""When the Jews return to Zion and a comet fills the sky and the Holy Roman Empire rises, then you and I must die."" ""From the eternal sea he rises creating armies on either shore," "turning man against his brother till man exists no more."" "Sanguis bibimus" "Corpus edimus" "Sanguis bibimus" "Corpus edimus" "Sanguis bibimus" "Corpus edimus" "Ave" "Ave" "I always looked at The Omen not as a horror film." "I felt if I pitched a horror film to myself, I didn't want to do it, and if I pitched it to the actors, they wouldn't want to do it." "In my mind, I made it a mystery suspense thriller." "I think that this was a picture that was destined to be, and there are very few pictures that you see - and I see a lot of 'em - that are really gonna change the lives of the people who see that movie," "because you cannot walk into a showing of The Omen, that you've never seen, and sit there for two hours and come out exactly the same person that entered that theatre." "Bob Munger scared the hell out of us." "He recited every verse of the Bock of Revelations." "He said it was gonna be a dangerous mission." "The devil wasn't gonna like it." "And he really warned us, all through the picture." "Everybody had the feeling that we had something really out of the ordinary." "And one of the main things that Richard and Harvey and David Seltzer impressed on the cast was that everybody had to believe implicitly that what they were playing was really going on." "What I wanted to do with The Omen was deal in the delusion of the devil, and the fantasy and the imagination, because those things that really frighten us are those things that make us think we're losing our mind." "I thought, "Gee, what if the Antichrist was really alive right now and already walking this planet, and he's just a little kid?"" "it sent a chill through me when I thought of it." "Bob Munger, a born-again Christian, in a Hollywood restaurant, he said, "Did you ever read the book of Revelations?"" "I said no." "He said, "What if the Antichrist came back as a little boy?"" "I dropped the food, I walked out of the restaurant, I wrote ten pages." "I called David Seltzer - there was a writers' strike on at the time." "I paid him an advance and in four weeks he wrote The Omen." "I must have researched probably for three months before I set anything down on paper." "And the three sixes are simply what they are." "It's the sign of the beast." "At the beginning of the book, The Omen, there is that excerpt from the chapter in Revelations that talks about the three sixes." "The three sixes are the unholy sign." "Seven is the perfect sign, and six is its opposite." "You find in religion that everything has a direct contradiction." "Thus the essence of temptation, they say." "That's one of the mysteries that's in the Bible." "It says that I can't tell you his name, or whatever, but his symbol will be 666." "Now, there are various theologians who have different opinions as to who that meant, or who it might mean, or whatever." "That is a prediction that's in the Bible and some day we'll see the truth of it." "As time goes on, you will see that this picture, unlike thousands of other movies that just entertain you, is based upon absolute truth that is gonna affect your personal life." "I mean you, personally." "I guess it brought to the front the book, and the Bible's the name." "And if it made people read the Bible..." "You know, they sold a lot more Bibles and got a lot more bodies into churches, and that's their mission, I would assume." "So maybe we did a little good for them." "They did a good box office, put it that way." "The Bible said that the unholy one" ""will rise from the eternal sea."" "And then, in an interpretive text, I saw that the "eternal sea"" "had been interpreted by theologians as the world of revolution and turmoil." "In other words, the world of politics." "So - ha ha - the devil's child rises in the world of politics." "And I just applied the three sixes to his body, and I was off and running." ""From the eternal sea he rises, creating armies on either shore."" " That was the beginning of it." " Theologians have interpreted the "eternal sea" as meaning the world of politics, the sea that constantly rages with turmoil and revolution." "So the devil's child will rise from the world of politics." "Matter of fact, there was somebody in Parliament named Jeremy Thorpe, and I think I named him Jeremy Thorn." "He was supposed to be a Brit, and I set it there basically because I was in the habit of writing scripts set in places I wanted to visit, though I'd never been there." "I did that all the time, because I got a free trip." "I thought, "I'll set it in England with" "British characters so I can spend some time there."" "And, as it turned out, American commerce demands American players." "Mace Neufeld got involved, and he got it to Warner Brothers." "And Chuck Bail was gonna direct it." "And we went to Switzerland and decided on Switzerland." "We came back." "And then