July 3, 2024 • 44 mins
Rufus Sewell stars as John Murdoch, who wakes up one day with amnesia in an non-descript hotel room with a butchered woman, immediately having to go on the run as the prime suspect in a series of murders of prostitutes around the city -- but he can't remember if he did it. In addition to the police force, Murdoch is also hotly pursued by a shifty psychologist named Dr. Shreber (Kiefer Sutherland), a tenacious detective, Frank Bumstead (WIlliam Hurt), a woman claiming to be his philandering wife, Emma (Jennifer Connelly), and a spate of pale and creepy-looking, trenchcoated Nosferatus (or so they appear), who are looking for Murdoch because he seems to possess abilities above and beyond what normal men have, which makes him a danger to them. As Murdoch seeks to get to the bottom of who he is and what's going on, he discovers that there's an even bigger mystery, which is who everyone else is, what kind of city they all reside in, why is it being controlled by these shady creatures who seem otherworldly, and just why does it always seem to be nighttime?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
It's no way else optional.
Can't get out of the city. Believe me
I've tried.
The murdoch.
The 1 they've been can for, you're not
a killer. They set you up with a
fake identity.
Like everyone else in this place. Who here.
You to be a cop,
at least
this life I was.
(00:21):
They steal people's memories you know.
Then they swap around between us. I seem
them do it back and forth back and
forth to no knows who they are anymore.
How do you know all this? Once in
a while, 1 of us wakes up while
they're changing things?
It's not supposed to happen, but it does.
It happened to me.
That come looking for you, Murdock.
(00:44):
Just like they'll come looking for me.
If that's okay. I figured away out.
Hi. Welcome to to the nineties and beyond.
(01:06):
A film podcast that looks at movies of
the 19 nineties as well as films that
were Spin from or Sequels 2 or somehow
influenced by movies of the 19 nineties. My
name is Vince Leo.
I have been a film review since the
middle of the 19 nineties.
19 96 to be exact as when I
first published
a film review online. You can find all
of my written work at my website qui
(01:27):
dot net, QWIPSTER
dot net.
I've been doing podcasts now for nearly 10
years
as well, and I do another podcast called
around the world in Eighties movies if you
like what you hear here, I do encourage
you if you also like films of the
19 to check that out. You can find
link to that quick dot n. Today, I'm
(01:47):
gonna be getting into a film that came
out in 19 98, and it's called Dark
City.
Dark city is an r rated film it
does have violent bridges images as well as
some sexuality. The runtime is an hour and
40 minutes, although the director's cut, which maybe
some people refer to watches, an hour in
51 minutes.
Ru Soul, Ke Sutherland, Jennifer Con, William heard
(02:08):
Richard O'brien and ian Richardson,
are in the cast, the director of Dark
City is Alex Por. Por also contributed to
the screen play, along with Le da.
And David S Go.
Now there were a lot of seeds of
inspiration for Dark city, some of them started
when Alex P was a young boy, he
was deathly afraid of the dark and even
(02:29):
more so when he started having these recurring
nightmares
that would involve these strange looking bald who
would come out at night and chase him
with knives.
Pro, when he would wake up, he felt
that the strange men surely must have had
the ability to alter reality because he would
notice things in his bedroom, were rearranged from
what he thought he had remembered before he
(02:50):
went to sleep.
As a teenager,
Por was somebody was passionate about reading. He
favored a lot of science fiction novels by
authors like Ray Brad, Arthur c Clark, Philip
K Dick,
Brian all this, he especially like stories where
characters were finding out somehow
by the end of the story that their
(03:11):
reality
is actually not reality. It's revealed to be
some sort of elaborate
artificial creation or some sort of experiment.
And Pro has wondered
if he could be living in some sort
of alternate reality that was created by those
mystery men that he had in his recurring
nightmares when he was a boy.
Price also at this time, started reading a
lot of graphic novels, some Japanese manga.
(03:34):
He was a big fan of heavy metal,
magazine as and he would also read anything
by Mob.
When he was about 15, he wrote a
script for this potential animated short film, he
thought,
he entitled the script he wrote for that
pedestrian furniture that was his first incorporation of
the the strange men
that were in his childhood nightmares,
who could move furniture around as he slept.
(03:57):
As an adult, Po expanded his mind even
more, he became interested in agnostic philosophy.
He really enjoyed the psychology of Freud and
young, and he especially enjoyed this 19 o
3 auto
by a man named Daniel Paul S called
memoirs of my nervous illness.
S memoirs detailed firsthand his experience
(04:20):
undergoing psychosis,
this auto biography
gave you a an image of the world
as it was experienced through the delusions of
a psychotic mind.
Troy has began to free associate all of
these things that he enjoyed and he worked
them
into a new script idea in late 19
89 after he had already become a filmmaker
and he directed his first feature called Spirits
of the air, g lens of the clouds.
(04:43):
P would take all of these ideas all
the way back from his ring nightmares to
his sci, love to all of those comic
books he would read as well as the
no philosophy and the psychology
and Daniel T
memoir, and he would just free associated into
a script. He didn't have any knowledge of
how any of those things would fit together
(05:04):
narrative or them dramatically.
Entitled it at that time, Sleep blocker, and
it was a very surreal concept
that would blend all of this love of
fantasy and science fiction and philosophy and psychology.
Although Por ideas were very broad at the
time,
he tried to keep the concept of the
plot at least,
small because he felt it was likely going
(05:25):
to be made very cheaply in Australia on
a Shoe string budget
being a fan of Hollywood film noir mysteries,
P began with, hard boiled detective as his
main protagonist.
Pro named him Frank Bump s. And pro
is really keyed in on the notion of
a of a detective who
was somebody was very logical and very analytical
(05:46):
going insane
as he started searching for clues,
ultimately would reveal that he's living in a
fantasy realm generated and manipulated by these other
otherworldly creek that he can't comprehend ever existing.
For inspiration Por began reading Raymond chandler crime
novels,
and those really inspired for us to break
from telling his story solely from the detectives
(06:09):
point of view because he really liked that
Raymond chandler narratives followed the perspective of multiple
character
within a very layered and very complex plot.
So as he continued to revise that script,
he expanded his supporting characters using
film noir archetypes. And meanwhile, his fantasy entities,
(06:29):
controlling reality were more steep for
cinema that influenced film Noir, going back, especially
to the silent era and German expression is
cinema,
films like metropolis and Nas,
m and the cabinet of doctor Ka.
The atmosphere that Pro is envisioned for this
was influenced especially by American architect Hugh ferris,
(06:51):
who happened to also influence the early Batman
comics as well.
Further revisions to his screen play toy with
titles like shadows and mystery men, but Pro
eventually
settled on dark city because he felt that
that title best captured the film Noir vibe
he was going for. Even through these revisions,
Por still had not come up with any
(07:11):
explanation for the mis men origins or the
motivations for why they control the lives of
the human characters
He was writing here still purely from a
subconscious level that even he didn't fully understand.
He saw the mystery men somehow as some
sort of metaphor for how humans were unconsciously
manipulated all the time by government, by media,
by corporations, he felt that we really, if
(07:33):
we wanted to live as humans, we should
be resisting all of that control that we
have all around us. Flushing out his secondary
characters eventually prompted pro to shift the stories
protagonist.
It was the harbor detective now he's decided
to make the main murder suspect,
the main character. An Amnesia named Jonathan White.
(07:54):
Corey felt that his character arc as well
as the emotional stakes for him were much
more exciting than they were for the detective.
Did the arc was broken down
into 2 characters, bumps dead, still, the current
homicide detective, as well as Thompson, who he
would later in more recent revisions called Will.
Thompson was the previous detective who ends up
(08:16):
going mad while he's trying to all the
case and the closer he gets, the more
he can't comprehend it. Gruesome moments of body
horror ran all throughout praise the story here.
The mystery man led by evil guy called
mister Black. They're not really men. They're really
insane x that are animating human cad from
within their skulls. The mystery men also could
(08:39):
use robotic bugs to spy in humans,
And they also create a killing machine at
some point toward the climax
who happens to be a puppet outfitted with
a lot of tools and deadly weapons.
Doctor S, he the Homage to the, original
Daniel Paul S. He's a psychologist who study,
Jonathan White. He reveals that they're living in
a world made
(09:00):
from the insects dreams.
After most of the human characters end up
dying horrific in the story, there's a court
ace climax,
it ends up exon Jonathan White, and it's
followed by an epi log on an ocean
pier where white meets up with a woman
and then begins str her, revealing he is
indeed,
(09:20):
a murderer.
Alex P was working on 19 90 four's
film the crow,
and that's when Hollywood Studios took notice of
him. So they started offering him, action or
comic book style follow ups that he had
no interest in directing. He counter these studio
offers with his own, the dark city script
(09:40):
the studios would read them and eventually, they
would decline. They felt that there was 0
commercial viability
this weird ph fantastic
concept that really doesn't make a lot of
sense to them.
So P decided he needed a little bit
of help trying to get this script into
shape, so he reached out to Dennis Potter
and Potter, a good writer, and very supportive
(10:02):
of Por script, but he politely declined because
he said that it was a bit too
insane, maybe a little bit frightening as well.
He possibly also, turned it down because he
was gravely ill at the time too. By
the way, the film, a Dark City happens
to be dedicated to the memory of Dennis
Potter in the closing credits.
So Perez decided well, he'll continue on his
(10:24):
own and he took a lot of the
studio feedback that he got for his script
to heart, and he started working more on
his script. He reduced a lot of the
gruesome qualities of the script and he wanted
to provide a better rationale for what was
going on underneath the story.
