Original subtitles

when we finish the filming, it never really

finishes because the day you stop shooting,

then you start all the special effects

things.

So you're not done up until the

preview of the film.

It's very difficult to know what you've got.

I just have one giant question.

Where am I?

Of all the alleys in the world I could have

fallen into that night,

why did it have to be yours?

Voice casting is very, very hard, and what

we did is we auditioned

hundreds of actors

to find the voice of Howard.

Doll,

I don't drink out of bowls.

You got a beer?

And

one of the actors we auditioned was John

Chusick,

and then we auditioned Martin Short, and we

auditioned

just a

whole group of people.

And then finally, Chip Zion is a very

well-known Broadway actor and has done also

a lot of television sitcom.

Go ahead and say something, dummy.

You might not want to hear what I'll say, Bozo.

And he came in after the picture was

completed,

but Chip's voice, which we always saw as a

sort of gravelly voice,

what we felt worked very well.

Is this gonna be easy?

Or is this gonna be trouble? And then, of

course, the nightmare came of how do you

get the voice into the duck's lips? Because

they're done at a different time,

and that was really complicated lip

syncing.

I mean, Willard and Chip were together

forever in a dark room,

you know, doing voices.

George had put together the best sound team ever.

We had Ben Burt, who was fantastic and had

worked on all the

Star Wars movies.

He must ate the chili.

He had to create the voice

of

the Dark Overlord.

If you can't take the heat,

get out of that

kitchen.

And the voice had to change as the Jeffrey

Jones character changed. One

million kilowatts.

It's always Jeffrey's voice.

It was just how far

that Ben would take it and tweak it and make it

more and more monstrous all the time.

And Richard Himes worked on the film and

then Gary Summers did the mixing and so

the sound was something I was really very

proud of.

And the sound effects

teams up there in San Francisco

were great and it's something we paid a lot

of attention to.

The songs were done by Tom Dolby and then we

decided to bring in John Berry

from the James Bond movies to develop the

score for Howard

and the really wonderful love theme that

was between

Howard and Leah and we thought he really

did a fabulous job.

As the movie was being finished, you know,

everybody was worried.

I mean, to have this creature that wasn't a

cartoon creature in it,

what would everybody think? What is that?

That's a duck.

What is that thing? That's a duck, man.

You either had to accept the artifice,

or it was a good work for you.

You know, Howard the Duck was so hard to

make, and it was an edgy idea.

So I don't know.

what I thought, whether I thought it was

going to be a big hit.

I knew that there was a lot of pressure on it.

When we showed it to the studio,

I don't think there was a reaction.

They just sort of left.

Wait, you can't leave.

Oh yeah? Why not?

And I said to George,

I have a feeling this isn't really

good.

And then we had some screenings, and the

screenings did not go so badly.

It was mixed.

I mean, there were people in the audience

who loved it and laughed and took it very

lightly, and other people were just kind of,

they

didn't accept it.

Only two things touch my feather, this

oil of nightfall

and him.

I don't know if it was before its time

or it was misunderstood,

but I mean, listen, this is a movie about a

duck from outer space.

It's

not supposed to be, you know,

an existential experience here.

We're supposed to have fun with this

concept,

but for some reason, reviewers weren't able

to get over that problem.

I mean, we knew pretty well

early on we were fried egg.

A lot of the reviews

weren't good

because it's hard when you're somebody like

George and you're releasing a film, you

know, a George Lucas production.

People expect a lot, and

on the other hand, critics are also, you

know, looking for ways to tear down the king.

I remember we went up,

I went up and bought a big screen

television

just to see

the critics and

invite all these friends over.

And it was like, oh, and our next movie is

Howard the Duck.

What a piece of...

And then my just face fell off.

It was harsh.

It was harsh. Is

this the end of power?

There's

going to be more violence.

I hate violence.

I remember being

really devastated when it came out in terms

of how much

just sheer

insane

tidal wave of

bad reviews.

how much that hurt, you know, that it was

such a big bomb.

And I had seen the flip side of what a hit

felt like with Back to the Future.

And it was an interesting thing to

experience as a really young person

and being new in the business to experience

those two.

It's given me, I think, a really unique

perspective on this business.

Look, they're laughing at you.

I didn't read the reviews.

It's not a good idea.

I know that in general it was

was considered to be a gigantic

waste of money.

I remember reading in the paper that this

was what's wrong with Hollywood.

And I think particularly with Howard the

Duck because of the title.

You know, it was easy to say,

this is going to

lay a bigger egg than Howard the Duck.

So,

I mean,

the title lends itself to a lot of things

like that.

Then Howard became what I call

sitcom fodder.

Some show I saw,

they were having a party.

The party flopped.

This is like, this party's

worse than Howard the Duck.

Constantly opening up that wound again.

