Category Archives: San Francisco

Interview excerpt: Walter Murch recalls Michael Sundin’s Performance as Tik-Tok

Here's a nice mid-week treat for you all - a five minute excerpt from our interview with Walter Murch. Walter directed Return to Oz for Disney at Elstree Studios in the early 1980s.  Michael Sundin, who was the World Trampolining Champion at the time, was cast to perform as Tik-Tok - actually physically operating the robot character from inside.  In this clip, Walter recalls quite what Michael had to go through in order to be able to perform as Tik-Tok, including standing with his head pointing between his legs, his arms back to front and walking while watching himself on a TV monitor! During the filming, the BBC's flagship children's show Blue Peter visited the set and filmed a profile about Michael.  This subsequently led to him becoming the 14th Blue Peter presenter.  Michael sadly died in 1989. ...
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Walter Murch and our Return to London

It's 15:30 at San Francisco airport and we are just having a last team meal before our flight. This morning, we had the honour of being guests in the home of Walter Murch - the Oscar winning editor of Apocalypse Now, The Godfather Trilogy and The English Patient. Walter spoke to us for over an hour about his time directing Return to Oz at Elstree Studios and we had a wonderful time. Afterwards Walter and his lovely wife showed us a short film of the "Droid Olympics" featuring a young George Lucas and a young Brad Bird! 20131222-153559.jpg 20131222-153746.jpg So we leave California with a lot of happy memories and a lot of success. To have recorded interviews with Steven Spielberg, Joe Turkel and Walter Murch in one trip has been such a privilege and an honour and we owe so many people a lot of thanks: Firstly, we clearly owe each...
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San Francisco

We are now towards the end of our California trip; the last part of which has been spent in San Francisco. The City is beautiful and we are in the heart of town in Union Square. It feels very Christmassy too - a giant Macy's Christmas tree overlooks an outdoor ice skating rink and there are beautiful lights everywhere. Tomorrow, just before we fly home, we have the extreme honour of visiting Walter Murch at his home. He has generously offered to spend the first morning of his Christmas holiday with us, so that we can interview him about the time he directed Return to Oz for Disney at Elstree Studios. I love the film and feel Walter should have been given a chance to do a director's commentary on the DVD release, so I hope our interview answers some questions about the making of the film. 20131221-185722.jpg 20131221-185733.jpg...
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