Jeff Goldblum Rewatches Jurassic Park, Independence Day, The Big Chill & More

Uh-oh.

That's a tooth.

Oh, bloody tooth. Uh-oh.

[Jeff laughing]

Hello, my name is Jeff Goldblum,

and today, we're going to be watching some scenes,

selected scenes from my so-called career.

Watch this.

[upbeat electronic music]

[upbeat electronic music]

[tape rewinding]

[rain pouring]

That radio's out too.

The mayor said to stay put.

Kids okay?

I didn't ask, why wouldn't they be?

The great Sam Neil is there, of course.

We had to sit there for, you know, a time,

and get the shot, but the very great Steven Spielberg,

on that one,

I think we came in a couple of,

you know, weeks or several days under schedule.

That guy not only is brilliant and inspiring

and exciting because he knows everything

about what he needs to get,

but is also in a creative surge conspicuously,

and going, Ah, I know what we could do. I know what we...

He's prepared so much

that he's free to come up with new ideas.

And that was the intersection there

of Mr. Spielberg and Stan Winston and Dennis Muren

and the technology to bring dinosaurs to life.

[rain pouring]

He left us. He left us.

You know, as I remember,

Mr. Spielberg and I were talking, and he was so generous,

we came up with this idea that instead of in the book,

as we got to talking, the lawyer, as you remember, goes,

Ah, ah, I shouldn't be here because the dinosaurs

or the T-Rex is out,

and he goes to the bathroom and eats him off the toilet.

[lawyer screaming]

And then, my character, he goes,

[Jeff muttering]

I'm getting out of here too.

And then, it chases me,

and happens to provide a moment for Samuel's character,

Alan Grant, to save the kids.

I think it came up in discussion where we said,

Hey, what if instead of being repetitive with the lawyer,

you know, not that these guys aren't scary,

the dinosaurs aren't scary,

but maybe my character is a little bit,

has a little bit of gumption

and self-sacrificing heroism in him, and goes,

gets that flare, lights it,

and purposely distracts the dinosaur,

and we all thought that was a good idea.

Anyway, just if you're interested in sausage making,

that changed a little bit at the 11th hour.

Hey, hey!

Ian, freeze!

Get the kids!

[Alan] [dinosaur growls] Get rid of the flare!

Get the kids!

[Alan] Get rid of the flare!

So there was nothing at this point but CGI,

so I'm running away from nothing.

Hey, chase me, chase me, chase me,

and like that, the rain, of course, is a rain machine,

turn on the rain and you get wet, you know?

There are other movies I've done where they do that,

and boy, they don't warm up that water so well.

[upbeat music] [tape rewinding]

Take these.

Just in case.

Where's...

Just in case.

I'm very proud of you.

Wow, sweet.

Well, you know,

now having kids myself,

I've got a 7-year-old and a 9-year-old.

I can't imagine, you know what it's like,

if they took a risk as radical as that seemed to be,

and have to possibly say goodbye to them for the last time.

It would be excruciating. Excruciating.

Oh.

And I'll bet, I don't know the whole backstory,

but I'll bet we've had a good relationship.

As you know, we're friends in the movie.

We play chess all the time,

and he cares about me, obviously, and I care about him.

And gee, I can imagine that being real.

What a great dad he is.

I've known him for a long time, but I love him to pieces.

And it's a sweet moment. And boy, you really got me.

I don't know what you do, why'd you do it to me?

But Judd Hirsch, you know, I'll bet at this point,

when did Ordinary People come out?

I'd seen him in many things, including Ordinary People.

And talk about a cry fest.

How you see how easy I am and mushy I can be.

When Judd Hirsch's character, the doctor,

the therapist helps, they meet at the office

and he's hysterical and he has a kind of epiphany

and he cries and stuff.

And then Tim Hutton, he says,

Are you my friend? Are you my friend?

Judd Hirsch says,

Count on it. Count on it.

And they hug.

And it's just very, very moving.

I feel, you know, it's fun to go to movies

that make you cry.

And I show movies to my kids and they see me boohoo

and they go, Da, da, what's the matter, you know?

I go, It's so sad.

So, you know, so I'll bet a little of that was working on me

as I was pretending that he was my father.

[upbeat music] [tape rewinding]

That's a tooth. Oh, bloody tooth.

Uh-oh.

