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Tremors: Making Perfection #7: Michael Gross Transcript
The following text is the transcript of the seventh, final episode of the 'Tremors: Making Perfection' podcast with Michael Gross.
It can be watched on YouTube here. It was originally uploaded on Dec. 17th, 2021.
Hello and welcome to Tremors: Making Perfection: The Podcast. I'm your host Michael Gross and every Friday for the next six weeks we're going deep on the making of 'Tremors' with the people who made it. From the very first draft of the script that birthed the graboids, to the challenges of filming in the middle of the desert, the cast and crew are going to tell you everything you need to know about the monster movie that became a cult classic. So graboid yourself a seat and let's make Perfection.
Now you might be thinking: 'Hold on a minute! I've listened to this entire podcast and I haven't heard hide nor hair about the survival master, the man who's been there for the entire 'Tremors' journey, the man who's killed countless graboids and even been inside one. Well, fear not. You were not denied critical, need-to-know information, we were just saving it for the end. Burt Gummer has been a part of me for many years now and will continue to live on through these movies and you, the fans. Here's my story and how I came to be a part of 'Tremors'.
How did you initially react to a script about underground worms?
I had been on a top ten television show for seven years. My first reaction was astonishment that this sci-fi horror film was even coming to call. Most casting directors don't have a great imagination; this would be very much casting against type, and I was surprised. I got in the audition room with the director and the writers and I thought to myself… and I still expressed to them, I said: 'This has to be some mistake'. I think I said that. 'Come on! You can't be seriously asking for me here'. I said: 'I'm one of America's nicest fathers, television fathers. What's going on?' Lo and behold, they had seen several other things I had done, and said: 'No, we think this guy's got range. Let's bring you in'. I mean, I enjoyed the script the first time I saw it, but I thought this could never happen. It's casting against type and the movie industry is a safe industry. They're spending a lot of money, they want someone who's known for something else. They must have somebody else in mind, but somebody's told them they had to look at me. Obviously, I impressed them enough that they said: 'Okay, let's do this. Let's try this'. I'm forever thankful for their courage in looking outside of what should have been a very simple choice for them: let's get somebody who's done something like this before. They were thinking outside the box and bless them for it. I mean, every actor who wants to do something different is extremely grateful for the casting directors who are able to look beyond the obvious. So, as I say, very grateful for that.
How did you keep the character of Burt authentic over the years?
Well, I had to keep the memory of the original films very, very close to me. Burt has a very specific voice and I wanted to do justice to them. I felt very protective of not only Burt, but the entire franchise. When they were no longer a part of the franchise, it was very upsetting for me, frankly. Because I thought they were the heart and soul, they were the creators, and so I felt off balance, quite frankly, and so tried to preserve as much as I could. I became an advocate, not only for Burt, for with the franchise with a new set of writers. Now that being said, Universal Studios was ready to go in a different direction. It had been 13 years since we had done a 'Tremors', 'Tremors 4'. Something like 12, 13 years. And they said there's a different audience out there of people that'd never seen it before. We want to reintroduce it to them, now half the audience are gamers. It's a whole different group, so we want to update it. I wasn't sure what that meant. I found out later some of what it meant. Amidst all the newness of it, we try to preserve some of the old. That was the part I felt I played in this piece in some way, as late as the seventh one. I have a lot to do with Burt's dialogue, with his emotional throughline, the scenes he plays, with people he particularly… the emotional journey he takes in the piece. The action-adventure — some other people can take care of that, I enjoy it to a point, but I'm interested in Burt's life, his emotional life going through the piece.
When you look back to making the first movie, are there any things that come to mind that make you think there's no way we could get away with this today?
The biggest change is from one and all the others is less money was spent on each subsequent film. That presented challenges of its own. You know, there are certain things we could not do. The biggest change overall in five, six, and seven is, of course, the use of CGI, because we were still using some three-dimensional pieces in one through four. So that's by far the biggest change. But nothing that we couldn't get away, you know, couldn't get away with. I can't think of any more restrictions in terms of stunts. What I can certainly say is when you have less time to do things, when you're rushing, when you're trying packing more accidents can happen. Stunt people are the first to tell you, you can hurt yourself badly out there if you don't allow time for these things to be rehearsed and rehearsed well. Physics have ways of playing with you, you have no idea, so you've always got to be watching our for that.
And you've sustained some injuries on 'Tremors' over the years.
