http://www.chud.com/news/mar00/mar15bearth.php3
'Battlefield Earth' Set Report!
JASON LEE RIDES AGAIN
By Nick Nunziata
3/15/00
Here's an "on set" report from a fellow who calls himself Earthling Slave #147. I don't know if this is an exclusive. All I know is that it provides some insight and that's all that matters. Read on:
"I was in the "cast of thousands" (and FX if more than the true 300 of us are ever shown) during last summer's shoot here in Montreal. A modest perspective, but enough to hope that BATTLEFIELD EARTH will transcend mere mediocrity and become a laugh riot along the lines of SHOW GIRLS. At least then my friends will watch and I can point out where I hammed my way on camera. One time was where I'm chain gang shackled to romantic lead Barry Pepper, cattle prodded along by the giant aliens to toil in the mines, when suddenly a flying saucer crash lands. An exhilarating if suffocating experience, with a crane load of styrofoam masonry mixed with kitty litter dumped on our heads. I was dust blinded for a full ten minutes and hero pampered by cute prop girls. As the dust clears and Barry makes his unlikely escape, there's the rest of us in our twitching death throes , pinned under chunks of fake cement. No one even thought of smearing us with blood. It's this kind of neglect for detail that makes me wonder about director Roger Christian's qualifications. The Scientology house director angle I'll leave to the informed (though he and glamour fossil wife Sally Kellerman floated around set in matching, loose fitting and spectral white angel drag during the hotter days) but he sure wasn't the Otto Preminger control maniac one would think a budgetted excess like this would require. He seemed, as I watched him with a gimlet eye, like a jolly oaf in a state of constant giggles, never addressing us hoards directly but, through cupped hands like a secretive teenybopper, he'd make suggestions to his assistants who'd blare vague instructions in French through their mega."
Thanks to Earthling Slave #147