Has anyone ever completely "misheard" a movie quote, and then were corrected? For years, I thought that Anna in "Predator" described the alien as "the demon that makes truffles of men", meaning that it hunted men as a highly desired prize. I found out today that it's "trophies", not "truffles", and I feel like a total ass.

I have that problem with music. I refuse to singalong with music because I will definitely have someone laughing at me for getting the lyrics wrong.

Yes on both!

Well, on Capo's Nos actually.

Michael Bay can go to hell.

Does anyone but me think that there should have been a sequel to Close Encounters? I would like to have seen the volunteers return to earth 20 years hence. It seems that a sequel could have followed any number of storylines.

"E.T. was the sequel to 'Close Encounters'" - Richard Dreyfuss

I guess it's still possible for a Close Encounters sequel. Every movie ever made is either getting remade or having sequels lately.

There's some truth to this.

From Wikipedia:

"Night Skies" was a sci-fi horror film that was in development in the late 1970s, but never actually made. Steven Spielberg conceived the idea after Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Instead, material developed at the time was used in Poltergeist and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

Origins:

Steven Spielberg came up with the idea for Night Skies in the late 1970s when Columbia Pictures wanted a sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He had no interest in a sequel, but also didn't want Columbia to make a sequel without him, as Universal Pictures had done with Jaws. Instead, he came up with a horror film treatment for a Close Encounters follow-up initially entitled Watch the Skies (which had also been a working title for Close Encounters). Spielberg based the story on a tale of alien encounters he had heard from noted UFOlogist J. Allen Hynek while doing paranormal research for Close Encounters: back in 1955, a Kentucky family claimed that they had been terrorized by gremlin-like aliens who surrounded their farm (note that Spielberg was one of the main driving forces behind the movie Gremlins).

In Spielberg's original treatment for Watch the Skies, eleven malicious extraterrestrial scientists try to communicate with chickens, cows, and other cattle in an attempt to discover which of Earth's animal species are sentient, before turning their unwelcome attentions on the human family and dissecting their farm animals. Fueling Hollywood rumors about the film, NASA announced that Spielberg paid to reserve cargo space for the 1980 inaugural Space Shuttle flight, in order to film the Earth and its Moon from orbit for the film's opening sequence. Spielberg stated that he would produce Watch the Skies but not direct it, as he was under contract to direct his next film for Universal.


John Sayles and Rick Baker:

Spielberg at first wanted Lawrence Kasdan to flesh out his Watch the Skies treatment into a fully fledged script, but Kasdan was too busy writing Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, so Spielberg turned to John Sayles (who had written Joe Dante's Roger Corman-produced Jaws spoof Piranha, which Spielberg had loved). Watch the Skies was renamed Night Skies because someone owned the rights to the words "watch the skies" (which was the last line in The Thing from Another World). Some called Night Skies "Straw Dogs with aliens", but Sayles says his inspiration was the 1939 western film Drums Along the Mohawk. Sayles even named one of the aliens "Scar" (a character who was said to be "a real badass") after a Comanche Indian badguy in the John Wayne film The Searchers. Spielberg suggested that Tobe Hooper, best known for directing and co-writing The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, direct the film. The film was scheduled to begin shooting after Spielberg returned from filming Raiders of the Lost Ark. Spielberg chose make-up and special effects master Rick Baker (who at the time was also working on John Landis's An American Werewolf in London) to design and create the alien creatures.

Rick Baker built a working prototype of the lead alien that cost $70,000 and thrilled Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy when they saw a videotape of it in action while filming Raiders in London. In mid-1980, Sayles delivered his first (and in the end, only) draft of the screenplay, which featured five aliens (cut down from the original eleven) including the aforementioned Scar; "Squirt"; and "Buddy", who was kind and befriended the human family's autistic son. Sayles's script opened with Scar (who was described in the script as having a beak-like mouth and eyes like a grasshopper's) killing farm animals by touching them with a long bony finger which gave off an eerie light, and ended with Buddy, marooned on Earth by his mean-spirited peers, cowering under the shadow of an approaching hawk. Although there was some differences over the new concept, Spielberg and Sayles parted amicably but the film project continued on.

Origin of E.T.:

While Baker worked on the aliens, Spielberg was having second thoughts about Night Skies. "I might have taken leave of my senses. Throughout [the production of] Raiders, I was in between killing Nazis and blowing up flying wings and having Harrison Ford in all this high serialized adventure, I was sitting there in the middle of Tunisia, scratching my head and saying, 'I've got to get back to the tranquillity, or at least the spirituality, of Close Encounters.'". While on the set of Raiders, Spielberg read the Night Skies script to Melissa Mathison (who was there to see her then-boyfriend and future husband Harrison Ford) and she cried after hearing it because "the idea of an alien creature who was benevolent, tender, emotional and sweet... and the idea of the creature's striking up a relationship with a child who came from a broken home was very affecting".

