Adrianne: Hello.

Billy: Hey, Adrianne! 

Adrianne: I have a question from a listener.

Regina: Okay.

Adrianne: It’s about something that has been hiding in plain sight for 27 years. Something that millions of people have seen millions of times and never noticed.

Regina: Okay?

Adrianne: The listener is Kevin, one of our fantastic, incredible listeners. Kevin sent us an email with the subject line, “Jeff Goldblum has a tattoo in Jurassic Park. No one noticed, no one can identify. Help!”

Regina: Oh, God.

Adrianne: I’m going to share a screenshot from Jurassic Park.

Billy: Okay.

Regina: It kind of looks like a domino.

Billy: That’s what I was going to say.

Adrianne: Okay. Yeah. Can someone describe what is in this screenshot?

Billy: So this is Jeff Goldblum, in the movie Jurassic Park.

Regina: Looking a little sweaty.

Billy: Yeah. He’s looking kind of wet. Okay. So he’s got some dimmed glasses on. He’s got his sleeves rolled up. It looks like he’s like running or hiding or fighting something.

John: He’s holding a flare.

Billy: Oh, right. Okay. So this is when he was holding the flare.

John: He’s distracting the T-Rex from the children. 

Billy: Right.

John: He’s jumped out of the car to try to save the children from the T-Rex by waving a flare.

Regina: I don’t know that I’ve seen Jurassic Park.

John: Regina!

Billy: Wow.

Adrianne: It took me a while too.

Billy: Anyway, he’s holding up his arm, I guess the flare’s in his hand, that’s cropped out of this. And on his forearm, on the inside of his forearm, sort of close to his elbow, is a tattoo that looks like about the size and shape of a domino, like a domino piece.

Adrianne: Can you tell what it is?

Billy:No, again, it looks like…it looks like maybe a domino, but it doesn’t.

Regina: A can of soup?

John: A can of soup.

Adrianne: Basically, it’s a rectangle and it’s black and it looks like there’s some kind of illustration or characters or something inside the rectangle.

John: It almost looks like it’s been superimposed into the frame.

Regina: Yeah, it kind of does. It’s super dark. Looks very crisp. 

John: Yeah. It’s contrasty. Yeah.

Adrianne: Kevin’s boyfriend, whose name is Roston, is the one who actually noticed the tattoo. We did a Skype call in the beginning of April when most of the country was under some sort of stay at home order due to the Novel Coronavirus outbreak.

Billy: You should probably explain what that is in case our listeners out there don’t know what the corona virus is.

Adrianne: No, that’s okay. 

All right. You guys are going to see my closet. Don’t judge.

Kevin: Cool. No judgement.

Roston: Hey, it’s all good. It’s quarantine times.

Adrianne: I know, everyone’s struggling. 

Roston: I was like, I gotta put on a hat.

Adrianne: Roston works in social media marketing. And at the time we spoke, one of his clients was Universal, which was great because he’s a huge Jurassic Park fan.

Roston: So I’m basically kind of spending all day scrubbing through the Jurassic films and playing with dinosaurs all day. So it’s kind of a dream job because I’ve been obsessed with this franchise since I was like four years old. And I was scrubbing through at one point, I think it’s the scene where Ian being Jeff Goldblum, pulls out the flare and the T-Rex is chasing him. And, I saw like this, like black dot on his forearm. And I was like, “what is that?” So I put up the contrast and I saw that he had a tattoo, which is weird because I’ve seen this movie like a thousand times. I’ve never seen this tattoo on this character.

Adrianne: So you guys saw the screenshot he’s talking about. The tattoo is clearly there. It’s very clear. It’s actually kind of crisp so that you can see the tattoo but, you can’t see what the tattoo is supposed to be depicting. So Roston starts searching online, and he can’t find this tattoo anywhere.

Roston: It’s not on the merch. It’s not on any fan art. It’s only visible really in like three scenes in the whole movie.

Kevin: Including that really iconic scene though. 

Roston: Right! So it’s you see it for half a second when he’s walking up to the sick triceratops and then you see it when he has the flare during the T-Rex breakout scene. And then you see it like quickly in the shot where he’s lying down lounging with his shirt off. Which I think is kind of the more, more iconic, frame from that film. But you, you see half of it’s covered up by a bar. 

And then I looked into the sequel, The Lost World because he’s in that as well, but he’s wearing like a turtleneck and a jacket the whole time of the movie.

Adrianne: So he wonders if maybe it’s just a tattoo that belongs to Jeff Goldblum the actor, like it’s a real tattoo so he checks that.

