:04:03
but I know that little anecdote got lodged
in the back of William Alland's brain.
:04:07
Ten years later, Alland landed a job as a
movie producer at Universal-lnternational.
:04:12
He made a lot of westerns early on, and
a Tony Curtis Arabian Nights sort of thing
:04:15
called The Prince Who Was a Thief.
All moneymakers but not world-shaking.
:04:20
Interrupting myself, here's an example of
how movies go together like big jigsaws.
:04:25
This is a shot of a speedboat crossing the
waters of Portuguese Bend in California,
:04:29
shot September 30, 1953.
:04:33
Now we're on the process stage
at Universal, a month later, October 29.
:04:37
But the background image
on the process screen
:04:39
was shot at Portuguese Bend
on October 5.
:04:45
And now we're 2500 miles east,
:04:47
beneath the surface of Wakulla Spring
in Florida, on October 14.
:04:51
So this little nothing scene
was shot in three different places,
:04:54
on four or more different days,
two different directors,
:04:58
and the three characters were played,
or "represented", I should say,
:05:01
by seven different people. It's amazing all
the work that goes into making a movie.
:05:06
Anyway, Alland's at Universal,
making picture after picture,
:05:09
and he starts having ideas
for science-fiction movies.
:05:12
He had the idea for It Came from Outer
Space and asked Ray Bradbury to write it.
:05:16
Right about that same time,
maybe just a few weeks later,
:05:19
he himself wrote up and submitted to the
studio a story called The Sea Monster.
:05:24
It was just a three-page thing
where the first page told the story
:05:27
of that real-life
dinner conversation with Figueroa.
:05:30
Then he pitched the idea that he should
make a movie about that kind of monster.
:05:33
He wanted it to start with a scene
of a dinner conversation,
:05:36
like the one they'd had with Figueroa,
:05:39
then go on to show an expedition entering
an unexplored region of the Amazon,
:05:43
accompanied, of course,
by a beautiful blonde.
:05:46
The man-fish spots the blonde
and gets a crush on her, and -
:05:49
here's where Alland's imagination
ran away with him -
:05:52
there was a bad guy on the expedition
who wants to catch the creature,
:05:55
and he uses the girl as bait.
:05:57
Alland's memo on The Sea Monster
ended by suggesting one of two endings.