When Spielberg came back from Tunisia and Hawaii (where the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark was filmed), he eagerly closed the door on Night Skies and began planning the film Mathison had dubbed ET and Me, but would in only a year and half be known to audiences all over the world as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Rick Baker, who had spent $700,000 on unused Night Skies designs, models and animatronics, had a huge fight with Spielberg, which led to Carlo Rambaldi (who had previously done alien creature designs for Close Encounters) doing creature designs for E.T.. John P. Veitch (then-president of Columbia's world-wide productions) and Frank Price (then president of Columbia) were also unhappy with the emergence of E.T. and didn't want to make "a wimpy Walt Disney movie". In February 1981 (six months after Columbia's desire for a Close Encounters follow-up had been fulfilled by Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Special Edition), Columbia put the Night Skies/E.T. project in turnaround. Sid Sheinberg (Spielberg's long-time friend and then-president of MCA, the then-parent company of Universal Studios) bought the Night Skies/E.T. project from Columbia, repaying them the $1 million that had been used thus far to develop the project and making a deal in which Columbia would retain 5% of the film's net profits (Veitch later said that "I think that year we made more on that picture than we did on any of our films).


Legacy:

Although "Night Skies" as a film did not come to fruition, it still has a rather interesting and long legacy, as it helped inspire not only E.T., but also Poltergeist (which had a family terrorized by paranormal forces), Spielberg and Mathison's proposed E.T. II: Nocturnal Fears (which had malicious, animal-mutilating cousins of E.T.), Gremlins (which had one innocent and kind member of a species of otherwise mean-spirited creatures), Critters (which had a farm family terrorized by cattle-mutilating aliens), the video game Destroy All Humans!, Signs, and Spielberg's recent War of the Worlds remake.

One of SC's fav. movies is on right now on CMT. Field of Dreams.

i need to get that movie...

My fav John Wayne movie is on AMC right now. Rio Bravo. Stumpy makes me laugh. I like Dean Martin in it to.

If I'm not mistaken, isn't that the one with Ricky Nelson? If I remember correctly, it was "Nelson" that was a draw to the movie,(he was big at that time) although I never saw it in the theater.



TIS

yea it is

TIS, here is a couple video's of Dean & Ricky singing in the movie
My Rifle, My Pony and Me


Cindy

Thanks Mig. You know as long as it's been since I've seen the movie, once I played the video I remembered that song. I forgot how smooth ol' Dino is and a young Ricky Nelson.

My cousin who was about 8/10 years older than I was crazy about Nelson. She very recently passed away from lung cancer and I got an extra chill thinking of her as I saw that video.

Thanks for posting.

Oh, and Walter Brennan. I forgot about him.


TIS

ricky did had talent...sad he passed away.

Anyone catch Paul McCartney on Letterman last night?

He was FANTASTIC. I never realized how funny he was (I guess our Brit friends would call it "droll"). Well, whatever you wanna call it, he was the perfect foil for Dave's caustic deadpan questions.

I don't know if it's on Youtube yet, but if it is, be sure to check it out. Don't forget, that's the EXACT same stage where the Beatles played Ed Sullivan back in '64. Lotsa memories.

I liked that one quip of his: "Well I played on a roof once."

here is a link for anybody that hasnt seen paul performing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjIY-BbmGBE

I've been watching reruns of Touched By An Angel on the Hallmark channel. What a great family show.

finally bought "Any Given Sunday"...cant believe i never seen this before, but yea i heard a couple good stuff bout this movie.

It was ok some of the parts I hated with a passion.

I hated it all with a passion, almost like everything else shot by Baynito Michaelini.

I just happened to see The Incredible Hulk with Ed Norton on HBO yesterday. I am not a comic book fan in the least, but did enjoy the tv show with Bill Bixby.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised at Norton. I couldn't see him in the role, but after watching the movie, I think he was fine as David Banner. I still like Superman films more, but this was at least a decent movie.

Btw, not being into the technology, the hulk and his rival were computerized right? They looked cartoonish.



TIS

I was just surfing through the TV movies listings and I came across The Pope of Greenwich Village which I haven't seen in years. I think that Eric Roberts' and Mickey Rourke's performances in it were outstanding, especially Eric's. It's a shame that despite Mickey's recent wrestler performance, neither of those actors has consistently found the right vehicles to display their considerable talents.

Anyone see the new reality dating show last night about a bunch of fat women?

Not easy to watch. I mean, why don't they just do a show about homely people, call it "Butt Ugly," and get it over with?

i really hope reailty tv dies out soon...i want sitcoms, dramas, action, etc.

It seems that a lot of "reality" shows these days are appearing more and more "scripted". Gene Simmons, Brooke Hogan, Denise Richards, etc...They all seem to be a bit rehearsed and predictable. Just my opinion.

You know what I'm wondering? What if eventually your basic tv channels (CBS,ABC,NBC) all end up showing these reality shows. I was searching for a "regular" tv show to watch and for the most part, primetime was all reality with I believe Dateline or one news show at ten. I ended up with a cable channel (but even then there are repeats).

I remember my dad saying years ago, "some day we will pay to watch tv." (Well, with cable most of us do, but he has always had regular tv). This conversion/digital box that everyone who didn't have cable were forced to get, may only be the beginning.

Not being a fan of reality tv, it really sucks.


TIS

GWTW on TCM right now.

You and me both.