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Director Michael Pressman has two Emmys and a movie in the National Film Registry (“Boulevard Nights“), but for millennial movie fans, his greatest achievement will always be getting Vanilla Ice to dance with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That’s only one of several irresistibly entertaining moments in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze,” which Pressman directed in 1991 just before shifting gears to produce and direct the acclaimed TV series “Picket Fences.” The film returns to the big screen for a 35th-anniversary engagement on March 13.
“I was absolutely stunned,” Pressman told IndieWire when asked for his reaction to the news that “Secret of the Ooze” would be getting a theatrical re-release. The last few years have been good to Pressman’s body of work, with the Library of Congress recognizing the importance of “Boulevard Nights” — a movie Pressman says was completely ignored when it was released in 1979 — and Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary devoting an episode of their “Video Archives” podcast to Pressman’s 1977 comedy “The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training.”
Tarantino, a Pressman enthusiast who frequently screens the director’s “Doctor Detroit” at his Vista and New Beverly theaters and has held special events for “Boulevard Nights” at the New Bev, made a case on “Video Archives” for “Breaking Training” not just being an underrated sequel, but an observant and nuanced coming-of-age classic. For Pressman, hearing Tarantino and Avary’s analysis was a gratifying surprise.
“They recognized the conscious work we had done that was dismissed at the time we made the movie,” Pressman said, speaking of the complicated father-son relationship between William Devane and Jackie Earle Haley. “That separation and struggle was what held the movie together, and they got that.” Pressman’s deft hand with material aimed at young people is ultimately what would land him the assignment to direct “Secret of the Ooze.”
“They didn’t have a director, and [producer] Terry Morse, who I had just worked with in television, recommended me because I had made a big hit for kids with ‘The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training,'” Pressman said. When Pressman first heard about the job, he knew nothing about the Ninja Turtles and turned to a 12-year-old actor on the TV movie he was directing for input. “I asked him, ‘What can you tell me about the Turtles?’ and he went nuts: ‘You could direct the sequel?!'”
Realizing there was a built-in young audience, Pressman took the job with the intention of making the kind of comedy he loved as a child. “I really channeled my inner eight-year-old,” he said. “It was close to a Three Stooges or Marx Brothers movie as it could be. I really went for the broad humor.” That said, Pressman directed his actors to play the scenes as seriously as they could, both to make the silliness stand out even more and to lend the material an emotional investment.
‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze’©New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett CollectionCreating that emotional investment was largely due to the casting, which mixed talented newcomers with veterans like “Straw Dogs” and “The Omen” star David Warner, who played the movie’s villain. “I was a fan of his going back to the ‘Tom Jones’ days,” Pressman said, referring to Warner’s feature debut. “He was our first choice, and I didn’t know if we could get him, but he was dying to do the movie. It turns out he had an 11-year-old daughter, and he wanted to prove to her that he could make a movie she would want to see. Having David gave it such a sense of gravitas.”
Pressman also cast himself as the boss in a newsroom, though he says this came more from necessity and exhaustion than desire. “That was the last week of shooting,” Pressman said. “We realized the movie was running about three minutes short of 90 minutes, and the writer wrote an additional scene for us to put together on the last shooting day. Rather than flying somebody in, they just put the suit on me, and I did it. I had been an actor, and I’ve acted again since, so it was a great opportunity, but that was the last thing on my mind. I was just like, ‘Let’s get this movie done already!'”
One reason Pressman took the job on “Secret of the Ooze” was to flex creative muscles he hadn’t been able to use before, particularly in effects and animatronics. “I had never done that, and I was intrigued,” Pressman said. “I found out how fantastic it was to combine the complicated elements of working with off-camera puppeteers, mimes in suits, and stuntmen in suits to create the effects.”
To stay on top of it all, Pressman storyboarded the entire movie, which had two units shooting for 75 days and was made largely in an old-school, classical Hollywood style. “Everything is a set,” Pressman said. “New York, the East River, we built everything and shot it all on stages, aside from a few days of exteriors. I got lost in the magical excitement of creating a whole new world.”
‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze’Courtesy Everett CollectionPressman even got to do his version of an old-fashioned MGM musical sequence for the movie’s iconic high point, the set piece where then-white-hot Vanilla Ice sings “Go Ninja Go” in a club as the Ninja Turtles and onlookers dance and party. “They made a deal with Vanilla Ice to write a song and be in the film, pure and simple,” Pressman said when recalling how the rapper (real name: Robert Matthew Van Winkle) came to appear in the movie. “I hired a choreographer, and Vanilla Ice was totally into it. He did his dance, and I’d give him notes, and he reacted to what was happening.”
Again, the intention was to present something ridiculous as seriously as possible; Pressman had choreographer Myrna Gawryn come up with dynamic and precise dance moves that would have worked beautifully in a traditional musical — only here they were being executed by guys in giant turtle suits. Pressman realized he needed to take the Ninja Turtles seriously if the movie was going to work for its young audience when he talked to his production sound mixer’s eight-year old son on the set.
“I said, ‘I want to ask you something. Are the Ninja Turtles real?’ He said, ‘Of course they’re real,'” Pressman said, though he realized the boy didn’t mean the actual actors standing in front of him. “I asked him, ‘Who are those guys?’ and he said, ‘Oh, those are just actors telling their story.’ For him, it was like watching a biopic.” Pressman realized later, when he was directing episodes of “Law and Order: SVU,” that there was a connection with the Ninja Turtles.
“They’re both about justice,” Pressman said. “It’s just that the Ninja Turtles are speaking to the six-to-10-year-olds.” With that in mind, Pressman thinks the time is right for a new Ninja Turtles movie. “If I were to make one now, I’d do a political film,” Pressman said. “I think the Turtles should save the country and save the government in a very comical way. In the earlier movies, they take on [villains] Shredder, and Tokka, and Razhar, but it could be bigger. Why not? These guys are genuine heroes that have clearly stood the test of time.”
“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze” returns to theaters March 13-19.
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