The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

230 John Landis
Casablanca or Citizen Kane . . . I say Jason and the Argonauts is the
greatest film ever made!”
Landis: I can’t speak for Tom Hanks, but I know that’s not entirely with
tongue in cheek. It was a low-budget picture made in Spain. I know all the
production history because I knew Nathan Juran fairly well, who just passed
away; he directed several pictures for Ray and also directed a Harryhausen
rip-off called Jack the Giant Killer. And one of my favorite movies, which he
shot in five days, was Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Juran was a lovely guy;
he was an art director who worked for John Ford for many years. He won an
Oscar for How Green Was My Valley. A lovely, lovely guy. He was just a crafts
guy. Whatever was thrown at him, he did. When I was a mail boy at Fox, he
was doing all those terrible Irwin Allen things: Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel,
and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.
He went on to do Land of the Lost, as well. As I talk to more filmmakers
about the films that changed their life, one of their great joys is casting
their heroes. Ray has been in a few of your films. What is he like?
Landis: Ray? I’ve known him for years; he’s a lovely guy. He’s a very sweet
man, and he still has all his boyish enthusiasm. Peter Jackson flew him to
New Zealand to show him all their stuff for Lord of the Rings. Ray is a terrific
person. He’s spent the last fifteen years just traveling the world being
lionized.
He really is one of the great, old-time crafts people. He’s an artisan. And
a lot of that stuff is being lost. He was in a unique position in motion picture
history, he and Willis O’Brien. They have their own body of work that is
unique. He never made a big-budget picture; he only made B-pictures. He
has a great imagination.
How has your perception of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad changed now,
when you see it as an adult?
Landis: Well, now when you see it, you see how low-budget it was. I’m a
little more sophisticated in the process, so it’s like The Wizard of Oz: “Don’t
mind that man behind the curtain.”
But I think that Torin Thatcher is great. The costumes are silly and the
genie is kind of stupid, but it’s just got a wonderful sense of fun and adven-