In this week’s episode of Just Foolin About, Michael Biehn recounts his riveting experiences filming the iconic 1989 sci-fi film 'The Abyss,' directed by James Cameron. From the challenges of shooting underwater scenes to the intense physical demands placed on actors like Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Biehn offers an insightful look behind the scenes. He discusses Cameron's unparalleled dedication, his own memorable moments on set, and the unique difficulties faced by the underwater safety divers. The episode also touches on other notable films and industry anecdotes, offering a comprehensive view of Biehn's cinematic journey.
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4dHNzumLLaFOIRqm4kcaAA
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/justfoolinabout/
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
01:14 Skibidi Toilet: From Viral Sensation to Michael Bay Movie
03:57 Ukraine's Drone Strike & Michael’s Personal Russia Stories 0
8:33 Hollywood Tales: The Abyss and Other Movie Memories
39:58 The Floating Beads and Lighting Challenges
41:55 Unexpected Blackout Underwater
48:12 Reflecting on the Abyss and Other Films
55:00 Emotional Scenes and Actor Performances
01:03:34 Difficulties on The Abyss & K2
01:09:53 Improvised Scene on The Abyss
01:14:48 Closing Thoughts
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4dHNzumLLaFOIRqm4kcaAA
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/justfoolinabout/
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
01:14 Skibidi Toilet: From Viral Sensation to Michael Bay Movie
03:57 Ukraine's Drone Strike & Michael’s Personal Russia Stories 0
8:33 Hollywood Tales: The Abyss and Other Movie Memories
39:58 The Floating Beads and Lighting Challenges
41:55 Unexpected Blackout Underwater
48:12 Reflecting on the Abyss and Other Films
55:00 Emotional Scenes and Actor Performances
01:03:34 Difficulties on The Abyss & K2
01:09:53 Improvised Scene on The Abyss
01:14:48 Closing Thoughts
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I have declared against my brain in order to see
that won't don't seem to so long, so long as
I know they will be on time the days I
don't have.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
To closing my window.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Is it gone now?
Speaker 4 (00:26):
I think so? Hey j yeah, hey, how are you?
I'm pretty good?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I uh kind of back at the beginning of our
time together, it's actually kind of a crazy uh Hispanic
woman next door to me.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
He was rambling a bit.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
And you remember that that woman who lived in the
apartment in an Orange dribe who Santa Ria.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
She get possessed like once a month and to just
like go absolutely out of her mind. This is where
where Jim and I for met and lived together in
this apartment building that was right behind Ground's Chinese theaters.
Is the same situation going on there, Jim, Well, there's
a she.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
She's can be emotionally disturbed. I don't know how exactly.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Yeah, be careful these days, man, you don't want to Yeah,
I want to call her.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
I can't diagnose or I know that, but you know
she is diagnosed and she should be taking her meds.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Hey, you know, you know we're doing silly stuff, but
you know, we were talking about Michael Bay last, like
last time that we talked and something came up, and uh,
maybe you can find it, Caylin. There's a there's something
that my son has been talking about for about two
(01:47):
years and he doesn't really talk about it that much
anymore now he's ten. But when he was eight, he
was all into something called skippity toilet or skippity skippity
toilets something like that, or something toilet, skippity toilet, something
like that. And some guy just started doing a you know,
(02:08):
half hour, ten minutes or whatever a couple two years ago,
and he called his thing skippity toilet, and you know
it blew up. I guess all the seven year olds
and eight year olds and nine year olds are all
like all over it, and you know it got I
guess better and better and better, and I just noticed it.
(02:29):
My Michael Bay's making the movie now. No I think so.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
That No, no, no, you know Michael Bay Ai saying,
oh is this on variety?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Way hold on?
Speaker 4 (02:46):
I mean, it wouldn't surprise me because it's, you know,
it's like what every nine year old kid was talking
talking about.
Speaker 5 (02:54):
There was a variety articles skippity toilet, film and TV
franchise in the work from Michael Bay Adam Goodman.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Well, okay, well I was from May fourth, I thought, okay,
something popular.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
Yeah, July twenty fourth. Yeah all right, well no, that
was from last year. I got to look into this
a little bit.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Okay, well, I don't know. Something came on my phone.
It says Skippity toilet, said Michael Bay, and I thought, yeah, okay,
that's just that's that's he's going to make another billion
dollars on Skippity Toilet. But uh and I uh, my
son has tried to get me to watch it a
few times, and it's you know, it's extremely popular.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
I had this Forbes article says it's official. This is
from May twenty first. It's official Michael Bay will direct
Skivity Toilet movie.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
So I don't know it's going to be as good
as a row, you know. So we'll have to wait
and see if the rock is still like the best movies.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
All the audience agreed with you. They said, yes, that
is definitely the best Michael Bay movie. And looking I
look back on I was like, yeah, that is the
best micro Day movie.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
That's too much, I thought I would uh, Jim, I
thought I would talk just before you know, we get
into the whole movie thing and and everything. I just
wanted to mentionine to you, man, it's not fucking kind
of crazy what Ukraine's doing now that the United States
has kind of gotten out of the way.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I saw a map they hit a place inside.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
I know.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
I've worked in that fucking god awful country in Siberia.
I really really, yes, yes, I hate Russia. It's a
horrible place, horrible place. And at some point, if you
dig deep down enough, you'll find a film that I
was accused of being drunk and there they couldn't make
(05:01):
the movie, and they sued me. And I can just
tell you that that didn't turn out quite the way
that they wanted it to. Just to give you an example,
after they got done suing me, they sued well, they
sued the casting director and then they but and then
after I had to go for depositions and all this shit,
(05:23):
they were all fucking hammered. It was twenty degrees below
suing for god, twenty mean Siberia, everybody runs on body exactly.
Everybody was. Everybody was, you know, and they're all dead
now from alcoholism and and like the director and you know, uh,
the producer. Uh. But anyway, they uh, when they got
(05:45):
done suing me and they didn't get what they wanted.
I guess they sued their lawyers. They were they sued me,
so they were they were all about the whole suing thing.
But I just I just out of Ukraine and I
just thought, like them like bombing the bridge, but like
the whole thing of them being able to like like
(06:07):
take a bunch of trucks and send them out in
different directions and you know, head a thousand miles this way,
in a thousand miles that way.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
And just hurt up all this to as like a
fleet of wooden of iron horse yeah, wooden horses, yeah right, yeah,
Trojan horses horses. Yeah, you know, and which is a
pretty apt analogy. It sounds like craft did they do
some hurt on those planes and knock about one a
(06:35):
third of their of their fleet.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
So uh wow yeah yeah, anyway.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah, I you know, I I guess Trump had an
hour long conversation with Vladimir today and yeah, and.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Vladimir City was going to have to do something, to
do something about it. We're not we're not really happy,
but the fact that he knocked out.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
A Yeah, air force is gone, my father's gone. I'm
gonna have to take those two thirds that are left
to do something.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Going to be consequences before they're gone.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
I'm gonna have to use them before they're gone too.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Yeah, that's fucking War's insane, that's uh. I know exactly
where I was in Bougier, Louisiana, and I got snowed
in and I couldn't get out of there, and I
was there for three days in in Louisiana, Bougier it's
called Beaugeier, Louisiana.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
And I in in Louisiana.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Uh no, no, no fog like fog or like oh
yeah fog. Yeah, fogged in and thank you.
Speaker 5 (07:42):
He gave you many tries to.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Fix in Louisiana, but nobody I know ever got snowed in. Yeah, no, no, no,
it was like fog that came down, believe.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
And then and from Bougier to go to Dallas or
to go to where it is that that would fly
me back to Los Angeles. They just weren't flying. So
I was there for three days and that's when that
war started, which is like now it's been over three years. Yeah,
I just I just thought it was interesting that you
(08:19):
know that like they you know, well.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
The yeah, I mean, the word audacious hardly hardly begins
to describe it.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
My word, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
I wonder what kind of capabilities they have left or
what is this response that Putin is talking about? And well,
I guess I guess.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
We'll know more bombs innocent people.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
Uh, well, I you know, I thought we'd talk a
little bit today because I, you know, I haven't really
talked that much about the Abyss on the PODCAS cast,
and I thought I would talk a little bit about
it today just because it's got a reputation for being
(09:10):
the most difficult, you know, hardcore like extremely you know,
tough movie to work on, and so I, you know,
I thought that I would address it a little bit.
It's you know, it's it's got ed hair. Oh. Kathy Baker,
(09:33):
by the way, did you know about that, Jim? Kathy
Baker said.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
The other night, I told her she was in a
movie that we had something to do with developing when
I was at ic M called Street Smart.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Right and Morgan introducing Morgan Freeman.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Right, Yeah, it was like this was one of Morgan
Freeman's earliest parts, and he came out of this thing
with great, great reviews. Pauline Cale said he may be
the best American actor. And this is after one movie
also starred Christopher Reid, and she was terrific in that
and she's got, you know, really terrific credits when you
look at him.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was, you know, you know,
I'd like to ask her, Hey, you know, when you
were working with Morgan Freeman, was there anything about him
that you that you thought yourself like, oh my god,
this guy is really good, like Pauline Cale said, he's
you know, or were you just like working and yeah,
you seem like he was good. And I don't know,
(10:34):
you know, I haven't seen that movie in a long time.
But I did watch a movie, but I fell asleep
and I didn't watch the whole thing where she co
stars with Robert de Niro and Ed Harris. She plays
Ed Harris's sister and kind of a love interest to
Robert de Niro, which is a fucking part I wouldn't
(10:56):
like to play. You can't really, you can't really, it's
really you know, they're talking about something being a two
hand or a three hand yeah, you know, so far
it's just those three and uh, yeah, no, I can't
wait to have her. What's that jack Knife? Jack Knife? Yeah,
jack Knife's name of the movie. And uh, yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
You I told you that.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
I remember looking at that when we were doing the
HBO Vietnam series because the movie deals with, uh, somebody
with post traumatic stress, and that's a huge that's a
big part of the plot.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Yeah, I mean h edge, you know, uh, drinking very
very heavily, and uh, you know, they they they were
in Vietnam, they lost a good friend. There was seemed
like there were like a like the three Amigo's, these
three guys that were in Vietnam and you know, their
friend gets killed, and uh, you know, what's it all about?
(11:57):
You know what's it all about? Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, you
know what's it all about? So yeah, so anyway, I
can't you know. I also and she didn't really have
that much to do. But the first thing that I
(12:18):
wanted to see her and I watched it last night
was it's called Paterno. I think it's the names Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think it's the name of the coach of what's
that team.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Of the Penn State.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I guess when
somebody says, uh, you know, I, you know, would you
be interested uh in in in in being a movie
and playing al Pacino's wife in a movie about you know,
(12:53):
the gruesome things that went on there, you know, I
guess she just that's kind of one of those things
that like, there's just some things she don't say no to.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
You, you know, playing playing Patino right right right, And.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
That's kind of I thought that was a pretty interesting
look at that whole situation. And uh, it reminded me,
reminded me of that we won't get politically here, but
it reminded me of that congressman was the wrestler who
likes aw some stuff and never reported it. What's the
name of that guy, Jim, you know, you know what
(13:30):
I'm talking about. His name is Jim actually Jim George George.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
He was like.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
An assistantstling coach at Olile State, who who who one
of his associates was clearly fondling the boys and more
and and he you know like see no evil, hear
no evil, speak no evil.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
It was going on right in front of him. And
he's met up about it.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
He just let it pass. Yeah, well it sounds like
the same thing that happened to Joe and that they
pretty much so, yeah, Joe got fired and they tore
down his uh statue and uh he died like two
weeks later.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Isn't that crazy he did?
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Really? Yeah? Yeah, that's crazy. How you know, he was
right in the middle of the of a season, four
games left, he said he'd retire, he wanted to coach
the last four games. And you know, I'd forgotten that
that that really is kind of Yeah, they wouldn't. They
wouldn't let him. They wouldn't let him coach the last
four games. And you know, I think.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Well, the heat was building so much as it came
out more and more of what that assistant coach san
Dusky had done. Yeah, that that there was just no
way it could go forward. Yeah, you know, and that,
and and Paccino's role there was similar. He was doing
a number of movies for HBO about real people. You know,
(14:59):
he played Kubworki.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Koorki, and he played what was the other one that
you were telling me about, the Whip. I don't think
I saw that one. He places spector. I would loft
to playing Phil Spector.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
I saw that one. I liked it.
Speaker 5 (15:12):
Yeah, I saw that one. I remember just turning it
on one day. I didn't know who Phil Spector was.
I just watched the whole story, and I went.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
The whole story.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Yeah, what's the name of it? Because it's probably not
called phil Spector? Like this one was called Bill Spector,
It's called and Crazy, the other one called KOORKI. I
(15:41):
guess if you do something and it's good and people
like it, you do it again. No change it, don't
change anything about it. Man. Anyway, getting back.
Speaker 5 (15:52):
To the David Mamette who wrote and directed that too.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Oh really, yeah, did you know that?
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Jim what Kavorkian? No Phil Spector? Oh wow, No, I
had no idea. Maybe I should watch that.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I think I avoided it just because the subject was
so unpleasant, I thought, But uh, yeah, I think I
should watch that.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Yeah. I think I'll go home and and and and
watch that this this after I get my son down
to sleep. So anyway, we were, I was I wanted
to talk a little bit about, uh, the Abyss because
of how difficult people talk about it. It being working
(16:38):
on that movie and they always asked me, was that
the most difficult movie you've ever worked on? How bad
was it? Uh? Yanna, yanna? And you know it was
Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Masteringtonio and they kind of
(17:02):
had a group and they all again it was one
of those situations where all the deep sea divers that
were on the rig, that were on the rig, they
all kind of hang it, hung out together, and I
was I played the bad guy, and I wanted you know,
I probably am in about eight percent of that movie.
