Sanskrit, right, All these all these, all
these fantasy terms are stolen from Sanskrit.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Yeah, very fitting for this child warrior. Initially, Noah Hathaway,
prior to getting cast in A Never Ending Story, was
supposed to appear in a Broadway production of Chaplain starring
Gene Kelly and Anne Margaret, but he opted to Never
Ending Story instead.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
It's a mistake, kid spending the year in a Buckskin
onesie instead of tapping toes with Gene Kelly.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
You'll never work in this town again. I mean to
be real though me.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yes, it turned out Broadway it turned out well for him,
But in the original novel Tray You is a member
of the green.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
Skin race, which, as the name suggests, meaning said he
is green, and the makeup team for the film adaptation
tried to keep this character trait and actually painted Noah
Hathaway in green paint for some early scenes. However, the
effect did not look good on camera and this whole
idea was abandoned. Hathaway said, quote, it wasn't believable. I

(29:21):
look like fun guy. They also cut the scene where
he does in an easy being green with Kermit. It
just felt forced. But I guess they thought he was
a little too pale, so they stuck him in a
tanning booth for a couple of weeks to make it
more believable that this kid, like you know, lived by
his wits in the forest. But there is one element
of pre production that is way less relaxing than kicking

(29:44):
back at a salon. While learning to ride a horse,
Noah Hathaway was apparently thrown off and then kicked by
the animal, and some sources say the horse actually fell
on him and as a result, this poor kid spent
a month in traction, and producer seriously wondered if he
would be healed in time to play a tray you.
To this day, he has titanium screws in his spine

(30:07):
and apparently continues to deal with painful back issues. I
wonder if there was a settlement just saying thankfully, I
guess for Noah. A bunch of other issues slowed down
the production, namely trying to figure out ways to make
it look like you're drowning a horse on screen without
actually driving a horse, which meant that he was able
to recuperate in time to participate in filming, only to

(30:30):
be seriously injured again. There's a scene when he fights
the wolf like beast Gomork, which was actually a robotic puppet.
This robot malfunctioned during the scene, and I guess it
went haywire and one of its claws slashed the young
actor's face right beside his eye and nearly blinded him.
It's alive. It's so rare, seriously, and then this robotic

(30:54):
puppet fell on him, and it was so heavy when
it landed on him that he knocked the wind out
of him and injured him pretty badly. They only got
one shot with this robotic puppet doing this because he
was so badly injured. That's the shot that you see
in the final movie, because that was the only one
I could get.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
I'd just like to imagine going back to Kubrick that
he's like acting alongside this wolf and all of a
sudden it starts talking in the howl voice.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
I'm afraid I can't do that. A tray you, I'm
afraid I can't allow you to do that. Uh ah.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
While we're on the topic of injuries, I just want
to shout out two of my favorite SFX injuries of
all time, which is surely a subcategory.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
It's a list of WHI I like to keep handy.

Speaker 2 (31:37):
Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch and Wizard of Oz,
during her Cloud of Smoke disappearing her like Ninja Vanish scene,
ended up with third degree burns on her hands and
second degree burns on her face. After that, and you said,
that's the take they used, Yeah, that's.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
The take they used in the because I think the
I think that the makeup that she was in, the
green you know makeup or whatever, well, it was made
of copper, which I think I should probably check this.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
But with them, because they also Buddy Ebsen, they painted
him in like silver and he wasn't on a respirator
or in an oxygen tent.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
Right, Yes, the original tin man Buddy Ebsen, who later
became very famous as Jed Klampan on The Beverly Hillbillies.
They painted him silver with basically like silver dust, and
he I think the line that he said was he
went to breathe and nothing happened. He breathed in the
dust and it just coated his lungs, and yeah, nearly

(32:35):
killed him. I don't know. He had to quit the movie. Yeah,
and they got Ray Bolger, I think Ray Bolger or
I think it was Ray Boulger. And and they obviously
changed the makeup compound quite a bit. I wonder how
pisted he was if they didn't wait for him, Like,
not only am I in the hospital, but I lost
this huge role.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
They didn't wait for Judy Garland to sleep. You think
they're gonna wait for him, You're no Judy kid, Buddy,
get back in the tent. My favorite one from Jurassic
is from Jurassic Park because it is just such a
I don't know this one. Oh yeah, So Stan Winston

(33:13):
was the effects studio that did the animatronics for that movie.
Just some of the all time animatronics work. And a
guy named Alan Scott was burning the midnight oil at
Warner Brothers studio gluing foam rubber to the skin to
the t rex. I actually spent a while trying to
find pictures of that thing without its skin on. I

(33:33):
wasn't able to find any because imagine how horrifying that
would look, like a terminator t rex that's like twenty
feet tall. Yeah, And so he's inside the thing's mouth
gluing its roof of its mouth onto the mechanical armature.
And because its jaws defaulted to closed when the power
was off, they had to do this while it was

(33:54):
basically plugged in and control it to put the jaws
open as wide as possible so he could be in there.
And he said to the guy he give this interview
about it. He said to the guy who was there,
was like, put that switch on and make sure no
one can trip over it or accidentally hit it, because
if it closes on me, that will be bad. And
then someone just shut the whole studio power off. The

(34:17):
thing starts to cause these are like industrial hydraulics.

