Genre: Horror/Science Fiction/Action.
Studio:
Miramax Films.
Production Company:
Dimension Films.
Project Phase: In the Can.
Who's In It:
Elijah Wood (Casey); Clea DuVall (Stokely); Jordana Brewster (Delilah); Josh Harnett (Zeke); Shawn Hatosy (Stan);
Laura Harris (Marybeth); Usher Raymond (Gabe); Piper Laurie (Mrs. Olsen); Christopher McDonald
(Casey's Dad); Bebe Neuwirth (Principal Drake); Robert Patrick (Coach Willis); Usher Raymond
(Gabe); Jon Stewart (Mr. Furlong); Susan Willis (Mrs. Brummel); Salma Hayek
(Nurse Harper); Daniel von Bargen (Mr. Tate); Laura R. Harris (Marybeth); Famke Janssen
(Miss Burke); Harry Knowles (The Film Teacher); Louis Black.
Who's Making It:
Robert Rodriguez (Director); Kevin Williamson (Screenwriter); David Wechter, Bruce Kimmel (Story);
Enrique Chediak (Director of Photography); Robert Rodriguez (Editor); Cary White (Production Designer); Brian
M. Jennings (Visual Effects Supervisor); Robert Kurtzman, Gregory Nicotero, Howard Berger, KNB EFX, Inc (Special Makeup and
Creature Effects); Hybride Technologies, Digiscope (Digital Effects); Threshold Digital Research Labs (Computer Graphics);
Centropolis Effects (Computer Graphics and Digital Compositing); Marco Beltrami (Musical Score).
Premise: Six students are about to discover that their creepy high school teachers are really from another planet.
Release Date: December 25, 1998.
Comments: This baby may have been announced back in late '97 as an untitled Rodriguez/Williamson project, but the creators' names were enough to whet the interest of genre fanboys. When Williamson handed in his first draft for the project it was known as The Faculty; as of January, it's become The Feelers.
Both guys are happier than pods slipped under the beds of sleeping children to be collaborating together on a sci-fi/horror picture. We're hoping that enthusiasm shows through in the film, 'cuz we're anticipating this treat (thought of by us as The Breakfast Club meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with the teachers looking like the main dude from The Thing. With that, how could one go wrong?)
Rumors: Unknown.
Scoop Feedback:
February 17, 1998... A couple of days ago a job posting went up on the 'net. The position calls for a lead animator to work on the new Robert Rodriguez flick, "in the spirit of Carpenter's The Thing." The ad also stated the position would last for 9 months, and they would work with closely with the director. Our scooper sent us these pictures of the clay model used to illustrate the "main creature" in the flick and asked us, "Might it be the Predator 3 gig or a completely new one?" We're happy to report it's the latter; we're pretty sure this has got to be the titular nemesis from the forthcoming film The Feelers.
What do we think of Mr. Big and Ugly? (Besides the fact it looks a helluva lot like Patrick's elementary school principal) -- very Chthulu-lian, if you know what we mean by the reference (see 'Lovecraft, H.P.', and then consult a psychiatrist directly afterward.) Born with a kisser only a mother (or pod person) could love, this could be one heck of a frightening CGI creation. Those multiple tentacles have the promise of being really neat when rendered in shadow, we think. Pic #2 looks similar to the 'graboids' from Tremors ("I'll take 'Obscure Monster Names Used in mid-Eighties Films' for $200 next, Alex.") Lookin' good so far Kev, Rob...
[Scoop and pix care of the Shakespearian-like 'Oberon'.]
March 22, 1998... Robert Patrick and Elijah Wood are confirmed in the picture. Also rounding out the supporting cast is Josh Hartnett, Clea Duvall and Shawn Hatosy. [Thanks to 'acamp', 'Oberon'.]
