Labyrinth (1986 Film) Jim Henson

Origins and script

Brian Froud says that Labyrinth was first discussed between himself and director Jim Henson.[12] Both agreed to work on another project together, and Froud suggested that the film should feature goblins. On the same journey, Froud "pictured a baby surrounded by goblins" and this strong visual image, along with Froud's insight that goblins traditionally steal babies, provided the basis for the film's plot.[17]

Henson discussed the film's origins to say that he and Froud "wanted to do a lighter weight picture, with more of a sense of comedy since The Dark Crystal got kind of heavy, heavier than we had intended. Now, I wanted to do a film with the characters having more personality and interacting more."[17]

Labyrinth was being seriously discussed as early as March 1983, when Henson held a meeting with Froud and children's author Dennis Lee.[18] Lee was tasked with writing a novella on which a script could be based, submitting it at the end of 1983.[19] Henson approached Terry Jones to write the film's script, as "his daughter Lisa had just read Erik the Viking and suggested that he try me as screenwriter".[20] Jones was given Dennis Lee's novella to use as a basis for his script but later told Empire that Lee had produced an unfinished "poetic novella" that he "didn't really get on with". In light of this, Jones "discarded it and sat down with Brian [Froud]'s drawings and sifted through them and found the ones that I really liked, and started creating the story from them".[21]

Jones is credited with writing the screenplay, while the shooting script was actually a collaborative effort that featured contributions from Henson, George Lucas, Laura Phillips, and Elaine May. Jones has said that the finished film differs greatly from his original vision. Jones states that, "I didn't feel that it was very much mine. I always felt it fell between two stories, Jim wanted it to be one thing and I wanted it to be about something else." Jones has said that his version of the script was "about the world, and about people who are more interested in manipulating the world than actually baring themselves at all". In Jones' original script, Jareth merely seems "all powerful to begin with" and is actually using the Labyrinth to "keep people from getting to his heart".[20]

Jones has said that Bowie's involvement in the project had a significant impact on the direction taken with the film. Jones had originally intended for the audience not to see the centre of the Labyrinth, prior to Sarah's reaching it, as he felt that, in doing so, it robbed the film of a significant "hook". Henson decided that he wanted Jareth to sing and appear throughout the film, which was something Jones considered the "wrong" decision, with the thought of Bowie starring in the film in mind. Despite his misgivings, Jones rewrote the script to allow for performing songs throughout the film. This draft of the script "went away for about a year". During this time, it was redrafted first by Phillips and subsequently by Lucas.[17][20]

An early draft of the script attributed to Jones and Phillips is markedly different from the finished film. The early script has Jareth enter Sarah's house in the guise of Robin Zakar, the author of a play she is due to perform in. Sarah does not wish her brother would be taken away by the goblins, and Jareth snatches him away against her will. Jareth is overtly villainous in this draft of the script. His final confrontation with Sarah tells her that he would "much rather have a Queen" than "a little goblin prince". The early script ends with Sarah kicking Jareth in disgust, and her blows transform him into a powerless, sniveling goblin. In the extensive junkyard scene, Jareth operates the Junk Lady as a puppet, whereas, in the film, she is autonomous. There is actually a pub or bar in the Labyrinth where the Man with Hat and Hoggle gather, and the river Lethe in Greek myth is mentioned. As well as this, the ballroom scene features extensive dialogue between Jareth and Sarah, whereas, in the film, there is none (though there is in the novelization by A. C. H. Smith), and the goings-on with the dancers in the ballroom are more overtly sexualised.[22]

The redrafted script was sent to Bowie, who found that it lacked humour and considered withdrawing his involvement in the project as a result. To ensure Bowie's involvement, Henson asked Jones to "do a bit more" to the script to make it more humorous.[20][21] May met with Henson in several months, prior to the start of filming in April 1985, and was asked to polish the script. May's changes "humanised the characters" and pleased Henson to the extent that they were incorporated into the film's shooting script.[23][24]

