Welcome to mind. Welcome to mind ed, Welcome to mind, well to
minded. Welcome. Oh gee is bolts. It's showtime. People say,
good money to see this movie. When they go out to a theater,
they want cold sodas, pop, popcorn, and no monsters in the protection
booth. Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring. Got it off. Do you have
any experience in motion truture saw? Yeah, quite a bit. Actually,
I'm quite a bit of the experience. I'm uh active, uh the renter
and I am attend to film the cinema. Uh, it's as much as
possible. Weekly, bi weekly, enter week inter Would you be willing to
cut your hair? Yes, but it's usually better if someone else does it.
I've had a cheap accident. Would you be uh willing to show your
naked ruin into the movie? Yeah? I guess so. Yeah. Welcome
aboard. There's your wardrobe. O god, healy, God, we are
finished. We are over. You had sex with Jeff. I never thought
of it that way. I move off with him. They went pig keep
it again, give it again, give it to gather, give it a
gallow, give it to gather. So you're going to be a star Welcome
to the projection booth. I'm your host. Mike White joined me once again
is mister Rob Saint Mary. This film is only for Madagascar and Iran,
which do not follow American copyright law. Also joining us as mister Kevin Laine.
We're not doing anything traditional here. We're working in a new style.
We're working in send him a new vool. We are kicking off a month
discussing comedy films with Ay look at Frank Oza's Bowfinger, released in nineteen ninety
nine. The film was written by En stars Steve Martin as the titular Bob
Bofinger, a struggling filmmaker who, along with his group of misfit artists,
makes a movie around the unknowing presence of unstable superstar Kit Ramsey played by Eddie
Murphy. We will be spoiling this film as we go along, So if
you don't want anything ruin, please turn off the podcast and go and watch
the movie. You can thank us later. So, Rob, when was
the first time you saw Bowfinger? And what did you think? I saw
it in the theater when it came out nineteen ninety nine. And certain lines
in this movie have become catchphrases between my friends and I, especially my friend
Shane, who I've talked about several times on the film, who I used
to work with at the main art theater. We used to go keep it
gether, keep it together, and things like that. It was just lovely.
I remember seeing it in theater and this was right at the time.
In nineteen ninety nine was the year that I went to can with my silly,
little low budget vampire movie. So movies like this, and there was
a whole raft of them. We'll talk about this later in the mid to
late nineties where Hollywood and some independent film started to look at kind of filmmakers
but not good filmmakers, that we're looking at low budget filmmakers or bad filmmakers.
And I don't know what the zeitgeist for that is. I think I
have a small idea, but for me being a low budget filmmaker at that
time, and that was still something that I was pursuing twenty five years ago.
Hard to believe. It really resonated that there's this dream and it's the
land of misfit Toys, and they're a weird little theater troupe that I'll get
together and want to put on a show. It might be a bad show,
what's for them? And they have fun and that's what's so beautiful about
the film, I think, which really has been harked and Kevin, how
about yourself? It came out a little later in the year, so I
was already at college. I just I was in my first year of college
where I was going to learn as much as I could about film and screenwriting.
And I saw this on a rainy October and I just loved it,
and like yourself, I came away referring to bad seats in the cinema from
then on as the both finger seats, and yeah, I remember seeing Return
of the King in the both finger seats and feeling like I may as be
watching this film upside down. But yeah, it's a film that I loved.
I loved from the moment I saw it, and yeah, it's just
become a comfort watch for me. I just go back to it so many
times, just for the mood that it has and the good nature that it
has. It's a rare perfect comedy. Yeah. I also saw this theatrically
and was very surprised by it because both Steve Martin has in this like introspective
phase of his career with LA's Story and these movies that just didn't really appeal
to me. And I'm sure now if I go back and watch La Story,
I would absolutely love it. But at the time I was like,
yeah, no, I'm good. I don't need this. Or what was
the George Elliott adaptation that he started in. It was just like a simple
twist of fade or something like that. I was like, yeah, no,
no, I'm good. And then Eddie Murphy was just doing a string
of bad films with like Holy Man and Life, and he was definitely already
doing the multiple characters in the movie with the first nutty professor, and I
was like, I don't need this. I don't need to Eddie Murphy's I
don't need Steve Martin being introspective. I don't know why I went to see
it, but I'm so glad that I did because I ended up loving it
and I thought that this was a fantastic film. And I know Robbie suggested
us doing this six seven years ago something like that, So I'm so glad
we're finally doing this. I'm glad that we're finally here. I was trying
to get Frank Oz or anybody related to the film to be on this episode.
Unfortunately, no, because most of the people that are in this film
are very talented and very big stars like Christine Baranski and Heather Graham and even
freaking Jamie Kennedy. I mean, everybody is somebody except for what's the guy's
name, Dave? Is it Jack? The one the star guy who drives
the old car. Yeah, that's and I'm like, who is this guy?
