THE PALMER TRANSFORMATION AND THE TWENTY FIVE MILLION DOLLAR FILM

                    I think it was Orson Welles who called a motion picture studio the worlds biggest erector set and John, in this environment for the first time, was determined to take advantage of  whatever Universal had to offer. From his office he could walk to one of the four sound stages housing the sets ( and not just ordinary sound stages but ones that were distinguished by their huge ducting and cooling units ), passing Albert Whitlocks studio along the way - walk to the projection room at lunchtime for dailies, perhaps stop by the editing suite before returning to rehearse or film. Rob's special effects facility, Heartland, was a ten minute drive away. The large scale tools were all there, but expensive to utilize...


                   The original idea in the Palmer transformation was for him to break free from the sofa and run full tilt while standing up the rec room wall to his left ( the far wall in the photo ), continue halfway across the ceiling and then drop down in front of Windows. A great unexpected idea, if it could be made to happen quickly...

                   Universal  happened to own a camera centrifuge, smaller than the one shown above, but operating in much the same way. It was large drum with the set built inside that could rotate 360 degrees with the camera platform locked down ( its use may be best seen in 2001 with the stewardess walking on the ceiling ). The original plan was to replicate the right half of the rec room set in the drum and have a stuntman in Palmer guise do a flat out run while rapidly moving the cylinder 180 degrees, leaving the camera crew upside down but the stuntman standing upright on the ceiling...


                    We loved this idea and were dedicated to its execution well after it became impractical ( it took a crew of  20 to operate and light the drum, plus the cost of the set, upside down hazard pay for the camera crew, ect. ), I think because it was a real movie moment, one you seldom get a chance to try...

                 With financial reality finally setting in, we met on the rec room set to map out a less expensive alternative, and what could be cheaper than a stuntman falling into frame and landing on a mattress covered with a thin layer of painted balsa wood? I proudly contributed the foot stomp that motivated Palmers leap to the ceiling, and a sequence was born...

                   We added  " the ceiling run " as we called it, to the long and growing list of ideas we would save for what we called  the Twenty Five Million Dollar version of  THE THING, a list that already included the first Bennings death on the ice and a complete incarnation of the Blair Monster...