Don’t remember for sure, but it’s a mismatch caused by the difficulties of making a movie. We had a completely different camera rig on a different vehicle for Grady’s closeups. There may have been some reason we couldn’t use the same “track” to tow the truck. It’s even possible we just didn’t notice how different the background was, since we shot the scenes hours or even days apart.
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Was Walter Chang originally written as first generation?
He was a first generation immigrant, but ORIGINALLY he was Vietnamese and named Pham Van. Back when we wrote Tremors, a lot of immigrants were coming from there, so it seemed topical and a way to show how America has become home to so many diverse industrious people. When we were able to cast Victor Wong with his many movie credits, we re-wrote to fit his heritage.
You guys have been understandably critical of the 5th movie. However, don’t you think saying the whole “tickle his insides” thing is a little unfair to call “rule breaking?” We’ve seen Graboids spit out things that were harmful to them (Stumpy spitting out the same explosion that killed his friend and El Blancho spitting out 4-12 due to his nausea-inducing secretions), so if someone was inside of a Graboid shooting up their interiors with a shotgun, wouldn’t that mean they’d want to hurl them out ASAP?
You make a compelling case. We may have to concede the point.
You said a few years back Burt mounted the Graboid head from the one that fell off the cliff on his wall. Stumpy was the one that fell and in the shot of the head it tremors 2 we see it has all of the tentacle tongues. Where did the other tentacle come from?
As we noted in that previous reply, Burt paid an expert taxidermist to complete the job. So we must assume one of the tentacles is a reproduction.
What would a shrieker do if it encountered a grizzly bear?
We have wondered ourselves how the Tremors creatures would fit into the ecosystem, especially before humans. Bears and graboid habitats don’t overlap much, but certainly an encounter could happen. Since a shrieker is all about getting as much food as fast as possible, it would probably attack mindlessly, assuming other shriekers will “hear” its food call and also attack. If its brethren don’t join in, its probably bear food.
Do you think Burt was disappointed he didn’t get to use all of those guns on the wall?
On the contrary, he was delighted to be able to say he still had weapons to fall back on.
With the very sad passing of the wonderful and talented Fred Ward in 2022, would you mind letting us know of any cool and interesting things about working with and knowing him?
Here’s a memory of Fred that I don’t think I’ve shared elsewhere. He was a very adventurous world traveler and he seemed to rate exotic places partly by how dangerous they were. He had a funny expression he often used. He’d say, “Marseilles’s pretty good. You can get in real trouble in Marseilles.” Then he’d just smile, leaving you to wonder what sort of trouble he meant. No, I didn’t ask, afraid I’d sound as naive as I actually am.
How were the 3 lower jaws/mandibles operated? Did each mandible have its own hinge and/or cable or was it all people manually moving each one?
Our memory is, at least for the “hero” graboids (the fanciest full-featured ones used for closeups), each of the four jaw mandibles had its own hinge and cable control. So, yes, at least two people were pulling levers to operate the mouth.
What about Kevin Bacon’s Tremors TV pilot.
It understandable that Tremors fans would send us questions about the TV pilot. But please understand that the company that made it refused to meet with us about it or discuss it in any way. They wanted no input from us whatsoever. We know nothing about the pilot and have never seen it.
How fun was it to make tremors the series (2003)
The cast and crew were great to work with. But the strain of getting the episodes written and re-written plus shooting in far-off Mexico, plus having the studio enforce many odd non-creative decisions like airing the episodes out of order meant that overall it wasn’t a great experience.
I just read your analysis of Land of the Lost, with corrections in the next issue (with fan letter of your work from Mr. Maddock) in Cinefantastique. Did you and Mr. Maddock ever make a pitch for a movie version?
Well, I guess we can’t ignore a question about an article SS Wilson wrote in a nearly 50 year old movie magazine. We did not work on or have any credit on Land of the Lost. Only wrote that article about the show. So would have had no right or calling card to pitching it to anyone.
I notice that you guys used film cameras to shoot the series. Can you tell if you used 16mm or 35mm film? I’m thinking due to the grain structure, it’s 16mm. If so, is there any chance Universal can do an HD remaster since 16mm can be scanned at HD resolutions and even 4k resolutions?
We shot 16mm. On top of that, SyFy/Universal insisted we use the old TV 3:4 aspect ratio, even though 16:9 was already common. That does not seem to have overtly harmed the DVD version of the show I’ve seen, but it was annoying. We have no control over what the studio does as far as remastering.
Why are all of your Tremors Youtube videos on Real Deal Productions, in reverse order?