Roston: He doesn’t have any tattoos, but there’s a long list of people who have tattoos of his face all over them. So when you search like “Jeff Goldblum tattoo,” a bunch of other different tattoos pop up that have nothing to do with Jeff Goldblum having a tattoo.

John: Have I ever told you guys about my Jeff Goldblum tattoo?

Billy: I mean, Jeff Goldblum, to be frank, is sort of like a sex icon. 

Adrianne: Oh, easily. 

Billy: So there are lots of photos of his flesh from different angles. 

John: What a choice of words!  

Billy: It shouldn’t be hard to find a photo of his inner arm. There’s got to be a photo of him.  

Adrianne: No. There’s lots of photos, lots of photos of his inner arm.No photos that show a tattoo anywhere. And he’s also said that he doesn’t have any tattoos.

Billy: Oh, really?

Adrianne: Yeah. He’s reacted to the fact that fans have tattoos of his face and said in that context  that he doesn’t have any tattoos. And he also has a segment on his new show on Disney plus, which is called The World According to Jeff Goldblum.

Billy: Right. Yes, I’ve watched it.

Adrianne: And there’s one episode where he does something on tattoo culture. And he’s like, “why do people get tattoos? I want to understand this.”

Jeff Goldblum: Hey, here’s what I’m thinking about. Why do people get tattoos? I myself never– had a tattoo.

Adrianne: Anyway, Roston uses Kevin’s Reddit account to post this screenshot on the Jurassic Park sub Reddit. And it’s pretty clear that people have no idea that this tattoo is there.

Roston: People online when you first posted it, where like “you made this up!”

Kevin:Yeah! That’s true! 

Roston: People that people knew better on Reddit, like, users that people knew better on Reddit, went back and confirmed it and like “it is there!”

Kevin: They’re like, “yeah,” they’re like, “you Photoshopped this!” And then someone was like, “look, I wonder if it’s on like the remastered version.” Someone’s like, “Oh, I whipped out my VHS,” and like, “I was able to find it and it’s there. It’s just blurry.”

Adrianne: All right. So here are some of the responses from Redditors,“my gods. I too have seen the movie countless times and never noticed. I feel like I’ve been lied to my entire life.” Someone else says, “how have I never noticed this?!” And another person says, “this is blowing my mind.”

Those are very representative comments of this Reddit thread. 

Some commenters pointed out that the tattoo is actually missing in some spots, like even in that same scene, in a different shot with the T-Rex and the Jeep. You can see Jeff Goldblum’s arm and the tattoo doesn’t seem to be there. They also had some guesses, including, “maybe that it was some kind of chaos theory symbol because Jeff Goldblum’s character is really into chaos theory.”

Roston: One person thought it was a rose, until I realized that his arm is up, like with his fist up in the air– so now we don’t even know if it’s upside down or not. So we really don’t know which way to look at it.

Adrianne: And someone else said “it looked like maybe it was a playing card,” which would make sense because Ian Malcolm is apparently a poker player in the books.

Regina: I see the playing card. I do not see the rose, but–

Adrianne: Yeah. I don’t know. Nobody on Reddit has anything helpful to add. So Roston posts the same thing on Twitter, and he posts on Instagram and tries to get everybody to @JeffGoldblum to ask him what the tattoo is. He looks into the cast and crew of the original film to see if he has any connections there, no dice.

And then he tries reaching out to Jeff Goldblum through Jeff Goldblum’s community phone number, which is something that the actor released like five months ago.

Jeff Goldblum: Hey! I’m always looking for cool new ways to interact with all of you. That’s true. I’m going to now give you the number ready? That’s (310) 620-6558. Okay! That’s the number and that really is my number. I’ve got, I mean, I’m going to have a phone with that number on it and we can T X T.

Adrianne: That was a Facebook video that Jeff Goldblum posted. 

John: It’s so upsetting.

Adrianne: So unfortunately Roston did text the community number and did not receive a reply from Jeff Goldblum. So that was a bust on the community number.

John: I think there’s another way too — like, if it’s not a real tattoo, it was put on him by someone probably in makeup.

Adrianne: Right! I have some ideas around this too. I actually think Jeff Goldblum might give a trolly answer if asked about this directly. I think we should work both angles.

John: Also, have you found any like official copies of the Jurassic Park script?

Adrianne: I can’t, I couldn’t. I found some online, but it’s hard to tell if how official it is, how complete.

John: Did you search for a tattoo?

