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Transcription
Andrea: Hi, everyone! Welcome to the Self-Publish Strong podcast. I’m your host, Andrea Pearson. I’m joined today by my husband.
Nolan: Hi, I’m Nolan. Glad to be here today.
Andrea: All right, we’re going to get right into things today with our quote. You want to go ahead and read that?
Nolan: “Don’t wait for every door to be opened for you, get ready to kick a few down,” by Bob Goff.
Andrea: I really like that quote because – and I’m visual so I have to actually read it. I’m taking it from him. Okay, so the best thing about being a self-published author is the ability to take things into our own hands and to put things into action. When you’re with a traditional publisher, you can promote and promote and promote, but you won’t know based on sales if your book is actually doing well or if your promotions are actually doing anything. So, as an indie author, we don’t need to wait around for things to happen. We can actually go out and get things done. So that’s our quote for today.
My tip for today is, again, this actually could be to seasoned authors as well because we all go through phases where we’re not getting as much attention as we like. When people don’t know who we are, that’s a really, really good time for us to make mistakes and to basically learn from our failures. The whole point is for us to enjoy our anonymity. One of the hardest things about publishing is watching books that we put all of our heart and soul into flop or not move as fast as we hoped they would.
When we first started out with this whole publishing thing, I was very impatient. I couldn’t handle the thought that people weren’t finding me right now and reading me right now. I made a lot of mistakes. Like a lot of new writers, I was willing to take risks without anything to back up those risks. We suffered a lot financially and emotionally because of it. I mean, we spent how much money on Goodreads, AdWords, and AdSense and all that?
Nolan: I have no idea.
Andrea: He doesn’t know. It was probably, I don’t know, $500-$750 while we were trying to figure out how things worked. I honestly never tracked it because I had zero experience. Anyway, the good thing about it is you can do things when nobody sees you that you can’t do when you’ve got a lot of readers watching you. So before you go big, get those mistakes out of your system. It’s okay to actually make them because failure leads to success and it’s better to fail now than later while there’s thousands of eyes on you. Anyway, so that’s the tip for today.
We’re going to get right into finishing up Jurassic Park. As we said, we are about 52 minutes into the movie last. I’m going to let Nolan take over. Go from where we left off.
Nolan: Okay. Right around this time is when the park starts shutting down, right?
Andrea: Yeah.
Nolan: We haven’t talked about Dennis Nedry at all.
Andrea: Oh, Dennis.
Nolan: They’re not subtle with him.
Andrea: Who’s not subtle? The…
Nolan: Him being Michael Crichton or whoever…
Andrea: The screenwriters and all that. And Michael Crichton.
Nolan: Yeah, I mean, the first time you see him in the movie he’s a large man and he’s stuffing himself silly at a restaurant.
Andrea: Yeah.
Nolan: Then, when he starts the park shutting down, his excuse to leave is he wants to go get something from the vending machines.
Andrea: Yes.
Nolan: So that’s his character, really. I mean, not his whole character, but you know.
Andrea: When you see his desk, he’s a complete slob.
Nolan: Complete slob.
Andrea: It’s weird because in the movie, they turned him more into a villain than he was in the book. I mean, in the book, he was like that pretty much. If I remember right, but he becomes a villainous slob. The hard, the careless person, while in the book, it was actually Hammond who was careless and thoughtless about how things were going. He was hiding up things and covering. Yeah.
Nolan: Yeah. One of the reasons it takes so long for everyone else to realize that the park is shutting down is because he said, before he left, Nedry, that parts would shut down. It would be normal.
Andrea: Yeah, like a few systems would go off-line.
Nolan: Right.
Andrea: While he was rebooting and updating things.
Nolan: So when that starts happening, they think it’s fine until everything, like, really critical systems, start to go down.
Andrea: And the whole park starts to fail.
Nolan: Exactly. So that ups the ante. They see a problem, but they ignore it and then it just keeps escalating until he’s too far away for them to find him and do anything about it.
Andrea: Yeah. I did want to make a quick point about the character names that I meant to say yesterday but forgot. If you think about them – here, I’ll just read off the main names. You’ve got Lex, Tim, Grant, Ellie, Hammond, Malcolm, Nedry, Gennaro – I always stutter on his name – Gennaro, Gennaro, Gennaro, Muldoon, Wu, and Arnold. One of the traits of a good author, and I’m not good at this yet. I still pick names that are way too.. anyway. Okay, so one of the traits of a good author is they’re able to pick names that are unique, that start with different letters and end with different sounds, and they vary in length. I mean, you’ve got Lex and Tim, but you’ve also got Gennaro, you know. So he varies the sounds of the names, the letters they start with, and the letters that they end with, the sounds that they end with.
