#movie:little-shop-of-horrors

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Frank Oz restores 'Little Shop of Horrors' dark original ending for the Trump era

The monstrous Audrey II wants to make a meal of Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors. (Credit: Warner Bros.)

The first time Warner Bros. screened Frank Oz’s 1986 film musical Little Shop of Horrors, test audiences ate it up like a bloodthirsty plant devouring a sadistic dentist. They rooted hard for Seymour (Rick Moranis), the nerdy 1960s shop assistant who makes a devil’s bargain with a man-eating plant to win the love of his co-worker Audrey (Ellen Greene). Every scene was met with laughter and applause — until the plant devoured Seymour and Audrey, and the audience went silent. After two previews and many livid comment cards, Oz and screenwriter Howard Ashman decided to scrap the original, 23-minute ending — in which the plant eats everyone and takes over the world — in favor of giving Seymour and Audrey their happily-ever-after. Oz has no regrets. “My job is to entertain,” he tells Yahoo Entertainment, and the new ending was “more satisfying to the audience.” However, film fans have long mourned the disappearance of the original ending, which included a heartbreaking reprise of Audrey’s ballad “Somewhere That’s Green” and a fantastic montage of the plant, named Audrey II, rampaging, Godzilla-style, across New York City.

This month, Little Shop of Horrors will be screened for the first time nationwide with its original, darker ending restored. Oz wonders if the film will have a new resonance in the Trump era, when America’s real-life monsters thrive on blood, greed, and the misguided good intentions of countless Seymours. “It will be very interesting to see if, in this new political and cultural climate, if there will be any association with that, with the plant. Let’s just say that,” says Oz. The original ending, he acknowledges, “may still be too dark for people and I accept that. It may not be as satisfying emotionally, and I accept that. But on the other hand, the reason Howard and I wanted it, was that it is the Faustian legend. Seymour does have consequences for his actions. We needed to omit those consequences to keep the audience happy, which I agreed with, by the way. I think we had to do it. But now it will be very interesting to see.”

The plants rampage through the city in Little Shop‘s original ending. (Credit: Warner Bros.)

Little Shop of Horrors is adapted from the 1982 off-Broadway rock musical by Ashman and Alan Menken, itself based on a 1960 Roger Corman B-movie. The show ran for four years in “a crummy little theater on Second Avenue,” as Oz remembers it, and he wanted to bring that claustrophobic downtown atmosphere to the film. “I didn’t want to turn it into a Hello, Dolly! musical. It had to reflect that grunge spirit,” he explains. At the same time, he felt that if he shot a truly realistic, on-location version of the city, the audience wouldn’t go along with the characters bursting into song — which is how Oz felt about a certain other iconic New York film musical.

“As much as I love West Side Story, it’s really bogus, because they’re not going to be dancing on the streets on a rumble in New York,” he says. “As brilliant as the film was, that world didn’t support that action, in my opinion.”

Audrey and Seymour didn’t have a happy ending as initially conceived in the script. (Credit: Warner Bros.)

“Every film is artifice, right?” he continues. “Scorsese is artifice. It’s not real. People aren’t actually getting really killed in Goodfellas. But one has to create, in my opinion, an artifice in which the world the characters inhabit can be believed. And so any actions within that world are believed, because of the tacit arrangement one makes with the audience, which is, ‘OK, I’m creating something, I’m asking you to believe in it, I will be honest to that world if you will continue to believe in that world.’”

To create a “quasi-theatrical world” for his singing characters (including Steve Martin as Audrey’s abusive dentist boyfriend), musical narrators (a Motown-style trio played by Michelle Weeks, Tichina Arnold, and Tisha Campbell-Martin), and talking plant puppet (voiced by Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops), Oz had the entirety of Skid Row constructed on an indoor soundstage (specifically Pinewood Studios’ “007 Stage,” built large to house the James Bond films). His preferred set-design process is unorthodox. “What people usually do is say, ‘Ok, build me a set and I’ll work around it.’ And I do the reverse,” Oz explains. A year before shooting began, Oz brought production designer Roy Walker to the empty soundstage, where they played songs from the Little Shop cast album and mapped out the set on the floor with tape.

