The History of King Kong with Author Ray Morton

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:13]For this video, I'm joined by author Ray Morton as he discusses his book King Kong: The History of a Movie icon that was originally published in 2005, but it's now available as a revised edition that expands on the history of Kong and covers the Peter Jackson movie in more detail. plus all the other King Kong related movies that have hit the big screen since 2005. As we chat about his book, we explore the 1933 classic, its sequel, Son of Kong, the 1976 remake, and its own sequel in 1986 with King Kong Lives.

[00:00:46]So, Ray, um, when did you first experience King Kong, the original 1933 classic, and what was your initial reaction to it?

[00:00:55]>> Um, I first saw it when I was about seven or eight years old. Um my dad showed it to me because he had seen it when he was a kid. He saw it on one of its um first or second re-releases and it was a fond memory for him because he'd actually gone to see a completely different movie and and this was the second feature. He had never heard of King Kong and it really kind of blew his mind. So when I was I guess we thought I was old enough. We lived in the New York area and anyone who grew up in New York, there was a local channel, television channel, Channel 9, and they had all the monster movies and they would show King Kong several times a year and uh I one of those times he sat me down and we watched it together. Over the years, it's hard to remember specific things. I just always fascinated with it. I mean, it was it's an exciting movie. If you're a kid, it's great cuz it's got dinosaurs and it's got a giant ape. So, you know, perfect perfect for a seven or eight year old boy. But just the whole mood of it, the atmosphere, you know, it's a very uh moody black and white film and just the spectacle of it was just uh incredible.

[00:02:01]And somehow I just found myself hooked on it because every other time that they would show it, I would plant myself down and make sure that I watched it. I I would get up in the middle of the night if it was screening at like 1:00 in the morning or something. my mother let me, which I I'm kind of amazed she did. Um, Channel 9, for whatever reason, and I still don't quite understand the connection, used to show it every Thanksgiving. You know, I don't know what King Kong has to do with Thanksgiving, but they would run it every year, and my mom would always arrange our holiday dinner around the screening time because she knew I would want to watch it. So, my mom was pretty cool that way. As I got older, I got interested in film in general. So, of course, then I wanted to figure out, well, how' they make this movie? And so, then I, you know, I started getting into, you know, understanding stopotion animation. And this would have all been in the in the 1970s, early 1970s. There weren't a lot of books or things about it. Um, you know, there was a couple of little things written for kids. And there was a magazine back then called the Monster Times.

[00:03:08]It was it was a newspaper like the New York Times only it was all about monsters. Um and the first issue had a making of King Kong story that was written by a guy named Steve Vertle and he's one of the first guys who ever really dug into the making of the film.

[00:03:25]And so this was like 1973 or something. And Steve and I had lunch last summer. I finally met him and it was amazing.

[00:03:33]>> It was very cool to like sit and say, "Hey man, I read your article when I was a kid and here we are having lunch." So, it was it was great.

[00:03:40]>> Wasn't there a making of book of King Kong in like 1976 when the new one came out? Right.

[00:03:46]>> There was. So, that came out um it was actually published first in the UK in a hardback and then it was published in the US in a soft cover early 1976. It came out uh the hard cover came out in 1975. We had lived in New York. My family moved to Connecticut, which is an adjoining state. And the day we moved, it was all busy at our house. And my mom said, "Go away. Come back in a few hours." Cuz I was getting in the way or something. And um I went to the local library in the new in the new town that we moved to and they had the hard coverver edition, which I was not aware of. So I that was the first day I was there. I got a library card. I took the book home. I probably had it out the whole summer. They probably got mad at me. Um and and then I did was able to finally buy the paperback when it came out. Um and that was by George Turner and he was um he was many things but he was the editor at the time of American Cinematographer magazine and that's that's a great journal for not just cinematography but they used to cover special effects and all of this. So he >> yeah he had really done his homework and it's a great great book and anybody who writes anything about King Kong owes a debt to George Turner and I certainly do. hysteria.

[00:05:07]>> It's crazy that a film from 1933 still had the power to influence a newer generation, especially into the 60s into the ' 70s >> cuz you know similar with Peter Jackson, you know, >> you know, he he saw it on reruns like everyone else would have done that similar age and it still has that influence. Why do you think it still has that power after like >> when you saw it like would have been you 40 to 50 years later?

[00:05:32]>> Yeah, about about 40 years after. Um, you know, I've thought about it a lot because people ponder this a lot and I I think it's on a couple of different levels. I not necessarily consciously, but in the matter of writing the script for the movie, and I actually go into this a lot in the new edition of the book, because I hadn't gone into it so much in the old edition. There were a number of writers and a number of ideas and and as I said I think probably mostly accidentally they tapped into a lot of really classic mythic elements. I mean you know there the initial appeal I think human beings in general are fascinated by apes because they are our closest genetic cousins. So I think there's always there's always a fascination that way. I think we're fascinated with size. you know, we all want to be bigger and more powerful than we are. Um, the story is basically, if you peel away all of the monster elements, it's a story of unrequited love. And I think we all know what that's like, or at least a little bit anyway. Um, but they they tapped into stuff that's in classic myths and fairy tales. I mean, they literally get on a boat and sail to a faroff land.