(17:23):
I mean, you know, I love the character and I
love the death. I mean, what other actor can say
that he died in an implosion right on film? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (17:36):
Well I went down with that submarine started sending you
your fucking death scene in the abysse.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Jim Cameron came out to speak
about how what an idiot that guy was, and uh oh.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Yeah, I just saw the documentary about that and pretty
creepy what happened.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Well, you know, it just sounds like that guy was like, ah,
you know what he he had, like the way that
he ran the you know, went.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Down, do he have hazard?
Speaker 4 (18:05):
My god?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
He had a you know, video game joy stick for
before this thing. You're going to go down.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
To with a PlayStation remote.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
That's just like I don't worry about those cracks bangs
you're hearing in the hall, you know, well.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
You know, normally submarine.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
What Jim was upset seemed to be upset about was
the fact that people in the know, meaning probably the
United States Navy, knew right from the very beginning that things.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Very clear from very clear.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
But they let it. They let it go for a
couple of days as if they were searching for you know,
remains or you know. And I think that Jim.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
How many how many dives did Jim make?
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Thirty? More than thirty?
Speaker 4 (18:58):
I think, I don't know. But Jim, what's the name
of that? Uh uh?
Speaker 3 (19:03):
The deepest part of the world.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
Marianas Trench, the Marianas Trench. Yeah, he went.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
I think he's I think he's been to the deepest
point any human has ever been. I could be wrong,
maybe somebody surpassed that, but I thought he went to
the deepest point on Earth.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Yeah. Well, I you know, if I was going to
go anywhere like that, it would certainly be with Jim Cameron.
I used to talk to Bill Paxton, Scared, he said, scared.
She was so fucking scared when they did their dive.
I think they went down to the Titanic too. He
was he said, you know, he didn't something about being
(19:40):
something about his underwear being brown or something. Bill dis
Bill went on one of those dives. And this was
a period of time when Jim was waiting for Avatar,
waiting for the technology to catch up to Avatar, and
Jim was doing all sorts of things, and one of
the things he did was take bill accent down I believe,
(20:01):
to the Titanic. And you know, Bill said he was scared.
Ship was the entire time. Well, it wasn't one moment
where he felt sort of like, okay, well this is.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
You know, oh my god, any little.
Speaker 4 (20:20):
Which reminds me of being you know, when I did
the Abyss, I was in side what they what they
what they called a submersible. Okay, and you know we
I have I'm inside of a submersible at the end
of the movie and uh, Mary lisamiths, mister Antonio's inside
(20:44):
of submersible. I think with d and the two submersibles
fight and uh but I can remember being in that
submersible and you know, Jim's trying to you gotta remember,
you know, it's underwater. You know, just try to think
about doing anything under eating sleepy. You know, well, you
(21:10):
can go to the bathroom. That's that's pretty easy to
do underwater. But you know, it's just it's hard hard
to film underwater, really really really hard to film. And
I think that the the people that had it the
most difficult on that movie was number one, Jim Cameron.
(21:35):
Jim spent more time underwater and at depth then And
I'll tell you a quick story. Well, and uh, the
DP is named Al Givings or Al.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Very famous underwater photographer getting sent.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Yeah, and Al was under there a lot. And they
have had a lot of safety divers. The safety divers,
would you know, make sure that when we're because we
were not in scuba gear. I didn't you know, I
didn't have scuba gear on. I had you know, a
helmet on and uh and that was connected to uh,
(22:18):
something that I wore on my shoulders that was part
of my wardrobe. And when I would go down and
we would go down, there were two tanks. One was
a not real deep tank. The other one was about
a thirty foot tank that was that was the big tank.
(22:38):
I think it had over a million gallons of water.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
And shooting in an old nuclear power plant. Weren't you, Yeah,
have an old nuclear power plant in South Carolina.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
Yeah, it's called Gaffty, South Carolina. And I guess at
some point they were going to put a And you know,
it was Linda Hamilton that always taught me to say
nuclear instead of nuclear. Uh, when I was doing the terminators,
like Michael, No, no it's not nuclear, it's nuclear nuclear nuclear.
I'm so excited when I'm yelling at her that probably
(23:12):
got it wrong, but she was always ah, but yes,
it was a the shell of a nuclear Uh what
was going too?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I guess yeah, it would have been the cooling power
huge reservoir.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
And uh, you know Jim and again Gail. I'm reaching
out to Gail. She's just so so fascinating to see
if she could possibly come talk to us. That she
would just be amazing to have on the show. But
they they found that place and rigged it in a
(23:52):
way where they could fill it up with water and
shoot a movie underwater. Now, obviously the whole movie is
not shot underwater, and I'm not sure exactly what percent
is shot underwater, but I can guarantee you. I spent
a lot of time underwater, and I know, I know
(24:15):
the guys that were playing the heels with me. You
spend a lot of time underwater. And I sat inside
of that submersible, and you know, there was no communication.
There was no It wasn't like I could like talk
and anybody could hear me. And while they were setting
up shots, I'd be sitting in that thing for an
(24:37):
hour or two hours just waiting for them to you know,
set the shot and and and get it correct. Now,
when I actually shot my death scene that was reaching
up and the things cracking and everything that was on
a that was on a set, and that was on
a set. But I did a lot of waiting and wait,
and you.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Didn't have to play like you were going crazy.
Speaker 6 (25:00):
Well probably were that.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Yeah, Well, the one thing about acting, one thing about movies,
television and being in the army is that there's a
lot of waiting around. And there's a lot of waiting
around when you know, when when we were working and
I used to take scripts of other stuff that I
(25:27):
had either been offered or people were possibly interested in
me doing, and I would just sit inside of that
thing and and and and read the scripts and uh
why yeah, I mean it's uh a little multiply asking
there by Michael Bean. So one of the things that
I wanted to mention about because people talk is the
(25:51):
safety divers. I think it had had it real bad.
There were some divers that needed to set up lights
for al would you say his last name was get In. Yeah,
And those are the people that I think spent the
most time underwater, and they did have to deal with
you know, chlorine sort of changing the color of their hair,
(26:18):
taking the kind of the color out of their hair.
But Jim was here's an example of I went. I
remember going to work one day and I probably spent
six or seven hours underwater. I never had to do
what they call hang off the line, which is when
(26:39):
you are underwater for a long period of time, let's
say thirty feet and you're under there for six or
seven hours, you can't just go straight to the top
because you get the bins and so therefore you have
to I think they used to call it hanging hang
off the line or something like that. So it's like
a rope and you go up like ten feet and
you know, wait twenty minutes. Then you go up another
(27:00):
ten feet and you have to just forty minutes exactly.
Your body has to deal with it. And I did,
you know, I never had to do that because I
was never underwater for that length of time, for that
that long of time. But I remember working one day
(27:21):
and I was wrapped and out of the water, and uh,
I was just trashed. You know. It's just a long day,
a lot of underwater stuff. I was just exhausted. And
I remember walking by. They used to have something that
(27:43):
they would call the observation window, which is a big
window that if you wanted to, you could watch the
production being set up. You could watch Jim setting up
the shots, you could see the actors down there, you could,
you know. It was called the observation window. And I
(28:03):
remember walking by the observation window and there was nobody
in the tank except for Jim. And Jim was hanging
off the line okay, And Jim was hanging off the
line upside down okay. And Jim was hanging off the
(28:30):
line upside down looking at a monitor underwater all right.
So I'm looking at this and I'm just thinking, like,
what the fuck. Guy's unbelievable. So I say to him,
the next day, Hey, Jim, I was just you know,
I'd wrapped where everybody was going home. You were still
(28:53):
hanging off the line. Why were you upside down? And
he said, well, the helmets that we all wore were
made for us, and they were somewhat comfortable. The helmet
that he had, which he could communicate to one person
underneath the water if he would plug and he could
(29:14):
communicate to one person. The helmet that he had on
his laid very very heavy on his shoulders, So his
shoulders were getting very bruised because of this helmet that
was laying on. So he was like upside down because
the helmet was hurting his shoulders, taking the weight off
(29:36):
his shoulders. And I'm like, well you need like had
like a monitor in front of you. What what the
hell was that? And he's going, oh, I was watching dailies.
I'm like, I'm like, are you kidding me? Are you
fucking kidding me? You know, that's that's where that's where
you know, Jim Jim, Jim has a tendency.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
To that's going to be one of the revealing stories
I've ever heard about him.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Well, it just goes to show you that he doesn't waste,
you know, no waste. Any time he's watching it's the
only time that he has because he's probably spending you know,
eighteen hours a day working and you know, if he's
got half an hour and it's got nothing to do,
(30:23):
he's gonna watch dailies and he's gonna do it underwater,
and he's gonna do it upside downside down.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
So I mean, it was, it was. It was just
absolutely insane.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
And you remember when Tim Calesari came on the set
and he walked on the set and Jim popped up
from the water and said, Hey, Kimmy, I just set
the record for the longest time underwater shooting in one session.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Yeah, I yeah, I know that. You know Timmy and
I know Timmy, and we all know the same stories.
So you we'll tell the audience that one. But yeah,
I certainly knew that, and Timmy did come down to
visit me, brought Devin and Taylor down when they were
like six seven or something like that, brought Devin and
(31:16):
Taylor down to spend some time.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
Is that when he gave you that joint.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
That will lead to that story. Jim, actually he mailed
that to me and I was in Gaffney, and you know,
there was never anything doing Gaffney. There was a bigger
city about about an hour away, and we were in
South Carolina. It might have been North Carolina. I forgotten
what it was, but it was a big city. We
could go up there if we wanted to go into
a club or or that type of thing. But I
(31:48):
didn't do really do much partying on that because there
was no party with it, really. But he gave me
a me in the mail, Timmy Colseari sent me in
the mail a joint. So, like not the smartest thing
to do, but back then, you know, like nobody definitely right. So,
(32:14):
so I had this joint and I you know, I've
been awake and bake guy uh so, and I don't whatever.
I you know, there was probably always marijuana in my system,
but if I had something important to do, I didn't.
You know, I never I never smoked if I had
(32:34):
you know, dialogue, and you know, I never never would
get you know, hot that high. So but anyway, I'm
going to the set and I'm shooting the sequence where
I get into the fight with Ed Harris, and and
I still had this joint. It's in my pocket. Or whatever,
(32:56):
and I pull it out, I'm like, oh, there's this joint.
I don't take a couple of hits off this joint,
take a couple of hits off of it, you know,
put it in the astray. I got so fucking stone, man.
I was so so fucking just wow. It was like
like it was really really good part he gotten from
(33:18):
a friend of his who was all for a while.
That's the thing is, I haven't had any for probably,
you know, two weeks or a month or something, and uh,
Jim wouldn't let me go back to LA and I
had a lot of time. So but I was like he, Uh,
Timmy had a country western star, uh singer. I forget
(33:39):
his name. I'll think of his name in a second.
That's who gave it to him. He gave it to me,
And like I just wasn't used to first of all, Uh,
it had been a couple of weeks since I gotten high,
and or a month or two months or whatever. And
on top of that, I think it was just like
crazy ass pot So you know, I I was so
(34:01):
stone I barely could make it like through a wardrobe.
We didn't have to. I got some makeup done on me,
and I was just quiet, you know, I was just quiet,
acting like I was like, you know, we're going over
my lines in my head, and I didn't have any
lines or anything. I just had to do this fight
sequence with Ed, and yeah, I got my wardrobe on
(34:24):
and then you know, I'm dressed like a Navy seal.
But anyway, I go out on the set and it's
just it if you know that there's a chain that
I'm pulling on and it's just kind of got a
weird vibe that set the waters about a foot or
(34:45):
two feet high. And I'm sitting there and I'm clearly
clearly out of my fucking mind in two ways. One one,
my character is like absolutely out of his fucking mind
at that point, and and I'm a little out of
my mind because I'm so stoned that like I can
(35:06):
remember Jim Cameron entering the area that we were shooting
at and me having a conversation with myself whether I
was going to be able to say Hi, Jim or
good morning Jim and be able to get that out
of my mouth.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
You know.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
That's how That's how drunk I was. I mean drunk,
not Freudian slip. No, no, no, no, No, that's how
high I was. So I'm sitting there and feeling like,
you know, a little paranoid and a little bit like, God,
how nobody fucking notices? And I look up and I
(35:45):
see me me. I see myself on the other side
of the room, and it was me. It was me.
I was here and I was over there too, and
I was stone out of my fucking mind. Man. I
(36:06):
was like, how can I be over there? How can
I be there? When I'm here?
Speaker 3 (36:12):
You can rub your eyes.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
I was. It was about ten secs, and you know,
like like I said, I was like just I was
blazing anyway, and there were about ten or twelve fifteen
seconds from my mind was just like, oh my god,
I can't this is too much. I can't deal. This
is like you know. And when I look back again
(36:38):
for the third or fourth time that I saw myself,
I turned to look back at me and I realized, Oh,
it was my stunt double in all, in all my wardrobe,
and you know, he had the fucking everything on. He
had the knife in his hand, he had the whole thing.
(37:02):
Oh yeah, totally, like you know, like he was my
stunt double. Of course, he looked exactly like me. So
I was kind of over there. But that was like, whew, okay,
well feeling much better now, let's let's get this calling Michael. Yeah,
that was that was That was That was pretty crazy.