Warner Brothers, unbeknownst to us, had Exorcist ll." "And, uh..." "We didn't know it, but on the budget they went lower and lower and lower, and finally it fell apart, and that was the end of it." "Then I said, "if this picture doesn't go, I'm gonna get out of the business."" "The script was gonna be put in turnaround at Fox." "No, at Warner Brothers." "So Eddie Rosen, who was an agent there, picked it up, read it, said:" ""This is great for Dick." He called me, said, "Do me a favour."" ""Read this." "They're gonna put it in turnaround on Monday."" "Turnaround meaning that the studio was gonna drop it from Warner Brothers." "I respected Eddie, and I was going out to have dinner, by coincidence, with Alan Ladd Jr and his wife, Patty." "I started turning pages, and I went, "Oh, wow."" "I kept turning pages, and before I knew it, it was an hour." "I'd read the whole script and I was really hooked." "I ran to dinner." "Laddie was there, Patty was there." "I said, "Listen, I just read this script I have in the car."" ""You gotta read it." "They're gonna put it in turnaround at Warners."" "And he was then president of Fox." "And I said, "It's extraordinary."" "Dick Donner was very friendly with Jay Kanter and Alan Ladd." "He took it to Laddie at a dinner party on Saturday night." "Tuesday, we were in London." "Don't forget, this picture literally was turned down by every studio, including Fox." "So when we went back to Fox," "Laddie moved in on a picture that had already been turned down by his people." "Chuck Bail was gonna use gargoyles, covens, and lots of things that were in Switzerland, architecturally." "Dick Donner didn't want any of it, and he took out the covens, the witchcraft... the unbelievable parts, and he made it a regular picture." "And he said, "if it's real, it will be believable." And that's the way it was." "Dick Donner's a really brilliant director." "He guided the script, he guided the actors, he cast it properly, he had the best production design team." "In London they, at that point, took production design much more seriously than in America." "And I wrote stage directions that were fulfilled to the letter." "In the graveyard, I talked about rats scurrying from one place to the other." "And I went on the sound stage in London, and they were training rats to scurry around." "I had written about the priest's walls being papered from top to bottom with pages from the Bible." "And, sure enough, that was there." "Page by page, the priest's walls." "At that point, in this country, they wouldn't have taken a script that seriously." "They would have cut corners, taken all kinds of shortcuts." "But with Dick in charge and the people he hired, this thing became down-to-the-letter, very, very authentic - to the script, anyway." "You give an actor the screenplay to read, and he says, "How are you gonna treat it?"" ""Well, I want to treat this like a reality." "I want to treat this like..."" "I don't believe a woman was violated by a jackal and she gave birth to the devil's child, but I do believe that in somebody's life we all say:" ""This is the worst moment that's ever happened."" "Things happen, and they accumulate, and they can accrue to such a level that I think you lose control of your own mind." "And I think..." "Lee Remick's character started to lose it very early." "And it brought out insecurities in Peck's character." " Anything wrong'?" " I just can't stand that noise." "It's not all that bad." "Good morning, Damien." "And when Gregory Peck said yes to this film, it validated the film." "I mean, Gregory Peck in this kind of a film'?" "Man." "I mean, this is extraordinary, it's unheard of." "But he was looking for a film at the moment." "Everything was opportune." "He saw what we saw." "Kathy, I love you." "If this is what the doctor's doing to you, don't you think it's time I had a talk with him'?" "Yes, you should." "There's something he wants to talk to you about, anyway." "Oh'?" "Lee Remick came on board after Gregory Peck was committed." "And she was living in England." "She was also looking for some work." "Not work per se, but a project that she wanted to get involved in." "Lee Remick was under the quota system in England, and so we got her, and she was a magnificent lady." "A tremendous actress, very professional, very warm-hearted, kind, and really a lovely woman." "Come on, darling." "Let's go see the monkeys, OK'?" "Harvey came in - little Harvey." "He had blondish hair, so we dyed his hair with, I think, shoe polish or something that would wash off." "And we put contacts in to change the colour of his eyes." "And each of the kids that we tested," "I'd ask them to attack me." ""Let's get into this fight." You know, I'd kind of provoke them." "And Dick says, "When I yell 'action', you attack me, and don't stop till I yell 'cut'." "OK"." "Dick yells, "Action!" The guy hits him right in the balls." "Right in the..." "He just was a tiger." "He hit him right in the nuts." "Boom, boom, boom, boom." "And