Speaker 1 (34:21):
These things are built out of just starts closing on him.
While he's in there, he talks about curlings into a
smaller and smaller ball so his limbs or head didn't
get caught in that thing. And he lowers, so the
jaws close and the head lowers down, and I guess
a bunch of the other crew guys had to come
and pry him out of it. Huh. Can you imagine that?

(34:45):
Probably the last human to be almost eaten by a tea? Really?
When I think about that, Wow, I showed you there.
I was on the set for Jurassic Park two. I
think I showed you pictures of this. They had off
to the side. Maybe it was the I aim t
rex head For all I know, this dinosaur head pride
open and they just used it for craft services. In

(35:06):
this t rex's mouth, they just had all these styrofoam
coffee cups lined up, just held in place by all
the teeth. That's great.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
Umm, yeah, man, God love it. It's a rough industry. Yeah, yes,
it is. His poor kid, he was like tens poor
Noah Hathaway. Uh.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
Given all of his physical anguish, at least he has
the satisfaction of seeing his once in a lifetime performance
up on the big screen right raw. During a panel
at Dragon Con in twenty ten, Noah Hathaway claimed that
virtually none of his lines in the film are his
own voice, despite the fact that he did record the

(35:45):
lines himself. He claims that another actor was brought in
to dub over his lines and that was what we
hear in the finished film. The voice actor used for
this was apparently uncredited. I was unable to find any
information on this person. You can hear Noah's actual voice
in a making of special that was released in nineteen
eighty three that you can find on YouTube. You can

(36:05):
tell that they are slightly different. But I guess dubbing
was pretty common in this movie because much of the
filming took place in Germany. Many of the actors were German,
and they spoke their lines in their native language, only
to have them dubbed into English and post, Oh yeah,
this is super common.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
I didn't know about it in Germany, but I remember
the famous thing about all the Spaghetti Westerns is that
all the different actors were just speaking in their native language.
So you've got guys talking English, Spanish, Italian. So some
of there's scenes where some people have no idea what
the other one is saying. Then they just dub it
over in post and I think they did that up
into the seventies with some of the Dario Argento horror stuff,

(36:44):
because those were like like David Hemings is in one
of those deep bred so it's like they had English
speaking actors on them, but they were shot in Italy,
and I think the Italian actors were just speaking in
Italian that whole time. Such a fun way to make movies,
Daria Argento is that.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
Father wow yep yep uh. The actor who played the
night Hob Tilo Pruckner, spoke most of his dialogue in
German and had it dubbed over, And the same is
true for the rock Biter. You go back and watch
the movie, you can see that their mouths are moving
and saying something completely difficult. It's actually coming out creepier
in German. Can you imagine the original the original dubs

(37:23):
of that. I watched a German dub, but not the
whole thing of the Wicked Witch of the West doing
the ill I'll get you my pretty uh scary, it's
really really scary.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Yes, yes, yes, it's like fascist speeches or something interesting.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
Point the voice of the Rock, Bier Falcor, the Luck Dragon,
and Gomork were all dubbed by the same American voiceover actor,
Alan Hoppenheimer, who's a veteran of the Smurfs, he Man
and Transformers. I know you love your voiceover actor, I
sure do. But this all brings us to the horse,
se Man. We've been delaying the inevitable. It's time to
discuss it. Good God, the moment when a tray's beloved

(38:06):
horse sinks in the swamp of eternal sadness, and now
we're about to sink in this swamp of eternal sadness too. Well,
let's get this out of the way. The horse didn't die.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
That was like a persistent urban legend that I remember
hearing growing up, you know, pre Snopes, pre Internet days.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
It was just always like, oh, you know, they actually
killed a horse on that movie.

Speaker 2 (38:26):
But no, folks, this was not Michael Simono's Days of
Heaven where they actually blew up a horse, nor was
it the Italian horror film Cannibal Holocaust, in which they
kill a turtle. They did, however, almost drown the horse
in a big sea of mud.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
That's an unkind reading of the situation and ungenerous. So
but yes, there's a horse. There is mud, it is
up to its neck. Yes, but but go on. Yeah, actually,
I guess it's not really that because.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
They make horses swim in Westerns all the time, right,
They're like usually throw like riding horses into the water
to get to the outlaws and such. Anyway, horses are
not known for their love of chest deep mud, and
so two trainers spent seven weeks teaching one of the
two horses playing attacks to stand still on a hydraulic

(39:17):
platform in the swamp with mud up to his chin
without trying to swim or run away, nearly two months
teaching a horse to defy all of its natural instincts
of self preservation, a scene they initially only budgeted two
weeks of shooting for. Can you imagine being the other
horse and just watching from the sides, being like, boy,

(39:40):
I'm sure glad I'm not Jimmy today. No, Hathaway didn't
have it much better. According to some sources, his leg
got caught on that hydraulic elevator and he was dragged
underwater during one of these shoots, and by the time
he pulled it up, he had lost consciousness, just super
bad for you.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
You don't want that.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
You want to be conscious, but uh that you didn't
weren't able to verify that. But no horses were harmed
other than psychologically and emotionally. And Noah told this to
Entertainment Weekly, UH for their oral history on the film,
he said, the real horse never really died. They were
more careful with that horse than they were with me.

