Ray Harryhausen gave a live interview Wednesday night. The night before, the festival had shown Jason and the Argonauts, and then he did a book signing. Wednesday’s interview consisted of clips from several of his films, and then a book signing.
I went with two friends to this event, and both were glad they did go. One of them had almost backed out on me, until I said I didn’t want to go by myself. He said he would join me, so I wouldn’t have to. After the talk was over, he thanked me for forcing him to go, and that he would’ve kicked himself if I’d come back and told him how awesome it was, and he’d missed it.
Mr. Harryhausen will be 88-years-old next Saturday, and the man has had a wonderful life and career. He only made sixteen films, but he worked on fifteen of them with no crew at all. He liked working alone. The last film he made was in 1981, and was called Clash of the Titans. (This movie was a box office success, and kept MGM from going bankrupt.) I love that movie. I grew up watching Perseus (Harry Hamlin), and Bupo the mechanical owl, and Pegasus, and Medusa, etc. and being fascinated with them.
The original King Kong came out in 1933, when Mr. Harryhausen was 13-years-old. It took him a few years to figure out how the creature was made and animated, and he’d decided that was what he wanted to do.
His nickname became “One Take Harryhausen”, because most of the takes in the movies he could only do one time. There wasn’t enough time to go back and fix things. He also became well known for dinosaurs, even though he only made two films were they were involved.
Clips shown from his work were: Earth Versus the Flying Saucers, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, One Million Years B.C., The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and Clash of the Titans.
Mr. Harryhausen said that (for Clash of the Titans) the inspiration for Medusa dragging herself down the steps with her body came from Todd Browning’s Freaks, and the lighting on Joan Crawford from Mildred Pierce influenced the lighting of Medusa’s eyes.
This was a very insightful event. I’m glad I had the opportunity to go.