April 11, 1998... Harry Knowles announced this week on his website that a part in the film has been written specifically just for him. Knowles will play the school's 'Film Teacher'. He also announced that Salma Hayek (From Dusk Till Dawn, Desperado) has also been cast as the School Nurse -- a casting decision we entirely agree with. Knowles also said that the photos we've been running of the monsters that were designed for the film (posted February 17th) have been discarded since they were leaked. Earlier in February Knowles asked CA if we would remove the photos, and we replied that if we received a communication direct from either Robert Rodriguez or Kevin Williamson, the show's creators, we would. Since no reply came we continued running the photos, and now it seems the design will be changed. [Information posted on Aint It Cool News.]
And the working title for the film is now The Faculty. Since there's been three titles associated with this project (The Faculty, The Flesh and The Feelers), we're going to hang back and wait to see what the final title will be, which will hopefully firm up when shooting starts in late April. [Submitted by 'Raoul K. Duke'.]
May 18, 1998... According to the Miramax/Dimension website R&B singer Usher will appear in the untitiled Williamson/Rodriguez project. [Sent in by anonymous.]
May 19, 1998... Artist Berni Wrightson was the Guest-in-Honor at the World Horror convention in Phoenix this month. Wrightson mentioned he was working on various film projects since they paid better than comics, including providing conceptuals for Rodriguez's untitled movie. Could the older pictures on this page be inspired by Wrightson's drawings? ['Catblack' handed in the manuscript.]
May 24, 1998... Scooper 'Ghostface' sent us a puzzling email. The scooper seems to have some kind of inside knowledge about this project but the info they sent veered off from one topic to another in every new sentence. We were a little confused at the conclusion of the scooper's email, so here's what we could make of it.
They began by telling us the 'feelers' are "just like the kids from 'It' (the ABC miniseries." Then the scooper told us that Jonathan Taylor Thomas was "supposed" to be one of the feelers "suffering from attention deficit disorder" but that Thomas was removed from the film for a reason the scooper hints at in a round-about way (and one if it were true Thomas could probably sue for discrimination against himself.)
The scooper then follows up by telling us Joshua Jackson may get the role of a character known as 'Wise-Cracking Jerry' which reminded the scooper of the Richie Tozier character from It -- except the character would be using more up-to-date humor."
Perhaps the scooper can return and further elaborate on the statement(s) they made? [Thanks to 'Ghostface' for the email.]
June 7, 1998... More and more media reports are now referring to this film as The Faculty, so we've adopted this as the film's present title.
Meanwhile, we've been receiving letters from extras who worked on the show on the night of May 29th. Both had nice things to say about Robert and his crew...
"On Friday, May 29th, I participated as an extra in the Rodriguez/Williamson project. 1,000+ people were needed to pack a high school football stadium in Lockhart, Texas (about 45 minutes south of Austin). From 8PM until 6AM the next morning, a night game between the Herrington Hornets and the 'Changos' was staged. Most of the film's stars were present - including Elija Wood, Usher, and Robert Patrick. To keep everyone there all night, a wide variety of prizes were given away...including a Ford truck (if you keep your eyes peeled on the sidelines, you may even be able to spot the raffle hopper). Rodriguez and crew were excellent and very quick between setups....considering they were moving/directing 1,000+ people. Robert seemed to be behind the camera 90% of the time, and had no problem with signing autographs between takes. A great experience on the set of a *hopefully* great movie coming this Christmas.
PS: The highlight of the evening (besides watching Rodriguez direct) was heckling Harry Knowles from the stands. The most noteworth comment yelled: 'CHANGE YOUR BACKGROUND!!' "
[Sent in by 'DuskTillDawn'.]
"I was at a mass extras call May 29th in Lockhart, TX for the Rodriguez/Williamson project. They needed about 2000 extras to fill the stands of a football stadium for some scenes. We were part of an establishing shot in which a camera on a truck in the parking lot filmed a car speeding into the lot, with the game going on in the background. The shoot was unpaid, but they gave away prizes all night, and had food available for we 'grunts'. They also brought out the shows stars to introduce them to us, including Robert Patrick, Elijah Wood, Bebe Neuwirth, and Piper Laurie (who they said wrapped that night - Rodriguez even gave her a wrap gift in front of the audience). Harry Knowles was there, too, but they didn't introduce him. Couldn't find out any of the plot line, although one of the PAs said the title was back to The Faculty (don't know how accurate that is). At any rate, Rodriguez and the rest of the crew were really cool, and they worked fast, too."