(37:24):
And we had another thing that happened down while we
were shooting. And what what happened was that we would
get into that tank and uh, the actors, not the
safety divers and and not Jim and what, but the
(37:45):
actors all had on weighted boots and uh uh that
it was kind of like walking on the moon, so
you could kind of like bounce around down there, but
you were weighted down. You were you were supposed to
be able to walk down. And that was I guess
part of the story. You know that that's that's how
(38:08):
these divers and these guys work on these rigs and
stuff like that, that they've got these these weights on.
And there was an underwater oxygen sort of an oxygen tank,
so at any time you could look see how much
oxygen you had, and you know, it'd be like a
(38:28):
gas tank. You look down, Oh I'm at three quarters.
I got nothing else to do. I'm going to go
over and fill up. You know, Oh, I've only got
a half a thing, I better go over and fill up.
And I always think that was good for about an
hour or something like that because we were under water
and we're in these I was in these helmets. We
didn't have scuba gear on, and we didn't have what
(38:49):
they're go on octopus, which is you know, a divers,
you know, sucking oxygen off their back. We were just
this was just being poured into us. Uh. The oxygen
was being supplied underwater. And so anyway, I was down there.
I don't remember if Chris was down there too. Chris
(39:12):
was one of the other seals. I think the seals
were down there, and and there were there were there
were some crew members. I don't think Mary was there.
I don't think that Ed was there. Uh. And what
what was happening at the beginning of the movie when
Jim was trying to shoot underneath the water in this
(39:33):
huge tank is the light would like from the sun
would come through and go through the water, and it
was kind of messing up like his ability to light
a underwater shot that he wanted to shoot because he
had to deal with the sun. So they came up
(39:55):
with this idea very early on that they would take beads.
If you just think of little black beads, you know,
about the size of a dime around not even smaller
than that. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them, and
and and they floated, and they floated on top of
(40:18):
the tank. So what they had a tendency to, well
what the reason they put him on there was to
block the light. So, uh when you came up, there
would be all these uh, all these sort of black
beads there. And Jim was then able to because it
(40:39):
was now dark up above, Jim was able to go
ahead in light shots the way that he was normally,
like like you would in a normal room, you don't
have to deal with the sun if it's completely.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Uh uh blacked out.
Speaker 4 (40:55):
Blacked out, thank you, and uh so, so we'd be
down there and we'd you know, we got pretty comfortable
down there doing that. It was fun. I thought it
was fun. People talk about how difficult it was. I
thought it was fun. I thought the whole thing was
just a blast. Had a great time. Uh. Like I said,
(41:16):
I didn't have to work as much as some of
the other people. But I go down there and just
be bouncing around and uh, you know, you're underwater. You're
shooting a movie underwater. Uh, you're you're you're recording dialogue underwater.
You're doing some things for the first time ever that
(41:37):
any actor's ever done, uh in there, in there in
the history of movies. And I was, I was just
enjoying myself. I had a really good time. And uh,
I was you know, always in in wardrobe. And uh
we were down there once and you know, uh, there
(42:00):
were a lot of guys, you know, they set up
lights and stuff. It was always, you know, pretty well
lit down there. And at one point when we were working,
when I was working, when I was underwater, everything went black,
just fing black all They lost power, to the entire unit,
(42:25):
to the entire tank. They lost all power. And I'm
talking about it goes from like this, like I'm talking
to you, like to like you can't see your hand
in front of your face.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Black.
Speaker 4 (42:41):
Now, there was always a safety diver or two divers
that were kind of watching me and watching Chris or
anybody else who was down there with these helmets on.
Jim also Jim and at some point ed Harris and
and you know, so there were these safety divers down there,
(43:04):
but all of a sudden it goes black, and it's
just like, where's my safety divers? Wait a second, when
was the last time that I, you know, got oxygen?
How much oxygen do I have? It was like whoa,
It was like wow. And it lasted probably about it's
(43:32):
probably less than ten minutes, but it was probably six
or seven minutes, eight minutes something. It was. It was
long enough time that I was There was no light
at all. None. I mean when I say black, I
mean nothing. Jim, you couldn't And the helmets.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
Of the safety divers were wearing didn't have lights in the.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
No no, no, no, no no. And so I finally
after six or seven minutes of being and then being
more and more scared because I didn't know the way out.
I didn't know left from right, I didn't know east
(44:16):
from west. I didn't know, and I couldn't. I couldn't
go to the top.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
It was almost like being in an isolation tank.
Speaker 4 (44:23):
Well yeah, yeah, and I had to walk out of
that when the lights were on. I had to walk
to a certain area and then walk up these steps
and the like get out. I couldn't just like like
take my boots off. I couldn't. I was stuck there,
and so were I think a few other people. Uh.
(44:45):
And after a bit of time, I thought to myself,
and I realized that I had what they call a
practical light. When you're on a movie set and you
see a light that turns on and off on the set,
that's called it practical. Okay, that's a practical light. That's
(45:08):
a light that the DP knows is there and he's
ready for you to turn that light on and off.
And I realized that I had a practical flashlight. I
had my character carries around a flashlight and uses it
in the movie. But I was so fucking stone or
(45:31):
or so whatever that I hadn't even thought about it. Yeah. Yeah,
So I pulled this flashlight out and I turn it on,
and immediately people started coming towards me, you know, because
I was the only one who had a light. Everybody
was in the same boat as me. And immediately people
(45:51):
started coming towards me, and like three.
Speaker 6 (45:55):
Four, five six, people like eyes wide, you know, like
like oh my, like this is thank god, you know,
people just you know, they came glued to me.
Speaker 3 (46:06):
And you should have had a camera on.
Speaker 4 (46:07):
That, well, Jim. Eventually, and I don't mean eventually, like
he was being slow about it. He he was, you know,
one of the first people that came over, and he
realized the situation that I was in and that some
of the other actors and other people that had the
(46:29):
boots on were in, and he threw sign language. Basically
it was kind of a follow me, I'm going to
lead everybody out. You need to follow me, you know,
and he took my flashlight and we followed. It was dark,
(46:51):
I mean except for that light in front of us.
It was I mean black black, And we followed Jim
and we found followed him for a minute or two.
Right when we sort of got to the area where
we would start walking upstairs, but we didn't know it
because it was completely black. All the lights turned back
(47:13):
on again. Like so it went from lights to like
completely black for five or six minutes to U a flashlight.
Everybody you know, crowded around, all right, we're going out
this way, follow me, follow Jim Cameron, and and then
the lights came all back on again. So you know,
(47:36):
people talk about, hey, does anything ever happen on a
movie set? You ever get scared? Any stunts that you like?
That was that was kind of gnarly.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
And that would have had my shorts brown too, or
just like Bill Paxton from the bottom.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Of the ocean, you know.
Speaker 4 (47:57):
And there's some way that they did it a horse.
But I've never understood how you could take lights and
electricity and use electricity underwater. You know, you know, you
know there's somebody a lot smarter than me. I mean
(48:19):
a lot smarter than me.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
Make sure that's what I would have.
Speaker 4 (48:23):
All these cables, cables, all yeah, cables and lights, and
you know it was But I had a really, really,
really fun time. I had a good time on that movie. Uh.
When I saw the movie, I was very happy with
my performance. I think that uh, I think that I
(48:45):
mentioned this before Jim had me in and uh, you know,
Jim has a tendency to make movies that are, you know, long,
and then then be cut down. He did that with
a scene of Mine and the Terminator that I thought
was when I first got the script, I thought, Ah,
this is this is the scene. This is a scene
(49:06):
where res breaks down, and oh my god, this is
a scene. This is a scene. This was not in
the movie. And I was with Sigourney Weaver when we
were in New York before any of the actors saw
the movie in Aliens, And I was with Sigourney when
Jim told her that a lot of her story about
(49:29):
her child that she had and when I'm not talking
about newt I'm talking about a real child that she
had had been cut from from from the from the movie.
I was with Sigourney and this Sigourney was not happy.
She was not happy about it at all.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
And well, there's no trace of that in the movie.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
Is that.
Speaker 4 (49:52):
Well, if you go look at like the director's cut,
there's a big trace of it. You know, you'll see. Okay,
you know, you'll see if you look get the director's cut,
you'll see that, Yes, there was a real backstory there.
But you know, Jim has to decide, you know, how
long the movie's gonna be. Yeah, And I think that
Sigourney probably forgave him when she was nominated for an
(50:16):
Academy Award for that role. You don't see that type
of role, action kind of horror action movie. You don't
really see.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
People getting nominated for that.
Speaker 4 (50:32):
No, no, you don't. And but I was with her
and us I want to get back to the talking
about the Abyss, but it just reminds me of they
were having a screening for the press in New York City,
and this is the Aliens now that I'm talking about,
(50:54):
and Jim and Gale and whoever, everybody at Fox, all
the press was going to go watch the movie. And
they didn't want the actors watching it. They didn't want
the actors watching it at the same time as the
press watched it. Whatever. Fair enough, we didn't quite understand
it at the time. So when I saw Aliens for
(51:19):
the first time, Bill Paxton and myself made our way
up to the project to projector the projector and you know,
back in the day, there used to be a guy
up there who was running the projector, yeah, and you
(51:41):
know the yeah and had a little you know, had
a hole that he could like, you know, if something
went wrong. You know, everybody remembers, well, people that are
my age, everybody that's not everybody, that's not everybody, everybody,
but uh so Bill and I made our way up there,
(52:04):
and Bill and I watched the entire movie with the
camera not camera operator. What did you call him, Jim
the projection the projectionist. Yeah, we watched the entire movie
kind of like through these the projectors. Whole the thing
that he sees the movie through. And I can remember
(52:26):
we were both just like totally stoked, and we're jumping
up and we're high five in each other and that
and and uh, Bill Paxton at that time describe the movie,
you know, Bill, Oh my god, are you kidding me?
Oh my god, that's a fucking roller coaster, right, Michael.
(52:48):
It's a you know, going down trying to do my
Bill Paxton invitation. You got not very good. And it's
interesting because people describe that movie as a roller coaster ride.
(53:09):
And I have a feeling that Bill said it so
many times to so many people in the press, they
eventually just started calling it a roller coaster ride. But
that's how I saw that that movie. Now, when we
did the Abyss. On the other hand, Jim, I was
(53:31):
on the lot. I don't think I wasn't at home.
I was on the lot. I was on the Fox lot.
And he knew I was on the lot and he called,
he Hey, got a message to me and said, come
on over here. I want you to take a look
at some stuff. And I went over and I I said,
(53:58):
what do you got? You said, well, I've got I
wanted to show you the ending of the Abyss. I've
got a cut which is, you know, twenty two minutes
longer than what the studio wants me to release. And
I want you to take a look at him, and
(54:19):
I want you to tell me what you think, which
you know, which one that you like more? And so
I did. That's where I saw the end of the Abyss.
And you know, the Abyss is I think the end
of the Abyss is the only, the only, like Mark,
(54:45):
I don't know exactly what you would call it on
a flawless filmmaker's career, is the end of the Abyss
somehow doesn't work as well as it should work. And
and I I think I remember telling him that, which
(55:07):
I don't and he wasn't happy with me. He wasn't
happy at me with me at all, but I told him.
And and in retrospect, when you think about the Abyss,
there's a there's a part in that movie where Ed
(55:27):
Harris and Mary Elizabeth Elizabeth muster Antonio. I used to
call her Mary Elizabeth must et cetera. She was sweet
to me though that they are trying to survive. They're
in a in a room where the water is rising
(55:48):
and they've only got one helmet, and they have to
decide who's going to wear the helmet and who's going
to get dragged underwater and then brought back to life
once they got to dry land. And it's a great,
great scene and they're just like fun. Both of them
(56:09):
are phenomenal actors, phenomenal and it's just a great, great,
great scene, very tense moment, very very very tense. And
he says, you know, you wear it, you wear it,
and she says, no, you wear it, and then she
kind of makes the point of like the reason why
you should wear it is and he has to say, like, oh, yeah,
(56:31):
you're right about that. Okay, all right, I'll put it on.
And so what happens is she drowns. She drowns, and
then he's got to well grab her and take her
underwater for I don't know, one hundred yards or two
hundred yards or.
Speaker 3 (56:49):
Whatever considerable distance, yeah.
Speaker 4 (56:51):
And then bring her out and lay her on the
debt dry service the deck correct and bring her back
to life, which he does with the help of his crew.
And that scene is so emotional and Ed Harris is
(57:15):
so wondering. He's like, come on, you can do it,
you can do it. And you know, they're pumping her
chest and.
Speaker 3 (57:23):
It's a very moving scene.
Speaker 4 (57:24):
Oh, it's just incredible movement. Brings almost brings tears to
my eyes now.
Speaker 5 (57:29):
And she.
Speaker 4 (57:31):
Yeah, and she you know, he ends up slapping her
and they don't think that she's gonna you know, and
he's like, wake up, you bitch, you know, and he's
slapping her and and she finally like burps up some
water and and oh my god, oh my god. So
and of course she lives. She's the female lead in
(57:52):
the movie. I play the bad guy. I'm going who dies?
Uh so?
Speaker 3 (57:57):
But it's again, yet again, yet again.
Speaker 4 (57:59):
Yes, it's a very very very emotional scene. And in
my heart of hearts, I don't think that the the
actors in the movie or the characters in the movie
(58:19):
are as ever they're they're never as emotional as they
are in that scene. And I don't think the the
audience never sees anything that is more emotional than that scene.
And that scene is so good. It should have been
(58:41):
like the at the end of the movie, like at
the end, because once you've you know, you're right.
Speaker 3 (58:47):
About that, it's hard to recover from that moment.
Speaker 4 (58:50):
Yeah, And I think that you know, just because the
the actors were so good. And I think that been uh.
I think that I think that uh, Ed Harris, who's
you know. I hear bits and pieces I see online.