I've hurt myself to a degree in every one of these. As a matter of fact, I'm now being treated for a rotator cuff injury in 'Tremors 7'. This left shoulder of mine is giving me problems. I broke a couple ribs in 'Tremors 5' or '6', I forget. There's always something.
You're one of the very few people that's been inside a graboid. Can you describe what that's like?
You've never seen claustrophobia like that. Yes, I have been inside a graboid, even though I knew I would be going home to my own bed and a nice hot meal that night. It was frighteningly claustrophobic, because I literally had to go underground, enter into this thing, have a membrane put over me, its skin, dirt, all that sort of thing, and then have somebody atop me coming at me with a chainsaw to open that up again. So, I would say the greatest thing was just being enclosed; it was a little like being entombed. I mean, just doing the stunt. It couldn't have been much closer. I think I was on my knees sort of folded over in a kind of fetal position so I could pop up out of this as I was cut out. I think we probably did a couple of takes. Boy, you wanna get it right the first time, because it takes so long to reset and you don't want to be the one responsible for them having to start over again. Just resetting things like that, it takes time. It takes a big bite out of the day. One of the big things about actors — you want to be so prepared that you're not the one who screws things up. You're not the one who's responsible for the day going much longer than it should. People say: 'Why do you learn lines so well? or, Why do you prepare so much?' I say: 'Simply to avoid public embarrassment.' It's that simple. In front of the crew, your peers, the other professionals who are working around you. You don't want to be the one to screw it up. It's embarrassing!
What were the conditions like on the 'Tremors' set?
There were sometimes when we shot this in winter time. It's particularly the other films: two, three, four. Sometimes we shot at least one of them sort of late in the year and so we had shorter days. And simply the loss of light earlier in the day was… it becomes a real problem. A lot of this is exterior stuff. So, making the best use of that time is important. We faced other things; very high winds and a lot of dust in South Africa where we were shooting five and six. The last one, seventh, presented its own set of obstacles; in that, the heat and humidity of Thailand were truly oppressive. There were at least twelve hour days, six day weeks, and people asked me: 'Oh, how was Thailand?', and I said it was miserable for me, I was not there on vacation. I was there to work. I took about a week or ten days afterwards to enjoy myself and travel around a bit and enjoy some of the sights, but you feel as if you're in training and you just have to stay in training to get through those other six days of the week.
Were there lots of practical jokes going on?
Off set occasionally, yeah; usually not when we're working. We always seem to be under such pressure to get the job done with so few hours and so little light and all this sort of thing, that I don't do a lot of that. I'm actually quite business-like. Off the set I can be insane, but when we're doing the work my thing is always — I want to be here as little time as possible, get the work done. — because I love time off. I love time in the bed, having a meal, getting a shower and reading my lines for the next day, as opposed to wasting time when the cameras are rolling. So I'm actually pretty business-like. Maybe a little too serious. No, no, I'm not too serious. I mean, I joke around, but it's like: 'Okay, let's move on.' So, pranks — no, not if it's gonna interrupt the work.
I remember 'Tremors' 1, there were some old pictures of Reba and I walking around with other people's wigs out and things like this, looking not at all like… you know, we look like a bad rock band, Reba and I, because we've had both, you know, long-haired wigs and things like this. Some of the most fun we have in preparing for the day; I think we're trying to get over our own nerves. A lot of the silliness happens in makeup rooms, when we're all round up in chairs together, getting our makeup on, preparing for the day. Could be very early in the day. We're half-asleep, some of us, and making fun of each other for the day, the work the day before, you know, giving each other shit, to put it lightly. You know, just like: 'Boy, you ruined that shot yesterday, didn't you?' You know, just giving each other a hard time. Just playing off each other with silliness, and we all know how difficult the work is. You have to be accustomed to making a fool of yourself and not worrying about it in front of other people. Some terribly embarrassing things happen. In 'Tremors 7', for example, I have worked with a flamethrower, okay. And this is a good forty pound tank on my back. They had a stand-in, but the stand-in couldn't be found, so I'm actually walking about with forty pounds. Maybe I'm giving too much away, but machetes, I was working with machetes and these forty pounds on my back, and I reached up with this machete to take a… and my center of balance was just so high, my center of gravity, and over I went. Onto my back. You know, obviously a ridiculous outtake now — onto my back, with the flamethrower on, and landed directly in a huge puddle of mud. Well, it was absurd, you know, I felt like a beetle on my back, because I couldn't get up by myself, my legs, arms are going like this. I found the whole thing really aggravating. I was pissed off at myself, sorry that I lost my balance, and you know, now we have to take all this time, but within half an hour I was saying to the producers: 'You've gotta save that stock. That's got to go in the outtakes.'
