Behind the Scenes: The 'Burbs (Dante, 1989) with Tom Hanks and Carrie Fisher

The Burbs came to me as a script called Bay Window, written by Dana Olson, from Imagine. And this was Imagine's first theatrical production. It was Brian Grazer and Ron Howard's company. It's interesting, I'm often on the beginnings of companies, you know, because Gremlins was Amblin's first picture. Anyway, it was a fun script. They seemed to be under the misapprehension that it was a Hitchcock parody, which I never quite got. Because it does involve people looking out windows and seeing stuff, but there really wasn't a lot of rear window in it. Anyway, I thought it was funny and dark. And because Ron already had a connection with Tom Hanks, we all thought, well, you know, let's see if Tom wants to do this. He had just shot Big, but it hadn't come out yet. And he was in a place in his career where he was sort of, for instance, Tom didn't want to have a kid. He read the script and he said, does he have to have a kid? Because I think he was thinking, well, you know, I'm doing leading man roles now, and I don't want to end up as, you know, Fred McMurray. I don't want to end up doing family movies where I have kids all the time. And we managed to talk him into it, but that was one aspect of it that he wasn't that crazy about. But he really got behind it, and he was terrific, a lot of fun to work with. And in fact, it's a cast movie. I mean, the story's fine, but it's a behavioral movie. It's about how these characters react in the situation. And because the picture was shot during a writer's strike, we couldn't have Dana around to do the kind of little fixes and pickups and things that you would want to do when you start to, you know, shoot the picture and plan the characters and change the trajectory of their motions and stuff. And so I thought we could get around it by shooting it in sequence so that if we did any improvs, they would be able to be generic and part of the story that we were telling, as opposed to sometimes in movie improvs, characters will do improvs that they'd get off the point of the movie, and all of a sudden you're watching the movie and you go, what are these people talking about? Because they shot stuff after that that went before it. So this was all in sequence, and we went to the back lot. It was all on the back lot of Universal, which we reconfigured a bit to make it into our place, most of which still exists in that way today. It was on Desperate Housewives for a long time. And because of the leeway that we had with shooting it in sequence, there was a tremendous amount of improvisation, particularly because we weren't officially having a writer, although I did put Dana in the picture because it's always been an excuse to be around, you know. And so as we progressed, you know, in the effort for actors to find their characters and to find out what their characters were really thinking, there was a lot of talk about why is he on a vacation? Why is Tom not having a job? Why is he home? What's the story at work? What's going on with him? And we came up with a whole big backstory, much of which isn't even in the movie. But it did lead to a lot of repartee, particularly between him and Carrie Fisher, who was, you know, no slouch in the making things up department. And so the fun of going to work on that movie was basically that you weren't really sure exactly what was going to happen that day because there were just so many wonderful moments that came out of an ad-lib or just a, you know. And we had some pretty smart and funny people on this picture. And a lot of the funniest things in the movie actually are things that were just sort of made up. Tom was a dream. He was a wonderful guy. And he invests. If he's there, he's there. He's not thinking about something else. He's doing what he's doing. And I can't envision the movie without him. Carrie was, you know, one of the brightest and funniest people that I ever met. And because her character is the only sane person in the movie, it seemed like it could almost be a thankless part. But because of her ability to work with an ensemble and the fact that she anchors all the scenes that she's in, it gives a certain believability to what would ordinarily be a bunch of crazy stuff. And I treasure the fact that I knew her. Where are you going? The bathroom. Fax. Rick Dukeman plays Art, the nosy neighbor. And there was a lot of searching for this character. A lot of comedians, better-known comedians, wanted to play this part. But I didn't want to get into a situation where we were doing an SCTV kind of a thing with Tom and then a funny quip guy. Rick had been a stand-up comedian. He also was a businessman. And he had an abrasive quality that was perfect for the part. And also, he and Tom didn't get along all that well. And it was great for the movie. I mean, they were nice to each other, and it was not tense or unpleasant or anything. But there was just a little something there, a little stone in the shoe in that relationship. And it was great, because I think they both brought out the best in each other. And it's a great relationship that these two guys have in this movie. Well, Bruce, what can I say about Bruce? I've worked with Bruce many times since, and he was one of my favorite actors in the 60s when I was growing up. I mean, I can't tell you how many Westerns I saw him shot in. And I was honored that he asked me to give a speech at the dedication of his star at Hollywood Boulevard. I mean, it was really kind of, wow. He is now, in the latter part of his career, is still doing some of the best work he's ever done. And in this part, he has a name that's similar to Rumsfeld, which we all thought was interesting later looking at it. But a lot of his part is Adler. A lot of the funniest things he says. Some of them aren't even on camera because he just said them while we were shooting, and they stayed in the movie. I always enjoy working with Bruce. I recommend that anybody who likes making movies should make a picture with Bruce because he's always there, and he's a total pro. And he knows what Jesse Lasky ate for breakfast. He knows everything about the business. And you can talk to him for hours. Listen up, mister. That piece of scum barking right of yours is just taking his last dump on my lawn. I find one more, just one, I'm going to catch him and staple his ass shut. Wendy Shaw I had worked with a number of times on Interspace and an Amazing Stories episode that Bob Picardo introduced me to her. He said, yeah, she'd be good for this. And wonderful, gorgeous, funny, and just another person who's just a wonderful person to have around. And she and Bruce were a great combo because those characters really do pop off the screen, I think. Henry Gibson is another person who I had worked with before, and John Landis turned me on to him and said, you know, you really like Henry. And Dr. Klopek is a character who is supposed to be sinister, but the first time I noticed Henry being really interesting on screen was in The