Harry and the Hendersons (1987)

William Dear (0:21)

Hello, my name is Bill Dear, and I'm the director of Harry and the Hendersons. I produced it along with Richard Vane, and I wrote it along with Bill Martin and Ezra D. Rappaport. The project came about, I had met Bill Martin, a very comedic writer, amazing comedic guy, and he and Ezra had written a half-hour sitcom pilot called Harry and the Hendersons. Their intention was to star Fred Gwynn with some light hair on his face, and he was going to be the Bigfoot that the family found and brought home. Basically, I thought the idea was much bigger than a sitcom and always wanted to do a movie about Bigfoot. There was a fascination about Bigfoot I always had, and I had the very good fortune to do an Amazing Stories for Steven Spielberg, and it was like a Hollywood story dream come true. I'm in the editing room showing Steven my Amazing Stories, the Mummy Daddy episode, and he said, Do you have a movie you'd like to do? And I was about five days away from finishing the script for Harry and the Hendersons. So I was a very lucky person.

I love the cast in this movie. John Lithgow I had seen, of course, in Garp and Terms of Endearment, and really wanted to work with him. Melinda Dillon just won my heart in Christmas Story. I'd seen her in Slapshot years ago and other things, and she's just an amazing actress. Josh Rodoy was great as Ernie, and Margaret Langerick, who plays Sarah, she was a Canadian actress who had been in My American Cousin, and she seemed very fresh and was fortunate to be able to bring her down from Canada to do this.

The opening credit sequence, what we wanted to do was basically show these people stepping into a world that, you know, it's like scuba diving. When you're underwater, you're in someone else's world. The deeper they got into the forest, the deeper they got into someone else's world. All the various animals that are inhabiting the forest and watching the cargo buy, those were all animals brought to us by Ann Gordon. Ann Gordon was just a wonderful animal trainer who had all these wonderful animals, and just her total respect for the animals was... It started everybody off on a good foot. It was what our movie was all about, and here was someone who really was working with us who had that kind of care that we were trying to talk about in the story.

The great scenic beauty of the Northwest, this was shot in and around Seattle, and then back on the stages at Universal. Ernest. Open the window, honey.

SPEAKER_4 (2:49)

Oh, Lularo will do us all some good. It's the fish.

William Dear (2:53)

Mike Fenton, Jane Feinberg, J. Taylor, the casting was amazing on this.

SPEAKER_5 (2:57)

Looking for my baseball gloves.

William Dear (2:59)

Bruce's score, Bruce Broughton's score is just wonderful.

SPEAKER_5 (3:02)

Major League Baseball team needs to get back?

SPEAKER_6 (3:04)

You bet.

SPEAKER_5 (3:05)

Great. I'm going to spike Frankie McDowell.

SPEAKER_6 (3:07)

Oh, no, you're not.

William Dear (3:09)

And Harry is designed by Rick Baker. I must say that I think Harry is probably Rick Baker's greatest creature, and he was rewarded with an Oscar, a second Oscar for designing and creating Harry and bringing Harry to life, along with Kevin Peter Hall, who is the heart and soul of Harry.

One of the requirements of Harry, and as you see Harry unfold during the course of this, was that I wanted the actor's real eyes to be able to come through the prosthetic, through the makeup. And it was very important that the whole head, as tall as it had to be above Kevin's head and as long as the face had to be below Kevin's chin, that his real eyes would poke through the makeup, because all we did was add color context to his eyes. We had done a lot of work on Harry to get Harry ready for his performance, and everything was a little bit harder, but also very much worth the effort it took to accomplish it.

SPEAKER_7 (3:58)

Be careful of my drawings back there.

And don't step on the trout. Or my flowers.

Melinda Dillon (4:03)

They're still alive.

John Lithgow (4:04)

Or mom's flowers.

SPEAKER_7 (4:07)

Oh, man.

John Lithgow (4:08)

I bet you loved roughing it in the wild.

Melinda Dillon (4:11)

Buffy! George!

SPEAKER_4 (4:14)

The only thing rough about it is when the generator went out in the middle of Masterpiece Theatre.

SPEAKER_6 (4:19)

Whoa!

Melinda Dillon (4:22)

George, please slow down.

John Lithgow (4:24)

I know these roads like the back of my hand.