[00:06:49]They sail through a veil of fog into this enchanted wonderland. Um it's primal jungles with um dinosaurs roaming around, you know, like it's it's our prehistory. It's it's the whole native tribe with a sacrificial uh ritual. You know, all of these things are elements that are that are in classic myths and classic fairy tales. Uh they capture the god. the god escapes into the modern world and and it's the primitive world versus the the modern world which was very much on the filmmakers minds. These are all such elemental things and I think putting them all together into this one film. I mean there's a certain, you know, St. George and the Dragon, you know, we're going to go up against the monster and rescue the girl. And I think I think that lucky uh combination of elements is what made it more memorable than a lot of other like I'm a big fan of the original uh Godzilla film, but Godzilla is about a force of nature and and if you go in that original film, it's a critique of the you know the nuclear bombing of Japan and the nuclear but it it stays there. Um, and and I think as you see in later Godzilla movies, they just get sillier and sillier. Kong kind of stays in this when they tell the actual story of Kong. When they start doing other things, we can talk about that. But, uh, but there's just all those great elements in it. And plus the iconography, um, is, you know, I mean, again, I grew up in New York.

[00:08:26]It's pretty hard to beat the giant ape on top of the tallest building in the city at the time.

[00:08:32]I suppose it's also down to it's as you said earlier about the stop motion visual effects because for many people of certain age you know seeing King Kong it's like how do they do that and then there's also like oh I could try and do that myself.

[00:08:45]>> Yes. And that sort of spurs on many you know animators to sort of follow you know a similar path like Phil Tippet.

[00:08:51]But the uh in the case of like the generational thing like for the 70s you had obviously Star Wars Ghost Encounters and Superman which would also kind of inspire other you know fans of of these films to sort of try and replicate or try and join that industry to be inspired by what they saw. Um, in case of King Kong, the process of writing this book because you cover all the movies, right? The new edition is up to the latest King Kong film we've had kind of fairly recently on the the previous edition kind of stopped at the Peter Jackson film, right?

[00:09:21]>> Right. Yeah. Cuz it came out ahead of that film.

[00:09:24]>> Yeah.

[00:09:24]>> Yeah. Yeah. So, obviously King Kong, the original one, massive hit movie. Um, and obviously you'd done so much so much research over the years, you probably filled your mind full of King Kong trivia and production information. What when I started and the book went through a couple of dis different conceptual phases. Originally I was just going to do a companion piece to the George Turner book. I wanted to cover the 1970s Kong so that it could sort of stand alongside his book on the 33 Kong because I felt like you know that movie has a mixed reputation. I feel it is better than its than its reputation. I feel it. Yeah, I feel it contributed a lot to the Kong mythos that a lot of people think was in the original film and wasn't. So, I thought I'd like to and and it's never really been covered, I thought, fairly. So, that's where I started. But then I then the idea I said it's really hard to write about one movie unless you put it in the context of the other films. So, then I thought I'm going to do a book on all of the films. Obviously, I started with the George Turner book because for what it is, it's very authoritative, but it also was limited. It it was mostly about the the nuts and bolts production, somewhat of the liveaction filming, but probably more about the visual effects and things. So, I thought there was more to cover. uh out I live in California and um at UCLA they have all the RKO archives and RKO was the studio that made the film.

[00:10:58]>> Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

[00:10:59]>> Yeah. And I had took me a while to figure out how to access it, but essentially I could go in and just start looking at all of the files and all of the production records. So that's really where I started the research. Um you know I I had the Turner book as a guide for certain things. Uh there were a couple of other uh fairly good in-depth articles like uh Cin effects had done a pretty good article mostly on Willis O'Brien but with a lot of focus obviously on Kong. Um and so those were the places that I was able to start for the second edition of the book. Uh these files were not available at the time.

[00:11:36]Marian Cooper, the guy who created Kong, his papers are at Brigham Young University in Utah, and those are now open. You can access those. And so for the second edition of the book, I really went into those files quite a bit. And what I got out of that, the first version of my book, I told a brief version of how the story developed, but in the new version, I really wanted to go into cuz one of the one of the things that was fascinating when I got into the um RKO files, the the first draft of the script, which was by Edgar Wallace, except for that Kong is in it and he climbs the Empire State Building, the end, there's very little in common with the final film and and there's like five or six different drafts of the screenplay. It was very interesting to see how that story developed like the whole native and sacrifice element doesn't come in until like draft three and although Marian Cooper the creator of Kong said that he got the idea from being in Manhattan one day and looking up at a tall building and seeing a biplane flying and he suddenly envisioned this giant ape on top of a building. the biplanes don't come into it until the fourth draft. So that wasn't true.

[00:12:55]>> Oh wow. Okay. That's that's crazy. Like they've got so many different drafts to get to. Really the main the main meat of King Kong. Obviously they had to have a huge success with that movie cuz before recording this we I briefly mentioned The Son of Kong >> cuz that that would arrive 9 months later and would have little to no impact at the time. Did did you find there was less information on that or was there kind of plenty of stuff going around for the sequel they'd put out?

[00:13:21]>> Basically that most of what I got for that was from the RKO files and there's there's some information in the files but it was a quickie production so there just isn't all that much. There was um an initial budget and the interesting thing on the budget is the original title of the son of Kong was Kiko the son of Kong. So he had a name at one point. Um he's only referred to in the final drafts as Little Kong, but uh um and there was also two drafts of the script and that's all there ever was.

[00:13:54]And it was interesting. It it pretty much follows the final film, but there's a couple of interesting changes and then there was shooting schedules. So I got to see where everything was done, who was working on what day. Um, so I think in what I tried to do in the chapter in my book is you get a pretty good idea of the progression of the production. Um, but it was it was an interesting thing because King Kong uh was initially released in March of 1933 or it had its premiere in New York and then it later had a second premiere in Hollywood in April and then it went into general release after that. Right before it came out in February of 1933, David Selnik, who was the head of production at RKO, left and the studio appointed Marian Cooper, who was the creator of Kong and was producing King Kong, as the new head of the studio. And they told him, "You have to have 40 movies released in the next year because RKO needed money." And you because it was the depression. and he so one of the first ideas he came up with is cuz by then they were fairly confident King Kong was going to be a hit. Uh so at the end of March he announced the Son of Kong and someone asked him why. He said because anything called Son of Kong is going to make money. He goes and he didn't he didn't have an idea for it.

