Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I’m delighted to welcome you here to the second of our and final of our Science Week lectures for 2008. Discover Science & Engineering, in association with the Science Gallery, are bringing together some leading speakers during Science Week to share their experiences of science and technology. Anyone interested in special effects is in for a real treat tonight and we’re delighted to welcome Gerry Johnston who has worked in film for over 35 years. And the effects that he has created have featured in hundreds of film and TV productions including Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. Our MC for this evening is Dave Fanning and as I’m sure you’ll be aware, he’s no stranger to movies. He’s a name synonymous with movies and music and throughout the nineties he presented over 400 editions of The Movie Show. He currently hosts his own radio show on RTE 1 and in addition to that he hosts The Last Broadcast on RTE 2 TV. So I’ll hand you over to Dave Fanning now.
Thank you very much indeed, Cathy. I just want to reiterate what Cathy said. I tell you what, there’s a paragraph here, I’ll just read it out and then I’ll go straight into this film I have behind me here because it’s great, I’ve seen it. Gerry Johnston, affectionately known as Boom-Boom Johnston, okay I’ll stop, is the director of Special Effects Ireland, based in Ardmore Studios. And if you read his book - which tells you every single thing you ever need to know, it should really be called ‘Adventures in the Screen Trade’ but it isn’t because that title was taken by somebody else in the past. Basically he’s been going since the 1960s. He’s been doing all this kind of stuff, Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan, Michael Collins and a bunch of other movies as well you’ve mentioned. He could have gone abroad, he did many times but he could have gone abroad to stay and he probably be a trillionaire by now if he had because he was the main man in the gig. But he stayed at home; what a moron. But anyway, Gerry is here and he’s going to be talking to us a little bit later on about all this. But first, as I say, he’s got this thing going here, which is basically Gerry in pictures for about 10 minutes. Let’s take a look.
Pascal Scott
My name Pascal Scott and Science Week has given me a wonderful opportunity to get behind the scenes in what is probably one of the most fascinating areas of the filmmaking process: special effects. Who better to tell us all about it than a man who, for the past 43 years, has been involved as special effects director on some of the largest movies ever made, and who has recently published a book appropriately titled Lights, Camera, Dynamite: The Adventures of a Special Effects Director.
Voiceover
Special Effects are tricks of sight and sound, mostly achieved by combining creativity, technology and imagination to create the illusion of reality in films, TV or on stage.
Crew Member
It’s my new tummy tucker.
Pascal Scott
Gerry, how are you?
Gerry Johnston
Pascal, you’re very good for coming, thank you very much.
Voiceover
By its very nature, special effects is a hazardous business and, as a special effects supervisor, Gerry must demonstrate health and safety standards, and ensure the safety of crew and actors. Fire safety is a priority, both in the workshop and on film sets.
Gerry Johnston
Health and safety is a priority at all times, right? And that’s why we have fire extinguishers covering the set and fire blankets and all sorts. When I think we need a fire engine to cover the set as well we bring it in; it’s good for insurance as well.
Pascal Scott
Mm-hmm.
Voiceover
Fire can be one of the most dramatic effects on film.
Gerry Johnston
What happens is, gas comes into this; we have a container or a bulk tanker; gas comes in and we can throw it out and we see the pressure and then we send it through the lines, ignite the lines and all you see is these gas flambos and we just light them up and we can throw, bring them up or down on these valves. When we need extra ‘voom’, like ‘voom’ to come up, flame to come up; we just increase our pressure.
As regards the trough over here, what we use, we use troughs and what we call firebars as well; we put them in windows, doors, in buildings, on sets; hide them behind anything like that where there’s flame needed and that’s controlled again by the likes of manifolds like that.
Pascal Scott
Giving the appearance of a house on fire.
Gerry Johnston
Giving the appearance of a house on fire.
The knights over here, again; simple enough. The cylinders are on the very back and what we do, we pressurise them and each time we fire off, which is maybe about a kilo or two of gas, it ignites and then replenishes itself straightaway. And every time I press that button, a flame comes out of those guys.
Voiceover
Creating special effects is both an art and a science and the workshop is a science lab, an engineering platform and an art studio, all rolled into one.
Gerry Johnston
This is an edge we use for engineering. This is our killer[?] drills, also engineering
Voiceover
Gerry’s workshop is a virtual Aladdin’s Cave, filled with odd-looking machinery, gadgets and gizmos.
Gerry Johnston
This here is my first little smoke machine, it’s gas and a little vapour goes through here which is a smoke juice and it just comes out the end here, a little flame and it heats up. So that was the first one I ever made.
These are our box, basically Second World War which we used in Private Ryan. These, all these things here. Our toolboxes.
And then over here, over here is our rams, air rams.
Voiceover
Air rams are used to lift mechanical rigs, like the rig bearing the sword rising from the lake in John Boorman’s film, Excalibur.
Gerry Johnston
This other one here is used for when you’re in a fight scene and in the fight scene it sparks. The two, the two swords crashing.
Pascal Scott
Oh, it’s actually wired up?
Gerry Johnston
It is wired up yeah, it’s wired up; we have it wired up here and when the other one hits the other one it’s like a positive and negative; when they strike, sparks go off.
Voiceover
An effects workshop will include scissors, a sewing kit, dust masks, all sorts of adhesive tape, nuts, bolts, piano wire, glue, different fuels, gas lighters and, sometimes, even an explosive grenade.
Gerry Johnston
You’re holding the pin in; nothing happens and then a little thing will fire down and create the explosion. It’s packed with explosives. So I screw off the top. Now, I don’t tell the actors this; it’s where I keep my petty cash. This here is sort of like you know it’s a baton and that. Sorry about that mate. You’ve got to be tough when you’re in special effects.
Gerry Johnston
We can go like slowly, or we can like machine gun.
Voiceover
Pyrotechnics is Gerry Johnston’s forte. Pyrotechnics covers anything that burns, smoulders or explodes. Here Gerry demonstrates a model aircraft exploding. The effect must look good, yet be safe for actors and crew.
Gerry Johnston
These are all little squibs. You know they’re quite dangerous and they could do you, blow your fingers off your hands. This here is a little flash like a ricochet bullet hit that ricochets off metal; we use that particular one. These particular ones here we use for bullet hits on the actors. These are plates that go on the actors. We have it padded at the back as you can see and what we do is we put the blood bag over it and then we put one of these little ones underneath it or we can put one of them underneath it.
Voiceover
Inside this blood this blood bag, there’s more than just blood. It also contains bits that look like fragments of bone and torn flesh. Creating reallooking wounds on people involves working closely with actors.
Gerry Johnston
We’re just putting the plate on here with the blood bag. So we put that around there and it’s like a Velcro pulled around there and then what we do is, when that’s around the body, wherever, the back, the arms, whatever. We put then this plate. Goes on after that and that’s a chest plate. Be for your back, or side or whatever. And then the bullet hits plates like I showed you earlier which goes on like so. Goes on there and that protects the body.
Voiceover
After pyrotechnics, the next, most common effect in film is atmospherics. Atmospherics involve the creation of rain, snow, fog, mist, wind and smoke, each creating a weather condition or atmosphere.
One of the most important aspects in rain scenes is depth. If rain appears in the foreground only, it looks artificial. And so, rain towers must be placed in such a way as to cover the whole area in the shot.
Pascal Scott
That looks very, very realistic.
Voiceover
Usually the effects department is called upon to create a snow scene in mild or even warm weather. To dress a large area, foam is sprayed over the set from large delivery hoses. Sometimes a street scene or a sauna or a factory scene might call for steam. For scenes involving vintage steam trains or streets that have vents in the sidewalk, steam machines are used.
Gerry Johnston
This is a steam boiler. This is purely just used for steam for the likes of planes, trains, boats, laundries, steam coming up out of the ground or whatever it is, right. It’s more or less a standard boiler. Now what we do is we adapt it to suit our business and that. So what we do is put it on a trailer. And you have to really sort of keep an eye on here all the time because steam and water become vaporised more or less can become explosive. Here we have a small little wind machine and we’re going to put some smoke through it to create a haze all together. So I’ll just turn on the machine here and then we usually press the smoke through it here.
Voiceover
In atmospherics, smoke plays a major role and smoke machines are used to create fog or mist.
Gerry Johnston
I’m just going to cut little holes in it.
Voiceover
When required to cover a large area, the smoke is pumped by small wind fans through a plastic tube perforated by hand called lay flat. The lay flat can be concealed in undergrowth in a forest for example thus enclosing the set so the smoke will not be affected by changes in wind direction.
Gerry Johnston
That goes all the way around the set, yeah. Smoke anywhere around the place, you don’t have to worry about it, you can ring the whole set.
Voiceover
Smoke is also used for lighting effects. For instance, rays of sunlight coming into a forest canopy. Indoors it is used to diffuse lighting, to highlight shafts of light coming through a window. And very often large volumes of smoke are needed to create a smoky atmosphere inside a burning building.
Voiceover
The technology, tools and ingredients of special effects have been created in the real world by physicists, lab technicians, engineers, bio-chemists and photographers. Film makers have adopted these inventions and the special effects technician must be a jackofalltrades: a carpenter, an electrician, an engineer, an inventor and a magician. Because most of what is designed and fabricated is suitable for use only in the movies.
Crew Member
Lads, we have to wrap this up; are ye not ready?
Gerry Johnston
You know, if I had a gun…
Pascal Scott
That’s not a problem.
Crew Member
Come on. Jesus!
Dave Fanning
Do you know, I’m glad we had a look at it like that because it’d be impossible to start talking about that kind of thing without having a look at it so at least you’ve seen what happens there in the cow shed. By the way, just as a matter of interest Gerry, that last quote there from Stephen Spielberg, what’s he referring to exactly? Is it the fact that digital effects took over for so long? And would I be right in saying that they’re kind of maybe going to the background a little more and you’re coming back to the forefront?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah well I think as the actors always prefer to be on sets whether it’s acting stuff or not. And lucky enough as we felt we were going to be redundant there a couple of years ago. But I think it’s all sort of coming back to the physical effects on the set.
Dave Fanning
As much as blue screen and green screen and all the rest are great, they want to know what they’re motivation is sort of thing. Like, ‘Hang on sorry; who’s attacking me?’ You know?
Gerry Johnston
Well this is it. I mean you can get the actor on the green screen. And then after the second take they’re beginning to wilt and they want to know what’s around them because it’s just a purely green screen.
