Moviefone Editorial

Tag: keith-david

  • 15 Things You Never Knew About John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’

    Can you believe it’s been 35 years since “The Thing” first terrorized moviegoers?

    The film didn’t make a huge splash when it first debuted, but over the years it’s developed a massive fanbase and come to be regarded as one of the greatest horror movies ever made. To celebrate this big anniversary, here are 15 interesting facts you might not know about John Carpenter‘s masterpiece.
    1. While he’s worked with Carpenter many times over the years, Kurt Russell wasn’t the first choice to play MacReady. Both Jeff Bridges and Nick Nolte turned down the role. Several actors were also considered for the part of Childs, including Isaac Hayes and Carl Weathers.

    2. Carpenter considers “The Thing” to be the first part of his “Apocalypse Trilogy,” which also includes 1987’s “Prince of Darkness” and 1994’s “In the Mouth of Madness.”
    3. Legendary makeup and effects artist Stan Winston (of “Alien” and “Jurassic Park” fame) had a hand in the movie. Winston was brought on board late in production after original makeup artist Rob Bottin had to be hospitalized do to the stress of the project. That’s why Winston receives a “thank you” mention in the end credits.

    4. Carpenter cut production costs by using the same set for both the US and Norwegian camps in the film. The Norwegian scenes were filmed after the set was destroyed for the big finale sequence.5. Though it’s never mentioned in the film, Carpenter and Russell worked out a back-story for the MacReady character. They envisioned MacReady as a disaffected, alcoholic Vietnam vet/chopper pilot, who is reluctant to be thrust back into a leadership role.

    6. If MacReady’s shocked reaction after throwing a stick of dynamite seems surprisingly authentic, it’s because Kurt Russell wasn’t actually acting. He misjudged the strength of the blast after throwing the dynamite and was knocked backwards. Carpenter elected to use that take in the final film.7. Editor Todd Ramsay was concerned that audiences might react poorly to the film’s dark, ambiguous ending (above), so he and Carpenter filmed an alternate ending where MacReady is rescued and a blood test confirms his humanity. However, Carpenter elected to leave that scene out of all test screenings, and to this day the alternate ending has yet to be released.

    8. The only female performance in the entire movie comes courtesy of Carpenter’s then-wife Adrienne Barbeau, who provided the voice of MacReady’s computer in an uncredited role.
    9. “The Thing” hit theaters the exact same day as “Blade Runner.” Interestingly, both films suffered similar fates, receiving middling reviews and doing poorly at the box office. Eventually, they attracted massive followings on home video and became modern classics.

    10. There’s an alternate cut of the film designed for TV broadcast. Aside from toning down the violence and language, this version also adds voiceover narration and a new ending, where the Thing again transforms into a dog and escapes the ruins of the camp.
    11. Prior to the release of the 2011 prequel (above), there were multiple attempts at green-lighting a sequel to the original film. The Sci Fi Channel announced a TV mini-series continuation in 2003, though it apparently never got past the writing stage and was quietly forgotten.

    12. Carpenter himself revealed his ideas for a sequel in a 2004 interview with Empire Magazine. He envisioned “The Thing 2” picking up right where the original left off, with MacReady and Childs struggling to survive the deadly Antarctic climate until a rescue team arrived. Carpenter even planned on having Kurt Russell and Keith David reprise their roles, with frostbite injuries being used to disguise their older ages.13. In the film, T.K. Carter‘s Nauls (left) mysteriously vanishes during the climax and is never heard from again. Alan Dean Foster’s novelization explains that disappearance, as it includes a scene from an earlier screenplay draft where Nauls is cornered by the Thing and kills himself rather than be assimilated.

    14. In 2002, Black Label Games published a video game sequel to “The Thing” in the form of a third-person shooter for the PC, Playstation 2, and Xbox. The game stars a new character named Captain J.F. Blake, who leads a team to investigate the ruins of the U.S. camp and battles new manifestations of the alien virus.15. The game (which Carpenter considers to be in-canon with the film) reveals that MacReady alone survived the events of the film, while Childs perished from exposure. MacReady appears in the game’s climax, where he shows up in his helicopter to provide assistance to Blake.

  • Oprah Winfrey Goes Behind the Megachurch Pulpit in ‘Greenleaf’

    “You’ve got to have sin or you don’t have a show,” Greenleaf,” a new scripted drama set inside the scandalous behind-the-scenes world of a black megachurch that she’s executive producing and acting in for her OWN network.

    And who would know better than Oprah?

    After all, during the course of her 25 legendary seasons as America’s preeminent daytime talk show host and her journalistic career that preceded it, along with the empowering message of self-improvement she’s long championed — and often in tandem with it — she’s showcased her share of real-world stories involving crime, sin, corruption, scandal, dalliances, betrayals, selfish acts, foolish mistakes, falls from grace and all sorts of human frailties that derail people of every class and color.

