The Abyss - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[melinda]

James Cameron's brother, Mike Cameron, plays a dead crewman inside the sunken submarine. To accomplish this he had to hold his breath under 25 feet of water while also allowing a crab to crawl out of his mouth. The shot took five takes, and Mike had to crush the crab twice because Jim took too long to set the lights.

[kenzi]

In the end shot where the alien ship surfaces, it's supposed to be spring or summer. However, the film was being shot towards the beginning of winter, so the actors put ice cubes in their mouths so they wouldn't breathe out mist.

[bessie]

Director James Cameron contacted Orson Scott Card before filming began with the possibility of producing a book based on the film. Card initially told his agent that he doesn't do "novelizations", but when she told him that the director was James Cameron, he agreed to consider it. The script arrived, and Card signed on after receiving assurances from Cameron that he would be free to develop his "novel" the way he wanted to. After a meeting with Cameron, Card immediately wrote the first three chapters, which dealt with events concerning Bud and Lindsay Brigman that occurred before the events in the film. Cameron gave these chapters to Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, who used it to develop their characters.

[edgar]

James Cameron declared this the worst production he was ever involved with, a sentiment shared by many of the cast members. The difficulties of filming around and under water put a great strain on both cast and crew, further complicated by Cameron's notorious perfectionism. Many of them have been quoted as saying that they would never do a sequel or movie like 'The Abyss' again. For Cameron, a director known to often collaborate with the same cast and crew members, this movie had suspiciously few people who worked with him again, including almost the entire cast (save for Michael Biehn), composer Alan Silvestri and director of photography Mikael Salomon.

[cassandra]

Most reporters seen on television in the extended edition of the movie are or have become James Cameron regulars. The man called Bill Tyler seen reporting from one of the ships is William Wisher, Cameron's long-time friend and co-screenwriter who made several cameo appearances in his movies. Anchorman Joe Farago also appeared as anchorman in The Terminator (1984). The reporter seen in the finale of the Special Edition (Tom Isbell) also appears in the finale of True Lies (1994).

[harry]

The final shot of the movie is of Bud and Lindsey embracing each other, but they aren't played by Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. The shot was filmed with two extras after principal photography was completed.

[victoria]

The studio was considering Mel Gibson, Dennis Quaid, William Hurt, Harrison Ford, Kurt Russell and Patrick Swayze for the role of Virgil 'Bud' Brigman. James Cameron suggested Ed Harris, but the studio was concerned about his lack of experience as leading man, as well as his receding hairline (something that Cameron felt added to his everyman appeal). Harris convinced the studio with a screentest where he wore a motorcycle helmet as a diving helmet.

[phyllis]

James Cameron: [title fade] at the beginning of the movie, the blue "Y" from the opening credits extends and then fades to the underwater scenery with the submarine.

[kenneth]

Real oxygenated fluorocarbon fluid was used in the rat fluid breathing scene. Dr. Johannes Kylstra and Dr. Peter Bennett of Duke University pioneered this technique and consulted on the film, giving detailed instructions on how to prepare the fluid. The only reason for cutting to the actors' faces was to avoid showing the rats defecating from momentary panic as they began breathing the fluid.

[carla]

In-movie monitor time stamps show at one point January 1987. It's an unintentional hint to a date because a device needed a restart and began with 01/01/87.

[harry]

Since it is supposed to be pitch-black at the bottom of the sea, all the lighting had to come from the Deepcore rig and the submersibles. A special 1,200 Watt light source was specifically created for the film, which has since been used in many other movies, as well as NASA.

[jamie]

The press kit sent out was a beautiful box made of sturdy material with the title on the the cover, inside it contains the stills of the the entire cast plus the deleted scenes of the wall of water hovering over the worlds great cities, if the beings weren't regarded they would have destroyed mankind as if the great flood occurred.

[beth]

The idea for the film came to James Cameron when he attended a science lecture about deep sea diving and liquid breathing in high school. He wrote a short story about a group of scientists in a laboratory at the bottom of the ocean on the edge of the Cayman trench. When signs of life come from the trench, the scientist dive in one at a time, never to return or being heard of again; when the last remaining scientist follows them to find out what happened, he ends up in a depth-induced psychosis. Since a film about a group of scientists didn't seem commercial to him, he changed it to a group of blue collar workers instead, and changed the story around them. Ironically Ghostbusters II (1989), a film about scientists was one of the most successful films of its year, while The Abyss (1989), while not a box office flop, was considered to be commercially disappointing.

[brent]

The water tank for filming was filled to a depth of 40 feet, but there was still too much light from the surface, so a giant tarpaulin and billions of tiny black plastic beads were floated on the surface. This had the advantage of being dense enough to completely block out the light, yet fluid enough for divers to break through in case of emergency. One of the downsides was that cast and crew kept pulling the small beads from their hair and folds for months. During a violent storm, the tarpaulin was destroyed, thus shifting production to night time.

[nora]

The sub called "Flatbed" in the movie was built around a real submarine called "Deep Rover" which was designed by the Canadian company Nuytco Research.

[michele]

The production was plagued by adversities and setbacks. There were engineering delays that slowed down production on the water tank, and when the tank was finally filled, thunderstorms and pipe ruptures complicated things. The tank was so huge that it had its own weather, and the water was often too murky to film. Local goats sometimes invaded the set, destroying equipment and urinating over the floors. Delays caused shooting days to last an average of 15 to 18 hours, which caused exhaustion and agitation among cast and crew, who had a tough time dealing with James Cameron's relentless pace and dictatorial behavior. The constant cold and submersion caused many to come down with ear and sinus infections, there were many near-drowning accidents on set, and finally, filming was delayed one day due to a bomb threat.

[tom]

Kathleen Quinlan, Jessica Lange, Debra Winger and Barbara Hershey were considered to play Lindsey Brigman. According to James Cameron, he almost cast Jamie Lee Curtis, but Kathryn Bigelow (his future wife) had already cast her in Blue Steel (1990). Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was finally chosen on the strength of her performances in Scarface (1983) and The Color of Money (1986). Cameron would cast Curtis in True Lies (1994) a few years later.