He's I know he's been in a ton of stuff, but he just
reminded me of Chris Klein a little bit. But I'm like, he's not
a big name, but everybody else in this movie is. It feels like
it's interesting with him because when I was doing my research for this episode,
the original star that they wanted for the Eddie Murphy pot was gonna be Keanu
Reeves, and I feel like this guy almost fits that brief of what that
character of Kit Romsey would have been. The I can't think of his name,
Cole Sutteth. I think it is Yes Later, which, like I
say, it feels more like a Keanu Reeves type. I hate to say,
a Keanu Reeves in that era was the himbo type, not too bray
good looking good with a letter jacket and a T shirt. And I think
this is the same year that The Matrix comes out, So nineteen ninety nine
really shot him to a different plane once that movie came out. An incredible
year for film, but a very odd year for comedies. Like when you
think of all the really successful comedies of nineteen ninety nine, like The Austin
Powers and The Big Daddy and American Play and things like that, I'm surprised
that Bollfinger was not as much of a hit as those films. But for
me, it has certainly endured a lot longer than those. Part of it
For me, I wonder, is it because it's about filmmaking and we obviously
are so much film lovers and deconstructionists, which there's a series of characters they'll
talk about later that I love in this movie that I wonder if it plays
to a general audio that doesn't have background in caring about film, like a
casual film watcher that watches bow Finger might be like, oh, it's about
making movies, I guess, But if you've actually made a movie, or
if you've read a lot about making movies or into film criticism. There's an
extra layer in there for you that I don't know. If it plays to
a general audience, I don't know. I can't take that part of my
brain out and watch it without it. I think it's because as well,
that Steve Martin was in a bit of a lull period in his career.
Like I think he'd been off cinema screens for three years before he made this
and the film. The big studio comedy before that was Sergeant Bilkole, which
I remember seeing at Dennis Penis interview with him, or really a snapshot with
him where he was walking the red carpra for that and Dennis Pennas said to
him, Hey, Steve, how come you're not funny anymore? And he
was devastated by that, totally devastated by it. And Dennis Penis, even
Paul Kay, the guy that performed as that character, it says that's the
one thing he regrets saying. He said, who am I to say?
Thatshboards. I think that's probably part of the genesis of this film, which
is Steve Martin retreating a little bit from screens, reporting back to his comedy
roots. I'm writing what I can sod to be his best film. There's
an extra that comes on the DVD, and he was saying that he had
the idea for this probably about ten years before they actually made the movie,
and that once he sat down and he said it was way more complicated than
it was, and so once he took it down more to brass tacks that
he was able to knock out the script. And I don't know, less
than a month. It's nowhere near as good as a twelve day script called
Chubby Rain. It's pretty good. Yeah, it's funny how they coded all
of the really boring part of the filmmaking, which is the writing of the
script. I'm appreciative of that as well, because so much of this movie
relies on people being smart enough to realize that people are shot at different times
when people are making movies. It's not just all a master shot and then
three or four cameras like catching the close ups or something. This whole idea
of the editing of having Kit Ramsey on one side and then Christine Baransky on
the other side, and the way that they're able to marry those two things
together, like in the parking lot scene, for example. I hope that
people get it, and I know that Frank Oz. The audio commentary for
this movie is fantastic. He's talking constantly. I don't know if people really
got that. I hope that they did. There's the stuff happening in the
background so much of this movie, Christine Baranski getting a mask put on and
she's going to have her fake head created, or Afraim testing out the melting
stuff that is going to happen to him. But they don't foreground that stuff.
It's all backgrounded, and Oz himself is like, I don't know if
that really worked, And just hearing him talk about how much stuff they shot
and ended up cutting out and how he used test previews. I think he
said they rew this eight times, and they went back and did a whole
bunch of reshoots just to clarify. There's the deleted scenes on the disc as
well, and you get to see the entire opening of the movie where both
ingers talking about a from script and all of this stuff and trying to gather
the troops and even does the whole thing with the FedEx truck, and then
they went back and reshot that whole thing just to make a lot tighter.