[Sent in by 'lexus'.]
September 27, 1998... Added some cast members and the tag line. [Scoop provided by 'RandomUD' and the IMDB.]
October 1, 1998... MTV has started to air Tommy Hilfiger ads introducing the cast of The Faculty, all part of the Tommy Hilfiger deal with Dimension Films. Let's hope Tommy doesnt have one with the teachers. Can you imagine Harry Knowles wearing Tommy clothes? I dont think the world is prepared for this. [Special thanks to the billion of scoopers who sent this good news.]
October 11, 1998... A test screening was held in Paramus, NJ this past week. Some really positive reviews have been posted at Harry Knowles' Aint It Cool news site; however, we were sent this not-so-great review by someone who was also in the audience that night...
"Just got in from an advanced screening of The Faculty in Paramus, NJ. Your description of The Breakfast Club meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers is right on the money. The audience reation was mixed. A lot of people were really vocal in praise of the film. Especially the bunch who applauded the line that mentions that there is a conspiracy to cover up an alien invasion by having Hollywood make lame movies like Men in Black. When the film was over many folks around me found the film to be dissapointing and silly. I found the main characters to be lacking but I liked the supporting work done by Bebe Neuwirth, Selma Hayek and especially Famke Janssen. Unfortunately they were barely in the movie. About 5-10 minutes screen time each. The actress Laura Harris who plays Marybeth looked disturbingly like Heather O'Rourke (The little girl from Poltergeist) if she had been alive today. Overall, it could be a fun Saturday night movie but not a memorable one." [Review provided by 'Kor'.]
So this leads us to ask the question: is Mr. Knowles posting every review he received or is he hiding the bad ones, or was every review he received a positive one? October 19, 1998... Harry Knowles wrote to us to defend his honor and his report on Ain't It Cool News about last week's test screening of The Faculty. He'd like it known for the record that every one of the numerous test screening reviews he received for The Faculty were indeed positive and just because he's starring in the film we shouldn't assume he's not posting any negative reviews on his Ain't It Cool site. He's right. Although we were trying to walk an fine journalistic line with regards to our last posting, and it does seem odd that the sole review we received about that screening was decidedly mixed, we don't want to slag the man just 'cuz he's is in the movie (which is a cool thing indeed.) If Harry says he's received no negative reviews, we're believing him. And hey, we're still looking for other audience members to step forward with their comments on the Paramus test screenings. [Apologies to Harry for the slight.]
November 3, 1998... Over on Ain't it Cool, Harry Knowles has been raving that the opening scene of The Faculty will be a classic. Even test screening scoopers have reported the film's opening scenes were amazing. Now comes the word that a certain rock band will be featured on the soundtrack. Who? Aerosmith. But before you start imaging another Armageddon-like ballad, now it gets really interesting. What's the title of the song that we've heard mentioned? None other than Pink Floyd's legendary 'Another Brick in the Wall'. December 14, 1998... It's a good question to ask, so why not let our scooper ask it?
"The, uh... always reliable IMDB credits George Huang as a writer on The Faculty, along with the incredibly bankable Williamson. All those die-hard Kevin Spacey fans out there might know Huang from writing and directing Swimming With Sharks, and therefore helping to create my personal favorite Spacey performance/character, the monstrous movie producer Buddy Ackerman. If you haven't seen that and you like Spacey, go rent, now! The movie is uneven, but Spacey proves he can be just about the funniest serious actor in the universe.
"ANYWAY, what does this mean in terms of The Faculty? I actually remember Huang and Rodriguez being buddies (something about those Sundances to bring film-makers together), so what's it all about? Who wrote the original draft? Did Huang polish it when everybody realized that Williamson is a forced, inauthentic writer (too bad writing wasn't the strong suit of Huang's first film either)? Did Williamson stamp his name on something Huang did? Is the IMDB just plain flat out wrong?
"And yet somehow, even with these questions gone unanswered... life goes on."