(59:12):
I hear him talking. I would never never want to,
never want to speak to him. But Ed Edwarked Ed
worked hard, He worked hard, hard on that movie, and
he had a close call or two. Uh, And I
think that he was disappointed in the way that he
(59:35):
reacted to fear and uh. But I think that he
was very, very very disappointed at the end of the movie,
especially the one because they used the shorter one and
(59:56):
you know, there's all of this incredible filmmaking going on,
and then like the end happens and they're all everybody's
just kind of standing out in the middle of the
ocean on a big plank of wood or something, and
it just doesn't work. Man, it just doesn't work. And
it's the only time I could whatever say that, you know,
(01:00:19):
it just doesn't it doesn't work. And I know that
Ed was very unhappy about that. He just like poured
his soul into that that character. And I mean, I
remember they they were they were trying to cast that
character while I was there I had been there for
a while, and you know, I I auditioned for Jim
(01:00:42):
Cameron for The Terminator. I replaced James Remar in Aliens,
and Jim just offered me this role of Coffee and I, uh,
you know, I had a great, great time making uh
(01:01:04):
that movie.
Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
And you had you had another person in the cast
named Todd grit Gaff.
Speaker 4 (01:01:12):
Todd Todd Graff was one of the one of the
oil workers who was part of Mary Elizabeth's team, and
Mary Elizabeth and Ed Harris played husband and wife there
in the middle of a divorce or something like that,
like Jim and Gail, Well, Jim. Jim was Jim. Jim
and Gail were boyfriend and girlfriend when we did The Terminator.
(01:01:35):
They were married when we did Aliens, and they were divorced,
uh when we made uh The Abyss, and she was there.
She produced the whole thing responsible for producing that movie,
and they were divorced. So I think there was some
of that, you know, some of that stuff was so good.
Ed was just so so good, and I think that
(01:01:56):
I think it was just very very disappointed.
Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
Todd's a guy who has the rat on his shoulders. Yeah, movie,
and he he was in right around the same time,
he was in one of our war story pieces that
was a like a one man show about a guy
who gets separated from his unit. And then a couple
of years later he really hit it as a screenwriter.
Speaker 4 (01:02:18):
Yeah. Well, I know that that he was a writer,
and I know that he uh.
Speaker 3 (01:02:25):
He got he got a couple of movies made produced.
Speaker 4 (01:02:28):
Uh well, yeah, good for him. And he also came
out of the closet a year or two ago, so
there's yeah, that's got that going for him too. Uh,
finally able to be himself, I guess. But yeah, Todd
was uh that was kind of reminds me of around
the time that Jim was thinking about the minds of
(01:02:49):
Billy Milligan. Remember that, Jim. That was a Yeah, that
was a movie that Jim wanted to make, and just
I guess he had problems with the people that own
the book.
Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
It was a well known book and.
Speaker 4 (01:03:07):
It was wasn't it about a young man who had
eight or ten or twelve or fifteen different personalities?
Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (01:03:16):
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I Todd. I think that
Jim saw Todd as a writer. I think Jim saw
his talent, and I think that that Jim might have
worked with him or wanted him to work on something
I've forgotten, but I seem to remember a bond between
(01:03:41):
he and Jim Cameron because because of his writing ability.
And so, you know, when people talk to me about
like a movie being difficult, it was difficult for Jim,
It was difficult for those safety divers. It was really
difficult for Harris, Mary Elizabeth Monstuntonio. Well, they don't, they don't.
(01:04:04):
She won't even talk about it. She said, you know,
she had such a bad experience. And from what I understand,
that scene that I said was so heartbreaking or it
was so emotion emotional. Was the scene that she felt
that that Jim was just pushing them too hard and
(01:04:27):
got up And I've heard, Okay, I don't know. I
wasn't there, but I've heard that she said we're not
animals and walked off the set. But you know, uh,
I very well could be wrong about that. So uh,
and I know Mary's not going to come out, and
(01:04:48):
I know ed Harris is not going to come out
and say anything about it, because they never talked about it.
I didn't, you know, I didn't think it was you know,
I you know, I'll talk about K two on on
one of these shows, but asking about it, people are
asking about it. Yeah, And K two was like, Wow,
that was much much more for me. Difficult sometimes working
(01:05:14):
in the elements, working in freezing cold weather, working uh uh,
sometimes stunts with fires and things like that. You can.
I enjoyed that movie. I enjoyed being on the set.
The only problem that I had on the set was
(01:05:36):
that I didn't I wasn't on the set all the time.
I wasn't working all the time. I was mostly like
waiting for them to shoot their stuff. And so you.
Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
Told me how funny it was to, you know, be
in wardrobe and make up, et cetera, and then hear
a knock on the.
Speaker 4 (01:05:56):
Door and whoa, Jim, Jim, Jim you But you have
to put that in perspective, okay, because that now you're
talking about K two. Yes, okay, so go you. You
can go ahead. But I just want to make sure
that that everybody knew that you were talking about K
(01:06:18):
two at this point, and uh, oh, yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:06:22):
You had gone back to the abyss after K two.
I was I was wondering for a minute there. I
was like, which movie is he talking about? Yeah, then
I figured it out it was the ABYSS. But that's
all right, Jim. I was there with.
Speaker 4 (01:06:31):
You, so you can go ahead.
Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
Well, yeah, I thought you were talking about K two,
how much you enjoyed doing the movie.
Speaker 4 (01:06:41):
Well I didn't. I did enjoy doing that movie. I
was going through a really difficult time during that movie,
really really difficult time. But what you're talking about and
not if you I'll go ahead and just you know,
tell the stories that that that we used to shoot
on a glacier and we used to shoot at fifteen
(01:07:02):
thousand feet or something like that. That was our base camp.
We had a base camp, just like climbers do that like.
And I never learned any of that stuff. I didn't.
I wasn't you know. I never learned to dive. I
was never into diving. I was never in although I
had to get certified for the ABYSS. But yeah, there
was a lot of work on top of that mountain,
(01:07:25):
and uh, it wasn't easy to get from place to place.
And uh so I would get up in the morning,
I would get my wardrobe won, I would go in
the makeup, get my makeup done. Let the first day
get a second ad. No, I'm ready. Whenever they need me,
I go back in my tent. There were tents that
(01:07:46):
we had, uh and then I would get a knock
on the front of the tent, on the front of
the on the front of the tent, and I get
a knock in front of the tenor mister Bin, mister
ban your helicopter is ready, like yes, yes, So we did.
(01:08:13):
We did a lot of helicopter work on that on
that movie, a load and loads and loads of helicopter work.
But I don't, you know, I want to save that
experience I was going through with his mother. And that
was the whole Patsy Kensitt situation which I was.
Speaker 5 (01:08:37):
That's an episode in itself right there.
Speaker 4 (01:08:39):
Well you know it's it was. I was. I was
in a lot of pain because I didn't I never
wanted to hurt your mother. Never never, never wanted to
hurt your mother. Never wanted to hurt her. And I
had and I did. But during that the making of
that movie, Patsy, there was a time that we were
(01:09:06):
together and we spent some like six months together and
then and then she I was supposed to go over
to England and go over to England and be with
her in England, and I knew. I knew in my head,
I know exactly where I was. I was in Lake
Cavaso on the phone Lake cavas Who when I was
(01:09:27):
talking to her, and I told her that I couldn't
come over there. I wouldn't come over there because I
knew that paparazzi over there is like vicious, just like crazy,
crazy stuff. But I was still going through that, and
then that kind of that put a cooler on things.
(01:09:47):
I was kind of still going through that when I
was doing K two and she she was there for
a while and that was the end of that. But
because I was still trying to end this on a
more fun note.
Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
Yeah, really joke. You have a moment with Mary Elizabeth Master,
et cetera. I remember telling you I thought it was
really golden. I thought it was a terrific example of
great screenwriting.
Speaker 3 (01:10:21):
And you said it wasn't.
Speaker 4 (01:10:22):
In the screen it wasn't.
Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
Yeah, go ahead, and that's when you you you're kind
of taking over late in the movie, and you back
her up against the bulkhead yep, and it's a close
shot of your faces and from below you hear this
ripping sound yep, and you say, I've been wanting to
do this ever since I came on board. And we
think you're ripping open her pants and you pull up
(01:10:45):
a piece of duct tape and put it over her mouth.
About a really funny moment. You know, really what a
great screenwriting bit this is. Yeah, Jim would have come
up with this, what's the real story?
Speaker 4 (01:10:57):
Well, as you well know, you know, uh, the line
was the line, and I was supposed to put it
over her mouth, but it was my idea to take
that and do that underneath the camera. Who said, okay, Jim, Oh, yeah,
you know, And it was my idea to hide that
(01:11:19):
from the audience. So when you hear that ripping, it
just it sounds kind of scary and disgustingly rape kind
of weird.
Speaker 3 (01:11:29):
Yeah, it does for sure. That's what my mind went.
Speaker 4 (01:11:31):
Yeah, and that's that was that was my intent. And
when Jim, you know, Jim Robert Rodriguez Quintin's the same.
You know, when if you come up with an idea,
that's a great idea, Jim, so great idea, Michael, do that?
Do that? I like that? I like that, Yeah, let's
(01:11:54):
do that. Another thing that I did in that movie
was there was a black dress. Maybe, uh, Kaitlin can
pull her name up. And she used to be in
one of the submersibles Kimberly Scott. Yeah, Kimberly and Kimberly. Uh.
Character was like a country western sort of person and
(01:12:17):
she had this radio and or tape player in her submersible,
so she used to At the beginning of the movie,
they set up the fact that she listens to this
country western music and I when I take over that sub,
I get, I get in the sub and I start
(01:12:40):
taking off and I'm loosing my f and mind and
all of a sudden, this fucking music, you know, comes on,
this this country western music. And I said to Jim, Jim,
do you mind if I just use my elbow and
just wawn, just fun and that in a hurry, you know.
(01:13:03):
And uh, he was like, you go for it, Michael.
And I don't think they you know, they didn't change it.
They didn't change whatever it was. If it was real
or not real, I don't know. But they didn't make
it soft for my elbow, you know. You know. But
it was another moment. That's another moment that you know
(01:13:24):
as an actor that you have that like, Okay, well,
that's the end of that fucking business. You know, I've
got like I'm losing my mind here. I don't need
fucking to be listening to.
Speaker 3 (01:13:35):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (01:13:36):
If I could think of a country and Western singer's name,
I would have. But uh, Anyway, I think that uh Jim,
I think that we're going to we're gonna call this
uh uh. Now that I've uh talked a lot about that,
we can do a whole episode on Russia too. I
would love to talk about Russia. Russia was what a
(01:13:59):
shithole that place. It was fucking horrible. What a fucking
horrible place.
Speaker 3 (01:14:03):
You were horrible people, what you were in Siberia.
Speaker 4 (01:14:08):
I was in Siberia. Yeah, I was in a place
called I'll think I'll have to look at it because
I forget that nor Elsk. It's called twenty degrees below
zero the entire time I was there, and and they
I don't know what they their production fell apart and
they tried to fucking blame me. But I'll wait for another.
Speaker 3 (01:14:30):
That does sound like a whole story.
Speaker 4 (01:14:32):
Oh that's a story, all right. And I well, I
probably I shouldn't have been doing some of the things
that I did. No, I'm not talking about drinking. Yeah,
you know, uh, director had an attractive wife and you
know it's just.
Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
Stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (01:14:53):
On the.
Speaker 4 (01:14:55):
There was a leading lady. It was just you know, anyway,
was quite a scene. Okay, so we'll wrap this up. Jim,
thank you. That had a good time today. Thank you.
I love you, Cal And I just want to thank you.
Know it's I didn't even know that you can like,
oh you can look at the look at the podcast.
(01:15:19):
Always people make remarks here like oh I can read
people are like saying, oh, they like me. Oh they
like me, Jim, they really like me.
Speaker 5 (01:15:31):
Like.
Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
All over the world.
Speaker 4 (01:15:34):
Yeah, only Jim will get that one. Yeah, they like me,
they really like me. I can't believe anybody would make
I was wasn't that where she played the the the
John Malcolm was in it too. Oh I thought it
(01:15:55):
was the one that she played the the work. Oh
yeah that was that was not that you like me,
you really like me? That was the second.
Speaker 3 (01:16:06):
Oscar with the second Oscar Okay, I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 4 (01:16:10):
Well you don't know what it is either being.
Speaker 3 (01:16:12):
No, I don't want to know the name of it.
The one with John Malkovich.
Speaker 4 (01:16:15):
Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, Malcovich guy stole my role in
all right. Oh yeah, and by the way, yeah, it's
like fun to like everybody's real positive and like talking
about how much they like me and what a wonderful
actor I am. I really like that now. I'd like
(01:16:36):
I'd wake up in the morning and I look at
my phone and see like people talking about how much
they like me. It makes me feel really good. Anyway,
we will see you and talk to you, and I
thank you for hanging in there. We got this nice
little core audience and I'm just having a great time.
And I think Jim and Cale.
Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
Well, yeah, and we really appreciate people offering suggestions because
I know a lot of people have asked.
Speaker 1 (01:17:01):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (01:17:01):
I noticed, most recently a lot of people asking us
to talk about the Michael Man movie Manhunters.
Speaker 4 (01:17:06):
Well, here's here's another thing. Let me just say this
in closing. Everybody wants to know why how come we
don't see Jim? How come we don't see Jim? What's
the deal with Jim? What's the deal with Jim? And uh.
When we started this, it was like sort of camera
situation where it's like, all right, Jim, were don't quite
(01:17:28):
have the camera set up exactly right. I just want
to get your voice in. We were we were doing
all the interviews too. We're interviewing, and you know you
were just like coming in like a voice from like
John Favrea.
