Information about Earthquake (film)

Earthquake
Earthquake movie poster
Directed by	Mark Robson
Produced by	Mark Robson
Written by	George Fox Mario Puzo
Starring	Charlton Heston Ava Gardner George Kennedy Lorne Greene Geneviève Bujold Richard Roundtree Marjoe Gortner Barry Sullivan Lloyd Nolan Victoria Principal
Music by	John Williams
Cinematography	Philip H. Lathrop
Editing by	Dorothy Spencer
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Running time	123 min.
Language	English
Budget	$7,000,000 USD
IMDb profile

Earthquake is a 1974 disaster film that was among several box-office successful disaster films of the 1970s that places a recognizable all-star cast in life and death situations. The basic plot concerns the reactions and struggles for survival after a catastrophic earthquake that reaches 9.9 on the Richter scale hits the city of Los Angeles, California.

Directed by Mark Robson and with a screenplay by George Fox and Mario Puzo, starring Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, Lorne Greene, George Kennedy, Geneviève Bujold, Richard Roundtree, Marjoe Gortner, Barry Sullivan, Lloyd Nolan, Victoria Principal, Monica Lewis and Walter Matthau (credited as "Walter Matuschanskayasky".)

Origins

In the wake of the tremendous success of their disaster-suspense film Airport, Universal Studios began working with executive producer Jennings Lang to come up with another idea that would work with the same "disaster-suspense" genre that made Airport so financially successful, only on a larger scale. The genesis of the idea literally "came to them" as a direct result of the San Fernando Earthquake, a moderate but impactful earthquake which shook the Los Angeles area during the early morning hours of February 9, 1971. Director Mark Robson and Lang were intrigued with the idea of creating a disaster on film that would not be confined to an airliner, but rather take place over a large area. Thus, Earthquake was born.

Development

Lang scored a major coup when he was able to sign on legendary screenwriter Mario Puzo to pen the first draft during the summer of 1972. Puzo, fresh off the success of his novel and film, The Godfather, delivered the script in August. Much like his Godfather films, the characters and situations in his Earthquake script were intricate, and showed a similar attention to detail. However, Puzo's detailed script necessitated a much larger production budget (as the action and characters were spread over a much larger geographical area in the City of Los Angeles), and Universal was faced with either cutting the script down, or increasing the film's projected budget. Puzo's involvement with Earthquake was short lived, however, as Paramount Pictures was anxious to begin development with the followup to The Godfather, . Since Puzo's services were contractually obligated to the sequel, he felt he would be unable to continue work on two projects of such a large scale, so he opted out of continuing any further work on Earthquake.

The Earthquake script languished at Universal Studios for a short period of time, but was brought back to life by the huge success of 20th Century Fox's hit, The Poseidon Adventure, released in December, 1972. Fueled by the enormous box office receipts of that film, Universal Studios put pre-production on Earthquake back in to high gear, hiring writer George Fox to continue work with Puzo's first draft. Director Mark Robson worked with Fox (who was more of a magazine writer - this was his first screenplay) to narrow the scope of the script down to fit into the budgetary constraints. After eleven drafts, Earthquake went before the cameras in February, 1974.

Production

Budgeted at $7,000,000 USD, Earthquake immediately found itself in a race against the clock with another (and bigger-budgeted) disaster film, The Towering Inferno, which was being produced by two movie studios (a motion picture first) by The Poseidon Adventure producer, Irwin Allen. While that film featured a larger "all star" cast (in fact, Universal had approached several, including Steve McQueen and Paul Newman, to star in Earthquake - but they had already signed to Allen), Universal was able to land Charlton Heston in the lead role, along with Ava Gardner (who signed at the proverbial "11th hour" simply because she wanted to spend the summer in Los Angeles), George Kennedy, Lorne Greene, Geneviève Bujold (who agreed to a part in the film to head off an impending lawsuit by Universal over a prior project), Richard Roundtree (fresh off the Shaft film series), former evangelical Marjoe Gortner, and fresh-faced newcomer Victoria Principal.

Production necessitated the complete destruction of the Universal Studios backlot in order to simulate the catastrophic earthquake of the title (as doing the same on Los Angeles streets would not have been possible). Along with a clever use of miniatures of actual buildings, matte paintings, and full-scale sets, Earthquake combined decades old special effects techniques with those developed especially for the film (including a revolutionary "Shaker Mount" camera system, which mimicked the effects of an earthquake).

Extensive use of highly trained stunt artists for the most dangerous scenes involving high falls, dodging falling debris, and flood sequences, set a Hollywood record for the most stunt artists involved in any film production up until that time: 141. Some stunt artists were required to fall sixty feet onto large air bags, for which they were paid the princely sum of $500.00

"Sensurround"

Universal Studios and Jennings Lang wanted Earthquake to be an "Event Film" - something that would draw audiences in to the theatre multiple times. After several ideas were tossed about (which included bouncing faux styrofoam "debris" over audience members heads), Universal's sound department came up with a process called "Sensurround" - a series of large speakers and a 1,500 watt amplifier, that would pump in sub-audible "infra bass" sound waves at 120 decibels (equivalent to a jet airplane at takeoff), giving the viewer the sensation of an earthquake. The process was tested in several theatres around the United States prior to the film's release, yielding various results. A famous example is Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California, where the "Sensurround" cracked the plaster in the ceiling. Ironically, the same theatre premiered Earthquake three months later -- with a newly-installed net over the audience to catch any falling debris -- to tremendous success.