Instead of the dreams of the insects, the
city maybe was better, built from the memories
of the human characters.
(10:44):
And new themes within the story explored whether
memories,
are what makes humans what we are. He
gave the mystery men finally a Mod opera.
They experiment on humans for the purpose of
seeing what makes us do the things that
we do.
If they implant memories of a serial killer
into an innocent person,
is that person going to be prone to
(11:05):
murder or will he remain
innocent as he was before the implant.
Now sensing a hit with the crow, mir
max this due go behind the crow, they
showed interest in producing Dark city as a
follow up with Edward R press slot as
the producer. But because Mer max happen to
be undergoing a very tumultuous management change at
(11:25):
the time. Pro has decided
given that the... He was getting some clout
for the crow, especially when it was released
and it was very financially successful, he would
shop it around elsewhere and see if he
could find a better deal.
The tragedy of Brandon
accidental death while he was making pro found
Por,
trying to let off some steam. He retreated
(11:47):
to Can France for, a, spell.
Disney Chairman, Jeffrey Cas did find him there
and he visited Po hotel room. And he
wanted to discuss the possibility of Disney working
with Por on a future project he was
interested in. And Boys happened to mention he
had a project he was trying to make
dark city.
So Captain,
(12:07):
he set up a meeting to come pitch
that in Hollywood.
The executives at Disney were not pleased when
they finally read. It was nonsensical. It was
repulsive they felt
But because Katz was very high employees, they
decided to place it still under development
under their touchstone banner with Po partner andrew
Mason producing.
(12:28):
Now as they were working through the script,
P started receiving a lot of studio notes
from Disney, relating a lot of things that
were not very flattering to him, The characters
didn't work. The story didn't make sense,
and the narrative aspects, there were a lot.
He should probably add and a lot he
should probably remove. And all of these notes
made Pro
(12:49):
begin to lose faith. He wondered why Disney
was continuing to work so with them on
the script that they could never conceptually grasp,
and they absolutely seem to despise every aspect
of.
P rationalize to himself that maybe as a
director, storytelling telling was emphasizing too much the
visual components
instead of putting in a lot of those
(13:09):
emotional hooks that usually grab audiences.
So he approved Disney's suggestion that they bring
in a professional screen writer to make Dark
city much more accessible.
Among them many things that Pro was offered
after he had directed the Crow, he especially
enjoyed the script for
Blade, which was based on a marvel comics
idea.
(13:29):
So he decided to contact the screen writer
of Blade David S go.
However, when Pro learned that Go happened to
be actively working on the sequel to the
crow. A sequel that Pro is adamant opposed.
He want... He thought that they should absolutely
in
the series with the death of Brandon lee
conversation between Po and Goya grew awkward and
(13:50):
Goya thought it was probably best
to decline.
Disney then assigned Ko screen writer Le dos
to come in. He was especially tasked to
bolster the characterization. He wanted to reduce cliches,
and he wanted to eliminate a of
that was in the script.
Chris did like that Do was a film
(14:10):
noir
like him
especially because he was somebody who is British
and American, he could deliver a lot of
american
of older eras phrases like the He G
or places like the auto.
Knobs really worked hard to sand down those
fed ta
elements
in the script, and he grounded the narrative
(14:32):
into a firmer reality, while he also converged
all of the character destin
He channel them all into 1 cause.
Da did feel that the protagonist being he
named Jonathan White, and the antagonist named mister
Black that was way too tri. That was
too on the nose. Pro suggested maybe John
Walker, but Da thought that this too was
(14:53):
cliche.
They eventually settled on John Murdoch.
The also injected a plot line that he
had seen before in this episode of the
outer limits
called a feasibility study.
An in feasibility study, there are aliens who
teleport an entire section of a city, including
the people
to their home planet,
and that's where they're going to study the
(15:14):
feasibility of turning all of humanity into slaves
there. Because these aliens are suffering from a
genetic disease where they become a mobile as
they grow older.
The humans event discover the alien intentions, they
decide to fight further souls, which is their
freedom of choice.
So he thought this strangers here could be
aliens that abducted humans to populate a city,
(15:37):
the city that is floating in space, so
that it was always dark.
For
experimentation on how to save themselves from extinction.
Do also fleshed out Murdoch wife, he developed
a love story inspired by the Nicholas Ray
film called in a lonely place.
And that's where Romance blossoms between a woman
who helps a murder suspect she doesn't really
(15:59):
know.
Do keyed in, especially to the line in
the film called, I was born when she
kissed me, I died when she left me,
I lived a few weeks while she loved
me.
Do found a way for Emma, his wife
changed from Elizabeth from the earlier drafts.
To appear throughout to add purpose to Murdoch
quest.
Da found a lot of ways to inject
(16:21):
Emma throughout the story. Emma was renamed from
Elizabeth in Earlier
and she would appear throughout the story to
add further purpose to Mu quest.
Now, Disney's interest unfortunately plummeted
when their suggestion to, quote, unquote, dumb it
up, to broaden the appeal could not really
be done without unraveling this very intricate plot
(16:43):
until it became nonsensical. And eventually, they grew
tired of trying to work it out. They
viewed dark city at that point as un
unfavorable, and they put it into turnaround.
Licking his wounds, Po has then decided he
needed to get back into direct. And he
took Steven Spielberg up on an offer to
direct Casper, the friendly ghost.
And unfortunately, during the prep production phase,
(17:05):
creative conflicts about Casper tone,
the lack of, of, finished script as well
as Steven Spielberg weird Boss
started ru po feathers, And need decided he
was just gonna to depart.
Twentieth a century Fox did pick Dark City
up in mid 19 95,
and they announced it as their first production
for Fox new Sydney studios, they were developing
(17:27):
in Australia.
To get the screen play back into Shape
Por salt David Go once again.
This time, Go was much more amenable to
Po offer,
Corey agent did try to steer him away
from it because he felt that high concept
expensive movies like this rarely ever get made
in the end.
Corey did though, except. He was an Australia
(17:49):
file. He was very curious to do work
there, so he wanted to go to Australia,
and work on this film. He also happened
to be somebody who very much related to
the film, having
recurring dreams of his own as a kid
about a mystery man that would haunt him.
Goya came in. He added especially action sequences
to make it more exciting
and a more science fiction based underpinning to
(18:12):
make the premise more relatable a lot less
weird. Goya also incorporated more mo. He took
a spiral motif that was in Po original
scripting and he developed it. Throughout the story
because he felt that it would symbolize more
of the search for the human soul.
For the lead, Por suggested maybe rape fines,
where Liam Ne Fox knicks finds because strange
(18:34):
days had just bombed at the box office.
And Liam Ne at that time wasn't really
much of a box office draw at all.
Things did pause when Fox began the negotiations
with Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise had expressed an
interest in doing a science fiction film and
were looking for a project for him, and
this happened to be a very timely 1.
Now, Corey has felt the huge star like
Time Cruise was gonna be a double edged
(18:55):
sword because it did
increase the the chance of it getting made.
The studio was very excited about doing a
Time Cruise vehicle, but it also would bring
with it, a major star demand ends, which
would completely alter the story if he didn't
really like some aspect or another, and there
would obviously be much more studio scrutiny because
they were gonna be investing much more money
(19:16):
into the. In fact, Cruise was offered at
the time, much more money than Dark City's
entire budget was.
Talks did unfortunately for Pro Inn when Fox
president Todd Jacobs resigned, and many of his
projects were canceled including Dark City.
It did get picked up again in April
19 96 when New line Cinema
picked it up as part of a 2
(19:36):
picture deal with Pro, the other
picture he was gonna make was Quit mass
in the pit, didn't quite come to fruition
for him and there, but Ne line did
offered a lot more creative to freedom than
he was offered by the other 2 big
studios,
They did request a title change though, because
New lines parent company Warner Brothers was working
on a film with a very similar title
(19:57):
at the time called Mad City,
and that was slated for a release at
the same time as Dark City. So they
decided they were gonna change the name.
Eventually, they settled on dark world.
Unfortunately, when that was released to the public
Steven Spielberg, who be working on the lost
world, which was gonna be slated for a
release around that time. He threatened legal action.
(20:18):
So they had changed it to dark empire.
And that's when the other big wig, George
Lucas
came in, Lucas film prompted legal action saying
Dark empire was something they already had
rights too. They did a, a comic for
Dark wars,
based on Star Wars, called Dark Camp empire.
So, eventually, they they did find that they
(20:39):
would revert to Dark City because the release
date ended up getting pushed beyond
mad cities run in the movie theater in
said he didn't do very well anyway. So
it it really didn't bear much of a
conflict at all.
They did change at some point during the
story, the mystery man as they were called
in the script to the strangers,
and that was to avoid copyright issues with
(21:01):
this existing comic superhero property
at the time being developed into a film
that would come out in 19 99.
Now as I mentioned, Pro did get a
lot of creative freedom when he was making
Dark city with new line, However, New line
did have a list of what they called
preferred actors,
Actors that they thought would be interesting to
(21:21):
put into this film. And those included Jim
Carrey, who did pretty well with new line
when he made the mask. Johnny Depp, and
the odd choice among a list was David
Letterman,
believe it or not. But Pro did insist
on casting freedom. He wanted an unknown
in the starring role because he thought audiences
should not assume Murdoch was a hero just
(21:43):
based on the casting.
So Pro eventually selected among the many who
auditioned, bring dish Art house regular Ru soul.
