B BUGS
Did you think it was icky when Steven Spielberg made his future wife Kate Capshaw film a scene for 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with thousands of creepy-crawly insects, including a big one that went down the back of her neck? Jackson goes even further in Kong. First, aspiring actress Ann Darrow (played by Naomi Watts) gets cornered by a couple of giant centipedelike critters inside a rotten log on Skull Island, an intended movie-shoot location where Miss Darrow gets abducted by natives (see N). Then sailors trying to rescue Ann fall off a much bigger log into a chasm, where they're besieged by six-foot spiders, massive crab thingies, and three-foot Wetas — nightmare versions of the cricket-like bug common in Jackson's native New Zealand; they also inspired the name of the effects companies he co-owns. If you're phobic, beware.
C CURTISS HELLDIVERS
Aviation nut Jackson set his Kong in 1933 — the year of the black-and-white original's release — in part to showcase vintage aircraft bedeviling Kong atop the Empire State Building. For authenticity, original drawings for WWI biplanes were used to build two full-size, earthbound replicas. (Smashups and tricky flying shots were accomplished with CG.) The pilots manning the dummy planes in live-action close-ups include makeup wizard Rick Baker (who played Kong in an ape suit in the '76 version) and military-scene artist Jim Dietz. As gunners, look for Lord of the Rings associate producer Rick Porras, director Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption), and...Peter Jackson, sans facial hair. Fitting, since the original Kong producer-directors, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, did similar cameos more than 70 years ago.
D DIRECTOR'S CUT
You might think Jackson left nothing out of his 187-minute epic. You'd be wrong. Senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri estimates that more than 300 completed CG shots were scrapped as the story line expanded in some spots and shrank in others. (No wonder the budget reportedly topped $207 million.) According to Jackson, extra scenes ''might end up in the DVD, if Universal wanted to do it.'' Start that e-mail campaign now! Among the scrapped bits, some fragments of which appeared in the trailers:
· Movie director Carl Denham (Jack Black) films Ann Darrow screaming on Skull Island's rocky shore.
· A Skull Island rescue party traveling on a makeshift raft is attacked by a Piranhadon, then set upon by what Jackson calls ''a particularly vicious dinosaur,'' as in the original Kong.
· Ann sings ''When You're Smiling'' to Kong. Probably omitted, says Watts, ''because of my sketchy singing abilities. I'm virtually tone-deaf.''
· More of writer Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) goading and fleeing an escaped Kong on Manhattan's wintry streets.
· Ann gets pulled away from Kong in New York during the military's attack, and is held back by soldiers as Kong goes berserk.
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