Really works very well. And he did that consistently. There's a one scene
where both Ingers explaining to Jamie Kennedy how they're going to do this with Kit
Ramsey, how they're going to make this fake movie quote unquote, and that
is so clear in what he's saying, and that was all reshoots just because
they're like, not really sure if the audience is going to follow this or
not. I have to say, when I watched the deleted scenes to the
opening, what I was struck by was how much they changed the tone of
the opening. They softened it entirely, and I think that was because where
they take the story and how it ends on such a sincere note. The
things I love about this film is that it's so uncynical for a satire but
Hollywood, and the way that it started. I think Frank god says in
that audio commentary that it began with a helicopter shot over the rich part of
La all the swimming pools, and you're just you're traveling further and further along
to the poor part of Tone until you come to both fingers cottage and his
first line, as in the deleted scene then, was him coming here and
sharing it. The Skuy that I hate this tone, I hate rich people,
and that I think would have pitched both finger in a place of bitterness
and frustration, and you wouldn't have been rooting for him as much as you
are with the reshot scenes, which are just there. They pitched him as
this innocent underdog who is still against all the odds, striving, and you're
immediately on the side from that point, Dan, You're like, I'm with
this guy and these lovable band of rogues. And as you were saying Rob
about this sort of this troop of performers that are trying to put on a
show that's tapping into Frank Oz's history, the muppets, that these guys are
almost like live action muppets, and the ethos of the Henson Company and stuff.
It comes true, I think in spades in this film. Most definitely,
I would say if there's any cynicism, it's not and the the plucky,
low budget filmmakers. The cynicism is with the bigger system. So it's
the Jerry Renfrow character and the agent because he plays the agent, and it's
with the scientology satire of mindheld. Oh wait maybe, oh shit, oh
oh, they're coming after me. Now and then also the disconnect between the
sort of Hollywood stars and their little bubble that they live in and all of
that stuff like that's where they pitch their cynicism as they pitch. If there
is any in the film, I'd say it's slight, but it is with
that kind of the machinery of the industry as opposed to the plucky folk who
are trying to make it or to do something that they find valuable even if
the system doesn't find it valuable. And I think that really is a beautiful
place to be as opposed to pitching it from the other angle as you were
saying, Kevin. And we can talk about a movie later that does that
along similar lines, but just that opening. I really love the opening because
it brings us in. It's such a just through little pieces of audio,
just as very simple visuals, we learn real quick who Steve Martin's character is
before we actually meet him. We get the idea of the oh, he
was in the community theater and he was doing this, and he's doing that,
and he lives in this kind of it's not a bad place, but
it's full shabby and we get the idea, okay, that this is who
we're dealing with it, and I think that's a much better opening than I
didn't even know this other opening existed until I listened to the audio commentary,
and I was just like, no, that would any But it's his performance
as well. It's so much more harsh and cutting. He's angry when they
pitch it in the first version of the scene, and they soften it so
much, and I think that's so vital because he's such a there's a way
that you can view his character as being ruthless and despicable. He's putting people's
lives in danger in order to get the shot. And if you get that
wrong, if you pitch it at the wrong tenor then you have a totally
different reading on this film. It becomes about a con man rather than a
dreamer. And I think that the heart of this story is what elevates it
beyond just being a knock about comedy or a farce. It becomes a story
we are rooting for underdogs to succeed. And that's the thing that's funny,
is because the poster says the con is on and it's got him in this
horrible suit code and he's standing next to Eddie Murphy. There really is this
balance that they're trying to strike between being a dreamer and being a con man.
And later in the film, of course, he developed the contos when
he's talking with Dave, the Jamie Kennedy character, and he's just like,
Oh, if this goes through, I will buy a new car and you
can have my old car, and Jamie Kennedy's that is my car, which
reading in the script I didn't necessarily get it, and then when I rewatched
the movie, I was like, oh, yeah, that's right, that
is his car. But he's not mad about it. He's not just like,
oh, you're driving me crazy. Nobody is angry at Bowfinger for being
the con man. He's the lovable con man, but in a lot of
ways. And I have to think about sort of Steve Martin's history of characters.
This seems to be an archetype that he likes to play in that he
is a very endearing and kind person, but he's also a bit of a
rope But he's not a mean one. He makes jokes and stuff. He's
not trying to harm. He's not psychopathic in that way or socio. It's
more like and clown to go back to what Kevin was saying, He's it's
like the elevation of the Sergeant Bilco character who's trying to get ahead in the
world and trying to pull the wool over everybody's eyes and things, trying to
make a lot of money. It's that, but like the softer, gentler
side of that. To your point, yes, the poster is misleading,
especially with that like herb Tarlk jacket that he's wearing and pulling the who's Everybody's
like, why is Eddie Murphy dressed that way? Why does he look the
way that he looks? In this they luckily go the opposite direction, and
yeah, make him that lovable scamp. And I love some of the dialogue
that he has, like what you're talking about, as far as the softness
of it. When he's auditioning actors and making them pay to audition and Heather
Graham shows up, is this where it come to be? As Stars?
And she goes to write him a check and he's like, you know,
no checks And she starts to cry, I don't have any cash on me.
I mean I have I have cash, but it's not on me.
And and and the paints are open. There there there, there, there's
the door. I'm sorry, we cannot you audition, but that's a your
Steve Martin total Yes, his lies as well. They're all coming from a
place of well intentioned, for good intentions. It's like when Slater says to
him, do I have it? And he just gives him this look up
and down and then goes, sorry, what I wasn't Do I have it?
