Okay, not exactly a question, but we enjoy fans thinking even bigger than we do, especially since we are barred from working on Tremors any more. Clint Eastwood and Burt Gummer? Come ON, Universal!
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Do any of you guys also agree that “Wrong Goddamn Rec Room” was the BEST scene of the ENTIRE franchise?
S. S. Wilson is prejudiced because he wrote that line. But I don’t think you’d get 100% agreement from the Stampede crew. Some like the pole vaulting scene. Others have other favorites. All would agree that it is ONE of the best scenes.
Did Universal completely blow off the (absolutely brilliant might I say) Tremors TV Series? There is nothing on El Blanco, Tyler, Jodi or anyone else in the valley, not even Mixmaster was brought up. Do they not consider it canon?
We’re not sure what this question refers to. Perhaps the Tremors TV pilot with Kevin Bacon that did not sell? If so, we know nothing about it and have not seen it. If not — please clarify and we’ll try to answer.
Is it possible that a shrieker or even a group of shriekers didn’t attack Burt [in his truck] and were still out in the middle of nowhere in Mexico. It seems illogical that so many shriekers attacked Burt, especially when there were 3+ at the radio tower when Earl and Grady left it?
We would argue that the distances between these events are not as great as you may be imagining. Also, shriekers’ constant signalling to each other with heat causes them to act more or less like a pack of wolves, staying relatively close together. So we feel it’s likely the ones at the radio tower quickly “got word” about the heat of Burt’s truck and joined the attack on him. And gosh, if any of them had remained hidden somewhere, eventually there would eventually have been reports of AssBlasters in Mexico!
Was the graboid that Burt and Heather shot to pieces the same one that got Walter?
I continue to be amazed at what fans think of — and/or what I don’t think of. It never occurred to us that it might have been the same graboid that got Walter. It’s possible. All we know for sure is it’s not the one Val nicknames “Stumpy.” So, yeah, let’s say it was the one that got Walter! Payback!
About the so called ‘Proudfoot’ Labs, mentioned in ‘Project 4-12’: Although it is said that the government came and basically took everything down, do you suppose today’s ground penetrating radar technology could show us if anything was left behind?
Absolutely. We’d have loved to do an episode where that was explored. Secret rooms that the demolition contractors weren’t told about or didn’t discover! Or that they did discover but were too afraid to enter to destroy them!
What steps does Burt take to maintain isolation and privacy? PO box vs mail delivery? Would he have a credit card (has to order stuff for delivery)?
These are important questions for any survivalist with a mistrust of government. Our feeling is Burt would like a PO Box, but has to settle for mail delivery (at least to Chang’s market) because Perfection itself is so isolated (he’d have to drive the 38 miles to Bixby just to get mail). By the time of the TV series he has mellowed a bit and probably has a credit card or two. But it’s also possible he leans on Jodi to order things through her store; and maybe she goes along with it — for a fee. Win-win.
Obviously, the Tremors franchise has many fans. However, I’ve personally talked with many fans that do not particularly like the fourth film, and it’s common to see it listed as the “worst” in articles that cover the whole series (sometimes even behind the fifth and sixth movies, which is just nonsense). I quite like it, if not necessarily as much as the first three or the series. My thinking is that this perception has more to do with a bias against westerns, as they’re no longer in vogue, as opposed to anything that’s actually deficient about the film on a qualitative level. Here’s the question: what western influence, if any, was there on the first Tremors movie? To my eyes, there are several elements that are similar between it and many classic westerns, but I want to hear what the people behind the film have to say. Thanks!
It’s both a movie review AND a question! But hey, the internet has unlimited space. As to the question part, all of us creators of the first Tremors grew up when westerns were very much in vogue. So at least subconsciously they had influence. But we’d also spent lots of time wandering around the small towns and ghost towns and abandoned mines of the southwest. It was the people and the look of those modern day Western places that had the most impact on writing and later shooting the film.
Did you ever think about using Mixmaster to blend the DNA of Shriekers and Graboids, effectively giving them the ability to both “see” and hear?
I like to THINK that we’d have thought of that if we’d been able to continue the series. But we didn’t. And it’s a great idea.
When Grady is talking to Earl about the arcade machine at the start of the film, Earl says that someone made a lot of money off it but it wasn’t him. Who made the money off the arcade machine?
Hard working guys like Earl are honest but not clued in to how shrewd business people operate. After Tremors, graboids were big news, so lots of people were looking for ways to capitalize on that. Someone came to Earl and offered him a flat fee for selling them the rights to the graboid name. Thinking it was easy money, and not realizing the potential, he signed and got his check. Later, he saw graboid arcade machines popping up all over the country and realized, too late, that they were making a fortune and he was stuck with his flat fee.
When Earl reverses the truck down the hill, the exterior shot shows that he’s broken the front axle. In T1, Val revs the truck up and dumps the clutch to break free from the tentacle’s grip, to which Earl responds “You can break an axle like that” … Is Earl ripping the axle off the truck in T2 a nod to T1 or just a coincidence?
I WISH I could say it was a deliberate homage. But in all honesty, it was such a long time between shooting Tremors and writing Tremors 2, I doubt that we even remembered the axle reference. We just needed a good way to visually show the truck was disabled.
How did the graboid not catch Val and Earl when El Blanco easily caught hiker who was running faster than them?