He felt that Soul had a very unique
vibe. He was intelligent. He had dangerous looks
that would be very good for the part
he admired Soul because he had seen him
before in British Tv and stage productions. He
liked his energy. He liked his vitality, and
(22:04):
he had a really good sense of humor.
Liked working with him. So Su also happen
to be handsome enough to be a leading,
man, but he also had a lot of
id in this performance that would be characteristic
of a character actor.
Now Su came in, he found
portraying Murdoch to be a challenge because Murdoch
was an amnesia.
So he was basically a blank canvas. And
(22:26):
furthermore Por was not going to reveal Murdoch
backstory to Sew until it was time to
actually film it. So
Any he specifically did this so that Sue
performance was going to remain ambiguous. Could he
be the killer or could he be innocent?
Soul had to play it not both ways,
but neither way? To help himself Soul observe
that maybe having no memories would make Murdoch
(22:47):
like a child. So he would play murdoch
as somewhat how child like, but he would
have adult instincts and vocabulary.
Green screen work throughout the film also became
a challenge for Soul because he was playing
to a blank wall
oftentimes,
while also having to portray this character on
the edge
of emotion without even knowing anything about him,
(23:09):
and that made centering his performance very much
difficult. He felt somehow too far removed of
what he was going to do, although Po
says that that does work for that character.
Now William Hart came in, originally, hurt wanted
to play doctor S in this film, but
Por encouraged him to take the role of,
Frank Bump instead. Now, Por was... He had
(23:30):
a reputation of being a very demanding act
and p did also find him to be
very much so,
but he felt that hurts persistent questioning of
his script caused him many times to reconsider
his ideas for the better. In previous Drafts,
the detective had a mother living in an
iron lung that he would serena with his
accordion,
If you see this film, there is an
(23:51):
accordion that still remains in the movie. You
don't see the mother, it's kind of left
a little bit more to the imagination as
to why them automatically, it might be in
the piece. Now for the female lead, Jennifer
Con, that was not the studio first choice.
In fact, Le told troy that Con just
was a little too young looking, maybe 2
baby face to play the su fe fatal
(24:11):
in this filmed noir ish movie.
But Pro felt that Con did bring a
lyric quality to that he lights. So she
was hired. Now, Con was scripted to do
a nude scene. She said that she didn't
wanna do it though if she was gonna
take the part. She... At that time had
been in a lot of films, and she
wanted to be taken a little bit more
seriously as an actress. There may have been
(24:32):
another reason though that she didn't wanna get
nude she didn't really reveal until the very
last day of the shoot that she was
during that time pregnant.
Con did have a a very challenging time
playing Emma
particularly frustrating was trying to find the character
motivations of Emma because she's supposed to be
confused that Murdoch is not acting
(24:53):
as she remembers him. Now she has implanted
memories, he does not. So he's not acting
as he should because his memories should come
to find out never injected. You know, there
are a couple of singing performances done by
Emma during the film as a a lounge
singer,
Anita at Kelsey voice was used for Emma's
singing performances is only in the theatrical version,
(25:13):
though. If you watch the director's version,
Jennifer Con original vocals
are restored for that take.
Doctor S, he was intended all along for
an older actor Pro envisioned him as, like,
Ben Kingsley when he was writing that role,
but ian Home was the main actor that
was sought for that role before, Pro ended
(25:34):
up connecting with Ke for Sutherland.
Pro in Sutherland became friends. They both met
at Brandon Lee's funeral,
and they decided to meet at a hotel
bar to talk about the dark city script.
Now, Ke came in, He had already read
the script when he came in, and he
was really locked in on the s role
as something that he could portray. Now, P
said, no. This actually is for an older
(25:56):
person. Maybe maybe Ke his father Donald so
they'll link can play, But but Ke said,
no. Actually, he thought that trooper would be
much more of a tragic figure if he
were younger if he had his life ahead
of him for him to become so twisted
at a younger age. Now Pro did express
some doubts
until Sutherland decided he stood up in front
of everybody in the hotel bar area, and
(26:19):
he started reading T lines. He transformed his
speech as manner into lisp and stu and
became very frantic right in front of Po
and any of the other bystanders who were
looking on
suggesting that S should be nervous and apprehensive
because he had not interacted with a cognizant
human in some time.
And during that manic performance,
(26:39):
P saw S within Ke and decided to
give him the role then there. Now, Le
dos, he was re hired to come back
and calibrate the script at after it hit
had already been warp and changed by Fox.
So
jobs came in and he individualized characters, specifically,
not for the humans but for the strangers.
So they all had different names to mister
(27:00):
Han, who gets imprinted with Murdoch memories at
some point during that. Mister Han reveals that
the city is actually fashioned on human memories
revised daily to study test humans to find
the secret of individual souls,
and they're doing that to avoid evolutionary extinction
because the
strangers had lost their souls by evolving too
(27:21):
much into becoming 1 big mindset. There were
not individuals really so much anymore.
Because the original story ended up at a
beach pier, they decided that Shell beach would
be, like, a fictitious place because they were
in outer space, so it really didn't exist.
And that would be con contracted as a
memory by the strangers to try to manipulate
city residents
(27:42):
into being compliant,
and that would lead to a better situation
for all of them. Now for the look
of the strangers, Prius modeled the look after
actor Richard Brian's character
in this 19 94 British children's Tv show
called the ink thief.
When casting C contacted O'brien, who was very
amenable to playing the role because the Premise
(28:03):
reminded very much of a Tv show, 1
of his favorites called the prisoner.
Cast all of the other strangers in O'brien
mold and he instructed the actors playing the
strangers to follow O'brien lead
as for how to do their performances.
O'brien did find it still very challenging
to try to remove emotion from his performance
because the strangers are not supposed to exhibit
(28:25):
any.
O'brien, when he wasn't in front of the
camera, he he played a lot of guitar
and he joking came up with the idea
of making Dark city into a musical instead,
and he he would frequently regal gail Pro
with these impromptu plot related songs.
Including 1 about net
which was very memorable walter to Po.
The small robotic killer puppet that was from
(28:47):
Po earlier scripts
He was turned into a character called mister
Sleep. Now they couldn't afford robotic effects for
this film. So they decided to re envision
mister Sleep instead of a robot or a
puppet. He was a child.
The shoot would take place at the newly
opened Fox studios in Australia at the Sydney
grounds. And everything scene took place at night.
(29:07):
So an indoor set would be ideal. Actors
who had signed on, hoping that they would
spend a lot of their time enjoying the
Australian beaches instead spent all day
from pretty much
wake to sleep in this darkened hanger. They
could only really go to the beach like,
on the weekends.
Exterior were shot in a section of Sydney
(29:28):
called the rocks,
which had architecture that was dating way back
to the 19 twenties.
In in retrospect do observe that the city
in Dark City,
itself feels very much pattern after Sydney, Australia
as he's come to see it,
especially as it was built from Por own
childhood memories of certain shops and amusement that
he remembered there. And given that there's an
(29:50):
nostalgic search for childhood in the story,
return to the past to know yourself in
the present, It's very fitting that Po emulate
the characters
by fashion this city completely out of his
memories.
Now because the city is built on memories,
designs for the buildings and local are very
inconsistent... Not only in their architecture, but also
(30:11):
the time period.
Production designer Patrick
Came in and he employed a lot of
his favorite artistic influences. Fa Bro and Bosch,
and he especially keyed in on the Ci
target that you would see in F Mu
morales films, especially Nas To. Pro
referenced also the police photography of Wei.
Who depicted a lot of people falling asleep,
(30:32):
and he would use that as his inspiration
for how people during the tuning would appear.
Cg elements are spa, but they do come
in and enhance a lot of the miniature
work, the painted map backgrounds.
There's psychic energy that's there, the kind of
cg done. Fueling the terrain machines that control
the world above in this process called the
tuning. To top of this got the idea
(30:53):
of morph the buildings of the city scape
wall, was working on independence Day and he
saw that the crew would be moving all
of these building facade around the
the set for different city setups. And Po
himself remembered very small scale buildings that were
put on wheels that were moved around during
the crow, to represent different places in the
city. And he thought it was really cool
(31:13):
to see these buildings looking like they were
moving around on their own. You he couldn't
see the,
technicians actually moving them around any and that
visual component he decided to put into the
film as part of the plot development for
the tuning. Now, again,
not everything was fully thought out. There is
no explicit origin still for the strangers.
(31:34):
It is revealed that they're insect parasites, maybe
they're from another dimension maybe they're extraterrestrial, the
implication is certainly there. They control and animate
human cad.
And all of this was in fired because
in the real life doctor Sc memoirs, he
felt that there were scorpions living inside his
head as he walked among the corpses, and
the the bugs being in his head as
(31:56):
well as walking among corpses
became very much a part of the stranger
existence.
Dogs view the strangers more akin to the
fates
because they could control people's lives,
and they often did that to help their
own cause
and Go observed the strangers were really what
humanity could become if we ended up losing
our souls, they had reached this Apex in
(32:19):
evolution where they were pretty much board and
they were testing humans like Marketing executives, hoping
to find their missing mojo.
Now it's also conversely,
never explained where the humans do originate why
are they in the starks, where do they
come from? Por envision them as maybe coming
from this intergalactic spaceship from a thousand years
from now, Goya thought that the city could
(32:40):
represent more like a purgatory and the the
humans were deceased and figuring out which way
they were gonna go. Now as for the
tuning employed by the strangers to manipulate people's
memories and the geography of the city, P
argues that they actually aren't doing magic. They
don't have any match powers, But instead, it's
really some sort of evolutionary psychological
advancement
among this very sophisticated race with a shared
(33:02):
mind.