Yes, yes you do. He's lying, but it's just he's saving
his ego. And it's as well when he's celebrating pretending that he's after getting
Eddie Murphy's character kit to start in the film, and they're all jumping up
and down and he's like yay, and he turns the camera and he's just
terrified. He's like, how is he going to pull this off? You're
rooting for a layer in that instance, because it's the spare making their hearts
and they're such puppy dogs. All there's incredible ensemble, but there's such they
add muppets to me. They're just they're just pure innocence and dreamers, and
you cannot break their hearts. You have to pull this off because it's going
to mean the world to them. Oh, yeah, you can see Scooter
is Slater, Miss Piggy is the Carol Christine Baranski character. Yeah, totally.
Afrom is probably Gonzo. Yeah, you could recast this with Muppets and
no problem. It's funny that you bring up the Muppets because this is the
first time I'd ever thought of it. Obviously, Frank Oz and things like
that, and this might be I don't know, I'd have to go back
over Frank Oz's films, live action movies. This might be the closest sort
of thematically to the Muppets, because the Muppets, at least the TV show
is always about we're putting on a show. It's always the Muppet It's always
backstage. Yeah, it's always backstage performance piece and what goes up between the
stage in backstage. Oh, it's the first time I'd ever really thought of
that. No, totally. That a song that they end the Muppet Movie
on Whards Here's to the Dreamers And all you need is one person to believe
in you, and that's what these guys are. It's a troop of underdogs.
But there's one thing that I want to call out about Steve Martin for
his writing on this is that usually if you have a writer writing a vanity
piece essentially what they're going to be the Star Wars, it's a very selfless
script. He spreads the jokes around everywhere. So each of this ensemble they
have like several stand up moments where they're just scene stealing and getting the biggest
laughs in the scenes. And I just think that's very commendable and it strengthens
the films. There's no superfluous characters in this which are just the straight man.
Everybody is delivering big comedic set pieces. It's a fantastic ensemble comedy in
that regard. Yeah, and we know that Terrence Stamp can do comedy.
I'm a big fan of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but his lines
and here where he's just like mister Weeney needs to stay in his pats.
You can so good And yeah, you're right. There's that whole moment in
the Muppet Movie where they go in front of Orson Wells and he green lights
the picture. And I like that Bowfinger is clueless at times, especially in
that meeting with Jerry Renfro how he's got the phone but you can see the
cord and Robert Downey Jr. Obviously knows that he's not talking with anybody on
the phone, and just that look that he gives at the end is fantastic.
I really appreciate him being there and this being I think right around the
time. I know he's not fully turned things around, but this is a
really good Robert Downey Junior role barely in here, but he does a great
job of it. And the other thing talking about Ego and Steve Martin the
writer, that he's open to having ad libs being done, like Frank would
be like, Okay, let's do one or two takes and then one for
you guys, and you guys can add lib and just that they even set
up that whole thing with Jeff and we'll talk about Jeff Moore, but having
Jiff answering those questions and some of those were scripted and other things were just
thrown out there, and that he was keeping the actors on their toes by
throwing in ad libbing questions. And I don't know what was necessarily in the
script versus not in the script that they were asking him, but it just
feels very fresh the way that he's answering them, and some of that stuff
about him cutting his hair. Would you be willing to cut your hair?
Oh? Yes, but it's usually better if someone else does it. Whoever
came up with it, whether it was Eddie Murphy or Steve Martin, it's
just hilarious stuff. I think it's the scene when Steve Martin rocks up to
Eddie Murphy's mansion and he's I got the script. It's jigg baby, it's
but it's butter, It's butter. And that was all improvised. They were
just riffing. But also that line or that that speech which has been regurgitated
so many times over the years since white boys get all asked. It's it's
a fact you know that luck Did that get nomination? No? And you
know what because because I have played them slave bros, I get my head
swiped. That's when you get the nomination, Kip, That's when I clude
play a slave broke getting as you get nominated the white web player idiot,
they get asked, they master give me a famil script is a retarded slave?
Did I get as? That was all Riffin improv from Eddie Murphy And
it's fantastic and it's become like it changed people's perspective on who gets awarded for
what at the Academy all those years before Robert Downey Junior took it to the
next level. Everybody knows you never go full retired. What do you mean?
Check it out? It doesn't often. Ray Man look retarded. That
retarded, not retarded. Cat too picks to your card autistic shop, not
retired. Yeah, Tom hangs forrest gun so yes, retarded. Maybe he
braced his owner's leg, but he trying to pay himself next to it.
And they won a pin punk competition. They didn't retard it. He was
goddamn war hero, you know, and he retired war heroes. You went
full return man, never go full return. You don't buy that, Yeah,
Sean Pan two thousand one. I am saying, never went full return.