Steve Martin as Little Shop‘s deranged dentist (Credit: Warner Bros.)

“I’d play the ‘Dentist!’ music from the off-Broadway show, and I’d say to Roy, ‘OK, here’s where the motorcycle stops, and Steve gets out,’ and then with that music, I would count how many steps it would take for Steve to get from the sidewalk to the front door,” Oz explains. “And so he would tape that. And then I would go with the music and guesstimate how many steps it would take to get inside his office, and then Roy would create the wall there…  And then when he created the set I knew musically how much time and how many beats it would take to get from one to the other.”

Once filming actually began, Oz says, “Every freaking day was a challenge.” That’s largely because one of his lead characters was a 13-foot-high puppet. Though Oz came on board with unimpeachable puppet credentials — he created many of Jim Henson’s iconic Muppet characters, and directed both The Dark Crystal (with Henson) and The Muppets Take Manhattan —  the plant Audrey II presented a daunting task for a director. At minimum, according to designer Lyle Conway, four puppeteers were needed to perform the character; for the climactic number “Mean Green Mother From Outer Space,” 51 puppeteers were required.  “If I wanted to move that plant from one part of the store to another,” says Oz, “it took two days.”

That Mean, Green Mother From Outer Space (Credit: Warner Bros.)

While Oz is proud of the film’s creative camerawork — the jaw-dropping growth of the plant, the verse in “Dentist!” shot from inside the patient’s mouth, the swooping crane shot at the end of “Somewhere That’s Green” that he’s quick to credit to Ashman — his favorite moment in the film is one of the simplest and most touching. “It’s not about shots for me as much as emotion. And I think my favorite song really is ‘Suddenly Seymour,‘ because the song is so stunningly full and beautiful that Howard wrote,” says Oz. “These two damaged, sad souls, connecting at that moment, that’s what’s most memorable to me.”

Little Shop of Horrors remains popular enough that the possibility of a remake has floated around for years. “There are a couple movies of mine that have already been remade, which is weird because they usually let the director die first,” Oz quips. “There’s been talk about Little Shop for a long time. I know nothing about it. But I think it’s wonderful. I mean, put it this way: I think it’s wonderful if it’s good.”

Audrey II’s pods provide backup singing… and chomping. (Credit: Warner Bros.)

As for Oz — whose post-Little Shop films include Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, What About Bob?, In and Out, and Death at a Funeral, among others — he hasn’t directed a feature film in a decade. “It’s not that I’m off, it’s just that things have changed,” he explains. “Sometimes I have worked on scripts that I liked and they couldn’t get the money for them. And the scripts that I am given are often scripts that I just don’t want to do. And I’d rather not work than do something I don’t believe in.” (He did recently direct an independent documentary about the creation of The Muppet Show called Muppet Guys Talking, which will receive a digital release in March.)

If there’s a thread that runs through all of Oz’s films, and Little Shop of Horrors in particular, it’s humor untarnished by cynicism. “I just do what I do and the human being I am comes out through it. I don’t think optimism is really something I identify with as much as purity and innocence,” says Oz. “I believe in my heart, without being a goody two shoes, that there are people in the world who are really good, and unfortunately it’s the people in power who are often not. And the people who are not in power, are the ones I’m making it for.”

‘Little Shop of Horrors: The Director’s Cut’ will play in theaters nationwide on Oct 29 and 31. For tickets, visit Fathom Events.

Watch the trailer for Little Shop of Horror: The Director’s Cut:

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The ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ Puppet Master Who Brought the Blood-Thirsty Plant to Life

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MVPs of Horror: The 'Little Shop of Horrors' Puppet Master Who Brought the Blood-Thirsty Plant to Life

To celebrate Halloween, Yahoo Movies spent the last week talking to people who scared us silly in classic horror movies. Go here to read our complete Halloween coverage.