Dick says, "Cut!" but the kid doesn't quit." "Dick says, "Dye his hair black and he is Damien."" "Little Harvey, he was tough." "Sure, he was a little kid, and I was holding him like this." "He was kicking and screaming and scratching." "He was a good kid." "I would not have wanted him to be my own." "Billie Whitelaw... is a dream actress to work with." "Have no fear, little one." "I am here to protect thee." "She was fantastic." "She was really fantastic." "She was utterly believable." "She read the screenplay, and she came in and wanted to talk." "She had such a fix on it, and such a handle." "The minute you find somebody that can run with a character as strong as she did..." "There was just no two ways about it." "Nobody came close." "Father!" "Thanks again." "David Warner's name was submitted by an agent." "And David Warner was one of my favourite actors, from Morgan." "If you haven't seen Morgan, you owe yourself a treat." "It was one of the great English films made in the Sixties." "A classic, and David Warnerwas the classic character that carried that piece through." "Bizarre." "Wonderful." "And they suggested David Warner." "I said, "Are you kidding?"" "He had a great contribution to make, cos his character was his own." "It was written, but he developed the character." "And he had a great rapport with Peck." "Externally, his body was normal, except for one thing on the inside of his right thigh." " What is it'?" " Three sixes." "Six hundred and sixty-six." " Concentration camp'?" " That's what I thought." "But the biopsy says it's a birthmark." "The best is yet to come." "You know, I'd been doing television, and a couple of failed movies, and, number one, when I got Gregory Peck, I couldn't believe it." "So, gradually..." "And then as I got Billie Whitelaw, I couldn't believe it." "Gradually I started to get a lot of security in myself." "And I'd say things like, "David Warner'?" "You think he'd do it?"" "And then I'd catch myself and say, "Well, yeah, maybe he's right."" "But I couldn't believe it." "I realised I had a hot property." "It all stemmed from a good script, that we had rewritten, and the fact that we had Gregory Peck." "And we had Lee Remick." "And other actors just want to get on board right away." "We had fantastic actors." "Lee Remick and Gregory Peck and Patrick Troughton and the others who were in it were fantastic character actors." "So we were relying upon getting the horror out of it from within them." "Their belief in the horror of it, their belief that this child is evil, their belief in the fact that he may be the son of the devil makes the audience believe it." "Instead of relying upon gore and blood and flashy effects, it was psychological - you got within them." "Eyes seem to magnify almost everything." "A lot of actors, you look in their eyes, there's nothing behind it." "And those are actors you hate to work with." "Here I had a dog that had everything behind it." "I had Billie Whitelaw." "I had David Warner." "I had Lee Remick." "Holly!" " I'll take him, ma'am." " No, I'll take him." "Come on." "Let's go over here." "Ah, Mrs Thorn." "Put him on the table, will you'?" "Dick shot a lot of these "big eyes" close-ups." "There were sequences, I remember, with the dog." "The Rottweiler first is introduced at the merry-go-round at the party and stuff, and we used those, the eyes, to get inside the people, get inside the evil of the child, and inside..." "as though the dog had an intelligence." "And then there was Billie Whitelaw, also, as the nanny." "We used those... moving in, tracking in, zooming in on the eyes as though there was a telepathy or a transference of this evil between them." "Very simple techniques, very effective." "Only effective if the actor is conveying something with those eyes." "Sometimes we overuse 'em, overdo 'em." "I think we were fairly judicious in it." "Those things are just wonderful to have." "Bankroll 'em, put 'em away." "You never know until you get into that cutting room what you're looking for." "My job as an editor is to create the tempo, the moments, to pull those moments out." "Editing is all to do with timing." "And if the performance is there, you just have to respect the timing of the actors and maximise the moment." "If you cut too quickly, you're going to lose some of the essence of it." "If you cut too slowly, you're going to over -milk it and it's not going to be effective." "It's all to do with the right length." "Robert, I want to know what he said!" "Look, I'm not just some bystander." " I was the one that found him!" " I'm the one that's supposed to kill him." "These are knives." "He wants me to stab him." " Wants me to murder a child." " It's not a child!" "L-low can he know that'?" "Maybe he's wrong." "It's insane." "I won't have anything to do with murdering a little boy!" "He's not responsible." "I won't do it." "Well, if you don't do it, I will." "The thing about the decapitation, originally it was supposed to be a plate of glass dropped