Dave Fanning
There’s a million ways we could start this because I tell you what, we’re going to do questions and answers a little bit later on as well. But we just want to go through some of what Gerry does. One of the easiest ways to do it is simply to mention the movies he’s made. But you do go in the book by the way just about your childhood and how you grew up and all the rest of it. You mention your family, you mention your kids and you mention a lot of other private stuff as well. But just on the actual work and what we’ve seen there, if we could go back exactly 40 years. I’m not going to stay there necessarily. 1968; could I say that was the start, do you think of what we might call an Irish film industry that, to be honest, has gone in fits and starts and might just be in as bad a position now as it was 40 years ago?
Gerry Johnston
Well it was even then, I mean back in the sixties there was more feature films coming into Ireland and they were all fairly big blockbuster films. At the time, you know they were all in their 15to 20 million which was quite a lot of money then. But, like over the years it’s, we’re going as you say fits and starts and studio closing up and starting again. And, you know as I can’t see, unless there’s going to be an injection of the government to put money into the studios as well and the industry, we’re not going to go anywhere.
Dave Fanning
It’s not going to happen is it?
Gerry Johnston
It’s not going to happen.
Dave Fanning
It’s not going to happen in the next five years.
Gerry Johnston
No. Definitely not.
Dave Fanning
Let’s be realistic.
Gerry Johnston
Well hopefully the upturn of the world economy, whether that helps it in that way I don’t know. But we’re sort of like; we were up the top of tax incentives there a few years ago.
Dave Fanning
Yeah.
Gerry Johnston
Now we’re at the bottom of the scale and the rest of the countries in Eastern Europe have gone up in the, they usually sort of now come in and give you a package. And that could be anything to do with the government, different departments. Very important.
Dave Fanning
I just want to go back to some of those movies you mentioned there. Taking them all in a kind of a thing. There’s an awful lot of them to do with First World War or fighting in the air or, you know, little small planes crashing and all the rest of it which is a little bit of what we saw there. I mean for instance there’s the Blue Max, there’s Tiger Lily and there’s a bunch of others that go on and on to Zardoz and Ryan’s Daughter etc. Of all those, you did an awful lot of those kind of World War 1 kind of movies. Did that help do you think say Blue Max in ’66 and then said ‘Well your man did Blue Max let’s get him in again for this’ and suddenly you had four or five without realising you had a resume?
Gerry Johnston
Well then, I was lucky then because as you say sort of back in the sixties I mean most of the films were all First World War because planes, the First World War planes were here. So it was great for, we even had the film called Zeppelin was being shot in England and part in France. And because the planes were in Ireland they decided well you know to come over here and do some shooting. Well if the planes weren’t here at the time we wouldn’t have got a lot of work out of it. But then, after that then we sort of like, it became then like Second World War stuff. And that went through to, started going through to the seventies. And then all of a sudden it was all different films after that. And the first big one I did since, a picture called Mackenzie Breaking Underground back in the seventies. We did a lot of Belfast, all that stuff, we did all the Belfast stuff. But the big film we came back to which was great to work with especially my first time working with Stephen Spielberg was on Saving Private Ryan.
Dave Fanning
Okay, well you did mention Zeppelin there which like shows you just how dangerous your job can be. Did you not like, four guys died on a plane making that movie.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah well I spoke to, that particular morning, most of the pilots go in and have a briefing every morning. And one or two pilots used to, came in this particular morning and they were asking me, you know, ‘What’s the drill for today?’ I just said, ‘Well you need to talk to the rest of the pilots because that’s not my job.’ But my job basically was to load the plane up with what we call fire pots which is a black smoke bomb which creates a bit of fire as well. And that, when the camera director was in the helicopter, there was a lot of helicopter dog fighting, the director would say, ‘Okay dive to the pilot.’ And these planes used to take off like, they used to carry about 20 feet back behind them, like a football. And we’d call this a burst in and then when it went into a dive the camera would be in apposition that the pilot would explode this bomb at the back.
Dave Fanning
Black smoke.
Gerry Johnston
Black. A big fireball would happen and block out maybe the plane. And then a lot of black smoke and you’d see guns firing which we had to make up as well. So we’d have all like we were using at the time for the gases, oxyacetylene which is highly volatile especially on aircraft and that. And so we had to weigh everything on the aircraft. There was stringent, you know, health and safety on that because these were like timber box, you know that could just go up. I mean most of them were sort of timber and bits of metal, you know so we had to be very careful even when we were doing the bullet hits on it and that. But it’s lucky enough we never had any accident or anything like that on it.
Dave Fanning
No but it did happen in England. Wasn’t there a part of the film made in England where it did happen?
Gerry Johnston
It did. Yeah, I mean the planes took off that particular day and that was, unfortunately something happened with the helicopter and the plane and they crashed into each other. And it was an awful death for them.
Dave Fanning
I’d say because there’s a lot of danger and everything you do in the book. You don’t talk much about the word insurance.
Gerry Johnston
No, I mean everything today is health and safety, insurance, insurance. It restricts a lot of our work as well.
Dave Fanning
Okay, but you do talk a lot about Hollywood stars. And there’s an awful lot for instance, even of a guy of your age who is coming into the business and you’re, half the time you don’t know who half of them are which I think is brilliant. You kind of go, you’re meeting this guy, you’re in a hotel and you’re sitting there across having a meal and it turns out to be David Lean. And he calls you over for a meal. Did you like when did you discover this is the guy?
Gerry Johnston
Well there was a particular guy used to work for the, Curran, he used to work for the government and he was the first stop shop kind of you know, you went to him when you came in and he said to me about, he rang me and said you know, ‘Young Johnston; get down to Dingle, set up down there the production and also as well as your own effects’. So I went down and I was staying in a place they’d just finished called the Skelligs Hotel in Dingle. And I used to go out for the day, you know and try and organise things for the film and that. And I was on my own and this guy was passing me one day and he said to me, ‘Are you on holidays?’ and I said ‘I am’, like joking, I said to him. And I said ‘No, I’m working on a movie’ and he said ‘What’s the name of it?’ and I said ‘Ryan’s Daughter’. And he said, ‘Well, would you like to come over our table?’ he said, ‘My name is David Lean.’ So he introduced me then to the writer, Robert Bolt, the producer, Sarah Miles and that. And I must have said the right things because I was living on lobster and wine for the next couple of weeks.
Dave Fanning
Had you seen Lawrence of Arabia? Had you seen Doctor Zhivago? Had you seen The Bridge on the River Kwai? Three of the biggest movies ever made by this guy.
Gerry Johnston
No, no I didn’t at the time. I didn’t know who this guy was, you know. So he was very courteous and he brought me over as I say and I was fascinated when they started talking about scripts because I knew nothing about scripts at that stage.
Dave Fanning
I mean there were books alone on just the making of this movie and the difficulty of it and like the madness of just how difficult the movie was to make and David Lean, task master and all the rest. One of the things was, he wanted the storms in the west of Ireland and there were storms every single year in Dingle except this year.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, it was the first time in 50 years they never had a storm. So what we had to do was, we had to bring in aircraft engines and we had to make up what we call big wind machines for to create the storms. We had to make up what we call these hoppers overhead which they’d maybe hold about three or 4,000 gallons and release them. And that’d be released near the camera, hitting rocks and that and also the wind machines, smoke going through it and everything. So, we did that and then they went off to shoot one or two in Africa. And it was fairly tough because we didn’t realise at the time we were going to have to create the storm because it just happened there was no storm.
Dave Fanning
So you had no idea you’d stay down there as long as you had to. What was Robert Mitchum like?
Gerry Johnston
Robert Mitchum was - he was a man’s man. Always joking and hard drinker and loved the parties. And he used to - he stayed in this particular Bed and Breakfast.
Dave Fanning
Gregory Peck or something was it?
Gerry Johnston
No, that was, I stayed there in that. But he stayed in this place and people used to ring up and Robert Mitchum would take the bookings and joke with the people.
Dave Fanning
So a good joker, yeah?
Gerry Johnston
No, I stayed in a place, there was a guy I met down there, a famous guy. He was a publican guy called Tom Ashe. And I didn’t realise but he was related to Gregory Peck. And I was staying in a place which I wasn’t happy at the time and he introduced me to two of his cousins. They were deaf and dumb at the time and they showed me this place and it was a beautiful place upstairs. And I didn’t realise that until a few days later, that I was staying in Gregory Peck’s place in Dingle. These were his two aunts that he used to call on.
Dave Fanning
Which you were able to tell him about years later.
Gerry Johnston
Which I worked with him later in India and we built up a rapport and we’d a great time. It was called, was during the Second World War, it was called the, oh God I can’t remember it. It was all to do with the Second World War anyway. The Last Charge of the Calcutta Light Horse I think it was called. And I worked with Gregory there for a while. Then we met back in Ireland, he was back in Ireland too and then I never seen him after that.
Dave Fanning
You were known to work with Robert Altman and all. Just thinking about the directors now, you were known to work with Robert Altman and Susannah York and all the rest of them in Images. What was that like? Was it easy?
Gerry Johnston
It was tough because Robert Altman arrived on the set every morning and said like ‘Change the scenes, new scenes.’ And on the Friday he said to me, well the first assistant came rushing out to me. We had a table tennis tournament going on with Susannah York and that was our partner. So we were going off to play table tennis and next thing, the AD called me back and said ‘Robert Altman wants to talk to you’ so I went back in. And he said ‘I want, on Tuesday to blow out this particular actor’s stomach and I’m going to use a double barrelled shotgun.’ So I had to say ‘Right okay’, this is a Friday evening. So I went and checked in my workshop at the time and see if we had enough latex. We hadn’t got enough latex so I rang a colleague of mine. He said he’d see about it so I decided to go to the production office and order a gross of condoms because I needed the latex as a backup in case I didn’t get the tins of latex over.
Dave Fanning
You couldn’t exactly buy them over the counter in a chemist’s shop in those days.
Gerry Johnston
Well you couldn’t buy them because they were illegal, yeah, in the seventies. So, the production secretary at the time rang the production accountant in London on a Friday afternoon late and he had to go out and buy a gross of condoms for me and he got a request to get some underwear for Susannah York. So on his way back –
Dave Fanning
A suitcase of underwear and condoms.
Gerry Johnston
On his way back he was apprehended at the Customs in Dublin. The Customs asked to open the case and this guy opened the case and seen all the ladies’ underwear and he had to take it out in front of people passing through and then he had to produce the condoms and all that. And he was so embarrassed. So they threw him in the clink at the airport and they had to ring the production office and verify all this. It went on for hours and I got a, when he came back to the studios at the time he sent for me and he said to me ‘Don’t ever ask me to get condoms again.’