So we're hoping someone can illuminate the dilemma our scooper faces. How much of Huang is in the finished product? How much did Williamson contribute? (And yes, Swimming With Sharks is brilliant. It's like Seven meets The Player. Go rent it!) [Question postulated by 'Fake Shemp'.]
December 15, 1998... "Okay, I noticed you people were wondering about the exact writers on THE FACULTY. Here's the skinny as confirmed in articles on Williamson by Sci-Fi Universe and Movieline:
"Williamson did two drafts on a script (from a few years ago) called THE FEELERS, with essentially the same premise. Wiliamson souped it up with hipness by doing two drafts on it. After that, he handed it over to George Huang (Needle in a Timestack) who faxed him rewrites (quote Williamson: 'He would send me the rewrites and I would say "What the fuck is this? You're ruining the script!" and he would say "Fuck You!". It was like a party.') (Some party...)" ['LarryJordi', thank ya.]
"Regarding George Huang's co-writing credit on The Faculty...for what it's worth, the UCLA Professional Program in Screenwriting script library has a draft of Williamson's Killing Mrs. Tingle, and on its title page Huang also receives credit. The draft of The Faculty in this library has the following on the title page: "'Written by Two Guys. Rewrite by Kevin Williamson.' Whatever the hell THAT means..." [It came from 'Dooovall'.]
After Its Release:
December 27, 1998... Normally we'd place this film in the Archives after its release but since we received a fair number of interesting scoops for The Faculty, we thought we'd leave it out in the open for a couple more days...
"I saw The Faculty Christmas night, with a bunch of guys who wished to escape their girlfriend's families and get back in touch with their adolescant male appreciation for monster movies. We all love Rodriguez, except we all concurred that every one of his movies since El Mariachi starts out cool as hell but falls apart in the last act (and not just because of the presence of vampires, I'm not saying that vampires=not good). So anyway, none of us like that Williamson boy all that much, but we went in with full knowledge of George Huang's ghostwriting, so we were expecting some fun and spin put on the premise.
"The movie has an abundance of really nice touches, and that's about it. Rodriguez fails to put any kind of personal spin on the direction, except for really great sound design (see it in SDDS, do) and a couple of little things (like the references to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and that weird little RUM-DUM-DUM zoom in on Piper Laurie that got a big laugh), the movie is so un-Rodriguez its amazing. Its almost as if he's subverting himself to the material... except the material is a teen-wave horror flick, so... anyway, if he'd have shot it more like Road Racers, but oh well. There are some really cool moments.
"But the writing is completely uninteresting. There is no logical stream of plot, after the unsettling first scene, there is nothing to explain the events of that scene (other than, I guess the aliens are sadists). The way to get rid of the aliens is based on a guess by one of the characters, and then adhered to as 'the plan'. When explanations do come, its through real unnatural dialogue. In fact, very little of the dialogue sounds natural, it mostly sounds like lines that might be cool, some of them delivered amusingly, many botched by the actors. The writing is probably on par with I Know What You Did Last Summer, with an amusing nuance or two, many of which were probably added by the actors.
"Speaking of which, depending who you are, each of the kids will either be cool or annoying as hell. Personally I give deserved accolades to Elijah Wood and Laura Harris, and Josh Hartnett will most likely annoy you, but he played that annoying character well, probably better than the concept of the character. The teachers are completely underused, except for Robert Patrick... he KICKS ASS. He milks the role for all its worth. Jon Stewart was the audience favorite, but isn't given much screen-time, but he was really good in spite of it. I love that guy. The other teachers don't make much of an impression, but its not their fault. No one is given enough to resonate beyond a typical Williamson stereotype. Christopher 'Shooter' MacDonald has one funny-and-yet-painful scene as Elijah Wood's Dad, the movie could have used more of that kind of truthful but amusing observation.
"Oh, the special effects won't win any awards, but there were some very nice images. The thing in the aquarium freaked me out in a grand way. And the climatic beastie is very nicely realized.
