Seriously, the scene with the naked guy falling out the window, penis in the wind, had to be one of the most unnecessary gratuitous scenes ever shot. And then he winds up dead with a horrific expression on his face. I can't believe Craig Wasson went through with that scene. Without some of the nudity, had it been released today, this might have gotten a PG-13.
shareMaybe most people here agree that Alice Krige's nude scenes were not gratitous because she shows a beautiful body while Wasson, well it depends on taste here....anyway, I dont mind nude scenes but I dont think they are necesary. Same for sex scenes.
I also though that the nude falling scene was funny.
Criag Wasson's nude scene was unnecessary and ill advised. I saw it in the theater and there was lots of laughing to what was supposed to be a horrible moment.
It sticks out as special effects and all I can think about is poor naked Craig on some sort of rig in front of a blue screen with his "flapping" being accomplished by a wind machine.
Besides, in many movies, female nudity is usually done for titillation and male nudity is usually done for laughs.
Polls... One of the Main Stream Media's Jedi Mind Tricks.
True! but I think its time for a change, I found it fair that George Clooney showed his butt and the female showed nothing.
This thread is amusing as hell, but my favorite, from August 2008, has to be:
"That scene is hilarious. Every shot of it, all the way down to the bouncing off the poolside concrete. LoL @ Bill Maher's dong."
I'm quite sure Bill Maher's dong IS news worthy, but I didn't realize he was doing penis stand-in work in 1981...
(and Hollywood gossip says it would've been doing a LOT more flopping than what I saw in that scene!)
Too funny...
GB
Craig Wasson and Bill Maher are so similar, I bet their dongs are of equal stature too.
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I don't get the joke and this thread is a bummer isn't it?
"Listen, do you smell something?"
Ray Stanz-Ghostbusters
You mean Donald Sutherland.
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you've all missed the point. It was method acting by Mr Wasson. End of.
shareWatching this movie for the first time and that scene was funny and certainly not needed.
shareThis movie was made at a pre-digital time, so even though they use "chroma key" effects to film the scene of David falling out the window, it would have still been a very challenging and difficult scene for them to film, as they had to then match each (dual) image frame by frame. Since he had to act as if he was falling several stories (on his back), and they had to film the downward fall as well and combine the images, I'm not surprised that with the technology of the day, it was less than pristine. Especially when compared to the effects seen in movies today, I'm not surprised at all that people end up laughing and don't get the full effect that the writer/director intended.
I still say that people are missing what is going on in this movie if they do not understand why David and Alma are naked in the beginning of the film. Honestly, would it really make as much sense if you repeated the scene, but he comes into the bedroom, he is wearing clothes and she is dressed, and he touches her clothed shoulder and says, "What's wrong with you, you're cold, you're not real (or whatever he says), she turns to him and turns into a ghoul. Oh wait, how would he feel her skin through her clothes? Or, I suppose we could have David come in the room wearing a robe, and she could be lying on the bed wearing a nightgown with her head face down (like it was), with her left shoulder peaking out, and he could happen to place his hand just on the patch of bare skin that is not covered by her nightgown, and he then says, "What's wrong with you, you're cold..." I mean, here is a place where the nudity has a role in the plot of this story. Both David and Don discovered through the course of their physical relationship with this woman/spectre that the person they had been involved with, the person who they had been intimately involved with for many weeks/months and who had appeared to them to be a normal, warm, loving woman all of a sudden became clear to them through strange behavior, speech patterns and then finally by tactile sensation of her skin that she was not alive/human. This is important. If you miss this, you miss a lot.
By the way, doctorcrimedog, you sort of proved my point with your comment, {seeing it as a scene about a rather embarrassing shot of a man's thingy}, that men are just plain uncomfortable when they are faced with male nudity, however much they like to dress it up as "Female nudity is okay, male nudity is gratuitous". I mean, "thingy"? I didn't see anything embarrassing in the scene, or the fact that he was naked. How old are you anyways? Another eXample of seXually repressed America.
