Director Menahem Golan has said that when the picture was booed midway through at the 1980 Montreal Film Festival, he left the theater, went to his hotel and was preparing to commit suicide by jumping off the balcony when his business partner barged in and stopped him.
The film originally began with a sequence in which Mr. Topps (aka God) creates the world. He sings the song "Creation" and brings various creatures to life, then he sings a song with Mr. Boogalow (aka The Devil), who ultimately falls into a stream and disappears. Live animals, humans, puppets and people in costumes filled a small set. Mishaps abounded as a tiger got loose, the elephants got their trunks stuck in set pieces, people wearing a brontosaurus costume collapsed from the heat, and the terrain and restrictive size of the set proved difficult for the actors to dance through and cameras to maneuver. The omission of this disastrous shoot makes the biblical ending of the movie seem completely random.
Reportedly, during its premiere at the Paramount Theater in Hollywood, audiences threw their free souvenir soundtracks at the screen, causing extensive damage.
Screenwriters Kobi Recht and Iris Recht set their screenplay in 1984 because of the Orwellian themes in the story. Director Menahem Golan decided the year was too close to the era in which they were living, so he pushed back the setting to 1994.
Screenwriters Kobi Recht and Iris Recht, originally conceived "The Apple" in 1977 as a three-act Hebrew stage musical about God and the Devil, but their vision was deemed too elaborate and costly to execute on the stage. They showed the screenplay to Menahem Golan, who convinced them to turn it into an English-language screenplay. The Rechts quickly determined that their initial vision would not work as a movie, so the original story and all 17 existing songs were scrapped.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content