[00:15:22]Yeah. And the RKO board said, "We will approve you making this film, but it has to be out by Christmas cuz King Kong came out March, April, and was going to play through the year." And they needed a Christmas movie. So, literally the day after the most of the crew stopped working on King Kong, they started working on Son of Kong, which was shooting before King Kong had gone into general release. So, >> that's mental.

[00:15:48]>> So, correct. cuz you think like that in that time the prince would have been kind of slowly working their way way around the United States and by the time he gets somewhere into you know in some town they were like oh wait there's a sequel coming out already you know um do you think like perhaps because it underperformed you think perhaps down to oversaturation or maybe the audience were kind of burnt out on the character already or just marketing just didn't work >> it's hard to tell exactly it actually it did okay it didn't it wasn't a smash.

[00:16:19]Kong was a blockbuster.

[00:16:21]>> Um, it wasn't a failure, but I do think I think it was too soon, you know, I because I don't think the market was done with King Kong.

[00:16:29]>> And and also I think it's an interesting movie with with some very interesting elements, but it's just not as good a movie as King Kong. It's much smaller in scope. It is clearly rushed a bit around the edges. the the elaborate um miniature sets and and atmospheric photography of King Kong are all replaced by very kind of rudimentary sets. And it's funny, and it probably shouldn't have been funny, >> you know?

[00:17:01]>> I mean, the writer Ruth Rose, I I don't I don't not know this adage, but she quoted some old Broadway adage, if you can't make it bigger, make it funnier.

[00:17:10]And they didn't have the money to make a spectacle on the same level as Kong because by then the depression was so severe that they really had a limit on the amount of money they could spend.

[00:17:22]>> Yeah.

[00:17:22]>> Because Kong Kong costs the equivalent of two and a half regular features at the time. It was a very expensive movie and RKO was like we're not going to spend that amount of money on the sequel. So >> it was groundbreaking as well. You know they were testing new ground with stuff.

[00:17:39]say >> absolutely. Yeah. Well, it was it was classic Hollywood that Mary and Cooper knew they were breaking new ground and the studio didn't want to pay to break new ground. So, they kept sending him notes. Can't you put him in can't you put a guy in an ape suit for most of these scenes? Do we have to keep doing the animation and which they do in future, wouldn't they? You know, decades later, put him in, you know.

[00:18:00]>> Yeah. You know, >> so after like the Son of Kong, we had this kind of massive kind of gap, right?

[00:18:05]Do do you think there was kind of a RKO had kind of maybe didn't want to pursue any more sequels but cuz we saw the Japanese would take on you know King Kong to fight Godzilla you know in the ' 50s and it's the ' 60s right ' 60s yeah early 60s in those days sequels were not um mandatory the way they are now and also like they were always considered a little bit like lower class kind of stuff like the studios they were willing to do it but they didn't like want to make a habit out of it. And the thing is, Son of Kong, it did okay, but it wasn't a blockbuster. And I do think the feeling was that King Kong was unique, like you weren't going to repeat that time and time again.

[00:18:45]>> Marian Cooper actually had an idea for a second sequel that he pitched RKO. Um, and it was um in the in in the first film, they knock Kong out on the beach of the island. The next time you see him, he's chained up in New York. Cooper came up with an idea for a sequel where they would tell what happened uh in the voyage to get Kong to New York. Okay.

[00:19:08]>> Yeah. And he would escape into I think it was the Melee Peninsula and the crew would have to recapture him and I don't know and and RKO was like we're we're done. We're not going to do that. And then about 10 years after he was no longer at RKO, but he came up with the idea to do King Kong versus Tarzan, which he wanted to do at MGM. and RKO said, "No, we're not going to give you the permission to do that." And then one more time he tried uh when Cynama came in, which would have been in the early 50s, I guess, he wanted to do a remake of Kong in Cynama, but they couldn't figure out how to hook up the three cameras that you needed to do synorama to sync it to do stop motion animation.

[00:19:53]So, that never went anywhere either.

[00:19:55]>> They should just shot it in 65 mm. Don't worry about the cinorama thing. You know what I mean? Should a bigger format, you know? Fine.

[00:20:03]>> Cooper owned stock in Cynama, so that was that was part of why he wanted to do it.

[00:20:10]>> Yeah, for sure. For sure. you know, got the Godzilla kind of crossover stuff, but it wasn't that was all, as you say, more the would you say the the silly years of of Godzilla where it becomes a little bit more fast cuz I I had a friend who used to was obsessed with Godzilla, but it was only for me, I'd always kind of like when it's serious, I'll enjoy it, but when it's a bit >> kind of wacky, I kind of lost interest.

[00:20:32]It was very >> when he's doing wrestling moves and laughing at his opponents. Yeah. That that >> Yeah. Yeah. It's it's a reflection of its times, you know. Um, and it sort of dates quite badly. Um, but again, Godzilla always comes back round to being serious again and then they sort of, you know, go off on their own little tangent and then come back again to being what everyone loves about Godzilla.

