What Jurassic Park’s Pile Of Poop Is Really Made Out Of
Jurassic Park features a famous scene with a hefty pile of poop, and here's what the very convincing looking droppings were made from.
It didn't come from a real Triceratops so what exactly was Jurassic Park's big pile of poop made from? While James Cameron once mulled an R-rated version of Michael Crichton's best-seller Jurassic Park, it was Steven Spielberg who ended up in the director's chair. In addition to being a specularly well-crafted summer blockbuster, the movie was famed for its groundbreaking use of CGI to bring its dinosaurs to life. In all, there are only around five minutes of computer-generated effects in the entire film, but it set a new standard in visual effects.
Spielberg later returned for The Lost World: Jurassic Park, but while it features some nice setpieces it lacked the heart of the original, and the director later confessed his boredom making it. Jurassic Park III was a success in 2001 but was a critical dud and the franchise went into hibernation for nearly fifteen years, coming back with 2015's Jurassic World. This fourth entry was a gigantic blockbuster that grossed over $1.6 billion worldwide and confirmed there was still an audience for the franchise. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom continued the saga in 2018, which saw the destruction of the original island.
Jurassic Park is still the one to beat and is a movie positively brimming with famous sequences and lines of dialogue. One of these is Ian Malcolm casually approaching a rather hefty pile of Triceratops droppings and declaring "That is one big pile of s***." Laura Dern's Ellie is also seen digging her arm into a particularly meaty pile of poop, making it a scene that lingers in the memory. In an interview with Vulture, the movie's co-producer Gerald R. Molen revealed what this pile was made from.
Jurassic Park's pile of poop is made from mud, clay and straw, and for texture it was smeared with honey to attract insects, completing the effect. Big piles of poop is a semi-recurring theme in the series, with Jurassic Park III seeing the cast wading through Spinosaurus droppings to retrieve a phone; this particular pile was made from gallons of oatmeal. A deleted scene from Jurassic World also saw Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard's characters smearing themselves with poop to mask their scents, but this sequence was mercifully deleted due to its grossness and misfiring attempts at comedy.
The upcoming Jurassic World: Dominion is set to close out the current trilogy, with Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum all reprising their roles. There are no reports on Jurassic Park's pile of poop returning for one last hurrah, however.
Source: https://screenrant.com/