I think that takes a lot of creativity because there’s not a whole lot of variance in how names go. A lot of them end with, like, -uh for girls: Jessica and Sarah and all of that. One thing that I’ve been told before is that authors tend to name characters names that start with the same letter of their name or whatever and that’s definitely true with me. I’ve really tried to move away from that. But, I mean, I’ve got Abel in the series I’m working on right now. I’ve got Azuriah, Austin Akeno, let’s see… I’ve got… There’s tons. I don’t need to go through all of them. But I’ve tried to move away from that. But my conscious thought is always to names that start with A. It feels slightly narcissistic. Am I narcissistic?
Nolan: A bit.
Andrea: Anyway, so just pay attention to the names that you’re using in your books and vary them. Readers are more likely to remember the characters if you give them names that don’t sound exactly like all the other characters. Anyway.
Nolan: Anyway, this is when the creatures start to escape.
Andrea: Yeah.
Nolan: Most notably, the T Rex. There is two ways they show that he’s coming…
Andrea: Oh, yes.
Nolan: …before he’s come. What is number one?
Andrea: The sound.
Nolan: The goat leg.
Andrea: The goat leg? Well, they get the thump sound before that.
Nolan: Oh, yeah, is that what happens? Okay. So they get the thump and they know something’s up. You see the glass of water, was it?
Andrea: Yeah, the glass of water. You know how they did the special effect to do that? They had a guitar string strung underneath the dashboard and apparently the foley artist…
Nolan: Why did they have a cup of water in the Jeep anyway?
Andrea: Because they’re thirsty. Anyway, the foley artist… Explain what a foley artist is.
Nolan: Foley artist is the guy that makes the sound effects in a movie.
Andrea: So the foley artist… folly – I always said folly artist. But the guy who was in charge said that he spent several weeks trying figure out how to make that sound because Spielberg said, “I want it to do this,” and they said, “Oh, yeah, we can make it do that.” And then they were like, “Oh, crap, we don’t know how to make it do that!” He said that it took him until the night before they filmed that scene to figure out that a guitar string. He had a cup of water on a guitar and when he plucked the guitar the water vibrated. So they finally got that figured out the night before shooting. I like movie trivia.
Anyway, so, yes, the first thing you notice is the sound and then the water. I mean, the water vibrating with each step. Oh, I just love that. It just makes me excited every time I watch the movie.
Is it my turn? Okay, so one of the things that I absolutely love about Jurassic Park is they use animatronics instead of relying on CGI. The CGI was really, really good. Especially, you know, even compared to today’s standards. I mean, some CGI is still pretty bad compared to that one was. I know they had a huge budget for it, but they use animatronics instead and something – just a little bit of fun trivia. So they had problems with the T Rex animtronic. They said that it would randomly malfunction at very, very odd times. They were saying that they’d be sitting down eating lunch, and, all of a sudden, the T Rex would come to life. People would start screaming and freaking out and running and they’d be like, “Oh, wait. It’s just malfunctioning again.” I mean, I can’t imagine something of that size moving while nobody’s in control of it. It would’ve totally freaked me out.
But this scene, it’s full of humor and terror. We’ve got Malcolm making these random comments all the way throughout while there’s all sorts of freaky things happening. So, for example, you know, when Dr. Grant asked him if he’s married, he says, “Occasionally.” He’s “always on the lookout for future ex-Mrs. Malcolm.” That’s one of the lines he says. Then he does this, you know, “When you gotta go, you gotta go.” Then he says, “Boy, I hate being right all the time.” There are several times throughout this movie where he’s adding in that comedic, you know. Like later on when the T Rex is coming and they’ve got him in the back of the Jeep and there’s an impact tremor. He’s like, “I’m fairly alarmed here!” Just all sorts of little things added to lighten the mood, while still, you know, there’s still that terror there. But, I mean, that’s good storytelling right there.
Nolan: Yes.
Andrea: Your turn.
Nolan: Okay, so when the T Rex does break out of the pen and comes for them. He doesn’t just attack. He slowly probes the Jeep.
Andrea: Oh, yeah, that’s right, he’s exploring.
Nolan: Yes, exactly. They drag out the terror because you don’t know when he’s going to attack.
Andrea: You don’t even know… I mean, he might leave the kids, you know. You’ve got that hopeful, you know.
Nolan: Then they turn the light on and he sees the light. You know, so it’s not just an attack. He hasn’t even attacked yet. He just doesn’t know what a Jeep is.
Andrea: No.
Nolan: Or what a flashlight is. He’s just trying to figure it out. Something that big, even if it were friendly, could kill you easily.
Andrea: Yes.
Nolan: Let alone something that…
Andrea: I’m looking at you, Clifford the Red Dog.
Nolan: I know. Yeah. So that happens. Then.. what? What exactly happens right after that?
Andrea: I’ve still got comments on the scene itself.
Nolan: Well, the Jeep falls.