(40:25):
I got hurt a hell of a lot more. The
horse was definitely looked after, well, which is adorable. We
like care Yeah, I guess it's not. I just like
the horse, being like the horse, like leading the horse off,
like great day of shooting. Yeah, yeah, you were great.
You're better than beautiful.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
Cage. He come too, you, I'm going to my trailer,
called me when he wakes up.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
The horse did actually live happily ever after. Noah Hathaway
said he was given the horse at the end of filming,
along with the saddle that he used in the film
for it. But due to the cost of transportation, quarantine,
and sterilization, they mean germs, right, they didn't have to
sterilize the horse, I would assume, so yeah, okay, anyway,

(41:21):
it costs too much and the horse was left behind
in Germany, where it lived happily for another twenty years.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
You can't just give somebody a horse that's not something
like that's a gift that registers as hostile. All the stuff,
all the money, all the all the housing for it
like that, that's no longer a gift, that's a responsibility.
Here's an obligation. Yeah, I mean maybe. I mean, kid
looks like a natural on all these horses. Considering you

(41:47):
to learn how to ride for this movie, like that's
pretty insane. It looks amazing.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
And he says that he loves doing all these conventions
for The Never Ending Story because he feels responsible for
traumatizing generations of kids with that scene.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
Yep, sure, he says. He hopes it's therapeutic for them
to see him.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
In real life, Noah has acted sporadically, but he is
now a martial arts teacher and tattoo artist in Las Vegas.
One thing you can't get from him is a tattoo
of the urn talisman. Am I saying that right, Jordan?

Speaker 1 (42:17):
I think so. It's on the cover of The Never
Ending Story Book. It's the necklace that a Trayu wears
in the movie. It's kind of the the cool magic
prop from the movie.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
And so once people found out that he was the
kid who played a tray you was doing tattoos, he
got flooded with requests to do tattoos of that, which
he says is flattering. But no, he would not do
that anymore anyway. Moving on, Jordan, talk to us about
the child Like Empress.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
Yes, she's actually known as the Childlike Empress. I'm not
editorializing there. I first started coming across that in articles
and thought, oh, that's weird, but no, that's actually like
her full title. My favorite fact about this horse drowning
scene is that was apparently the first day on the
set for the little girl who played the childlike Empress. Whah, yes,

(43:05):
I know, well I can't. I'm making it heavy. I'm
making it in the movies, my first big role. It's
probably worth adding right here than it was her last
big role. Oh manby, why isn't your first crying? Yes? Yeah.
Wolfgang Peterson said that while they were shooting this scene,
there was basically not a dry eye on the set,

(43:26):
so so wow, welcome to show business. She was cast
late in the production and Wolfgang Peterson had invited her
down to check things out on the set and surprise.
Tammy Stronach is the name of the actress who played
the Empress, and she had been attending theater classes in
San Francisco playing the part of Piglet in an adaptation

(43:47):
of Witty the Pooh, which I love. When she was
asked to audition for this role, I guess her acting
teacher was friends with the production executive and the talent
scout for this movie. Tammy initially believed that she was
auditioning for a little play and she had no idea
that it was for a major motion picture, and she
auditioned alongside Heather O'Rourke the little girl from Poltergeist, which

(44:08):
I think is adorable. Can totally see her doing a
good job as the Empress also. But Tammy won out
and she was cast I guess two weeks before filming began,
and if her first day on the set was any
indication she was really thrown into the deep end. Here
her scene at the end of the movie, when the
evil force known as the Nothing is threatening to destroy

(44:29):
the land of Fantasia, she is just absolutely tremendous. She's like,
you know, close up shot at the camera. You know, bastion,
save us, like this absolutely harrowing scene. She's so good.
She later described Wolfgang Peterson getting down on his haunches
so we could talk to her at eye level to
give her acting notes, and he was just saying, hey,

(44:50):
it's remember it's the end of the world. Nothing will
be left. Look at me. I need you to understand.
Look at me, Look at me in the eyes, Tommy,
nothing could be left. It's a heavy thing to lay
in a kid. She was like eleven, good God, but
she pulled off this incredibly complex scene despite her age

(45:13):
and also another hindrance dentures the second appearance of child
dentures on TMI. The Olsen twin babies were forced to
wear baby dentures on the set of Full House and
Now poor Tammy when she was playing the childlike Empress.
She'd lost two of her upper front teeth shortly before
filming began, so she had to wear dentures to cover
up the gaps, and unfortunately, the false teeth impacted her

(45:36):
ability to speak and caused her to speak with a
prominent lisp, which required a great deal of time and
diction to overcome. So not only is she doing this
incredibly emotionally complex scene. She's trying to overcome these weird
fake teeth in her mouth. So good lord, very talented.
There's an incredible interview that she gave to the Beacon
Reader in twenty fourteen where she shares the notebook that

(45:58):
she kept during the Never Ending Shoot and her character
notes are as follows, and there's a picture of this notebook.
It's in her childlike handwriting. Her notes for the Empress
are as follows. Dignity in charge, wise, understanding, magical, very sick,
very tired, very old parenthesies three I did years, very empress,