The ‘80s were a golden age for movie monsters, from mischief-making gremlins and shape-shifting aliens to human flies and human pinheads. But only one creature earns the title of Mean Green Mother: Audrey II, the carnivorous plant from the cult 1986 movie musical Little Shop of Horrors. Adapted from the hit Off-Broadway play, itself based on a low budget Roger Corman film, Little Shop stars Rick Moranis as lovestruck Skid Row horticulturalist Seymour, who pines for the lovely Audrey (Ellen Greene) while tending to his latest plant, a Venus Flytrap-looking flower that turns out to have a very peculiar diet: people.

At first, Seymour satiates his plant’s bloodlust by feeding it scuzzy Skid Row residents like Audrey’s abusive boyfriend — and the world’s worst dentist — Orin Scrivello, memorably played by Steve Martin. (In one of the movie’s most famous scenes, Martin worked his dark dental magic on Bill Murray’s pain-loving patient.) But when Seymour discovers Audrey II’s world-conquering agenda, he steps up to take Earth off the alien invader’s menu.

Related: MVPs of Horror: The Woman Behind Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, on Her 35th Year as the Bodacious Horror Hostess

Working before the advent of CGI, director Frank Oz knew that Audrey II could only be properly brought to life through the magic of puppetry. So he turned to his former colleague at Jim Henson’s Muppet Workshop, Lyle Conway, who designed characters for such classic Henson productions as The Muppet Show, The Great Muppet Caper and The Dark Crystal. With Audrey II, he created his masterpiece, a massive, 13-foot high puppet made of rubber and Kevlar that’s as lifelike as any of the flesh-and-blood actors in the film.

Watch the trailer:

And Conway — who received an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects (he lost to the Aliens team) —considers that no small feat considering the caliber of the cast. “We had to overcome Rick’s face, because all he had to do was smile and he’d eat up the screen,” he tells Yahoo Movies. “And Ellen’s cleavage upstaged the plant in most of the shots!” With Little Shop’s 30th anniversary approaching in December, we chatted with Conway about the movie’s abandoned original ending and building a plant monster for the ages. Pull up a chair and follow along.

Was your experience working with Frank Oz on The Dark Crystal one of the reasons he approached you to design Audrey II? I worked very closely with Frank designing his character Augha for The Dark Crystal. Then I went off to do things on my own, and I got a call from him about Little Shop. I had seen the play in New York and loved it, but I did question whether I wanted to work with Frank again. I love Frank, but he’s very intense. [Laughs] Anyway, I did work with him again, it was wonderful — probably the best experience I’ve had on a film set. It’s a strange job doing these things, because you tell people you can do it, and then you have not idea how to solve the problem. I mean, building a 13-foot plant that can boogie, rap and lip sync! They ask you, “Can you do it?” and you go, “Yeah!” And then you go home and think, “What the hell have I gotten myself into?”

Besides the stage musical, had you seen the original Roger Corman film? Oh yeah, I saw it when it came out actually! I liked dark things as a kid, and I knew even then that this was a disturbing little film. When I started working on Little Shop, I had them get a print of it that I ran for my crew, and they hated it, of course. Frank and I had actually talked about trying to get the surviving stars of the Corman film to make cameos in our movie, but it was hard enough just getting the American actors over to England [where Little Shop was filmed.]

Watch the trailer for the original 1960 movie:

Were there any elements you borrowed from past stage and screen versions of the plant for Audrey II? [Sesame Street puppeteer] Marty Robinson performed the plant in the Off-Broadway show, and he really inspired me. The energy level he had was great; I sat there riveted. So I hoped to capture in our plant the energy that he had in his. Frank and I would have loved to recreate the ending of the play, where vines came down from the ceiling. It was a wonderful effect. You wanted to bring friends to see the show just to watch their reactions to the vines coming down. We couldn’t do that in the film, unfortunately. I drew my inspiration from work I saw and loved since childhood. One of the puppets — the “growing coffee can plant” — took its inspiration from Georges Méliès inflating rubber head. We stand on the shoulders of giants, and it delighted me that an effect not only from the beginning of special effects, but from the dawn of filmmaking could still amaze people.