Release

After October test screenings in various theatres throughout the country, Universal opted to cut thirty minutes from the film at the last minute (notably from the pre-quake sequences), at the cost of some of the dramatic flow (including a sub-plot involving an abortion).

Released in the United States on November 15, 1974, Earthquake grossed nearly $80,000,000 USD ($333,000,000 USD, adjusted for inflation in 2007 dollars), becoming the fourth-highest grossing film of 1974 (Its competition, The Towering Inferno, was the highest).

The "Sensurround" process proved to be a large audience draw as well, but not without generating a fair share of controversy. In addition to the cracked ceiling plaster at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, there were several documented cases of nosebleeds generated by the sound waves. When the film premiered in Chicago, Illinois, the head of the building and safety department demanded the system be turned down, as he was afraid it would cause structural damage. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, a knick-knack shop next door to a theatre using the system lost part of its inventory when items from several shelves were thrown to the floor when the system was cued during the quake scenes. Perhaps the most amazing Sensurround incident occurred when a patron's ribs were cracked by the intense output of the system.

Releases

• 1974: Theatrical Premiere
• 1975: USA: Original Release
• Canada
• Mexico
• 1976: China
• France
• UK
• Italy
• 1977: Japan

Television Premiere

For the film's October, 1976 television premiere on NBC, additional footage was added to expand the running time of the film so it could be shown over two nights. Contrary to popular belief, this "television version" made no use of material originally left out of the theatrical release (save one brief scene featuring Victoria Principal and Reb Brown), but rather new footage was shot some two years after the original, using some of the stars from the theatrical version. New scenes included a young married couple (Debralee Scott and Sam Chew) on an airliner attempting to land at Los Angeles International Airport during the earthquake.

Sequel

A script for a sequel, Earthquake II, was written in late-1975, and featured the characters of George Kennedy, Victoria Principal, Richard Roundtree, and Gabriel Dell, but was never pushed into production. Earthquake II details the main characters adjusting to new lives in San Francisco as refugees from the Los Angeles quake of the original film, when another major, more catastrophic earthquake and tsunami strikes the Bay Area. Production was cancelled in the pre-production stage in late-1977, as the popularity of disaster films was starting to wane.

Trivia

• The 2006 Universal Home Video DVD release features the original "Sensurround" 3.1 audio track, duplicating the original theatrical "Sensurround" track, which generated low frequency, high-power sound waves which "shook" the theatre. In addition, the films original soundtrack was remixed in Surround Sound 5.1 (a different arrangement than "Sensurround)."
• On an episode of Quantum Leap, Sam Beckett leaped in as one of the stuntmen on the fictional disaster film "Disco Inferno" (footage from Earthquake was used, as it and Quantum Leap were both made by Universal Studios). "Sam" is the man hanging from a piece of debris whom Sam Royce (Lorne Greene's character) attempts to save, but loses his grip and falls.
• Footage from the earthquake sequence was reused in the Galactica 1980 episode "Galactica Discovers Earth", in a "computer simulation" of a devastating Cylon attack on LA.
• Walter Matthau is credited in this film as "Walter Matushanskayasky". (Click the name to find out why.)
• Parts of the movie, namely portions of the film when the big earthquake struck, was used in the music video Another Postcard by Barenaked Ladies.
• The film can be seen playing in the background of the movie Scarface during the scene set in the "Sun Ray Motel" where Tony Montana conducts a botched drug transaction with the Columbian drug dealer Hector.
• Footage from the sequence featuring the collapse of the Hollywood dam was reused in the 1984 NBC mini-series V: The Final Battle during the destruction of the Visitors water pumping station.

Awards

Earthquake won an Academy Award for Best Sound, as well as a Special Achievement Award for visual effects. The film also introduced a widely publicised gimmick called "Sensurround." The marketing of the film made full use of this gimmick, and provided a novelty factor to help entice people into the cinemas. It was used again for the films Midway (1976), Rollercoaster (1977) and Battlestar Galactica but had limited use and was dispensed with after this.

Ride

A theme park attraction based on the film, appropriately titled "Earthquake", is located at Universal Studios Florida. The attraction, in its original form from 1990-2002, took you through three rooms and showed you the secrets behind the special effects in the movie, and then put you in the middle of an 8.3 Earthquake. In 2002, the preshow sequence was removed and replaced with a new show, "The Magic of Effects," which took you through the three rooms and showed you the secrets behind special effects in Universal's movies. This ran until September 8, 2007, when the show closed once again to make way for a brand new, unannounced show, set to open during the Christmas season of 2007. The ride will also be closing in November 2007 for set enhancements, and will reopen with the new preshow experience.

The ride is a simulation of an Earthquake, measuring 8.3 on the Richter Scale, combining special effects such as a giant oil tanker exploding directly in front of the riders as it crashes through the subway station roof, a train derailment that nearly ploughs into you, and 60,000 gallons of water from a ruptured water main travelling right into the side of your open sided train as you enter San Francisco's Embarcadero BART station. There is a Universal Studios Hollywood version, but it does not include the special effects show and is included as part of the Backlot Tour rather than a separate attraction, so the ride is experienced in the tram cars rather than an actual "train". There is no connection between the events of the film and the events depicted in the ride--the film takes place in Los Angeles, California, the ride takes place in Embarcadero BART station in San Francisco, California.

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