(46:20):
very otherworldly, very goddess like. It's my tender bio.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
Back in the day, it was like that, said Rickles thing, Well,
it's late and I'm full, and I'm sick of all
you people.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
Very sick and sick and tired. Jordan, tell us more
about Tammy. Yes, the Empress, who is not so childlike anymore,
is a remarkable lady. She was born in Iran, where
her father was an archaeologist. I think her mom was
an anthropologist, and her family fled the country during the
revolution in seventy nine, and The Never Ending Story was

(46:57):
her only feature film role for many years, in large
part to the disturbing reaction from her so called fans.
The family home was stocked, I guess people were camping
out on her law and literally she was inundated with
calls on her home phone and adults proposed to her
with engagement rings. She was eleven, may I remind you,

(47:19):
and the scripts that she relieved from Hollywood featured nude scenes.
So I look at people and I see nothing worth likings. So,
perhaps wisely, her parents declined to allow her to appear
in the Never Ending Story sequel, basically in an effort
to avoid the further trappings of child stardom. For years,

(47:40):
she pursued a career in dance, working as a dance
company director in Brooklyn, and it was recently announced that
she's appearing in a movie with Sean Aston, star of
another beloved eighties property, The Goonies, and Front of the
Program Christopher Lloyd. This is a movie called Man in
Which which looks tremendous. It has some of my favorite
British comedians, Jennifer Saunders of Absolutely Fabulous, Eddie Izzard and

(48:03):
Bill Bailey from never Mind the Buzzcocks. It looks really cool.
I can't wait to see Real Pearlman. Yeah. Real Pearlman's
in it too. Yeah. Oh my god. Okay, so that's cool.
So I guess it's gonna be her first feature film
role since The never Ending Story oh forty years ago.
And Jim Henson's Creature Shop is doing the puppets. It's
gonna be awesome. They have no plans to use CGI.

(48:24):
This cool sounds awesome. Wow. Yeah, No, I'm really excited
for it. I think it was announced in like twenty twenty.
I think they're I think, yeah, it was delayed. They
were hoping to have it out last year. This is
according to EW in twenty twenty. But there's one mystery
about The never Ending Story that's baffled fans for decades,

(48:44):
and that is the name of the Empress. You'll remember that.
In the climactic scene of the movie, Bastion, the boy
he's been reading the never Ending Story book, learns that
he must give the childlike Empress a new name and
call it out to her in order to save the
world of Fantasia by being houred by the Nothing. And
there's the very gripping scene when Bastian dramatically runs to

(49:05):
the window and shouts into the storm an incomprehensible. I
have no idea gold weight bum that dump that in. Yeah,
so there's been a great deal of debate over the
name Bastian gave the childlike Empress, but the original novel
reveals the name to be Moonchild, and if you visit

(49:29):
the scene and know how to read lips, it does
seem to fit what he's shouting. So Moonchild is the
name that Bastian gave the Empress. As to why it
was obscured in the first place, no idea, adding mystique
is my best guess. There you go.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
Well, that brings us to Bastion. You don't like not
my favorite character?

Speaker 1 (49:51):
No, No, I mean he's kind of a whimp, So
maybe I just identified with them too much.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
I don't know, spend a lot of time in dumpsters,
you did. Jordan has been literally sucking on a lemon
throughout this podcast, and yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
Still sweeter than you. Ah ah.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Anyway, Bastion, Jordan's enemy played by a kid named Barrett Oliver,
who you said beat out some two hundred kids, which
contrasts this at the alleged fifty thousand that knoweth Hathaway.
I was up again switch That is a lopsided ratio.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
Yeah, either though Hathaways lying or not, many kids wanted
to play I mean great to Bash's entire role consists
of getting thrown into a dumpster then hiding in an attic.
So maybe it just wasn't that interesting of a role
as opposed to a trayu who's riding horses and fighting
lest Dragen. Yeah exactly, and you know, I mean hindsight

(50:47):
though Oliver didn't spend a month in traction right, yes,
or watch a horse drown for two months, interestingly, just
before flying to Germany to film The Never Ending Story.
The kids cast is the star of Frankenweeny, which is
a twenty nine minute live action short directed by a
young Tim Burton, which was shelved for years after Disney

(51:08):
fired him amid accusations that he was wasting company resources
on this featurette that wasn't suitable for kids. Welcome to
Tim Burton, everybody.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
Yeah, once Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands,
all those blew up.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
Franken Weeny came out in nineteen ninety two. Well, then
they remade it in I think twenty twelve. Yes, yes,
they And guess who's in franken weeniy Jordan.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
I don't know, Shelley Duval, that's right, Oh my god. Anyway,
Oliver does not do the convention circuit, unlike a Treyu
and the Empress. He now works as a specialist in
historic photographic print technology known as Woodbury type proto copy
machines from the mid eighteen hundreds. He's worked with the

(51:55):
Getty Conservation Institute and even published a book on this
from two thousand and seven. And you can catch him
in a short twenty twelve documentary entitled In the Usual
Manner for the Huntington Library's Civil War Photography Exhibit. So
I didn't have that on my bingo of this movie,
but good for him, man, I love we love a nerd.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right
back with more too much information in just a moment.
Special effects.

