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BY DANIEL BAIG | [Back to Part One] Just
past the catering (craft services, to use the proper Hollywood term)
truck, we were indeed finally met by Sheryl, Terminator 3: The Rise
of the Machines unit publicist (the person responsible for all the
publicity-related events, like press visits, that take place on a movie
set while the movie is being made). We commented on her pretty cool set
identification card, worn hanging from the neck. It was her picture,
along with her name, but the left part of her face was like the metallic
skull of the under the skin part of the original Terminator. Somebody
observed what a nice souvenir similar half-and-half face shot ID cards
would be for reporters visiting the set. (Idle wishing.)
Pretty much the first thing Sheryl said to us, after introducing herself
and getting all of our names, was an apology. Although we had been told
that we would be watching the filming of a big fight scene between Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Kristanna Loken, who plays Ah-nulds T-800s newest
nemesis, the T-X (a.k.a. the Terminatrix) today, it turns out that they
had actually finished shooting Arnie in that scene last night!!
(As it happens, this was the second such disappointment we had
had. Originally, our set visit had been scheduled for Thursday ((two
days before)), but it wasnt going to be to this set, at these
studios here in Los Angeles. It was going to be at a location in the
nearby city of Downey, on the grounds of an old aircraft plant the same
place they filmed the World Festival scenes of Spider-Man. But,
at the last minute Wednesday night we were contacted by Warners:
DONT COME! The trips off! They finished shooting ahead of schedule!
The cool scene we were going to watch there in Downey was all over.)
Clearly, this production was doing pretty good efficiency-wise, finishing
scenes ahead of schedule like this. (Later Jonathan Mostow, the director
of Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines, would tell us that
the shoot went only one day over the original schedule and that was
because a scene was added. For a film of this size and scope, thats
quite impressive, and Jonathan was justifiably proud.)
But for us, it meant no watching the two Terminators go at it
with each other. Not only that, but actually it meant no watching Mr.
Schwarzenegger film anything that scene which they had wrapped
last night was also the very final scene for the Awesome Austrian. This,
Sheryl told us, had also come us a surprise to Arnold he had been sitting
in his trailer, waiting to be called back to the set, when the filmmakers
realized they had gotten what they needed, and sent someone to tell him
he was done totally done.
Which wasnt the way it was supposed to go. Usually, Sheryl explained,
the completion of a big stars final scene in a movie is an occasion marked
by the whole production (like with a cake or something). Here it had
just, well, happened.
So, Arnold had come back to the set today for two reasons: one, to talk
to us internet reporters (yay!), and two, to participate in a little ceremony
in which he would thank and say goodbye to the crew. A ceremony which
we would get to watch as well! (Double yay!)
As we were walking, we passed in front of the big man himselfs trailer
(which he wasnt in yet). We were introduced to two older guys sitting
in portable chairs in front of its door, who turned out to be his assistant
and his security guy. I say turned out to be deliberately, because
finding out what their roles on set were was a lesson in the old appearances
can be deceiving/you cant judge a book by its cover concept: they looked
just like two, well, I dont know, electricians or something, taking a
union-mandated break outdoors or something. The way they were dressed
was set casual in the extreme.
While we were standing there, a big black SUV pulled up alongside the
trailer.
Oh, thats him now!
The two guys sprung up, all action now, and headed over to greet their
boss. The publicist was hurrying us along, but I held back a bit just
to get a glimpse of the passengers getting out of the SUV. It may seem
silly after all, we were going to be talking to him later on but,
considering all the unexpected cancellations that had happened so far,
I wasnt taking any chances, and just wanted to make sure I could say
I at least saw the original Terminator in the flesh. Well, there
he was, accompanied by a quite small child with long blond hair; from
where I was, I couldnt be sure if it was a boy or a girl (the hair made
it ambiguous), but I leaned towards boy. And not actually knowing the
details of the Schwarzenegger/Shriver family makeup, I had to mention
to one of the other reporters, when I caught up with them, that Arnold
had apparently brought his little kid. Oh, he brought his son? Well,
that answered that.
As we were walking down a wide thoroughfare between two sets of soundstages,
another SUV drove quickly past us.
Oh, look that was John Travolta.
Huh? What? Where?! was basically my reaction to this information.
In that SUV! I was told. Boy did I feel unobservant.