Andrea: Yeah, I’m still before that. So, really fast. There’s a little bit of actual bad foreshadowing in the story. We’ve got Dennis Nedry leaving the huge gate open when he drives through. I remember the first time I watched it, I was like, “Crap! He left the gate open!” But they never returned to that. I mean, we know that the dinosaurs are romping through the park. I mean, you can assume they come in through other ways, you know. It’s not just through that gate. They never actually returned to that and so I was a little bit disappointed by that the first time I watched it.
And, then, another comment. We’ve got rain in this setting. You know, when the T Rex is about to attack, and the rain is setting the mood, but it’s still very plausible for the island. So it’s not out of the ordinary, but still sets the mood and so it doesn’t feel like they are setting the mood even though they are.
Nolan: Anything else?
Andrea: Ouch! Yes, that was my elbow. I was just going to talk about the water in the cup, and then finally returning to the goat. We see the goat leg and that’s a great way to return, you know, the goat’s…
Nolan: The one that wasn’t eaten earlier.
Andrea: Yeah.
Nolan: It’s now eaten.
Andrea: Yeah, exactly, and then the string’s just dangling, like, where’s the goat and then the leg lands on the top of the car. Just totally awesome. I know that’s awful of me, but I love it.
Nolan: Okay, the Jeep falling scene bothers me.
Andrea: Oh, gosh, I’m glad you mentioned it because it’s always bothered me.
Nolan: This is one of my least favorite parts of the movie. The Jeep is in a tree. It falls over the side of the road, right?
Andrea: Yeah. And they don’t ever explain why there’s this huge goalie right there.
Nolan: Yeah, It falls into the top of the tree and they’re farther down in the tree and it starts falling on them.
Andrea: When he climbs up the tree to get Tim out?
Nolan: Yeah, and it’s just silly that it falls straight down and breaks a branch and it stops just long enough for them to escape and then falls down to the next branch and it never flips over until it hits the ground when it would’ve flipped over immediately.
Andrea: Yeah.
Nolan: Or they could have just climbed to the other side of the tree that the Jeep isn’t on. They would’ve been like two steps from being safe at any point.
Andrea: Yes.
Nolan: So, you know, that scene just bothers me. There you go. There’s my one biggest criticism so far besides the…
Andrea: My biggest is leaving the gate open. Oh, the lab?
Nolan: The lab pencil scene. A travesty
Andrea: Yes, well, that is so horrible.
Nolan: Yes.
Andrea: So, when Nedry loses his glasses, this is something I really like. He’s the bad guy, but they give him a bit of humanity where you’re like, “Ah, crap! He’s lost his glasses.” You hope that he can find them and that he can actually get out safe. But, he doesn’t, of course, you know, but we still want him to escape even though he’s the bad guy. I don’t know, maybe I’m unique.
Nolan: No, I don’t want him to escape.
Andrea: Nolan’s like, “No, I want him to die.” And I’m like, “Oh, I hope he escapes!” Well, actually, and then the other part of me was… I wanted him to escape because I would love that plot, that threadline, to go on to a different movie of him carrying the little embryos, little frozen things. I think that would’ve been a really fun thing for them to carry into future movies.
Nolan: I always assumed they would find the embryos that were in the container and they never do.
Andrea: Okay, so there we go, because actually it falls.
Nolan: Yeah, and it gets buried under some mud. I just assumed that…
Andrea: Something would happen from it.
Nolan: Yeah.
Andrea: That’s also a little bit of foreshadowing that maybe they didn’t plan on foreshadowing and then never followed up on.
Nolan: Yeah, I don’t know. It’d be impossible to find it, you know. And it’s just chemicals that would die. You know, dissolve. So it’s not…
Andrea: Yeah.
Nolan: Yeah, nothing’s going to happen. Just die. The embryos or whatever. But, I always thought that something was going to happen in the second movie and it never did. I was like, “Did someone find the the shaving cream can? With all the dinosaurs in it?” But, no.
Andrea: No, nothing happened. They all died. They reached room temperature.
Nolan: So, yeah, you have the dinosaur that kills Nedry. The Delophosaurus is briefly mentioned in the recording during the early tour scene at the beginning of the movie so they tied that in.
Andrea: Yeah, they introduced us to all the bad dinosaurs throughout the first part of the movie which is good story writing.
Nolan: Yup.
Andrea: It’s not a surprise. We know what’s coming, especially when the fan opens. Oh, and by the way, that’s not the way Delophosauruses are. Spielberg added the spitting and Michael Crichton added the flares. So, I don’t know what the Delophosaurus really did in real life.
Nolan: I don’t know. That’s the picture that pops up on Google.
Andrea: Maybe he didn’t add it, but maybe they were inaccurate in their trivia.
Nolan: Don’t know. So, yeah, back to the Jeep scene. Grant has now saved the kids.
Andrea: Yeah, he’s stuck with the kids that he doesn’t like.
Nolan: Right, and then that just makes them more attached, of course.
Andrea: Yes, they like him even more now.