Just as Arthur C Clark observed that any
sufficiently advanced technologies is
indistinguishable for Magic.
He also felt that, like Robert Anton Wilson,
he further promoted that advanced para
would be even less distinguish indistinguishable for magic.
The film did unfortunately run over schedule and
budget. And new line pretty much threatened to
(33:24):
shut down the entire production on the scheduled
end of production date, P insisted that the
linking material was absolutely needed because the story
was not going to make sense without it.
So new line at that point granted AA2
week additional pickup shoot sometime a little bit
later.
As P did put together his work print
(33:44):
Initial test screenings revealed that most viewers were
very confused and very frustrated by dark city.
Grace decided to go back and start re
editing the film He wanted to try to
make things clearer,
but further test ratings with the re edited
version resulted in the even worse scores for
Dark city So a new line allocated
(34:04):
more funding,
3 more weeks of shooting 7 weeks of
additional second unit work try to fix a
lot of the narrative issues that were embedded
in the film.
They also wanted to switch the climax to
add a more citing
confrontational climax in in. Now the original ending
featured Murdoch murder trial, that was deemed way
too existential and very un unsatisfied to audiences.
(34:26):
And Pro himself was growing very dis enchanted
with the sour tone anyway where the strangers
when he... Because he started feeling maybe humanity
should really over their suppression was much more
uplifting. And Murdoch leading their revolution by harnessing
the strangers powers would be very much a
good thing to end the film on. And
so now there was going to be a
new climactic psychic battle.
(34:49):
It pays Homage to 1 of Pro favorite
Japanese animated features called Ak. So the new
ending was here to expand the world of
dark city. The new line as part of
the barter in order for Pro to be
able to finish the film with additional money
and additional time, he had to compromise and
put a voice over narration. That was done
(35:09):
by K for Sutherland as Sc for the
per log to clue in audiences
before they see it as to what they're
about to see. Ap pro has found a
a lot of this tweaking and adding and
removing a scenes very difficult for him because,
you know, the the plot really is kind
of like a Chinese
a puzzle box. And so every time that
you altered 1 scene, it actually would force
(35:29):
you to make alterations to other scenes
to try to, you know, re explain how
things were going. So new line
provided additional resources to complete the film. Although
still even with the additional resources in additional
time,
time did run out yet again before it
was fully completed. So Por
feels well,
it's not really as complete a film as
(35:51):
he would have wanted, but it's as complete
as he could get given the resource he
was given. Now, New line decided they wanted
to trim out some of the more overt
gore and blood in the film because it
was very
it was still a little gory, a little
bloody. They wanted to get it down to
a Pg 13 rating to recoup some of
that extra money they were putting into it.
But the Mp
(36:12):
bestowed upon it 8 in an r rating
anyway. So they went through the appeals process,
they even brought in William heard to try
to appeal it because, you know, sometimes big
stars can get them to to to woo
things their way. But...
And they've furthermore stated that well, there's no
sex scenes in the movie, there's really hardly
any bad language at all. And the violence,
very little of it is actually on screen,
(36:32):
but the Mp still said
it was too intense, and it was too
weird to give it a Pg 13 rating.
Given that it was gonna get an r
rating anyway, they decided to go back and
put back in the blood moments that they
had trimmed out before to try to get
Pg 13. Now, Dark City's initial, August 19
97 release date. That was pushed forward, push
forward to October initially. And then finally,
(36:54):
in February of 19 98. They were trying
to avoid competition with Titanic, although that wasn't
very successful because Titanic actually got more pop
as it went along. I mean, it was
more popular, I think in its twentieth week
than it wasn't in its first week. Still
though, despite all of the changes, and all
of the edits in the extended shoots and
the re shoots and the re editing and
the postpone and all of that, it still
(37:14):
failed at the box office. It only earned
about half of its
reported budget in the United States.
Now it did get critical acclaim. Didn't really
help the box office bottom online, though, even
Roger Eb and 1 of the most popular
film critics in the world, probably the most
popular in the country at that time.
Proclaimed it the best film of 19 98.
(37:36):
Still didn't quite help it become of a
a success.
I personally find Dark city, it's an uneven
film to me to be sure. You know,
there's a lot of aspects I like, And
there are a lot of of aspects that
don't quite work for me. I don't I
don't get is emotionally invested as I I
feel
because there's a lot of mechanics that you
have to follow. I do however conceded it
(37:57):
is very master in terms of being a
visual experience
It does contain a lot of nifty philosophical
concepts that are worth pondering even beyond the
film's run time. And and I especially would
say that this was conceived a year prior
to the similarly premise film, the matrix.
And that alone should merit some respect for
not being a matrix rip off. In fact
(38:19):
some people that the matrix ripped this film
off,
because the W did actually see a version
of this film as they were shooting the
matrix 6. Now as the title implies to
look at the film is very dark, is
similar in fashion to Por previous film the
crow in that way.
And it features similar lighting, emphasis onset design
and the the same center of a talk
for Darius W.
(38:40):
Others are probably gonna to compare it to
other science fiction very notable films, metropolis, blade
runner in Brazil, those were very dark and
and dense and oppressive Ka
city escapes.
I personally see Dark city as kind of
a metaphor for Hollywood filmmaking.
You can see the city, basically, kind of
like a studio lot, which it was. For
(39:01):
the most part,
sets that change regularly,
people, humans are casting to different roles at
the Whim of the the strangers, which are
kinda like the studio heads and they're crafting
different stories
said in this period drama that is full
of dams and killers and cops.
Troy himself actually compared it to filmmaking. He
he actually compared it the strangers to, like,
(39:21):
d demanded script writers creating and revising and
people their world with care and situations. So
I... Maybe my higher hypothesis is not that
far off.
I do think it's a very nifty film.
As I mentioned, it's very uneven.
Some of the performances can be seen as
Ham. I think Ke your sutherland kind of
a an acquired taste here. Some people love
them, some people, like me may me. Not
(39:42):
as much. He's sputtering and stuttering and w
and limp
very camp, so I I don't take it
as seriously.
Sometimes as I probably should
characters, I don't really care about the characters
in this film. I'm much more interested in
the plot and how it's developing. So it's
much more of a a gimmicky film in
that way, you know, much more relying on
(40:03):
that. But in its defense, you know, these
characters are blank slate are that are injected.
With memory. So maybe
there's a reason why they're kind of a
very shallow
characterization. In the meantime, we're following these very
dizzy plot points to try to solve this
very loop puzzle box, and, you know, it
is worth contemplating. To me Dark City plays
a lot like a graphic novel come to
(40:25):
life and given that graphic novel that, Prius
grew up on where influences for this film.
I could see why and he just directed
a graphic novel
in the Crow. So it it keeps that
vibe. I do think it's a a very
intriguing multi layered mystery.
It doesn't merit multiple viewing. I've watched this
movie a number of times. Even though I'm
not super high on the film. I do
(40:46):
like it. And I like it enough to
to watch it multiple times, and I do
think that there's plenty to admire
even when you're waiting for the pieces to
come together in multiple viewing.
There is a bombastic finale that Akira inspired
finale that gets a little bit silly with
its head to head, literally head to head
confrontation. And even though it did get the
jump on the matrix and kinda of developing
(41:07):
a city that actually happens to be
a
artificial concussion,
Dark City did fail to make that same
mainstream success as the matrix, even though it's
still championed by a very strong cult contingent.
So all in all, I will give dark
city 3 stars at A43 stars on my
scale means that I do think that it's
worthwhile for people like kind of movie. Certainly,
(41:28):
if you're somebody who really loves
science fiction, film noir, kind of hybrids,
especially... I mean, I love Blade runner, which
is a film noir appliance fiction hybrid.
It's in that keeping... But certainly, if you're
in that vibe, there are people who were
absolutely blown away by dark city. I do
think that a lot of the concepts have
been borrowed time and again though
(41:49):
in newer films such that if you've not
seen it before 4. Maybe you won't be
as blown away as some people were at
the time in 19 98 when this was
released,
especially after you've seen the matrix, but I
respect the film probably more than I like
the film, and that's why I give the
film 3 stars out of 4.
Now during the production, they actually discussed that
they could do a sequel to this film,
(42:10):
price at the times said that maybe it
could be with Murdoch getting corrupted by playing
God over this, you know, new world that
he is helping to create
because this film developed a cult
on video, there has been talk every once
a while over many years about doing a
a follow up. In 20 21, just a
a few years ago from the time of
(42:31):
this According Corey did release a 20 minute
short film called Mask of the evil abe
operation.
He says that that is
set in the dark city universe.
You know, it's not specifically tied into dark
city. And he basically wrote it around the
same time as he was doing dark city.
So there are a lot of
parallels
between the 2
(42:51):
stories.
Chris more recently also has begun work on
a dark city streaming series
he wants to do it a, a series
following the daughter of John and Emma or
Anna as she is at the end of
this film.
The Jennifer Con and Ru soul characters,
the offspring, and it would somehow pick up
(43:11):
with that,
Po has hinted in more recent interview that
Sutherland. Keep Sutherland come back and return as
Doctor S.
For that. That awaits to be seen. There
are a lot of concepts that never quite
get made in 2 series, but it is
something that Po has continued to work on
if you're interested in dark city. It maybe
it will
(43:32):
get a follow up the end, after all.
I hope that you enjoyed this retrospective look
at Dark City if you have your own
thoughts on Dark City if you think that
maybe I'm not giving in enough credit.