    So when the television icon has reconnected with her considerable dramatic roots — she’s been, after all, Oscar-nominated for her acting work in “The Color Purple,” and was a producer on “Selma,” among other prestige film and TV projects — she recognized the rich reservoir of stories, both moving and provocative, that could be told about a fractured family at the center of a Southern church serving a large African-American congregation.

    But as someone who’s had her own church traditions loom large in her life, as Winfrey told guests at “Greenleaf’s” L.A. premiere, the stories to be told were not any sort of indictment of religious institutions — just an unflinching look at the personal test, trials, and transgressions of the Greenleaf family as they navigate their lives within the realm of a dynasty of spiritual service. Think a less flashy, more grounded iteration of “Empire,” with sermonizing and soul-saving in place of hip-hop and hit-making.

    “I’ve been hearing stories and been a part of stories and telling stories for as long as I can remember, since I first sat in church in Mississippi when I was three years old,” said Winfrey, who joked that her recitations in the pews were the beginning of her broadcast career. “Church is my root, is my foundation, is my center, is my life, and everything that I am today came up out and through and within the structures of the black church.”

    She noted that as the series — which centers around the prodigal-like return of Grace Greenleaf to her family’s megachurch fold after a long absence following her sister’s mysterious death, an event that prompts her to both reconnect with her brood and reopen long festering wounds — developed, creator Six Feet Under,” “Dirty Sexy Money”), who is white, brought a familial knowledge of the inner workings of a church to the table, but she frequently reminded him of the additional elements involved in traditional black churches.

    “We’re more than church. It is our community, our doctor, our nurse, our comforter, our psychiatrist,” she said. “So I loved the idea to use that platform of the church, and made the church as a foundation for real storytelling about sin, because you don’t have a good show without sin. Sinning, and all the issues that face everybody in their lives at one point or another — jealousies, and betrayals, and lies, and deception, finding the truth, but most importantly, the truth of who you really are.”

    “That’s what this series is about,” Winfrey, who also plays a recurring role as Mavis McReady, Grace’s aunt, who lives at a distance from the church community running a blues club, continued. “It’s about people you know, about people you wish you didn’t know. It’s about things that happened in your life and the things you’ve seen happen in other people’s lives. Being able to use this form of expression is really a glorified and sacred moment. So it’s not just about television, but using television to say something meaningful.”

    Merle Dandridge, who plays Grace, said she recognized the sensitive and powerful writing when she read the first script. “That’s how I knew that I was going to be in good hands,” she said. “It’s not tackling the church. It’s being within the church and understanding what’s going on in the church, and talking about the pros and cons of the church with love and affection for it.

    “I also felt ‘Well, it’s about time,’” the actress added. “It’s about time we talk about this topic. It’s about time that things that might have hurt people that we shed light on and humanize those stories. Maybe somebody can get healed by it.”

    Dandridge said she’s looking forward to seeing the conversation “Greenleaf” sparks among its viewers. “I think the dialogue that’s going to start from this show is one of the wonderful things, and one of the reasons I wanted to do this show so much. Because when your work, when your art can create those kinds of conversations, when it can start people having a dialogue and an actual understanding amongst people who might be on polarized lines, I feel like that’s art worthwhile, and that’s the kind of art I’ve always wanted to do.”

    Keith David, who plays Grace’s father and the church’s spiritual patriarch Bishop James Greenleaf, feels the series is an eye-opening depiction of a world he recognized well. “I knew him,” he said of the role. “When I read the script, I recognized him. I was raised in a church. I have lots of friends who are ministers. Having wanted to be a minister myself, I’ve been to a lot of churches. I’ve met this man. I recognized him immediately, and I loved him on the page.”

    “I believe that it’s going to be wonderfully resonant for people,” David said. “I think they’re going to really like what they see.”

    “I thought this whole concept of the megachurch and nighttime drama smashed together was so interesting because I had never seen anything like it,” said Kim Hawthorne, who plays Grace’s ambitious, confrontational, and holier-than-thou sister-in-law, Kerissa. “People are really going to see that we’re normal people, that the church is a church, a place of worship, but also a business, and that the first family has just as much drama and shenanigans going on as anyone who’s coming to the church to worship.”

    “I’m not preaching to people,” Winfrey told me. “But at the end of an episode, [if] you just go, ‘Hmmm. Hmmm….’ I’m just looking for ‘Hmmm.’ Three M’s — three M’s, not five! Just “Hmmm. That’s interesting. Yeah, what was that?’ You know? So I’m trying to drop little whispers of light into people’s lives.”

    “Greenleaf” premieres June 21st on OWN.