Adrianne: I did. And there were no mentions of tattoo and there’s no real—  there isn’t really a detailed physical description of Ian Malcolm. It just says like 40ish.

John: How about in the Michael Creighton book?

Adrianne: Um, people did search tattoo in the Michael Creighton book and it had zero results.

John: This is, what’s weird about this though. Like if it’s not a real tattoo, it was put there purposely by someone, so, who would make that decision?

Adrianne: Right. Someone in makeup.

John: Is it makeup though? Or is it like— 

Adrianne: Makeup, or costume.

John: Or is that a directorial decision? Does this go all the way to Spielberg?

Adrianne: Call Steve!

So, I asked Roston, “what would you want to know in order to feel satisfied?”

Roston: I would want to know what the tattoo is.

Adrianne: And this is not just idle curiosity for trivia’s sake. There’s a reason Roston wants to know what this tattoo is.

Roston: Okay. Here’s, here’s another thing, long before this I’ve always wanted the Jurassic Park tattoo because it’s my favorite movie. It’s why I wanted to get into entertainment. It was the first non-animated or like child movie that I saw when I was four. But yeah, so I’ve always wanted to Jurassic park like tattoo, but I never really knew, like, I don’t want like a giant skeleton on me. I didn’t want the logo cause it’s– I don’t know. So just kinda, always try and kind of figure it out– and then this kind of fell into my lap and if we can figure out what it is, and it is dramatically…Jurassic, then I probably would get it.

Adrianne: Okay. So we have to figure this out because obviously it would be the perfect tattoo for Roston.

John: Yeah.

Regina: I mean, I think I would go as far as to say that the four of us should also get the tattoo.

Adrianne: Okay, maybe.

John: You haven’t even seen the movie.

Regina: Fair enough.

Billy: I think Regina just really wants a tattoo.

Regina: Yeah. I have no tattoos, you know, it can be interesting.

Adrianne: This seems- the bar for this just keeps getting higher and higher. I did have something else.

Roston: Oh, and the other thing, and they’re currently filming Jurassic World Dominion and Jeff Goldblum is in it. And I just think it would be a really sad, missed opportunity if they forgot to put his tattoo in there.

Adrianne: Oh, yeah.

Roston: I think they’re- they’re only a couple of weeks into it and it’s been halted because of the coronavirus.

Adrianne: Right. So, I feel that it is now our mission to find out the nature of this tattoo, deliver the information to Roston so he can get it on his body. Then also deliver it to the cast and crew of Jurassic World Dominion before they start shooting again.

Billy: Wow.

Regina: Alright.

Billy: I think we can do it.

John: Coming up, Adrianne finds an answer, 65 million years in the making.

Billy: Hello listener! This is Billy, and this is how I can tell you how you can support the show. 

We have a Patreon, that’s the thing that makes Underunderstood continue to exist. If you join our Patreon, you’ll get access to all kind of stuff; our private Discord community, trivia nights, but we also do a whole second podcast every week, including weeks that the main show is on highest. This week, we talk about misinformation that started on TikTok including a get rich quick scheme that involves putting an ATM in your bedroom. 

You can find out more by going to Patreon, by clicking the link at the bottom of the show notes or by going to patreon.com/underunderstood. 

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported us so far! Alright, back to the show.  

Adrianne: Hey everyone!

John: Hey!

Billy: Hi, Adrianne! 

Adrianne: So it’s been awhile. It’s been 10 months. 

John: Has it really been- it’s been 10 months? 

Adrianne: It’s been 10 months. We talked about Jurassic Park. A lot of things happened. There was an election. There was an inauguration. The novel coronavirus pandemic continues to rage. And in the middle of all of this, I have been desperately trying to figure out Ian Malcolm’s tattoo.

Regina: Priorities.

Adrianne: So, first of all, I emailed Jeff Goldblum’s publicist who was very nice and said, “no, he is not doing a ton of press right now.” And then I saw Jeff Goldblum do a bunch of press so I emailed her again and I was like, “I noticed Jeff is doing some press. I thought maybe he would be available for this.”

And she said, “Oh no, I’m sorry.” Very nicely. And then I emailed her a third time and she said, “no,” again, very nicely.

Regina: At least she was nice every time.

Adrianne: At least she was nice. Yeah. I mean, I emailed Colin Trevorrow’s public relations firm twice and they didn’t respond.

So I figured, if I couldn’t talk to Jeff, there was one person who worked on the film who would definitely know if this tattoo was supposed to be there. And if so, what it was, and that was Ana Maria Quintana.

Billy: Oh I was going to guess the T-Rex.