You can write to me. Can find my
contact information at my website. That's at qui
dot net QWIPS
key e r
dot net
As far as what I'm going to be
doing on the next show, well, I mentioned
(43:53):
it several times through the course of this
pod cast,
might as well continue the next year with
the matrix.
If you want to write to me, you
can find my contact information out my website,
Q dot net links to my Twitter feed,
my Instagram, my Facebook are also there as
well. E email though is the best way
(44:14):
to get in touch with me if you
have something that you want to talk about.
Grip dot net is where to go. Until
next time, Thank you everyone for listening and
joining me as we continue our journey to
the nineties
and beyond.
It's no way else optional.
Can't get out of the city. Believe me
I've tried.
The murdoch.
The 1 they've been can for, you're not
a killer. They set you up with a
fake identity.
Like everyone else in this place. Who here.
You to be a cop,
at least
this life I was.
(00:21):
They steal people's memories you know.
Then they swap around between us. I seem
them do it back and forth back and
forth to no knows who they are anymore.
How do you know all this? Once in
a while, 1 of us wakes up while
they're changing things?
It's not supposed to happen, but it does.
It happened to me.
That come looking for you, Murdock.
(00:44):
Just like they'll come looking for me.
If that's okay. I figured away out.
Hi. Welcome to to the nineties and beyond.
(01:06):
A film podcast that looks at movies of
the 19 nineties as well as films that
were Spin from or Sequels 2 or somehow
influenced by movies of the 19 nineties. My
name is Vince Leo.
I have been a film review since the
middle of the 19 nineties.
19 96 to be exact as when I
first published
a film review online. You can find all
of my written work at my website qui
(01:27):
dot net, QWIPSTER
dot net.
I've been doing podcasts now for nearly 10
years
as well, and I do another podcast called
around the world in Eighties movies if you
like what you hear here, I do encourage
you if you also like films of the
19 to check that out. You can find
link to that quick dot n. Today, I'm
(01:47):
gonna be getting into a film that came
out in 19 98, and it's called Dark
City.
Dark city is an r rated film it
does have violent bridges images as well as
some sexuality. The runtime is an hour and
40 minutes, although the director's cut, which maybe
some people refer to watches, an hour in
51 minutes.
Ru Soul, Ke Sutherland, Jennifer Con, William heard
(02:08):
Richard O'brien and ian Richardson,
are in the cast, the director of Dark
City is Alex Por. Por also contributed to
the screen play, along with Le da.
And David S Go.
Now there were a lot of seeds of
inspiration for Dark city, some of them started
when Alex P was a young boy, he
was deathly afraid of the dark and even
(02:29):
more so when he started having these recurring
nightmares
that would involve these strange looking bald who
would come out at night and chase him
with knives.
Pro, when he would wake up, he felt
that the strange men surely must have had
the ability to alter reality because he would
notice things in his bedroom, were rearranged from
what he thought he had remembered before he
(02:50):
went to sleep.
As a teenager,
Por was somebody was passionate about reading. He
favored a lot of science fiction novels by
authors like Ray Brad, Arthur c Clark, Philip
K Dick,
Brian all this, he especially like stories where
characters were finding out somehow
by the end of the story that their
(03:11):
reality
is actually not reality. It's revealed to be
some sort of elaborate
artificial creation or some sort of experiment.
And Pro has wondered
if he could be living in some sort
of alternate reality that was created by those
mystery men that he had in his recurring
nightmares when he was a boy.
Price also at this time, started reading a
lot of graphic novels, some Japanese manga.
(03:34):
He was a big fan of heavy metal,
magazine as and he would also read anything
by Mob.
When he was about 15, he wrote a
script for this potential animated short film, he
thought,
he entitled the script he wrote for that
pedestrian furniture that was his first incorporation of
the the strange men
that were in his childhood nightmares,
who could move furniture around as he slept.
(03:57):
As an adult, Po expanded his mind even
more, he became interested in agnostic philosophy.
He really enjoyed the psychology of Freud and
young, and he especially enjoyed this 19 o
3 auto
by a man named Daniel Paul S called
memoirs of my nervous illness.
S memoirs detailed firsthand his experience
(04:20):
undergoing psychosis,
this auto biography
gave you a an image of the world
as it was experienced through the delusions of
a psychotic mind.
Troy has began to free associate all of
these things that he enjoyed and he worked
them
into a new script idea in late 19
89 after he had already become a filmmaker
and he directed his first feature called Spirits
of the air, g lens of the clouds.
(04:43):
P would take all of these ideas all
the way back from his ring nightmares to
his sci, love to all of those comic
books he would read as well as the
no philosophy and the psychology
and Daniel T
memoir, and he would just free associated into
a script. He didn't have any knowledge of
how any of those things would fit together
(05:04):
narrative or them dramatically.
Entitled it at that time, Sleep blocker, and
it was a very surreal concept
that would blend all of this love of
fantasy and science fiction and philosophy and psychology.
Although Por ideas were very broad at the
time,
he tried to keep the concept of the
plot at least,
small because he felt it was likely going
(05:25):
to be made very cheaply in Australia on
a Shoe string budget
being a fan of Hollywood film noir mysteries,
P began with, hard boiled detective as his
main protagonist.
Pro named him Frank Bump s. And pro
is really keyed in on the notion of
a of a detective who
was somebody was very logical and very analytical
(05:46):
going insane
as he started searching for clues,
ultimately would reveal that he's living in a
fantasy realm generated and manipulated by these other
otherworldly creek that he can't comprehend ever existing.
For inspiration Por began reading Raymond chandler crime
novels,
and those really inspired for us to break
from telling his story solely from the detectives
(06:09):
point of view because he really liked that
Raymond chandler narratives followed the perspective of multiple
character
within a very layered and very complex plot.
So as he continued to revise that script,
he expanded his supporting characters using
film noir archetypes. And meanwhile, his fantasy entities,
(06:29):
controlling reality were more steep for
cinema that influenced film Noir, going back, especially
to the silent era and German expression is
cinema,
films like metropolis and Nas,
m and the cabinet of doctor Ka.
The atmosphere that Pro is envisioned for this
was influenced especially by American architect Hugh ferris,
(06:51):
who happened to also influence the early Batman
comics as well.
Further revisions to his screen play toy with
titles like shadows and mystery men, but Pro
eventually
settled on dark city because he felt that
that title best captured the film Noir vibe
he was going for. Even through these revisions,
Por still had not come up with any
(07:11):
explanation for the mis men origins or the
motivations for why they control the lives of
the human characters
He was writing here still purely from a
subconscious level that even he didn't fully understand.
He saw the mystery men somehow as some
sort of metaphor for how humans were unconsciously
manipulated all the time by government, by media,
by corporations, he felt that we really, if
(07:33):
we wanted to live as humans, we should
be resisting all of that control that we
have all around us. Flushing out his secondary
characters eventually prompted pro to shift the stories
protagonist.
It was the harbor detective now he's decided
to make the main murder suspect,
the main character. An Amnesia named Jonathan White.
(07:54):
Corey felt that his character arc as well
as the emotional stakes for him were much
more exciting than they were for the detective.
Did the arc was broken down
into 2 characters, bumps dead, still, the current
homicide detective, as well as Thompson, who he
would later in more recent revisions called Will.
Thompson was the previous detective who ends up
(08:16):
going mad while he's trying to all the
case and the closer he gets, the more
he can't comprehend it. Gruesome moments of body
horror ran all throughout praise the story here.
The mystery man led by evil guy called
mister Black. They're not really men. They're really
insane x that are animating human cad from
within their skulls. The mystery men also could
(08:39):
use robotic bugs to spy in humans,
And they also create a killing machine at
some point toward the climax
who happens to be a puppet outfitted with
a lot of tools and deadly weapons.
Doctor S, he the Homage to the, original
Daniel Paul S. He's a psychologist who study,
Jonathan White. He reveals that they're living in
a world made
(09:00):
from the insects dreams.
After most of the human characters end up
dying horrific in the story, there's a court
ace climax,
it ends up exon Jonathan White, and it's
followed by an epi log on an ocean
pier where white meets up with a woman
and then begins str her, revealing he is
indeed,
(09:20):
a murderer.
Alex P was working on 19 90 four's
film the crow,
and that's when Hollywood Studios took notice of
him. So they started offering him, action or
comic book style follow ups that he had
no interest in directing. He counter these studio
offers with his own, the dark city script
(09:40):
the studios would read them and eventually, they
would decline. They felt that there was 0
commercial viability
this weird ph fantastic
concept that really doesn't make a lot of
sense to them.
So P decided he needed a little bit
of help trying to get this script into
shape, so he reached out to Dennis Potter
and Potter, a good writer, and very supportive
(10:02):
of Por script, but he politely declined because
he said that it was a bit too
insane, maybe a little bit frightening as well.
He possibly also, turned it down because he
was gravely ill at the time too. By
the way, the film, a Dark City happens
to be dedicated to the memory of Dennis
Potter in the closing credits.
So Perez decided well, he'll continue on his
(10:24):
own and he took a lot of the
studio feedback that he got for his script
to heart, and he started working more on
his script. He reduced a lot of the
gruesome qualities of the script and he wanted
to provide a better rationale for what was
going on underneath the story.
Instead of the dreams of the insects, the
city maybe was better, built from the memories
of the human characters.
(10:44):
And new themes within the story explored whether
memories,
are what makes humans what we are. He
gave the mystery men finally a Mod opera.
They experiment on humans for the purpose of
seeing what makes us do the things that
we do.
If they implant memories of a serial killer
into an innocent person,
is that person going to be prone to
(11:05):
murder or will he remain
innocent as he was before the implant.