[00:20:52]>> People always rediscover him every 10 years or so. I think >> they do, don't they? It's kind of ripe for remaking, isn't it? With a new take, but kind of this the core story is the same. And that's kind of what happens with Kong really. become the the 1970s where it got the sort of uh disaster movie kind of craze of the period of earthquake and I think a bunch of other movies but >> yeah towering inferno which >> Inferno yes which is the movie that directly inspired the 1976 King Kong which is kind of weird when you think about it but what had happened there is you know movies in the late 60s and early 70s had gotten fairly small, you know, small gritty dramas and comedies and things because the industry wasn't doing that well and and audience they didn't think audiences necessarily wanted to go for big stuff kind of you know there were still some spectacles but they were more like you know musicals and things. So then in the in the early '7s you have the Poseidon Adventure which comes out in 1972 which is this big blockbuster spectacle and full of special effects and audiences loved it. It was a huge huge hit. So all the studios jumped on the disaster movie craze which is what it became known as.

[00:22:11]And the irony is Pesign Adventure came out in 72 and then there's a bunch of other ones. The most memorable ones are Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, and Airport 1975, which is the Well, yeah.

[00:22:24]And the what I didn't realize till I started read because when I was a kid, I remember these movies coming out, but you think like, oh, there's just, you know, it's months and whatever. They all came out within um eight weeks of one another.

[00:22:36]>> That's mental.

[00:22:38]>> Yes. Yeah. Airport 75 came out in October. Earthquake came out in November and Tower Inferno came out in December.

[00:22:46]Um >> it's like the 90s when you got like Volcano and Dante's Peak, you know.

[00:22:50]>> Ex Yeah, exactly. So like I in my in my childhood memory this, you know, this took many years to happen, but apparently I had a very busy 3 months or whatever it was, two months. But what happened is um and and all of those movies were big hits. So again, the studio is like we want to do more of that. and they all had, you know, fairly significant special effects for the time. And um so Dino Dler was an Italian producer. He he was probably the guy most responsible for resuscitating the Italian film industry after World War II. Uh he and Carlo Ponte. And then in the early 70s, he moved from Italy to New York and made a bunch of films there that made a big impact. He produced um Serpico and Three Days of the Condor and Death Wish and a bunch of so he was he kind of landed in America with a splash and he had he didn't work exclusively with Parammont but mostly with Paramont so he got together with Barry Diller the head of Paramont like to figure out well what are we going to do next and and they both said we want to do a disaster movie because Tower Inferno had just come out and it was the biggest success of all of all of those disaster films.

[00:24:06]So, what are we going to do like that?

[00:24:08]And they kind of figured that between burning buildings and crashing airplanes and earthquakes and turned over ocean liners, all the really cool disasters had been taken. So, what they Yeah. Like they they they weren't coming up with what would be the next thing. So what happened there was they started to think about the idea that well if you did a giant monster movie with a monster knocking over buildings and things you could do the same kind of special effects the disaster movie special effects only you wouldn't have to come up with a new disaster. The monster obvious would be the disaster. So they decided okay we're going to do a giant monster movie. And if you try to figure out why they decided finally on King Kong, there's like so many different stories about how Dino got the idea or who gave Dino the idea or um you know, I'm not really sure exactly how I got the idea.

[00:25:04]>> Was there like a a rights thing with King Kong had a kind of lapse? Maybe.

[00:25:07]>> It's very complicated, so I'll try and make it as simple as possible.

[00:25:11]Essentially, RKO was the studio that produced the original film. So the logical thing was let's go to RKO and get the rights uh to do a remake and and uh so Dorrenis started negotiations with this the RKO's representative and they made a deal. What he didn't know was at the same time Universal Studios had also had the idea to do a King Kong remake.

[00:25:38]>> Yes, I recall reading about this. Yeah.

[00:25:40]>> Yes. Because well they had Same for the disaster movies. two of the big disaster movies, Earthquake and Airport 75 were Universal Pictures. So, they were kind of thinking along the same lines, what's another special effects thing we could do? There was also a producer at Universal whose name was Hunt Stroberg Jr. and he had just produced for Universal a two-part it over here. It was a two-part television movie. I think it was released as a feature in Europe.

[00:26:10]Um, it was called Frankenstein, the True Story. um which was a kind of an event thing in its day. It's an interesting take on Frankenstein written by um Don Bikardi and yeah, Hun Stroberg was a big monster movie fan and he thought let's do King Kong and Universal we like that idea. The other thing was Universal had just come out with Sensoround which was the uh sound system that shook up the theater for Earthquake. Um I know Yeah.

[00:26:41]I know so many people who swear they were watching earthquake and chunks of movie theater ceilings were falling on them from the vibrations. So Universal is like, well, King Kong would be a great, you know, great use for sensor.

[00:26:53]So all of this, so they start negotiating with the same representative at RKO that a guy named Dan O'Shea. Uh, and he doesn't tell either side that there are two negotiations going on. and it gets lost in the midst of time, but apparently he told the universal representative, he said, you know, I like your offer, I think you guys are going to get it. However, Dan O'Shea was not uh empowered to confirm the deal. It had to go to the head of uh at that time RKO general who liked Dino's deal better because Dino was offering uh gross points and Universal was offering net points. So RKO made the deal with Dino and when Universal found out they said, "Well, Dan O'Shea told us we were going to get it, you know, verbal contract kind of thing." So lots and lots of lawsuits back and forth. Ultimately, Dino still had he had the signed contract so he was he could go ahead and make his movie.

[00:27:53]But what hap in the course of these lawsuits, what they had discovered is that when the 33 King Kong came out, one of the reasons uh that Cooper engaged Edgar Wallace to write the co write the script with him was Edgar Wallace at the time was the most popular writer on the planet. He was a mystery writer based in England um and just incredibly popular.

[00:28:19]And the and Cooper's idea was as a promotional gimmick, he was going to have Wallace write a novelization of the movie, which was not that common in those days. Uh, you know, you know, so Wallace died actually right after he handed in his first draft. And the script ultimately changed so much that there's very little of what Edgar Wallace contributed in the final story.

