Born in Griffith and raised in Canberra, author Phil Hore is set to feature in a five-hour documentary alongside some of Hollywood’s biggest names. Photos: Supplied.
The horror movie classic The Thing is one of the most influential films of all time.
It pioneered special effects for the next 40 years, arguably began the horror whodunit genre and kick-started the career of legendary actor Kurt Russell.
For a young Phil Hore, it was the movie that sparked his love affair with film, leading him to write an Amazon Best Seller about the behind-the-scenes making of The Thing, titled THE THING: The History Of A Franchise.
Now, the Griffith-born, Canberra-raised paleontologist is featuring in a soon-to-be-released documentary with the likes of Kurt Russell, Stephen Colbert, Tim Roth and John Carpenter, as an expert on the film’s creation and eventual influence.
While Phil’s passion for The Thing is clear, his journey to publishing his book actually began due to his interest in dinosaurs.
“It all starts with dinosaurs,” he said.
“When I was a kid, we didn’t have videos for TV. So they used to take segments out of movies and put them on little reels of eight-millimetre film, which would only go for a couple of minutes, and they had the dinosaur section out of Fantasia.
“I’d never seen a dinosaur before, didn’t know what they were. And I remember running home, going, ‘Oh my God, dinosaurs’ and then that became my thing.
“In the ’70s and ’80s, it was hard to really find anything dinosaur-related in Australia. There’s no paleontology in Australia. We don’t have the museums as they do in America. They don’t have the universities that we can go to.
“So I decided to work as a film projectionist instead, as there was no real opportunity with dinosaurs just yet.
“Eventually, they opened the Dinosaur Museum in Canberra, where I got a job as a tour guide.
“Turns out I was really good at presentations, and a lot of people loved the work I did. From there, I would eventually travel and work at some of the biggest museums in the world, like the Australian War Memorial, the London Natural History Museum and eventually the Smithsonian.”
The cover of Phil’s book, The Thing: The History Of A Franchise.
While his love of dinosaurs saw him travel the world, it wasn’t until a chance encounter in London that his international career began.
“My partner at the time worked for Foreign Affairs, so she got transferred to the London embassy,” he said.
“On our first day in London, a real estate agent was driving us around to a bunch of these different houses. As we were driving around town, I saw this dinosaur skull in a window of a shop and told her to stop the car.
“The guy inside was on the phone to his boss, and I was waiting patiently for him to end his call so I could ask if he needed any help putting bones together or someone casual to run the shop.
“I eventually had to leave before he could finish his call, so I gave him my number and asked him to ring. Turns out, he was actually on the phone with his boss trying to figure out how the hell they were going to put a bunch of dinosaur bones together that they had ordered for the next week.
“He thought me coming in was a practical joke from his boss, because the exact type of person they were looking for had literally just come bursting through the door.”
Phil ended up helping put the Tyrannosaurus exhibit together, which eventually featured in Rolling Stone magazine.
Moving forward to 2007, Phil was back in Canberra working for the National Dinosaur Museum when he was approached by the editor of the Prehistoric Times magazine, the longest-serving dinosaur-based publication in the world.
The author approached Phil to write for the magazine following the death of one of its writers. Now a writer for Prehistoric Times, Phil would eventually start looking to write his book THE THING: The History Of A Franchise.
The poster for the upcoming documentary The Thing Expanded.
As a means to start finding sources for his book, Phil reached out to artist Alan Dean Foster, who created novelisations of famous films including Star Wars, Star Trek and Alien.
Alan recognised Phil as a writer for Prehistoric Times and eventually gave him the contacts for another artist and author, Don Glut, who put him in contact with famous directors, including George Lucas and John Milius.
“With all these famous contacts, I thought, I’m going to write this book that I’ve always wanted to write,” Phil said.
“I didn’t ask for permission, I just did it. I had a lot of interviews, asked a lot of questions and was eventually able to form a pretty good background into how The Thing was created.
“Eventually, I found someone to publish the book, and it became a bestseller.”
A couple of years after the book’s release, production company Creatorvc began work on a documentary on the creation of The Thing, following the success of similar documentaries on other horror movies.
As part of the documentary, Creatorvc reached out to Phil to build the foundations of the film. However, with his vast knowledge of the movie, Phil would eventually go on to become a talking head within the documentary, alongside the likes of The Thing director John Carpenter and Kurt Russell himself.
“They [Creatorvc] contacted me and said, ‘Look, we want you to be part of the inner circle’,” Phil said.
“We want you to sit down with a couple of other people, including the director, the producer, and a couple of other people, who are writing this and organising this.
“It ranks as the coolest thing I’ve ever done. It’s a full-circle moment from watching the movie as a kid in a video store 40 years ago to travelling the world to writing the book. It’s just incredible.”
The documentary will be released digitally on 24 March.