Now sensing a hit with the crow, mir
max this due go behind the crow, they
showed interest in producing Dark city as a
follow up with Edward R press slot as
the producer. But because Mer max happen to
be undergoing a very tumultuous management change at
(11:25):
the time. Pro has decided
given that the... He was getting some clout
for the crow, especially when it was released
and it was very financially successful, he would
shop it around elsewhere and see if he
could find a better deal.
The tragedy of Brandon
accidental death while he was making pro found
Por,
trying to let off some steam. He retreated
(11:47):
to Can France for, a, spell.
Disney Chairman, Jeffrey Cas did find him there
and he visited Po hotel room. And he
wanted to discuss the possibility of Disney working
with Por on a future project he was
interested in. And Boys happened to mention he
had a project he was trying to make
dark city.
So Captain,
(12:07):
he set up a meeting to come pitch
that in Hollywood.
The executives at Disney were not pleased when
they finally read. It was nonsensical. It was
repulsive they felt
But because Katz was very high employees, they
decided to place it still under development
under their touchstone banner with Po partner andrew
Mason producing.
(12:28):
Now as they were working through the script,
P started receiving a lot of studio notes
from Disney, relating a lot of things that
were not very flattering to him, The characters
didn't work. The story didn't make sense,
and the narrative aspects, there were a lot.
He should probably add and a lot he
should probably remove. And all of these notes
made Pro
(12:49):
begin to lose faith. He wondered why Disney
was continuing to work so with them on
the script that they could never conceptually grasp,
and they absolutely seem to despise every aspect
of.
P rationalize to himself that maybe as a
director, storytelling telling was emphasizing too much the
visual components
instead of putting in a lot of those
(13:09):
emotional hooks that usually grab audiences.
So he approved Disney's suggestion that they bring
in a professional screen writer to make Dark
city much more accessible.
Among them many things that Pro was offered
after he had directed the Crow, he especially
enjoyed the script for
Blade, which was based on a marvel comics
idea.
(13:29):
So he decided to contact the screen writer
of Blade David S go.
However, when Pro learned that Go happened to
be actively working on the sequel to the
crow. A sequel that Pro is adamant opposed.
He want... He thought that they should absolutely
in
the series with the death of Brandon lee
conversation between Po and Goya grew awkward and
(13:50):
Goya thought it was probably best
to decline.
Disney then assigned Ko screen writer Le dos
to come in. He was especially tasked to
bolster the characterization. He wanted to reduce cliches,
and he wanted to eliminate a of
that was in the script.
Chris did like that Do was a film
(14:10):
noir
like him
especially because he was somebody who is British
and American, he could deliver a lot of
american
of older eras phrases like the He G
or places like the auto.
Knobs really worked hard to sand down those
fed ta
elements
in the script, and he grounded the narrative
(14:32):
into a firmer reality, while he also converged
all of the character destin
He channel them all into 1 cause.
Da did feel that the protagonist being he
named Jonathan White, and the antagonist named mister
Black that was way too tri. That was
too on the nose. Pro suggested maybe John
Walker, but Da thought that this too was
(14:53):
cliche.
They eventually settled on John Murdoch.
The also injected a plot line that he
had seen before in this episode of the
outer limits
called a feasibility study.
An in feasibility study, there are aliens who
teleport an entire section of a city, including
the people
to their home planet,
and that's where they're going to study the
(15:14):
feasibility of turning all of humanity into slaves
there. Because these aliens are suffering from a
genetic disease where they become a mobile as
they grow older.
The humans event discover the alien intentions, they
decide to fight further souls, which is their
freedom of choice.
So he thought this strangers here could be
aliens that abducted humans to populate a city,
(15:37):
the city that is floating in space, so
that it was always dark.
For
experimentation on how to save themselves from extinction.
Do also fleshed out Murdoch wife, he developed
a love story inspired by the Nicholas Ray
film called in a lonely place.
And that's where Romance blossoms between a woman
who helps a murder suspect she doesn't really
(15:59):
know.
Do keyed in, especially to the line in
the film called, I was born when she
kissed me, I died when she left me,
I lived a few weeks while she loved
me.
Do found a way for Emma, his wife
changed from Elizabeth from the earlier drafts.
To appear throughout to add purpose to Murdoch
quest.
Da found a lot of ways to inject
(16:21):
Emma throughout the story. Emma was renamed from
Elizabeth in Earlier
and she would appear throughout the story to
add further purpose to Mu quest.
Now, Disney's interest unfortunately plummeted
when their suggestion to, quote, unquote, dumb it
up, to broaden the appeal could not really
be done without unraveling this very intricate plot
(16:43):
until it became nonsensical. And eventually, they grew
tired of trying to work it out. They
viewed dark city at that point as un
unfavorable, and they put it into turnaround.
Licking his wounds, Po has then decided he
needed to get back into direct. And he
took Steven Spielberg up on an offer to
direct Casper, the friendly ghost.
And unfortunately, during the prep production phase,
(17:05):
creative conflicts about Casper tone,
the lack of, of, finished script as well
as Steven Spielberg weird Boss
started ru po feathers, And need decided he
was just gonna to depart.
Twentieth a century Fox did pick Dark City
up in mid 19 95,
and they announced it as their first production
for Fox new Sydney studios, they were developing
(17:27):
in Australia.
To get the screen play back into Shape
Por salt David Go once again.
This time, Go was much more amenable to
Po offer,
Corey agent did try to steer him away
from it because he felt that high concept
expensive movies like this rarely ever get made
in the end.
Corey did though, except. He was an Australia
(17:49):
file. He was very curious to do work
there, so he wanted to go to Australia,
and work on this film. He also happened
to be somebody who very much related to
the film, having
recurring dreams of his own as a kid
about a mystery man that would haunt him.
Goya came in. He added especially action sequences
to make it more exciting
and a more science fiction based underpinning to
(18:12):
make the premise more relatable a lot less
weird. Goya also incorporated more mo. He took
a spiral motif that was in Po original
scripting and he developed it. Throughout the story
because he felt that it would symbolize more
of the search for the human soul.
For the lead, Por suggested maybe rape fines,
where Liam Ne Fox knicks finds because strange
(18:34):
days had just bombed at the box office.
And Liam Ne at that time wasn't really
much of a box office draw at all.
Things did pause when Fox began the negotiations
with Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise had expressed an
interest in doing a science fiction film and
were looking for a project for him, and
this happened to be a very timely 1.
Now, Corey has felt the huge star like
Time Cruise was gonna be a double edged
(18:55):
sword because it did
increase the the chance of it getting made.
The studio was very excited about doing a
Time Cruise vehicle, but it also would bring
with it, a major star demand ends, which
would completely alter the story if he didn't
really like some aspect or another, and there
would obviously be much more studio scrutiny because
they were gonna be investing much more money
(19:16):
into the. In fact, Cruise was offered at
the time, much more money than Dark City's
entire budget was.
Talks did unfortunately for Pro Inn when Fox
president Todd Jacobs resigned, and many of his
projects were canceled including Dark City.
It did get picked up again in April
19 96 when New line Cinema
picked it up as part of a 2
(19:36):
picture deal with Pro, the other
picture he was gonna make was Quit mass
in the pit, didn't quite come to fruition
for him and there, but Ne line did
offered a lot more creative to freedom than
he was offered by the other 2 big
studios,
They did request a title change though, because
New lines parent company Warner Brothers was working
on a film with a very similar title
(19:57):
at the time called Mad City,
and that was slated for a release at
the same time as Dark City. So they
decided they were gonna change the name.
Eventually, they settled on dark world.
Unfortunately, when that was released to the public
Steven Spielberg, who be working on the lost
world, which was gonna be slated for a
release around that time. He threatened legal action.
(20:18):
So they had changed it to dark empire.
And that's when the other big wig, George
Lucas
came in, Lucas film prompted legal action saying
Dark empire was something they already had
rights too. They did a, a comic for
Dark wars,
based on Star Wars, called Dark Camp empire.
So, eventually, they they did find that they
(20:39):
would revert to Dark City because the release
date ended up getting pushed beyond
mad cities run in the movie theater in
said he didn't do very well anyway. So
it it really didn't bear much of a
conflict at all.
They did change at some point during the
story, the mystery man as they were called
in the script to the strangers,
and that was to avoid copyright issues with
(21:01):
this existing comic superhero property
at the time being developed into a film
that would come out in 19 99.
Now as I mentioned, Pro did get a
lot of creative freedom when he was making
Dark city with new line, However, New line
did have a list of what they called
preferred actors,
Actors that they thought would be interesting to
(21:21):
put into this film. And those included Jim
Carrey, who did pretty well with new line
when he made the mask. Johnny Depp, and
the odd choice among a list was David
Letterman,
believe it or not. But Pro did insist
on casting freedom. He wanted an unknown
in the starring role because he thought audiences
should not assume Murdoch was a hero just
(21:43):
based on the casting.
So Pro eventually selected among the many who
auditioned, bring dish Art house regular Ru soul.
He felt that Soul had a very unique
vibe. He was intelligent. He had dangerous looks
that would be very good for the part
he admired Soul because he had seen him
before in British Tv and stage productions. He
liked his energy. He liked his vitality, and
(22:04):
he had a really good sense of humor.
Liked working with him. So Su also happen
to be handsome enough to be a leading,
man, but he also had a lot of
id in this performance that would be characteristic
of a character actor.
Now Su came in, he found
portraying Murdoch to be a challenge because Murdoch
was an amnesia.