[Jeff laughs]

Chris Walas, who won the Oscar for the makeup,

for the special effects makeup in this,

and David Cronenberg, great David Cronenberg,

who directed this movie.

What a wonderful guy he is and a terrific artist.

They were very careful beforehand in having designed it

and had five stages.

This took five hours as I remember to,

well, maybe the suit, the suit comes up to here.

And the suit, you kind of get on in a few minutes

with a little help, you know, a tight fitting,

rubbery thing that they'd beautifully fashioned

that comes up to there.

And then now, it's a five hour process.

They spend the next five hours.

Pieces, prosthetics, of course,

teeth things that you put in probably later.

And then paint, paint, paint, paint, paint.

Then it's made of,

it's done in such a way that you start working.

And between each take, as I remember,

it's starting to fall apart.

So they have to be doing that,

painting more and gluing more.

And then at the end of the day, by the way,

there's no, I always said,

I think still even the last time I did something like this,

there's no solvent that can just spray, spray, spray.

That's it, you're out of here.

It's rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, rub,

rub, rub, rub, rub.

Ouch, ouch. It's a little red.

My teeth have begun to fall out.

What I remember, and yes,

at the 11th hour in the trailer, now we're on the set.

I think a fly appeared and I was able to catch it

and thought, Hey, this is a good,

if it flew into our laps here, may as well kind of put it,

I don't want to hurt it, but let's pin that thing

and keep it alive as long as possible and watch it.

I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me before then,

but, you know, gee, I see, you know,

it kind of moves in this herky jerky way

and does this thing and you know, got what I got from that.

But then, as I remember the first time

I had to shoot a scene, I think it's the scene

where I break through those glass bricks.

[glass smashes] [woman screams]

And I think that's the first thing we filmed

with this five stage, five stuff on,

I started to move around kind of like a chicken.

I thought, Oh, it's like a chicken movement.

It's like, you know how those things go

and they waddle, their things waddle,

they reverberate around.

I thought maybe it's a little bit like that.

And then, well, here you go.

Jeff crashed through that thing.

Or a stunt guide crashed through the thing.

Now you land in the thing, we'll dump some fake glass,

some candy glass around you.

And now you come down, and now look for her.

And that's it.

[Jeff laughs]

After having done all that work,

hoping that something would come out of me behaviorally,

and that's what did.

[upbeat music] [tape rewinding]

Am I likable?

Do people like me?

Do they not seem to take to me?

What are you talking about?

We're watching a scene from Kaos, K-A-O-S.

You know, this is a show about

the Greek mythological characters, some of them,

as set in the modern day, pretty much the modern day.

You see, I wear different kinds of tracksuits,

that kind of thing, and those little tinted glasses.

I'm talking in my backyard on Mount Olympus,

back garden with Stephen Dillane, who plays Prometheus.

Stephen Dillane is a fantastic actor.

If you know everything about,

if you've devoted your life to studying the Greek gods,

the myths, you'll still enjoy this.

because Charlie Covell wrote these brilliant

and powerful and moving and hilarious scripts.

And they not only modernize the setting,

but kind of twist the ideas.

Do you remember that on all Olympia days past,

we would barbecue?

The whole gang, all of us

would be dancing around the meander.

So this is me and Prometheus, you know,

Prometheus was that character

who brought fire to the Earthlings.

And he's my good friend in this show.

He's my best friend and confidante

and therapist and confessor.

This was added,

additional shooting that we did

because originally all the scenes with me and Prometheus

were on that cliff face.

And I went and visited him there.

For one reason or another,

we changed the content of some of those scenes

in additional shooting and brought him

with this beaming up business to my beautiful overly,

you know, flaunting of wealth backyard.

Do you see this thing here?

Ah, come on. Come on.

This prophecy.

Geez.

I think it's coming to pass. It's happening.

Read it.

I know what it says. I said read it, please.

A line appears, the order wanes,

the family falls and Kaos reigns.

Like a lot of these guys who are not really powerful

but are given and somehow find themselves

in positions of authority.

Listen to what I'm saying now.

He maybe have weaknesses.

Real power lies in a person's ability to tell the truth.

Be honest, be authentic, know themselves,

connect with themselves and to others

and to lift others up and leave others

better off than they found them.

That's a real powerful person.

[upbeat music] [tape rewinding]

What are you talking about?