I love him That scene with Robert Dorny Jr. And Steve Martin when
he's conning him and when he tells him you got a green light, and
it's Steve Martin's reaction, he just goes, Okay, He's just he is
like stunned beyond belief, and you immediately just love him. You just feel
so I hope this works out for you because you're out of your debt here
and you don't realize that. You think you're pulling the wool over everyone else's
eyes and you're the one that's being calmed here. The thing that's also funny,
and I know this after I made my feature, when I made my
silly little feature, we started to go out and talk to people about the
next project we want, and we get meetings not too far off from the
Robert Downey Junior meeting, in which no one really wants to tell you because
they don't know if you've got a fucking great idea that's going to make them
tons of money. So they're like, Okay, the script's interesting, it's
good idea. Why don't you go out and see who you can get,
and if you can get that person, come back to me. I'd love
to talk to you about it, because, like I said, it's the
old William William Goldman line. Nobody knows anything but now, so it's gonna
tell you a fuck off and get the hell out of here, because no
one wants to be the guy who didn't sign the Beatles. There's that story.
Oh I passed. I thought guitar bands were on the way out,
So it's no one wants to be that guy. Yeah, they'll kill you
a cleanness in Hollywood. I love if he looks at the script. Oh
that's interesting. And then it flips to the last page, got you suckers.
Oh there's a catchphrase, and then we cut to Eddie Murphy just a
few seconds later, like, where's my catchphrase? Arnold's got astel leavista baby,
where's my catchphrase? That's right, it's true. It's so good,
especially in that era, because it seemed there were so many action movies.
There were so many movies that it was just like people just repeat these lines
to each other. It just became the cool thing. The thing that I
noticed true working in the States, I'm working in the UK is not.
In the UK, they'll treat you like shit because you're nobody. But in
the US they'll treat you kindly because you might become somebody. It's a stark
difference between the two industries, and it's different when I worked in radio.
I remember in broadcast school they say they told us to be kind to everyone
because you may work with them going up and you may work with them going
down. So as your career does this, just keep in mind. But
you don't want to rough somebody up because that person who was the intern may
want to be in your boss, you know. I want to talk about
Daisy, the Heather Graham character, because she's one of several characters that we
see change throughout the film, and hers is probably the most notable, with
the exception of some other folks that we'll talk about in a bit here,
but her character, the way she dresses, the way her hair is done,
who she's with, and just the way that she keeps asking questions as
far as like how do I get more seen? Oh? That person takes
care of that, and then she moves to another person who how can I
do this? Oh? That person okay, Then she moves to another person
and she is perfect for both finger. I love that she is as conniving
but also sweet at the same time, doesn't really purposefully hurt people, doesn't
go out of her way to hurt them, but you can see the look
of she's up front disappointment. Oh yeah, but you see that look of
disappointment, like when she moves from a freme to Bowfinger and he's just like,
oh okay, But then there's another person behind him who she's already slept
with the way she goes up and up, and that when she sleeps with
Jeff and he's so excited. And then that argument unquote that she and Bowfinger
have we are finished, we are over. You had sex with Jeff,
So I never thought of it that way. See you tonight. Okay,
that is again another wonderful Steve Martin moment. And that Yeah, at the
end of the movie, she's there with Kit, but I'm so surprised that
she's actually in the Kung Fu movie. At the very end of the film,
did you know that she was modeled on an Hesh. That's where the
inspiration came from. That she was like climbing all the way up until she
became involved with the most powerful lesbian in Hollywood and generous. That's funny.
That's funny. And hes she's also from Ohio, So that's one of the
observations I think that Steve Martin made about an Hish. When Anhesh came out
as bisexual, or she might have even gone full lesbian, it was just
like, what more power tour. I'm not gonna question their sexuality, but
there was like, is this a power move? What are you doing?
All the characters have layers to them. Onions have layers, Ugers have layers,
Onions have layers. You get it. But she's the woe, which
is she's in on it, and she's aware of it, and she's not
the dumb blonde that you think she is. Like the other characters that have
that great transformation as well, they lose their wide eyed naive tand they become
players within the system very quickly. Since we're talking about that arc of her
character, do you want to talk about the other character, the other set
of characters that have an arc there, who weren't even in the script.