Dave Fanning
Did it work by the way?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah we got the shot. We got the shot on the Tuesday.
Dave Fanning
You know, speaking of getting the shot. An awful lot of it is you get one shot at getting the shot. Because all the stuff that you got, you mightn’t have it again or you mightn’t be able to use it. So you might be using 5,000 quids’ worth every second, you know for two or three minutes. Often is the director trying to say ‘Okay we’re all ready now’, hold on a minute we’re actually not, I don’t have it ready yet buster. So you might have to wait four hours or a day. Have you ever said that? Because you might have had to say that.
Gerry Johnston
Oh many a time, many a time if we’re pushed by directors saying, ‘Look we got to go, we got to go, got to go.’ And it was like, well I remember I did Neil Jordan’s first film Angel.
Dave Fanning
Angel yeah.
Gerry Johnston
And it was near where the British Ambassador was blown up and we were right across the road, you know as there was a bit of confusion with the police and the Special Branch and everything. No one knew –
Dave Fanning
They hadn’t got the message that you guys were making a movie.
Gerry Johnston
They hadn’t got the message so, you know Neil Jordan said to me ‘We got to go, we got to go, we just can’t wait around.’ And I said ‘Well we’re not going yet till I have fire cover’ and we were waiting for these Green Goddesses to come down and it was a Friday evening, six o’clock on a Friday evening –
Dave Fanning
Stuck in Dublin traffic.
Gerry Johnston
coming down from Sandyford in Dublin through traffic. So it was all the police trying to get them through and everything. So once I seen it coming in the gate, then I fired, I blew up this ballroom, at the time, simulated. And in the meantime, five minutes later there was all these guys jumping around with machine guns, Special Branch guys.
Dave Fanning
The real deal yeah?
Gerry Johnston
They thought it was the real thing after happening because apparently the Ambassador rang, said to his wife ‘I’m on my way home.’ And it was about, calculation was roughly where he was going to be when the British Ambassador was blown up before. So, it was a lot of, they were pushing guns up my nose because they kept saying ‘It’s him, it’s him.’ You know?
Dave Fanning
Do you ever think yourself it was the dumbest place ever to have to do that? I mean like when you think about what happened with the British Ambassador. I don’t know when it was, was it ’76 was it?
Gerry Johnston
That was, about, I think it was ’74 some time, ’74, ’73.
Dave Fanning
Whatever, okay, it was Ewart-Biggs. And like, why would you have to blow up a thing for Angel for Neil Jordan right there? Could you not have found somewhere else?
Gerry Johnston
Well, I mean they picked the location but I did say to them at the time, you know, ‘A couple of hundred metres away is where the ambassador was blown up.’ But then you know, ‘Ah it’s fine, fine, it’s the location.’ Though I’d say, ‘well did you pick the location?’ I do my job; I notified the security and that. The security is supposed to notify other certain security, production is supposed to do the same but as far as I was concerned I did my bit.
Dave Fanning
Do you care about a reputation that a director might bring? Like other people might be in awe or might be scared. Because you’ve worked with some of the most fickle kind of characters I’ve ever come across in terms of reading about directors in the past. Like for instance, you worked with Sergio Leone. Now I don’t know how fickle or crazy he is but I do know he doesn’t always speak English very well, that’s one thing for starters. He’d done his dynamite or his Fist Full Of… movies, the Clint Eastwood etc. So he was like, well known. Did that mean anything to you when you met him?
Gerry Johnston
I didn’t know who he was, you know. Again, sort of again -
Dave Fanning
You’re better off.
Gerry Johnston
This guy is, we’re shooting this in a pub and he said, ‘You shoot the person’ and I said ‘Yeah, that’s what I’m here for; that’s my job.’ So he made me strip off, then to fire this, to fire the bullet in on my skin to show him. And he said ‘That’s fine. I want more blood. I want loads of spaghetti’ he said. So we got the shot and that. But then I realised, I heard who he was. I said, ‘Wow, great; I’ve worked with him as well.’
Dave Fanning
And what about the guys you were working with on the movie? There was Rod Steiger in that one?
Gerry Johnston
There was Rod Steiger, there was James Coburn and I think, I’m not sure whether Clint Eastwood –
Dave Fanning
How was James Coburn? Was he cool?
a. Shooting Barry Lyndon
Gerry Johnston
He’s fine, grand just ‘What am I doing?’ you know? A lot of these actors, a lot of these actors, experienced, seasoned actors and actresses; it’s great. It’s sometimes you have the problems with some of the actresses or actors coming up the way sort of like, you want to be the belle of the ball, you know. One thing, it happened when we were doing Barry Lyndon with Stanley Kubrick. Brian O’Neill, this coming through big actor at the time and that and he always, a lot of the Irish actors were great. And Kubrick really loved the Irish actors at the time; they delivered the lines, acted well. But Brian was always like;
‘How did I do Stanley? How did I do?’
‘Yeah, fine.’
‘What do you mean fine? You know, you tell everyone else they look great, but you don’t tell me I ever look great.’
So there was always that little thing, that you meet these particular guys.
Dave Fanning
And would Kubrick do every shot 400 times? Every scene?
Gerry Johnston
Yes. He’d all the time. And, if we had to, if he wasn’t happy with a set, it was like, ‘Change it. I don’t like it.’ That’s what he did; he’d just walk into –
Dave Fanning
You’ve got a throwaway line in the book which is brilliant about Kubrick when he was taking his soup, dribbling down his beard, yeah?
b. Anecdote
Gerry Johnston
Yeah. Yeah well I was after finishing a film called Zardoz with Sean Connery and a guy called Bernie Williams was the producer. And he said to me, ‘Look, I want you to do a movie.’ So when I said to Boorman at the time, he said to me, ‘Now hold on. I’m not finished the film yet, I want to do another week or two.’ So, he held me on. So they got an English guy and then he got a crew together and they came over. And when I finished on the film, I went and I start showing Kubrick effects. So I was asked to take over the movie and the rest of the guys just went back to England at the time. And at the time I went out to set the scene one day because if you went on the set and you weren’t involved, you were fired. So you have to have a reason to be on the set, you know. You couldn’t visit on it. So there was one day, a particular day we were, I sort of decided because we were going to do a big tracking scene in the movie. And I said to him, ‘Stanley, I have so many things, going to do so many explosions fires and everything like that.’ And he was like that drinking his soup with a beard and the soup was going down his beard and he was rubbing it in his beard. And he just said ‘Treble it.’ And that’s all he said to me and then after that I got on great with him. It was like he was a bit of an eccentric, you know, Stanley.
Dave Fanning
Was he now? But they all are. I mean like I noticed the way you mentioned John Boorman for the first time in the last 10 minutes you said ‘Boorman’. Let’s be perfectly honest, I hope he’s not here because I know he lives down in Annamoe. Anyway, you didn’t like him at first did you?
Gerry Johnston
No, we had a run in the first time. It was a problem we had. We were doing a shot where this bread like French sticks –
Dave Fanning
What was this? Was this Zardoz?
Gerry Johnston
That was Zardoz, yeah. That was the first film. And you know, I was at camera, I always stay at the camera you know, so I can see what’s going on myself. And I always like to be standing there.
Dave Fanning
So you can see if it works as the audience might see it?
Gerry Johnston
I can see if it works and where the audience are going to be looking at it and that. So I like to stay at the camera. And one particular scene we were doing was all the steam coming these tubes, hundreds of tubes and that. And whatever happened, it broke down. So Boorman said, ‘What’s the problem?’ and I said ‘I don’t know. I’ll go and see.’ So I went around the back and there was a remark passed about the effects, you know? So what happened was, the generator spiked. There was a surge of power blew the fuses in the machines and we didn’t know that. Because behind the scenes and all the guys, my crew and electricians were trying to find out what went wrong. But there was a remark passed about me at the time.
Dave Fanning
And you didn’t like that.
Gerry Johnston
And I didn’t like that. I don’t care who the, whether it’s the biggest director or whatever it is, I don’t care. I’ll just challenge them. So I challenged him at the time and I just said ‘I want an apology’ and he just went on. I just said to the first assistant director, ‘If he hasn’t given me an apology by four o’clock, I’m going, pulling my crew, my equipment off the film.’ So, he didn’t apologise but he said ‘Look, okay this is movie making’ and that and we kind of got on well and then after that we just got on like a house on fire.
Dave Fanning
Yeah, and you worked together again.
Gerry Johnston
We worked together on many movies.
Dave Fanning
There was one scene where you were there with Boorman. And to get back to Stanley Kubrick, before Barry Lyndon or anything, before he had done it. And he’s on the phone and you pick up the phone and say it’s something like ‘Old Kubrick’ or something.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, I was passing by and I picked up the phone, like on the stage. And this guy said;
‘Can I speak to John Boorman?’ and I said, ‘Can I ask who’s speaking?’ and he said ‘Stanley Kubrick.’ And again, I didn’t know who he was at the time. So I said, ‘Right, okay. Can I ask what it’s connected with?’ ‘Just say it’s Stanley here.’
So I went to Boorman who was doing a shot with Sean Connery and he just said, ‘Look, tell him I’m busy, you know, I’m busy. I’ll call him back.’ So I just went back to the phone and said, ‘Look, he’s very busy. He’ll call you back.’ So, I just happened to be going out the door again, what a coincidence. And someone said; ‘There’s a guy called Kubrick on the phone.’ So I said ‘Okay I’ll take it.’ So anyway, took up the phone. So I went back to John and said it to John and he said ‘Oh tell him I’m busy, I’ll ring him back.’ And the penny dropped on me then. This is the guy coming into Ireland about doing a big movie called Barry Lyndon so I was a bit more polite this time. I said ‘I’m very sorry sir, -
Dave Fanning
Were you now?
Gerry Johnston
- he’s not here.’ And I ended up working with him.
Dave Fanning
Yeah, exactly. But, okay like, but think about the way you went from that from Zardoz to Barry Lyndon which is 23rd Century to 18th Century. Is that just the nature of the gig like? Everything is just, it doesn’t matter what it is. Do you care about what the movie is?
I don't care as long as it's work.
Dave Fanning
It’s just a gig that you have to do.
Gerry Johnston
It’s just a gig like.
Dave Fanning
The gig that you have to do. What? The gig that they say they want you to do or the gig that you think you have to do? Like your man has now said what he wants but I know what he really wants. Is that the way you look at it?