Ana Maria: Hello?

Adrianne: Hi, can you hear me now? 

Ana Maria was the script supervisor on Jurassic Park, which means she was responsible for continuity. And that includes everything from details in script to props and costumes, lines positions on the scene, making sure the actor has the same energy. If they’re shooting parts of the same scene on different days. All that stuff. 

She was also the script supervisor on many other films, including; the original Blade Runner, American Beauty, Saving Private Ryan, the Hunger Games, Indiana Jones, two SpongeBob movies, you know, no big deal.

Billy: Wow.

John: So, she would theoretically have been you know responsible for say hypothetically, him having a tattoo in some shots and not others?

Adrianne: Exactly.

John: Okay.

Billy: Oh, wow. There were three SpongeBob movies. What have I been?

Ana Maria: When I walk on a set, I’ve always said this by the time I get, I enter the stage and I walk with the monitors on, I’ve been asked five different questions.

Adrianne: What kind of questions?.

Ana Maria: Well, it could be like, “Oh, Maria, you know, there’s going to be a clock. What time is it? Oh, you know what? Did we shoot that two shots or the DP will take? Can you, when you have a chance to give me the slate number, cause I want to look at that close up because I want to match it to this? Or the actor will come and say, “when you get a chance, um, did I say those lines or did I change it? And what did I change it to?”

Adrianne: Scripts supervisors typically sit next to the director and they have to likevsort of mind-meld with them.

John: This seems like such a fun job.

Adrianne: It does. I know. 

Regina: Oh, my God. I was going to say it seems so stressful!

Billy: You just have to like extremely nerd out on every film you’re on before it’s been made.

Adrianne: Ana Maria first met Steven Spielberg when she was the script supervisor for Hook. And she actually thought he didn’t like her. They didn’t have this close relationship like she had had with other directors in the past. And she felt like sometimes he was ignoring her.

Ana Maria: I said, he’ll never call me again. He’s Steven, he doesn’t like me.

Adrianne: Of course, he called again for his next film, which was Jurassic Park. She said for Jurassic Park, everyone was on top of their game. So prepared, the actors, Steven Spielberg knew every shot he needed and there weren’t a lot of continuity challenges. There was one thing that came up later.

Ana Maria: About 8 years ago, something, someone- I was interviewed here about Steven or something, and if it was for a TV show or something, and they interviewed me. And they said that people were really upset because there’s a scene in Jurassic park with the goat.

Adrianne: Ahuh.

Ana Maria: And what is it is that if you can see that thing, you can tell that there is no cliff. And then when you cut to the goat, the goat is on a flat land to where’s the cliff. And of course they showed it to me and I looked at it and I said, “you know, first of all, I don’t think anyone realized that until somebody started picking at it. And of course, if you do pick up things, you will find things, you know, but it worked.” And obviously the movie works because it made a fortune. Obviously the movie was a huge hit

Adrianne: I didn’t want to call Ana Maria out, like whoever this dewey was, who asked her about this. But I did want to ask her about this tattoo. 

If a character has a tattoo as part of their costume, like it’s not the actor’s tattoo, is that something that the script supervisor would pay attention to?

Ana Maria: I mean, it’s my job to make sure like, “Oh my God, he just walked in and everyone forgot the tattoo,” especially if it’s part of the character. That is really, I mean, that would be an incredible, incredible oversight, you know? But it would be my job at the end to make sure, you know, where is it? What happened? And did we do something in Jurassic Park?

Adrianne: So I told her about the tattoo and she did not remember it being part of the character design.

Ana Maria: It could be Jeff, you know, wanted to add that to his territories, but I don’t know. Are you sending it to my AOL or my- ?

Adrianne: I texted it to you.

Ana Maria: Oh, you texted it to me. Okay…let’s see. Oh my God! Look at that.

Adrianne: So she did not recognize it, but she gave me a hint for where to go next.

Ana Maria: Now the best person to ask about something like this would be our- who was our lead? Was it, was it Christina Smith? I would ask her because she’s definitely know.

Billy: Lead with what?

Adrianne: Lead makeup person. 

Do you mind just saying who you are and that you worked on Jurassic Park?

Christina: Yeah. This is Christina Smith, and I was the head makeup artist on Jurassic Park.

Adrianne: Was the makeup on Jurassic park, the first film, particularly challenging?

Christina: No, it was pretty easy. I don’t mean that being rude or anything, but because it was all about the dinosaurs, you know what I mean?

Regina: Wait, was there a different makeup artist for the dinosaurs?