I was so surprised that the whole thing with We're going to get the best
crew money can buy. That line and the payoff to that, it's one
of the best laughs in the movie. And then to see the Mexican crew
that he gets those four guys, and to see their transformation through the film,
Holy cow, so good. I have to say, on this watch,
I can't remember the last time I saw it, maybe at least a
decade or so, but on this watch, the way that it's staged with
the cliche Mexican music and they're in the middle of the desert and they're just
shoving people into the van. I was like, h I cringed a little,
like I was thinking of a similar And this is Robert Downey Junior again,
where when you first hear Robert Downey Junior in Blackface Tropic Thunder, and
then you see Robert Downey play that character and why you're like, Okay,
that works. But the first reaction to it is we're not going where we
need to go. But when we get to the end, and I love
the fact that right before the end, they're sitting around they've been on the
crew, they've been shooting and all this stuff, and they're debating great cinema,
they're ring ty cinema. They've become film nerds like us basically, so
you've got nothing but met respect. Yeah. It says that with hard work
and tenacity you can become the most in demand film crew in Hollywood. You
can work your way up. So's it's affirming and it's positive and yeah,
again, it's just all the characters have their moments and it's just so good
natured that it starts off from a place of desperation on Hippo Fingers part and
then just in the background you just see them evolve to the point where they're
talking about cube breaking lenses and they've got their mobile phones and they're dressed really
slick, and it's lovely. You just love to see that, and that
just is the undercurrent of the whole film, is that there's joy seeing these
people rise up and pull it off. It's such a crowd pleaser in essence.
They've surpassed both Finger by the end of the film, like they are
the ones that their phones are ringing. Obviously gets the FedEx at the end
of it, which is fantastic for him, and I love how it's all
shot in slow mo and just presented like this magical moment and everything. But
they're the ones that are going to be working steadily now for the next for
the rest of their lives. They're the ones who in twenty years, I'll
try to be contacting for interviews for the show. It's funny you say that,
but when I was watching the film, I was thinking about how different
Bullfinger would be if it was made today, and where a Bullfinger himself would
have a podcast, what it would be his psch No, but the difficulty
for him to pull off making this film, it would be a much easier.
He'd be Neil Breen today. He'd be doing it himself with like green
screen and starring is all the different parts. And you can do it now
a lot easier. You can be that one man band. Because I don't
hear about Neil Breen's crew very often, I'll have to tell you that Neil
Breen is the crew chat GPT, which then comes true because he says in
here he's got the line he goes every movie costs two and eighty four dollars,
so it's after ten percent that deferred not or whatever. Yeah, one
of my favorite movies we did on the show cost one hundred bucks to make.
You've never seen Flooding with Love for the Kid, do yourself a favor.
I was glad that one thing from the script got dropped, which was
the counting of the money. And it's it's almost like a ticking clock for
the movie because he's got all his money. It's rolled up in the springs
of his bed, and it's this whole scene of him and Dave and they're
getting the money and all this, and it just becomes much more of a
big thing because that scene is still there, but it's the context is a
little bit different. And then of course when he gets Daisy credit card and
just starts buying all the real equipment, charging all the real equipment, and
I was god to the stuff with the security guard who is a member of
Mindhead. That is a much longer piece in the script as well, Like
from the first time Dave takes one of those cameras, you have the guard
who's watching him, and it becomes like this investigation. I was just like,
I don't need that. I just need the one scene at the end
where the guard notices and happens to be a member of Mindhead. And I
love Mindhead. I love the all of the design around Mindhead, the pyramid
stuff, the pyramid type building, the huge picture of Terrence Stamp with all
of the people next to it, like all those faces almost Rupert pupkin esque,
But it's just I love that, and the rules that they have for
Kit and how he's like Kit's personal counselor. I always like those scenes between
those two. Mindhead's building, which I guess is an actual design center in
Los Angeles. I think it's actually nicer than I used to tell people.
If you ever just want to have fun, you have no money. Just
go to the Scientology Center and you're in La. Take their little test and
take their little tour because it it's fun just to go. My god,
but Terence stamp In here is if you want to talk about a straight man,
it's the player. It's the street. But the whole thing with the
auditing with him every time he says, go nance, Oh god, yes,
buzzes. But the happy premises are they're just brilliant. It seems as
though you were doing much better. Yes, yes, your paranoia is definitely
under control since you came to understand. Happy Premise number one, Happy Premise
number one. There are no aliens, Happy Premise number two, Happy Premise
number two, There is no giant foot trying to squash me. Happy Premise
number three, Happy Premise number three. Even though like I might ignite,
I probably won't. So what do we do? Keep it together, keep
it together, keep it together, keep it together, keep it together,
keep it together. And what is it we don't do under any circumstances?
Oh man, what is it? Look? I have to show it to
the Laker girls. You cannot show it to the Laker girls. Keep mister
Weeney in the pants, always in the pants. I know you want to
show it to the Lago girls, but you must never show it to the
Laker girls. At the same time, it is making fun of scientology.
But I'd have to say even that is lighthearted. That's a cynical takedown of
people who are into alternative ideas, who are part of the Hollywood establishment.
It's just lightly pop. They could just be caaa under a different guys'tecting their
client or their cash co It doesn't have a mean bone in its body this
film, which is why that opening, the original opening was so surprising that
they pitched it at the wrong tenor in the beginning. But it's so sweet
and yeah, it's a very fleet film. There's no fat on this.
