TITLE
‘The stench of it stays with everybody’: inside the Super Mario Bros movie
AUTHOR
Keith Stuart
PUBLICATION
The Guardian
YEAR
2018
ARTICLE TYPE
Article
FROM THE ARTICLE
Dennis Hopper was not happy.It was the summer of 1992, a few weeks into shooting Super Mario Bros: The Motion Picture and the atmosphere on set was febrile. Endless rewrites and script splices had scrambled the story and dialogue. Producers, writers and investors were all working at cross purposes with the directors, the British couple Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton. On set, there were 300 extras waiting to film the next scene. The lines Hopper was about to deliver had been changed at the last moment, and not for the first time. He was dressed as a humanoid dinosaur, heavily made up in the sweltering North Carolina heat, his hair gelled into a weird row of reptilian spikes.
“We’re in the bedroom of King Koopa’s skyscraper; it’s a big set,” recalls actor and co-star Richard Edson. “Dennis comes in and he’s looking pissed off. He’s mumbling to himself, he won’t look at anyone. So the directors ask, ‘What’s up Dennis?’”
Something was about to go horribly wrong.
GAMES MENTIONED
Super Mario Bros.
PEOPLE MENTIONED
Richard Edson
Samantha Mathis
Ed Solomon
TOPICS MENTIONED
Adaptations