Billy: The people basically just had to get like dirtier or in sweatier. 

Adrianne: Exactly and that’s exactly what she told me. They had to get– there was a progression of dirt and blood, and that was the most of what makeup had to do really.

John: Again, sounds like a great job!

Regina: Can you just want to make Jurassic park, John?

John: Yeah!

Adrianne: So I sent Christina the image of the tattoo and she told me that they did not give Jeff Goldblum’s character a tattoo.

Regina: Oh, god.

Billy: What?

John: What is it?

Christina: Are you sure it wasn’t dirt or something on his arm?

Adrianne: Yeah. It’s definitely something it’s in a couple of different scenes. If you check the email, you can see the photos that I attached to the email. 

Christina: Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. But-

Adrianne: You saw it. Okay.

Christina: I saw that. Yeah. But I couldn’t make it out either. I know that we didn’t put anything on them.

Adrianne: You do. Okay. You’re sure about that? 

Christina: For sure. For sure. A hundred percent.

Regina: What?

John: This makes no sense. 

Billy: She’s like, “I wouldn’t have been able to make a fake tattoo with my blood and sweat kit.”

John: It’s in multiple scenes. Did he just go rogue and put something on his arm?

Billy: Yeah. I don’t understand. It’s very distinct. It’s like a crop circle type of pattern. It’s not–it doesn’t look accidental.

Adrianne: Christina did say she still had her continuity book from the movie and she promised me she would check it for any tattoo photos.

Regina: So wait, there’s a continuity book- like she takes- like Polaroids and stuff on set and just puts them in?

Adrianne: Yeah.

Regina: Okay.

Billy: That’s so cool. It’s like-

Adrianne: A scrapbook.

Billy: Like a Memento situation.

Adrianne: So she said that she gave, she gives some stuff to the Academy, the Academy collects this sort of memorabilia, but she kept her continuity book from Jurassic Park.

John: Huh?

Regina: Good for her.

John: Yeah.

Billy: But she can at least check it, right?

Adrianne: Yeah.

Anyway, meanwhile, you remember there was this other angle to this, right? We wanted to find out the tattoo, but we also wanted to get a message to Colin Trevorrow, the director of the new Jurassic World movie, because Jeff Goldblum is in it. 

Billy: Yeah!

Adrianne: So, I thought, okay, maybe if I go back and take that angle, Colin Trevorrow will be in a better position to figure this out. He can just make a few calls, hit up the Universal archive. He’s already on set with half the cast from the original film because Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, BD Wong, and Sam Neill are all in the new one Jurassic World Dominion.

John: Wait, are they really? Doing what? 

Regina: Acting John!

Adrianne: I mean, you’ll have to wait until June 20, 2022 to find out. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, Colin Trevorrow’s publicist is icing me out.

John: Nice.

Adrianne: So I took a very indirect route and messaged someone Colin Trevorrow follows on Twitter, who also happens to follow me.

John: Oh, wow. Okay.

Dom: My name is Don Nero, and I am a video editor on staff at Esquire. And I also write about film comedy, video games, and a whole bunch of stuff for the website as well.

Adrianne: So Dom wasn’t sure when or why Colin Trevorrow followed him on Twitter but, he thinks it might’ve had something to do with a story he wrote for Esquire. So Colin Trevorrow was originally supposed to direct Star Wars, episode 9. 

You know, there’s a lot of shakeup with Disney firing people working on the Star Wars movies?

Billy: Yep.

Adrianne: So apparently Disney didn’t like the script that he wrote so they fired him and they got JJ Abrams. But this script that Colin wrote which was called the Duel Of The Fates—

Dom: That script leaked and we were at, at Esquire, like reading it together. And I pitched a story of just like, this seemed like a very cool, like heavy metal take on Star Wars. And I think it might’ve been better than the rise of Skywalker, which I thought was a pretty mediocre movie. So I wrote that story and I think, maybe I tagged him when I tweeted it and then he followed me.

Adrianne: So as anyone who uses Twitter knows if someone is following you, you can direct message them. And that’s what I wanted Dom to do for me to Colin Trevorrow.

Billy: Slide in Dom. Slide in.

Adrianne: I wrote like a- a thing for you to copy and paste to him, and then a couple screenshots from the film of the tattoo. And then, you sent that along and did you copy and paste that verbatim and send the images?

Dom: I did. I’m looking at my exchange with him right now. It’s- yes, word for word.

Adrianne: Okay. And what time of day did you send that?

Dom: Let’s see here..I sent this message on October 11th at 11:39 AM.

