By Francis Wright
As you will see I've attached a very self-conscious photo of me (in a ghastly shirt) on the set of the goblin village from the battle scene in 'Labyrinth' ... I do not know why I am chewing my finger. Perhaps I was trying to look nonchalant and pretending that I didn't know my photo was being taken.
The large head in the foreground belongs to the 3rd Assistant Director, Nik Korda (a direct descendant of the Korda family which was so influential in classic British film.) As far as I know, Nik has never stopped working and is probably a producer or director (or both) now. His credits are probably easy to find. He was extremely efficient and easy to get on with.
The young woman in the long white shirt - standing with the camera crew - is Chyna Thomson - daughter of Alex Thomson, who was the film's Director of Photography. You will also see Ludo in the background with Val Jones, the lady who stuck his skin full of hair. (Don't joke. The hair was Alaskan Yak Hair, as far as I recall.) After the film was finished and the costumes and creatures and props went into storage, Ludo's body apparently developed an infestation of lice and other creepy crawly things. I have no idea what they did after that. So much for yak hair.
I was Ludo's eyebrows, and other things in the film. My first day was as a very small fairy flying up against the wall of the labyrinth until it was shot down by Hoggle's Flit Gun ... The battery-operated wings created a buzzing noise which annoyed the sound recordist, who came round the back of the set to search for the culprit. The credits at the end are unfair to the Ludo Team - we didn't get individual billing, unlike Hoggle and the Fireys. (A historical note about the latter: they were originally called 'Wild Things' - but Maurice Sendak's publishers wouldn't have it, and if you look at the credits at the end you will see a note that 'the producers acknowledge the works of Maurice Sendak' gets the producers out of the awkward hole created by the presence of a copy of 'Where the Wild Things Are' on the set of Sarah's bedroom ...) The three of us felt a little cheated to be lumped in as 'Goblins' along with a whole list of artists who came in for only a few days here and there. Ludo was, after all, a major character, and we were contracted to the whole shoot. Very useful it was too, especially when paying a mortgage.
The Fireys (I hope I'm spelling it right) song used a new technique, with a computer-controlled camera, to allow free movement of the characters, as the camera tracked and panned and did what movie cameras do. Normally with blue screen, or in this case black curtains, it's very difficult to move the camera and have the background marry up to the character in the shot. So matte scenes were quite often static (they aren't now, but in older films they are!) The 'Chilly down with the Fire Gang' song was shot as a 'master' with puppets and relevant camera moves, and was then re-shot with no puppets, and the camera duplicating exactly the moves it had made without anyone having to touch it. Unfortunately, it didn't really work, although it took ten days to shoot, and if you look carefully at the Fireys, they are ever so slightly transparent, which they shouldn't have been.
All Ludo's facial features were radio controlled, and as the whole system and idea of animatronics was fairly new to the world, there were often problems. Ludo picked up transmissions from local minicab firms in Elstree and these played havoc with his face - eyebrows especially. They would suddenly leap uncontrollably up and down his forehead, as his lips and eyeballs performed strange moves of their own. This frequently led Jim Henson to sigh and say 'Switch him off' and we would have to wait until specific closeups before we could do anything as a team. Ron Mueck, who was in Ludo's body, is of course now an extremely famous artist in his own right. He shot to fame in the 'Sensations' exhibition that the Saatchi Gallery mounted in the '90s, I think, and has never looked back. He is a very tall and very good humoured Australian. We had a lovely time working with him on Ludo. Rehearsals consisted of looking at the script with Ron sitting on the floor, and then getting Ron into the rehearsal head, which balanced precariously on a kind of arm and harness strapped to Ron's back. He would growl and do his Ludo lines a bit as we busked the face and eye movements. We were lucky enough to work instinctively together without having to agonise over timing. Rehearsals usually came to a conclusion early in the day with Ron saying ‘I think we should go and sit in the sun.’
Hoggle went through literally hours of preparation with every line worked over and over ... (The same was true for Audrey II in 'Little Shop of Horrors' of course - much the same team as Hoggle.) Ron Mueck was very happy to let Ludo be as spontaneous as we all wanted to be, so we didn't really do much rehearsing at all. I don't think it shows too badly. Ron injured his back during shooting, and a long lad called Rob Mills took the costume over for certain scenes as they were about the same build. But the role was definitely created by Ron, and the most successful bits have him performing.
Ron ended up by marrying one of the Creature Shop puppet makers - Cas Willing - who you will also find plenty about. Cas's mother was the artist Dame Paula Rego, and I have often worked with Cas's brother Nick (he directed a loopy series called 'Gophers!' and then a rather nice-looking film of 'Alice in Wonderland' in which I was the March Hare and other things) and also her sister Victoria, who has another life as an actress and playwright and mother of a very fine daughter.
Paula Rego's late husband was the artist Victor Willing. Victoria and I are good friends, and we have worked together a few times. Nick spends a lot of time in America now, I think, and Cas is busy with family and writing. Ron carries on working and sculpting and doing the most astonishing things for the art world, and I think regards it all as slightly unreal.
Labyrinth was a 5-month shoot, occupying a lot of 1984, as far as I remember. I had been working on the renowned comedy series 'Spitting Image' (for those who don’t remember, it was a satirical programme on Sunday nights. I worked on Series Two, which was the glamorous one, and had shedloads of money spent on it.) About half-way through, casting for Labyrinth came up, and of course none of the puppeteers working on Spitting Image mentioned that they had been asked to audition. Most of us ended up working together again at Elstree on the film, which began in the spring of 1984 and lasted over the whole of that summer.