So he was basically a blank canvas. And
(22:26):
furthermore Por was not going to reveal Murdoch
backstory to Sew until it was time to
actually film it. So
Any he specifically did this so that Sue
performance was going to remain ambiguous. Could he
be the killer or could he be innocent?
Soul had to play it not both ways,
but neither way? To help himself Soul observe
that maybe having no memories would make Murdoch
(22:47):
like a child. So he would play murdoch
as somewhat how child like, but he would
have adult instincts and vocabulary.
Green screen work throughout the film also became
a challenge for Soul because he was playing
to a blank wall
oftentimes,
while also having to portray this character on
the edge
of emotion without even knowing anything about him,
(23:09):
and that made centering his performance very much
difficult. He felt somehow too far removed of
what he was going to do, although Po
says that that does work for that character.
Now William Hart came in, originally, hurt wanted
to play doctor S in this film, but
Por encouraged him to take the role of,
Frank Bump instead. Now, Por was... He had
(23:30):
a reputation of being a very demanding act
and p did also find him to be
very much so,
but he felt that hurts persistent questioning of
his script caused him many times to reconsider
his ideas for the better. In previous Drafts,
the detective had a mother living in an
iron lung that he would serena with his
accordion,
If you see this film, there is an
(23:51):
accordion that still remains in the movie. You
don't see the mother, it's kind of left
a little bit more to the imagination as
to why them automatically, it might be in
the piece. Now for the female lead, Jennifer
Con, that was not the studio first choice.
In fact, Le told troy that Con just
was a little too young looking, maybe 2
baby face to play the su fe fatal
(24:11):
in this filmed noir ish movie.
But Pro felt that Con did bring a
lyric quality to that he lights. So she
was hired. Now, Con was scripted to do
a nude scene. She said that she didn't
wanna do it though if she was gonna
take the part. She... At that time had
been in a lot of films, and she
wanted to be taken a little bit more
seriously as an actress. There may have been
(24:32):
another reason though that she didn't wanna get
nude she didn't really reveal until the very
last day of the shoot that she was
during that time pregnant.
Con did have a a very challenging time
playing Emma
particularly frustrating was trying to find the character
motivations of Emma because she's supposed to be
confused that Murdoch is not acting
(24:53):
as she remembers him. Now she has implanted
memories, he does not. So he's not acting
as he should because his memories should come
to find out never injected. You know, there
are a couple of singing performances done by
Emma during the film as a a lounge
singer,
Anita at Kelsey voice was used for Emma's
singing performances is only in the theatrical version,
(25:13):
though. If you watch the director's version,
Jennifer Con original vocals
are restored for that take.
Doctor S, he was intended all along for
an older actor Pro envisioned him as, like,
Ben Kingsley when he was writing that role,
but ian Home was the main actor that
was sought for that role before, Pro ended
(25:34):
up connecting with Ke for Sutherland.
Pro in Sutherland became friends. They both met
at Brandon Lee's funeral,
and they decided to meet at a hotel
bar to talk about the dark city script.
Now, Ke came in, He had already read
the script when he came in, and he
was really locked in on the s role
as something that he could portray. Now, P
said, no. This actually is for an older
(25:56):
person. Maybe maybe Ke his father Donald so
they'll link can play, But but Ke said,
no. Actually, he thought that trooper would be
much more of a tragic figure if he
were younger if he had his life ahead
of him for him to become so twisted
at a younger age. Now Pro did express
some doubts
until Sutherland decided he stood up in front
of everybody in the hotel bar area, and
(26:19):
he started reading T lines. He transformed his
speech as manner into lisp and stu and
became very frantic right in front of Po
and any of the other bystanders who were
looking on
suggesting that S should be nervous and apprehensive
because he had not interacted with a cognizant
human in some time.
And during that manic performance,
(26:39):
P saw S within Ke and decided to
give him the role then there. Now, Le
dos, he was re hired to come back
and calibrate the script at after it hit
had already been warp and changed by Fox.
So
jobs came in and he individualized characters, specifically,
not for the humans but for the strangers.
So they all had different names to mister
(27:00):
Han, who gets imprinted with Murdoch memories at
some point during that. Mister Han reveals that
the city is actually fashioned on human memories
revised daily to study test humans to find
the secret of individual souls,
and they're doing that to avoid evolutionary extinction
because the
strangers had lost their souls by evolving too
(27:21):
much into becoming 1 big mindset. There were
not individuals really so much anymore.
Because the original story ended up at a
beach pier, they decided that Shell beach would
be, like, a fictitious place because they were
in outer space, so it really didn't exist.
And that would be con contracted as a
memory by the strangers to try to manipulate
city residents
(27:42):
into being compliant,
and that would lead to a better situation
for all of them. Now for the look
of the strangers, Prius modeled the look after
actor Richard Brian's character
in this 19 94 British children's Tv show
called the ink thief.
When casting C contacted O'brien, who was very
amenable to playing the role because the Premise
(28:03):
reminded very much of a Tv show, 1
of his favorites called the prisoner.
Cast all of the other strangers in O'brien
mold and he instructed the actors playing the
strangers to follow O'brien lead
as for how to do their performances.
O'brien did find it still very challenging
to try to remove emotion from his performance
because the strangers are not supposed to exhibit
(28:25):
any.
O'brien, when he wasn't in front of the
camera, he he played a lot of guitar
and he joking came up with the idea
of making Dark city into a musical instead,
and he he would frequently regal gail Pro
with these impromptu plot related songs.
Including 1 about net
which was very memorable walter to Po.
The small robotic killer puppet that was from
(28:47):
Po earlier scripts
He was turned into a character called mister
Sleep. Now they couldn't afford robotic effects for
this film. So they decided to re envision
mister Sleep instead of a robot or a
puppet. He was a child.
The shoot would take place at the newly
opened Fox studios in Australia at the Sydney
grounds. And everything scene took place at night.
(29:07):
So an indoor set would be ideal. Actors
who had signed on, hoping that they would
spend a lot of their time enjoying the
Australian beaches instead spent all day
from pretty much
wake to sleep in this darkened hanger. They
could only really go to the beach like,
on the weekends.
Exterior were shot in a section of Sydney
(29:28):
called the rocks,
which had architecture that was dating way back
to the 19 twenties.
In in retrospect do observe that the city
in Dark City,
itself feels very much pattern after Sydney, Australia
as he's come to see it,
especially as it was built from Por own
childhood memories of certain shops and amusement that
he remembered there. And given that there's an
(29:50):
nostalgic search for childhood in the story,
return to the past to know yourself in
the present, It's very fitting that Po emulate
the characters
by fashion this city completely out of his
memories.
Now because the city is built on memories,
designs for the buildings and local are very
inconsistent... Not only in their architecture, but also
(30:11):
the time period.
Production designer Patrick
Came in and he employed a lot of
his favorite artistic influences. Fa Bro and Bosch,
and he especially keyed in on the Ci
target that you would see in F Mu
morales films, especially Nas To. Pro
referenced also the police photography of Wei.
Who depicted a lot of people falling asleep,
(30:32):
and he would use that as his inspiration
for how people during the tuning would appear.
Cg elements are spa, but they do come
in and enhance a lot of the miniature
work, the painted map backgrounds.
There's psychic energy that's there, the kind of
cg done. Fueling the terrain machines that control
the world above in this process called the
tuning. To top of this got the idea
(30:53):
of morph the buildings of the city scape
wall, was working on independence Day and he
saw that the crew would be moving all
of these building facade around the
the set for different city setups. And Po
himself remembered very small scale buildings that were
put on wheels that were moved around during
the crow, to represent different places in the
city. And he thought it was really cool
(31:13):
to see these buildings looking like they were
moving around on their own. You he couldn't
see the,
technicians actually moving them around any and that
visual component he decided to put into the
film as part of the plot development for
the tuning. Now, again,
not everything was fully thought out. There is
no explicit origin still for the strangers.
(31:34):
It is revealed that they're insect parasites, maybe
they're from another dimension maybe they're extraterrestrial, the
implication is certainly there. They control and animate
human cad.
And all of this was in fired because
in the real life doctor Sc memoirs, he
felt that there were scorpions living inside his
head as he walked among the corpses, and
the the bugs being in his head as
(31:56):
well as walking among corpses
became very much a part of the stranger
existence.
Dogs view the strangers more akin to the
fates
because they could control people's lives,
and they often did that to help their
own cause
and Go observed the strangers were really what
humanity could become if we ended up losing
our souls, they had reached this Apex in
(32:19):
evolution where they were pretty much board and
they were testing humans like Marketing executives, hoping
to find their missing mojo.
Now it's also conversely,
never explained where the humans do originate why
are they in the starks, where do they
come from? Por envision them as maybe coming
from this intergalactic spaceship from a thousand years
from now, Goya thought that the city could
(32:40):
represent more like a purgatory and the the
humans were deceased and figuring out which way
they were gonna go. Now as for the
tuning employed by the strangers to manipulate people's
memories and the geography of the city, P
argues that they actually aren't doing magic. They
don't have any match powers, But instead, it's
really some sort of evolutionary psychological
advancement
among this very sophisticated race with a shared
(33:02):
mind.
Just as Arthur C Clark observed that any
sufficiently advanced technologies is
indistinguishable for Magic.
He also felt that, like Robert Anton Wilson,
he further promoted that advanced para
would be even less distinguish indistinguishable for magic.
The film did unfortunately run over schedule and
budget. And new line pretty much threatened to
(33:24):
shut down the entire production on the scheduled
end of production date, P insisted that the
linking material was absolutely needed because the story
was not going to make sense without it.
So new line at that point granted AA2
week additional pickup shoot sometime a little bit
later.