Gerry Johnston
Well the
Dave Fanning
You’re in charge.
a. Reading script
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, I’m in charge. I mean basically I get the script, break it down, read it, see what it’s all about. Whether it’s 18th –
Dave Fanning
Oh really? You’d look at the script, would you?
b. Decide effects
Gerry Johnston
Oh yeah, I’d read the script, break it down, see what the effects is going to be. Then I sort of, then I talk to the Production Designer, the Art Director. And then I talk, I always like talking to the director because what the director sees and perceives is maybe totally different than what the art department.
Dave Fanning
Do they usually know what they want or do they just trust you, the Art Department and everything else, props, the works?
Gerry Johnston
Well you know, I mean good production designers have a wellestablished, person has maybe done a lot of this before. Same as myself so we kind of have a good idea of kind of what it’s all about. But, yes, sometimes directors don’t know what they’re talking about.
Dave Fanning
I say it that way because I met a bunch of directors. Sometimes, I think half the time I don’t know what they’re talking about. But you have worked with the biggest directors that you could possibly work with. Every one of them right across the board. So I’m just wondering are these guys good for the whole vision of a movie?
a. Master of his craft
Gerry Johnston
Well I think the guy I’ve seen this with, who’s a master of his craft is Spielberg. He knows so much about effects.
Dave Fanning
Does he?
Gerry Johnston
He does, yeah. And he gets into it and he talks to you about it and how will that be and you’ll say yeah. ‘Well I don’t see blood in this. I want to see dust coming off the hits.’ Which you know, very seldom a director will ever ask you that.
b. Saving Private Ryan: First 30 minutes
Dave Fanning
Were you involved big time in Curacao Beach for Saving Private Ryan?
Gerry Johnston
Curacao; I was only involved in the first half hour. You know?
Dave Fanning
Sure that’s the most talked about half hour in movies in the last 10 years.
Gerry Johnston
Well it was and it was at the time, it was great because there was four supervisors and they’d different areas to work at and that. And it was, in actual fact the adrenaline was running through you as you were, when it was the first shot up was a master shot of all the amphibious craft coming in.
Dave Fanning
And do you feel you’re on more attention?
Gerry Johnston
Oh yeah.
Dave Fanning
‘Stephen Spielberg is right in front of me and I’m in charge of all that.’
Gerry Johnston
Well it strikes you like, it’s like, you know the minute you touch those buttons they’re firing. You’ve got to look all around you, wait for your cues; you’ve got to take the cues yourself.
Dave Fanning
Are we talking rain, are we talking sea, are we talking shots, are we talking fire, are we talking about everything you were doing there?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, everything. We were creating explosions there in the water; we were creating bullet hits in the water. Which again we used. The bullet hits, all you’ll see in the movie. The bullet hits were shot in a tank where we were firing bullets and air through and all of that to get the effect. And which was, which looked very realistic when they were underwater.
c. Great effects and greater emotion
Dave Fanning
That’s what I’m saying. Like the power of the way the shots seemed to hit on the screen and the awfulness after five minutes. I remember going to the movie and was told the first half hour was like this. And then another 20 minutes I was like, ‘I won’t be able to take it.’ It was really heavy stuff. The noises you got when the bullet goes through the water and all that kind of thing. Is that you?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, that’s us. I mean we rigged the whole beach, we rigged the whole beach with a lot of compressed air and then we’d have electric little manifolds. And we’d have all sort of little valves, electric valves that would let off sort of a gush of air under huge pressure. So you could see this ‘pe-ew’ through and you’d see just a gush of air, looks like a bullet’s after going through the water and that. And a lot of the detailed stuff for the bullets was done in a little tank back in the UK. But most of the time, the explosions on the beaches, fires, blown up people. And there was one particular part when it was one of the big scenes where it was the main shot, master shot where they all arrive on the beach and it was so realistic. And it was even some of the guys that were in the Second World War, veterans were crying behind. And we felt it as well and when it was all cut there was a hush and you could hear sobbing and that. And I felt like the adrenaline was running through me at the time.
Dave Fanning
And I felt that when they were puking all the time they were puking for real.
Gerry Johnston
Oh yeah, they were real. I mean that’s what happened as well. Because when the soldiers were taking out in the boats, they’d no water, they weren’t given any food and they were dehydrated. But that’s what Spielberg wanted to see. You know, to see this thing. I mean these guys maybe the army were never out in a boat before. Terrified. But it was a great shot at that particular scene where we did that shot where there was silence and then Spielberg asked for bullhorn and he got on with it. And he just said, ‘You guys can fight for my country any day.’ He said ‘I’m absolutely proud of you guys.’ And that was the Irish army you know and the FCA. Because all those guys were after coming off Braveheart so that’s a huge experience. I mean these guys were telling Mel Gibson how to direct.
Dave Fanning
If guys go over to Ireland and look for stuff like that, like – ‘I want the Irish army here, I want armoured vehicles here, I want this, that and the other’; can they get them for any big movies? Is the point? I mean if you go to Morocco, they hand you over all these things in a minute. ‘How many horses do you want?’ etc.?
Gerry Johnston
No, I find here, sort of, you know as over the years, going back over the years it was much easier years ago. When I started in the business you just, it was like one guy, he would talk to each department, government department and he had tremendous clout.
Dave Fanning
Somebody in the Irish government you mean?
Gerry Johnston
Yes, the Irish government. But nowadays you know it’s you have to go to that department and that door and the government is not really interested, they are, they say there are, in film. But I always say; and it’s the same as on a lot of the films we shot: Braveheart, Into the West, Ryan’s Daughter, it brings in tourism. You know? And that’s a huge thing for this country.
Dave Fanning
But I mean Dingle, there’s huge tourism to Dingle for Ryan’s Daughter, huge tourism for Far and Away with Tom cruise.
Gerry Johnston
That’s right and apparently now is they’re going to build a village back there again for tourism in Dingle. But again we need the government because if you go to other countries, you go to Morocco, you go in, they give you a package: you want 20,000 horses, you want 5,000 horses, you want arms, you want the army, you want the navy, you want helicopters. You just get it, that’s it, it’s like the American system. You know, you go to America and you give the script to the department and they’ll have people who’ll sort of organise it for you. Here it seems to be sort of like you know; you’re beating your head against the wall all the time. The same if I want to do, if I want to apply for to import any pyrotechnics, I’ve got to ask them six or eight weeks beforehand. I mean that shouldn’t take that long. You know, if people who has a track record, it’s bringing in money, not to be holding up productions. You know a lot of movies would come in here in the morning but there’s a terrible lot of bureaucracy goes on.
Dave Fanning
You mention in the book, just to get back to kind of stars for a second. Oh yeah by the way, on Saving Private Ryan, what’s his name? Tom Hanks. There you are having your meal and this guy sits down beside you. It’s Tom Hanks and he’s 41 that day.
Gerry Johnston
He was 41, yeah.
Dave Fanning
And then you had a big party in a tent.
Gerry Johnston
He had a big party. Well we used to, we used to break at different times and sort of some of the crew would stay on during lunch and get things ready for after the lunch and that. So I took it that I’d take the first break and I was on the first break and that. So I’m sitting on my own and another one or two guys beside me and the rest of us nobody beside and facing. And a guy, this guy came up and he said to me after the first day, he said ‘Do you mind if I sit down here?’ Stephen Spielberg said it to me and then we got talking. Then he said ‘I have a little surprise party here today’ and I said ‘Oh really?’ and next thing a big cake came along and Tom Hanks just happened to come in at the same time and it was a surprise party for him. And I was happy to be there and it was a great privilege.
Dave Fanning
Tom Hanks and Stephen Spielberg, they’re kind of one of a kind aren’t they?
Gerry Johnston
They are. They work together a lot, they know exactly. Tom Hanks is a great guy to work with. He wanted to use the flamethrower, if anyone’s seen the film, he wanted to use the flamethrower in burning the Germans out of the pillbox at the time. And I just said ‘No you can’t do that. It’s got to be another guy’ you know. ‘Ah’, he said ‘I want to do it’ and I said ‘No, you can’t’. Because actors will always want to do these things but nowadays because you get some actors who’s producing, directing and that; they can do things, but a lot of actors are not allowed do things nowadays because of the health and safety and that so we have to have stunt people in doing things.
Dave Fanning
Okay, just sticking with actors then. Charlotte Rampling and Peter Ustinov were in a movie and so was Fred Astaire: The Purple Taxi.
Gerry Johnston
The Purple Taxi, yeah.
Dave Fanning
So you had to talk to Fred about Ginger. ‘So how’s Ginger getting on? I love those movies with Ginger.’ What was the reaction to that?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, we were shooting; I was just cut off like that. We were shooting down in a place called Renvyle, down in the west of Ireland over in Connemara. And I was after having a big meal with a colleague of mine and we had the biggest lobsters you ever seen. They were that size. I never seen anything like it. So we were stuffed and there was a big fire and there was two chairs; the backs of the chairs. So I walked in and I seen an arm moving and I said ‘Ah Fred, how are you?’ Fred Astaire. So he was very grumpy, a grumpy guy at the time and that and he said ‘Yeah, it’s very cold outside.’ So I got talking to him and after about a minute I said, ‘What was it like working with Ginger Rogers?’ and he just put his hand on his head and said ‘I don’t want to talk about her’ he said ‘and don’t ever mention her name to me again.’ So I said ‘I’m sorry about that Fred.’
Dave Fanning
‘Sorry about that Fred, pass the salt.’ Really? You can’t read anything into it, no?
Gerry Johnston
No, well obviously he didn’t like it.
Dave Fanning
She kept standing on his toes.
Gerry Johnston
Maybe she stood on his toes.
Dave Fanning
No, maybe she was sick or dying or something. I mean maybe another perfect example of that kind of thing. I remember Robert Shaw, the great Robert Shaw; From Russia with Love and Jaws and all the rest of it and The Sting. He died in County Mayo, didn’t he?
Gerry Johnston
He did, he died in –
Dave Fanning
You were filming in Ireland with –
Gerry Johnston
We were doing a film The Big Red One with Lee Marvin.
Dave Fanning
Lee Marvin, okay. The toughest guy who ever hit the screen.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, the toughest guy.
Dave Fanning
Sitting at the bar, having a drink. You’re going to get pissed for the night.
Gerry Johnston
We’re sitting at the bar. There’s four or five of us at the bar. This was the director, can’t think of his name, he was a small little guy, anyway American.
Dave Fanning
He’s not here tonight.
