Relax. The only possible person who could ever pull off this part has shuffled off his mortal coil. There’s no one else acceptable to play the Goblin King currently roaming the Earth.
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The perfect Act 1 setup for… a Quest!
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Tilda Swinton.
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Yeah, I wasn’t aware that those of us who were in the target age group for the film at the time of its release who are now pushing 40 were millenials.
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you probably fall in the fuzzy area between x-ers and millennials, just like i’m in the grey area between x-ers and boomers. i really identify with the x-ers, but there are boomer sensibilities i understand, and maybe it’s that way with you and millennials. i don’t think it’s a hard/fast rule, i just know that of the people i personally know, millennials hold a far stronger love of Labyrinth than any x-ers i know.
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Bro, do you even Planetary?
I know that the films aren’t nearly within the same time frame, but I’d group Coraline more closely with *The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland.
With respect these commonalities crop up in a whole lot of Gaiman’s writing.
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I will refute your findings with my own and state that every GenXer is know love BOTH Curry & Bowie, there is not either/or. And all the millennials I know would say “who?” if I asked them who they liked better. 
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But can she sing?
Labyrinth might be my favourite live action fantasy… only stuff that beats it, IMO, are The Last Unicorn and The Flight of Dragons.
Unless you count Stalker… but it’s nominally Scifi if it’s anything, I guess.
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She’s no Bowie, but she has sung.
Owch. I hope she’s been practicing these last 25 years.
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i’m not contending that millennials don’t know Curry or Bowie, or that X-ers only like one or the other – it’s all about an adoration of Labyrinth the movie, or a shrug about it.
I think it’s due to a lot of things; Labyrinth is just about the perfect representation of 80s fantasy, with its synth score, David Bowie rocking big hair and tight pants, and the Muppets when Jim Henson was still directing. Its ballroom scene gets called out as the perfect high school girl’s fantasy, with its dreamy feel, elaborate costumes, and uh, David Bowie. And I think a lot of ‘millennials’ (I loathe that term) embrace its handmade nature, which is so refreshing after the CGI-fests that fantasy films are these days.
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hmm, those are all really good points. (side note: i thought “millennial” was the accepted term now. it used to be “Gen-Y” until something more descriptive came along.)
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I’m familiar with much of his work, but I can’t think of any other stories that involve a girl who finds herself transported to a strange fantasy world that mirrors her own and is forced to confront a doppelgänger of her own mother who plots to trap her there forever. I guess the setup isn’t too far off Alice Through the Looking Glass though.
Ah, I didn’t realize that. Makes sense.
Just filling in some blanks in the discussion:
The script is credited to Terry Jones - it was co-written with Laura Phillips. For a time it kept going back and forth between them for re-writes and they eventually just kept changing the changes back & forth. Finally a (sort of) finished script was locked into place. Towards the end of the shoot Elaine May was brought in to help with a bit of doctoring. The story itself was developed by Jim and Froud but was originally (and unwittingly) inspired by Maurice Sendak’s “Outside Over There” - there is a credit acknowledging their debt to his works.
The Chilly Down song was also “inspired” by a Wild Tchoupitoulas tune.
Ron Mueck performed the voice for Ludo - the physical performance was shared with yours truly. That costume was brutal. We took turns in various scenes and had our owned molded fiberglass hip harnesses on the inside. Eventually, as the shoot wore on, we all found ourselves shooting on 3 different sound stages simultaneously and Jim would have to ride back and forth between setups on a bike - inevitably the harnesses got mixed up and Ron and I suffered through the shape of each others pelvis. Getting lifted up to the top of the tower for the calling of the rocks scene, my harness split on one side from the weight of the costume and when I was set down in to tower the split closed up again, pinching me. Still have the marks. I also performed the Red Riding Goblin that jousted with Sir Didymus, the little goblin that polished Bowie’s boots, some of the hands in the Shaft Of hands, part of the Chilly Down puppet team and a bunch of other stuff.
The bog of stench really did “Smell Bad”. George Gibbs, the FX guy, had the water in the tank thickened with cellulose and then covered in a layer of coloured oil. We shot on that set for 3 weeks. After the first week the cellulose had broken down and was rotting. So long as the oil remained undisturbed we were okay - but when those hydraulic fart plants started going the stench was unbearable.
Being on set was amazing. The sets were incredible and, unfortunately, the way the whole thing was shot it never really did justice to the look and feel of the world created on the soundstage. Goblin City was insane and the Escher set alone would almost make you fall over when you stepped on stage.
My favourite memories of Bowie during that time were sharing my gin & tonic during dailies and one day when we were all trooping back to the dressing rooms - he was in full makeup & costume and started skipping in those boots, singing: We’re Off To See The Wizard. Brilliant.
I know for some people of a certain age this a touchstone film for them. While I still admire the craft of everyone who worked on it - whenever I see it now all I get to feel are the aches and pains of all the injuries sustained during the shoot. Kinesthetic memory is a bitch.
I’ll stop complaining now. Go enjoy the film.
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Thank you for filling in that gap; I had forgotten that you shared that role, and it most certainly looks like a physically demanding shoot. It’s awesome to hear what it was like from the “other side” –– the illusion on screen is so seamless that it’s easy to forget what’s going on inside those suits. I spoke to Mike Quinn once about Dark Crystal and he said he still feels the pain of performing a Skeksis when he sees that film, and I can only imagine the hell of being inside a Mystic. The fan in me wants to know what it was like on the Fraggle set compared to this, though!
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