Every single scene is pushing the story forward, and it's doing that without compromising
the comedy. It's like sometimes for feel good films, they can just have
this lull period where it just becomes about like the second act, where everything
goes to shit and everybody's falling up with each other and they're all sad,
and then somebody has to have a heart to heart moment. This doesn't have
that. It manages to swerve all of the hacky tropes of someone calling cut
and then you see that it's a scene and it's not an actual moment from
the film, and you don't see any of Steve Martin's films up to this
point. It manages to be really succinct and economical and very funny and still
tell a cracking story. It's the writing of this film is he's the real
starting to show for me. It's so well written, the arithmetic of this
film that the moment that they find out that Jiff, the Kit Ramsey look
alike that they've found and hired, that he's the brother of Kit Ramsey.
When we find that out, and then suddenly it's like Bullfinger has this crisis
of conscience and it's just, oh my god, I can't use this guy
anymore. This is terrible. I'm an awful person. Next scene Jiff comes
in is just like, guess who I slept with? And then that like
suddenly takes that shift of power and balances it back out again. And so
then next thing, both Fingers like, Okay, I need you to run
an errand I want you to go to you know, Starbucks. I want
you to do this. I want you to call your brother find out where
he's going to be on Friday. I want you to go and grab a
box of pencils, and I want them to be really sharp and just he
is treating him a little bit differently, but at the same time, he
doesn't care, and he's just gonna go on and he has to get this
movie made, and he's he might treat Kipp or sorry, might treat Jeff
a little nicer after that, but yeah, he still has to get this
film completed. It gives us and it gives him permission to be really reckless
and dangerous in the scene with him risking his life to cross the freeway.
That's the other thing is that the comedic set pieces in this film are so
laugh out load funny that you don't really need to understand much about filmmaking in
general. Or I know Frank Oz was struggling to put that across teach people
how her film has made. But if you can just buy into the fact
that they're pranking Eddie Murphy's character, whether he's Kid or Jiff, it's just
got bustingly hilarious. I remember watching the film on DVD with my mom and
she wouldn't have a clue about any stuff. She's never read anything I've written
she wouldn't even know like hor film has made. But just seeing Eddie Murphy
walk through a parking garage and a dog is pursuing him in high he and
he thinks he's being stalked, and he's losing his mind and he's wailing and
trying to scare it off with these kung fun it's just hilarious. Like you,
it's pure slapstick comedy. It's brilliant. That freeway scene always makes me
laugh. And the thing that's interesting was I didn't realize that they staged it
in two different manners, and now that I listened to the audio commentarium,
oh okay, that's how they did it. I didn't realize that part of
it was actual cars and with a really long lens so there was no danger,
and then the other part was all digital. But given the fact that
this is twenty five years old digital it doesn't look like digital, does not
does not look like fake cars whatsoever. I think that's sorry to pull the
Detroit card here, but I think that's one of the advantages of cars is
that we've been using three D models of cars and commercials and things for so
long that they look really good. And you can make them look really good
film. So many of the cars that people see driving around in commercials today
it's all three b it's all just CGI's creations. And also given the fact
that they're going fast or blurred, so they don't have to be that good,
you know what I mean. But still it's even to the eye,
I'm like, this looks like traffic. And then the sound, especially with
a freeway, if you live in a place with a freeway like that Wolf's,
it has a certain sound and they totally captured it, and it just
adds to the peril you feel for he's basically playing Frogger in the middle of
the freeway. The sound of that, the sound of the high heel shoes,
like Kevin was just talking about, that makes the scene. Is that
the high heel shoes and when you get the reveal that it's Betsy the dog
wearing the shoes. And that's one of the weird things about the movie.
I do have to say is that before he tells them about Kit Ramsey being
on board the film, he has to show that Daisy can do that come
here and staying. But and then they're like and he's like, oh yeah,
no, get to yes, and I'm like, we had to show
that thing with Betsy. That was very odd, but she was a great
canine actress and really just appreciate what she brings to it, especially just her
laying on the couch with her legs spread wide open and such an unladylike powse.
I'm constantly on my dogs, just like, what is yeah a little
decorum place? Come on. I just like the rubber band he goes of
her in rubber bands them together. But it's also a gorgeous looking for them.
You're talking about the look of it there. I think if the other
studio comedies of the era, this one just looks. It looks so Californian,
like that golden hue that's basking the scenes and it's there's so many shadows
and it's dynamically shot. It just looks sumptuous like that. They haven't scrimped
on it. It's not shit shit, it's not shot like a sitcom.
I appreciate it, and that they're doing all of that stuff in his office
on a set, and that it looks like real sunlight coming in from outside.