"But in the end, we're left with a movie who's existence as a horror flick riding the teenage movie wave (the oh so annoying trend) is not transcended by the talented people behind it. I had the impression that Rodriguez was going to make this great movie about real kids who find themselves in a Body Snatchers flick, and respond accordingly and humorously. But the movie is neither witty enough to spin the material, nor inventive enough to work straight. The two scenes that really do work (the 'drug test' Thing rip-off and the aquarium) don't elevate the entire movie. The whole thing blows hot and cold, sometimes scene by scene.
"I only write so long because I wanted this movie to be the one I'm waiting for... I thought this would be it. But I'm still waiting for a sci-fi movie that takes its cues from real life, not other movies. One in which there is at least one scene where the characters step back and say, 'whoah... aliens,' instead of reacting like they're been preparing for this moment for their whole lives. And certainly a movie that changes the nature of the rules. Instead of a standard horror flick made by people who could probably do much better.
"And that's The Faculty."
['Fake Shemp'.]
'Fake Shemp' also added that a Talk Balk writer on Aint-It-Cool-News, a scooper stated that the ONLY writer present on the set was George Huang, and that he did on-set rewrites. "So one can assume that his contribution to the final product was substantial, perhaps even more substantial than that of credited writer Williamson," 'Shemp' muses.
Related to this is a fax we were sent a couple of days ago about Killing Mrs. Tingle. The scooper sent us a copy of the December 12, '95 draft cover which lists Williamson as the writer, but interestingly enough also lists Huang as providing the rewrite. Their association on projects must go back a number of years. [Anonymous faxers.]
And then there's this reviewer who's obviously a fan of the direct approach:
"I saw this movie last night and it was really good. It was intense and I don't give a crap about what critics say it was great. It was also really funny too."
['JVN' just doesn't give a crap.]
"I know it's a little late for an 'advance scoop' of a movie that comes out tomorrow, but here's my review of The Faculty.
"The good - Great acting, some nice fright scenes, cute 'feel-good' ending. More emotion and subtext than you expect in a horror movie. Harry Knowles is in it for a mercifully short time.
"The bad - Plot holes you could drive a truck through - it basically turns into Scream except for 'who's the killer?' it's 'who's the alien'? And just like Scream 2, when the alien is revealed, it's surprising, but not satisfying. Also, its too much of a rip-off of Body Snatchers and The Thing. Sure, Kevin Williamson can throw in his 'references' to the movies and then say, 'I'm not ripping it off, I'm paying homage!' But the whole movie suffers from the lack of originality.
"The Ugly - lame, predictable soundtrack. how can a soundtrack be predictable? Not only does this feature the THIRD Tom Morello 70s remake this year (here he does 'Another Brick in the Wall', after Godzilla's 'Kashmir' remix and Small Soldiers' 'War' remix), but it also features the THIRD David Bowie remake by a 'hip' band (after the Wallflowers' lame 'Heroes' from Godzilla and Marilyn Manson's 'Golden Years' from Dead Man on Campus. Here, it's Shawn Mullins' 'Changes'.) At least the closing song was an Oasis B-Side called 'Stay Young', which was a pleasant surprise.
"SPOILER TIME: The whole idelogy of the movie pisses me off too (not often that a horror movie's morals piss me off, but this one did). Basically, the good guys refuse to give in to the aliens, because they want to retain their individuality, flaws and all. They'd rather be unpopular outcasts than be like everyone else...but at the end, after the aliens are defeated, they DO conform! The drug dealer guy becomes a football player, the gothic chick starts wearing flowery dresses, etc... This is supposed to be a happy ending, but it kinda negates what the whole movie is about. Plus, the way that they defeat the monsters makes very little sense - the magic drug they use to defeat them works because it has caffeine in it - which dehydrates you, and the monsters need water. Wow, it must have ALOT of caffeine to be able to melt monsters on contact. Not to mention plenty of other things would have worked just as well - especially those 'laxatives' the good guys had all along. And when the final alien is revealed, you have to wonder - why wasn't he/she chugging water the whole time?
"All in all, a fun time at the movies, but just don't think about it - at all - or it starts to fall apart."
[Reviewed by 'Stone Cold' Austin Powers.]
The Tag Line:
"You will not be disrespectful this school year!" "These six students are about to find out their teachers are really from another planet."