Nolan: Okay, so that’s their first T Rex encounter and then the aftermath. Then they have the next one, right? The rippling footprint.
Andrea: Oh, yes, yes, yes.
Nolan: So now they know what that means.
Andrea: Yes. It means, like, I’m fairly alarmed here.
Nolan: They now know what a ripple in the water means and it’s rippling in a footprint.
Andrea: Which is awesome.
Nolan: Yes. That’s a trailer shot, I believe. That cue. They don’t need to show the T Rex. They have that experience.
Andrea: One thing, by the way. Okay, so I’ve got a couple comments on that part of the movie. But, Michael Crichton was paid $2 million for the rights to this movie and that’s not including what he got paid as a screenwriter. That was the rights to the movie. They actually approached him before the book was even published because they loved the idea so much. That’s very unusual. Just so authors know, you don’t get $2 million for rights to a movie. The average I’ve heard is 50,000 to 100,000. Not even 100,000. I mean, I’ve heard of authors getting 10,000 for the rights to their movie.
Anyway, he was experienced in Hollywood. He’d done screenplays already. Several already. Westworld was one that came out before this one. The Andromeda Strain came out before this one. And, so, he had experience so the producers knew him and they knew that he could do this, you know. They knew that he was a good writer and that the movie would do well. Plus, I mean, how many dinosaur movies had actually been done before this one?
Nolan: A couple really bad ones.
Andrea: Yes.
Nolan: Stop motion and claymation stuff.
Andrea: Yes, Gamera.
Nolan: He’s not a dinosaur.
Andrea: I know, but he’s a kaiju, kind of.
Nolan: He’s a kaiju. That’s true.
Andrea: Anyway, one thing that I love, and sorry Nolan, this is still in the same scene, but the objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Were you going to make a comment about that?
Nolan: No.
Andrea: Okay.. a good tell – sorry, as I stutter my way through this – a good sign of a good writer is someone who can incorporate clever things like that into their books, you know, so, objects in mirror are closer than they appear. That’s something we all see every time we drive a car, but the fact that there’s this huge dinosaur head coming at it and you see that, it’s, like, you know, clever and terror again all in one. They do that very well in this movie.
Nolan: Okay.
Andrea: Your turn.
Nolan: So, back during the Triceratops scene, Ellie takes a Jeep back to…
Andrea: Get the kids.
Nolan: No, she goes back to the main building on her own.
Andrea: Oh, yes, yeah.
Nolan: At this point, she’s talking to Hammond, you know, about how dangerous everything is, and how control is an illusion.
Andrea: Oh, yes, yes, yes, right.
Nolan: They’re eating ice cream and just chilling.
Andrea: He’s like, “The ice cream’s melted,” and he tells this cute little circus flea story, and…
Nolan: Yeah.
Andrea: …it’s all lighthearted.
Nolan: It’s very calm like they’re in their safe space.
Andrea: Yes.
Nolan: Right, and, you know, everything’s fine there, and then…
Andrea: Then the next time they go there… you’ve gotta finish your thought there.
Nolan: No, that’s it. It just sets that scene. It makes it feel like that place is safe.
Andrea: Safe location.
Nolan: So that means we have to wreck it. But, for now, it feels safe. Then, after that, we have a scene with Grant and the kids where he’s, like, hanging out with them and joking.
Andrea: Yeah. Oh, yeah!
Nolan: Doyouthinkhesaurus and all that.
Andrea: Tim is being set up as a little comedian because later on, you know, they are watching watching the T Rex and then the flocking dinosaurs. Grant’s like, “They do flock. They go around in flocks.” And Tim’s like, “They’re flocking this way!”
Nolan: They find the raptor eggs at this point. We mentioned that in the first episode.
Andrea: Yeah.
Nolan: They’re not supposed to lay eggs and now they’re laying eggs and there’s baby Velociraptor footprints everywhere. He’s, like, in awe of it and then realizes that – he is Grant – realizes the implications of…
Andrea: Yes, yep.
Nolan: We know what that means.
Andrea: Okay.
Nolan: So then after that, we go to the computer room with Sam L. – Samuel L. Jackson.
Andrea: Yes. You know what? This is really bad. I didn’t realize Arnold was Samuel Jackson. I don’t know how I missed that. I bet… I’m a huge fan of his. I’ve seen a lot of movies with him and I just… maybe because I watched this movie so long before I knew who he was as an actor, that I just never put two and two together.
Nolan: Well, he’s wearing some very bright pink socks.
Andrea: Yes, yes. Nolan commented on that when we were watching it. He was like, “Look at those socks!”
Nolan: No, go ahead.
Andrea: I was just going to say the scene when – I don’t know if this is where you are or not. Okay, so when they’re climbing the fence and Ellie’s trying to recharge. Is that where you are?
Nolan: Yes.
Andrea: Ellie’s trying to recharge.
Nolan: No, I’m not. That’s ahead.