from the top of a building, and he was walking, and he bent over to pick up the knives, and he's decapitated." "And John Richardson came to me and he said," ""Listen, I've tried this and tried this, on cables, on rigs."" ""Every time it falls, it wants to leaf, it wants to go against the wind."" "He said, "I can't do it}." "I said, "Well, keep trying, John." "I mean, I gotta do this."" "He said, "I have an idea." "What if I can make it come straight off as a sheet of glass?"" "I said, "Well, if we can validate it." He said, "Well, let's try."" "So we came up with the truck there, the brakes released when the guy gets out, it runs down, hits a balk, and the sheet of glass comes off and decapitates him." "It really seemed to make sense." "We had no money when we made this picture, but I grabbed every single camera known to mankind that we had on the truck at the studio." "We had six or seven cameras rolling." "I was shooting one of 'em." "And when the piece of glass came off and it took the dummy's head off, it turned it in a reverse spin, almost like a cue-ball shot." "And when we looked at this decapitation..." "It's like, "Show the banana, show the banana, slip on it."" "Audiences - it's, "And a-one, and a-two, and a-three."" "When you have these scenes..." "The audience are conditioned, and especially if it's something that has this terrible fear, they look away." "And they usually go..." "If you count for 'em, they look up usually right after three." "So it's, "And a-one, and a-two, and a-three," and it's over." "And that's how we had cut it." "So we went back in and re-cut it." "And we did, "And a-one, and a-two, and a-three... and a-four, and a-five."" "And the head was still going." "So when they came up from the three, having seen it come off, and knew it was gone, they look, and it was still there, there was this compounded scream that came out of nowhere," "and the head landed, and the music was perfect." "And it taught me a great deal about cutting." "It was an interesting moment, because it was done exactly the way it should be, but then we found a way of doing it even better." "The beheading sequence is really a classic, cos there was no blood." "And it was not necessary for any blood." "But the first time we shot it, the plate glass went straight through the building and didn't break." "Cut his head off but didn't break." "So then we had to re-rig it." "Dick had five cameras at different speeds going on and..." "David Warner wouldn't see that sequence." "I drove home with his head in my car one day." "I almost caused accidents on the M4 cos I just had it kind of suspended." "He wouldn't even look at it, David Warner." "He had this, "I can't look at myself."" "The scene of the priest running, we had very powerful Ritters - very powerful." "And we used a hovercraft as a dolly." "And it's the first time." "Gil Taylor said there was a hovercraft available, and we got it." "That's why the dolly was so smooth." "And the Ritters were blowing, and the leaves were fed into the Ritters." "And Patrick Troughton was the priest, and he ran, and he was scared, and the music was building." "And then when the top of the steeple fell," "I wanted to test this." "I was standing there, and when it came down, I felt it was gonna impale me." "I was hit in the feet." "But I swear to God, it was so frightening." "And so Patrick Troughton, when he got there, he felt that it was gonna hit him." "Baboons bite." "Keep all car windows closed." "Keep all car windows closed." "Baboons are dangerous." "With the baboons, they said, "What we'll do is we'll keep them in a pen, we won't feed 'em for three hours, we'll put bananas on the top of the car," "let 'em loose, they'll run out like they're gonna kill you."" "bang, roll cameras." "I'm inside shooting with Lee, in the back." "And the baboons run out, they jump on the car, and they grab the bananas and eat." "And I was, "Oh, shit." "Cut, cut, cut." We tried a million things." "Now, Windsor Safari Park had thousands of people going through a day, and you could drive your cars through, just as they did, through the baboon enclave." "And of course the baboons get pretty blasé." "They're used to being fed, they're used to seeing people." "So getting them angry was pretty difficult." "The veterinarian came to us, and he said, "Listen."" ""Two things." He said..." ""The big baboon, the big maha, the big kahuna, has a terrible out, and I'm gonna have to knock him out and sew this thing up."" "He said, "if you have him in the car, when the others see that you're taking the big kahuna out, they're gonna go berserk."" "So it was a Ford station wagon, and we had a guy holding the baboon - it wasn't a baby, it was the big guy." "We tried it with a baby once, they didn't give a shit. "Bye-bye, baby."" "But they saw the big kahuna, and they're holding him up," "I'm shooting, Lee's in front, driving on the right-hand side." "I got the kid on the left." "He keeps looking in the back to the camera." "The