Speaker 3 (01:17:41):
You know, yeah, you were thinking of that Kim Allen series.
Speaker 4 (01:17:47):
Home Improvement. I'd always say home alone, home Improvement.
Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
Yeah, with that Wilson, the guy you only saw his
face partially through the fans.
Speaker 4 (01:17:57):
Well, and Wilson is the guy that knows everything all
the time and always gives him the best advice. Yeah,
it's kind of like you. You're the one who always
knows the answers to everything except for uh what Sally
Field got nominated in the heart one of those neurons.
Speaker 3 (01:18:20):
Back to remember that one.
Speaker 4 (01:18:23):
All right, all right, all right, I love you all
and having a great time and we will see you
next time.
Speaker 3 (01:18:31):
Got it.
I have declared against my brain in order to see
that won't don't seem to so long, so long as
I know they will be on time the days I
don't have.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
To closing my window.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Is it gone now?
Speaker 4 (00:26):
I think so? Hey j yeah, hey, how are you?
I'm pretty good?
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I uh kind of back at the beginning of our
time together, it's actually kind of a crazy uh Hispanic
woman next door to me.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
He was rambling a bit.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
And you remember that that woman who lived in the
apartment in an Orange dribe who Santa Ria.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
She get possessed like once a month and to just
like go absolutely out of her mind. This is where
where Jim and I for met and lived together in
this apartment building that was right behind Ground's Chinese theaters.
Is the same situation going on there, Jim, Well, there's
a she.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
She's can be emotionally disturbed. I don't know how exactly.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Yeah, be careful these days, man, you don't want to Yeah,
I want to call her.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
I can't diagnose or I know that, but you know
she is diagnosed and she should be taking her meds.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
Hey, you know, you know we're doing silly stuff, but
you know, we were talking about Michael Bay last, like
last time that we talked and something came up, and uh,
maybe you can find it, Caylin. There's a there's something
that my son has been talking about for about two
(01:47):
years and he doesn't really talk about it that much
anymore now he's ten. But when he was eight, he
was all into something called skippity toilet or skippity skippity
toilets something like that, or something toilet, skippity toilet, something
like that. And some guy just started doing a you know,
(02:08):
half hour, ten minutes or whatever a couple two years ago,
and he called his thing skippity toilet, and you know
it blew up. I guess all the seven year olds
and eight year olds and nine year olds are all
like all over it, and you know it got I
guess better and better and better, and I just noticed it.
(02:29):
My Michael Bay's making the movie now. No I think so.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
That No, no, no, you know Michael Bay Ai saying,
oh is this on variety?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Way hold on?
Speaker 4 (02:46):
I mean, it wouldn't surprise me because it's, you know,
it's like what every nine year old kid was talking
talking about.
Speaker 5 (02:54):
There was a variety articles skippity toilet, film and TV
franchise in the work from Michael Bay Adam Goodman.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Well, okay, well I was from May fourth, I thought, okay,
something popular.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
Yeah, July twenty fourth. Yeah all right, well no, that
was from last year. I got to look into this
a little bit.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Okay, well, I don't know. Something came on my phone.
It says Skippity toilet, said Michael Bay, and I thought, yeah, okay,
that's just that's that's he's going to make another billion
dollars on Skippity Toilet. But uh and I uh, my
son has tried to get me to watch it a
few times, and it's you know, it's extremely popular.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
I had this Forbes article says it's official. This is
from May twenty first. It's official Michael Bay will direct
Skivity Toilet movie.
Speaker 4 (03:53):
So I don't know it's going to be as good
as a row, you know. So we'll have to wait
and see if the rock is still like the best movies.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
All the audience agreed with you. They said, yes, that
is definitely the best Michael Bay movie. And looking I
look back on I was like, yeah, that is the
best micro Day movie.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
That's too much, I thought I would uh, Jim, I
thought I would talk just before you know, we get
into the whole movie thing and and everything. I just
wanted to mentionine to you, man, it's not fucking kind
of crazy what Ukraine's doing now that the United States
has kind of gotten out of the way.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I saw a map they hit a place inside.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
I know.
Speaker 4 (04:38):
I've worked in that fucking god awful country in Siberia.
I really really, yes, yes, I hate Russia. It's a
horrible place, horrible place. And at some point, if you
dig deep down enough, you'll find a film that I
was accused of being drunk and there they couldn't make
(05:01):
the movie, and they sued me. And I can just
tell you that that didn't turn out quite the way
that they wanted it to. Just to give you an example,
after they got done suing me, they sued well, they
sued the casting director and then they but and then
after I had to go for depositions and all this shit,
(05:23):
they were all fucking hammered. It was twenty degrees below
suing for god, twenty mean Siberia, everybody runs on body exactly.
Everybody was. Everybody was, you know, and they're all dead
now from alcoholism and and like the director and you know, uh,
the producer. Uh. But anyway, they uh, when they got
(05:45):
done suing me and they didn't get what they wanted.
I guess they sued their lawyers. They were they sued me,
so they were they were all about the whole suing thing.
But I just I just out of Ukraine and I
just thought, like them like bombing the bridge, but like
the whole thing of them being able to like like
(06:07):
take a bunch of trucks and send them out in
different directions and you know, head a thousand miles this way,
in a thousand miles that way.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
And just hurt up all this to as like a
fleet of wooden of iron horse yeah, wooden horses, yeah right, yeah,
Trojan horses horses. Yeah, you know, and which is a
pretty apt analogy. It sounds like craft did they do
some hurt on those planes and knock about one a
(06:35):
third of their of their fleet.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
So uh wow yeah yeah, anyway.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah, I you know, I I guess Trump had an
hour long conversation with Vladimir today and yeah, and.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Vladimir City was going to have to do something, to
do something about it. We're not we're not really happy,
but the fact that he knocked out.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
A Yeah, air force is gone, my father's gone. I'm
gonna have to take those two thirds that are left
to do something.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Going to be consequences before they're gone.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
I'm gonna have to use them before they're gone too.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Yeah, that's fucking War's insane, that's uh. I know exactly
where I was in Bougier, Louisiana, and I got snowed
in and I couldn't get out of there, and I
was there for three days in in Louisiana, Bougier it's
called Beaugeier, Louisiana.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
And I in in Louisiana.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
Uh no, no, no fog like fog or like oh
yeah fog. Yeah, fogged in and thank you.
Speaker 5 (07:42):
He gave you many tries to.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Fix in Louisiana, but nobody I know ever got snowed in. Yeah, no, no, no,
it was like fog that came down, believe.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
And then and from Bougier to go to Dallas or
to go to where it is that that would fly
me back to Los Angeles. They just weren't flying. So
I was there for three days and that's when that
war started, which is like now it's been over three years. Yeah,
I just I just thought it was interesting that you
(08:19):
know that like they you know, well.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
The yeah, I mean, the word audacious hardly hardly begins
to describe it.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
My word, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
I wonder what kind of capabilities they have left or
what is this response that Putin is talking about? And well,
I guess I guess.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
We'll know more bombs innocent people.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
Uh, well, I you know, I thought we'd talk a
little bit today because I, you know, I haven't really
talked that much about the Abyss on the PODCAS cast,
and I thought I would talk a little bit about
it today just because it's got a reputation for being
(09:10):
the most difficult, you know, hardcore like extremely you know,
tough movie to work on, and so I, you know,
I thought that I would address it a little bit.
It's you know, it's it's got ed hair. Oh. Kathy Baker,
(09:33):
by the way, did you know about that, Jim? Kathy
Baker said.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
The other night, I told her she was in a
movie that we had something to do with developing when
I was at ic M called Street Smart.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Right and Morgan introducing Morgan Freeman.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Right, Yeah, it was like this was one of Morgan
Freeman's earliest parts, and he came out of this thing
with great, great reviews. Pauline Cale said he may be
the best American actor. And this is after one movie
also starred Christopher Reid, and she was terrific in that
and she's got, you know, really terrific credits when you
look at him.
Speaker 4 (10:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was, you know, you know,
I'd like to ask her, Hey, you know, when you
were working with Morgan Freeman, was there anything about him
that you that you thought yourself like, oh my god,
this guy is really good, like Pauline Cale said, he's
you know, or were you just like working and yeah,
you seem like he was good. And I don't know,
(10:34):
you know, I haven't seen that movie in a long time.
But I did watch a movie, but I fell asleep
and I didn't watch the whole thing where she co
stars with Robert de Niro and Ed Harris. She plays
Ed Harris's sister and kind of a love interest to
Robert de Niro, which is a fucking part I wouldn't
(10:56):
like to play. You can't really, you can't really, it's
really you know, they're talking about something being a two
hand or a three hand yeah, you know, so far
it's just those three and uh, yeah, no, I can't
wait to have her. What's that jack Knife? Jack Knife? Yeah,
jack Knife's name of the movie. And uh, yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
You I told you that.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
I remember looking at that when we were doing the
HBO Vietnam series because the movie deals with, uh, somebody
with post traumatic stress, and that's a huge that's a
big part of the plot.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
Yeah, I mean h edge, you know, uh, drinking very
very heavily, and uh, you know, they they they were
in Vietnam, they lost a good friend. There was seemed
like there were like a like the three Amigo's, these
three guys that were in Vietnam and you know, their
friend gets killed, and uh, you know, what's it all about?
(11:57):
You know what's it all about? Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, you
know what's it all about? So yeah, so anyway, I
can't you know. I also and she didn't really have
that much to do. But the first thing that I
(12:18):
wanted to see her and I watched it last night
was it's called Paterno. I think it's the names Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think it's the name of the coach of what's
that team.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Of the Penn State.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I guess when
somebody says, uh, you know, I, you know, would you
be interested uh in in in in being a movie
and playing al Pacino's wife in a movie about you know,
(12:53):
the gruesome things that went on there, you know, I
guess she just that's kind of one of those things
that like, there's just some things she don't say no to.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
You, you know, playing playing Patino right right right, And.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
That's kind of I thought that was a pretty interesting
look at that whole situation. And uh, it reminded me,
reminded me of that we won't get politically here, but
it reminded me of that congressman was the wrestler who
likes aw some stuff and never reported it. What's the
name of that guy, Jim, you know, you know what
(13:30):
I'm talking about. His name is Jim actually Jim George George.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
He was like.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
An assistantstling coach at Olile State, who who who one
of his associates was clearly fondling the boys and more
and and he you know like see no evil, hear
no evil, speak no evil.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
It was going on right in front of him. And
he's met up about it.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
He just let it pass. Yeah, well it sounds like
the same thing that happened to Joe and that they
pretty much so, yeah, Joe got fired and they tore
down his uh statue and uh he died like two
weeks later.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Isn't that crazy he did?
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Really? Yeah? Yeah, that's crazy. How you know, he was
right in the middle of the of a season, four
games left, he said he'd retire, he wanted to coach
the last four games. And you know, I'd forgotten that
that that really is kind of Yeah, they wouldn't. They
wouldn't let him. They wouldn't let him coach the last
four games. And you know, I think.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Well, the heat was building so much as it came
out more and more of what that assistant coach san
Dusky had done. Yeah, that that there was just no
way it could go forward. Yeah, you know, and that,
and and Paccino's role there was similar. He was doing
a number of movies for HBO about real people. You know,
(14:59):
he played Kubworki.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
Koorki, and he played what was the other one that
you were telling me about, the Whip. I don't think
I saw that one. He places spector. I would loft
to playing Phil Spector.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
I saw that one. I liked it.
Speaker 5 (15:12):
Yeah, I saw that one. I remember just turning it
on one day. I didn't know who Phil Spector was.
I just watched the whole story, and I went.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
The whole story.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Yeah, what's the name of it? Because it's probably not
called phil Spector? Like this one was called Bill Spector,
It's called and Crazy, the other one called KOORKI. I
(15:41):
guess if you do something and it's good and people
like it, you do it again. No change it, don't
change anything about it. Man. Anyway, getting back.
Speaker 5 (15:52):
To the David Mamette who wrote and directed that too.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Oh really, yeah, did you know that?
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Jim what Kavorkian? No Phil Spector? Oh wow, No, I
had no idea. Maybe I should watch that.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
I think I avoided it just because the subject was
so unpleasant, I thought, But uh, yeah, I think I
should watch that.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Yeah. I think I'll go home and and and and
watch that this this after I get my son down
to sleep. So anyway, we were, I was I wanted
to talk a little bit about, uh, the Abyss because
of how difficult people talk about it. It being working
(16:38):
on that movie and they always asked me, was that
the most difficult movie you've ever worked on? How bad
was it? Uh? Yanna, yanna? And you know it was
Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Masteringtonio and they kind of
(17:02):
had a group and they all again it was one
of those situations where all the deep sea divers that
were on the rig, that were on the rig, they
all kind of hang it, hung out together, and I
was I played the bad guy, and I wanted you know,
I probably am in about eight percent of that movie.
(17:23):
I mean, you know, I love the character and I
love the death. I mean, what other actor can say
that he died in an implosion right on film? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (17:36):
Well I went down with that submarine started sending you
your fucking death scene in the abysse.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Jim Cameron came out to speak
about how what an idiot that guy was, and uh oh.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Yeah, I just saw the documentary about that and pretty
creepy what happened.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Well, you know, it just sounds like that guy was like, ah,
you know what he he had, like the way that
he ran the you know, went.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Down, do he have hazard?
Speaker 4 (18:05):
My god?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
He had a you know, video game joy stick for
before this thing. You're going to go down.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
To with a PlayStation remote.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
That's just like I don't worry about those cracks bangs
you're hearing in the hall, you know, well.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
You know, normally submarine.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
What Jim was upset seemed to be upset about was
the fact that people in the know, meaning probably the
United States Navy, knew right from the very beginning that things.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Very clear from very clear.