We think this question refers both to Tremors and the opening of the TV series. There are a couple of ways to answer it. 1) With a movie reality joke: the graboid didn’t catch Val and Earl because they are the STARS! Or 2) with S. S. Wilson’s penchant for analysis: El Blanco is unique in the graboid pantheon, and is probably much faster than regular graboids. Furthermore a graboid’s speed of movement is very dependent on the soil it happens to be in. The unlucky hiker was probably on very loose easy-to-push-through dirt that gave El Blanco the edge in that case.
Why is Walter so greedy?
We don’t actually agree that he’s greedy. He’s just a smart small town businessman. He sees opportunity and goes for it. His opinion would be that if Val and Earl don’t recognize the value of their monster tentacle, he might as well be the one to capitalize on it.
How come no token bimbo blondes ? Nothing like a bimbo being devoured on the big screen!
Well… our only defense is that we just like writing strong, smart women. Also we try to do movies that don’t have the standard cliches.
Earl and Grady find Pedro’s remains hanging from the back of his truck cab. How did this happen, especially after we see the truck come to a stop? What happened that we didn’t see?
Our intent was this: Pedro was surrounded by shriekers attracted to his warm engine. His first natural impulse, to slam on the brakes, let the monsters start swarming aboard his truck. He climbed out the window into the bed and tried to get as high as he could, up onto the top of the truck’s cab, but by then, so many shriekers had hold of him they ate everything but his arms.
I miss the old Jodi (Susan Chuang). She was so sexy! Did you guys think about bringing her back in the series?
We begged Susan to keep playing Jodi for us! But with other things going on in her life, she didn’t want to relocate to Mexico (where we shot the series) for who-knows-how-long. So we had to re-cast the part — and felt really lucky to find Lela Lee.
What type of pocket watch does Hiram sell?
Terribly sorry, but we just don’t remember what it was. I actually checked with the propmaster for that film, and he took the time to look through old records and invoices he still had, but couldn’t find the watch. You can be sure he chose a watch that was correct for the late 1800s period of the film, and for Hiram’s upper-crust lifestyle.
Why didn’t you show Buford getting pulled into the graboid instead of the graboid resurfacing [with him in its mouth].
We felt like it was important to try different things with each movie. We had seen Walter Chang get pulled into a Graboid in Tremors 1. And we had seen the oil worker swallowed in Tremors 2. So in Tremors 3 we thought it would be more fun and fresh to have Buford just disappear, then reappear in a graboid’s mouth. So for a few seconds maybe some viewers are thinking, “What happened? Where did that guy go?”
How were the “snake” parts of the graboids made? I think I read somewhere a long time back they were pantyhose with “stuff” stuffed in them? (OK, I’m planning to go to a convention cosplaying as Val and a graboid would help sell it…)
We’re probably answering this question too late (we’ve been busy!). Hope the convention went okay. The Graboid tentacles were made in a number of ways. Most were sculpted in clay and then cast in various kinds of rubber, then elaborately painted. Some had extremely complex mechanical skeletons. Some were simple hand-puppets. The reference to panty hose probably refers to the graboid intestines, seen in the movie after the monsters are blown up. Some “guts” were panty hose filled with things like canned pureed pumpkin, or other things the creature effects people dreamed up. The Tremors Blu-ray DVD has some very nice behind-the-scenes extras showing most of this.
Can you do a Tremors remake with al Pacino, Jamie Foxx, Dennis Quaid and Cameron Diaz?
Absolutely! Can you get them for us?! And can you convince Universal to let us do it?! Kidding aside, what a fabulous notion. It’s great to have fans that dream bigger than we do!
What ever happened with “Grady and Earl’s Monster World”? I know it was referenced in Tremors 3, but nothing else was ever said about it since.
Hey, it gets hard tying up all these loose ends! Seriously, though, we feel that Earl and Grady made a go of it (with the money from the Mexican government), and it probably did pretty well for a time, when Shriekers were in the news. But in the end it was kind of a “niche” destination, like you had a theme park devoted to zebras or platypuses; and Grady and Earl probably moved on to other things. Hard core Graboid and Shrieker fans were disappointed when it finally closed.
Where in Nevada would you say Perfection is exactly?
We can’t say — exactly. SS Wilson’s memory, increasingly subject to question, is that we felt Perfection was in central Nevada, like somewhere East of Reno.
Hello there! I’m looking for information on the whereabouts or existence of the jeep truck used in the original movie. I would very much like to purchase it if possible. Any info would be appreciated thank you
I think we’ve answered this one before, but I know how much people would love to find one of those old military version Jeep Gladiators. They date from the early 1960s. The two we rented for the first movie were sent back to where ever we rented them from. The ones we used in Tremors 2 and Tremors 3 were also rentals and were returned. We have met a few fans who have found and bought them (search the FAQs for one lucky fan’s comment), but the old trucks are just becoming more rare!
Was creating El Blanco as a Protected White/Sterile Graboid just an excuse to always have a Graboid around because you guys knew we loved them, or was it really just all part of the work that went into the movie at the time?
It was an excuse to have a Graboid around because WE loved them. When we got the green light for Tremors 3, we had many discussions about how to expand on the series but keep fun elements. We were happy when we came up with El Blanco.
In Feeding Frenzy, Burt says El Blanco tried to get over his wall but couldn’t. Given his/her already strange behavior, is it possible Graboids could actually climb over his wall, crawl above ground like an inch worm (hence their nickname: Worms) and still cause him problems? Or is there something about Graboids that actually prevents that from happening?
In Tremors 1 Rhonda points out that Graboids move by pushing with the dozens of spikes on their sides. Though a Graboid is somewhat flexible, the more spikes that get above ground, the less able it is to move well. We don’t feel they can “inch worm” along. If they could, Burt would’ve have built is wall differently!