At least 25 treatments and scripts were drafted for Labyrinth between 1983 and 1985. The film's shooting script was only ready shortly before filming began.[23]

Casting

Henson intended the protagonist of the film, at different stages of its development, as a king whose baby had been put under an enchantment, a princess from a fantasy world, and a young girl from Victorian England. They made the lead a teenage girl from contemporary America to make the film more commercial. Henson noted that he wished to "make the idea of taking responsibility for one's life, which is one of the neat realisations a teenager experiences, a central thought of the film".[17]

Auditions for the lead role of Sarah began in England in April 1984. Helena Bonham Carter auditioned for the role but was passed over in favour of an American actress. Monthly auditions were held in the US until January 1985, and Jane Krakowski, Yasmine Bleeth, Sarah Jessica Parker, Marisa Tomei, Laura Dern, Ally Sheedy, Maddie Corman, and Mia Sara all auditioned for the role. Out of these, Krakowski, Sheedy, and Corman were considered the top candidates. Fourteen-year-old actress Jennifer Connelly "won Jim [Henson] over", and he cast her within a week.[23] Henson states that Connelly was chosen, as she "could act that kind of dawn-twilight time between childhood and womanhood".[25] Connelly moved to England in February 1985, in advance of the film's rehearsals, which began in March.[23] Connelly discussed her understanding of her role with Elle magazine that the film is about "a young girl growing out of her childhood, who is just now becoming aware of the responsibilities that come with growing up".[26]

The character of Jareth also underwent some significant developments during the early stages of preproduction. Henson states that he originally intended him as another puppet creature in the same vein as his goblin subjects.[17] Henson decided that the role should be filled by a live actor and initially considered offering it to Simon MacCorkindale or Kevin Kline.[27] Henson eventually wanted a big, charismatic star "who could change the film's whole musical style" to play the Goblin King[17] and sought a contemporary musician for the role, considering Sting, Prince, Mick Jagger, and Michael Jackson before choosing Bowie.[28]

Henson stated that, "I wanted to put two characters of flesh and bone in the middle of all these artificial creatures, and David Bowie embodies a certain maturity, with his sexuality, his disturbing aspect, all sorts of things that characterise the adult world."[29] Henson met David Bowie in the summer of 1983 to seek his involvement, as Bowie was in the US for his Serious Moonlight Tour at the time.[30] Henson pursued Bowie for the role of Jareth and sent him each revised draft of the film's script for his comments. During a meeting that took place on June 18, 1984, Henson showed Bowie The Dark Crystal and a selection of Brian Froud's concept drawings to pique his interest in the project.[31] Bowie formally agreed to take part on February 15, 1985, several months before filming began.[17][31] Bowie discussed why he was involved in the film, stating that, "I'd always wanted to be involved in the music-writing aspect of a movie that would appeal to children of all ages, as well as everyone else, and I must say that Jim gave me a completely free hand with it. The script itself was terribly amusing without being vicious or spiteful or bloody, and it had a lot more heart in it than many other special effects movies, so I was pretty hooked from the beginning."[32]

Gates McFadden was originally offered the role of Sarah's mother by Henson, and she signed up to do the choreography as well, but she was not allowed to act in the film and had to accept the choreography role alone due to union rules. She is credited in the film as Cheryl McFadden (her first name), as she usually is when being credited for choreography work. She said that, "Even though that was the reason I took the job and had, for two years, been thinking that was what was going to happen. They would not allow us."[33]