baboons are really coming at the car." "Coming at the car." "And Lee goes to scream." "I say, "No, no, Lee, not yet."" "She says, "Argh!" I say, "Not yet." She says, "Aaargh!"" "I look down, and the baboon is coming to, and he's got ahold of her hair, and he's pulling her back." "And these baboons are stronger than ten of us." "So we reach in and we pry the hair out of the baboon, try and hold his arms." "We're getting attacked, they're pounding on the window like they're gonna come through the glass." "Lee was totally..." "We had to change her wardrobe three times." "The kid was horrified." "I mean, total state of panic." "It was..." "If you notice, in that scene there's a lot of shake in that camera." "That's me, cos I was scared stiff." "When we had enough and the guy in there said, "I can't hold him any longer,"" "I said, "Drive, Lee, drive." So she drove, and we got the gates closed, we're outside." "A whole bunch of handlers came and took this guy away from us." "So Dick shoots." "It was a very tight schedule, very difficult." "You know, only so many days to shoot - certainly only one day to shoot those baboons, plus other stuff." "I saw the material and said, "We ain't got a sequence."" "And Stuart would say, "it's shit, it's shit, it's shit."" "I said, "I don't want to hear it." "You go shoot the goddamn baboons."" "And there was me trying to get these close-ups with the baboon, and the guards, the warders, they had shotguns, because we were in amongst them." "But they got bored with us doing that and we got carried away, and after a while, suddenly I was looking through the camera or next to the cameraman prodding this bloody baboon, trying to get a screech out of it with my broom handle," "and suddenly we heard this shout from the side, "Don't move!" "Don't move!"" "And so the cameraman and I looked up, and we were surrounded." "Cos everybody had gone off, got bored with it." "We were surrounded by these baboons." "If they'd jumped on us, they'd have got their courage and all been on us." "So it could have been a nasty moment." "It was a stupid thing to do, but when you're filming, you get carried away." "We were forced into situations that were really extreme." "And I look back on it and..." "There's a scene in that picture that, to this day, if you're doing any kind of lecture, somebody will say," ""How did you do that scene where Lee Remick falls from the balcony and hits the floor?"" "And that's a pretty amazing scene, if you really look at that carefully." "We created the horror of the fall, the height of the fall, by having her put a fishbowl on the balcony, on a balustrade." "As she moves the table, the kid comes along, hits her, she falls against the balustrade and knocks the fishbowl over." "So you start on the fishbowl and let it go at 125 frames a second - you see it go all the way down, hit the floor and splatter." "That really tells you how dangerous it is." "To tell you my way of life, though, with filmmaking, they had it with goldfish in it." "And I said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa."" ""No live goldfish, man." "I'm not gonna kill a goldfish for a movie."" "So they sent him out to the caterer and we got sardines, dried them and painted them orange for the fall." "I don't believe any actor, person, animal or thing should be hurt in making a movie." "anyway- " "So that gave you..." "This exemplified the height of the fall and everything." "Then we had boxes and built it up as though she was hanging onto the balustrade." "And as she let go, she only had to fall maybe six inches onto this balcony." "And then we took the floor... and we put it on the wall." "And we took the palm and nailed it to the wall and wired its leaves up so they'd defy gravity." "And we took some plastic and cut it out and put it on the ground, like water, we put the phoney... sardines in that, and then way back here..." "Now, that wall is where your camera is, let's say." "My camera's back here, and I start on Lee Remick's face, and she's on a dolly." "So we domed her away' and K turned." "So she starts in a big close-up and she screams, like this, and then the dolly turns, so it took her away, took her right smack into the floor." "It actually was just dollying horizontally right up against that." "And the minute she hit there, we cut to the floor, put her face down, put a live goldfish on the floor so it would flap - for only 17 seconds, so it could get back in the water immediately." "It became a conversation piece." ""l-low the hell did they do that?"" "The Rottweilers, of course, were extraordinarily frightening in the first film." "Accidentally so, because we were originally going to use German shepherds." "There were trained German shepherds here we were gonna use, and then we found out we couldn't bring them into England - they have a six-month quarantine on dogs - and the only dogs that were available in England were these Rottweilers," "fortunately, who were very, very scary." "When we filmed