Speaker 4 (18:42):
But they let it. They let it go for a
couple of days as if they were searching for you know,
remains or you know. And I think that Jim.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
How many how many dives did Jim make?
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Thirty? More than thirty?
Speaker 4 (18:58):
I think, I don't know. But Jim, what's the name
of that? Uh uh?
Speaker 3 (19:03):
The deepest part of the world.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
Marianas Trench, the Marianas Trench. Yeah, he went.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
I think he's I think he's been to the deepest
point any human has ever been. I could be wrong,
maybe somebody surpassed that, but I thought he went to
the deepest point on Earth.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Yeah. Well, I you know, if I was going to
go anywhere like that, it would certainly be with Jim Cameron.
I used to talk to Bill Paxton, Scared, he said, scared.
She was so fucking scared when they did their dive.
I think they went down to the Titanic too. He
was he said, you know, he didn't something about being
(19:40):
something about his underwear being brown or something. Bill dis
Bill went on one of those dives. And this was
a period of time when Jim was waiting for Avatar,
waiting for the technology to catch up to Avatar, and
Jim was doing all sorts of things, and one of
the things he did was take bill accent down I believe,
(20:01):
to the Titanic. And you know, Bill said he was scared.
Ship was the entire time. Well, it wasn't one moment
where he felt sort of like, okay, well this is.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
You know, oh my god, any little.
Speaker 4 (20:20):
Which reminds me of being you know, when I did
the Abyss, I was in side what they what they
what they called a submersible. Okay, and you know we
I have I'm inside of a submersible at the end
of the movie and uh, Mary lisamiths, mister Antonio's inside
(20:44):
of submersible. I think with d and the two submersibles
fight and uh but I can remember being in that
submersible and you know, Jim's trying to you gotta remember,
you know, it's underwater. You know, just try to think
about doing anything under eating sleepy. You know, well, you
(21:10):
can go to the bathroom. That's that's pretty easy to
do underwater. But you know, it's just it's hard hard
to film underwater, really really really hard to film. And
I think that the the people that had it the
most difficult on that movie was number one, Jim Cameron.
(21:35):
Jim spent more time underwater and at depth then And
I'll tell you a quick story. Well, and uh, the
DP is named Al Givings or Al.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Very famous underwater photographer getting sent.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Yeah, and Al was under there a lot. And they
have had a lot of safety divers. The safety divers,
would you know, make sure that when we're because we
were not in scuba gear. I didn't you know, I
didn't have scuba gear on. I had you know, a
helmet on and uh and that was connected to uh,
(22:18):
something that I wore on my shoulders that was part
of my wardrobe. And when I would go down and
we would go down, there were two tanks. One was
a not real deep tank. The other one was about
a thirty foot tank that was that was the big tank.
(22:38):
I think it had over a million gallons of water.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
And shooting in an old nuclear power plant. Weren't you, Yeah,
have an old nuclear power plant in South Carolina.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
Yeah, it's called Gaffty, South Carolina. And I guess at
some point they were going to put a And you know,
it was Linda Hamilton that always taught me to say
nuclear instead of nuclear. Uh, when I was doing the terminators,
like Michael, No, no it's not nuclear, it's nuclear nuclear nuclear.
I'm so excited when I'm yelling at her that probably
(23:12):
got it wrong, but she was always ah, but yes,
it was a the shell of a nuclear Uh what
was going too?
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I guess yeah, it would have been the cooling power
huge reservoir.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
And uh, you know Jim and again Gail. I'm reaching
out to Gail. She's just so so fascinating to see
if she could possibly come talk to us. That she
would just be amazing to have on the show. But
they they found that place and rigged it in a
(23:52):
way where they could fill it up with water and
shoot a movie underwater. Now, obviously the whole movie is
not shot underwater, and I'm not sure exactly what percent
is shot underwater, but I can guarantee you. I spent
a lot of time underwater, and I know, I know
(24:15):
the guys that were playing the heels with me. You
spend a lot of time underwater. And I sat inside
of that submersible, and you know, there was no communication.
There was no It wasn't like I could like talk
and anybody could hear me. And while they were setting
up shots, I'd be sitting in that thing for an
(24:37):
hour or two hours just waiting for them to you know,
set the shot and and and get it correct. Now,
when I actually shot my death scene that was reaching
up and the things cracking and everything that was on
a that was on a set, and that was on
a set. But I did a lot of waiting and wait,
and you.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Didn't have to play like you were going crazy.
Speaker 6 (25:00):
Well probably were that.
Speaker 4 (25:03):
Yeah, Well, the one thing about acting, one thing about movies,
television and being in the army is that there's a
lot of waiting around. And there's a lot of waiting
around when you know, when when we were working and
I used to take scripts of other stuff that I
(25:27):
had either been offered or people were possibly interested in
me doing, and I would just sit inside of that
thing and and and and read the scripts and uh
why yeah, I mean it's uh a little multiply asking
there by Michael Bean. So one of the things that
I wanted to mention about because people talk is the
(25:51):
safety divers. I think it had had it real bad.
There were some divers that needed to set up lights
for al would you say his last name was get In. Yeah,
And those are the people that I think spent the
most time underwater, and they did have to deal with
you know, chlorine sort of changing the color of their hair,
(26:18):
taking the kind of the color out of their hair.
But Jim was here's an example of I went. I
remember going to work one day and I probably spent
six or seven hours underwater. I never had to do
what they call hang off the line, which is when
(26:39):
you are underwater for a long period of time, let's
say thirty feet and you're under there for six or
seven hours, you can't just go straight to the top
because you get the bins and so therefore you have
to I think they used to call it hanging hang
off the line or something like that. So it's like
a rope and you go up like ten feet and
you know, wait twenty minutes. Then you go up another
(27:00):
ten feet and you have to just forty minutes exactly.
Your body has to deal with it. And I did,
you know, I never had to do that because I
was never underwater for that length of time, for that
that long of time. But I remember working one day
(27:21):
and I was wrapped and out of the water, and uh,
I was just trashed. You know. It's just a long day,
a lot of underwater stuff. I was just exhausted. And
I remember walking by. They used to have something that
(27:43):
they would call the observation window, which is a big
window that if you wanted to, you could watch the
production being set up. You could watch Jim setting up
the shots, you could see the actors down there, you could,
you know. It was called the observation window. And I
(28:03):
remember walking by the observation window and there was nobody
in the tank except for Jim. And Jim was hanging
off the line okay, And Jim was hanging off the
line upside down okay. And Jim was hanging off the
(28:30):
line upside down looking at a monitor underwater all right.
So I'm looking at this and I'm just thinking, like,
what the fuck. Guy's unbelievable. So I say to him,
the next day, Hey, Jim, I was just you know,
I'd wrapped where everybody was going home. You were still
(28:53):
hanging off the line. Why were you upside down? And
he said, well, the helmets that we all wore were
made for us, and they were somewhat comfortable. The helmet
that he had, which he could communicate to one person
underneath the water if he would plug and he could
(29:14):
communicate to one person. The helmet that he had on
his laid very very heavy on his shoulders, So his
shoulders were getting very bruised because of this helmet that
was laying on. So he was like upside down because
the helmet was hurting his shoulders, taking the weight off
(29:36):
his shoulders. And I'm like, well you need like had
like a monitor in front of you. What what the
hell was that? And he's going, oh, I was watching dailies.
I'm like, I'm like, are you kidding me? Are you
fucking kidding me? You know, that's that's where that's where
you know, Jim Jim, Jim has a tendency.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
To that's going to be one of the revealing stories
I've ever heard about him.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Well, it just goes to show you that he doesn't waste,
you know, no waste. Any time he's watching it's the
only time that he has because he's probably spending you know,
eighteen hours a day working and you know, if he's
got half an hour and it's got nothing to do,
(30:23):
he's gonna watch dailies and he's gonna do it underwater,
and he's gonna do it upside downside down.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
So I mean, it was, it was. It was just
absolutely insane.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
And you remember when Tim Calesari came on the set
and he walked on the set and Jim popped up
from the water and said, Hey, Kimmy, I just set
the record for the longest time underwater shooting in one session.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
Yeah, I yeah, I know that. You know Timmy and
I know Timmy, and we all know the same stories.
So you we'll tell the audience that one. But yeah,
I certainly knew that, and Timmy did come down to
visit me, brought Devin and Taylor down when they were
like six seven or something like that, brought Devin and
(31:16):
Taylor down to spend some time.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
Is that when he gave you that joint.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
That will lead to that story. Jim, actually he mailed
that to me and I was in Gaffney, and you know,
there was never anything doing Gaffney. There was a bigger
city about about an hour away, and we were in
South Carolina. It might have been North Carolina. I forgotten
what it was, but it was a big city. We
could go up there if we wanted to go into
a club or or that type of thing. But I
(31:48):
didn't do really do much partying on that because there
was no party with it, really. But he gave me
a me in the mail, Timmy Colseari sent me in
the mail a joint. So, like not the smartest thing
to do, but back then, you know, like nobody definitely right. So,
(32:14):
so I had this joint and I you know, I've
been awake and bake guy uh so, and I don't whatever.
I you know, there was probably always marijuana in my system,
but if I had something important to do, I didn't.
You know, I never I never smoked if I had
(32:34):
you know, dialogue, and you know, I never never would
get you know, hot that high. So but anyway, I'm
going to the set and I'm shooting the sequence where
I get into the fight with Ed Harris, and and
I still had this joint. It's in my pocket. Or whatever,
(32:56):
and I pull it out, I'm like, oh, there's this joint.
I don't take a couple of hits off this joint,
take a couple of hits off of it, you know,
put it in the astray. I got so fucking stone, man.
I was so so fucking just wow. It was like
like it was really really good part he gotten from
(33:18):
a friend of his who was all for a while.
That's the thing is, I haven't had any for probably,
you know, two weeks or a month or something, and uh,
Jim wouldn't let me go back to LA and I
had a lot of time. So but I was like he, Uh,
Timmy had a country western star, uh singer. I forget
(33:39):
his name. I'll think of his name in a second.
That's who gave it to him. He gave it to me,
And like I just wasn't used to first of all, Uh,
it had been a couple of weeks since I gotten high,
and or a month or two months or whatever. And
on top of that, I think it was just like
crazy ass pot So you know, I I was so
(34:01):
stone I barely could make it like through a wardrobe.
We didn't have to. I got some makeup done on me,
and I was just quiet, you know, I was just quiet,
acting like I was like, you know, we're going over
my lines in my head, and I didn't have any
lines or anything. I just had to do this fight
sequence with Ed, and yeah, I got my wardrobe on
(34:24):
and then you know, I'm dressed like a Navy seal.
But anyway, I go out on the set and it's
just it if you know that there's a chain that
I'm pulling on and it's just kind of got a
weird vibe that set the waters about a foot or
(34:45):
two feet high. And I'm sitting there and I'm clearly
clearly out of my fucking mind in two ways. One one,
my character is like absolutely out of his fucking mind
at that point, and and I'm a little out of
my mind because I'm so stoned that like I can
(35:06):
remember Jim Cameron entering the area that we were shooting
at and me having a conversation with myself whether I
was going to be able to say Hi, Jim or
good morning Jim and be able to get that out
of my mouth.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
You know.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
That's how That's how drunk I was. I mean drunk,
not Freudian slip. No, no, no, no, No, that's how
high I was. So I'm sitting there and feeling like,
you know, a little paranoid and a little bit like, God,
how nobody fucking notices? And I look up and I
(35:45):
see me me. I see myself on the other side
of the room, and it was me. It was me.
I was here and I was over there too, and
I was stone out of my fucking mind. Man. I
(36:06):
was like, how can I be over there? How can
I be there? When I'm here?
Speaker 3 (36:12):
You can rub your eyes.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
I was. It was about ten secs, and you know,
like like I said, I was like just I was
blazing anyway, and there were about ten or twelve fifteen
seconds from my mind was just like, oh my god,
I can't this is too much. I can't deal. This
is like you know. And when I look back again
(36:38):
for the third or fourth time that I saw myself,
I turned to look back at me and I realized, Oh,
it was my stunt double in all, in all my wardrobe,
and you know, he had the fucking everything on. He
had the knife in his hand, he had the whole thing.
(37:02):
Oh yeah, totally, like you know, like he was my
stunt double. Of course, he looked exactly like me. So
I was kind of over there. But that was like, whew, okay,
well feeling much better now, let's let's get this calling Michael. Yeah,
that was that was That was That was pretty crazy.
(37:24):
And we had another thing that happened down while we
were shooting. And what what happened was that we would
get into that tank and uh, the actors, not the
safety divers and and not Jim and what, but the
(37:45):
actors all had on weighted boots and uh uh that
it was kind of like walking on the moon, so
you could kind of like bounce around down there, but
you were weighted down. You were you were supposed to
be able to walk down. And that was I guess
part of the story. You know that that's that's how
(38:08):
these divers and these guys work on these rigs and
stuff like that, that they've got these these weights on.
And there was an underwater oxygen sort of an oxygen tank,
so at any time you could look see how much
oxygen you had, and you know, it'd be like a
(38:28):
gas tank. You look down, Oh I'm at three quarters.
I got nothing else to do. I'm going to go
over and fill up. You know, Oh, I've only got
a half a thing, I better go over and fill up.
And I always think that was good for about an
hour or something like that because we were under water
and we're in these I was in these helmets. We
didn't have scuba gear on, and we didn't have what
(38:49):
they're go on octopus, which is you know, a divers,
you know, sucking oxygen off their back. We were just
this was just being poured into us. Uh. The oxygen
was being supplied underwater. And so anyway, I was down there.
