THE STORY OF THE SHOT
Jurassic Park
How iconic images came to life
SAM NEILL HAS vivid memories about this month’s shot, the moment in Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park where a T-Rex stomps into the mud before a cowering Alan Grant (Neill) and Lex (Ariana Richards). “I’m probably in a little bit of pain in that photo,” he recalls. “We’d previously shot Alan Grant waving a flare to distract the T-Rex and a lump of burning stuff landed on my arm and went under my watch. There’s still a big scar where this stuff landed.”
The first big scare of the movie — “There’s been a wobbly glass, some absence of goat, so anticipation is rising,” says Neill — it’s a moment burnished by the brilliance of live-action-dinosaur creator Stan Winston. Bitten by the malfunctioning mechanical shark on location making Jaws, Spielberg insisted Jurassic Park’s animatronic creatures be shot in the sanctity of a studio (save a sick Triceratops). The production had taken up all the stages at Universal Studios, so the T-Rex paddock was created at Warner Bros. Studios on Stage 16, one of the biggest in Hollywood. For the giant stamp, the ’Rex was played by a bottom half consisting of a walking rig with two 15-feet-tall legs, weighing 2,000 lb — only there was a fatal flaw.