As we walked towards the direction where this latest SUV had parked,
I waited for the occupant to get out. Finally, a baseball cap-wearing
figure emerged. And, knowing that it was John Travolta, I could
indeed tell that it was John Travolta. But if I hadnt been told that,
from this still fairly considerable distance I wouldnt have looked twice.
I was doubly impressed now by my fellow reporters previous lightning-quick
recognition of the actor, in a baseball cap, in a moving vehicle, behind
tinted windows! Clearly my star-spotting powers were nowhere near theirs.
The question of why Travolta was there was discussed. Someone said he
was shooting another picture there. (So these studios were large enough
to accommodate more than one big production at a time. I was even more
impressed with the place, the existence of which two days prior I had
been totally unaware of, than I had been up till this point.) We joked
that maybe he was actually there to shoot a secret part in T3:
at one point, the new Terminator is going to morph into John Travolta!
(Note to the comprehension-challenged: that is not true, and not even
a rumor. It is merely a joke.)
Heading into another building, Sheryl began to rave about the work of
Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines production designer, a
young guy named Jeff Mann who had previously been the production designer
on Swordfish. We were about to see some of his work, and she assured
us wed be impressed.
We now entered a very large soundstage, which contained a set which we
were told was already in the process of being disassembled. The set represented
a location in Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines known as
Crystal Peak, which Sheryl told us played a very important part near the
end of the movie.
(And which apparently has nothing to do with that other well-known cinematic
location, Crystal Lake, the location of a very poorly run sleepaway
camp.)
Crystal Peak, it was explained to us as we stepped into it, was a secret
underground deep inside a mountain military headquarters of some sort.
Somebody asked if it was SkyNets headquarters. No.
The walls on two sides of the, well, I guess literally cavernous
set were covered in huge fake jutting rock, so the space did indeed,
depending on where you were looking, give the impression of a space hollowed
out presumably by blasting of a mountain. The sets walls were not
the walls of the soundstage building itself. They were made of wood,
and much further into the interior of the building. A catwalk ran along
the back of the walls, halfway up.
The first thing we saw, after the massive boulder-like projections covering
the walls, was a huge . . . well, I had no idea what it was. It hung
from the ceiling, hovering just off of the floor. It was some sort of
wooden, glass, and metal contraption about the size of a VW Beetle. It
was a lot of rectangular slats going both horizontally and vertically.
It could have been a public art installation of some sort. (But not like
the big sculptural blobs that term often brings to mind. This was symmetrical;
it had a uniform pattern.) With all metal, though, I assumed it was probably
some machine. What it really reminded me of, though was a xylophone
albeit an enormous multi-sided one that hung from the ceiling. Hey,
why not? Star Trek has that futuristic multiple board chess game.
So I asked Sheryl if it was actually a giant xylophone-like thing.
Yeah, she laughed, And we tried to arrange for Lionel Hampton to come
play it for you, but he wasnt available! (Kind of grim humor there
jazz great Hampton, actually a vibraphonist, had died exactly one week
prior.)
(The mystery of what the non-xylophone was will be revealed a bit later
on.)
On the far left side of the set was a large slightly elevated platform,
reached by stairs or a ramp. Here was the remains of an office of some
sort; there were a few metal desks, and a low fake ceiling, in the old
asbestos panel style, interrupted by (fake, of course) large metal supporting
columns. In one spot a panel had (I was told fake) water damage. Sheryl
explained that much of this area had already been partially disassembled,
so we werent quite seeing it the way it will be in the movie.
She also pointed out that it was all supposed to be 50s style.
To the right of this small office floor was a low railing with a banister,
separating the desk area from the otherwise contiguous space behind it.
Here we saw the cave wall again. A large, long panel stretched across
it. It was marked by a horizontal line of nine round clocks, evenly spaced.
Under each clock was the name of a city in a different world time zone
Tokyo, London, New York, Boise (kidding!), etc.
To the right, above some steps leading down to the main floor again,
carved into a rock wall was a giant United States Department of Defense
seal, including Latin motto, and the inscription Crystal Peak. Somebody
joked, Hey, whats the Paramount logo doing on a Warner Brothers film
set? because the central part of the seals design was a mountain peak.
Further to the right, still on the slightly raised platform level, and
deeper into the cave was a room full of very old fashioned floor-to-almost-ceiling-length
computers. And to the right of that was a small and very plain conference
room, with a very plain wooden conference table (which could maybe seat
12 or so) in the middle facing a small movie projection screen. As I
was checking it out, I realized everyone else had gone on without me.