Nick is pissed off because Alex didn't leave us

a suicide note.

You think he could have sum up his reasons in a note?

Maybe a long note.

I can sum up people's whole lives in 32 paragraphs.

I once did an entire rock band in a page and a half

and they had two drummers.

Well, that's a very rich and warming

memory as you see all these people,

we had a good time together, you know?

We stayed together all in Beaufort, South Carolina

and rehearsed for four weeks together and bonded

because the whole thing is predicated

on our having a backstory that you feel a little, you know,

us having been close and now it's the aftermath, you know?

I knew he wasn't happy. That doesn't tell you much.

I had no idea how bad it was.

Glenn Close, I stay in touch with.

She's very wonderful and everybody is.

Now William Hart, hmm.

I think it was damn straight of Alex

not to cook up some neat phony Reader's Digest

condensation of his screwed up life for our entertainment.

I'm so sick of people selling their psyches

for a little attention.

He was classier than that.

Wonderful actor, wonderful man.

And I remember lots and lots and lots.

Will never forget it. I miss him.

And he was a spectacular actor,

and very, very giving and full of life force on this.

And had a unique character, unique personality,

and was really something.

Nobody like him.

What, do you think this is funny?

One of our best friends decided to kill himself

and we don't have a fucking clue as to why.

You never know why anyone does anything?

I don't know why I chose these socks this morning.

Oh, there's a great equation.

Your socks, Alex's death. Hmm.

They're pretty sad socks.

I believe in the old theory that everybody does everything

in order to get laid.

Who said that? Freud?

No, I did.

Really, it was a beautiful, you know, rehearsal,

you know, actorly, serious, special,

delightful, you know, thing that we did on most movies.

You don't have anything like that.

[upbeat music] [tape rewinding]

I am Oz, the Great and Terrible.

Something bad is happening in Oz.

The best way to bring folks together

is to give them a real good enemy.

I'm sorry to be so mushy,

but you got me going with that Independence Day.

And this kills me. This show just kills me.

When I saw it first on Broadway with Idina Menzel

and Kristin Chenoweth, I was a mess.

I didn't know what it was.

Somebody said, Oh, there's a hot ticket, and da, da, da.

And I went in and I had been such a fan for the movie,

for that original material.

And well, I don't know what it is about that primal thing

going home or Judy Garland or that whole movie.

It just gets me.

And I've shown my kids that movie

and I'm very emotional at that movie.

And then Steven Schwartz's music,

that music and that show just knocks me out.

And by the end of it, I was an emotional wreck.

You know, I didn't know they were going to be best friends.

I was wailing, I think,

as people were going out of the theater.

♪ Defying gravity ♪

You have no real power.

That's why I need you.

So when Mark Platt,

who originally developed this thing into a movie

and Jon M. Chu, who is really fantastic,

he showed me some early footage of,

I think I'm going to start with the hat,

with, you know, and water.

The witch is dead,

you know how she gets drowned in the first one,

but we're going to turn that upside down.

And he showed me things

and Nathan Crowley had already made some production.

This is the production designer.

Very brilliant, already made some models.

He took me around and said, you know,

This is what we're going to do

and would you like to do it?

Now we come to these two giant artists and people.

Come with me.

What? To meet the wizard.

I couldn't possibly! This is your moment.

I'm coming.

Ariana Grande, just, you know,

a beloved and giant musical superstar.

We met when she was 11.

She showed me pictures, I didn't remember.

She came backstage to The Pillowman.

I was doing this thing at the Booth Theater

and she saw productions with her mom.

She has pictures of the two of us backstage after,

or, you know, signing autograph.

It's fantastic. Anyway.

Now working with her, she's to play that part

and you see some of it in it.

Absolutely incredible.

Her acting and her singing.

And Cynthia Erivo.

Cynthia Erivo.

I'm not afraid.

Out of this world, out of this world.

They're both out of this world.

I should have been intimidated.

We sang songs all the time on set.

And Jon M. Chu helped us realize this character

as a little different from the idea in the movie.

I'm a kind of a Tesla character

who's invented the 20th century in a way

in this parallel universe and movies

and mythmaking and et cetera, et cetera.

At another time, I'll gush about it further,

as you can imagine.

[gentle music] [tape rewinding]

Thank you so, so much for watching.