Speaker 2 (52:34):
The SFX in the movie were handled by a guy
named Brian Johnson, who you remember from shotting on Noah
Hathaway earlier.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
It was his effects that almost killed him like three times. Yeah,
yeah right, maybe no athlete wasn't any mood to be
nice to him. Hey, your robot almost cut my eye out,
that's true. He received the nineteen eighty Academy Award for
Best Visual Effects for Alien, which he shared with designer
hr Gieger and a few other guys, and he had, man,

(53:05):
everybody is just coming back to Kubrick from this episode.
He had previously built the miniatures for two thousand and
one A Space Odyssey Wow, and George Lucas offered him
the role of effects supervisor for the initial Star Wars.
He was unable to accept it, but he did work
on Empire Strikes Back and he picked up another Academy award,

(53:26):
a Special Achievement Award for that, which he shared with
the other guys from that film.

Speaker 2 (53:31):
Interestingly enough, he was also originally in talks to do
a film for Italian filmmaker Rafaela di Laurentis of the
famous del Lorentis family, which we gather from around the timeline,
to be one of the Conan the Barbarian movies. I
think so, yeah, yeah, But that deal fell apart and
he picked Never Ending Story instead. Not just the sheer

(53:52):
number of miniatures and practicals that he had to do
in this film, the weather also conspired against him. This
was one of the hottest Germany had in twenty five years,
and it was so hot that one of the statues
of the Ivory Tower actually melted. Where on the other
days the crew were forced to shut down production because
the blue backgrounds for the matt work wouldn't work properly.

(54:14):
Is that because they were melting or because of like
heat waves on the side, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
I'm thinking like heat waves, Like you know when you
look at a road on a hot day and everything
looks kind of like, Yeah, I think it's that.

Speaker 2 (54:24):
Johnson said that he built what he believes to be
the largest blue screen ever made at the time, ninety
five by thirty five feet good Loow.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
Johnson was part of the team who created The Nothing,
and fans of the movie will recall that The Nothing
is an emptiness or despair fueled by the loss of
hopes and dreams, and New Yorkers will know it better
as Midtown hell doing the Johnny Carson like golf swing. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

(54:57):
Nothing for nothing leaves nothing. You gotta have something.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
And I'm not fronting, believe you me, doesn't he say
I'm not stuffing? At one point there I think.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
So for those who keeping track at home, that is
our first Billy Preston reference of this episode of a series.
Oh Man, but to the Nothing, because Billy Preston, sure
is it nothing? In the novel, It's described as an
invisible force. So the special effects coordinators had to figure
out how to basically make this visual, and they landed

(55:29):
on the rolling storm clouds as a way to indicate
the Nothing's presence. And I'd always assumed that those terrifying clouds,
which I honestly I still think of, you know, whenever
see a storm out in the distance, I just thought
it was old footage of approaching storm clouds that had
been sped up and colorized. But apparently it's colored oil
in water, which is pretty ingenious. Yeah. I started.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
I tried to look at what other things that's been
done in I don't think the two thousand and one,
like that whole trippy thing at the end was that.
But I think do you remember that Darren Anofsky movie
The Fountain, like sort of little Bit Jackman.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
I think the trippy space scenes in that were like
similar oil and water. So it's also like a big
live music psychedelic Joshua light show from the old Filmore's
and all that. Yeah, Yeah, Moneray pop in the background
has all the like pulsating blob stuff.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
It's pretty cool, it is. I mean, it's such a
neat little trick. Yeah. But the destruction caused by the
nothing is pretty epic. Everything from trees and rocks to
people just get sucked into the horizon line. It's like,
really rewatching the scene. Fine, we're pretty horrifying. Yeah, And
there's a scene where a tray U is literally blown

(56:43):
sideways and he's hanging onto a tree. He's like a
human flag. I just assume that they got some industrial
strength jet turbine to blow the kids, just in keeping
in line with complete disregard for this kid's life. But
their method for achieving this effect was actually a lot
more ingenious. They built a room on gimbals, which allowed

(57:03):
the room to rotate and tip over, and in this
room they built the set where a tray U was
gonna get blown around by the nothing. They have all
these rocks and dirt and trees, and when they shot
the scene, they just tipped the room over so gravity
would cause everything to just fly in one direction. But
because they had the camera mounted in the room as well,
the perspective stayed the same, so it just looked like
this crazy wind was blowing everything away and Noah Hathaway

(57:26):
was just hanging from this tree parallel to the ground.
Really cool. Yeah, there's a making of documentary on YouTube.
There's the original one from eighty three, and then they
made one for like a DVD special features that's also
on YouTube, and you can see this being done. It's
like really cool, very ingenious. Again, it's like the oil
and water thing. It's like very effective. Nowhere near as

(57:49):
difficult as I would have assumed. Oh, it's easy for
me to say, I'm not I don't have the arm
power to hang from a tree as this kid did.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
The one that I always remember from that that he's
the same trick as Nightmare on Elm Street when Johnny
Depp's character it's killed, he's like strapped up into the
ceiling and they did it the same way. And I
didn't bring this up earlier, But speaking of SFX injuries,
they very bloody scene like insane fountains of blood which
was obviously just red colored water, and the cinematographer Jacques

(58:17):
Heitken explained that when they begin to dump water through
the hole, there's a hole in the ceiling that the
water comes out of. It hit the light and it electrified,
and so the guy pouring it through the holes electrocuted.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
Oh, Hollywood, where dreams are made. It's like a very
avoidable problem. You know, it could happen. Well, let's hope
it doesn't. They got deadlines to me. Electrocute the kid.
I don't give it shit. Have you seen the dailies?

