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When they are in the junkyard looking for a potato gun parts, Burt says to hurry because it’s going to be dark soon. After they battle it out Burt’s watch goes off saying it is just before MIDNIGHT. Surely it didn’t take them HOURS to gather everything and battle the abs right? Is this another continuity error that slipped by?

It’s not a continuity error.  We were aware of the issue. There’s often an editorial struggle between real time and movie time.  We tried to address it by putting in the dissolve to night (where the light comes on) and having Burt say “What’s taking Jack so long?”   Also, the battle with the ABs does go on for quite a while.  But as far as “movie time” goes, yes it does not really feel like hours have passed, so you can argue we didn’t get away with it.

What did Burt Gummer think of the Iraq War?

It’s an interesting question. I suppose one would expect that he wholly supported it. But Burt is also something of an isolationist, so might just as easily have felt it was meddling in world affairs that have nothing to do with the U.S.  So there you have it: a non-answer.

If you had wanted to see more graboid tentacles in Tremors 2, but were limited by budget, could you maybe have spliced in tentacle shots from Tremors 1 (like when you used shots from Tremors 1 in Tremors 3)?

We did use a few graboid and dirt hump shots from Tremors 1 in Tremors 3.  But using tentacle shots would have been a bit trickier. In T1 the tentacles are almost always doing something very specific (feeling a wall, searching a rock, grabbing something). To reuse them we’d have had to shoot scenes with Grady and Earl  or Burt that matched what the tentacles were doing.  Also, the lighting has to be exactly the same in the shots before and after.  Since there weren’t many times tentacles would have been called for in T2, it didn’t seem worth the extra trouble.

Was creating El Blanco as 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 both, but a bit more the former I guess.  We always like to look at what would really happen (even in a fantasy situation) and we felt that clearly people would rise up to protect the super rare graboids.  But the fact that graboids turn into shriekers presented a problem; they technically have a pretty short life span as graboids.  That’s when we hit upon the idea of El Blanco.  And that led to the idea that he could just stay in the valley indefinitely.

About the Episode: Feeding Frenzy. There was a scene in which 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 to Graboids that actually prevents that from happening?

To our knowledge, no one has documented a graboid climbing a wall like Burt’s.  The consensus is they are more like whales than worms, and would have great difficulty lifting their whole mass high enough to get over.

What is “Blacksmining”

Uh, we can’t figure this one out.  But we want to answer every question if possible. Can anyone tell us which movie this refers to? Or can the person who submitted it give us more detaiils?

In the first 4 movies, where specifically are the graboid tentacles attached inside the body? Is the graboid able to fit the tentacles completely inside of its body or are the tentacles too long to be fit inside the graboid completely? It’s very mysterious how the tentacles function inside the worm because we never see the inside of the throat.

In our view the tentacles are attached far back  along the muscular walls of the creatures’ very long “throat,” past the circular opening they come out of.  They can fold very compactly, like a chameleon’s tongue, but the unfolding step happens before you see them start to emerge. When folded inside, we imagine they can ripple and flex, helping a graboid swallow very large prey, forcing it back past the tentacles into the stomach.

Is there any town that inspired the idea for perfection Nevada?

There is not one specific town.  SS Wilson and Brent Maddock had done a lot of camping in the southwest deserts and had visited a number of ghost towns and small towns like Glamis, Randsburg, Rhyolite and others.  Perfection is a composite of places like that and of the people we met when hanging out in such places.

Hello! I have a question about Burt’s mounted Graboid trophy in Tremors 2. What happened to the original prop? Was it sold after production or was it destroyed?

It was not sold or destroyed. At the time we did Tremors 2, the creature FX team, Amalgamated Dynamics, had a mounted graboid on the wall of their shop. I think it may have been that one; in which case it went back to ADI after production.  Later, one of the full-sized graboids was donated to the Lone Pine Museum of Western Film History, and it’s still there today! (as of this Jan 2020 post).

I was watching one SS Wilson’s “Lost Tapes” of Tremors, and it showed how how you guys made that little “tremor” scene with the pebbles moving down the dirt bank before you cut to Rhonda, with it being done originally with little pops of a sort, before changing it to a wire. I’ve had to wonder, did any of you think about instead using a little stage, creating a desert themed layout with sand, mounting it onto a sort of vibration generator and attempt to get the same desired effect?

I have to say we did not think about those things.  Building a miniature set would have been time consuming and more expensive (we were a low budget movie!) Also, when we went out to do the shot we thought it was going to work like we planned it. Only when it didn’t did we have to quickly improvise.

I’ve gotta ask: how awesome was it to have a legend like Christopher Lloyd on the series? Knowing him from such movies like Back to the Future, the Addams Family and the like, I’m sure some of you guys had to be star struck at the time. And what did he think about the graboids? (Assuming someone knows the answer to that last part).

It was totally awesome getting Christopher Lloyd!  We were fans, too, and blown away when he agreed to come aboard.  Sorry we can’t answer the last part of your question. We actually didn’t get to see him much in person, since we were writing the episodes in LA while the crew was shooting the shows down in Mexico.

First, i wanna say thanks to you guys for bringing Graboids into our lives; I love them. My Question is: Tremors has seen a much longer, larger life than you guys had expected, and if i remember correctly, there was a time where you guys didn’t think there would even be a 2nd movie when the first came out, but 30 years, six movies, a TV Series and a 7th Movie apparently on the way, later, what are your thoughts on the life this monster movie franchise of yours has seen? And if you could say anything to us as fans for giving it such a life, what would you say?

Thank you. We get asked this a lot in interviews and podcasts and such. We feel great about fans having made Tremors the success it is.  It is true that we didn’t think there’d even be Tremors 2.  But when Tremors 1 was a huge hit in the then-new VHS video rental business, that made T2  and all the rest possible.  We are grateful to all the fans that have stuck with us and supported the franchise, even while we’re sad not to be allowed to work on it any more.  It’s fun to be part of something that has lasted so long.