the scene at Civitavecchia, in the graveyard, all the stuntmen wore leather armour and metal armour underneath their legs and arms." "The one dog bit the leg of David Warner's Stuntman, cut right through the armour, cut through the leather, and he had 14 stitches." "The dogs went bananas." "We were up on parallels and they all started fornicating - unbelievable, uncontrolled." "Luckily, we were up there." "It was mayhem." "That's all they did." "They weren't angry, they were trying to hump each other." "I mean, there's shots in there... if you really look closely, there's a couple of dogs up on top with glazed eyes." "But we just put sounds in of dogs barking." "As a matter of fact, they loved each other, the dogs." "In the dog attack I did interesting things with the chorus not singing but making grunts and groans, making strange noises that are not necessarily musical, but I incorporated them as being musical." "Jerry Goldsmith had a concert of his music, all his movie music." "And Dick Donner and I and my wife and Rosemary Schwartz went to see him." "And Dick and I looked at each other, and he said, "That's the guy for the score."" "The score of The Omen is one of its great strengths." "Jerry Goldsmith used that religious chant, almost Gregorian chant, so effectively for the horror aspects, with a beautiful love theme between the husband and wife," "Gregory Peck and Lee Remick." "But it was really the use of the Gregorian chant which was very effective and innovative." "I felt there was definitely a very strong love story with Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, and also the love of the child." "I mean, this side of things, this intense relationship, this love, makes the horror even more terrifying when you think that he loses his wife, who he loves so much, and his kid that he loves so much." "Then all of a sudden he realises, finally, at the moment where... the kid is the devil." "I mean, it's made more powerful by the fact that they've established this relationship." "That's good filmmaking, good storytelling, good construction." "Jerry Goldsmiths score, I think, probably kicked the movie over the top." "It was liturgical and... and really more deeply troubling than even the darkest liturgical music can be." "And he would establish themes which, even in scenes that didn't convey, on the surface, any threat, he would reiterate a theme from an earlier scene that did contain a threat, and you would begin to feel... you know." "It did exactly what music should do." "In the greatest tradition of Hollywood music, it amplified the psychological underpinnings." "Jerry Goldsmith's score had as much to do with the success of the film as the visuals did." "When he said to me, "I would like to do something like Gregorian chants."" ""I hear a choral group."" "I figured, "OK, I gotta hear this."" "And then I started thinking about the demonic nature of the film." "Then I talked to the choirmaster I was gonna use in London." "He was quite a linguist when it comes to Latin." "I mean, he knew the language and he spoke Latin fluently - if one speaks Latin fluently, I don't know." "But anyway, he did speak Latin very well." "We started talking and I got this idea." ""Wait a minute."" ""Why don't I make this like a black Mass?"" "I said, "Gimme some lines out of the Mass,"" "and he started giving me some words." "I said, "What if we just twist them around?"" ""You know, instead of hailing Mary or whatever, let's hail Satan."" "He said, "Well, that's 'Ave Satanl." I said, "Great title."" "The day we were recording, he brought in this choral group." "We put up the film to the particular scene, and Jerry got up there, and all of a sudden this group in this guttural deep breathing started to do:" ""Antichristo, Antichristo, Antichristo."" "And my God, the shivers." "The hair came up at the back of my neck." "And I got to the point in the film, quite honestly," ""Get rid of the music." "Can't we use more of that?"" "I remember there was a shot where the Rottweiler's up on the steps of the mansion," "Peck is down below, and he looks up and sees the silhouette of the animal and he's coming across the thing, and it was scored - it was scored beautifully." "And I said, "Jerry..." He said, "OK, OK, OK."" "He brought the people back onstage, and they did..." "It almost was the breathing of the dog, going, "Antichristo, Antichristo."" "It was mind-blowing." "Sanguis bibimus, corpus edimus" "Sanguis bibimus, corpus edimus" "Sanguis bibimus, corpus edimus" "Sanguis bibimus, corpus edimus" "Sanguis bibimus, corpus edimus" "Sanguis bibimus, corpus edimus" "Sanguis bibimus, corpus edimus" "Sanguis bibimus" "I must say that we were all stunned when we were in England." "The big orchestra's there, Lionel Newman was conducting for Jerry, we were in the control room and they started playing the theme, with this big English choir and big orchestra, based on Gregorian chants." "And everybody's mouth dropped open, because that's one of the