Gerry Johnston
And there was Lee Marvin, my, at times my effects supervisor and there was another colleague of mine which we worked together and that over the years. And anyway it came up in the news –
Dave Fanning
You were sitting there drinking for the night.
Gerry Johnston
Oh, sitting there drinking.
Dave Fanning
And the RTE news comes on the screen.
Gerry Johnston
And the news came up and Robert Shaw died today over in Mayo and Lee Marvin broke down immediately. And he turned around and he says, put his glass down and he said ‘I gotta go.’ And everyone, the four of us were thinking like, who was he, who is he, where is he going? So anyway they’d to change the schedule because he was gone next day and he went to the funeral. But I never seen him, a man crying. Especially Lee Marvin which is like the toughie of those films and that. You know, so he broke down and he was missing for about two or three days and then he came back on the scene. He wasn’t right, even a few days when he came back you know. He was still talking about his best mate, you know at the time, you know. So that was these actors, sort of hard actors, you know they all have a heart and we all sort of break down.
Dave Fanning
Other people went missing at times. Kubrick went missing once as well and he went off because feeling there was a threat on his life or something. You were dealing with an awful lot of stuff during the Troubles in Ireland and that stuff that you were dealing with is stuff that people could have found very handy. Explosive sort of stuff like.
Gerry Johnston
Ah, yeah.
Dave Fanning
So was that a difficult thing often? Like, you know, getting into trouble. Not just the other big things you mention there with Angel.
Gerry Johnston
Well there was one time I was going, I mean I was going back in the sixties, the late sixties and that. Is that what you want to know about?
Dave Fanning
Yeah.
Gerry Johnston
Back in the sixties I was doing business with a couple of company called ICI, used to supply a certain amount of explosive materials and that. And I rang them up and I said ‘Look, I need a certain amount of materials.’ And this Colonel O’Kelly said like we can get stuff out of the army and what we call HE, high explosive. But I needed a lot of other stuff, powders and primer chords and things like that. So I ended up in a place somewhere in Meath, in a field and a little house, a little sort of, it was like a little wooden outhouse basically. But you put your sort of lawnmower in and things like that only a bit bigger. And when I got there I was to meet a guy and he never turned up, the door was open and I went in rooting around this place and I could have walked away with anything. And that was the time of the Troubles. And a guy arrived anyway, about 10 minutes later. He said ‘Are you Gerry Johnston?’ and I said ‘Yeah’ and he said my name is whatever his name was. So I got a certain amount of materials out of him and then I got the rest out of the army and that. But that’s it. After that then it was very difficult then because everything tightened up because of the Troubles in the North.
But, getting back to Stanley Kubrick. We were doing that film and he was after doing a film called Clockwork Orange and I think that’s why his life was threatened and he came to Ireland. Now, Stanley Kubrick would never travel with his family; his family always travelled separate. His kids travelled separately, his wife travelled separately and he travelled. He was just paranoid about sort of being bumped off. And on that particular shoot when we were shooting Barry Lyndon, he disappeared overnight. The producers were asking ‘Have you seen him?’ and I said ‘No, I haven’t seen him at all.’ So, he got a threat, he was threatened apparently and he left overnight and then they finished up, packed up and went back to England.
Dave Fanning
Do you know, it’s a funny thing when you look through the book and all these kind of stories; good, bad and indifferent, it sounds like you’ve had a very exciting life and there’s still plenty more to go. But is there an element of like, you know, a lot of times you didn’t get paid. A lot of times you had to chase people and nearly threaten people to get paid. And even that’s like 20 and 30 years after working with some of the biggest. Did you ever feel like, you know, clocking in a nine to five mightn’t have been a bad idea?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, I do, yeah. It takes its toll; especially on family life. You know because once you go on a movie life is just locked into that.
Dave Fanning
And when I say, by the way, you never went abroad; you went abroad to make loads of movies.
Gerry Johnston
I did.
Dave Fanning
Bizarre stories in Harare and Africa and every other damn place. And really weird stories: either being attacked by locals or being attacked by elephants.
a. Zimbabwe
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, I was in, I was doing a film in Africa in Zimbabwe at the time and I was working for a company called Canon; I won’t say the word but anyway they’re finished up now. And after about six weeks I hadn’t been paid so I went on strike. I just told them I wasn’t going, but everyone, a lot of the other heads of departments as well wasn’t paid and that. So we kind of said we weren’t going to work and that and then we had to threaten them in Los Angeles. And Los Angeles was – they were moving money around the globe. By the time it’d got to us they’d made a fortune on our wages at the time. So that was the first time.
And then the second time – I’ll come back to the near misses as well – then the second time I was working in Israel and I was working for the same company and the same thing happened again.
Dave Fanning
Right.
b. Israel
Gerry Johnston
You know? And I refused and I stayed back after about five weeks in my hotel, chilling out at the swimming pool in a beautiful hotel, reading a book and I said ‘I’m not going in till I’m paid.’ So the producer, I worked with him before, Gene Corman who was a brother of Roger Corman at the time and he said ‘I’ll give you a personal cheque if you go back.’ I said ‘No, that’s not the point about it, the principle is these people are doing the same all around the world.’ So eventually, after a while he guaranteed, he said to me, ‘Come on come back on the set and I’ll promise you I’ll pay you your money this week out of my own personal account.’ So we got paid eventually and carried on the movie.
Dave Fanning
What about a little known movie called, is it Flaming Borders?
Gerry Johnston
Flaming Borders, yeah.
Dave Fanning
Did Saddam Hussein star in that for you?
Gerry Johnston
Well, yeah I mean a colleague of mine, he rang me up and he said ‘I’ve got a picture in Iraq.’ And I said ‘We can’t go there’ I said, ‘there’s a war.’ ‘Nah,’ he said ‘don’t worry about that,’ he says, ‘there’s nothing happening.’ So anyway I went to London and we sorted out our work permits and our passports and everything like that. And we arrived in late at night time. And when we arrived in Baghdad we were whisked away. We didn’t realise we were whisked away by the army at the time. And everyone else was looking for cases and there was hassle going on and you know and that. So we went anyway, we went back to our hotel. And a few days later and we were establishing in the television centre, underground. And we didn’t realise this until the third day that we were surrounded by tanks and we seen a lot of guns on the roofs and everything. And we were wondering what’s this all about and that?
So it wasn’t a good place to be. And of course after, when they went in to bomb Iraq, later on in years that was the first thing they knocked out. But we didn’t know at the time, I didn’t know who the President was. And my contact was a guy who invited us there, was a guy called Tariq Aziz who became later a spokesman for the United Nations. But we were taken around one day to this palace to meet somebody and we were taken around anyway. And all I remember was going in and seeing all gold on the ceiling and mosaic and all like that. Beautiful place but there was always military around. And we were taken into this big hall with a huge door about 15, 20 feet high and we were all told to line up. We were going to meet someone famous and that. So anyway this guy came in and we were told it was the President. So I met the President, you know, Saddam. And it was like a handshake and only just looked like, steel eyes. He’d just go along like that. And we didn’t realise after that until weeks later, we were making a propaganda movie for him at the time.
Dave Fanning
Yeah, exactly.
Gerry Johnston
So when I heard that we were there for now maybe about a couple of months, I wasn’t too happy about that. And I decided to tell the production about it; I’m not going back after Christmas. So it was then like ‘You’re staying, your our guest, you’ve got to stay.’ So we felt a bit intimidated and we were told then if we hadn’t cleared all our bills and we owed one cent in Iraq, we’d never get out of it. So I made sure of all the crew, you know, was paid up, any outstanding bills, make sure because if you owed money we were going to suffer, we were going to be held there. But we got out there and we never got back. Some of the guys went back but at the time –
Dave Fanning
Scary stuff.
Gerry Johnston
And I’ve never seen the film. It’s called The Flaming Borders. It was a lot of; we were using a lot of military stuff.
Dave Fanning
I’ve never seen it either. By the way, we’re going to do a Questions and Answer thing in a few minutes time. I just want to ask for another five or 10 more minutes and then you can ask. Just as a matter of interest, you mentioned there that you met the President, right, of Iraq and didn’t know or whatever. I once got out of a lift in the Dorchester in London and introduced Pierce Brosnan - James Bond - to the most powerful woman in America, Oprah Winfrey which I felt really good about. But you met the President of Ireland in the west of Ireland once, Patrick Hillery, who then introduced you to Grace Kelly. That’s pretty cool. I’d rather that.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, it was a picture called The Great Train Robbery. In actual fact it was in the Phoenix –
Dave Fanning
Great Train Robbery. Can I just say I was an extra in that movie?
I got into Trinity College at the age of whatever and the most bizarre thing was that you were wearing your St Bernard pullover and you’re brought down to some place in Annamoe or somewhere down Glencree or somewhere. And there’s a woman being hanged and there’s a whole scene with a woman being hanged and thrown off a balcony or something and somebody else is escaping from jail at the same time because the whole thing was a ruse. And we were to go ‘Hang her! Hang her!’ And we were all there in our St Bernard tshirts and wearing watches and it’s the 18th Century. I don’t know how you got out of that. Sean Connery standing there beside us. It was so cool. Anyway, that was the nearest I ever got.
Gerry Johnston
Well the time I met the President was we were shooting it up in the Phoenix Park.
Dave Fanning
He was - Patrick Hillery was President at the time?
Gerry Johnston
He was, yeah Patrick Hillery was the President at the time and he was in the Áras an Uachtaráin up there in the park. And I was - again it just happens these things – I was sitting in the tent and this guy just came in and he sat down beside me and he said;
‘What’s the movie? What’s the movie you’re making?’ and I said ‘It’s called The First Great Train Robbery with Sean Connery.’ ‘Oh,’ he said ‘I heard about Sean Connery. I’m looking forward to meeting him’ and that. And I said ‘Ah yeah, he’s around’ and that, you know. And he said to me ‘What do you do?’ And I said ‘I do Special Effects.’ ‘What are you doing on this?’ ‘I do rain, smoke, mist, fireworks, pyrotechnics and things like that.’ And he said ‘Oh yeah’ – and he was with a polystyrene cup and he said ‘Really’ he said ‘it’s very interesting’ he said. ‘And do you do much of this?’ And I said ‘Yeah I’m doing it for years’ and that. And he said ‘My name is Paddy Hillery.’ And I said ‘Oh right. Okay.’ So then it dawned on me – oh it’s the President. So you know. And he said ‘President’ he said, like. I said ‘Oh right, great.’
