Proof of the cultural relevance of ‘The Mummy’, the Stephen Sommers film that will be 25 years old next year, is the existence of a real desire on the part of a large part of the public to to see Rick O’Connell again with the face of Brendan Fraser living adventures but without the need to rejuvenate him or to go to the gym. A mature man recovering treasures. If this script isn’t on top of a couple of offices right now I’d be surprised. Although the actor, after his experiences in the late 90s, may not feel like it so much…
mommy suffocation
In an Entertainment Weekly oral history from a few years back, Fraser talked about a scene early on where his character ended up being hanged in prison., but not dead. From said to fact, of course, there is a stretch.
I completely drowned. It was scary. Rick is swinging at the end of the rope and he’s such a tough guy that his neck won’t break. We did the wide shot with the stunt double, who had a harness on, and he looked great. Then I had to do it myself for a close-up. There was a gallows and hemp rope tied up and around my neck. On the first take, I did my best drowning performance. Steve said, “Can we do another one and turn the tension up on the string?” I said, “Okay, one more take.” But a rope around your neck is going to choke your arteries no matter what you do. So the stuntman turned up the tension on the rope, I went up on my toes, then I guess he turned up the tension again, and I’m not a dancer, I can’t be that on my toes.
I remember the camera starting to spin, and then it was like a black iris at the end of a silent movie. It was like turning the volume down on your mini system, like the Death Star losing power. I came back to consciousness and one of the doctors was calling my name. There was gravel in my ear and damn, it really hurt. The stuntman came over and he said, “Hello! Welcome to the club, man! Ha ha ha!” and I’m like “Ha ha, funny? Ha ha?”, like, what the fuck? I want to go home! Steven – he and I differ – I think he was trying to go like “Oh, this crazy Brendan messing it up again!” or something like that. I was like “Hey, think what you want but I already have enough.”
The director, on the other hand, thinks otherwise: “We can blame Brendan, he tightened the rope and when we were about to roll he made it look like he was strangling him, I guess he cut his carotid artery or something like that, and left him unconscious. He did it himself.” Brendan ends the discussion with “he was doing my job and pretending he was a man hanging by his neck about to die. I have to say that what you see in the film was the shot they did, they had to cut it because moments later it was already out“. It goes without saying, but both are still friends. We keep crossing our fingers for a fourth part old-school of ‘The Mummy’. To dream, let it not be left.