Filming

The team that worked on Labyrinth was largely assembled from talent who had been involved in various other projects with the Jim Henson Company. Veteran performers Dave Goelz and Steve Whitmire operated various puppets in the film, along with Karen Prell, Ron Mueck, Rob Mills, and Kathryn Mullen (as various goblins), who had all worked with Henson on Fraggle Rock. Kevin Clash, a puppeteer from Sesame Street best known for performing the character Elmo, also worked on the film as various creatures, as did Frank Oz, who performed briefly as the Wiseman (while also directing Little Shop of Horrors around that time). Members of Henson's family also worked on the production, including son Brian (the voice and chief puppeteer for Hoggle) and daughter Cheryl (who assisted on one of the Fireys and is also credited for building the characters). Newcomers working on the production included puppeteers Anthony Asbury, Angie Passmore, Nigel Plaskitt, and Mak Wilson (the latter three of whom are credited for performing goblins) who had previously worked on the satirical puppet show Spitting Image, while a few others, including David Barclay, David Greenaway, Toby Philpott, and Mike Quinn, were carried over from The Dark Crystal. Other goblin puppeteers included David Rudman (also known for his work on Sesame Street), Robin Stevens, Don Austen, Robert Tygner, and, briefly, Jim Henson himself. Louise Gold, a veteran Muppet performer who had gotten her start on The Muppet Show, cameos in the film as a masked ballroom dancer during the "As the World Falls Down" sequence, while Kenny Baker and Warwick Davis, best-known as the performers of Star Wars' R2-D2 and Wicket W. Warrick respectively, were credited as some of the "Goblin Corps". "Ambrosius", Sir Didymus' canine steed, was voiced by Percy Edwards, who had previously supplied the voice of "Fizzgig" in The Dark Crystal.

Principal photography began on April 15, 1985, at Elstree Studios.[35] Labyrinth took five months to film and was a complicated shoot due to the various puppets and animatronic creatures involved. In the making-of documentary Inside the Labyrinth, Henson stated that Jim Henson's Creature Shop had been building the puppets and characters required for around a year and a half, prior to shooting, but "everything came together in the last couple weeks". Henson noted that, "even if you have the characters together, the puppeteers start working with them, they find problems or they try to figure out what they're going to do with these characters".[28]

Each of the film's key puppets required a small team of puppeteers to operate it, but Hoggle was the most complex puppet of the production. Shari Weiser was inside the costume, while Hoggle's face was radio-controlled by Brian Henson (who also provided the character's voice and performed a few goblins) and three additional puppeteers. Brian Henson stated that Weiser "does all the body movement and her head is inside the head. However, the jaw is not connected to her jaw. Nothing that the face is doing has any connection with what she's doing with her face. The other four members of the crew are all radio crew, myself included," in the Inside the Labyrinth documentary. Brian Henson also said of the challenges involved with performing Hoggle that, "five performers trying to get one character out of one puppet was a very tough thing. Basically, what it takes is a lot of rehearsing and getting to know each other."[28] The film's big, ogre-like monster Ludo, whose original build weighed over 100 pounds, was similarly challenging. It would have been too exhausting for performer Ron Mueck to inhabit the 75-pound suit for all of his scenes, so Henson decided to have Mueck and Rob Mills exchange performances inside Ludo, as they were the same size and had a similar body shape.

At the early stages of filming, stars Connelly and Bowie found it difficult to interact naturally with the puppets they shared most of their scenes with. Bowie said that, "I had some initial problems working with Hoggle and the rest, because, for one thing, what they say doesn't come from their mouths, but from the side of the set or from behind you."[32] Connelly remarked that, "it was a bit strange [working almost exclusively with puppets in the film], but I think both Dave [Bowie] and I got over that and just took it as a challenge to work with these puppets, and, by the end of the film, it wasn't a challenge anymore. They were there, and they were their characters."[36]

The film required large and ambitious sets constructed, from the Shaft of Hands to the rambling, distorted Goblin City where the film's climactic battle takes place.[28] The Shaft of Hands sequence was filmed on a rig that was thirty feet high, with a camera mounted on a forty-foot vertical camera track. Many grey, scaly hands integral to the scene were actually 150 live hands supplied by 75 performers and 200 foam-rubber hands.[35] Connelly was strapped into a harness when shooting the scene and spent time between takes suspended midway up the shaft.[28]

