Jurassic Park According to Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern and Sam Neill

[Interviewer] Let's talk about your open shirt.

I don't know, what about it?

[group laughs]

It wasn't in the script,

had nothing to do with my character,

it had nothing to do with the movie.

I don't know, it just happened somehow.

[Sam] Did he muscle you up or something?

No, no, but I saw the original drawing

and it's entitled Naughty Tusks.

[exciting music]

Welcome to an exclusive conversation for Vanity Fair.

We're gonna tell the story of how we made a movie

called Jurassic Park 30 years ago.

And possibly about how we reunited once again

for this movie called Jurassic World Dominion.

It's coming out this summer.

[projector running]

I think... [laughs]

[Interviewer] Is that the run from the-

The run. velociraptor?

Mr. Hammond, I think we're back in business.

[velociraptor cries]

[Ellie screams]

Yeah. That's my favorite.

That whole sequence,

it was the most fun I had with Steven.

He loved choreographing.

This idea of you're in this circumstance,

it's gonna be really terrifying, really scary,

and then the climax is you succeed and then you fall back,

and then something terrifying happens.

Oh, Mr. Arnold.

[Laura] No, it's such a relief,

but oh my God it's the worst, most horrific thing ever.

[velociraptor cries]

And then you throw yourself back,

but then you know, you're gonna be okay,

you're gonna make another. [Sam laughs]

And then you're gonna run like crazy,

and the you run a little bit more,

then you slam it shut.

And I want you to cry hysterically, cry, scream,

let it, people don't, they're not heroic in these moments.

And then you're gonna run, run as fast as you ever have,

like a marathon, we're training you for eight weeks.

And then suddenly we did the whole thing in like one master.

But, on the first take,

am I hearing laughter, have I gone crazy?

No, maybe it's just you needing to be in the moment,

that's gonna be so sad.

No, you're really hearing laughter.

Laura, you're hearing people laughing hysterically,

and suddenly I look back

and my wire of my flashlight

has been dragging all the various limbs

of Sam Jackson's character as I'm traveling.

Oh my God.

So I have like eight body parts as I go-

[Interviewer] Oh, there was more than the arm?

There was more than the arm,

they're props they put there just in case,

he wanted to see more, and a hundred people were howling.

But I was so focused in getting it right.

I'd never heard that before, that's fantastic.

I think Steven has it- Oh that's fantastic.

But I never seen it, but oh my God, we had so much fun.

[projector running]

No one really understood what we were up to.

Just Steven Spielberg was making a movie,

and it might have something to do with dinosaurs.

And then it was like,

oh it's based on the Michael Crichton book.

I hadn't read the script, I'd read the,

you know, they said, You got a meeting,

they're thinking about you for this part.

I'd read the book, came in to the meeting

and then he said, Hey, you know,

your part is gonna disappear.

I think that's what's gonna happen to this.

So sorry about that.

And I think I said, Oh, oh, wait okay,

but think of this, don't do that without.

And I think I said something,

having no impact on the final decision,

but luckily it did coincide with somehow

the part getting in there.

You were so prepared.

Always prepared. I'm nothing

if not conscientious.

The most prepared actor ever.

You were buffed, you had your costume with you.

You knew how every line was gonna be said, oh my God.

I don't know about that. Jeff, I was impressed.

I'd never seen anything like this.

Really? I know.

Oh, thank you. Me too.

[projector running]

I get a lot of flack to this day.

Sam Neill's American accent in Jurassic Park

was a load of T-Rex poo.

They're moving in herds.

[Jurassic Park Theme]

They do move in herds.

On day one, and it was the day

we fried the kid on the electric fence.

[dramatic music] [sparks sizzling]

[group laughs]

The day we fried the kid. [laughs]

Yeah.

You wonder why he cast Sam Neill to play this role.

That's so you.

Anyway, he came up to me halfway through the day

and he said, Hey Sam, you know the accent

we were talking about?

I said, Yeah, I've been working on it

for four weeks or something.

