Interview with Peter Elliott

What brought you to the Return to Oz project?

    Well, Return to Oz was shot at what was them EMIstudios at Boreham wood in England. I was just finishing a film at the same studios called Greystoke ( the Tarzan movie with Christophe Lambert) I played Silver beard Tarzan's ape father, trained and choreographed all the other actors being apes.
 
    This meant I had been working Quadruped (on all fours )for a long time. It seemed perfect to work as a wheeler on all fours just with wheels on the end. So I moved straight from one movie to the next along with a lot of other people, mechanics, puppeteers and other wheelers. They where just starting to develop how the wheelers where going to work so some of us that had been on all fours on Greystoke spent hours wheeling and falling our way around the studios testing all the new developments as they came out of the workshop. The best moment was when we found you could also stand up on just the back wheels giving a whole new dimension to the characters.

Besides helping to develop  the wheelers, was there any other involvement with the development process?

    They where also developing Tick Tock the wind up robot at the time. In which they cast an actor called Micheal Sundin. As this part was quite difficult because of the position the performer had to be in, your whole body was in the bottom half of the robot. You had to stand bent in half looking through your legs at a TV screen that had a camera seeing where you where going, the picture was flipped so it was not back to front like looking in a mirror. Your arms where crossed with your left hand working the robots right hand and vice versa and you walked backwards. So if somebody said move your right hand it could get very confusing.
 
    They thought it best to have another person on standby in case Michael could not perform. Which I agreed to do . The only problem I was bigger than Michael which meant I had to be jammed in to it making it very uncomfortable. There were a few stunt type things that Michael was not happy doing so I did. These included some of the fast runs and walks and one quite scary stunt, walking up the stairs. This was quite dangerous as my legs were sticking out of the bottom of the fiber glass body which meant if I fell and rolled down the steps I would probably break both my legs. I rehearsed it many times with somebody next to me two grab tick tock if it looked as if I was going to fall. Then we shot it with nobody next to me , it was quite scary but went without a hitch.
 

Any other tough moments you remember?

    There were lots of other tough moments on the movie, Like the wheelers going down a very steep hill as fast as they could with a camera in car in front of them filming them. Every time somebody fell over we would have to film it again. Let me tell you we did it a lot of times. Every time you would be thinking I hope it is not me that falls over this time so we have to do it again, and yes I did fall over several times. But as with the rest of the movie we all took it very well. In general it was a very happy movie to work on, with a very tallented cast and crew. And the director Walter Murch was a delight to work with.
 

Are there any interesting stories you remember working on the film?

  One of the best experiences on the set was near the beginning. Walter, the director, got quite a lot behind schedule in the first few weeks. But had some very high powered friends in Hollywood and three of the worlds top directors came over to help him catch up there was Steven Spielberg, Francis ford Coppola and I’m afraid I can not remember the other one (George Lucas) but you would be on one stage doing a shot with Steven, then the next thing you knew you were being directed by Francis and so on until they caught up.

Any difficulties in shooting?

    The hall of mirrors was a very tricky set to shoot on as every mirror had to be re-angled so you did not see the camera and crew for every new shot.

Finally, what was your overall experience working on Return to Oz?

    From what I recall the whole project was a very happy experience with some very talented people. And Walter Murch was one of the most pleasant directors I have ever worked with.

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