Adrianne: Okay. And then how long did it take you to get a response?

Dom: He wrote back at 4:00 AM. The next day.

Adrianne: Okay, so you woke up to it and what did the message say?

Dom: He said, “Hey, Dom. Neither Jeff or I have seen this before and he doesn’t remember it, but an active investigation is underway.

Regina: An active investigation!

Billy: He talked to Jeff Goldblum about it.

John: This is incredible that this worked!

Adrianne: I know. I think we got lucky because Colin was filming Jurassic World Dominion and with Jeff Goldblum and all these other people. And then someone on set had just tested positive for COVID, like four days before this. 

John: So, they have a bunch of downtime in London.

Adrianne: So they were in a two week quarantine. Exactly.

So Dom and Colin go back and forth about this, where Dom keeps trying to redirect Colin to me. He gave down my Twitter, gave him my email address, asked him to follow me, but Colin just keeps sending messages to Dom through Twitter. And then he just like, he sort of drops off. Like it’s like that thing where each message you send like, it takes longer to get a message back.

John: It’s putting Dom in more and more uncomfortable position-

Adrianne: Exactly!

Regina: Right. Exactly. Dom is like, “please get me out of this!”

John: With a filmmaker he likes and respects.

Adrianne: Exactly. But Colin had implied that he’d be willing to do an interview. He just sort of kept not committing to a specific date. So first he said it would have to wait until Jurassic World Dominion wrapped. Then he said there was just too much intense political news going on. Which sort of makes sense. I don’t know if you remember, but there were some moments when it felt difficult to concentrate on anything other than US political news.

So finally I said, “Dom, okay, we just need to ask him one more time.”

Dom: I think you, you know, I have to be prepared and you have to be prepared for, for radio silence. 

Adrianne: To be blocked.

Dom: Or yeah, I mean, maybe I might get reported. No, I just, I do- I do kind of anticipate him not responding because I do get the vibe that he’s–

Adrianne: You think? That’s a wrong attitude? You can’t have that. If you have that, I’d do then that guarantees the outcome. 

So I’m definitely starting to spiral a little bit as well as Dom is too. And the time that Dom and I were talking, it’s like around 10:00 PM and all of a sudden I’m like, “okay, I have to call Billy.”

Oh, wait, he’s calling me back. 

Dom: Okay.

Adrianne: Hey, Billy.

Billy: Hello!

Adrianne: Do you- ? I’m talking to Dom Nero. Do you have a second? Are you at your computer? Can you hop on? 

Billy: Sure. Yeah. You like with my mic?

Adrianne: Yeah, ideally. 

Billy: Okay. Yeah. 

Adrianne: So I told Billy that Dom and I were like struggling with how to reach out to this, like ultra famous A list director.

In the past, it seemed like he got a little bit distracted by political news and I worry that there’s about to be a lot of political news, or whether we should wait until there’s no political news on the horizon.

Billy: I don’t know. I mean, I’ve been having to go through the same consideration just in general, not for people that I’m even particularly worried are super plugged in and can’t focus on anything else. But just because it’s hard to expect anyone else to it, at least in America, I feel like right now. I mean, I think in general push for right now, why not? You can always push for later, later, but why not push for right now? Right now?

John: Oh, I’m getting that as a tattoo.

Adrianne: Oh god. Okay. I think that we should just send a message tonight and like, you know, if he blocks Dom, he blocks Dom.

Dom: That’s fine.

Adrianne: Dom can deal with it.

Dom: I’m willing to take the fall here. 

Colin: Hello!

Adrianne: Hi! 

Colin: Can you hear me? This is working, yeah?

Adrianne: You sound great.

Colin: Thanks.

Adrianne: Thanks so much for doing this. You are a class act. I’m so happy. We really appreciate it.

Colin: I just like talking to other people.

Billy: Wait! You got him?

Adrianne: So that’s Colin Trevorrow.

Billy: You didn’t tell me that you got him!

Adrianne: Yeah, of course we got him!

Billy: You called me in the middle of the night to say I don’t have anything. I thought I figured once you did have something, you would let me know.

Adrianne: Yeah. I don’t know. Whatever we came up with, whatever we said- worked. And he put me through to his assistant, not the publicist, and they set it up. He lives in the countryside outside of London. He’s in like a very nice kind of suburban white dad looking office with a couch and a guitar and a couple of lamps.

Colin: This is the editing room for Jurassic World Dominion. You’re looking at it.

Adrianne: Everyone remembers Roston right? The Jurassic Park super fan who started this whole journey? I pulled Roston in for this call with Colin.