He said, Don't worry about it, just use your own voice.

I said, That's great, Steven, thank you so much.

And then four days later, he came up to me and said,

You know, that voice you're using now?

I said, Yeah, my voice.

He said, Somewhere in between.

It's like, God.

[projector running]

He definitely worked with both of us on the relationship.

Yeah.

And he was very specific about it.

We were in different places in our lives,

and he was never gonna settle down.

She was a serious scientist who also was gonna want

a commitment, and a life that wasn't just at a dig site.

You know, I think his, trying to figure out how we do that,

also given that we wanted the character

to be somewhat of a feminist within

this rather male dominated construct of the action movie,

and adding dialogue that supported her being

a badass feminist, and you know.

And so that was important to me and to Steven.

So those were our conversations, which I really appreciated.

We didn't rehearse, everything was in the moment.

He loved us trying things.

He loves making movies in such a way delicious way right.

That enthusiasm. Yeah, we were never not

able to improvise, or come up with a funny line.

[projector running]

I remember being incapable of imagining

how it would work and be spectacular.

But the big breakthrough of CGI was made,

where now they Kathy Kennedy describes a meeting where

Steven had said, Hey, I need these dinosaurs

that are running, running.

She went, Okay, well let me see.

And she talked to amusement park people, and she said,

Steven, that's not gonna work, we don't have that.

Dennis Muren was fooling around with these things

and said, Hey, after some time, come to my,

I think I've found something here that might interest you.

At ILM.

At ILM, showed them something on a computer,

from what I gather, the two of them,

I think Kathy and Steven- Yeah.

lept to their feet when they saw this and said,

Eureka!, you know, whatever, you know.

One of the guys there, they had the VistaVision

and they were gonna get the image of us

seeing the brachiosaurus for the first time,

we're all in the Jeep.

They'd put an X on a piece of paper up in the tree

where it was gonna, sort of eat a leaf,

and we all on the first shot looked, you know, in awe at it.

And someone came running over,

No, no, no, no, it's gonna be so vast.

And it was like, Jerry, Jerry run as though

you're the back of the dinosaur all the way to...,

so we could get the scope of how big it would be.

And we're like, Oh my God, Jerry, it's all the way back.

[Sam laughs] And his whole body.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've got all that room.

So when you guys see it, you can really take it all in.

We're like, All right, whatever.

I don't know if this is gonna come together, but okay.

CGI will never entirely replace the human being

because it's the actors that make this stuff real,

at the end of the day, don't you think?

At this point, note to editor,

cut to the CGI version of Sam continuing this sentence.

[group laughs]

And I say, finally, never will human being...

[projector running]

Bigger.

Why do they always have to go bigger?

[dinosaur growls]

[dramatic music]

We shot this under COVID conditions.

We were at one point, I think the only production

that was actually turning over in the world.

And we were all in a hotel together

in a remote part of England, and this is all we knew,

just each other.

Shortly before we gathered, we had a choice to live

kind of separately, in different housing,

around the area at Pinewood Studios.

And then on one call, I think we all had a confab,

and he said, Well, here's my vote.

I'm not gonna make you do anything,

but we have this hotel nearby

where we could all take it over and just be there,

and I think we could enjoy that, and it might be very safe.

And on weekends, on off days,

we could kind of keep rehearsing and developing things.

What's so incredible is that we all know

that feeling from childhood of imagining

what we always long to see.

I mean, the dinosaur being a huge part of

most children's lives.

And so I think for all of us to bring,

whatever it is for us as actors,

that childlike desperate longing

for your dream to come true.

Yeah, and if there's any evidence of, for me,

it's this right now, it's this moment right now.

Here we are, entangled with each other,

in a delightful way right now, with you and doing this.

I find that very magical and how great, you know.

Thank you, Vanity Fair.

Thank you, Vanity fair.

Thank you, Vanity fair.

You are, and vanity you are fair,

and vain somewhat.

[Laura laughs]