And so anyway I said I had to go back. So he said ‘I’ll go back with you.’ So I was walking out of the tent and who’s walking in? It was Grace Kelly with Michael Crichton who was the director who died there
Dave Fanning
Who died last week.
Gerry Johnston
last week. And I met the Prince as well and that and just shook hands and ‘Nice to meet you’ and all. And that was it.
Dave Fanning
Well there’s so many other movies and so many things we haven’t mentioned yet. I mean, Daniel Day-Lewis, just what did he do to you in terms of just looking at this guy who was never once, for one second out of character? Either as Christy in the first movie or as whatever his thing was, Conlon, Gerry Conlon; is he always like just on?
Gerry Johnston
Always. Daniel always goes away, especially playing the part of Christy Brown at the time in the wheelchair. He went away and he went into a home with these people to get the feeling of what it was like. And then I had a problem because when I met him first it was about two weeks before the shoot and he was in character. And I said to him ‘Daniel, I need to talk to you about’ – he’s in the wheelchair and he’s slurched like this, anyone who’s seen the movie – I said ‘Daniel I need to talk to you because I’m going to have to put you in a wheelchair and send you down around Dublin on cables and in your wheelchair and that. So I need to talk to you how it’s going to be.’ So he kept going ‘[Inaudible]. And I said ‘No Daniel I need to talk to you’ and he kept going on and I said ‘Right I’ll talk to you when you finish shooting.’ So that particular evening then, I’d say to him ‘Daniel I need to talk to you’; ‘[Inaudible]’. So I never got talking to him.
Dave Fanning
24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Gerry Johnston
24 hours a day. That’s the – he’s the character, he’s fantastic. That’s why he’s won a few awards. He’s just a fantastic character. Great guy to work with and very, he’s a very private guy altogether. But his own mother – sorry Dave – his own mother on that, there was a colleague of mine used to drive him around and when he was playing Christy, his own mother couldn’t understand because he was in character. So, she used to ring Louis the driver and ask ‘How’s Daniel? And I can’t understand him, is he alright?’ and he said ‘Yeah he’s okay, he’s playing the character’ and everything. ‘Well I don’t know, is he, you know is he fine or is he?’ You know, a typical mother. And Louis said ‘Don’t worry he’s okay.’ ‘And Louis, you just let me know if anything goes wrong.’ And so Louis had to ring her and tell her how Daniel was.
So when it came along – In The Name of the Father, the same thing happened again, he’d get into the character of this strong Belfast accent and she didn’t know. So she used to ring Louis again and say ‘I don’t understand.’ So he was like the interpreter all the time for the mother, you know?
Dave Fanning
Yeah. Okay, there’s one thing in the book and it’s very important. It’s, you worked on Neil Jordan’s movie Michael Collins. When you realised that Neil Jordan was making the movie first of all, you don’t say it in the book but I’m going to say it to you right now. Did you say ‘Bastard, he’s stolen my movie’?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah.
Dave Fanning
That was your movie, was it?
Gerry Johnston
Well at the time I – there was a clearout years ago in the studios and they were throwing scripts out: burning them. And I seen Michael Collins and I took it.
Dave Fanning
What do you mean? What, Michael Collins?
Gerry Johnston
They were burning the scripts, you know the people that used to send in scripts.
Dave Fanning
The Neil Jordan Michael Collins?
Gerry Johnston
No, no. Somebody sent in the script and it was written by a lady called Rosemary Anne Sissons who did Upstairs, Downstairs. Maybe you wouldn’t remember it but it was a TV series. Very successful black and white TV series called Upstairs, Downstairs.
Dave Fanning
So she had sent in some kind of treatment for a movie hoping that somebody might pick it up.
Gerry Johnston
Hoping someone would pick it up and I found it. So anyway, I looked at it and it was very outdated and that. So I contacted her, got her tracked down and I contacted and I said, ‘Look can I have a talk with you?’ So in the meantime as I went to see her in London, I said ‘Look I’m interested in taking the rights of the story.’ So she said well I think it was British Screen at the time or British Finance at the time had the rights. So it was a guy who took the rights on this and he paid British Screen a certain amount. But we tracked him down anyway and he became a monk in Tibet. So we had to track this guy down and I had to make the offer to take the option on the script. So I said to British Screen, ‘You’re going to have to chase this guy, I don’t know where to contact him.’
So we got that back to Rosemary Anne and then I used to visit her and we sort of brought it updated and then I decided that this is not going to work. So a colleague of mine, we decided to write a script and I went to Toronto and I asked, rang up Liam Neeson and asked him would he play the part of Michael Collins, explained to him about what it was more or less the same script as Neil Jordan had. And there was loads of scripts going around then as well. But when I went to work on Neil Jordan’s film –
Dave Fanning
But hold on a sec, when you went to Liam Neeson, had Liam Neeson heard from Neil Jordan?
Gerry Johnston
No, no.
Dave Fanning
So Liam Neeson was asked by you to play Michael Collins in a movie called probably Michael Collins. You’d a different title to it?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah I’d a different title to it. And he said, ‘This sounds interesting. Yeah, I’d be interested in that.’ Because I was after doing a film, I think, before that with him called Lamb, yeah, I think he plays a Christian Brother and there was a child.
Dave Fanning
Yeah, boy out in the [inaudible].
Gerry Johnston
Yeah. And I explained to him who I was and everything and he was ‘Yeah, yeah, we’ll have a chat about it and everything when we get back to Ireland.’ But in the meantime, there was a couple of scripts going around, there was Kevin Costner was playing Michael Collins – Michael Cimino.
Dave Fanning
And was it based on that Gerry Johnston doesn’t mean anything compared to Neil Jordan or Kevin Costner, was that it?
Gerry Johnston
That was it.
Dave Fanning
You were a nobody in that field.
Gerry Johnston
I was a nobody at the time, you know. But I think you know, as now, it’s like I want to sort of try and make my own movies now and I’ve had a lot of experience over the years and I’ve done a second unit directing on films so I’m going to go. I love the special effects. I love it and I’ll always do it you know, till the day I die maybe.
Dave Fanning
Okay so that’s what’s coming around the corner. A lot of the movies you might have made it first, you didn’t get your name in the credits at the end and is it vital?
Gerry Johnston
It is, it’s vital because all the people you know. And the first thing is, especially on a film, it’s either at home it’s time to put on the kettle when the credits start rolling or if it’s in the cinema.
Dave Fanning
But if somebody abroad wants to sort of do something they might get the movie out on video in Hollywood or something like that and take a look at it and say ‘Okay that’s the guy who did that is it?’
Gerry Johnston
Exactly.
Dave Fanning
You need your name there.
Gerry Johnston
Well it’s very much important because first of all it’s important that our credits come up but and people say ‘Oh right, okay.’ It could be Hollywood, it could be anywhere in the world. Hollywood is a place as everyone thinks in America but, you know, there’s two Hollywoods in Ireland anyway.
Dave Fanning
That’s right, down in Wicklow.
Gerry Johnston
They haven’t got money, the same money. But I mean it’s, Hollywood is known to everyone, it’s Los Angeles, you know?
Dave Fanning
Tom Cruise. What was he like?
Gerry Johnston
Tom Cruise, I never worked with Tom Cruise.
Dave Fanning
I thought you did Far and Away?
Gerry Johnston
No I didn’t do Far and Away. I was doing a film called The Playboys. It shot -
Dave Fanning
Oh, you were up in Mayo while they were down in Dingle.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah I was up in Cavan.
Dave Fanning
Did you not do the, some of the snow for Far and Away in Dublin?
Gerry Johnston
No. Yes I was to go and work on the film.
Dave Fanning
Because you had done it for Educating Rita and here’s the snowman, get him.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah. Well, -
Dave Fanning
Here in Trinity.
Gerry Johnston
Well, Far and Away, first of all I was to go and work on it. A guy; supervisor-director, a special effects guy called John Richardson asked me would I do the movie for them. Because, he said, ‘I don’t know what it’s like in Europe now and what to do.’ So anyway, we never worked together and I went off and I did another movie and that. But when I was working on a movie here which is back in 1973, it was called Educating Rita with Michael Caine and Julie Walters, that was the first time Julie Walters was coming off the stage and playing in her first film. And we were creating here at the time, I was to create a big snow scene and it was during the August and it was one of the hottest summers ever. And I think the Dean got a bit annoyed about it because we had all these wedding parties coming in to –
Dave Fanning
Getting their photograph taken in the snow?
Gerry Johnston
get the photograph in the snow. And it was really like 100 degrees.
Dave Fanning
And was there any newspaper the next morning that didn’t have a picture on the front page?
Gerry Johnston
Newspaper headlines the next morning – ‘Snow Overnight in Trinity College’ and all these wedding parties.
Dave Fanning
In the August of 2008 it would have been appropriate
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, yeah.
Dave Fanning
Alright, well look, I’ll tell you, just there are many other things, okay, so I’m going to ask one last thing and then it’s up to you guys. We’re going to hand around the microphones. Wait till you get a microphone if possible. And that’s this; just Braveheart, I mean is Braveheart one of the biggest things you’ve ever done in terms of just everything was in it except like the kind of pyrotechnics we saw there? Everything else was in it. Massive.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah it was massive.
Dave Fanning
Because I was on the set a few days and I’ve often given out about Mel Gibson in interviews but he was brilliant on the set. He was so funny and just a big laugh. This guy is spending 200 million and he’s just having a laugh.
Gerry Johnston
Well he was under a lot of pressure. First of all he was involved in the acting, directing and producing. And it was, as I say it was very funny because all the Irish army used to get behind this bank of monitors. And Mel would say, sort of like, ‘God that’s’ and of course the Irish guys used to say ‘Oh we can do better than that Mel, come on let’s get back and do another one.’ You know. But in that particular we had fire, a huge amount of fire in it. We were using massive boat tanks of fire, liquid gas. We had arrow launchers, we had chopped off arms, heads, spears going through, mechanical horses, burning oil.
Dave Fanning
See the point about all this is you’re just expected to come up with this. They say, ‘This is the special effects guy, come up with this.’
Gerry Johnston
Yeah. Well, you have to – again, you read the script right?