John: Oh my God.

Adrianne: So that Colin could understand the stakes here.

Roston: I’ve always wanted the Jurassic Park tattoo and that comes in many forms. And so my thinking was that like, if this is a character centric, like a tattoo made for this character then, um, then I would get it in a heartbeat.

Adrianne: So Colin, I sent you this message sort of via an intermediary, and it sounded like you actually talked about this on set.

Colin: We did.

Adrianne: How did that go?

Colin: This was a little, this was like a mini mystery for a few days. Multiple department heads were involved in this conversation, why it became an issue is that Jeff in the film wears long sleeves for a big chunk of his appearance, but at a certain point, the sleeves were going to roll up and we hadn’t shot the part when the sleeves roll up yet.

And so when this came up, I felt like, “Oh, I missed this.” You know, I should know this. This is my job. And I screwed up.

John: Oh my god!

Regina: I like that he still classifies it as a mini mystery. Like I would be having a complete full meltdown and he’s like, it’s a mini mystery.

Adrianne: So Colin’s producer, Annys Hamilton, comes up with this theory that maybe Jeff went to the club the night before and forgot to scrub the stamp off.

John: And got stamped on his forearm?

Adrianne: Well, if he was trying to avoid having it be visible in the film and then just forgot about it later.

Regina: He knew he was going to forget to wash it off.

John: It’s really big too.

Adrianne: But, Colin goes to the makeup department and they start going through the first film. And they realized the scene where Jeff Goldblum is holding up the flare was shot at universal studios, and the scene with the sick triceratops and the big pile of dinosaur poop, where you can also see the tattoo, was shot in Hawaii.

Billy: Yeah. So..couldn’t have been from a club.

Adrianne: So it could not have been from a club.

Billy: Wow! I like how their first assumption is like, “yeah, Jeff was just partying the night before.” There didn’t seem to be any evidence for that whatsoever. They just jumped to that conclusion.

Regina: The go-to. Yeah.

Colin: So, we started scrubbing through the rest of the movie to see if it showed up in other places. There are scenes where he doesn’t have it also. And so it got even more confusing. And so of course asked him, cause we’re just living in a hotel together. So I just– he would sit in the lobby and there was like this lounge and he would just sit in there and play the piano. So I go downstairs.

Adrianne: That’s amazing!

Colin: And I- I spent an unexpected amount of time singing jazz standards with Jeff Goldblum. And he had no memory of it at all. He was confident that he never had a tattoo. And I showed him the picture, and he had no memory of having a tattoo when he shot that scene.

And he was convinced that it was fake. Somebody must have put this on here. 

Adrianne: Really?

Colin: And so you know, the plot thickens.

Billy: Wait, sorry, convinced that all like a fan faked it? That it’s not in the actual movie?

Regina: Like that we sent a Photoshopped or something?

John: No, but they just scrubbed through the whole movie looking for the scenes. It’s in there. 

Billy: Jeff, c’mon.

Regina: Well, no, but he didn’t, he didn’t scrub through it. Colin scrubbed through it. So Colin presents it to Jeff and then Jeff is like, “no, no, no, no, no. Somebody faked this.” And Colin’s like, “no, no, no.”

Colin: I don’t have any answers for you. All I know is that he is pretty confident that he didn’t did not wear a tattoo in that movie. And yet it’s evidence that he had a tattoo in the movie. So where does that leave us?

Adrianne: Did you ask the other original cast members? Like Sam Neil, Laura Dern, BD Wong? None of them remember anything about clubbing? Or- ?

Colin: No one remembers. They were all around because everyone is around, often and, yeah, no one- no one had any memory and they hold those memories very close and we would talk about them all the time. And yet that one, no. And right around that time, it came up again cause he did, he took a picture that was essentially his open shirted, you know, iconic image of him lying down and he took it again. I can’t remember what it was for, think it’s on the internet now and even- even then we were like, “well, are you, should you put the tattoo on? Cause here we go.”

Adrianne: Jeff Goldblum recreated, you can see this on his Instagram, he recreated that scene with the open shirt for a get out the vote campaign. It’s kind of funny because he actually has his sleeve kind of rolled down over the spot. Sort of like leaving it open, then it could appear later, but, I guess they decided not to include the tattoo prominently. 

Regina: Right.

Adrianne: But we got a little update while we were talking to Colin.

Colin: I just got a text from Jeff Goldblum.

Adrianne: Oh my gosh!

Colin: I told him I was coming on.

Adrianne: Okay.