The set of the Goblin City was built on Stage 6 at Elstree Studios near London and required the largest panoramic back cloth ever made. Production designer Elliot Scott states that the biggest challenge he faced was building the forest Sarah and her party pass through on their way to Jareth's Castle. The film's production notes state that, "the entire forest required 120 truckloads of tree branches, 1,200 turfs of grass, 850 pounds of dried leaves, 133 bags of lichen, and 35 bundles of mossy old man's beard".[25]

Most filming was conducted at Elstree Studios, while a small amount of location shooting was carried out in England and the US. The park seen at the start of the film is part of the West Wycombe Park estate in Buckinghamshire, England. The scenes of Sarah running back home were filmed in various towns in New York State, namely Upper Nyack, Piermont, and Haverstraw.[37]

Shooting wrapped on September 8, 1985.[38]

Post-production

Most of the visual effects on Labyrinth were achieved in-camera with several notable exceptions. The most prominent of these postproduction effects was the computer-generated owl that appears at the opening of the film. The sequence was created by animators Larry Yaeger and Bill Kroyer at Digital Productions[39][40] and marked the first use of a realistic CGI animal in a film.[41] The owl head maquette was rescued from a skip when the animation company Omnibus went bankrupt in 1987.[42]

The scene where Sarah encounters the Fire Gang was altered in postproduction, as it had been filmed against black velvet cloth to disguise the puppeteers, and a new forest background was added behind. Jim Henson was unhappy with the compositing of the finished scene, although he considered the puppetry featured in it worthy including them.[29]

Henson received help editing the film from executive producer George Lucas. Henson states that, "When we hit the editing, I did the first cut, and then George was heavily involved on bringing it to the final cut. After that, I took it over again and did the next few months of post-production and audio." Henson went on to say that, "When you edit a film with somebody else you have to compromise. I always want to go one way, and George goes another way, but we each took turns trading off, giving and taking. George tends to be very action-oriented and he cuts dialogue quite tight. I tend to cut looser, and go for more lyrical pauses, which can slow the story. [In doing] so, I loosen up his tightness, and he tightens my looseness."[17]

Music

The soundtrack album features Trevor Jones' score, which is split into six tracks for the soundtrack: "Into the Labyrinth", "Sarah", "Hallucination", "The Goblin Battle", "Thirteen O'Clock", and "Home at Last".

Bowie recorded five songs for the film: "Underground", "Magic Dance", "Chilly Down", "As the World Falls Down", and "Within You". "Underground" is featured on the soundtrack twice. The first version of "Underground" is played in an edited version that was played over the film's opening sequence, while the second version is played full. "Underground" was released in various territories as a single and, in certain markets, was also released in an instrumental version and an extended dance mix.[43] "Magic Dance" was released as a 12" single in the US.[44] "As the World Falls Down" was initially slated for release as a follow-up single to "Underground" at Christmas in 1986, but this plan did not materialise.[45] Bowie did not perform the lead vocals on "Chilly Down", which was performed by Charles Augins, Richard Bodkin, Kevin Clash, and Danny John-Jules, the actors who voiced the "Firey" creatures in the film.[46] A demo of "Chilly Down" under its original title "Wild Things", which was performed by Bowie, was leaked in 2016 by Danny John-Jules shortly after Bowie's death.[47]

Steve Barron produced promotional music videos for "Underground" and "As the World Falls Down". The music video for "Underground" features Bowie as a nightclub singer who stumbles upon the Labyrinth encountering many of the creatures seen in the film. The clip for "As the World Falls Down" integrates clips from the film. This video uses them, along with black and white shots of Bowie performing the song in an elegant room. Both were released on the 1993 VHS tape Bowie – The Video Collection and the 2002 two-disc DVD set Best of Bowie.

In 2017, Capitol Studios announced a reissue of the soundtrack on a vinyl record. This included all five original songs by David Bowie, along with Trevor Jones' score.[48]