Thoughts on Demolition Man (1993)
Thoughts on Demolition Man (1993)
"I'm a walking nightmare, an arsenal of doom"
Last week, I watched the 1993 movie Demolition Man for the first time. It was amazing.
Simon Phoenix: Look, you can't take away people's right to be assholes.
I have collected some trivia to share. The blockquotes are from IMDb1.
Sylvester Stallone had duplicates of the frozen John Spartan put on display at Planet Hollywood restaurants. He was one of the original investors in the restaurant chain.
We walked past the abandoned Planet Hollywood at Niagara Falls last summer. I wanted to go inside so badly.
The movie was Marco Brambilla’s directing debut. Four years later, he directed Excess Baggage. Since then, he has only directed film shorts and a Kanye West video!
During filming, Rob Schneider became friends with Sandra Bullock, but had reservations about her next project, "some bus movie" that he didn't think would take off. Speed (1994) was one of the next year's most critically and financially successful movies.
Speaking of Sandy, her eyebrows were so thin in Demolition Man. It was a shock to my system. I never over-plucked in the ‘90s. I also never got that eyebrow ring I wanted, so I guess you win some, you lose some.
Denis Leary's part was re-written after he was casted as the eagerly and rebellious resistance-leader Edgar Friendly. The writers… all wanted to hear Leary rant.
Denis Leary, a stand-up comic known for his rants put himself into Edgar Friendly, particularly in one scene, where Edgar rants to Spartan about food, smoking cigars, and reading Playboy Magazines.
Demolition Man was released October 8, 1993. Leary’s character explicitly mentions a lot of the same talking points as he does on his song Asshole2 (album released January 12, 1993).
The title of the movie comes from a song written by The Police. It was released by Grace Jones in early 1981, and then by The Police in late 1981. Sting re-recorded it for an EP in support of the movie in 1993. He released a music video where he is playing bass extremely shirtlessly, which literally nobody asked for.
Christopher Sandford wrote a biography titled “STING Demolition Man”, which was released in 2000. The reviews are… mixed.3
For some non-American releases, references to Taco Bell were changed to Pizza Hut, since the former was virtually unknown in many foreign countries at the time. This includes dubbing, plus changing the logos during post-production.
You can watch the dubs and logo changes online. They are pretty bad.
In case you’re surprised there weren’t action figures… there were, and not only that:
The action figure of the Demolition Man in full armor is actually a repainted He-Man action figure.
Lastly, this movie showed far more of Sly Stallone’s perineum than I ever thought I would see.
Demolition Man (1993) - Trivia - IMDb
Denis Leary – Asshole Lyrics | Genius Lyrics
Sting: Demolition Man by Christopher Sandford | Goodreads