There are several different versions of Audrey II in the film: the baby plant, the medium-sized one, and then the giant one at the end. I did most of the sculpting from the baby plant up to the big “Feed Me” plant. For the baby plant, I wanted it to look like a baby bonnet. The petals around it suggest a bonnet or some kind of precious Fabergé egg, something that would encourage Seymour to take it home.

I took the job under the understanding that they’d let me build a completely working prototype for the “Feed Me” plant, and then rebuild it. That was enormous advantage. Usually there’s no time, and they gave me an enormous amount of time — a three month rehearsal period with the puppeteers and a wonderful director.

I was very fortunate to cast the two major plant puppeteers: Anthony Asbury, who had just finished a long run in the West End production of Little Shop. He built up the necessary back muscles to perform “Mean Green Mother.” No one else could have performed the big musical number. I was also lucky to get Brian Henson as a key performer for the “Feed Me” plant; I had cast him in Return to Oz where he gave a beautifully nuanced performance as Jack Pumpkinhead.

Two puppeteers look at Audrey II in her unfinished state (Photo courtesy of Lyle Conway)

The full-sized “Feed Me” version of Audrey II is a remarkable feat of puppetry. How did you build it? That plant is made of foam rubber and cables, as well as a Kevlar skull with foam rubber over it. For the “Mean Green Mother” number at the end we had 51 puppeteers on set when everything was working; the vines on the wall and all that. Otherwise, we rarely used that many people. We had a core group of four puppeteers that operated the head and then five or six under the stage operating the vines. And the vines were these freestanding, non-marionetted puppets that was the first time anything like that had been done.

Related:  MVPs of Horror: Adrienne Barbeau on ‘The Fog,’ ‘Creepshow,’ ‘Swamp Thing,’ ‘Escape From New York’

In fact, the UK Atomic Energy Authority worked with us on creating a rigid, but flexible core for these vines, and that helped enormously. The puppeteers were amazing; if you just isolate the vines and look at them, they each have a personality of their own. They did stuff like have one vine reach over and feel another vine’s muscles. They even did a Hedy Lamarr joke, having a vine mime a curvaceous shape in the air. The hardest shot was the one where Audrey II reaches into the cash register. That took 30 takes; it looks like nothing in the finished film, but it was hell doing it.

During the rehearsal period when I was looking at footage on video, I would often speed through it. And I noticed that the plant would pick up an energy it didn’t have at normal speed. So I went to Frank and showed him the sped up version, and he liked it. He told me, “I’ll go with it, but you have to go to the actors and plead your case.” Because they would have to act more slowly when they were in the frame with Audrey II. Luckily, they were delighted; I think they liked being part of the effect. So we did a month-long workshop and then filmed some of the scenes with them and the plant at two different speeds. And there were some shots that would have been difficult for Rick to do in slow motion, so we just filmed those at normal speed.

Related: MVPs of Horror: Chris Sarandon Shares Freaky Tales From ‘Child’s Play,’ ‘Fright Night,’ and ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’

How did you film the scenes where Audrey II chows down on her victims? For those scenes, we had to take the head off the plant, which meant disconnecting a lot of cables and stuff. In Ellen’s case, she was pulled in by our puppeteers, while Rick was fed in by these huge rigid vines. The rest is all just cheating. I remember showing Vincent Gardenia, who played Mushnik, the plant and saying, “You’re going to wind up in there.” And he told me, “I’m claustrophobic.” And I was like, “Yeah, well, we can’t make the plant any bigger.” [Laughs]