[00:28:44]But Cooper kept his name on it because again he was the most popular writer in the world at the time.

[00:28:49]>> Gives it a great great PR, doesn't it?

[00:28:51]>> Yeah, exactly. But so he hired um a newspaper uh writer, a friend of his, a guy named Delos Love Lace, who wrote a novelization based on the final scripts.

[00:29:04]And it was published in um the early March of 193 No, I'm sorry, more like February of 1933, about a month ahead of the movie's release. In copyright law, as I have learned, uh, whatever comes out first is what they call the originating item. So, one of the things Universal discovered is while RKO had renewed the copyright on the film, nobody had renewed the copyright on the novelization.

[00:29:34]>> So, technically it was public domain.

[00:29:38]>> So, mad, didn't it?

[00:29:40]>> It's crazy. So again, more lawsuits and eventually what happened is, and there gets to be some mob lawyer involvement in this, but they eventually settle where Dino's going to make his movie.

[00:29:54]He's going to give Universal, I think it was like 6% of his profits, and Universal would reserve the right to make their version of the movie. And the only limit on that was it had to be at least 18 months after Dino's movie came out. They couldn't release a movie before then, >> but they never did, did they? So, it was like obviously they backed away, right?

[00:30:16]So, >> well, they actually they did some pre-production work on it. They also did a man in an apes suit, which is what Dino did, but but the guy who was the guy in the apes suit said the weirdest part of the test was one of the directors of the test said, "Can you walk around in a herkyjerky motion to imitate stopotion?" And he was like, >> "Oh my god."

[00:30:36]>> Yeah. So, I've read the script to their version. The script is very good. It's It was by Bo Goldman, who wrote the screenplays for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and uh Melvin and Howard and a few other movies.

[00:30:50]>> Some really strong credits there.

[00:30:52]>> Yeah, the script was very good. I I think when they wanted guys walking around in herkyjerky motion, I'm not really sure the movie would have been.

[00:31:00]Um, but anyway, Universal, uh, they didn't exercise that right till almost 30 years later when they put out Peter Jackson's King.

[00:31:09]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:10]>> So, with Dino with Dino's one, you know, uh, you know, he it touted it was going to be it's going to outperform Jaws, you know, the big lavish production. When you do watch it, it does look amazing.

[00:31:21]You know, it's the money's on screen.

[00:31:24]Why do you think it I mean it was expected to do pretty good but why do you think it kind of didn't quite hit as expected and maybe the reviews were somewhat mixed because as you've you know writing your book you've wanted to uncover more about the film and express your appreciation for it. Right.

[00:31:41]>> It has an odd reputation and I'm not always quite sure why it does. The reputation if you just sort of scan online is that it was a critical and a financial failure and it was neither of those. The reviews were mixed to good.

[00:31:56]Um, you know, I never saw an outright this movie stinks. Um, also it did well at the box office. What it didn't do was outgross Jaws. That's not the movie's fault. What happened is as as they were gearing up and it's hard to remember now and if you didn't live through it it's even hard to describe but there was such a giant wave of publicity around that movie from the moment they started shooting till the moment they released it. So it was a pop culture event and somewhere along the line all the studio and people were like this movie is going to do better than Jaws and I'm sure Dino wanted it to do. Now, what people forget is Jaws was the highest grossing movie of all time at that time. Um, so it was probably not likely it was going to outgross Jaws and it didn't. And somewhere along the line that got translated into it failed completely at the box office and it's just not true.

[00:32:53]You know, >> it's an interesting movie. It's not the classic that the original is. It's not innovative enough. But it does innovate in one way that became very influential.

[00:33:04]It's the first significant use of makeup effects in feature films. Um because how they created Kong, it was it was a man in an apes suit, but it was the most sophisticated apes suit anybody had ever built. And the face was incredibly expressive. And that was done because the person who sculpted the face was Rick Baker who later became obviously you don't even know need to say who he is. He's so famous. Um and he worked with an Italian special effects guy named Carl Rambaldi. What they did is they made five different masks each capable of different ranges of expression. And then Rambaldi worked in these mechanical devices that were operated by um by wires like they were actually the wires that are on bicycle brakes like thin you know thin kind of pump wires and they would manipulate the wires and it would manipulate the facial features of the mask and if you watch the film now the expressions are wonderful like and you don't even think about it. It it was the first use of makeup effects which became the standard special effects technique for a lot of the 70s and all of the 80s and on into the '9s until digital started to take over. So in its own way it's as pioneering in its special effects as the original was in its in its stop motion effects. The problem is that most of the publicity attention, they started planning the movie in early 1975. So what comes out in June 1975, Jaws >> and all of the publicity around Jaws is around this mechanical shark that they built. So originally their plan was man in an eight suit. And while they were in early stages, Dino says, "What about a full-size mechanical calm?" All of the experienced special effects guys go, "No, that we can't do it." And Carl Rambaldi says, "Oh, yeah, I can do that." And and he designs this incredibly complicated mechanical operating system.

[00:35:14]They send it out to an aircraft company to see if the aircraft company will build it for them. They said, "Yeah, it'll take three years. Um, it'll take a year to do a prototype, two years to build the thing and get all the bugs out of it, and it'll cost like $5 million.

[00:35:29]>> Oh my god.

[00:35:30]>> Right. So, Demo was like, "No, we're not going to do that." And and the other special effects guy on the movie was a guy named Glenn Robinson, and he had done all all the effects for Earthquake and um legendary special effects man. Uh but he had also in his spare time designed amusement park rides and amusement park rides are based on hydraulics. He said I can build you a hydraulically operated Kong but Carla Rambaldi was saying Kong can like pick up the girl and walk around and climb the World Trade Center and all this and and he's like and it's not going to do any of those things. He said it'll it'll move its arms and you know whatever. So they went from and if and if you look at some of the early storyboards for the movie, they were planning to use the big mechanical Kong in like a whole lot of scenes >> because it's only used like once, right?