Andrea: Go ahead then and I’ll get to that.
Nolan: So, the scene sets more tension. This is where they’re in the computer room and they come up with a plan and they execute it. Right? They shut the breakers down and the system reboots, right? It worked. The plan worked. But, there’s a complication, right? They have to go flip the breakers in the other room.
Andrea: The other building.
Nolan: The other building, on the other side of the compound. He’s like, “I’ll just go to the other side of the compound.” You know?
Andrea: Yes.
Nolan: “Flip the switch. It’s no problem,” right? And then that sets that scene. So they have, like, a victory, but also a complication.
Andrea: Yes. That’s a good point. It’s important to have your characters have victories, but the try-fail cycle. They’ve gotta be able to try, try, and fail and then every now and then have them succeed, but have complications in there because otherwise, if they succeed, and ultimately succeed, it’s the end of the book.
Nolan: So, next. Well, there’s the scene that we talked about with the flocking this way.
Andrea: Yes.
Nolan: Then after that is… things are happening quickly now that’s why we’re…
Andrea: Talking back and forth.
Nolan: Yeah, so like the beginning there’s all the set up and then you just, like, let all the parts go. And so that’s what’s happening now. So, things aren’t being described quite as well, but there so much action happening. You know, the set up has paid off and we’re doing the things that we set up earlier.
Andrea: Yep, yep.
Nolan: But, so this is the hunter guy, right? So…
Andrea: Muldoon, yeah.
Nolan: Muldoon and Ellie go to find out why Arnold hasn’t flipped the…
Andrea: The breaker things.
Nolan: The breakers. We’re pretty sure we know why, because all the dinosaurs are loose, but they don’t necessarily… they don’t know that.
Andrea: She’s like, “Something’s wrong, something’s wrong.” She’s like, “Something’s happened.”
Nolan: Yeah.
Andrea: They feel that something’s off but they don’t know exactly what.
Nolan: They’ve all been there, they weren’t out in the park with the T Rex and everything like that. They’ve been at HQ.
Andrea: Yeah.
Nolan: So they don’t know how bad things are out there. So that’s when she goes in there and then she flips the breakers and then they run across some Velociraptors. Then…
Andrea: Oh, yeah, Muldoon’s hunting them. You’ve got to make your point about Muldoon.
Nolan: I will. Muldoon goes to track down the Velociraptors while she…
Andrea: Goes forward.
Nolan: Flips the breakers. So they split up, which is usually never a good idea. He’s the only one with a gun, too. She’s got a flashlight.
Andrea: Well, you can defend yourself with a flashlight against a gun. Of course, the gun didn’t do him any good.
Nolan: It didn’t do him any good, no. But, anyway, she flips the breakers – hooray! And then she gets attacked by Velociraptors anyway.
Andrea: Yeah.
Nolan: And finds Mr. Arnold’s severed arm. They think there’s a moment of relief from the pressure. “Oh, Mr. Arnold, I found you. Ah! It’s not attached to you!”
Andrea: And that’s a spoiler.
Nolan: It doesn’t matter.
Andrea: We’re going to be giving lots of spoilers in these movies.
Nolan: We’re going through it like almost everything.
Andrea: Yeah.
Nolan: By the way, if you haven’t seen a 24-year-old movie then I don’t really feel, like, sorry. Anyway, so that’s just like a brief, like, tense scene. Relief, then more tension.
Andrea: Yeah, no kidding.
Nolan: So that’s really good. Back to hunter guy, Muldoon. He described how Velociraptors hunt the very beginning of the movie where one of them draws you in and they attack you from the side and then that’s how he dies.
Andrea: Yeah and he’s, like, falling for their trap.
Nolan: Yeah, he explicitly says this is what they do and then he falls for it. What should have happened is he plans for that trap and they one up him somehow.
Andrea: The velociraptors?
Nolan: Yeah.
Andrea: Just to show that they’re intelligent.
Nolan: Because he’s, like, “They have problem-solving intelligence.” You know what I mean?
Andrea: That would’ve made the movie so much longer, though.
Nolan: Just one other trick . He’s like, “Oh, I know. I saw you coming from the side, buddy,” and then they do something else. Like ones of them drops out of a tree.
Andrea: Yeah.
Nolan: Something like that. And he’s like, “Aw, crap.” Just something like that. It wouldn’t have added more, but it’s just like you literally explain the problem and then you die from the problem.
Andrea: Yeah, no kidding.
Nolan: So that’s my other plot gripe, I guess. I like to think he wouldn’t have fallen for that, given the fact that he…
Andrea: Understands how they hunt?
Nolan: Yeah, but there’s literally something where he says not to do that. Anyway. That didn’t feel ironic, it just feels sloppy to me.
