While sitting down with Debbie Lee Carrington, I was wishing we could have been chatting in The Last Resort but sitting with Total Recall’s Thumbelina on Earth was still a real treat. Debbie was sitting with me at a Star Wars event since she played an Ewok in Return of the Jedi but she was ready to leave planet Endor to remember her days on Mars.
TheArnoldFans: What’s one of your best, most memorable or funniest memories of Total Recall?
D. Carrington: “So, one of my funniest memories of “Total Recall” is where we were getting ready to rehearse a scene where Michael Ironside points the gun at me. He says “Maybe YOU know” and I run across, pull my bowie knife out from under the table, run across, and stab the bad guy. When we rehearsed it, in the first shot, we have a retractable knife, a fastened knife, and then I gutted him like a fish, from his lower belly up to his rib cage. The Director says “We need more blood, more blood! Put more blood on her!” So the makeup people come and they, like, squirt the fake blood on my chest and my shoulders, pat it around, and he says “a little more blood, a little more blood!” They squeeze more and he says “no, no, a little more blood!” So he takes the thing, douses me in it.
“Then I said, “oh, I can’t hit the guy, I can’t hit the champion in the crotch.” I’m running across the room and sure enough, as soon as you get nervous about something you rehearsed, BAM, I hit him right between the legs! I’m like “oh noooo!” But it was pretty gory - in the original footage, I saw in the original cut, when I was doing my looping when I gut him like a fish, there was blood and everything came out - the ratings board says “No no no no no, that’s gotta be toned down!” So, it turned out to be quite different.”
TAF: Did you get to keep your Last Resort outfit?
Debbie: “Yes, I did!”
Lycia Naff who played Mary, the hooker with three boobs from The Last Resort, also spoke with TheArnoldFans about her experience and Paul Verhoeven's extreme violence.
Lycia Naff: “That’s got to be the quintessential most fun day of my acting career. It was so fun and we had to do it several times. It’s not easy. They squib you up and then the head of stunts, he came over and showed me the guns and assured it fired blanks. I was so scared. I mean they really are real guns. But even when they were shot, there’s still a projection of air. He didn’t want me to be afraid of that so we practiced shooting me a few times. We got comfortable. Then it was time to do it for real. He said ‘when I say NOW, you’re going to arch your back and throw your hands up and the blood is going to pop and at the same time, I’m going to give you capsules in your mouth so you’re going to bite down on them and open your mouth so that the blood flies out.’ The first time we did it, I opened my mouth and just a little came out so we had to do it again. So again, Michael shoots me in the back, the stunt coordinator pressed the control and all the squibs opened up at the same time and I arched my back and I fly forward where there’s a mattress. They didn’t want me to brace myself, which was okay because I had the three-breasted plate on – all this foam. So I had to fly down and it was a big fall. I mean, it was like playing cowboys and Indians. It was the funnest day of work! We went through about 5 chest pieces that day. Sometimes we could just wash them off but usually they were ruined.”
Click HERE for the complete interview with Lycia Naff.
Paul Verhoeven, the director of Total Recall, also spoke with TheArnoldFans to inform us how he got the Total Recall gig!
Verhoeven: "I remember from Total Recall, being the director of that, with a simple phone call, Mario, who called me at 12 o'clock in the daytime, said there's a script called Total Recall and Arnold is going to do it. In fact Arnold has been pursuing it for a long time now. I had no idea what it was at that time but it had been around for ten years that project. But he said, 'you should be the director based on Robocop. So i'll send you the script now and you'll have it in about two hours. You'll have to read it and then come to dinner at the restaurant on Beverly and Rodeo.' And Arnold was there and we began to discuss it. So six hours later, sitting at the table, I think it was Andy, me, Arnold, Mario and I think the head of the government (of Mexico?), to discuss it. And I had read it by then and I said yeah, it's a good idea. Can we shake hands? Then we all shook hands at the table and then they said, 'Okay, you can start tomorrow.’ "
Click HERE to read our full Verhoeven interview. One of the goriest directors also tells us about working with Arnold in Total Recall as well scoops such as the downfall of Crusade, Arnold considered for the roll of RoboCop and Sgt. Rock!
