Geena Davis can’t believe that she’s talking about The Fly 40 years later.
The Oscar winner tells Gold Derby that when was cast opposite Jeff Goldblum in David Cronenberg‘s remake of the 1958 B-movie, she had no clue she would become part of one of sci-fi horror’s most enduring classics. But now, four decades after the film’s release on Aug. 15, 1986, she thinks the hand-made approach has helped the film endure.
“It was pretty intense because nobody had CGI or anything then,” she says. “It all had to be real.”
Written by Charles Edward Pogue and Cronenberg, The Fly stars Goldblum as Seth Brundle, an eccentric scientist who develops teleportation technology. Davis plays Veronica Quaife, the journalist who becomes romantically involved with Brundle and ultimately witnesses his horrifying transformation after a housefly gets trapped in the portal and its DNA is merged with the scientist’s.
Critics embraced the film — it has an 81 “universal acclaim” rating on Metacritic — with Gene Siskel ranking it as one of his 10 best films of 1986 and Roger Ebert declaring Goldblum’s performance Oscar-worthy. At the Oscars, special makeup effects artists Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis took home the statuette for Best Makeup. Made for a reported $9 million, The Fly grossed more than $60 million worldwide, finishing in the top 25 for the year.
Davis’ instantly iconic line — “Be afraid, be very afraid” — is still quoted today.
Davis and Goldblum’s unconventional casting
At the time, Goldblum and Davis were unexpected choices for the leads. Both actors were primarily known for comedic work, while The Fly demanded an intensely dramatic combination of romance, horror and tragedy.
“I’d seen a lot of Vincent Price movies … all those William Castle things and those Roger Corman things, which I was seeing first-run in the early and mid ’60s, so I had a taste for that kind of thing,” Goldblum once said. “I like monster movies, and I read the script and it was a very intelligent, brilliant Cronenberg-esque version of that. … It was meaty. It was meaty and challenging.”
Davis was also dating Goldblum when she auditioned for the role, which initially made Cronenberg and the producers hesitant. She ultimately won them over, and her relationship with Goldblum became an asset to the performances. “We just lived and breathed that movie,” she says. “All we did was work on it and talk about it and and rehearse it and really make it our own.”
Mel Brooks kept the film alive — and coined its most famous line
The production nearly failed to get off the ground when 20th Century Fox passed on funding Pogue’s initial script, though the studio agreed to distribute if outside backing was secured.
Producer Stuart Cornfeld read Pogue’s draft and brought it to Mel Brooks — the two had previously collaborated on David Lynch’s Oscar-nominated The Elephant Man. Brooks agreed to produce The Fly through his production company, Brooksfilms, and stepped in to secure the remaining financing.
Beyond saving the project, Brooks was also responsible for the movie’s defining phrase: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” It came while Brooks and Cronenberg were discussing a scene where Brundle tries to reassure a visitor.
“At one point, Mel said, ‘When [Brundle] says, “Don’t be afraid,” the answer should be, “Yes, be afraid, be very afraid,”‘” Cronenberg later recalled. “He wasn’t really giving me dialogue, he was just reacting. And I said, ‘Yeah, I’m going to put that in the script.’ So let’s say it was a collaboration. But yes, it was Mel who came up with [that].”
‘Boily and misshapen’: Inside Goldblum’s transformation
Believe it or not, The Fly made Goldblum an unlikely sex symbol, thanks to several pre-monster shirtless scenes.
“Once I get mashed up with the fly DNA, I’m given to great power, volatile storms, and a sexuality, a fevered, unquenchable sexuality,” Goldblum once recounted. “I worked out to have that fly DNA, which is in [Cronenberg’s] interpretation is superhuman kind of resource. I was doing a lot of weight-lifting just before we shot. I pumped myself up for a couple of those scenes.”
However, this being classic Cronenberg body horror, Brundle becomes more insectoid through the film. The film relied on practical effects, meaning Goldblum’s transformation had to be created almost entirely through makeup, prosthetics, and costuming.
“Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis put me in a dentist’s chair for five hours and applied that thing. It was 2:30 in the morning and it was freezing,” Goldblum recalled. “And then another hour after we were done, rub, rub, rub, rub, rub, and took it off. I squeezed into this rubbery suit, so I look all boily and misshapen, and then I’d put on prosthetics. It’s not the most comfortable thing, but it wasn’t bad. It was a fun thing to do.”
“I would read whole books to him while he would get his makeup done,” says Davis, whose character is present for every stage of Brundle’s transformation, from the strange hairs and subtle physical changes to the loss of his nails and ears.
“It’s so gradual at first,” she recalls now. “It’s just weird hairs and little things that you don’t know what they are. And then his nails fall off and his ears fall off and all that.”
One scene in particular stayed with her: Veronica visiting Brundle as he becomes increasingly frightening, right when his ear suddenly completely drops off.
“The scene where I’m visiting him and I’m really kind of scared of the way he’s becoming,” Davis says. “As I’m talking to him, his ear falls off. He just can’t believe it. He is so wounded. And my character, just hugs him.”
Who swatted away the part?
Before Goldblum accepted the role of Seth Brundle, several other actors were considered. John Malkovich was reportedly the first choice, but he turned down the part. Michael Keaton, Richard Dreyfuss and John Lithgow were also in the mix. Lithgow later opened up about rejecting the role, saying, “My agent wanted me to do The Fly and I didn’t want to do it. I just finished another project and I was exhausted, and I found it such an icky story. I told my agent I just didn’t want to play something so grotesque.”
Goldblum, however, leapt at the opportunity to work with “international treasure” Croneberg. “However I got the part, I told him, ‘I want to do this.’ … That was a landmark and breakthrough for me creatively. I never before felt so passionate and invested.”
The opening-night gross-out
Davis and Goldblum attended the film’s opening-night screening in a packed theater in Times Square.
Davis recalls the crowd reacted loudly throughout, but one gruesome moment generated an especially boisterous response. In the scene, Veronica hugs Brundle on the side of his head where his ear had just dropped off, pressing her face directly against the gooey raw makeup.
“You couldn’t hear the dialogue in the next two scenes, because the entire theater goes, ‘Ahh, ahh!'” Davis says, making a retching sound. “Yeah, I probably should have been on the other side.”
Despite the collective gross-out, Davis has nothing but fond memories of The Fly.
“It got a lot of audible reaction, that kind of movie. It was so much fun!” she says, adding, “Cronenberg is a genius.”