[00:36:24]>> Six shots.

[00:36:26]>> Six. Oh my goodness. You just see it arms move. That's about it, right? It goes up, I think, up and down. That's about it.

[00:36:32]>> And the movie started shooting in January of 76. It was booked in the theaters in December. It took them until August to build this thing. So, they could only use it in one sequence, which is called the presentation scene. And of course, it didn't work because they hadn't tested it. So, they brought in this whole crowd of people and the first night and they revealed Kong. And as they pulled up the the covering, the ne the wire in the neck snapped. So, his head fell down on his chest and all of this hydraulic fluid started spewing out of his crotch. uh promp prompting somebody to yell, "Kong is peeing and and and then at some point the whole thing split in half. So they ended up only being able to use it in about six shots. It cost them about a million dollars and somebody quote which was really funny was like as a prop it was a disaster said as a publicity tool it was worth its weight and gold because for a while everybody thought it was the full scale Kong doing most of the Kong action.

[00:37:39]>> Well yeah cuz if if you've been if you're there watching it you see the reveal and go oh my god this is amazing and once it moves or whatever you're just like is that it >> when it's standing still it looks great.

[00:37:51]The the only the other problem is there was no coordination between the people building the suit and the people building the giant. So the giant looks very good when he's standing still.

[00:38:02]However, he doesn't look anything like the suit.

[00:38:06]>> So there's actually a scene where they intercut the two and you're like >> what's going on here?

[00:38:12]you know, >> I think because Dino would obviously the film would be successful, you know, as what you were saying alluding to that people perceived it as a kind of somewhat mediocre success. Uh, Dino would follow with King Kong Lives in ' 86, >> right? 10 years later.

[00:38:28]>> 10 years later. Yeah. So, I mean, that was now it's known as a bad movie, right? King Kong Lives. So, maybe could be so bad it's good.

[00:38:36]>> Um, >> it's one of those >> one of those. Yeah. Yeah, >> cuz when I saw the trailer years ago, I thought, "Is this a cannon film?"

[00:38:42]>> Yeah.

[00:38:43]>> What were your kind of thoughts on that film when you saw it? Did you Did you see it in the cinema?

[00:38:48]>> Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I went opening night, I dragged a bunch of people cuz I >> It's going to be good. It's going to be good. Trust me.

[00:38:54]>> Well, I was keeping my fingers crossed.

[00:38:56]But and and you're also not far off with the cannon reference, but the thing with the 76 King Kong had come out. I always and in the book I make an argument for it. It adds things to the Kong legend that everybody thinks are in the original movie that are not. It It especially adds a sympathetic relationship between Kong and the woman in the story, which in >> because the 33 one, it doesn't really explore.

[00:39:22]>> Every time she sees him, she screams and that's it. And and so all of that all of that sympathy was was all included in that film. And and so and and I think if you look at the 76 film, the visual effects in the first half of the movie are excellent.

[00:39:41]They get a little less excellent as the movie goes on because the blunt truth is they had a tight schedule. It was booked into theaters and they just didn't have time to >> There's some good miniatures in the final act, isn't there? He's interacting. He's like throwing stuff at a train and stuff like that. And >> the train stuff is great. Yeah.

[00:39:57]>> That's like really well photographed.

[00:39:59]>> Yeah. Is is also very good. Um, some of the some of the composits aren't aren't as good as they need to be, but overall, I think it's a successful film. Not a classic, but successful.

[00:40:12]>> Dino wants to do a sequel right away, but but because it didn't do as well as um as Jaws, Paramont wasn't that crazy about it. And also, there was some odd clause in the agreement that he had made with Universal where Universal got to approve a sequel. And I'm not sure exactly why that clause is in there, but I think because Universal's original pitch to RKO was they wanted to do a remake and a sequel. So, I guess they wanted to reserve that right. Anyway, and Universal at that point was in another lawsuit with Dino over the movie Orca because the name of the boat in Jaws is Orca, which is why Dino called his killer whale movie Orca. So, I I don't think anybody was in the mood to cooperate at that time.

[00:40:59]>> Well, Dino was going through a number of kind of like, you know, box office kind of failures, wasn't it? In the 80s, it was kind of slightly undoing, wasn't it?

[00:41:07]You know, as you >> Yeah. Well, he yeah, he he had a mixed record in the late 70s, but what happened in the 80s was Paramount was his partner on King Kong and and on most of his 70s movies. He always had a studio. He ended up doing the David Lynch Dune, bunch of other that was with interesting Universal, right?

[00:41:26]you know. Um, but what happened in the right actually right after Dune was there was this weird trend in the 80s of all these people wanting to start their own mini studios. And so all of these producers um as someone I heard describe of dubious financial uh resources. So the Canon guys and Dino and a few of these other people where you don't quite know where the money's coming from, you know, and maybe maybe you don't want to know.

[00:41:54]>> Like the soul kind isn't it? So there's all kinds exact like they were all kind of in the same boat I think. Um anyway, Dino uh took over this company called Filmways and he turned it into the Derenesis Entertainment Group.

[00:42:09]>> Yes.

[00:42:10]>> And then he also uh took over a distribution system from uh from Sony.

[00:42:16]The thing with distribution is it's incredibly expensive and that's why most independent producers sign with a major studio because the studio handles the distribution. Dino wanted to be his own studio and he had certain financing lined up, some of it actually legitimate and then a bunch of economic things happened and the financing all fell through or half the financing fell through. So, what happened is he had all these grand plans and one of his plans was, "Well, now I'm going to finally get to do the sequel to My King Kong."

