HOLY JINKIES! Harry here! Ray Harryhausen apparently is working on a new Sinbad movie!!! That's what the reporter below says Ray said! Wow! I'd heard rumblings that Ray was working on something, but never in my wildest dreams did I think SINBAD would be the dealio! Here ya go with the skinny and fat details...
Harry,
Last night I attended a screening of the original King Kong with Ray Harryhausen speaking afterwards at UCLA, which I found out about from the KongisKing.net website. The screening was a part of a "Films that Inspired Me" series, and since Kong is Harryhausen's favorite film and influenced everything he ever did, he and the film were a perfect choice for the series.
A few interesting points after the screening, which had a great original print of the film (not the edited down version, but the actual original release print with Fay Wray's clothing being ripped off in all it's glory). Jackson's remake came up pretty quickly. He mentioned he was excited about it and believed Jackson would do a great job and would get it right because he cared about the material so much.
Someone asked in the audience if it was true that there was a scene cut from the original involving spiders attacking the men as Kong knocked them off a log and sent them plummeting to the bottom of a ravine on Skull Mountain. Ray said it was true and that it was cut for timing by the producer. The only person he ever knew who said he had seen the scene was Ray Bradbury at a screening of the film in Arizona before it was released. Pretty cool. Even cooler is that he mentioned that the scene WOULD be in Jackson's Kong. Awesome!
Ray plugged his upcoming DVD of his earlier work and screened one of his "three dimensional animation" shorts of the Little Red Riding Hood tale. Great stuff. A fun night and just got me more excited for Jackson's sure to be classic remake.
What does Harryhausen have in the pipeline now? A new Sinbad script! That's what he said! How awesome would that be?!?!
WhiteEyeLid