Feels like something inside me.

Gnawing at my guts.

What's wrong with me?

Well, what did you have for lunch?

There's no point in worrying about what

you've done.

What you've done is done, you know? It was

what it was, and I'm perfectly happy with

my part in it.

On to the next.

I can't sit here on my tail feathers

feeling sorry for myself.

We just left for Hawaii and just refused to

read any more material.

It's just, you know, people go through that

and there's just nothing you can do.

The study

is like a psychic

boomerang.

You know, it's depressing for everybody

because everybody's worked very hard.

I mean, even on the worst movie you've ever seen,

you know, people have really killed

themselves, but then you just have to, you

know, say, well,

we've got to

continue and hopefully have a career in the

future.

My whole career is falling apart.

Your career?

What about my life?

I was

literally

terrified to work.

I had to start working.

And I remember crying on the first day.

I was like,

I don't know what to do.

I don't know how to act.

I don't know how to do this.

It was too

How do you prepare for something like that?

You think that by looking controversial,

you're never going to

find a job.

Well, the first assistant director on

Howard the Duck was Dan Colgewood, and he

introduced me to Mel Brooks.

And, you know, Mel was looking at him and

looking at me, and he goes, How did you two meet?

And he said

he was Howard the Duck.

Mel Brooks stood up and said,

Anybody who's in Howard the Duck can be in

my movie.

And I was in--

he shook my hands, and then I was in

Spaceballs.

We actually found that people were more

forgiving than we expected.

And actually, we got quite a few offers to

do other things.

And then we tried to

work in more dramatic areas

to do something totally different.

This world didn't treat you very good.

But you saved it,

didn't

you? George for years said,

he said, just wait.

25 years from now,

it will be rediscovered.

And it will look really good for its time

period.

And that's sort of what happened.

This is crazy!

Bill,

no duck is an island.

And if fate sent me here to save Earth,

then how are the duck is ready to fight?

The first thing,

you know, people would say sort of under

their breath,

You know, I liked

it.

They were

afraid to say it.

But then, you know,

people would start saying it was unfairly

treated

and there'd be websites, fans of Howard the

Duck and why isn't it on DVD.

I've got rights, you know.

I'm suing.

Yeah.

And so those things, you know,

eventually

you come out from under the cloud and

people say, well, I liked it.

I thought it was fun.

You are about to make history a second

time, my little friend.

Thanks.

And then suddenly it becomes a cult movie

because people really understand the

absurdity of it.

Yeah,

well,

I didn't buy it at first either.

And it's funny how

it died for a lot of years, and then the

new kids came,

and now

I have a whole new generation.

I get fan mail from all over the world,

and it's Chucky and it's Howard the Duck.

I've done lots and lots and lots of films,

and again, you kind of ask, Well, don't you

remember me from that film? No,

that film? No, I want a picture of Howard

the Duck.

I'm like, Okay.

Death from the sky!

That's how I defend Howard the Duck, is

that people still love it.

It's for iconoclasts.

It's for people who feel like they're on the

fringe

or somehow relate to it or somehow just hate

when they're told, You should hate this movie.

It's bad.

And they go, I'm going to love that.

Duck

and proud of it.

which is one of its charms, I think,

because it is so

odd and unpredictable and

not logical, really.

You know, it sort of defies logic.

Any questions?

Yeah.

Where are my pants?

I think the last time I saw Howard the Doug

must have been when we finished the film,

and I think the scenes I like the most are

actually some of the smaller scenes.

I liked the love scene.

I thought it was very sweet, and the tone

is sort of different than the rest of the movie.

Let's go for it, Mr.

Macho.

I like the scene in the diner.

I no longer need

human

food.

When Jeff is getting crazier and crazier,

because there's a lot of looks between

Howard and Beverly.

And I like the humor in the movie.

I hope in spite

of whatever limitations it may have in the

special effects, I hope it's really a

charming and enjoyable and humorous movie.

And that you see an imaginative process at

work that maybe wasn't fully realized,

but is there.

And I think the actors are great and

brought a tremendous amount to it.

And there is a lot in that movie.

It's really funny and it really is about

the ultimate underdog

or underduck.

These are the original hands I wore in the movie.

We wore

many pairs, of course, but this is the

first pair that I wore,

and we were able to keep them.

And if you notice, he had three fingers.

And we had to,

they started off with taping my two fingers

together

so I could

train myself.

Well, after the movie was finished,

and for months afterwards, I would walk

like that.

That was that, they're kind of falling

apart in their age, but

not bad for 23 years.

Ain't no time to waste

Tell him he ain't coming home

They'll join

the human race

They call him Howard

the

Duck

No way to conceal it In

a feathers

touch

I love him upon

They call him Howard

the

Duck

If it ain't funky, don't feel it And they shot

an

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