(58:52):
I'm underwater on this picture? Oh man. But in the
movie A Tray you is rescued from the nothing by Falcore,
the luck Dragon. We have not talked about Fokhre enough.
He's one of the crowning achievements of the special effects
team in this movie. It was basically like designing an
aircraft built by chief animatronics engineer j Just set me

(59:14):
to Torah, who you have a factoid on? Oh? Yeah,
you did SFX on Conan the Barbarian Man. What else
do you do? Surely other? Oh? He worked on the
sequel to this. Oh.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
He worked in one of my favorite gross, weird horror
movies from Beyond, which is Folks, if you like wet puppets,
and who doesn't just look up some of the effects
for this movie. It is gross and weird and awesome.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
Sorry, So that is the guy. He's responsible for our
beloved Falk. He's actually two models. The biggest is a
forty three foot long motorized puppet framed out with airplane steel,
topped off with six thousand plastic scales and pink fur
I guess it was pink and white. The three foot
head alone weighed more than two hundred pounds, and the

(01:00:06):
body required at least fifteen people to manipulate at any
given moment via strings. One was in charge of movements
of the nose. Two other people were in charge of
each eyebrow. Others were on the mouth. It was this
incredibly complex puppet. I mean, it makes muppets look like,
you know, simple, and those only have two.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
I just remember how much of a pain in the
ass the shark was from Jaws, and this thing was
like literally twice that big.

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
Yeah, you know. They were sinking it to a tape
of pre recorded dialogue, so they had to make sure
that the mouth matched the words, the body language and
facial expression match the emotion. All these people. I mean
it was a big, just choreographed operation, incredibly difficult, sounds
like an absolute nightmare. But the rock Bier puppet was
even more complicated. That took twenty five people to operate.

(01:00:54):
Just absolutely incredible, and director Wolfgang Peterson really believes that
these pactical effects played a huge role in the movie
Stang Power. He said, quote the creatures were so real
how they interacted with the actors. It wasn't just like
they were standing in front of this green screen and pretending,
which is true, which is something that just ten years
later even you would not go through all the trouble

(01:01:16):
of having these kinds of effects built. Really amazing. Given
the complexity of the puppet, Fucore was not a beloved
figure on the set, despite the fact that he's a
beloved figure in my heart. Brian Johnson, the aforementioned special
effects coordinators, said an interview with sci Fi Now that
Falcore quote worked fine, but it didn't really do it

(01:01:37):
for me. It was huge, and it was difficult moving
him around, and we couldn't make him walk. That's true,
I guess with all the u motorized parts of it,
walking and wasn't really part of it. They just suspend
it right now. It's a forty foot dragon. Noah Hathaway,
who Lord knows went through more than his fair share
of abuse on this film set, said that writing quote

(01:02:01):
wasn't as glamorous as you might imagine. Sometimes it would
overheat Jesus and it would start going out of control,
probably once every twenty minutes. It ended up being like
a bucking bronco. I just had to hold on for
dear life from time to time. But it was fun.
Considering the thing was suspended from twenty feet up in
the air, it sounds like less than fun. What is

(01:02:22):
it with these robots going haywire every twenty minutes?

Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
I'm saying, I'm saying, well, I'm sorry, Noah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
But you know, one person who really hated Falcore was
unsurprisingly Never Ending Story author and Michael Ende. One of
the many things that he disliked about the finished film
was Falcore because he resembled a big golden Retriever instead
of the dragon that he'd originally written. And I guess
this was directorial choice by Wolfgang Peters, and he wanted
to make him resemble a dog because he felt the

(01:02:53):
kids would respond more to dogs than dragons, which you know,
was arguably correct. He's yeah guy, question the most beloved
character in this movie. Yeah. And you know what, if
you ever find yourself in Munich, you can meet Falcore
and take him for a ride. I love this so much.
The original Fucre puppet is on display at the Bavaria
Film Studios, where visitors are invited to sit on his

(01:03:16):
back for a photo op. And this is great. They
even have a fan just off camera in front of
him to get the full windblown effect for your pictures.
It's so good, looks like he's flying. There's other things
there from a never Ending Store. There's the aforementioned oracles.
There's the rock Bier puppet and the racing snail. They're
also there. And there are other full sets from the
never Ending Story that you can walk through as well.

(01:03:38):
And guess what, it gets better. There are sets from
Wolfgang Peterson's large plane movie. Yes, Air Force one sets
are there too. Stay tuned from when we'd tape an
episode of this from the Bavaria studios. Oh, I would
love to go. This is so funny to me, so
deeply appropriate.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
The never Ending Story script did not have an end
Uh Peterson in the production team because as we mentioned earlier,
the shooting script is only the first half of the book,
so Peterson the production team had to come up with
how this movie was slated to end, and it was
thus decided to have the scene where Bastion returns to
the real world via Falcor and chases after the three bullies,

(01:04:23):
chases them into a dumpster, mimicking the opening of the
movie when he is I believe, thrown into a dumpster.

Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
Yeah, we call that a framing device.

Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
Would have ruled if they just like one of us
went to film school, would have ruled, if they just
like it was like one of the extremely gory like
Game of Thrones like dragon scenes, Like these kids just
get butchered by an enormous dragon.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
I want them to know it was me.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
If yes, which author Michael Endy was not a fan
of Too Bad. Yeah, Tuba sucks to him. It doesn't
sleeping on large piles of money for fifty Yeah, he
didn't get much.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
From this movie. But come on, dude, thirty billion or
whatever movie like it was basically Harry Potter proto Harry Potter, Right.
I just think it's so funny that Noah Hathaway was
later in a movie called Troll where he plays a
character his name is Harry Potter. What when was this
pre Harry Potter of the book?

Speaker 2 (01:05:23):
Yeah, yeah, I found this on I was creeping on
his IMDb. It's weird speaking of nothing in particular. Oh,
Steven Spielberg, we brought up speak of Jaws.

Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
There it is.

Speaker 2 (01:05:35):
There's the connection, giant malfunctioning puppets. Steven Spielberg and Wolfgang
Peterson have a cozy relationship. They apparently met when Spielberg
was filming Indiana Jones The First One, Raiders The Last
Dark and he borrowed the sub replica from dos pot
for the scene where the subsurfaces and Indie's still hanging
onto it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Right. He doesn't like go under He doesn't go underwater
with it. No.

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
Yeah, anyway, that's when they met, and they were also
both up for oscars at the nineteen eighty three Academy Awards.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
Spielberger was there for et Peterson for Toss Boot. You know,
I think this friendship is really pure.

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
Peterson told MTV News that they spoke quite a bit
on the phone during this period, and Spielberg apparently asked
him for input on filming locations for what would become
Schindler's list. As he was gearing up to release the
first English release of Never Ending Story, Peterson asked Spielberg
to take a look and give him some notes.

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
He said.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
I told him that I'd like to show it to
him because I had a feeling that for an American
audience it was a bit slow. It has a very
European feel to it, and I thought that he could
give me some advice about edits I could make to it.
He gave me some very good suggestions about where I
could make a few little cuts here and there to
get the pacing up a little bit to where it
would suit American audiences better, which is yeah, man, all

(01:06:59):
Europeans just think Americans are like TV adult idiots and Ken.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
Can you how can you make this dumber? Steven Stephen,
I need the movie louder and dumber can they? And
dances a kid? Mom? Stephen, I need you to send
me announce a horse to drum a wolf Gang. We
sent you five already, Wolfgang, you blew through the horse

(01:07:26):
budget in two weeks. What are you doing with them?
Over there? Opened a factory? Oh boy, this is gonna
be a fun one for you to edit, Spielberg cut
seven minutes from this, so not really that much else,
but many many minor cuts. So I'm just a few

(01:07:46):
seconds in length and just kind of shuffled the order
of a few scenes. Uh. And he credited his editing
technique to George Lucas, who were famously buddies. He thought
George Lucas was a master of pacing and gifted it
making his films snappy, which anyone who has seen those
Star Wars prequels might beg to differ.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
But yeah, I guess that's just before all that. Yeah,
it's true. Among the changes Spielberg made was to increase
the rumbling sound of the rock Bier as he approached
the night Hob in the beginning of the film. All
of that sounds like words salad to me. Oh why
did he do that? Though I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:08:24):
This is okay, I'll tell you abo go ahead, because
the original version that the night Hob swears, and Spielberg
wanted to obscure the swearing with this rumbling so that
the obscenities wouldn't be there, so it would make it more,
you know, more of a kid friendly film.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
Yeah, the drowning Horse stays in the picture but can't
have any profanity. To thank Spielberg for his work on this,
Peterson gave him the actual ar In talisman prop, which
still hangs in a glass display case in Spielberg's office.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
I've heard that Spielberg's office he has this like table
where he has all of his awards. But I mean
like all of his awards, like his Oscar will be
next to his pine with Derby trophy from his Scout
days as a kid like I just find that alldorable,
like a little kid like, this is my table of
my special things. I love that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
Oh wow, now we come to our famous You gotta
start punching this SoundBite in mate. Yeah, I'm it's been
enshrined as a bit a little segment that we'd like
to always throw to.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
Jordan called it belongs in a museum. Yes, speaking of
our Spielberg Lucas collaborations and priceless cinema props, we have
to go to that belongs in a museum segment. The
original book prop for The Never Ending Story was placed
up for auction by an eBay person eBay by an
eBay seller named Spirit Robin fifty seven, not once, but

(01:09:48):
twice The first auction listed the item for seventy five
thousand dollars, but it failed to sell. Then it was
listed again for twenty eight five hundred dollars, but still
no takers. I actually reached out to this person who
tells Japanese antiques, which I thought was interesting, and they

(01:10:08):
have told me I did sell the book, and I've
never heard from the buyer of the many years that
have passed. I reached out to them on various occasions,
including recently when someone inquired about the book. I've had
a number of inquiries about it over the years. At
any rate, I've sent all interested parties the NFT LinkedIn.
There are currently three owners of the ten that have

(01:10:29):
been minted, So anyone who wants their own special never
ending story mementoly.

