Kenneth Tobey interviewed about remake of "The Thing"
I saw this on the page for "The Thing From Another World" and I just had to steal it and repost it here:
--
Kenneth Tobey Interview
Kenneth Tobey is the star of the Howard Hawks' 1951 production of The Thing. Here are his views on the new version.
Kurt Russell is a damn good actor, and gave an excellent performance as MacReady. The special effects were absolutely remarkable. I've never seen effects like those in the film before. Rob Bottin is obviously very talented. In fact I met him when we were interviewed together on TV, and he's a very sweet guy. I haven't seen any of John Carpenter's other movies, but I think he's a very good director, although he was somewhat limited by his material. He showed a wonderful aptitude for handling the dramatic scenes.
Carpenter really built up that opening sequence. It was right on target. As soon as I saw the dog running, I knew what was happening. I knew it portended something bad, and I just ached for that poor animal.
I thought the most exciting scene was the blood test. When Russell put the heated copper wire in the dish and the blood jumped, I leaped out of my seat. That reminded me of our scene where I opened the door and the 'thing' was there, and we closed it on his arm. The blood test was the most exciting scene in John Campbell's story "Who Goes There?", and I always wished we could have done it in our picture.
On the other hand, while I appreciated that Carpenter tried to put Campbell's story on film, I now realise that was an almost impossible task. I doubt if the story could be told in visual terms. Because of the internalized drama, I think it could only be told in narrative form, where everything doesn't have to be shown.The way Carpenter did it, he ran into some trouble, because he had to have so mnay graphical special effects.
The effects were so explicit that they actually destroyed how you were supposed to feel about the characters. They became almost a film in themselves, and were a little too horrifying. The emphasis on effects took away from the human story that has to be told in order to capture the audience's sympathy.
When you make a monster movie, the audience has to be able to root for somebody. Usually they root for the humans. In this one there was nobody to root for, because you didn't know who was human and who wasn't.
I also thought it was wrong for the ending to be so inconclusive, instead of showing good winning out over evil. I don't think it was fair to do that to the audience, unless it was just to set up a sequel. I know the ending was more realistic than ours was, but there's a difference between realism and art. Sometimes you have to do things for art's sake that aren't realistic. In order to make the art successful, you make have to compromise the realism and have the story end satisfactorily for the audience, otherwise they may not fully appreciate all the good stuff they've seen.
I think Carpenter made a mistake by including visual references to our picture. It was a little too obvious to duplicate the same shots, like the men standing in a circle on the ice to measure the size of the flying saucer and the man on fire running across the snow. I'm sure Carpenter has more imagination than that. I realize he had to show something, but he should have found another way to do it. All he did was to take me out of his story and put me back into our story.
As a matter of fact, I don't think he should have called this film The Thing at all. He should have called it Who Goes There? It wasn't the same as the first picture, so it shouldn't have the same title.
Nevertheless, if I were going to rate the movie, on balance I'd give it about an 80 - which is a grade of 'B' - for special effects and excitement and an attempt to do something truthful and spectacular. Actually I hope it's a hit, because the bigger the success it is, the more our version will be talked about.
--
Tobey nailed both the good and the bad. To me the classic version with always the the 1951 movie with Tobey.