Left to right: SS Wilson, Alec Gillis, Tom Woodruff Jr and Brent Maddock. We played police officers and construction workers who arrive to Perfection at the end of the film. We are visible very briefly in the background.
MJS: What was the genesis behind the shriekers in Tremors 2? Did you want something that would be more dangerous?
BM: We wanted something that operated with different rules. The graboids hunt by vibrations through the ground - essentially a version of sound - and we thought it would be great if there was another sense that the shriekers use, which in this case is sensing body heat. That was the genesis of it, I think.
SSW: There was that, and there was also a desire to go away from people's expectations. When they first talked to us about having a Tremors 2, we really couldn't think of what we might do that was new. The curious thing about the graboids is that, once you understand them, they're not that dangerous. As we demonstrate at the beginning of Tremors 2.
BM: They're real easy to kill. You make some noise, they swallow some dynamite and they blow up.
SSW: So the obvious thing then is: there's a graboid queen, five hundred feet long. We just didn't want to do that. So at some point - and I don't remember when it was - we started thinking: 'What if they fragment into something smaller?' So it was that and the desire to change the rules so that our characters would once again be behind the eight-ball.
BM: The whole impetus, and it's always hard writing the scripts, is to go: what do the audience think is going to happen? How can we do something different that doesn't break the rules, that isn't a cheat? So that's what was motivating us.
MJS: Steve, what differences did you find between shooting second unit and shooting a whole movie?
BM: Human beings!
SSW: Yes, human beings.
BM: They are the trickiest.
SSW: Working with actors is very, very different.
BM: Actors or monsters: what's your favourite?
SSW: My cast was wonderfully supportive. They were all so talented and they were all so professional; on neither movie did we ever have any problems with the cast. The other thing is that there's a tremendous sense of responsibility. That's the main burden the director bears: you are the decision machine. Your job is to make decisions all day every day. At any moment, at all moments, you think, 'Perhaps the decision I just made is good or perhaps it's going to send us down a horrible rocky slope from where we can't recover.'
MJS: Apart from a smaller budget, did shooting for video-release affect the movie any other way?
SSW: You end up having a lot of discussions about format. They curiously wanted us to shoot it so that it would also fit in what's called the 1.85 format, the conventional aspect ratio. The shape of the image is what we're talking about. There's the television shape, which is four units by three units, and there's the conventional movie shape which is slightly more rectangular than that. That was just a constant annoyance in the course of it. Really it's mostly technological, that question. You are dealing in a digital effects universe and you're dealing with master tape. I didn't get to cut on film; we cut on video. Of course, I don't know that anybody cuts on film any more, but at the time it was an open question, when we did that film. But it's mostly technological stuff that you get involved in.
MJS: Did you find that people who came aboard but hadn't worked on Tremors were fans of the first movie?
SSW: Well, very many of the people who worked on Tremors 2 had worked on the first one - they really wanted to come back: the monster team; the second unit DP on the first one was our first unit DP on the second one; the effects guy actually was not on the first one because the effects guy was someone who had turned down the first one and regretted it. Peter Chesney left Waterworld early to come to work on Tremors 2.
BM: Our production designer, Ivo Cristante was the same one; he did a great job on both films.
SSW: Actually many, many people on the first one came back.
BM: What was nice was: when we made the first film, we treated everybody well, with respect, which isn't always the case in Hollywood. So we were able to benefit from that when we did Tremors 2.
MJS: What was the response to Tremors 2 when it came out?
SSW: In its universe it was huge, it was a runaway hit. Because the direct-to-video universe is one that's kind of not on the radar of conventional Hollywood. I consistently run into producers who don't even know that Tremors 2 exists. It's so funny because the fans are clamouring at our website all the time. There's one poor fan in Australia who has worn out the rental copy at his video store, and the video store won't buy another one, and he's asking us what to do.
BM: We don't have PAL copies, that's the problem.
MJS: Get him to e-mail the UK because both films are six pounds each over here on a budget label.
SSW: Great. See, that's what I'm hoping to put up on the website because we get questions all the time from all over the world about, 'Where can I see it?' - places where, for whatever reason, it's not for sale. Anyway, I went on this little press junket, me and Michael, and they sent us to these giant video distribution houses where our job, instead of talking to fans, was talking to people whose job it is to sell videos. And we talked to those people and said, 'Well, you'll have an easy time selling this. It'll be fun to sell.' And it was. But the short answer is: it took right off right away. They immediately sent us a plaque that we had sold 50,000 in some ridiculously short time.