SET VISIT REPORT: LAND OF THE LOST

I have solved the mystery of Sleestak urination. How do these seemingly sexless lizard people pee without any noticeable junk? Revelation: they have a velcro flap built into their crotches.

Actually, that solves the mystery for the actors in the Sleestak suits, but it doesn't solve the mystery for Sleestaks themselves. I'm hoping that the movie version of Land of the Lost, opening this summer, clears that up, since it definitely clears up one word from my previous paragraph: in this movie we learn that Sleestaks are not sexless. They actually are fairly sexual. In fact, we get to see them having sex in the film.

There's probably someone from the Land of the Lost fanworld up in arms about that nugget of info, but I'd have to imagine that since Will Ferrell and Danny McBride got cast as the leads in this big budget comedy re-imagining of the children's TV show they've had some time to get in touch with their feelings of loss. I can almost understand where those guys are coming from; growing up Land of the Lost was big for me. Huge. The idea of Marshall, Will and Holly going over a cavern waterfall and ending up in a strange valley filled with crude Claymation dinosaurs, cavemen, glowing crystals, futuristic ruins and most of all lizard men, filled me with excitement, glee and joy. I liked all the Sid & Marty Krofft shows that ran on WPIX Channel 11 weekday afternoons, but give me Marshall, Will and Holly running from Grumpy over Sigmund and the Sea Monsters any day of the week.

The show's weird sci-fi meets Lost World tropes really helped form my impressionable young genre fan mind. And Holly's pig tails helped form another part of my development; I remember as a young boy fantasizing about her... but not in any sick way, you creeps. I used to imagine marrying that buck-toothed blonde.

Fast forward almost thirty years and I'm again fantasizing about Holly. But this is in a sick way. And it's not a pig-tailed little girl, it's the spicy Pushing Daisies star Anna Friel, who is playing a very different Holly in the big screen version. Where the original group consisted of a father, a son and a daughter, the movie gang is made up of Dr. Rick Marshall, a scientist who has a seemingly insane belief in time vortices, his research assistant Holly and redneck Will (Danny McBride), who runs a shitty little log flume ride that happens to be located on just such a time vortex. The trio get sucked into the Land of the Lost where they meet Chaka (Lonely Island's Jorma Taccone), a caveman who also happens to be a total dick, and they must try to find a way home, all while avoiding hungry dinosaurs and angry Sleestaks.

I met Friel on the set of Land of the Lost, conveniently located a fifteen minute walk from my house, at the Universal Studios backlot. Tourists would travel by on guided tram tours, unaware that just inside the inconspicuous building to their left was a strange temple*; a vast set had been built to look like an ancient ruin overgrown in a jungle, with giant foam Sleestak heads keeping guard and a steep staircase leading up to a circular room - the Library of the Skulls. Living up to its name, the Library contains a series of grottoes, inside of each resides a Sleestak skull. They look sort of like the shrines in which superstitious Roman Catholics (like my family) keep Virgin Mary statues, except that instead of a broad in a blue dress each has a misshappen skull with glowing red eyes.


This was just one of the many major sets built for the film, which finally fulfills the epic scope at which the TV show could only hint. The Land of the Lost isn't some place in our past but rather a weird pocket universe that exists outside of space and time. And the filmmakers haven't simply upped the scope of the show by building bigger sets, making photorealistic dinosaurs and increasing the production value of the Sleestak costumes. They've seemingly stuck with much of the show's strange sci-fi mythology; this isn't just Will Ferrell and Danny McBride in Jurassic Park (as some of the marketing might lead you to believe), it's Will Ferrell and Danny McBride in the kind of off-kilter, big idea world that attracted some of the best writers from the original Star Trek. Did you know that the original show actually had a language created for Chaka's people, the Pakuni? The folks behind the movie knew that, and they've tried to keep it in the new film version. That's source fidelity at it's nerdiest.

I can't really tell you much of what was happening that day on the steps of the Library of Skulls. I'm sad to report that it had nothing to do with Sleestaks; one of my dreams (or possibly nightmares) in life is to interact with a real Sleestak, and getting a look at the incredibly well made (and incredibly damp - those foam latex suits just suck up the moisture from the actors) suits in the FX workshop was a thrill. It was especially exciting to see the head of Enik - the advanced Sleestak who sometimes aids Marshall, Will and Holly - and to examine the points of articulation and the level of detail. But to have seen people in them, walking around! That would have been heaven.

Anyway, I can't tell you what I saw because it's spoilery, but it did involve Anna Friel playing to a ball on a stick which will be replaced in the final film by Grumpy, the T-Rex that caused so much trouble for the family in the original show. This Grumpy will likely be more menacing than the faintly Downsy one from the original show, and Friel showed some chops in this scene. I was expecting to see nothing but non-stop comedy on set, and here she was... emoting?

People on set kept telling me how damn funny the movie is, so don't think that director Brad Silberling has decided to go all dramatic with his Land of the Lost. But it's also obviously not just a spoof of the original; in fact, many of the cast members went out of their way to explain that it's in no way a spoof. Rather, it's a deadly serious take on the concept... with some clowns thrown in to it. Everything about the Land of the Lost is real, and possibly fatal, but Will and Danny play characters whose reactions to these things bring the comedy.

The question, of course, is how well will these elements gel? For my money I can name the big-budget-genre-action-comedies that have been classics on one finger: Ghostbusters. In many ways it seems like the more money you throw at a comedy, the less funny it gets. The reality is that big budget FX films require a kind of discipline and mark hitting that doesn't leave much room for the flexibility comedy demands. But Silberling didn't hire Ferrell and McBride simply to force them to stand on Xes made of gaffer's tape and gawk at unseen dinosaurs. Everybody involved thinks they've hit that sweet spot, that they've found a way to let these guys be just as funny as they need to be (and by these guys I also mean Taccone, whose Chaka sounds like he could be the hidden comedy weapon of the movie) while also creating a fantastical world that is filled with wonder and danger.

Over the rest of the week I'll be bringing you some interviews from the set. While I was there I had a chance to sit down with Ferrell, McBride and Friel, as well as with Sid and Marty Krofft themselves. At the end of the day a select group of us also met with Silberling at his trailer as he smoked a cigar and seemed shockingly laid back for a guy carrying way more than a hundred million dollars of studio money on his back. Will his confidence pay off? We'll find out June 5th.