The box office smash Back to the Future was almost a bomb, saved only by the talents of Michael J. Fox, who was brought in to star six weeks after production had started. Ivan Reitman wasn’t really interested in directing Ghostbusters. Producer Gloria Katz described Howard the Duck as “a comedy about a person with certain particular characteristics,” foremost of which was that he was a duck.
These insights and many more are revealed in these interviews with some of the leading creative talents in Hollywood fantasy films during the 1980s. Fox, Reitman, Katz, Joe Dante, Robert Zemeckis, Richard Donner, Jamie Gertz, Ray Bradbury, Michael Ritchie, Timothy Dalton and others discuss Big Trouble in Little China, James Bond, Conan, Dead Zone, Gremlins, Ladyhawke, Lost Boys, and other fantasy films of the decade. Each of the interviews (previously published in a different form in Starlog) is preceded by a brief introduction setting it in context.
“All the interviews are informative” Classic Images
“Gives a variety of perspectives…enjoyable and informative” Library Journal
“You may not believe me, kids, but before your fancy internet rolled around, we got information about new and upcoming movies from artifacts called “magazines” and ‘newspapers.’ On-set articles and interviews for more than two dozen beloved genre movies are collected in companion volumes The Dreamweavers: Fantasy Filmmaking in the 1980s and Science Fiction Filmmaking in the 1980s: Interviews with Actors, Directors, Producers and Writers. To read them is to be transported back to the days of thumbing through issues of Starlog, Twilight Zone and Fangoria at the magazine rack while your mom shopped for groceries. Half the fun is seeing how prescient these journalists were. Case in point: Of Howard the Duck, writer William Rabkin predicts, ‘There’s a chance that American audiences simply don’t want to see a duck starring in anything besides a plate of orange sauce.’ Bookgasm
Jean-Marc Lofficier, Lee Goldberg, Randy Lofficier, William Rabkin /
Film Reference, Non-Fiction