To each their own...opinion
Well, how old I am is none of your business, but no, I don't care for male nudity because I find asthetically displeasing. There is no equivalent female nudity in the film, so it's not a case of "this was okay, that wasn't okay." Female frontal nudity still doesn't actually expose the naughty bits. If it did, I expect I'd also find that awkward. The scene could've been done with him returning to the room in shorts and with her partly under the sheet, and it wouldn't have seemed out of context. Not because the existing scene was morally objectionable or any such thing, but because it obviously came off as silly to many people, which I seriously doubt was the director's intent. And frankly, I think you're playing amateur psychologist a bit too much by attempting to extrapolate my entire view on the subject out of the word "thingy." You aren't that perceptive, and I'm not that simplistic, so spare me the airs you're putting on.
-There is no such word as "alot."
I do respect that you have your own opinion on this, doctorcrimedog. But I also think you need some professional psychological help/counseling. Once again, "naughty bits"? There are no parts of the human body that are naughty, and if someone taught you that when you were growing up (assuming you are indeed already grown up), then they did you a huge disservice. It is ideas like that that make people ashamed of their bodies and have seXual hang ups. A penis is something that people usually cover with clothes, but it is no more inherently "naughty" than your elbow. This is not rocket science, this is Psych 101, which you will learn in college if you decide to go there.
ie, human behavior can be said to be "good" or "bad/naughty". Bodies and their parts are just that, a body made up of parts, all made of the same things, skin, muscle, ligaments, bones, circulatory system.
To each their own...opinion
Wow, that's apallingly arrogant of you. As it happens, the phrase "naughty bits" is one I've used since I was a kid because it popped up in episodes of Monty Python. It appears humor is something you have no concept of. Here, try this: Penis penis penis penis penis. Happy now? Christ, what a self-important prick you are. Oh, sorry, "prick" is another euphamism that obviously indicates I was abused by my dad or indoctrinated by priests or something evil which the briliant Macgirl66, who's so amazingly clever she couldn't pick a username not already used by 65 other people, can see with the perspicacity of Sherlock Holmes. Whoever taught you that condescension and baldfaced assumptions of your own intellectual superiority were ways in which to win an argument did YOU a terrible disservice, provided that anyone did teach you such things, and you didn't simply decide to be a haughty snot all on your own. Well, piss off. I'm sticking you on my ignore list, because I come to these boards to discuss movies, and not to listen to the amateur prattlings of Freud wanna-bes who think they can dissect an entire personality based on a hundred-word Internet post about one silly shot in a movie.
-There is no such word as "alot."
I rest my case. Ignore away.
To each their own...opinion
Yeah, the special effects were actually well done for the time. It was very hard to avoid matte lines on stuff like that back then. The building background is actually a well done miniature too.
Of course, the scrutiny is enhanced because you know it's a shot impossible to do normally.
I don't mind saying though that even now, male nudity is played primarily for laughs and for that reason alone, they should've either had him dressed to a degree or use non/less revealing angles for his death fall.
The focus of real greed lies with unrestrained Government.
I agree with you about the quality of the effects for the time.
However, male nudity is played primarily (and routinely?) for laughs? I don't see anything funny about a guy being frightened to the point of breaking through a plate glass window and falling several stories, landing on glass and concrete. Eric Clapton's 4 yr old son plummeted to his death through a window on a high rise building. Do you find that funny too? The fact that he (David) was naked makes it neither more nor less funny to me. The natural state of humans is that of nakedness. When people are alone or with their partners, they often disrobe, for bathing. sleep or seX. He died, in a terrifying and horrible way. Not trying to be harsh, just being honest.
To each their own...opinion
Come on, you didn't find that teenie weenie the least bit amusing?
shareThat'd exactly the point macgirl66.
A movie is not reality and since it is not reality the makers can take a scene which is supposed to be tragic/horrifying and make it ludicrous.
Let's say that it was a necessary thing for the character to fall to his death naked. Okay, if it has to be, it has to be but it was done ineptly.