Dave Fanning
We just saw the place there, the cow shed as you call it which has been renovated now or at least it’s better than it was, is it? Or the weeds are gone from the front, are they?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, I mean when I went there – when I opened it up in 19 – I was in the studio and they kept moving me around and I needed a big area like something and they gave me this particular place one day. And we opened up the door and as I opened the door it was like –crreeaak – and there was all these massive cobwebs. This door hadn’t been opened for about 30 years, 20, 30 years. And it was all just farm machinery in the yard, farmyard. And all the place was basically pens for cattle with Lord Meath and there was Jersey cows I think was the only one. But the whole place was falling down. All there was was a light bulb and a tap. And I got rid of all the machinery, farm machinery; I got rid of all the straw and the hay.
Dave Fanning
And that’s what we’ve been seeing on the screen there?
Gerry Johnston
And that’s what you’re seeing on the screen now. Whereas at the time it was just every felt was falling down and there was trees going up through the roof.
Dave Fanning
How cool, do you see the way I brought it right back to the beginning? That was pretty good wasn’t it?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, Americans often ask me ‘Where’s your base?’ And I say, ‘The cow shed.’
Dave Fanning
So the cow shed is what it’s called. There’s a picture of the book from 2007.
Dave Fanning
By the way does anyone want to – there’s a question. Can you just wait till we get the microphone because I think they want to get this kind of stuff on camera?
From the floor
Good evening, Gerry.
Gerry Johnston
How are you?
From the floor
I’d just like to ask you – obviously your work involves huge detail and as you mentioned there’s health and safety aspects. So how much time do you get to prepare? Maybe not just reading the script but before the movie actually starts, how early do you actually get involved?
Gerry Johnston
Well, it could be days, it could be weeks, it could be months. It depends on what the movie is. If it’s a big – usually a big film, you get plenty of warning. I was working on – years ago when I started – I was working six months before we ever seen a camera. So it depends really. The quicker we get the script the better. And break it down and then you start sort of you know, what you need and then you communicate then with maybe people abroad or wherever we are working. So it depends really what the film is about. The likes of Braveheart we didn’t get very much time on that. You know.
And either Saving Private Ryan wasn’t much time on that. I wasn’t privy to the script. I didn’t get the script like six months because I was only – came for the Irish end of it, where we were shooting in Ireland. So I just was involved in the first 20 minutes, half an hour of the movie. I wasn’t involved then after that, you know. So, again, I had the script about four or five weeks before that, you know. So some of the other people, some of the other supervisors maybe had it three or four months before that.
From the floor
Hiya. I just wanted to ask what got you into special effects and did you have to do special training or did you learn as you went along?
Gerry Johnston
Well I actually fell into the business. It all started when I was about nine and 10. I was making up bows and arrows. I used to play cowboys and Indians, made my own arrows. Then I decide that I got fed up with bows and arrows and I started making up my own little explosives. So I started – I used to go off on my own and plant them in trees and blow lumps out of trees. Then after that then, that’s what I used to do and then I went into science class. And that’s when we started to experiment. We used to use gas, magnesium – we used to fill up the balloons with gas and then we’d sort of put a little fuse on them. We’d make up our own little fuse and they’d be floating, just in the science class. Next thing there’d be a big explosion and the science class ceiling was all blackened and that. And then we nearly died because the teacher came in at the time and sort of gave out and ‘How did this happen?’ So eventually anyway, we had to tell him eventually what happened, what we were doing and that. So that was – I started doing that. And then I start then, I went off and I started my first job doing engineering.
And it was like; my father knew I wasn’t happy with what I was doing. So he met a colleague of his and he said he was working on a movie and my father said, ‘I think you should go out to Ardmore Studios’ to see this particular guy. So I went out anyway and he introduced me to a couple of these supervisor-directors at the time, had a meeting with them and they asked me to come back again. And I went back the second time and they said they’d be in contact. And I think that was a few days before. And then on the Monday morning I got a knock on the door, the bell rang and there was a big black limo outside. And there was a guy dressed as a chauffeur and he said ‘Mr Johnston, I’m here to take you to Ardmore.’ And took me to Ardmore and never looked back and I love what I’m doing.
Dave Fanning
That’s an answer. Here’s a question here. Front row.
From the floor
What is the hardest special effect to do?
Gerry Johnston
What would the hardest special effect – well it could be the kettle boiling over at the right time. Or it can be something very dangerous. The most dangerous thing is always when we’re using explosives; whether it’s what we call HE which is a high explosive or low explosives would be anything to do with chemicals and powders. But the hardest thing can be a cake rising at the right time. Like your mother cooking a cake and she sees it rising and she says I must test that or whatever. So that can be sometimes the hardest right on cue, is to have that cake rising. You know, so it depends really.
Dave Fanning
Anybody else got a question? Go ahead.
From the floor
Hiya. Is special effects a hard profession to get into really? Like do you need to build up a lot of experience before directors will like trust you or whatever?
Gerry Johnston
No, it’s not really a hard thing. Nowadays it’s not because you have, you’ve colleges now. To be a special effects person, you’ve got to be creative. It’s hard work and if you have a background of engineering or science or whatever it’s not a bad start. But too, you’ve got to be imaginative and creativity. Be like you’re going to create the illusions because that’s what special effects is about: creating illusions onscreen. That no one is hurt and that no one sees behind the scene, the wires and things like this.
Dave Fanning
Yeah, Gerry, in terms of what you – what Gerry does in this book, seriously, it’s really hard work. It’s not nice work a lot of it, it’s terrible hours underwater. Like there’s one scene you set – I can’t remember what the movie was – and your Morris Minor – there’s a great picture of it in this book – and the Morris Minor’s going over this cliff and it’s on fire. And obviously you only get one shot at that. But then later on it causes debris and you’re making a movie. He’s got to go down. There should have been five guys going down there in wetsuits to get this Morris Minor up. He’s the only guy down there who’s trying to put this big hook on with the waves coming. You realised you didn’t have time because it was going to go out to sea. And he has to do it all by himself. Like, sorry; I’d rather be doing my job than yours.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah.
Dave Fanning
It’s not easy.
Gerry Johnston
It’s not easy, it’s tough. As I said when I was breaking the bottle; you got to be strong, you know. It’s tough because you’re pushed to the limit, what you can do and you’ll always be pushed to the limit by directors that say ‘I want the house to really blow up.’ And you got to sort of say ‘Sorry, this is what you’re going to get’ but giving him the same effect. But they’ll always push that, push you, push you, push you. But like what Dave was saying about the Morris Minor going over the cliff is for I was told, ‘You’re going to have to get away this Morris Minor for environmental purposes.’ You know, so I had to go down underwater with a snorkel and put a massive big hawser around this Morris Minor on my own.
Dave Fanning
A job for five people.
Gerry Johnston
Which was a job for four or five people. And I broke the rule then and I swore I’d never break it again because it could have torn me. Because this trawler was above the surface and I was diving. I had no aqualung and I was diving down and I had this – it nearly killed me to get it down. But we got it up. I’d never do it again.
Dave Fanning
But to be really cruel about it, one of the worst things is that a lot of these guys don’t care too much about you and with all due respect, they just want the shot, they want you to get paid whatever way you’re meant to get paid but do what you’re told and get it done. It’s not the nicest gig in terms of the way you’ve been treated by a lot of people.
Gerry Johnston
No, you’re only, you’re like, you’re only a number.
Dave Fanning
Yeah. Exactly.
Gerry Johnston
You know. And if someone gets killed, it’s you know, ‘Oh, very sorry, can we get (push them asunder) can we get on with the shoot?’ That’s the way it’s gone. It’s like; it’s run by accountants and insurance people now. And that’s what sort of – the niceness, a lot of the niceness has gone out of the movie business.
Dave Fanning
That’s a really terrible answer. Is there not a good thing in the book?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, there is.
Dave Fanning
There’s an awful lot of exciting things about it too. Jeepers, it’s a great gig. There was one over, was there, no? Yeah, have we got a microphone there, yeah?
From the floor
Gerry, just a couple of questions kind of linked. Just interested in hearing what you want to do next because you were saying you wanted to go into maybe, was it directing or producing? And then also, kind of linked onto that; is there any advice you could give say you younger film makers perhaps working in low budget features or no budget features in relation to special effects?
Gerry Johnston
Well, you know for young directors and that there’s many, many books on special effects now and there’s also on the Internet. So, like I mean, many’s the time directors or producers rang me and said ‘Look, we’re thinking of doing a movie. We’re not too sure how to do these shots.’ Or I might get a call from a writer saying, ‘I don’t know how to put this in. What do you think is the best thing to do and how do you go about it to get it into the script?’ And a lot of producers and directors up and coming; they’ve maybe gone through college and they feel like - oh well we know how to do this and everything like that. But when it’s – it’s totally different when you get on the stage as they say, it’s a totally different thing what you learn in school and classes and colleges. When you come out in the real world it’s a totally different thing. What I think is, it’s always good not to be ‘Well I know it all’ and the producer, director and that sort of you know, don’t be afraid to ask people that’s in the business. You know and that’s what I’d say to anyone; young film directors or producers coming up is; don’t be afraid to ask questions. Because you know, it’s simple enough.
Dave Fanning
You sound like you’re making something and you’ve been as far as the joke shop and that’s it. Yeah, I know it well. Who’s – sorry, have you got a microphone? Oh, he does. Good man yourself. Anybody else want to ask a question by the way? Yeah, there’s a few over here. Yeah, go ahead.
From the floor
Hi. What do you think was the best stunt that you did?
Dave Fanning
The best stunt that you did.
Gerry Johnston
The best film I did?
Dave Fanning
No, the best stunt that you did. The best thing you did in the movie, the one you’re most proud of.
Gerry Johnston
Well I don’t do stunts. I do the special effects but I make, sometimes I make the stunt guys look good because I create the fire around them and throw them in the air.
Dave Fanning
What was the favourite one? Would there be one say – look I did all that, he wouldn’t have been able to fall that way or die that way or whatever.
Gerry Johnston
Well it was a shot we did in the – we did a shot like for instance in the Great Train Robbery, The First Great Train Robbery and the stunt coordinator, he jumped the wrong way. He should have jumped when the train is going in that direction he should have jumped that way. But of course he jumped that way and he broke his shoulder and arms and everything like that. That was –
Dave Fanning
What was so great about that?
Gerry Johnston
No, I’m just saying to her it was, that was no one particularly liked this particular guy and it was a good thing to happen. But, and I think Dave, you maybe met him at the time. But I think one of my favourites was when I worked with Pierce Brosnan the first time was I blew up a gunpowder factory, one of the biggest in America. And I achieved about how it looked and no one was hurt, you know. And that was a seven or eight storey big factory.
Dave Fanning
What’s the movie?