Sheryl was pointing out to the rest of the gang some other elements of
the set worthy of notice on the other side of the soundstage. I tried
to rejoin them by heading along the behind-the-wall catwalk. I could
see them from it through a clear plastic sheet covering a rectangle cut
through the wall, which appeared to be made of nothing more than plywood.
But it turned out the catwalk dead-ended, and there was no way down from
where it stopped, so I had to quickly backtrack to the conference room
set and from there back down to the main floor.
When I rejoined the group Sheryl was talking about production designer
Jeff Manns brilliance and the incredible ideas he had come up with for
the movie, as we could clearly see here inside Crystal Peak. She said
that Jeff had been inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright for the sets look.
Huh? Now I was confused. I looked around me. This I didnt
see. For one thing, Wrights work is much more of the 20s, 30s, and
40s. Hes not so much associated with the 50s look. And then, Wright
liked ornamentation, decorative patterns, etc. This spare metallic military
hideout didnt quite jibe with that to me.
Frank Lloyd Wright?? I said. Uh . . . like where?
Sheryl pointed straight ahead at a enormous rock formation looming
from the top of the complex corner, and the metal supporting structures
built into it. Well, that certainly makes me think of Falling Water,
she answered.
I got her point. Falling Water, Wrights most famous design, was a house
which was built over and around a small rock waterfall, a natural feature
of the landscape it was located in. And this design we were looking at
now was certainly an example of that principle.
Turning around now towards the direction of the wall of the stage through
which we had entered, we found ourselves looking at another elevated platform,
this one quite high up, sticking out of another huge cave wall, though
this one had a reddish tint, unlike the gray of all the others. To the
rear of the platform was a mosaic made out of thousands of small (about
one inch) square tiles. Sheryl said this was perhaps Jeff Manns greatest
triumph; it looked like a true work of art. He had come up the design
himself. What it was was a mural, exactly in the style of the old Tomorrowland
parts of Disneyland and Disney World (the old Tomorrowland, not
the kitschy retro makeover it went through this past decade), of a hopeful
space age future, with rockets heading through golden clouds into space.
Everyone was just staring at it from our rather far away location on
the ground floor. Finally I asked Sheryl if we could go up the stairs
to the platform to look at the mosaic close up. Of course! So I led
the way, and we all admired the handsomely painted tile work.
Finally, passing by it again, I just straight out asked Sheryl what that
giant xylophone thing was. Before when she didnt give me a straight
answer, I had thought that it was secret information. It turned out,
I just needed to ask directly.
Its a chandelier!
Oh . . . This was the weirdest chandelier I think any of
us had ever seen.
Up until yesterday, it was hanging high up from the ceiling, so it was
easier to tell its a chandelier. (Now, with it just a few feet off
the ground, chandelier definitely was not the first guess that came to
mind.)
But, now knowing it wasnt some kind of time travel machine, but just
part of the dicor, I had to acknowledge that this object, at least, was
very much in a Frank Lloyd Wright sort-of style, with its rectangular
panels of wood of different sizes arranged geometrically.
But now we had to skedaddle, because an interview awaited. On the way
out, past the set walls but still inside the soundstage, we passed a whole
bunch of junk. I noticed a cardboard box on which was handwritten National
Security General P.R. Ashcroft. Once again left behind, I ran outside
and caught up with the others, and asked Sheryl if there was a character
in the movie named General Ashcroft.
She thought I was making a dumb joke, until I explained what I had seen.
Oh. People on a movie set are always making little jokes like that to
themselves. Props get labeled all kinds of silly stuff.
And now we headed back towards Arnold Schwarzeneggers trailer. When
we got there, we waited in front. It wasnt yet clear where the man was.
Then, all of a sudden, the air started to crackle and buzz; the smell
of burning rose into our nostrils. There was a blinding flash, and then
streaks of blue lightning all around us. And there, crouching on the
ground, naked as the day he was born (though quite a bit bigger of course),
one fist supporting his weight, was Maria Shrivers husband.
Okay. Just kidding.
It turns out he was in his trailer, expecting us. Sheryl went inside
to check if he was ready, and then we were invited aboard.
NEXT: The T-800s sex organs, or lack thereof.
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