[00:42:48]>> But then when all of these financial things fell through, he goes, "But now it has to be a smaller budget."

[00:42:54]>> And the de his 70s King Kong cost $25 million, which at the time was the most expensive movie ever made. The second one cost $22 million 10 years later when the average price of a blockbuster was $40 million. So, >> yeah. Yeah. All of a sudden, it's a cheapo. The other problem was how do you bring King Kong back? Because um Dino did not want to do like Son of Kong. He wanted King Kong to come back and people pointed out to him that Kong was shot off the roof of the World Trade Center and fell 110 stories to the ground. It's going to be tough. So this writer named Ron Shusette who was one of the co-authors of Alien and he came up with this idea of giving Kong open heart surgery and a heart transplant.

[00:43:42]>> Yeah, it's crazy. I mean it's quite forward thinking, you know, as an idea.

[00:43:46]It's the most kind of in reality, what you could could you do apart from like do some sort of Frankenstein's monster and try and bring him back, you know, that way.

[00:43:54]>> Yeah. which actually was one of the ideas of the of an earlier sequel idea was to have Kong like Frankenstein somehow which I don't quite understand.

[00:44:02]Um so and you know they do skip over the fact that every bone in his body would have been broken by the fall also but that whatever. So they they come up with this idea and Dino likes it and he says go write the script but he put he put put another restriction on it and the restriction was he had also bought and opened well actually he didn't buy he opened his own studio in North Carolina uh over here and the reason that he did that was North Carolina over here is a non-UN state and California is a union state so he could do things cheaply which has its own problems. Um, so he told Ron Shusette, "I don't want any action set in a city." He goes, "They were in and North Carolina has a lot of mountains and and wooded areas." He said, "I want you to set it like in mountains and wooded areas so we can just film it all around here." And and as Ron Shuset pointed out, uh, he said, "The problem, one of the big problems of the movie is that all of the action sequences are the same. They're running around, jumping off cliffs, running through the woods, and after a while, it gets very boring.

[00:45:11]>> Yeah, it does. Yeah. Very repetitive, you know.

[00:45:14]>> Yeah. And the other thing they came up with was to give Kong a mate, Lady Kong.

[00:45:18]So, a female Kong.

[00:45:21]Anyway, um it's it's kind of a cheesy idea. And there was a weird split because Shuset said that he wrote it as a semi- spoof, but that the director and the producer, and they brought John Gillerman back, who had directed the 70s Kong. Um, they directed it as a serious movie. Um, and so the problem is you have this kind of ludicrous premise directed by somebody taking it too seriously.

[00:45:48]And >> and also in the 70s Kong Gillerman directed most of the Kong stuff himself.

[00:45:56]Here they gave it over to a second unit director. Um actually most of the keys on King Kong Lives were from the UK because they could import UK people.

[00:46:08]They couldn't import Hollywood people.

[00:46:11]um >> because uh British crews aren't subject to our union rules if if they don't work in a union state.

[00:46:19]>> So you had a you had um Peter Merton was the production designer. He had done Man with the Golden Gun.

[00:46:24]>> Um yeah, Alec Mills was the DP. He was the DP on The Living Daylights and uh License to Kill. So they had some Bond people there and a few other folks, but Robin Brown was the second unit uh cinematographer and director and he had done lots of work on like A Bridge too far and all those all those great films.

[00:46:45]Um, so a really good crew actually and it's not a badl looking movie for what it is, but the problem is it was sort of a satire and it sort of wasn't and the apes are making goofy faces at one another and and the whole thing just ends up collapsing in in in just a bunch of cornball stuff and and audiences I don't think understood how to take it.

[00:47:10]>> Yeah. Suffers some sort of tonal whiplash, doesn't it? Yeah, absolutely.

[00:47:15]And the other thing was um because Dino didn't have enough money, he couldn't promote it. So, they didn't get I remember where I saw it was in this little out of the way multipplex theater that, you know, basically cannon movies would open in. So, it you know, it basically was a failure critically, a failure commercially. And that Dino had planned to do a third a third Kong movie at the end of King Kong Lives, little baby Kong is born. So, he was going to do the adventures of Baby Kong, but uh that didn't happen.

[00:47:49]>> Then nothing would happen really until Peter Jackson got his hands on it, you know, which you know, cuz he had the he had the the power to do whatever he wanted after the success of Lord of the Rings. And you know, he'd been obsessing over King Kong since he was a kid and now to get the chance to do his big lavish, you know, version of King Kong, which I saw at the cinema. I remember when I was I was a projectionist at the time and we got the prints come in and the print we got was a special print that was used at at the um one of the premier prints and I got a letter in there from Peter Jackson saying >> to be careful with it and make sure the volume's at this level. I'm like well I'm not going to play at that volume just deafen everyone.

[00:48:31]>> It's always the same. And we always got letters from like Michael Bay saying turn it up to seven. and say, "I'm not doing that."

[00:48:39]>> Speakers out.

[00:48:40]>> Exactly. Within 10 minutes, they're going to come out. Can you turn it down, please? It's too loud. You know, so Okay, fine. Um, but I was that film, you know, cuz I, >> you know, I'd seen the 1930s one as a as a kid on Channel 4 in the UK on a Sunday afternoon. Um, didn't have much memory of it though until, you know, sort of 70s one. Again, that's one of the one of those kind of weekend movies. You see glimpses of it. But the the Peter Jackson was the one I I knew even though you hadn't really seen the Kong movies.

[00:49:08]Um the the the story and those elements are kind of just part of pop culture.