Well, the site posts them newest first, since I guess website designers think that’s how most people would expect it. I’m not tech savvy enough to know if there’s a way to see them another way.
In T-3, when Burt uses the anti-aircraft gun, was that a modified M45 quad mount made into a twin mount, or was that an M33 twin mount?
I think we talked about a quad mount, but budget and/or availability may have reduced us to the twin mount. And am not up enough on hardware to know which model!
When Val is hammering the fence nail at the opening credits, he keeps missing the nail, was that scripted or improv?
Neither. On that one take, Kevin just happened to have a hard time hitting the nail. Later, in editing, Ron Underwood decided it was a fun moment and decided to use it.
Were there 4 or 5 Graboids originally? I assume that the one at Burt’s house was scared away when the car alarm went off and ran back to town. others say there is a plot error. I know they are wrong.
They are wrong. The one that sinks Burt and Heather’s SUV did return to Perfection. Our feeling is not that it was scared away by the car alarm but that Burt and Heather’s concrete bunker was just a tougher target than the flimsy buildings in town that the graboids were already having success pulling down. Graboids play the odds.
When Burt kills his first graboid, why was he on the ground? Wouldn’t it be safer to sit on his truck?
Technically, yes. But Burt was a), making almost no noise, and b), pretty confident that graboids would be attracted to his noisier remote control tank and not him.
What happened with the graboid comics made by Dark Horse? Were the just cover prints or actual books. Was there ever a comic line in the works?
Just covers. And no, Universal never pursued or authorized licensed comics as far as we know.
When you shot the early trembling scene [with the dirt bank], you tried sqibs, more sqibs, then a piano wire. Why didn’t you just use a jackhammer?
We didn’t have one! We were a small 2nd unit crew way out in the middle of nowhere and had many more shots we had to get done that day. It wasn’t possible to drive a couple of hours to a town and see if we could rent a jack hammer. We had been very sure the squibs would work. When they didn’t, the crew had to scramble to come up with a solution. They had wire, so that was it.
This movie is the most underrated of the quadrilogy in my opinion! (Tremors 5-7 don’t exist! shhhhhh!) Anyways here’s my question, why did you decide to go back to basics with this movie?
I’ve told the story before, but perhaps not in these FAQs. Universal had insisted that Tremors 3 would be the last movie in the series, so we by invented the ABs in that movie and completed the graboid life cycle. But Tremors was getting more and more popular and Universal suddenly decided they wanted Tremors 4 almost immediately (and the TV series got green lit as well). Not wanting to have to cheat and come up with some lame reason the graboids keep changing into other things after ABs, we asked if we could do a prequel western instead. They didn’t hesitate and said, “Sure!”
Was the damage from the .50BMG round real? Or just added as an effect? Did it really go through all of that into the car block?
The 50 BMG is a very powerful cartridge, and what we showed is pretty close to what one can do. But of course none of it was “real” in the sense that we never, ever use real ammunition on a movie set. Effects people blew up the shrieker with a squib. The fake bullet hole in the concrete wall behind it was already there (hidden by the shrieker). And prop people made each of the other fake bullet holes you see in the next shots.
Why did Chang immediately start bleeding from his nose as soon as the Graboid, well, you know, grabbed him?
One could argue that the tentacles crushed his chest when they grabbed on. But the timing is odd, we have to grant. During production we felt we wanted that moment, so we shot it. Then in editing we probably found we didn’t have the shots needed to extend the moment, or Ron maybe felt adding shots didn’t add anything and slowed the overall action down, so we ended up with the timing you see in the movie. BTW, getting the fake blood up his nose, then having to keep his head tilted awkwardly back until camera rolled was very uncomfortable for Victor, making him feel like he was choking. We certainly weren’t going to ask him to do it over and over in different ways.
This might sound ridiculous, but how come there were no video games(disregarding the arcade game and the flash game)when the franchise was starting to gain more popularity?
It’s not ridiculous. But the answer is a mystery that only Universal studios can answer. They simply never pursued these things. A video game was in development around the time we did Tremors 2, but the company making it went under and no other company picked up the game to finish it.
If the graboids are sensitive to loud noises, why didn’t the sound of all the gunfire drive away the one trying to get into Burt and Heather’s basement?
It isn’t just any loud noise. It’s a question of scale. The explosion and concussion of one of Burt’s bombs is vastly greater than that of a gunshot, or even multiple gunshots. Only the much louder sound hurts their hearing and drives them away.
In Dune, the Fremen have a special sand walk so they can cross the desert without attracting the sandworms. Would something like that work with Graboids?
Of course! But you’d probably have to be really good at it. Graboids are a lot smaller and probably hear better than the enormous Dune worms.