Summer is here which can only mean one thing: the
Hollywood blockbuster has arrived and, in particular, the much maligned bête noireof all right-minded cinema goers, the big budget
remake is rearing its ugly head. Brad Silberling’s Land of The Lost is a new look at Sid and Marty Krofft’s much loved
70s television show that followed Dr Will Marshall, originally played by Wesley
Eure, as he travelled back in time to a land full of dinosaurs and cavemen. The
film had its world premiere in Sydney and we were lucky enough to have a few
words with Silberling and the new Dr Marshall, comedian Will Ferrell on the red
carpet.
“It was such an insane mash up of ideas that only
the Kroffts could do,†explains the director. “It was the bravery that comes
from innocence. Sid Croft in particular is an incredible puppeteer, he’s very
innocent, he’s kind of child like which prevents him from questioning the
combination of elements together which should have never have been in the same
show. You’ve got dinosaurs, aliens, a banjo; only Sid could do that without
thinking twice about it. It’s like a little bit of Willy Wonka, he liked that
flavour, he liked this flavour so he included them all. It’s why it stayed with the audiences in the
States.†Those flavours in the new film have been transformed into a fabulous
CGI rendered T-Rex called Grumpy, slow moving extraterrestrials called
Sleestacks and a cavemen called Chaka in a surreal land that fuses the past,
present and the future as a backdrop for Ferrell to work his comic madness.
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Brad Silberling (Photo copyright David Michael Brown)
A mutual love for the show brought the director and
Ferrell together for the project. “It was Will. At some point Will was talking
to a couple of friends and he, like I, was an original viewer of the show. His
manager and producing partner Jimmy Miller tried to sort out how to get the
rights to the show to potentially adapt it. It was just circumstance that I got
involved; Will and I have known each other for a very long time but have never
worked together. I was writing a piece and had a role in mind for Will, we were
just having lunch. He said 'OK, I want to talk to you about Land of the Lost.' He wanted to make the movie and there was also a
threatened SAG strike. I had been an avid watcher but hadn’t set eyes on the
show for thirty five years. It was fantastic when he told me, I just started
cracking up. My memory bank immediately refilled with the images that stayed
with me. The concept of taking a comedic sensibility and then selfishly
harnessing the elements of the show that we remembered was kind of fantastic.â€
Ferrell adds his own side to the story, “It actually had already got started
before I got signed on but when I heard it was going to hit the works I thought,
‘Oh, that is going to be so much fun because I love the show.’ When I heard the
premise that they were going to ignore the kitsch style special effects and go
for the realistic ones and play the comedy off of that, it sounded like a lot
of fun to me.â€
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(Photo copyright David Michael Brown)
Having a comedian like Ferrell in the film obviously raises certain
expectations for the films potential audience. His madcap antics in films like Anchorman, Old School and Blades of Glory all sign post what kind
of film Land of the Lost will be but looks can be deceiving as Silberling
explains. “The funny thing is we both agreed early on that a pure spoof would
be exhausting after about eight minutes! It would be a great SNL sketch. You’d do stop motion
animation and bad special FX but that wasn’t of interest to me. In a way it’s
the extremity of the original show of Land
of the Lost that attracted me. This family is given every possible obstacle
to overcome; not only did they have dinosaurs to cope with but aliens too,â€
continues the director. “So what I actually thought was great was to put the
wrong group of characters into that scenario and really commit on all fronts
you could get really fantastic comedy in a way I haven’t seen in terms of a
comedic adventure movie without constantly winking. We were all pretty much in
synch including the studio. I said to them this is the way you have to do it. Build
significant sets, have photo realistic dinosaurs, it’s going to be a big
undertaking but that’s the only way we can do this if we’re going to do it.â€
It’s obvious the pair has an innate love for the
source material but after last weeks US box office results, it seems that the
money paying public are not wearing the same rose tinted glasses. It will be
interesting to see if the casting of Ferrell had a detrimental effect on
viewers, but it seems that those who loved the show do not want to see the Old School comic messing with their
childhood memories. Ferrell does, however, finish by talking about his proposed
Sherlock Holmes project with Sasha Baron Cohen that you would have though would
have run out of steam following the soon to be released escapades of Robert
Downey Jr and Guy Ritchie, “We just met a couple of weeks ago, just trying to
figure out if we can still do it. We have both been so busy so we probably
wouldn’t have a chance to do something until next year.â€
(Visit entertainment journalist David Michael Brown's web blog)Â