Believe me, I know how much effects cost or don't. They can even be inexpensive with CGI -- we managed to turn out over 150 VFX shots for SUPER MARIO BROTHERS (script and editing: NOT MY FAULT) for about $4M. But the cost of the SETS still pushed it up into the $30-40M range. And on-set effects and construction costs were also behind the exorbitance of T2 (Visual Effects: ~$18M) and the other L.A.Hero (Total ~$130M).

Here was my chance. I took the old man aside, and two or three glasses of Old Crow launched him into reminiscence.

This displays one side of the binary in all its Platonic-Descartesean arrogance.

He has a son, who shall be flayed alive; then 'nointed over with honey, set on the head of a wasp's nest; then stand till he be three quarters and a dram dead; then recovered again with aqua-vitae or some other hot infusion; then, raw as he is, and in the hottest day prognostication proclaims, shall be be set against a brick-wall, the sun looking with a southward eye upon him, where he is to behold him with flies blown to death.