I don't remember if Chris was down there too. Chris
(39:12):
was one of the other seals. I think the seals
were down there, and and there were there were there
were some crew members. I don't think Mary was there.
I don't think that Ed was there. Uh. And what
what was happening at the beginning of the movie when
Jim was trying to shoot underneath the water in this
(39:33):
huge tank is the light would like from the sun
would come through and go through the water, and it
was kind of messing up like his ability to light
a underwater shot that he wanted to shoot because he
had to deal with the sun. So they came up
(39:55):
with this idea very early on that they would take beads.
If you just think of little black beads, you know,
about the size of a dime around not even smaller
than that. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them, and
and and they floated, and they floated on top of
(40:18):
the tank. So what they had a tendency to, well
what the reason they put him on there was to
block the light. So, uh when you came up, there
would be all these uh, all these sort of black
beads there. And Jim was then able to because it
(40:39):
was now dark up above, Jim was able to go
ahead in light shots the way that he was normally,
like like you would in a normal room, you don't
have to deal with the sun if it's completely.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Uh uh blacked out.
Speaker 4 (40:55):
Blacked out, thank you, and uh so, so we'd be
down there and we'd you know, we got pretty comfortable
down there doing that. It was fun. I thought it
was fun. People talk about how difficult it was. I
thought it was fun. I thought the whole thing was
just a blast. Had a great time. Uh. Like I said,
(41:16):
I didn't have to work as much as some of
the other people. But I go down there and just
be bouncing around and uh, you know, you're underwater. You're
shooting a movie underwater. Uh, you're you're you're recording dialogue underwater.
You're doing some things for the first time ever that
(41:37):
any actor's ever done, uh in there, in there in
the history of movies. And I was, I was just
enjoying myself. I had a really good time. And uh,
I was you know, always in in wardrobe. And uh
we were down there once and you know, uh, there
(42:00):
were a lot of guys, you know, they set up
lights and stuff. It was always, you know, pretty well
lit down there. And at one point when we were working,
when I was working, when I was underwater, everything went black,
just fing black all They lost power, to the entire unit,
(42:25):
to the entire tank. They lost all power. And I'm
talking about it goes from like this, like I'm talking
to you, like to like you can't see your hand
in front of your face.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Black.
Speaker 4 (42:41):
Now, there was always a safety diver or two divers
that were kind of watching me and watching Chris or
anybody else who was down there with these helmets on.
Jim also Jim and at some point ed Harris and
and you know, so there were these safety divers down there,
(43:04):
but all of a sudden it goes black, and it's
just like, where's my safety divers? Wait a second, when
was the last time that I, you know, got oxygen?
How much oxygen do I have? It was like whoa,
It was like wow. And it lasted probably about it's
(43:32):
probably less than ten minutes, but it was probably six
or seven minutes, eight minutes something. It was. It was
long enough time that I was There was no light
at all. None. I mean when I say black, I
mean nothing. Jim, you couldn't And the helmets.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
Of the safety divers were wearing didn't have lights in the.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
No no, no, no, no no. And so I finally
after six or seven minutes of being and then being
more and more scared because I didn't know the way out.
I didn't know left from right, I didn't know east
(44:16):
from west. I didn't know, and I couldn't. I couldn't
go to the top.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
It was almost like being in an isolation tank.
Speaker 4 (44:23):
Well yeah, yeah, and I had to walk out of
that when the lights were on. I had to walk
to a certain area and then walk up these steps
and the like get out. I couldn't just like like
take my boots off. I couldn't. I was stuck there,
and so were I think a few other people. Uh.
(44:45):
And after a bit of time, I thought to myself,
and I realized that I had what they call a
practical light. When you're on a movie set and you
see a light that turns on and off on the set,
that's called it practical. Okay, that's a practical light. That's
(45:08):
a light that the DP knows is there and he's
ready for you to turn that light on and off.
And I realized that I had a practical flashlight. I
had my character carries around a flashlight and uses it
in the movie. But I was so fucking stone or
(45:31):
or so whatever that I hadn't even thought about it. Yeah. Yeah,
So I pulled this flashlight out and I turn it on,
and immediately people started coming towards me, you know, because
I was the only one who had a light. Everybody
was in the same boat as me. And immediately people
(45:51):
started coming towards me, and like three.
Speaker 6 (45:55):
Four, five six, people like eyes wide, you know, like
like oh my, like this is thank god, you know,
people just you know, they came glued to me.
Speaker 3 (46:06):
And you should have had a camera on.
Speaker 4 (46:07):
That, well, Jim. Eventually, and I don't mean eventually, like
he was being slow about it. He he was, you know,
one of the first people that came over, and he
realized the situation that I was in and that some
of the other actors and other people that had the
(46:29):
boots on were in, and he threw sign language. Basically
it was kind of a follow me, I'm going to
lead everybody out. You need to follow me, you know,
and he took my flashlight and we followed. It was dark,
(46:51):
I mean except for that light in front of us.
It was I mean black black, And we followed Jim
and we found followed him for a minute or two.
Right when we sort of got to the area where
we would start walking upstairs, but we didn't know it
because it was completely black. All the lights turned back
(47:13):
on again. Like so it went from lights to like
completely black for five or six minutes to U a flashlight.
Everybody you know, crowded around, all right, we're going out
this way, follow me, follow Jim Cameron, and and then
the lights came all back on again. So you know,
(47:36):
people talk about, hey, does anything ever happen on a
movie set? You ever get scared? Any stunts that you like?
That was that was kind of gnarly.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
And that would have had my shorts brown too, or
just like Bill Paxton from the bottom.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Of the ocean, you know.
Speaker 4 (47:57):
And there's some way that they did it a horse.
But I've never understood how you could take lights and
electricity and use electricity underwater. You know, you know, you
know there's somebody a lot smarter than me. I mean
(48:19):
a lot smarter than me.
Speaker 3 (48:21):
Make sure that's what I would have.
Speaker 4 (48:23):
All these cables, cables, all yeah, cables and lights, and
you know it was But I had a really, really,
really fun time. I had a good time on that movie. Uh.
When I saw the movie, I was very happy with
my performance. I think that uh, I think that I
(48:45):
mentioned this before Jim had me in and uh, you know,
Jim has a tendency to make movies that are, you know, long,
and then then be cut down. He did that with
a scene of Mine and the Terminator that I thought
was when I first got the script, I thought, Ah,
this is this is the scene. This is a scene
(49:06):
where res breaks down, and oh my god, this is
a scene. This is a scene. This was not in
the movie. And I was with Sigourney Weaver when we
were in New York before any of the actors saw
the movie in Aliens, And I was with Sigourney when
Jim told her that a lot of her story about
(49:29):
her child that she had and when I'm not talking
about newt I'm talking about a real child that she
had had been cut from from from the from the movie.
I was with Sigourney and this Sigourney was not happy.
She was not happy about it at all.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
And well, there's no trace of that in the movie.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
Is that.
Speaker 4 (49:52):
Well, if you go look at like the director's cut,
there's a big trace of it. You know, you'll see. Okay,
you know, you'll see if you look get the director's cut,
you'll see that, Yes, there was a real backstory there.
But you know, Jim has to decide, you know, how
long the movie's gonna be. Yeah, And I think that
Sigourney probably forgave him when she was nominated for an
(50:16):
Academy Award for that role. You don't see that type
of role, action kind of horror action movie. You don't
really see.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
People getting nominated for that.
Speaker 4 (50:32):
No, no, you don't. And but I was with her
and us I want to get back to the talking
about the Abyss, but it just reminds me of they
were having a screening for the press in New York City,
and this is the Aliens now that I'm talking about,
(50:54):
and Jim and Gale and whoever, everybody at Fox, all
the press was going to go watch the movie. And
they didn't want the actors watching it. They didn't want
the actors watching it at the same time as the
press watched it. Whatever. Fair enough, we didn't quite understand
it at the time. So when I saw Aliens for
(51:19):
the first time, Bill Paxton and myself made our way
up to the project to projector the projector and you know,
back in the day, there used to be a guy
up there who was running the projector, yeah, and you
(51:41):
know the yeah and had a little you know, had
a hole that he could like, you know, if something
went wrong. You know, everybody remembers, well, people that are
my age, everybody that's not everybody, that's not everybody, everybody,
but uh so Bill and I made our way up there,
(52:04):
and Bill and I watched the entire movie with the
camera not camera operator. What did you call him, Jim
the projection the projectionist. Yeah, we watched the entire movie
kind of like through these the projectors. Whole the thing
that he sees the movie through. And I can remember
(52:26):
we were both just like totally stoked, and we're jumping
up and we're high five in each other and that
and and uh, Bill Paxton at that time describe the movie,
you know, Bill, Oh my god, are you kidding me?
Oh my god, that's a fucking roller coaster, right, Michael.
(52:48):
It's a you know, going down trying to do my
Bill Paxton invitation. You got not very good. And it's
interesting because people describe that movie as a roller coaster ride.
(53:09):
And I have a feeling that Bill said it so
many times to so many people in the press, they
eventually just started calling it a roller coaster ride. But
that's how I saw that that movie. Now, when we
did the Abyss. On the other hand, Jim, I was
(53:31):
on the lot. I don't think I wasn't at home.
I was on the lot. I was on the Fox lot.
And he knew I was on the lot and he called,
he Hey, got a message to me and said, come
on over here. I want you to take a look
at some stuff. And I went over and I I said,
(53:58):
what do you got? You said, well, I've got I
wanted to show you the ending of the Abyss. I've
got a cut which is, you know, twenty two minutes
longer than what the studio wants me to release. And
I want you to take a look at him, and
(54:19):
I want you to tell me what you think, which
you know, which one that you like more? And so
I did. That's where I saw the end of the Abyss.
And you know, the Abyss is I think the end
of the Abyss is the only, the only, like Mark,
(54:45):
I don't know exactly what you would call it on
a flawless filmmaker's career, is the end of the Abyss
somehow doesn't work as well as it should work. And
and I I think I remember telling him that, which
(55:07):
I don't and he wasn't happy with me. He wasn't
happy at me with me at all, but I told him.
And and in retrospect, when you think about the Abyss,
there's a there's a part in that movie where Ed
(55:27):
Harris and Mary Elizabeth Elizabeth muster Antonio. I used to
call her Mary Elizabeth must et cetera. She was sweet
to me though that they are trying to survive. They're
in a in a room where the water is rising
(55:48):
and they've only got one helmet, and they have to
decide who's going to wear the helmet and who's going
to get dragged underwater and then brought back to life
once they got to dry land. And it's a great,
great scene and they're just like fun. Both of them
(56:09):
are phenomenal actors, phenomenal and it's just a great, great,
great scene, very tense moment, very very very tense. And
he says, you know, you wear it, you wear it,
and she says, no, you wear it, and then she
kind of makes the point of like the reason why
you should wear it is and he has to say, like, oh, yeah,
(56:31):
you're right about that. Okay, all right, I'll put it on.
And so what happens is she drowns. She drowns, and
then he's got to well grab her and take her
underwater for I don't know, one hundred yards or two
hundred yards or.
Speaker 3 (56:49):
Whatever considerable distance, yeah.
Speaker 4 (56:51):
And then bring her out and lay her on the
debt dry service the deck correct and bring her back
to life, which he does with the help of his crew.
And that scene is so emotional and Ed Harris is
(57:15):
so wondering. He's like, come on, you can do it,
you can do it. And you know, they're pumping her
chest and.
Speaker 3 (57:23):
It's a very moving scene.
Speaker 4 (57:24):
Oh, it's just incredible movement. Brings almost brings tears to
my eyes now.
Speaker 5 (57:29):
And she.
Speaker 4 (57:31):
Yeah, and she you know, he ends up slapping her
and they don't think that she's gonna you know, and
he's like, wake up, you bitch, you know, and he's
slapping her and and she finally like burps up some
water and and oh my god, oh my god. So
and of course she lives. She's the female lead in
(57:52):
the movie. I play the bad guy. I'm going who dies?
Uh so?
Speaker 3 (57:57):
But it's again, yet again, yet again.
Speaker 4 (57:59):
Yes, it's a very very very emotional scene. And in
my heart of hearts, I don't think that the the
actors in the movie or the characters in the movie
(58:19):
are as ever they're they're never as emotional as they
are in that scene. And I don't think the the
audience never sees anything that is more emotional than that scene.
And that scene is so good. It should have been
(58:41):
like the at the end of the movie, like at
the end, because once you've you know, you're right.
Speaker 3 (58:47):
About that, it's hard to recover from that moment.
Speaker 4 (58:50):
Yeah, And I think that you know, just because the
the actors were so good. And I think that been uh.
I think that I think that uh, Ed Harris, who's
you know. I hear bits and pieces I see online.
(59:12):
I hear him talking. I would never never want to,
never want to speak to him. But Ed Edwarked Ed
worked hard, He worked hard, hard on that movie, and
he had a close call or two. Uh, And I
think that he was disappointed in the way that he
(59:35):
reacted to fear and uh. But I think that he
was very, very very disappointed at the end of the movie,
especially the one because they used the shorter one and
(59:56):
you know, there's all of this incredible filmmaking going on,
and then like the end happens and they're all everybody's
just kind of standing out in the middle of the
ocean on a big plank of wood or something, and
it just doesn't work. Man, it just doesn't work. And
it's the only time I could whatever say that, you know,
(01:00:19):
it just doesn't it doesn't work. And I know that
Ed was very unhappy about that. He just like poured
his soul into that that character. And I mean, I
remember they they were they were trying to cast that
character while I was there I had been there for
a while, and you know, I I auditioned for Jim
(01:00:42):
Cameron for The Terminator. I replaced James Remar in Aliens,
and Jim just offered me this role of Coffee and I, uh,
you know, I had a great, great time making uh
(01:01:04):
that movie.
Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
And you had you had another person in the cast
named Todd grit Gaff.
Speaker 4 (01:01:12):
Todd Todd Graff was one of the one of the
oil workers who was part of Mary Elizabeth's team, and
Mary Elizabeth and Ed Harris played husband and wife there
in the middle of a divorce or something like that,
like Jim and Gail, Well, Jim. Jim was Jim. Jim
and Gail were boyfriend and girlfriend when we did The Terminator.
(01:01:35):
They were married when we did Aliens, and they were divorced,
uh when we made uh The Abyss, and she was there.
She produced the whole thing responsible for producing that movie,
and they were divorced. So I think there was some
of that, you know, some of that stuff was so good.
Ed was just so so good, and I think that
(01:01:56):
I think it was just very very disappointed.
Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
Todd's a guy who has the rat on his shoulders. Yeah, movie,
and he he was in right around the same time,
he was in one of our war story pieces that
was a like a one man show about a guy
who gets separated from his unit. And then a couple
of years later he really hit it as a screenwriter.
Speaker 4 (01:02:18):
Yeah. Well, I know that that he was a writer,
and I know that he uh.
Speaker 3 (01:02:25):
He got he got a couple of movies made produced.
Speaker 4 (01:02:28):
Uh well, yeah, good for him. And he also came
out of the closet a year or two ago, so
there's yeah, that's got that going for him too. Uh,
finally able to be himself, I guess. But yeah, Todd
was uh that was kind of reminds me of around
the time that Jim was thinking about the minds of
(01:02:49):
Billy Milligan. Remember that, Jim. That was a Yeah, that
was a movie that Jim wanted to make, and just
I guess he had problems with the people that own
the book.
Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
It was a well known book and.
Speaker 4 (01:03:07):
It was wasn't it about a young man who had
eight or ten or twelve or fifteen different personalities?
Speaker 3 (01:03:16):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (01:03:16):
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I Todd. I think that
Jim saw Todd as a writer. I think Jim saw
his talent, and I think that that Jim might have
worked with him or wanted him to work on something
I've forgotten, but I seem to remember a bond between
(01:03:41):
he and Jim Cameron because because of his writing ability.
And so, you know, when people talk to me about
like a movie being difficult, it was difficult for Jim,
It was difficult for those safety divers. It was really
difficult for Harris, Mary Elizabeth Monstuntonio. Well, they don't, they don't.
(01:04:04):
She won't even talk about it. She said, you know,
she had such a bad experience. And from what I understand,
that scene that I said was so heartbreaking or it
was so emotion emotional. Was the scene that she felt
that that Jim was just pushing them too hard and
(01:04:27):
got up And I've heard, Okay, I don't know. I
wasn't there, but I've heard that she said we're not
animals and walked off the set. But you know, uh,
I very well could be wrong about that. So uh,
and I know Mary's not going to come out, and
(01:04:48):
I know ed Harris is not going to come out
and say anything about it, because they never talked about it.
I didn't, you know, I didn't think it was you know,
I you know, I'll talk about K two on on
one of these shows, but asking about it, people are
asking about it. Yeah, And K two was like, Wow,
that was much much more for me. Difficult sometimes working
(01:05:14):
in the elements, working in freezing cold weather, working uh uh,
sometimes stunts with fires and things like that. You can.
I enjoyed that movie. I enjoyed being on the set.
The only problem that I had on the set was
(01:05:36):
that I didn't I wasn't on the set all the time.
I wasn't working all the time. I was mostly like
waiting for them to shoot their stuff. And so you.
Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
Told me how funny it was to, you know, be
in wardrobe and make up, et cetera, and then hear
a knock on the.
Speaker 4 (01:05:56):
Door and whoa, Jim, Jim, Jim you But you have
to put that in perspective, okay, because that now you're
talking about K two. Yes, okay, so go you. You
can go ahead. But I just want to make sure
that that everybody knew that you were talking about K
(01:06:18):
two at this point, and uh, oh, yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:06:22):
You had gone back to the abyss after K two.
I was I was wondering for a minute there. I
was like, which movie is he talking about? Yeah, then
I figured it out it was the ABYSS. But that's
all right, Jim. I was there with.
Speaker 4 (01:06:31):
You, so you can go ahead.
Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
Well, yeah, I thought you were talking about K two,
how much you enjoyed doing the movie.
Speaker 4 (01:06:41):
Well I didn't. I did enjoy doing that movie. I
was going through a really difficult time during that movie,
really really difficult time. But what you're talking about and
not if you I'll go ahead and just you know,
tell the stories that that that we used to shoot
on a glacier and we used to shoot at fifteen
(01:07:02):
thousand feet or something like that. That was our base camp.
We had a base camp, just like climbers do that like.
And I never learned any of that stuff. I didn't.
I wasn't you know. I never learned to dive. I
was never into diving. I was never in although I
had to get certified for the ABYSS. But yeah, there
was a lot of work on top of that mountain,
(01:07:25):
and uh, it wasn't easy to get from place to place.
And uh so I would get up in the morning,
I would get my wardrobe won, I would go in
the makeup, get my makeup done. Let the first day
get a second ad. No, I'm ready. Whenever they need me,
I go back in my tent. There were tents that
(01:07:46):
we had, uh and then I would get a knock
on the front of the tent, on the front of
the on the front of the tent, and I get
a knock in front of the tenor mister Bin, mister
ban your helicopter is ready, like yes, yes, So we did.
(01:08:13):
We did a lot of helicopter work on that on
that movie, a load and loads and loads of helicopter work.
But I don't, you know, I want to save that
experience I was going through with his mother. And that
was the whole Patsy Kensitt situation which I was.
Speaker 5 (01:08:37):
That's an episode in itself right there.
Speaker 4 (01:08:39):
Well you know it's it was. I was. I was
in a lot of pain because I didn't I never
wanted to hurt your mother. Never never, never wanted to
hurt your mother. Never wanted to hurt her. And I
had and I did. But during that the making of
that movie, Patsy, there was a time that we were
(01:09:06):
together and we spent some like six months together and
then and then she I was supposed to go over
to England and go over to England and be with
her in England, and I knew. I knew in my head,
I know exactly where I was. I was in Lake
Cavaso on the phone Lake cavas Who when I was
(01:09:27):
talking to her, and I told her that I couldn't
come over there. I wouldn't come over there because I
knew that paparazzi over there is like vicious, just like crazy,
crazy stuff. But I was still going through that, and
then that kind of that put a cooler on things.
(01:09:47):
I was kind of still going through that when I
was doing K two and she she was there for
a while and that was the end of that. But
because I was still trying to end this on a
more fun note.
Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
Yeah, really joke. You have a moment with Mary Elizabeth Master,
et cetera. I remember telling you I thought it was
really golden. I thought it was a terrific example of
great screenwriting.
Speaker 3 (01:10:21):
And you said it wasn't.
Speaker 4 (01:10:22):
In the screen it wasn't.
Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
Yeah, go ahead, and that's when you you you're kind
of taking over late in the movie, and you back
her up against the bulkhead yep, and it's a close
shot of your faces and from below you hear this
ripping sound yep, and you say, I've been wanting to
do this ever since I came on board. And we
think you're ripping open her pants and you pull up
(01:10:45):
a piece of duct tape and put it over her mouth.
About a really funny moment. You know, really what a
great screenwriting bit this is. Yeah, Jim would have come
up with this, what's the real story?
Speaker 4 (01:10:57):
Well, as you well know, you know, uh, the line
was the line, and I was supposed to put it
over her mouth, but it was my idea to take
that and do that underneath the camera. Who said, okay, Jim, Oh, yeah,
you know, And it was my idea to hide that
(01:11:19):
from the audience. So when you hear that ripping, it
just it sounds kind of scary and disgustingly rape kind
of weird.
Speaker 3 (01:11:29):
Yeah, it does for sure. That's what my mind went.
Speaker 4 (01:11:31):
Yeah, and that's that was that was my intent. And
when Jim, you know, Jim Robert Rodriguez Quintin's the same.
You know, when if you come up with an idea,
that's a great idea, Jim, so great idea, Michael, do that?
Do that? I like that? I like that, Yeah, let's
(01:11:54):
do that. Another thing that I did in that movie
was there was a black dress. Maybe, uh, Kaitlin can
pull her name up. And she used to be in
one of the submersibles Kimberly Scott. Yeah, Kimberly and Kimberly. Uh.
Character was like a country western sort of person and
(01:12:17):
she had this radio and or tape player in her submersible,
so she used to At the beginning of the movie,
they set up the fact that she listens to this
country western music and I when I take over that sub,
I get, I get in the sub and I start
(01:12:40):
taking off and I'm loosing my f and mind and
all of a sudden, this fucking music, you know, comes on,
this this country western music. And I said to Jim, Jim,
do you mind if I just use my elbow and
just wawn, just fun and that in a hurry, you know.
(01:13:03):
And uh, he was like, you go for it, Michael.
And I don't think they you know, they didn't change it.
They didn't change whatever it was. If it was real
or not real, I don't know. But they didn't make
it soft for my elbow, you know. You know. But
it was another moment. That's another moment that you know
(01:13:24):
as an actor that you have that like, Okay, well,
that's the end of that fucking business. You know, I've
got like I'm losing my mind here. I don't need
fucking to be listening to.
Speaker 3 (01:13:35):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (01:13:36):
If I could think of a country and Western singer's name,
I would have. But uh, Anyway, I think that uh Jim,
I think that we're going to we're gonna call this
uh uh. Now that I've uh talked a lot about that,
we can do a whole episode on Russia too. I
would love to talk about Russia. Russia was what a
(01:13:59):
shithole that place. It was fucking horrible. What a fucking
horrible place.
Speaker 3 (01:14:03):
You were horrible people, what you were in Siberia.
Speaker 4 (01:14:08):
I was in Siberia. Yeah, I was in a place
called I'll think I'll have to look at it because
I forget that nor Elsk. It's called twenty degrees below
zero the entire time I was there, and and they
I don't know what they their production fell apart and
they tried to fucking blame me. But I'll wait for another.
Speaker 3 (01:14:30):
That does sound like a whole story.
Speaker 4 (01:14:32):
Oh that's a story, all right. And I well, I
probably I shouldn't have been doing some of the things
that I did. No, I'm not talking about drinking. Yeah,
you know, uh, director had an attractive wife and you
know it's just.
Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
Stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (01:14:53):
On the.
Speaker 4 (01:14:55):
There was a leading lady. It was just you know, anyway,
was quite a scene. Okay, so we'll wrap this up. Jim,
thank you. That had a good time today. Thank you.
I love you, Cal And I just want to thank you.
Know it's I didn't even know that you can like,
oh you can look at the look at the podcast.
(01:15:19):
Always people make remarks here like oh I can read
people are like saying, oh, they like me. Oh they
like me, Jim, they really like me.
Speaker 5 (01:15:31):
Like.
Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
All over the world.
Speaker 4 (01:15:34):
Yeah, only Jim will get that one. Yeah, they like me,
they really like me. I can't believe anybody would make
I was wasn't that where she played the the the
John Malcolm was in it too. Oh I thought it
(01:15:55):
was the one that she played the the work. Oh
yeah that was that was not that you like me,
you really like me? That was the second.
Speaker 3 (01:16:06):
Oscar with the second Oscar Okay, I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 4 (01:16:10):
Well you don't know what it is either being.
Speaker 3 (01:16:12):
No, I don't want to know the name of it.
The one with John Malkovich.
Speaker 4 (01:16:15):
Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, Malcovich guy stole my role in
all right. Oh yeah, and by the way, yeah, it's
like fun to like everybody's real positive and like talking
about how much they like me and what a wonderful
actor I am. I really like that now. I'd like
(01:16:36):
I'd wake up in the morning and I look at
my phone and see like people talking about how much
they like me. It makes me feel really good. Anyway,
we will see you and talk to you, and I
thank you for hanging in there. We got this nice
little core audience and I'm just having a great time.
And I think Jim and Cale.
Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
Well, yeah, and we really appreciate people offering suggestions because
I know a lot of people have asked.
Speaker 1 (01:17:01):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (01:17:01):
I noticed, most recently a lot of people asking us
to talk about the Michael Man movie Manhunters.
Speaker 4 (01:17:06):
Well, here's here's another thing. Let me just say this
in closing. Everybody wants to know why how come we
don't see Jim? How come we don't see Jim? What's
the deal with Jim? What's the deal with Jim? And uh.
When we started this, it was like sort of camera
situation where it's like, all right, Jim, were don't quite
(01:17:28):
have the camera set up exactly right. I just want
to get your voice in. We were we were doing
all the interviews too. We're interviewing, and you know you
were just like coming in like a voice from like
John Favrea.
Speaker 3 (01:17:41):
You know, yeah, you were thinking of that Kim Allen series.
Speaker 4 (01:17:47):
Home Improvement. I'd always say home alone, home Improvement.
Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
Yeah, with that Wilson, the guy you only saw his
face partially through the fans.
Speaker 4 (01:17:57):
Well, and Wilson is the guy that knows everything all
the time and always gives him the best advice. Yeah,
it's kind of like you. You're the one who always
knows the answers to everything except for uh what Sally
Field got nominated in the heart one of those neurons.
Speaker 3 (01:18:20):
Back to remember that one.
Speaker 4 (01:18:23):
All right, all right, all right, I love you all
and having a great time and we will see you
next time.
Speaker 3 (01:18:31):
Got it.
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