I could imagine many better ways to stage the scene. For instance, if he was supposed to be naked, ditch the towel in the scene leading up to the fall. As it is now, he's in the towel, get's scared and crashes through the window and we don't even see the towel fly off before we are surprised with the full monty during an already shocking scene. The shock of the fall combined with the shock of the sudden frontal nudity made people laugh. Like it or not, a sustained shot of a bobbing penis was/is unusual in an R rated film and the reactions will reflect that.
You could've also had him crash though the window, show the towel snagged on the broken glass and pan down to show him falling already a distance away to not emphasize the nudity. It might've also been better that way effects wise.
Ghost Story had one of the greatest genius special effects men ever, Albert Whitlock. But even he could not get rid of the hard edged matte lines on light colored background with what they had back then. So, out of the gate, there is a contrived artifice to the scene combined with the sudden, without warning frontal nudity that blunted the horror impact of what the scene was supposed to convey and instead made it bizarre and somewhat funny.
The focus of real greed lies with unrestrained Government.
I can't believe we're still on this. But oh well. First of all, I think that people's eXpectations of "modern" special effects cloud their view on what they think they should see in a scene like this. If they had seen this scene when it came out in 1981 (before the ready use of CGI in movies), they might have had different eXpectations, and therefore a different view of a scene like this. NeXt, is it really necessary to see how he loses his towel as he, terrified at seeing that the woman he is engaged to and has been sleeping with for several months is not a woman at all, but a walking corpse, not alive but dead, backs up in fear and crashes through a plate glass window...which happens to be several stories above the ground, causing him to fall to his death. Did people eXpect the towel to stay tied all the way down? I have said this before, but I can hardly get my towel to stay tied for the walk from my bathroom to my bedroom. So, knowing the technological challenges of matte lines that they had at the time this film was made, do you really eXpect them to have to deal with the matte lines of not just him falling out of a window of a multi-story building, hitting the roof of a glass covered pool room, then hitting the concrete neXt to the pool, you would also require him to lose the towel (in mid-air) on the way down so they would have to deal with those matte lines as well? Or, in another scenario, do you really need a shot of the towel snagged on the window to realize that that is the fate of the said towel?
Donny spent weeks or months with Alma, sleeping with her, bathing with her, touching her and he had no idea she was a ghost until she started to act odd and then it was when they were intimate together that he realized that she was "not real", that she was "cold". He thought she was so normal and was so happy that he asked her to marry him. David went through the same, he had a period where he did not notice anything unusual, also asked her to marry him. It is in this opening scene where it implies they have also been intimate that David is realizing that there is something "not real" about her, he touches her and she is cold. As the movie goes on, it is important that we see they both have these parallel relationships.
I really think that it is unfortunate that people have so little realization into what it was like for special effects to have been produced prior to CGI. Just for a director and producer to decide that they needed a scene like this and that they were going to get it done for their film, how time consuming it would have been for them to produce this scene. Each frame of him falling out the window would have to be roto'd, which involves it being handled frame by frame for the entire length of the scene. This process was eXtremely time consuming. Of course, this is all done by computer now, in a much shorter time period, with more realistic results, so people who have seen little else have "little" appreciation for what went into films like this to try and tell the story of the day. I can appreciate that this was the best they could do with this scene at that time with the effects they had available, it was a scene that they felt was important to the story, I understand why it is important to our understanding of the story, so I can overlook its defects.
To each their own...opinion
For goodness sake, were you not comprehending me?
I prefaced it all by saying how great Whitlock was and how the problem with the effects shot were unavoidable due to the time period. I have a big awareness of how effects like this were done back then. Even this one, specifically. Since I have an old Cinefantastique magazine covering the movie and they devoted a whole page to the effects of the high rise fall scene. He was not rotoscoped, he was filmed against a bluescreen. He's even on bluescreen when he crashes against the window. The actual cracking of the window was done by tossing an iron cross bar into it (because it fit the outstetched arm pattern of what they wanted the actor to do). If you look closely you can even catch a glimpse of part of it on the right side of his chest when the window crashes.
I happen to enjoy old school effects more than CGI ones and my comments were not meant to denigrate the effects. They were meant to stress that there was only ao much they could do back then.
The focus of real greed lies with unrestrained Government.