As P did put together his work print
(33:44):
Initial test screenings revealed that most viewers were
very confused and very frustrated by dark city.
Grace decided to go back and start re
editing the film He wanted to try to
make things clearer,
but further test ratings with the re edited
version resulted in the even worse scores for
Dark city So a new line allocated
(34:04):
more funding,
3 more weeks of shooting 7 weeks of
additional second unit work try to fix a
lot of the narrative issues that were embedded
in the film.
They also wanted to switch the climax to
add a more citing
confrontational climax in in. Now the original ending
featured Murdoch murder trial, that was deemed way
too existential and very un unsatisfied to audiences.
(34:26):
And Pro himself was growing very dis enchanted
with the sour tone anyway where the strangers
when he... Because he started feeling maybe humanity
should really over their suppression was much more
uplifting. And Murdoch leading their revolution by harnessing
the strangers powers would be very much a
good thing to end the film on. And
so now there was going to be a
new climactic psychic battle.
(34:49):
It pays Homage to 1 of Pro favorite
Japanese animated features called Ak. So the new
ending was here to expand the world of
dark city. The new line as part of
the barter in order for Pro to be
able to finish the film with additional money
and additional time, he had to compromise and
put a voice over narration. That was done
(35:09):
by K for Sutherland as Sc for the
per log to clue in audiences
before they see it as to what they're
about to see. Ap pro has found a
a lot of this tweaking and adding and
removing a scenes very difficult for him because,
you know, the the plot really is kind
of like a Chinese
a puzzle box. And so every time that
you altered 1 scene, it actually would force
(35:29):
you to make alterations to other scenes
to try to, you know, re explain how
things were going. So new line
provided additional resources to complete the film. Although
still even with the additional resources in additional
time,
time did run out yet again before it
was fully completed. So Por
feels well,
it's not really as complete a film as
(35:51):
he would have wanted, but it's as complete
as he could get given the resource he
was given. Now, New line decided they wanted
to trim out some of the more overt
gore and blood in the film because it
was very
it was still a little gory, a little
bloody. They wanted to get it down to
a Pg 13 rating to recoup some of
that extra money they were putting into it.
But the Mp
(36:12):
bestowed upon it 8 in an r rating
anyway. So they went through the appeals process,
they even brought in William heard to try
to appeal it because, you know, sometimes big
stars can get them to to to woo
things their way. But...
And they've furthermore stated that well, there's no
sex scenes in the movie, there's really hardly
any bad language at all. And the violence,
very little of it is actually on screen,
(36:32):
but the Mp still said
it was too intense, and it was too
weird to give it a Pg 13 rating.
Given that it was gonna get an r
rating anyway, they decided to go back and
put back in the blood moments that they
had trimmed out before to try to get
Pg 13. Now, Dark City's initial, August 19
97 release date. That was pushed forward, push
forward to October initially. And then finally,
(36:54):
in February of 19 98. They were trying
to avoid competition with Titanic, although that wasn't
very successful because Titanic actually got more pop
as it went along. I mean, it was
more popular, I think in its twentieth week
than it wasn't in its first week. Still
though, despite all of the changes, and all
of the edits in the extended shoots and
the re shoots and the re editing and
the postpone and all of that, it still
(37:14):
failed at the box office. It only earned
about half of its
reported budget in the United States.
Now it did get critical acclaim. Didn't really
help the box office bottom online, though, even
Roger Eb and 1 of the most popular
film critics in the world, probably the most
popular in the country at that time.
Proclaimed it the best film of 19 98.
(37:36):
Still didn't quite help it become of a
a success.
I personally find Dark city, it's an uneven
film to me to be sure. You know,
there's a lot of aspects I like, And
there are a lot of of aspects that
don't quite work for me. I don't I
don't get is emotionally invested as I I
feel
because there's a lot of mechanics that you
have to follow. I do however conceded it
(37:57):
is very master in terms of being a
visual experience
It does contain a lot of nifty philosophical
concepts that are worth pondering even beyond the
film's run time. And and I especially would
say that this was conceived a year prior
to the similarly premise film, the matrix.
And that alone should merit some respect for
not being a matrix rip off. In fact
(38:19):
some people that the matrix ripped this film
off,
because the W did actually see a version
of this film as they were shooting the
matrix 6. Now as the title implies to
look at the film is very dark, is
similar in fashion to Por previous film the
crow in that way.
And it features similar lighting, emphasis onset design
and the the same center of a talk
for Darius W.
(38:40):
Others are probably gonna to compare it to
other science fiction very notable films, metropolis, blade
runner in Brazil, those were very dark and
and dense and oppressive Ka
city escapes.
I personally see Dark city as kind of
a metaphor for Hollywood filmmaking.
You can see the city, basically, kind of
like a studio lot, which it was. For
(39:01):
the most part,
sets that change regularly,
people, humans are casting to different roles at
the Whim of the the strangers, which are
kinda like the studio heads and they're crafting
different stories
said in this period drama that is full
of dams and killers and cops.
Troy himself actually compared it to filmmaking. He
he actually compared it the strangers to, like,
(39:21):
d demanded script writers creating and revising and
people their world with care and situations. So
I... Maybe my higher hypothesis is not that
far off.
I do think it's a very nifty film.
As I mentioned, it's very uneven.
Some of the performances can be seen as
Ham. I think Ke your sutherland kind of
a an acquired taste here. Some people love
them, some people, like me may me. Not
(39:42):
as much. He's sputtering and stuttering and w
and limp
very camp, so I I don't take it
as seriously.
Sometimes as I probably should
characters, I don't really care about the characters
in this film. I'm much more interested in
the plot and how it's developing. So it's
much more of a a gimmicky film in
that way, you know, much more relying on
(40:03):
that. But in its defense, you know, these
characters are blank slate are that are injected.
With memory. So maybe
there's a reason why they're kind of a
very shallow
characterization. In the meantime, we're following these very
dizzy plot points to try to solve this
very loop puzzle box, and, you know, it
is worth contemplating. To me Dark City plays
a lot like a graphic novel come to
(40:25):
life and given that graphic novel that, Prius
grew up on where influences for this film.
I could see why and he just directed
a graphic novel
in the Crow. So it it keeps that
vibe. I do think it's a a very
intriguing multi layered mystery.
It doesn't merit multiple viewing. I've watched this
movie a number of times. Even though I'm
not super high on the film. I do
(40:46):
like it. And I like it enough to
to watch it multiple times, and I do
think that there's plenty to admire
even when you're waiting for the pieces to
come together in multiple viewing.
There is a bombastic finale that Akira inspired
finale that gets a little bit silly with
its head to head, literally head to head
confrontation. And even though it did get the
jump on the matrix and kinda of developing
(41:07):
a city that actually happens to be
a
artificial concussion,
Dark City did fail to make that same
mainstream success as the matrix, even though it's
still championed by a very strong cult contingent.
So all in all, I will give dark
city 3 stars at A43 stars on my
scale means that I do think that it's
worthwhile for people like kind of movie. Certainly,
(41:28):
if you're somebody who really loves
science fiction, film noir, kind of hybrids,
especially... I mean, I love Blade runner, which
is a film noir appliance fiction hybrid.
It's in that keeping... But certainly, if you're
in that vibe, there are people who were
absolutely blown away by dark city. I do
think that a lot of the concepts have
been borrowed time and again though
(41:49):
in newer films such that if you've not
seen it before 4. Maybe you won't be
as blown away as some people were at
the time in 19 98 when this was
released,
especially after you've seen the matrix, but I
respect the film probably more than I like
the film, and that's why I give the
film 3 stars out of 4.
Now during the production, they actually discussed that
they could do a sequel to this film,
(42:10):
price at the times said that maybe it
could be with Murdoch getting corrupted by playing
God over this, you know, new world that
he is helping to create
because this film developed a cult
on video, there has been talk every once
a while over many years about doing a
a follow up. In 20 21, just a
a few years ago from the time of
(42:31):
this According Corey did release a 20 minute
short film called Mask of the evil abe
operation.
He says that that is
set in the dark city universe.
You know, it's not specifically tied into dark
city. And he basically wrote it around the
same time as he was doing dark city.
So there are a lot of
parallels
between the 2
(42:51):
stories.
Chris more recently also has begun work on
a dark city streaming series
he wants to do it a, a series
following the daughter of John and Emma or
Anna as she is at the end of
this film.
The Jennifer Con and Ru soul characters,
the offspring, and it would somehow pick up
(43:11):
with that,
Po has hinted in more recent interview that
Sutherland. Keep Sutherland come back and return as
Doctor S.
For that. That awaits to be seen. There
are a lot of concepts that never quite
get made in 2 series, but it is
something that Po has continued to work on
if you're interested in dark city. It maybe
it will
(43:32):
get a follow up the end, after all.
I hope that you enjoyed this retrospective look
at Dark City if you have your own
thoughts on Dark City if you think that
maybe I'm not giving in enough credit.
You can write to me. Can find my
contact information at my website. That's at qui
dot net QWIPS
key e r
dot net
As far as what I'm going to be
doing on the next show, well, I mentioned
(43:53):
it several times through the course of this
pod cast,
might as well continue the next year with
the matrix.
If you want to write to me, you
can find my contact information out my website,
Q dot net links to my Twitter feed,
my Instagram, my Facebook are also there as
well. E email though is the best way
(44:14):
to get in touch with me if you
have something that you want to talk about.
Grip dot net is where to go. Until
next time, Thank you everyone for listening and
joining me as we continue our journey to
the nineties
and beyond.
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