Josh Brolin Recounts Seeing the Pirate Ship in THE GOONIES for the First Time and How He Ruined the First Take
Every fan of The Goonies knows the story of how Steven Spielberg, Richard Donner, and the rest of the crew kept the kid actors from seeing One-Eyed Willy’s pirate ship until the day that they shot the big scene. They has a full scale ship built and wanted to get a natural reaction from the kids when seeing the ship on film with the first take, and well… Josh Brolin screwed it up, but he has no regrets.
The actor recently took to Instagram to reminisce about the film and his experience when he saw the awesome pirate ship for the first time. Brolin writes:
“16 years old. Clueless. Reading Stanislavsky books on character in my little prison of a 10 by 10 all wood ‘trailer’. Martha Plimpton’s my best bud, and Robert Davi scares me stiff. Steven Spielberg is God and Richard Donner is a camp counselor. I think the writer, Chris Columbus, and I are the same height. We haven’t yet seen the boat. We are backed into the water that the stage is filled with. We are told to submerge in unison and when we come up turn around and react naturally. They roll cameras, we go under, we hear a muffled “Action!” and when we surface and turn around there’s silence. All of us. Then the first word spoken is mine. It’s loud. “Fuck!!”. And the take is ruined. I don’t care. The ship is 150 feet long and it has treasure hanging from all sides. It’s every kid’s dream come true. Fuck seems, even now, totally appropriate.”
It must’ve been a pretty incredible experience for those actors to be a part of this movie! Maybe one day they’ll all get together for that long-awaited sequel.