Andrea: Yeah. So, my thing with they’ve got every scene is doing two things at once. The one scene where she’s charging and reconnecting the system, and while Grant and the kids are crossing the fence. We’ve got her and it just flashes back and forth so it’s technically the same scene. It flashes back and forth really fast, but it is one scene doing two things. First off, watching the kids cross the fence would have been boring if it weren’t for her pushing those buttons. You know, way down the perimeter fence, because we know that’s were they are. The camera pans down so you know that’s where the kids are. But having them cross the fence without her pushing the buttons or having her push the buttons without the kids crossing the fence. It doesn’t have same tension, but you’ve got the two things happening at the same time and it ups the ante quite a bit.
Nolan: One gripe about this scene is Grant tries to get Tim to let go of the fence because they hear the alarm. Now the fence is going arm – electric fence. He’s like, “Jump! 1-2-3, jump!” When you see the picture of where Grant is relative to Tim, he’s, like, 30 feet away.
Andrea: Yes, “Jump! I’ll catch you if you jump really far!”
Nolan: Yeah, I know they had to frame the shot because they’re aiming from, like, the top of the fence and that’s how far Grant has to stand back for it to look right in the shot. But if Tim were to let go, he would fall to his severe injury if not death because Grant’s not really that close, not like standing underneath and ready to catch him. He’s, like, not even close.
Andrea: Yeah. My biggest gripe for the movie is right here. Can I get my biggest gripe for the movie?
Nolan: Sure.
Andrea: Grant performs CPR on Tim. This is something Hollywood and TVs and writers get wrong all the time. I knew these stats because I’ve been CPR trained multiple times, but I looked them up again. Okay, so CPR, if you’re in the hospital and you go into cardiac arrest, 40% of people in the hospital survive the immediate situation and only 10 to 20% survive long enough to be discharged. Out in the wild, outside the hospital, only 10% of people who go through CPR survive. Most people get broken ribs. They get punctured lungs. They get internal bleeding. The CPR ends up killing them. But, 10% of the time it does help them, so that’s why they teach it. But, I mean, otherwise, those 10% of people would die.
Nolan: It seems like it’s a cure-all…
Andrea: Yes.
Nolan: …like in movies and it works every time.
Andrea: Movies, books, TV shows, everything.
Nolan: Like, oh, CPR and you’re saved, and then he gets up and runs around. He just got fried
Andrea: He got fried. Well, they do show that his hands and feet… But, I’m like, the CPR, he’s talking, he’s breathing, he’s moving. I mean, my brother broke a few ribs and he couldn’t… he was in the ICU for how many days? Like five days?
Nolan: Yeah.
Andrea: I mean, you can’t just have your ribs broken and not… yeah. Anyway. There’s my gripe.
Nolan: Yes, yes. But they do manage to get back to the park so the…
Andrea: You mean back to the headquarters?
Nolan: Headquarters. So now we’ve gotten our two groups back together again, right. Well, there was three, so Hammond stayed back at the park, right? While they went on the tour and the tour split up. Ellie went back to help with the Triceratops while everybody else was out there. Now we’re getting the band back together again, right? Now Lexi and Tim are sitting in the same places that Ellie and Hammond were sitting eating.
Andrea: Yes.
Nolan: In a place that we feel is safe. And then what happens?
Andrea: We see the shadow of a Velociraptor.
Nolan: You don’t see the Velociraptor, you see the shadow of a Velociraptor. Lexi’s hands start shaking with the Jell-O flopping around on it. Then, hilarity ensues.
Andrea: Hilarity? You mean horror? Terror?
Nolan: Yes, then horror and terror. Then they run into the kitchen.
Andrea: The kitchen scene’s absolutely fantastic.
Nolan: They’re hiding and the Velociraptors are tired of them hiding, so they jump up on the counters. They kind of ratchet up that. They almost get caught because, like, trying to close the door.
Andrea: Yeah.
Nolan: She hides in a cabinet and she can’t close the door and then all that stuff happens.
Andrea: So, okay, so one little thing, a note for writers. We’ve got the scene where the kids are sitting there eating and… I think it’s when they’re eating. Actually, maybe it’s not when they’re eating. Anyway, where they’re like, “We’re safe unless they figure out how to open doors.” And then they shoot immediately and you see the Velociraptor opening the door. So some foreshadowing does not need to happen, like halfway, you know, 300 pages earlier, you can have foreshadowing happen and then the next scene have it be built up on, followed up on.
And then another little quick point right here. Velociraptors are supposed be smaller, like, the size of the dog, and even in Jurassic World they’re bigger than they’re supposed to be. But, Steven Spielberg was, like, he wanted them to be 10 feet tall. But it’s funny because that’s, you know, that’s not completely accurate. But while they were filming, or when this movie was released, they actually dug up a raptor, it’s called a Utahraptor, that was that size. I thought that was cool.
Nolan: Not a Velociraptor, but Utahraptor.
Andrea: They didn’t know.
Nolan: There is a raptor, something in the raptor family.