One of the moments that never ceases to crack me up is the bit where Audrey II shoots a vine at Seymour’s crotch, while singing “I’m gonna bust your balls!” That’s a whip pan; there’s a cut right in the middle of it to a dummy of Rick. I watch it and try to catch the cut, and you can’t do it. The camera goes from his face, then whips down to his crotch, and midway there’s a cut as he’s replaced by a dummy. I don’t think Rick would have done that stunt himself. Our aim was not that good. [Laughs]

Levi Stubbs’s voice is such an important part of the character. Was he always the first choice? Levi is the only person that I know about. He had to get permission from the Four Tops to do a solo project like this. He was there at Pinewood Studios recording his dialogue while we were shooting. Sometimes we’d have to wait for his recordings to come in, because they were hot off the presses. The playback would be slow and pitch-corrected so it was understandable. He was wonderful — it was perfect casting. Of course, after the first test screening in Los Angeles, all hell broke loose. Frank called me and told me the results of the preview, and that the studio wanted Rodney Dangerfield to re-record the voice! Rodney was hot at the time, and I think they were afraid of audiences being frightened.

Ellen Greene is pulled by puppeteers into Audrey II’s mouth (Photo courtesy of Lyle Conway)

That test screening resulted in the ending being completely overhauled. The original finale — where Audrey II eats all of the main characters and then takes over the world with its spawn — was unavailable for a long time except on YouTube. It was recently released as part of a special “Director’s Cut” Blu-ray. What did you miss the most from that version of the film? That was mostly miniature stuff, done by Richard Conway, who had worked with Terry Gilliam on Brazil. I fell in love with his miniature work on that film, and recommended him to Frank. By the way, the ending that’s on the Blu-ray is way too long. It’s not the ending that the test audience saw. If you go online, you can find the rough cut. But at least some of Richard’s work is out there now. And, of course, there’s Ellen being fed to the plant. I miss her line: “At least I’ll be somewhere that’s green.” The whole movie’s about that really, and her delivery is so poignant. I was angry to see it go.

Were there debates about how scary to make Audrey II early on? I don’t remember being scared by the plant when I was younger, but when I showed the movie to my own kids recently, they were a little freaked out. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Paul Blaisdell, but he did some truly gonzo monster making in the ‘50s on movies like The She-Creature and Invasion of the Saucer Men. I wanted to go in that kind of ‘50s direction, but Frank kind of shied away from it. In general, those ‘80s kids’ movies were really dark and frightening. I worked on a few of them, including The Dark Crystal, Return to Oz and Dreamchild. They were frightening! As a good fairy tale should be.

Related: MVPs of Horror: Lance Henriksen Talks ‘Aliens,’ ‘Pumpkinhead,’ ‘Piranha 2,’ and More

If Little Shop were made again today, Audrey II would probably be created via CGI. Is the fact that it’s physical puppet crucial to the success of the character? Not to me, but I do think viewers pick up on the fact that it’s actually there. There are clips of the movie on YouTube, and someone recently told me to read what people were saying about the film…. I went on there and spent hours and hours reading the comments about how much they love the character. They loved that you could see Rick’s hair being blown by the plant’s mouth when it closes.

Some comments said that it was better than Avatar. I’m delighted by that. Certainly, it’s a little crude by today’s standards, and we could have done a better job with the lip syncing if we’d done it digitally. But I think we did very well; there isn’t much I would change looking back.

The controls required to manipulate the “coffee can” version of Audrey II (Photo courtesy of Lyle Conway)

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Rick Moranis Says His Giant 'Spaceballs' Helmet Was Originally Much Bigger

Rick Moranis in ‘Spaceballs’ (Everett)

By Ryan Parker, The Hollywood Reporter

Rick Moranis tells great stories — so great, in fact, that THR couldn't fit them all into this week's magazine, where Moranis revealed that he's not retired (just looking for the right project) and explained why he ultimately decided to pass on a cameo in the new Ghostbusters.