Gerry Johnston
It was Pierce Brosnan’s first movie, it was called Manions of America and that was the first time. Pierce then became famous. He then went off to America and then after that he did Remington Steele.
Dave Fanning
Can I just say something on that level too about somebody becoming famous first? You did a small movie in County Kerry which I think you got yourself involved in too. To kind of answer your question earlier on about what you’re going to do next. You’re going to get into directing or get into making movies on a different level than what you’re doing now. And you made a thing called Drinking Crude and it didn’t make it, it didn’t do anything, it wasn’t successful as such, right? But it was the first movie ever that Colin Farrell was in.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah that was his first. We did that back in – we shot it back in 1996. We bought and robbed, borrowed and everything to make the movie. It was in 84, we shot it in super 60 and we blew it up onto 35. And main actor was Andrew Scott and Eva Birthistle who’s, they’re doing very well today. And we had this part, this guy playing a cameo – Colin Farrell. And I wanted the director to maybe use him as the lead part but the director at the time thought that no, that we use Andrew Scott at the time. And I kept saying to him ‘No, why not use this guy?’ and he said no. But we only had him in about 10 minutes and then we know what happened after that. Colin Farrell became famous. But at the time we made the movie for I think at the time for a grant from the Film Board and we made it for about 200,000. But it got great ratings at the time and thankful to Dave here gave us two reviews on television and gave it rave reviews.
Dave Fanning
I enjoyed it.
Gerry Johnston
We got a few little sales out of it but we hadn’t got the money to push it and to promote the movie. And we had a particular friend of mine who never had a feature before and he asked me to give it to him and I gave it to him but he was out of his league at the time and he hadn’t got the resources to do it. And I often get an enquiry about, ‘What are you going to do with this movie?’ So we were asked there recently would we go back and re-shoot it and put Colin Farrell – but you couldn’t do that because he was only about 20 odd at the time, you know he was very young.
Dave Fanning
12 years ago.
Gerry Johnston
12 years ago, yeah.
Dave Fanning
A question there, yeah?
From the floor
Just, in the film industry in general, being on set for actors and directors and producers and special effects. Inevitably there’s going to be dates pushed back and that. Is it true that it’s an area you can’t afford to be sensitive in?
Gerry Johnston
So your question basically is?
From the floor
Sorry, in the film industry there’s inevitably dates have to be pushed back and extend the deadlines. Is it true that it’s an area in general that you can’t afford to be sensitive in with tensions and that?
Gerry Johnston
You mean, well it depends really. As for the actors, to push days back and your other question is regards push back effects?
From the floor
Yeah, datelines inevitably having to be extended and that and then tensions will inevitably rise at some point, I mean is it you can’t afford to be sensitive to criticism and –
Gerry Johnston
Well maybe you’re answering your question. I’m not too sure this is the answer but I mean as regards the effects; most of the effects is always the end of the day. They always call you out very early in the morning but you know and then they want either the actor to survive or the set to stay up. Because at the end of the day it might be blowing the set up or whatever it is so they want to get everything else shot. It’s often they extend the day and that then sort of causes maybe budget constraints for the production company and that because then they have to – there is a certain time, you only get maybe a tenhour day. If you start going over that, then you’re into overtime, you might have to pay certain people double time and into the next day and that. But yes, it’s often pushed back. Maybe some of the effects is pushed back the following day or that but it’s all sort of what’s happening on the day really. Does that answer your question?
From the floor
I just wanted to know have the technological advances over the last few years made your job harder or easier? Like, the green screens and the computerisation of effects. Has it made your job easier or harder?
Gerry Johnston
You mean the computergenerated effects?
From the floor
Yeah.
Gerry Johnston
Well I don’t do computer, I do the physical side.
Dave Fanning
Oh you mentioned the dirty word there.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, like I mean my colleagues and that and actors we seem to be going back to what happens on the set. There’s a place for computergenerated effects still and green screen but we tend to be sort of going back. Directors now want to go back because first of all, the actors and the actresses on the set and if there’s action they feel part of it and the movement and everything like that. When you’re shooting on green screen or whatever is for computer generated thing, the actors and actresses feel the fun is gone out of it. Or they’re, what are they supposed to be doing? There’s no one around them and they don’t know what’s going on when it gets into the computer generated stuff. So, they prefer working onset and there’s communication with the crews and rapport and that so.
Dave Fanning
And there is the line on the screen there. It’s the very last line in the whole book where you say, ‘My dreams of adventure had been fulfilled. Computer generation generated fires, winds, explosions, still looked fake. But before technology catches up, I would like to echo one of Hollywood’s greats who paid tribute to the work of the special effects professionals. He said “The audience is treated to the results but I have smelled the cordite, seen the hidden wires and experienced the meticulous and personal care for the safety of everybody without compromising the finished effect.” Thank you Stephen Spielberg.’ So you have Stephen Spielberg and a few others. As I said at the very beginning, it’s coming back, isn’t it?
Gerry Johnston
It’s coming back yeah.
Dave Fanning
Yeah, the real deal.
Gerry Johnston
I mean even Spielberg is. Okay, he’s going back. He used to use a lot of CGI himself and that. He’s going back to now. I mean most of – a lot of directors and production companies and some of the big moguls in Hollywood; they’re all going back to it as well. You know?
Dave Fanning
Wasn’t there a question up there? There you go, yeah.
From the floor
Hi, how’s it going? You said that insurance and the insurance industry are kind of taking the fun out of it. Well, maybe not the fun but they’re putting more restrictions. Do you think that preventing the creativity that could be there?
Gerry Johnston
Sorry?
From the floor
Do you think the whole insurance industry and the whole idea that it is being turned over to accountants and people that are sitting in an office looking at numbers and looking at risk are actually taking out the creativity that used to exist?
Dave Fanning
Yeah it’s all gone very PC and nanny state and all that.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, it’s like, if you notice now, it’s health and safety plays a huge part in every industry and it has restricted a lot. I’m not saying it’s restricted but there’s more paperwork, there’s more safety aspects. I mean when I started in it there was okay if we were blowing up some place we had a nurse on set or you might have an ambulance. Nowadays you’ve got to take into consideration and it’s part of your call because you see you have to do risk assessments for every time you’re going out nearly now. And this is more paperwork and paperwork and paperwork and that. And also as well, as regards like, you were saying accountants. I mean at the end of the day, most producers - I mean I wore the hat myself as a producer – the end of the day, the cost factor.
But you’re caught between two stools because the director might say, ‘I want a jumbo jet to blow up’ or ‘I want two. I want just one in case we don’t get the first shot.’ So then I’ve to go back and I’ve to talk to the production accountant, the producers and they say ‘No. We’ve no money, you’re not getting that.’ You know so I’ve to go back and tell the director. He knows he’s not getting it and then you’ve to go back and say you can’t. So you see you’re caught between two people here: the production area and the creativity. So what often happens at the end of the day, is a lot of effects, imagination, the illusions are put out because the producer will say ‘Well okay, you’re the accountant’ and the accountant will just slash, slash, slash, slash. So at the end of the day, sort of, if you can cut other corners that mightn’t be relevant to the movie, do it that way. But don’t sort of cut what the director wants and what’s good for the movie, you know?
Dave Fanning
Okay, we’ll take one more maybe if there’s any more. No I don’t see any. Here’s one here if we can get a mic down. Although you could shout if you like because he could certainly hear you.
From the floor
I was basically wondering, throughout your career, which stunt or which film would you be most proud of having been working on?
Gerry Johnston
Well there’s a lot of them, it’s very difficult to say. But I suppose the one I had feeling for because I was there, lived it and everything like that and I felt I was in war with Saving Private Ryan. You know, the rest were movies as such but when you have people crying behind you and you’ve people sniffing and everything.
Dave Fanning
So you’re talking about the impact on Curacao Beach as opposed to the impact in the cinemas. While you were making it.
Gerry Johnston
While I was making it yeah, I felt that was my favourite movie that I worked on that I felt I was there and looking at the screen I was crying nearly behind the scenes, you know?
Dave Fanning
Alright, anybody else or will we leave it at that?
From the floor
Yeah, just a quick comment. The explosion at the very beginning of In the Name of the Father was one of the most stunning things I’ve seen. It’s not a question, I’ll just tell you. You’re sitting up there watching it and my God.
Dave Fanning
That’s the pub in Guildford is it?
From the floor
Yeah, I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ll never forget it.
Dave Fanning
Really powerful.
Gerry Johnston
Yeah, see again, you know as you build a set that will blow out. But sometimes we have to blow out – there’s a pub there but then we have to put a false set in front of it and blow it out. You know, it’s within the landscape of that. But we use, it depends really you know, it’s nice for us if we can get a derelict building. We can really go to town on it then, we can do what we like, you know? If it’s a set that’s built and we have to have it next day, well then we have to compromise to a certain extent. And then we might have a set that’s out in the wilderness that we could just blow the whole thing up. And it doesn’t have to be concrete, there’s sort of stuff we can make up that looks like concrete. The whole set can either disintegrate or a wall blown out. You know so, it depends on what the film is about, you know, what it is.
From the floor
Can I just ask you, if you do your pyrotechnics and then the director says whatever, go or whatever they say, and then it goes wrong and the set has blown up and gone on fire.
Gerry Johnston
Sorry, just go back on that again.
From the floor
You know if you’re doing your pyrotechnics and you’re blowing something up?
Gerry Johnston
Yeah.
From the floor
And they say ‘Go ahead’ and you do your job and then they say it wasn’t quite right, you know?
Gerry Johnston
Wasn’t what you wanted?
From the floor
What happens then if it’s blown up?
Gerry Johnston
Well, either that or they go and build another set or another, whatever it is. But normally what I’d do – and this is what I always make it my business if I can because if I’m working with the art department, we normally work through art department because we come in: the makeup, the wardrobe, the special effects and everything comes under the umbrella of the art department. And the production designer, the art director, myself have an idea how this should look but then the director might have a different concept of how they want it. So I always try and make it my business to go to the director to make sure that this is what they want. And you know I’ve never had any problem with that. You know? It’s always good because if I had went with what the art director said, that’s not what the director wanted. You know, so I’ll always try and go – I’ll say to the art department ‘I’m going to talk to the director about it’ because I always like to sort of find out what way they want it, their feeling, what they want to see and what if I can help them. And then I might say ‘Listen, my suggestion would be’ you know, da, da, a compromise for them and they feel happy with that.
Dave Fanning
Alright folks, Lights, Camera, Dynamite. Let’s hear it for Gerry Johnston.
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