most exciting and scariest moments." "You don't really hear your music until it's played." "And Jerry had been nominated, I think, 11 or 12 times and never won." "Actually didn't want to go to the Academy Awards." "He said he couldn't take that rejection again." "But we were pretty sure he was gonna win, and he did." "And I remember I started working on the picture, and a month later" "Harvey kept saying, "You'll win an Academy Award for this."" "I said, "Come on, Harv." "This is a horror picture." "Nobody's..."" "And..." "I guess I was wrong." "He was smoking three cigarettes at a time during the Academy..." "He was so nervous." "But he won, and he deserved to win." "I mean, since I'd lost 17 times and won once..." "I mean, I'm an expert at losing, a novice at winning." "I think The Omen at that time was my tenth or eleventh nomination." "I was just getting used to not winning, so I was really surprised when I won." "Especially as Bernard Herrmann had been nominated for two and he'd just passed away and the sentiment was..." "As soon as they announced him, you could hear the applause." "I said, "There it goes."" "So when they did announce me, it was unbelievable." "The budget of the film was two and a half million dollars." "And we brought it in for two and a half million." "Including Gregory Peck's salary, including the fact that we shot it in England," "Italy, Jerusalem." "All cast in, above and below." "We got an extra $25,000 from Laddie when I said I'd love Jerry Goldsmith to do this." "Actually, Harvey had a relation with Goldsmith." "I loved his music." "But he was way above our budget." "In those days, it was like $25,000." "And Laddie OK'd it." "So we delivered that picture for the ridiculous sum... for the ridiculous sum of $2,225,000." "Which is, you know, expense money today for your leading star." " No!" "Please, Daddy, no!" " Don't look at me." " No, Daddy!" "No!" " God help me." "Police!" "Stop!" "Stop, or I'll fire!" "The way the picture originally ended was an ambiguous ending." "It was a funeral for all three." "Like the kid died, Peck died, and Lee Remick was dead, and that was the final." "And Alan Ladd Jr came over to look at the first rough cut." "And he said, "I love it." "I think it's terrific." And we were at dinner." "And halfway into dinner, he said, "You know, did you ever think of... maybe having the kid alive in the end?"" "I said, "Oh, my God." "What a great idea."" "This is Laddie, president of the studio." "And I said, "Can we have a couple of bucks to do a quick re-shoot on the back lot at Shepperton Studios?"" "He said, "You got it}." "So we did a close-up of the flag being handed to the back of an actress who was supposed to be the ambassador's wife, and the ambassador." "And as they got the flag - and it was all very tight - we tipped down and went between them, and there's the back of little Harvey Stephens, and he turns and he looks at the camera." "And he had this very severe face." "I said, "I want you to really look mean."" ""Let me see what you can really do." He looked right into that camera." "And he was looking very mean, and I said, "Don't you laugh, Harvey."" ""Don't you start..." And he started to fight it." "And all of a sudden this big smile came to his face." "Laddie said, "That makes the movie." He was right." "I don't think I've ever, in all of the films that I've worked on - and some of them are pretty important films - ever realised at the time I was doing them that this was going to be a pivotal film, a momentous film." "That this was going to be a stepping stone to somewhere." "I was struck by how simple the picture is, how straightforward in its style of making, and its honesty in the performances, in the action beats." "There was no gratuitous gore or horror." "Nobody was trying to shock you out." "You were just relying on a very well told story, and an effective story with an excellent cast." "The picture, when I sat through it and Dick sat through it, and the crowds would go utterly bananas, it was such a thrill to watch the emotional effect that it had on the people." "And they would walk out totally exhausted." "And we said, "Jesus." "We made this picture."" "I mean, it was phenomenal to make a picture that has that psychological effect." "It shows you the power of film." "The Omen changed my life." "The Omen opened up my career." "Before that I had done a lot of television and two or three..." "X-'l 5," "Twinky, with Charlie Bronson and Susan George," "Salt and Pepper, with Sammy Davis and Peter Lawford." "They were fun, but they put me right back in television." "The Omen turned me around." "I will be obligated to Alan Ladd Jr for the rest of my life." "He gave me that opportunity." "He believed I could do something with that picture." "From that came the rest of my career." "That was Superman and Inside Moves and..." "Everything that I held near and dear all followed because of The Omen." "It gave me my opportunity." "If it was an omen, it's a good omen."