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):
You struggled to find a euphemism for NFTs.

Speaker 1 (01:10:45):
Reach out to spirit Robin R b y N fifty
seven at eBay and then for to me on Twitter
so I can write click and save it. You did.
Perhaps because of this association with spiel and by extension,
George Lucas, Wolfgang Peterson made sure to sneak in an
assortment of their famous characters into his final cut after amit.

(01:11:09):
I never noticed this, but in the very first scene
inside the Ivory Tower, there's a wide shot of a
crowd gathered, and in these wide shots, partially obscured by shadows,
you can see Yoda, Chewbacca, two E Walks, C three
po and E T as well as Mickey Mouse and Gumby.
Now they're not visible for tighter shots, probably because they

(01:11:29):
didn't want to be sued into oblivion. I can see
wanting to have a little nod the Spielberg and George
Lucas for kind of being friendly with them. It seems
like putting Mickey and Gummy in there, you're just poking
the bear. Yeah, copyright law seats. That's interesting. Uh. Wolfgang
Peterson himself has a cameo in the beginning of the
movie as one of the people in a street scene

(01:11:50):
that the bullies bump into. That's interesting. One crucial difference
between the American version of The Never Ending Story and
Peterson's European cut is the addition of Giorgio Moroder's electro
flourishes on the soundtrack, and of course his poppy theme
tune that's only in the American version. He needed to
like Juge up the soundtrack for the Americans. The theme

(01:12:12):
song to Never Ending Story great song. For some reason,
I always confuse it with the theme song to David
the Nome. You remember that look around You anything, Lucy?
I bet you met the David Bowie single different? Yeah,
but yeah, never Ending Story theme incredible. The German version

(01:12:35):
doesn't have it. They only have the classical orchestral score
by Klaus Dolinger, who also did the Dos Boots soundtrack. Yeah,
I'm guessing that Wolfgang Peterson just wanted to add an
extra dose of sparkle for what he hoped he is
an American film breakthrough, So he hired Georgio Moroder, who
also done scores to American Jigglow, Midnight Express and probably
most famously, Scarface got him to do his coked out

(01:13:00):
proto techno disco guru thing. The theme tune is written
by Moroder, but with lyrics by Keith Force of the
German band Aman Duel Too. They are a pioneering Kroud
rock band known for their winding psychedelic excursions which not
punchy lyrics. Let me tell you that how much mo

(01:13:22):
And The Never Ending Story theme is sung by the
British pop singer Limal, the lead singer of Kajaja Goo Goo.
Anyone anything there? Yeah? This thing on Kejajha Goo Go Yeah,
Nope nothing. The song reached the top spot on music
charts in Sweden and Norway and sold more than two

(01:13:44):
hundred thousand copies in the UK, but only made it
to number seventeen on the US Billboard Hot one hundred.
But then it enjoyed another peak in popularity when it
was performed on the third season of Stranger Things in
twenty nineteen. Got that Stranger Things bommed Kate Busch. The
only way any of us will ever get our dues
in life is being featured on a streamer. Ah, and

(01:14:09):
that brings us up to today. You'll notice that we
really didn't mention the sequels the Never Ending Story two,
starring the late Jonathan Brandis as Bastion, or the even
lesser known Never Ending Story three from nineteen ninety four,
starring the kid from Free Willie as Bastion and a
young Jack Black as a school bully. That's very interesting.

(01:14:31):
We don't mention these two movies because they are both bad.
Any fans who for some masochistic reason are holding out
for a reboot. I don't know why you would, but
if you are, you will have a long wait. Wolfgang
Peterson has said that the rights to The Never Ending
Story are tied up in litigation, presumably due to author
Michael Endez lawsuit, and they are unlikely to be untangled

(01:14:54):
anytime soon, and pretty much everyone is fine with that.
Wolfgang Peterson has been quoted as saying, I like the
films the way it did. I like the film the
way it is, with all its old fashioned charm. Just
leave it alone. Alan Oppenheimer, the voice of falcoor Gomork
and the rock Bier, agrees, saying I think they need
to leave it alone. It doesn't need a remake, and

(01:15:16):
we should really just give the last word to the
childlike Empress herself, Tammy Stenach, though she says she'd enjoy
a remake on some level. She says the film is
quote an invitation to grow the space of making and creating. Hopefully,
if Hollywood diversifies and there are more women directors and
more minorities writing scripts, the message of the film will

(01:15:37):
be the ultimate winner here. So I don't think we
need to remake this, but I think we need to
keep growing the space for everyone. That is right, go
ahead and do what you dream. That is a lovely sentiment. Yeah,
good for her very much. So yeah, huh, well, Heigel,
we don't want this to become another never ending episode,

(01:15:58):
so let us wrap the us up.

Speaker 2 (01:16:02):
Uh. I'll give you that one, you know, just because
you love this movie. Folks, thank you for listening. This
has been too much information. I'm Alex Heigel.

Speaker 1 (01:16:11):
And I'm Jordan Runtalg. We'll catch you next time. Too
Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio. The show's executive
producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtalk. The supervising producer
is Mike Johns. The show was researched, written and hosted
by Jordan run Talk and Alex Heigel, with original music

(01:16:31):
by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you
like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review.
For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.