It got very very hot.
If you are familiar with the various sequences, there is a hedge maze that features. That was genuine box bushes, and of course they need watering. Every time anything was watered, the humidity on the sound stage shot up and it all became like being on a tropical island. It sent us all to sleep by about 11 in the morning. The other slightly unpleasant set was the Bog of Stench, which was a carefully constructed landscape - and a large hollow pit which was filled with very runny wallpaper paste. Trust me, in hot weather, flies, midges and mosquitoes LOVE wallpaper paste. I don't know why, but they do. And frogs enjoyed the landscape as well. They had been transported from the back lot at Elstree by mistake in amongst the huge black bags of foliage and leaves that were scattered all around Stage 6.
The film's star, of course, was David Bowie - an extremely easygoing, professional, and pleasant man, who spent about two thirds of the day with us - and then went off to somewhere like Pinewood to work on 'Absolute Beginners' at the same time. He was quite happy to sit and chat and have a bacon roll and coffee, and there was a rather fine moment which I was sure would make it into movie history, but has never been mentioned by anyone except me. It is as follows:
After Jareth the Goblin King has stolen Sarah's baby brother Toby (one of twin sons belonging to Brian Froude, the designer of the film) he is sitting on his throne in his castle, with Toby perched on his knee. Jareth is telling Toby that Sarah's attempts to win him back are doomed and that the child will become a goblin like the hideous specimens to be seen all around the castle. The scene is quiet, and the child has an almost hypnotic stare on its face. Very effective, and people remember the scene well.
On the day, Toby wouldn't stop screaming. He appeared to be deeply upset by the alien nature of the characters and the set, and as soon as he came anywhere near it, his vocal cords gave full vent. Nothing - not dad, or mum, or star or puppeteers or anyone could calm him down. It was like a reflex action - bring him on set: cue Toby, hollering. The scene was rehearsed with Jareth holding the doll that is thrown up in the air during the 'Jump Magic Jump' song, and all well and good. But ...
David Bowie had noticed that one of the goblin puppeteers had been playing with a toy hand-puppet of Sooty (as in Sooty & Sweep ..) It's the kind of thing puppeteers do. Bowie suddenly said 'Can I borrow that for a minute ?' Sooty was duly handed over. David put the puppet on his right hand, and made Sooty wave at baby Toby. The scene was shot faultlessly and quickly with a now silent and staring Toby mesmerised by Sooty on David Bowie's hand, bobbing up and down just out of shot during the speech. Pure magic. Little human touches like that make filming fun.
The continuity lady, Angela Allen, who is a piece of film history in her own right (she trained on 'The Third Man') asked me at the end of shooting if I'd enjoyed it. 'Yes, very much,' I said rather inadequately, 'Have you ?' 'Of course,' she answered briskly. 'It all down to the director. Jim (Henson) is a gentleman, and when the director is a gentleman, you know the film is going to be a happy one. So often they aren't. And it comes from the top.' I believe that Angela who must now be well into her eighties, still plays tennis on Sundays. She was right about Jim Henson, by the way - a very genuine and nice man, knew how to behave with people, and just enjoyed the process of making a film as a kind of family event.
As shooting started on the first day (the set was the exterior of the Labyrinth wall) there was something of an interruption by the ‘Big Doors’ … An immensely tall figure in black cloak and mask strode in. Darth Vader, carrying a bottle of champagne, was bringing a good luck present from George Lucas to Jim Henson. Unfortunately, things like that are all in the timing, and Darth Vader had got stuck outside while we attempted take one. We couldn’t tell if he looked crestfallen or not.
Jennifer Connelly was 14 when we started shooting on 'Labyrinth' - she was born in 1970, I think. She as always 100% professional, good-humoured, very hard-working (there were some difficult things that she had to do, physically) and seemed to enjoy the whole thing enormously. She never once complained about anything. Not even the scene where the bridge across the Bog of Stench collapses underneath her as she is crossing it (Sir Didymus in front of her, I think - real Old English sheepdog with dummy on back intercut with puppet dog and Didymus). We were sworn to secrecy on set for the scene, because Jennifer had no idea that the bridge was rigged up on hydraulics and would give way on cue. She had a harness and Kirby wire for safety but she thought that was just the normal thing to do under such circumstances in case she fell off the bridge by accident. After all, any possible injury would cost the producers a lot in time and expenses. Her reactions as the bridge wobbles and gives way are 100% spontaneous - and exactly what Jim Henson wanted, of course. After the one take (I think they had two cameras covering it) Jennifer's response as she recovered from the slight shock was a good-humoured 'You bastards ...' the worst language we ever heard from her lips.
Incidentally, Jennifer's chaperone (which anyone under 16 had to have by law) was her mother - a very bright and easygoing lady, who looked rather like her daughter. I believe they were accommodated somewhere in Hampstead for the duration of the production.
I think pre-production on the film was about a year, maybe a little less. Bear in mind just how much had to be built and designed, to say nothing of casting and auditioning people. Special Effects movies and fantasy films take far longer than folks ever imagine, simply because you are creating a world from scratch, you can't just go into Waitrose and buy props and stuff ready made.
Even the house that Jennifer runs back to at the beginning of the film is a set. It was on the back lot at Elstree, intercut with some angles done in America, I think. (At the same time, the back lot was occupied by the most wonderful crescent of London houses for ‘Young Sherlock Holmes’ which was nearing completion at Elstree. This set then got reworked and made into a modern street for something else entirely, I have no idea what.
Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed these memories of what has become a cult classic. I will always be very glad to have been a part of it.