Andrea: I don’t know if you’re moving on or not, but I still have kitchen comments. Do you have kitchen comments still?
Nolan: No.
Andrea: Okay. So, he already mentioned this a little bit, but it’s one of my favorite visual effects in the movie. It’s when she’s trying to shut the… what is it she’s sitting in? Like, a closet or cupboard and she’s trying to pull down the metal door and you see a mirror image of her and it’s not really Lex. It’s totally one of those great things that some authors are able to do, is mislead readers. You want to be able to mislead them occasionally so that they feel like something’s going to happen and it doesn’t. Because that right there was misleading the viewers, you know. We see this Velociraptor running and then all of a sudden it crashes into the opposite side.
Another little quick point. The ice on the floor. Timmy’s legs not working. The Velociraptor. Don’t be gentle on your characters. I mean, he’s scrambling across ice on the floor, and he can walk right under normal circumstances, to get away from this Velociraptor, you know? You want to be… even in romance you can’t be gentle on your characters. You need to make things tough for them, you know?
The “This is a UNIX system.” As someone who has worked quite a bit in UNIX systems, it looks nothing like a UNIX system.
Nolan: Well it did in 1994, maybe.
Andrea: You’re right. I wasn’t working in UNIX systems in ’94. I was only 11.
Nolan: I like how they had to have, like, a 3D navigation.
Andrea: “This is a UNIX system!” She’s moving the mouse along.
Nolan: We don’t even use that now.
Andrea: No.
Nolan: Because it’s dumb and computers back then would take so long to render each…
Andrea: Oh, to render the 3D system. No. It would’ve been by code. It would’ve all been command prompt.
Nolan: I’m pretty sure I was using a DOS prompt in ’94.
Andrea: Yes. But that’s why it was, like, futuristic. “I know this! This is a UNIX system!” She’s supposed be so cool and so advanced and smart.
Let’s see. Okay, so we know from watching the movie there’s only two Velociraptors and they seem to be everywhere in that main room.
Nolan: There’s gotta be more than two.
Andrea: They said there’s only two. We’ve got the…
Nolan: He says that?
Andrea: Yeah, he says that. She says that I tracked one inside of the bunker where she turned the power on and they’re like, “That leaves two.” I’d never noticed that before because it feels like there’s tons. We can check that again, but it feels like there’s tons of Velociraptors. But, anyway.
Nolan: So then there’s the big fight with the T Rex.
Andrea: Yeah.
Nolan: And the Velociraptors.
Andrea: You can make that comment about…
Nolan: The T Rex is a ninja! This time they very much emphasized the vibrations of its coming.
Andrea: Yes.
Nolan: And then it’s inside of a building. Like, a whole building. Got inside. Where’s the door for that?
Andrea: Yeah.
Nolan: I don’t think they really… he just kind of appears in the lobby.
Andrea: He doesn’t break his way in.
Nolan: Yeah.
Andrea: He was hiding in there. Like he said, he was a ninja.
Nolan: He’s a ninja. They have giant T Rex size doors and very soft carpet and he snuck up on…
Andrea: Just to muffle his noise.
Nolan: He snuck up on four people and a couple Velociraptors.
Andrea: Hey, at least in Jurassic World, they go get the T Rex, you know, so we know where the T Rex came from.
Nolan: Yeah. So that kind of bothers me as well. I don’t understand it. There’s two very iconic, pivotal scenes where they show the…
Andrea: The vibration and then he doesn’t…
Nolan: The last one he just shows up.
Andrea: Did you want to make a comment about the cables holding the bones up?
Nolan: Yeah, the cables holding the bones up. So, at one point they escaped from the computer room up through the ducting and then come out through the ceiling in the main lobby with the giant T Rex bones. They’re climbing on the bones and then the bones are falling down because they won’t be held in the ceiling because they can hold a thousand pound, multi-thousand pound…
Andrea: Fossil.
Nolan: T Rex skeleton, but can’t hold…
Andrea: Timmy.
Nolan: …children apparently. So those fall.
Andrea: They break out.
Nolan: Yeah, so…
Andrea: That bothered us. We were like, “Would that really, actually happen?”
Nolan: I’m pretty sure they’d have them anchored well enough and it’s, like, coming out of drywall it looks like.
Andrea: Oh, yeah, that’s right. It’s not even anchored into, like, wood or anything.
Nolan: Yeah, I don’t know. That said, it’s one of the other things at the end where it could have been executed differently, but it’s a famous movie, it’s a very good movie.
Andrea: So, yeah, and then at the end, who ends up being the ultimate bad dinosaur? T Rex, right? I mean, the T Rex, he defeats the raptors. You know, I mean. And then the banner falling down, you know. He’s like our hero bad guy. He’s the ultimate dinosaur.
Nolan: Which, yeah, yeah. I mean, he is the king lizard.
Andrea: Yeah, I love T Rex. He’s my favorite.
