After I posted on The Swarm I looked around and couldn't find this anecdote posted anywhere else, so here's a story Richard Chamberlain (who had also been in Irwin Allen's The Towering Inferno) told on TVOntario's Saturday Night at the Movies about Irwin Allen's directorial, um, style:
Allen is about to do a scene involving some of the real (de-stung) bees who had been brought in for the film. Suddenly Allen looks dissastisfied. "Wait," says Irwin Allen. "There's a humming noise in here. Who's making that humming noise?"
Michael Caine stares at the director/producer. "Irwin," he says, "that's the bees."
Allen: "Well, why are they humming?"
There is a pause as Caine struggles to resist the obvious punchline, and then, finally, he can't stop himself: "I don't know, Irwin. Maybe they don't know the words."
Irwin didn't get it.
Because of your original post about The Swarm, when I first read about this story, my immediate reaction was to shout "Bees! Bees! Millions of bees!" in a rushed, stilted, unconvincing manner.
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