[00:49:13]>> They are, >> you know, they've been spoofed. It's always always kind of referenced. So you kind of knew where you're at with the stories that start, middle, and end. And then seeing Peter Jackson one was really was spectacular. And it was, you could argue that some people complain it was a little bit too long, but as in the case of many directors who are obsessed with the source material and they get through their movie, they always are. They a bit indulgent and especially with um >> El Toro's uh Frankenstein movie that came out that was a little bit I thought was a little bit too long, but you know that was intended for streaming anyway.

[00:49:45]So you can kind of get away with that.

[00:49:47]But this big epic, you know, Peter Jackson film, at the time you were kind of planning your book, obviously this is ahead of this film coming out, right?

[00:49:56]>> When he announced he was going to do it, I knew cuz I had been kind of working on the book as a hobby, you know, just as I was doing research, I was interviewing people, and in my head it was someday I'm going to actually sit down and write this book, but right now I'm doing other things. So this is like what I do when I have some free time. when he announced he was doing his movie, I knew this was going to be the time like if if I was going to do it >> perfect marketing wise, tee it up with that, you know.

[00:50:24]>> Yeah. And a friend of mine um had written a number of film related books and I told him about it and he put me in touch with his book agent, his literary agent and she said, "Oh yeah, I could sell this." And we within a couple of weeks we had a deal. The only problem was we we made the deal in probably early December of 2004 and in order for it to be out in December of 2005 because books go through this whole production process.

[00:50:55]>> That usually takes about 6 months. So I had to have the manuscript in in April of 2005. So I had to write this whole history. I had all the well I had most of the research. I didn't have all of it. It's just to put it all in sort of together and make it work structurally and stuff, you know.

[00:51:12]>> Yeah. So, I I had to finish the research and write the whole book in about five months and I ended up they gave me one extra month. Um I think I wrote the last two chapters in a total fugue state. And what what I've always told what I've always said to people is if you told me that the last few chapters of that book were brilliant, I would be very happy.

[00:51:36]But if you told me it was a bunch of gobblelygook that made no sense, I would completely believe you because I have no I have no memory of phrasing.

[00:51:44]>> That is really impressive though, Ray, to get that turned around that quickly.

[00:51:48]That is Oh, was it absolute nightmare done?

[00:51:52]>> I I I was pretty exhausted by the time it was done. But they did a really lovely job on um the the design of it, you know, which I can't take credit for.

[00:52:02]And when it came out, I was very pleased with it. Um, and the thing is because it had to be turned in in the spring, I couldn't really cover the Peter Jackson film because obviously it hadn't come out yet. And um, so really all I could do was I did a very brief chapter. It's like four or five pages um, based on the publicity materials that were available at the time.

[00:52:27]>> And and and so that was all I could get to. But so the book came out, it came out a little ahead of the movie. Um, it did it did well um for this kind of book. Uh, but I always thought like, well, gee, I never really got to do a full chapter on the Jackson Kong. Also, a bunch of other Kong stuff had happened. There was a an Australian musical that then went to Broadway. Uh, Peter Jackson had actually at one point had planned a sequel, but that that didn't happen. There there was a whole literary franchise uh done by the Marian and Cooper estate with this writer artist a guy named Joe Devidito and that whole series started to come out and there was a couple of new animated shows and then of course in the last seven or eight years we have what are called the legendary Kongs which is the legendary pictures did Kong Skull Island Kong versus Godzilla and then Kong times Godzilla I don't know it's Kong x Godzilla or whatever.

[00:53:24]That's right. The Skull Island one was pretty good. I quite enjoyed that for what it was, but when it sort of the crossover stuff, I was a little bit I don't know. It's not I also had a bit for a younger audience, not >> the way I look at them is they're they're the modern versions of the Japanese uh Kong movies, which is >> kid pictures. And and that's fine.

[00:53:45]There's a play and I remember when I saw the last legendary one, um I was in a theater with a lot of families and kids.

[00:53:53]It it wasn't to my taste, but the kids loved it and I'm like, "Okay, you guys you guys you can have your Kong movie that you love." You know, I I I wasn't going to ruin that.

[00:54:01]>> It's not my Kong, >> right? Yeah.

[00:54:04]Well, it's funny. By the time that last film was done, that their Kong has almost nothing to do with the original Kong. He's more like this Edgar Rice Burrows character, like his own kingdom and his own land. And like it's not a bad idea on its own. It doesn't have much to do with the 30s guy, but that's, you know, whatever, >> you know.

[00:54:25]>> So, with your new edition, you're getting to cover the Peter Jackson film, of course, in bigger and more detail >> and obviously the sort of the musicals and where we up to now with the Kong movies.

[00:54:37]>> I uh all the Legendary Pictures and the Peter Jackson the musical and and all the the Joe Devito stuff and everything else. So, yeah.

[00:54:45]>> But so, Ray, where can people find your book? This new revised version. It's out in the States already and they can get it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or uh that's published by Bloomsberry and it's on their website. Uh I I've seen it in a few bookstores. I'm hoping it will be in more bookstores. Uh it's also available as a Kindle edition and it will be out in a print edition in the UK in June.

[00:55:10]>> Yay. Hooray. I'll get my copy then.

[00:55:12]Excellent. Well, thank you very much for talking to me about King Kong. I've learned a lot today. I I knew a little bit about King Kong, so I know I'm a little bit more informed, but I can't wait to get your book. So, >> well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

[00:55:31]>> Hope you enjoyed the video. Don't forget to click the like button and hit the bell to be notified of my latest reviews. Big thanks to my patrons and YouTube members for supporting the channel. If you want to get involved and gain access to exclusive videos and take part in Q&A, follow the link below.

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