What do 'Tremors' fans ask you about?
Most fans are extremely positive. They just want to express how much 'Tremors' has meant to them over the years, how much joy you've brought them, that sort of thing. Occasional questions of how was so and so to work with, you know, 'what did you and Reba talk about?', you know, this sort of thing. But mostly expressions of joy, gratitude, sharing stories about how much they enjoyed it growing up, how much it meant to them. A couple of years ago… I have a Facebook page, and a couple of years ago, I think it was two Halloweens ago, I sponsored a Burt Gummer Halloween costume contest for kids; it was only for kids. And so I said to people: 'Look, send in pictures of your kids dressed as whatever, something 'Tremors', it can be Burt… I think it was Burt only, you know. Because people had started… had sent me a few of those over time and I said this would be a great contest. And it was great just judging them, I said they've got to be in by a certain time. I wound up picking about five who I thought were the absolutely best and sent 'Tremors' memorabilia to them: photos, and some copies of the scripts and things like this. So that was fun. That was something where I asked them to do something. Most of the time it's simple questions like: 'When's the next one coming out?' 'You've just done seven. When will there be an eight?' I said: 'Seven hasn't come out yet!' I am not as faithful to the Facebook page as I'd like simply because I have a private life. I have a love-hate relationship with social media, because although I like hearing what fans have to say and occasionally I respond, it becomes another job in a way, something I have to, you know, set aside my own life and do that. It's nice just being in touch with them, and they are wonderfully rabid. You know, fans also have their comparisons, everybody's a critic: 'Oh, I like two better than one', 'Nothing was ever as good as one', 'Four was my favorite' and all that sort of thing. Everybody's got an opinion; I like where you did this, I didn't like that; and as Burt would say: 'I do what I can with what I got.' You can't please everybody all the time.
Will you ever defeat the graboids once and for all?
No, and I doubt that Universal will let go of it too. When I'm dead and gone they'll probably find somebody else hunting these very same monsters. One of the things I've always insisted upon, and we agreed upon very early on, was that though Burt loves guns and Burt's never seen a gun he doesn't like, they've never turned on any humans in these films. It's not about us going after terrorists or another army of human beings or bad guys. The good guys are the humans and the bad guys are the monsters. It's that simple. The guns, as many as they are, are turned on monsters and never on each other. We like that aspect of it. It's something we adhere to. In the last one there was a scene where Burt was asked to just put his hand on his gun in front of somebody else, I said no. No, I'm not gonna even make that gesture. I'm not even gonna put the hand on the gun as if I'm too… Well, let's find another way to disarm the situation, as opposed to Burt looking as if he might shoot somebody. He doesn't shoot other people. He shoots monsters; so, let's keep it simple.
What are your favorite lines from 'Tremors'?
I mentioned a line earlier, one of my favorites is, and I think it's just a good one for life: 'Doing what I can with what I got.' It's the best all of us can do and I think it speaks well to all of us, we've all been given a different set of circumstances, a different set of talents, and sometimes you don't have what it takes, but by golly you can find that thing within yourself that works for what you need at the moment. So I do love that line, 'doing what I can with what I got'. I think that's good preaching for life in general. There are great, fun lines: 'I feel I was denied critical, need-to-know information', the first kill in the first piece: 'Broke into the wrong goddamn rec-room, didn't ya, you bastard?' Burt's full of great things like that.
And what does 'Tremors' ultimately mean to you?
One of the things I've loved about the 'Tremors' franchise is it feels like an old-fashioned family film. A small number of people fighting a monster. The cohesiveness of a small community that bands together to deal with something greater and more dangerous than itself. The cohesiveness that people can find working together. I think it's a very old fashioned sort of film in that way and that keeps it very, very family-friendly. We may have disagreements among themselves, but when push comes to shove we band together and do what's necessary.
Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Thanks as well to writers/producers Steve Wilson and Brent Maddock, producer Nancy Roberts, special effects master Alec Gillis, director Ron Underwood, and actor Kevin Bacon for sharing their memories. Thanks most of all to the fans who have kept this franchise for over thirty years. This is Michael Gross AKA Burt Gummer, signing off. Over and out.
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