Here are seven fun things that didn't make the print story due to limited space:

1. The massive headgear worn for Dark Helmet in Mel Brooks' 1987 film Spaceballs was originally way, way bigger. 

"In the original script," Moranis says, "the description of the character was that the whole costume was one gigantic helmet. Then it got scaled back to just an exaggerated version of the Darth Vader helmet. It was very light — actually took one prop guy to maneuver it. Where's it now? The Smithsonian?"

2. The plant from Little Shop of Horrors, Audrey II, took a lot of manpower to bring to life, and scenes were literally acted out in slow motion.

The man-eating alien in the 1986 film was not CGI, Moranis says. And the bigger it got, the more people were needed to make it work. "It took 55 puppeteers all working simultaneously to work the final iteration of the plant," Moranis says. "The only way to accomplish it was to slow down the music by a third. When I was on camera with the plant, I also had to slow down my lip syncing and movement by a third." The scenes were shot at 16 frames per second and played back at regular speed, he added.

3. Moranis was a lovable goofball on set.

He says he and George Wyner, who played Colonel Sandurz opposite Moranis' Dark Helmet, loved to crack each other up on set.

"It’s the last day of shooting, and we’re doing this action scene at the end of the movie where there’s some choreography where we’re escaping the ship. So we’re shooting this on the last day, and George attempts to make me laugh by saying, 'So are you going to take the helmet home?' And I heard what he said and I immediately thought of what I was going to counter with. I waited for them to start counting down, and I said to George just before Mel was going to yell 'Action,' I said, 'Yes, I’ll have to reserve the bulkhead.' Of course the take was completely messed up and poor George, I mean it was an OK joke, pretty mediocre joke, but the cruelty of my putting it right before the action call. It was a wonderful way to end the shoot."

4. One of Spaceballs' best dirty jokes was improvised.

Moranis says Dark Helmet's erotic doll play scene — "Your helmet is so big!" — was unscripted and he made it up on the spot.

"What I remember is not feeling that well that day. I think I had a fever. I wasn't at the top of my game, but somehow was able to come up with that. George was so fantastic in that scene. His performance makes the movie. The intensity he creates is what allowed me to be as broad as I needed to be walking around in that outfit."

The doll scene wasn't the only one that pushed boundaries. Moranis says the famous "I'm surrounded by assholes!" scene was "radical" then for a film rated PG.

Related: Rick Moranis Reveals Why He Turned Down 'Ghostbusters' Reboot: "It Makes No Sense to Me"

5. Of all his films, Moranis says he was "luckiest" to land one part in particular.

He doesn't have a favorite film he has done, but Little Shop holds a special place in his heart. "I’m the luckiest guy to get that," Moranis says. "It was timing, and I fit the right type. It was an amazing experience. One of the greatest moments of my life was shooting that thing."

6. Entertainment-wise, Moranis is mostly a sports guy.

He especially enjoys ESPN's Pardon the Interruption, hosted by Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon. "They’re sort of the Siskel & Ebert of sports," he says. "Their chemistry is so entertaining to me, and it’s a way to be on top of what’s happening. Helps me to sound like I know what I'm talking about to the guys in my neighborhood." Still, Moranis prefers radio to TV. "I listen to JohnBatchelor’s show on WABC," Moranis says. "It’s all kinds of things. It’s analysis and opinion on news, but there's also history, and authors and biography, and he covers things in space that are happening. It’s a wonderful show. Sort of a podcast for geezers."

7. He's pretty much as widely loved as anyone would expect.

His former colleagues adore him. Dave Thomas says he knew Moranis had talent the moment they met years ago. "I’m impressed with funny people, and I knew instantly this guy was funny,” Thomas says. “Working with him was real fun, I mean just real gut-busting laughs.” The pair worked together on SCTV where they created brothers Bob and Doug McKenzie. George Wyner said working with Moranis was one of the great joys of his career. "No one else but Rick could have played [Dark Helmet]. No one,” Wyner said. “His charm and likability are real, and that translates onto the camera.” Frank Oz, the director of Little Shop, was too busy for an extended interview, but said of Moranis: "He's a great friend and a great human being."