Colin: I’m gonna send him this photo again, just so just, you know, while he’s here, sending the screenshot. This is all gonna happen live. So that photo that you just sent me was screenshot and is going to him.

Adrianne: Okay.

Colin: Uh, just in case he has a sudden—

Adrianne: Maybe he’ll have a sudden flash of recollection.

Colin: He said, “Maybe we were fooling around in the makeup trailer that day.” And mentioned, “like Laurence Harvey in the Manchurian candidate, I might have a hazy recollection.” A lot of things come along with classic movie references with Mr. Goldblum. “I might have a hazy recollection.” I mean, that’s, maybe he never planned to do this and they were just having fun and suddenly, it became part of the character.

Adrianne: Okay. So, here’s the working theory. It seems like Jeff Goldblum went rogue, came up with this tattoo, drew it on himself in the makeup trailer one day and then repeated the tattoo for other scenes, but not all of them. All without consulting with the head makeup person or anyone else who was part of the crew.

Billy: So what you’re saying is, Jeff Goldblum was so preoccupied with whether or not he could give himself a tattoo, that he didn’t stop to think if he should?

Adrianne: So, if Jeff drew him a tattoo on his arm in the makeup trailer, I wanted to know what Christina Smith thought about that.

Christina: Knowing him, and I like Jeff, he’s a little bit goofy, you know, and you know, and he could have been sitting there in his trailer or setting with a pen and just decided to draw something on his arm. I have no idea. Because I would have killed him, had we not put it in continuity. Do you know what I mean?

John: That must be maddening.

Adrianne: So Christina, you remember she told me she would look through her continuity books? 

John: Yeah.

Adrianne: She did. And there is no tattoo on Jeff Goldblum’s character.

Billy: Wow! He went rogue.

Colin: It’s like, what is it? Soft canon? What do we call that? 

Adrianne: Soft canon?

Colin: He’s now referencing that you’re like, you’re Antonioni’s Blow Up for Jurassic Park.

Adrianne: Does anyone know this film, Blow Up?

Billy: We’re actually just talking about this at my work, cause I work with a bunch of film buffs cause I work for a film school-

Adrianne: Okay?

Billy: But I don’t totally understand the reference.

Adrianne: Okay. I hadn’t seen it. So I watched it and I think he’s referring to the fact that the movie sets up a murder mystery and then just doesn’t solve it. So it has this unsatisfying ending sort of like where it becomes a meditation on truth.

Regina: So exactly what we want.

Adrianne: Yeah. I mean, it’s the worst outcome for a podcast like this. 

So, I think Colin was sensing my disappointment and Roston’s disappointment and he had this idea.

So he’s like, “okay, listen, the only person who can solve this mystery, doesn’t remember the answer. There’s no set definition of what it is. Maybe he drew it on himself in the makeup trailer, but he doesn’t remember what it was supposed to depict.”

Colin: Well, I mean, I have a proposition.

Adrianne: Okay. 

Colin: Which is that- I mean, you can define what it is cause you’re the resident authority on this now. You kind of have a PhD in this subject, if one’s available.

Adrianne: So he tells Roston just bring the picture to a tattoo artist, get something you think is cool and then tell everyone that it’s Ian Malcolm’s tattoo because it is.

Billy: Yes!

Colin: If you tell them that this is the tattoo, that’s what it is.

Adrianne: And then he gets one last text from Jeff Goldblum.

Colin: Oh, he says, “tell them, love to you folks.” So yeah, so it pretty much leaves you with the ability to have that– I think you should do it.

Adrianne: So Roston and Kevin are currently playing around with some ideas and talking to tattoo artists. So one idea is to use the dragon curve, which is a type of fractal that appears at the start of each section of Jurassic Park of the book, alongside a quote from Ian Malcolm and their other idea was based on a project called the Butterfly Effect that was done by some design students. And one of these designs sort of looks like a mosquito.

Roston: The tattoo will be had regardless.

Adrianne: Whenever Roston does get the tattoo, we will do an update and we will announce it as Ian Malcolm’s official tattoo.

Regina: Thanks for listening! Underunderstood is Billy Disney, Adrianne Jeffries, John Lagomarsino and me, Regina Dellea.

Adrianne: Special thanks to Dom Nero, our Colin Trevorrow whisperer.

Billy: If you enjoyed this episode, or if you just enjoy the show in general, you can rate us on the Apple podcast app that really goes a long way to help us. And also there’s some haters in there so, like drown them out, please.

Adrianne: You can also support us on Patreon. We’ll put the link in the show notes.

John: Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.