Prop Store: It was the Spring of 1982. In the Southern California desert region known as Buttercup Valley, cameras were rolling on a film called BLUE HARVEST: HORROR BEYOND IMAGINATION. A SoCal science-fiction nut named Mike Davis had heard rumors about the production just having gotten under way. He and his pals decided to pack up some camping supplies and go check it out. This was the 1980s, a time when film productions were able to remain much more secretive than they do today, due in large part to the producers being able to stem the flow of information much more effectively in the absence of the internet. But just Earthling spies do their best work when boots are on the ground, so too would Mike Davis and his network of Bothan spies.
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
ON LOCATION: BUTTERCUP VALLEY, 1982
Prop Store: It was the Spring of 1982. In the Southern California desert region known as Buttercup Valley, cameras were rolling on a film called BLUE HARVEST: HORROR BEYOND IMAGINATION. A SoCal science-fiction nut named Mike Davis had heard rumors about the production just having gotten under way. He and his pals decided to pack up some camping supplies and go check it out. This was the 1980s, a time when film productions were able to remain much more secretive than they do today, due in large part to the producers being able to stem the flow of information much more effectively in the absence of the internet. But just Earthling spies do their best work when boots are on the ground, so too would Mike Davis and his network of Bothan spies.
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3 comments:
I love hearing about these kinds of "back-in-the-day" stories. Men camping out in a desert to see a shoot really reminds us of why movies are made. STAR WARS of course had greater fandom than many film sagas, but the fact that a movie could bring out guys to a location they had only heard speculation about filming Star Wars is incredible given the year. Especially since they were able to keep the photos so long. Today someone would have gone just to make a buck off any pictures they could sell which is really unfortunate. And I love how warmly they were received in the area being able to get so close. The pictures are wonderful and that kind of photo would never be permitted now. Especially some of the ones with the wires which would be eliminated before the film.
A ten day hike into the desert is the kind of commitment that I'm not exactly shocked to find in Star War's fans from the eighties, but it's still a little surprising. Like the article says, without the advent of the internet and information being everywhere, they must have done some extreme spy tactics to locate that exact place miles into the desert. That's also a lot of food and water packing, not to mention some kind of shelter... true movie dedication. I'm surprised to learn that after building that whole alien (Sarlaac) the crew just left him to live in the desert! I guess it could be considered a nice treat for the camper-outers, to get to haul back their very own authentic Sarlaac. (?) Like Meg said, it's nice to hear about this sort of watered down, friendly/actually interested in the movie type of paparazzi, rather than the ones who show up at sets today in order to turn out a profit for the photos they manage to snag.
What's cool about this is that the scale of the espionage is proportional to the scale of the information. Compare this to the information that has been leaked about the conlusion of Nolan's Batman trilogy. Any passerby nowadays is a spie, and with social media and internet, infomration is spread much faster and easier. The world knew what catwoman looked like before the studio wanted us to. These guys hiked and camped out for days to get photographs of the Jedi set. I love the narration behind the photographs, there were some things they didn't even know what they were looking at. What they saw couldn't fill in missing pieces of what they knew because there was a lot they didn't know; which made the photographs that more exciting.
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