Long Goodbye, where he plays this doctor, and Henry's very diminutive, so there's something comical already whenever he's standing next to somebody. And he plays this doctor who belies Henry's laugh-in image, which was that he's this lovable poet kind of guy. And he was mean and vindictive and very effective, I thought. And I thought, you know, it's interesting that Henry can come on so blandly, and yet if you look a little deeper, sometimes there's a real hint of evil and anger and nastiness. And so he was a perfect Dr. Klopek, because you really don't know. You're not supposed to know when you watch the movie. What's the story with these guys? I mean, are they really just weird, or are they actually bad? And, you know, we're supposed to identify with Tom because he thinks that they must be doing something bad, but we're never quite sure whether or not they're doing something bad until the ending that was imposed upon us when we hired Tom, which was that in the original script they are bad, and they take Tom away in the ambulance and kill him. That's the end of the movie. But when we cast Tom, the producers said, well, we can't kill Tom Hanks. So we had to come up with an excuse for what the Klopeks have been doing in their basement for the entire movie. It was never conceived as something that would be explained. It was just weird lights and strange noises and all this stuff. And it's like, wow, what are they up to? And the audience's mind was supposed to fill in all these gaps. Like, wow, imagine what they're doing. Well, we weren't supposed to ever know, but then we had to figure it out. We had to explain it, kind of. So we shot a couple of different endings trying to explain this, and we ended up with skulls because we just couldn't find anything else to put in the trunk of the car. We did one version with cheerleaders. We did another version with the two garbage men in the trunk, and we didn't use any of those. But Henry was... He would always be Dr. Klopek to me. Brother Theodore was a character. I was aware of Brother Theodore because I had... When I was in the East Coast, I would read The Village Voice, and there would be these ads for his one-man show that he would do. And it was very dark and very macabre, and Brother Theodore's background was very fraught with Nazis and bad things and torture and all this terrible stuff that happened to him. And it gave him a very dark sensibility, which he turned into a character. And he would appear on Joe Franklin. He'd be on The Tonight Show or whatever, and he would always bring this gloomy character with him. And in real life, he was just a sweet guy who was unfortunately really hard of hearing. So it was very difficult for him to pick up cues because he couldn't hear. We did a take where I had to stop the tape because Carrie was shouting. I tried to keep him in his cue. But again, I didn't really get to spend a lot of time with him because we had a young guy who stayed with him and made sure he was okay and everything. And so I didn't really get to talk to him to the degree that I would have loved. But I just thought he was a brilliant idea for that character. And we had interestingly also seen for that character Timothy Carey, who was another character who once allegedly tied up Otto Preminger in his office to try to get a part or something. And Timothy was great, but he was too imposing. He was too scary to play that character. It needed to be somebody who was a little more benign-seeming. But no, I just... When I look at that movie and the cast list comes up, I just think, boy, this is just such a good cast. Courtney Gaines I've used several times. He's great Hans Klopek. In fact, I just saw him over the weekend. And I introduced him to somebody as Hans Klopek and they knew what I was talking about. He's a terrific actor. He does the children of Korn stuff, and that sort of typed him, unfortunately. But he's still working. He still gets jobs, and you know, hire him. He's good. Gale Gordon, again, I didn't have a lot of time to talk to Gale. He was kind of quiet and withdrawn. But he did appreciate the fact that when they break into the character's house, there's a picture of him and Lucille Ball on the TV. I used Corey on Gremlins. He was one of the best child actors ever. In that movie, there's a scene where he talks to the puppet, Gizmo, and he talks to it like it's a puppy. And it's so convincing, and he's so invested in it, that I think it goes a long way toward allowing the audience to buy the idea that the puppets are real in that movie. And so when I read this part, I thought, well, this is Corey Feldman. I mean, he's this goofball kind of character. I mean, he's a little bit like the Fast Times character that Sean Penn played. But, you know, Corey is Corey. And he was having a lot of personal problems at the time, which impacted the movie somewhat. But in the end, everybody agreed that it was worth it because he was the perfect partner. Hey, Mrs. Rumsfield. No tan lines this morning. Looks nice. I, of course, went to Jerry for the music because that was my go-to guy. And we did talk to George Delerue, actually, whose music I really love but who I don't think probably would have been the right choice. But when Jerry came on, I gave him, as I always do, I gave him the rough cut, which has a lot of temp music in it because when you show the rough cut to the studio and all that, and previews, you've got to have music in it. So in this case, I temped it with a tremendous amount of Ennio Morricone Italian Western music to sort of build up the mythic feeling that these guys were going on a big adventure. And Jerry used that as a template for writing a completely different kind of score, except for one scene, which is when they go into the Klopac house the first time and the whole neighborhood is watching them. And it's all cut like a Sergio Leone picture, and it was choreographed to a piece of music that was actually Morricone music. And try as he might, Jerry could never quite get the right feeling for that little section of music, and we ended up buying it. Luckily, Universal had released the movie, so they owned it. And that little piece of music is actually not by Jerry. But it's a terrific score, and it's got all this great organ music in it and stuff. And as I said, the movies, they just get better when Jerry touches them. And of course there's a lot of little jokes. He does patent music in there. I think one of the reasons that we liked working with each other so much is that we didn't feel that we were tethered to any particular style or any particular kind of music, and there's lots of room for just having fun. Aside from Gremlins, that's the picture that I'm most asked about, and that I'm most asked to sign things for, which flabbergasts all of us, because it was one of those things that was like, well, it's going to come out, it's going to go away, it's going to be on TV at 9 o'clock at night or something, and then it'll be gone. And it's had this shelf life that's really quite remarkable.