Nolan: They have some bigger, better ones in the later movies.
Andrea: But he is pretty awesome.
Nolan: He still comes through for them.
Andrea: We’ll talk about that later. We’re actually going to do one of these movies a month leading up to the release of Jurassic World 2: Fallen Kingdom which I am so excited for.
Nolan: Yeah, those movies are not as good at building tension. They’re more explody.
Andrea: Yeah, they are that. I mean, I don’t know. Like, Jurassic Park was based on a novel and it was by a fantastic author and Lost World… for those who do not know, they actually kind of had to arm twist Michael Crichton into writing the book Lost World so they could base a movie off of it and it’s not as good. He didn’t want to do it. He doesn’t like to write sequels. I mean, that’s one of things. He doesn’t do sequels. And, so, it didn’t have the heart in it that Jurassic Park had.
Nolan: Oh, remember that we watched the interview where they asked him, like, you know, like, “So, how good is this movie?” And he was like, “Well, it is what it is.”
Andrea: Oh, that’s right, yes, about Lost World.
Nolan: Yeah, he’s like, “Cha-ching, so there.”
Andrea: He got his money. Two more comments. Malcolm, shirt unbuttoned still, at the end. He’s our little am I allowed to say sex symbol on our podcast?
Nolan: Yeah, you can say sex symbol.
Andrea: I know. Yeah, he’s our little sex symbol. So he’s got to have his shirt unbuttoned. Then we’ve got that character development, the character growth, with Grant. He’s got the kids with him in the end in the helicopter.
Nolan: Yes.
Andrea: So we see him go from hating kids to loving kids.
Nolan: Yup, so that character arc paid off. You know, early, hates kids, right? When he meets the kids you know this specifically.
Andrea: Yeah.
Nolan: And, then, they go through a couple trials. You know, the T Rex, the Jeep, all that stuff. At the end, they’re friends.
Andrea: Yeah. Who would you say is the main character? I mean, I kind of think Grant is because he’s got the most growth out of everybody.
Nolan: Yeah, he probably has the most screen time I wanna say, too.
Andrea: I mean, the kids. They go from being happy to terrorized and happy. That’s not exactly…
Nolan: The trauma, the trauma.
Andrea: Yeah. And Ellie doesn’t really have a lot of growth, you know. I mean, Malcolm goes from skepticism to skepticism to skepticism and he gets attacked in the middle, but it doesn’t actually change his character. He’s…
Nolan: Yeah, Grant’s probably the only one with that arc, because…
Andrea: Well, Hammond has little bit of an arc.
Nolan: He doesn’t learn. He’s still…
Andrea: That’s true.
Nolan: He’s like, “Oh, yeah, site B. And, then, oh, yeah…”
Andrea: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, yeah. So, Grant, I guess. Gennaro. No, it was Gennaro. He got the most. He went from being alive to being dead. That’s about as drastic as you can get.
Nolan: Yeah. Because the kids don’t change.
Andrea: No, they don’t change.
Nolan: Yeah. That’s pretty much it. Yeah. There you go.
Andrea: It’s still a satisfying movie. I mean it’s still one of my favorite movies, you know. For all the reasons we mentioned. That’s the other thing. It’s not like it’s a romance, you know. The character development has to be there, but it doesn’t have to be as involved as a romance, you know, where everything hinges on the characters. Anyway.
Okay, so where can people find you online, husband of mine?
Nolan: Nowhere right now.
Andrea: K. Nolan, when was the last time you signed into Facebook?
Nolan: I don’t think people know I have a son.
Andrea: And he’s two-years-old.
Nolan: He’s two.
Andrea: Yeah. He probably hasn’t updated his posts since we announced we were getting married seven years or eight years ago or something like that. He hasn’t updated Facebook.
Nolan: I did. We’re married.
Andrea: Oh, yeah, we are married. Did you announce that we’re married then?
Nolan: Yeah. It says status: married.
Andrea: Oh, that’s right.
Nolan: That’s the big… that’s it.
Andrea: So if you want to reach Nolan you have to go through me and, like we said, his pen name is James Curwen and we do have a blog that’s not well updated for him. And then, if you want to reach me, you can email me at andrea@selfpublishstrong.com and make sure you check us out on Patreon, patreon.com/selfpublishstrong. If you’re not noticing a theme here, the podcast is Self-Publish Strong and my email and Patreon and all of that.
Anyway, thank you for listening. Next time we are going to be talking about Twlight, we said?
Nolan: Twilight.
Andrea: We are so excited for Twilight. Twilight defines our relationship.
Nolan: I don’t think we should admit that to people.
Andrea: I’m very excited about it. Okay, so Twilight with RiffTrax defines our relationship.
Nolan: There you go. That I’ll claim.
Andrea: Yes. Okay. Thank you for listening and tune in next time for our next podcast episode. Bye.
Nolan: Bye.
“On My Way” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/