You're wasting your breath with this person. If you think the effect was lacking, you must hate old-school effects, along with the people who made them, and probably their families, as well. If you think the scene was somehow silly, you must have some horrible repressed trauma relating to male body parts, or some other claptrap. "Macgirl" knows all, except, apparently, that Macs are overpriced, crappy computers.
The "Ignore" button is a wonderful thing, though looking back up this thread, it's apparent that she will continue to reply to your messages even when you specifically tell her that you're going to be using it on her. I suppose it could be somebody else I ignored, since all it says is "Post ignored," but what are the odds it's not our little genius?
-There is no such word as "alot."
I'm guessing since you put "little" in quotes you at least agree with me.
shareSo sorry, wrong term. My bad. They used Chroma Key Compositing. This was before there was any invention of the machines that allowed automation of this process (which were invented later in the 80's), so they were still processing these scenes frame by frame. It still does not change the fact that they still had to edit the overlapped shots frame by frame in order to put the images together. It was a very time consuming process, and is why you (as you are aware), can slightly see the matte lines around the image of him "falling", which was superimposed over the background shot.
I have already gone into detail for you, FountainLion on why I think this scene was included in the first place (read my last post). As to why they did not just have him naked the whole time, I'm not sure, but I could only guess that for the ratings board, having him in a towel was easier than 3 min of a full frontal David, whereas filming him falling 20-30 stories with a towel that mysteriously won't fall off would be kind of bizarre. Then you get back to, do we really need to see how he lost the towel on the way down?
This still goes back to I'm thinking that some people (who I won't pigeon hole), just can't help but hold all movies up to the standard of the special effects that are available today, and that's okay. I am more about whether a film has a good story to tell. I can overlook dated special effects when a movie is well cast and the story is compelling. I know there are others who don't care for this film in general. I happen to like it.
To each their own...opinion
Albert Whitlock was one of the best of the old school effects guys. His big thing was his matte paintings. The long shot exteriors of the Ghost Story town were his matte paintngs. He also was called upon to add snow to many live action shots because the particular time they were filming nature did not provide too much snow.
He also painted a more trecherous drop under the bridge they filmed at.
The focus of real greed lies with unrestrained Government.
Look, I agree that his being naked makes perfect sense in the scene. My point is a lot less sophisticated, all I'm saying is small penises are funny so it was funny. Surely we can all agree here.
shareWell, when you are in distress, the penis tends to do the opposite of what it does when it is excited.
The focus of real greed lies with unrestrained Government.
Regardless of explanation, my point stands.
shareSmall penises are funny? Shall we throw you off a building and see what yours does? I'm assuming that you are male. In either case, I will assume that you must not have very much anatomical knowledge, in that the human penis can appear to look many different "sizes" depending on circumstances. Since it is filled with nerves and is also under the control of the parasympathetic nervous system, it is greatly affected by factors outside of active control. Things like mood, skin and air temperature can affect size, as well as whether one is relaXed, or if one is frozen in fear.
BTW, I didn't happen to notice his penis size as he was on the way down, plummeting to his death. I was too busy watching the fear he was eXperiencing. I hope you won't take this the wrong way, but I find your reaction to this character's death rather juvenile.
To each their own...opinion
I'd rather not get tossed off a building naked. No need to get violent. Also, sure, it's possible the actor doesn't have a small penis most of the time, but in the scene it was a small penis and it added to some humor. I mean, you haven't disagreed yet as to the central postulate, you've simply given reasons why it would be small.
shareWhat a way to go. Poor bastard.
"but I still wake up, I still see your ghost"
Personally I don't think any of the nudity was necessary. It didn't add anything to the movie. Yes the naked guy fall out of the window was stupid and looked like it should have been in one of the "Scary Movie" films. He could have been wearing a robe or something and just have it ripped up as he fell out of the window, that would have been sufficient.
My point is that no nudity was necessary for this movie. They could have gotten their point across some other way. That's just my thoughts.
The movie was enjoyable though.
I love this thread.
shareThis is the only scene I remember- lol. His little peanut spinning around like a helicopter was so funny. I'm laughing thinking about it right now.
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Bump.
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