Really well done. That was amazing to me. I didn't realize that
was a set. The lighting was so good. The architecture inside of the
place looked realistic, It looked lived in. Kudos to set creator and set
design and all of it on this film. It just looks lived in that
way. All those little pieces of paper that you're talking about, the flyers
for former Bowfinger productions, the posters on the wall, all of that stuff
I thought was great. I love that he's got a touch of evil on
the wall. Talking about another very frustrated filmmaker, Can we talk about Eddie
Murphy double roll movies? Please? Can we just have a little moment to
talk about when they work really well and when they don't. And obviously I
would say this one is one of the better ones up there with Coming to
America. Coming to America set the standard for you now. For a long
time, as a kid, I didn't know where this kind of came from.
I didn't know why Eddie Murphy was doing these double roles. Obviously,
when I was young and I first saw Coming to America, I wasn't aware
of things like The Nutty Professor, the original one with Jerry Lewis. I
don't even think I had seen when Coming to America came out. I don't
think i'd seen Doctor Strangelive yet, but I think it was. I read
somewhere that Eddie Murphy was very influenced by Peter Sellers and doing these multiple roles
in films, especially the Pink Panther series. To me, this one,
I think, I don't know how many of their seven or eight movies that
he's done double roles. I don't know. That's a good question for me.
It all goes all the way back to when he was mister White on
Saturday Night Live, and just that embracing of the prosthetics and the makeup and
just to transform himself into a white guy. Probably one of the best looking
transformations, way better than that bizarro Uncanny White Chicks movie that the Wayne Brothers
are. Those blue contacts still haunt me to that White Like Me segment reminds
me of, of course, the film we've done on the show many years
ago, a Watermelon Man, and I thought, Godfrey Cambridge, that was
a good ten plus years before Eddie Murphy did that White Like Me segment.
Pulled that off really well. You gotta walk with him, but real tight.
I was explaining this to a coworker recently who's younger than me, who
had never seen this bit, and I was like, go look it up.
It's so good. The Eddie Murphy White Like Me segment on Saturday Night
Live. I think it probably speaks to Eddie's genius really as a performer,
the fact that he can slip into these roles so easily, and he can
mimic so many other different types of personalities that I think he would get very
bored if he just had to play one type for whole film, because he's
done it successfully before. So whenever I see these fantastic filmmakers who end up
dismantling their process and just making terrible films, but it's a new way for
them to see if they can make a film, I think that probably motivates
a lot of the Eddie Muffy impulse to switch it up and try and play
a woman or an old man or a fat chick or whatever. But in
this one, he's so restrained. It's just his persona. It's his energy
himself. It's not and effects driven sort of transformation. It's his essence.
He's just entirely transformed in boat roles, and he manages to make both of
the characters really endearing and sweet. They're not irritatingly stupid or aggressively obnoxious.
There's just a nugget of humanity to vote them where you end up, even
like rooting for them to I don't know, get through the predicament that they're
in. It's like they one things that opposite ends of the spectrum. And
that's the thing that's so funny about the two brothers is that Kit wants to
be the biggest star. He wants to be bigger than Arnold, he wants
to be all that. And then Jeff's just like, oh, man,
I would just love to run errands. I just want to do something very
simple. Oh that'd be great because I know when I go get the coffee,
that's me. I went and got that for them. It's just very
simple. It's when he's looking at Header Graham and she takes a top in
front of him and he's like a little boy. He's guitting and he's like,
assium you've got to be a small be a star, And I think,
Hello Graham is the perfect foil for that, because she's just got this
sort of magnetic like doid. It's like she's a playboy Bunny's she's just enchanting
to watch. He just plays these global idiots so well. And yeah,
it just makes that scene that they've cast this film so well, like across
the board. And I was thinking around the same time, and this was
I think maybe a year before the only other movie. And it's a movie
where she plays someone making a movie, and it's similar but different is Boogie
Knights, but in there she's much more realistic. And then it gets darker
as it goes. And the fact that she basically plays Ingenu in two different
films, it doesn't play the exact same character. In here, she's much
more of a like he were saying, Uh, I'm just this. I
love her lying in here where it's I may be from Ohio, but I'm
not from Ohio. It's bad. It's I can be naive Midwestern, but
I I have knowledge of my naive take quot. You can see the gears
turning in her head in the scenes. She's always watching and observing and seeing
where the angle is. And it's a fantastic performance. Definitely is And I
love that. It's if Kit Ramsey wasn't as unstable as he is in real
life. This whole thing wouldn't have worked nearly as well, but that they
just happened to pick a person who thinks that he's being plagued by aliens,
is receiving messages from the Laker girls that they want to see his penis just
all of these things that make him unstable, and that they just play right
into it with showing up talking to him, calling him this other name,
leaving. It's like he's being tormented almost by ghosts in this movie, especially
Christine Baranski. When she shows up, it's just like, Oh, I
know I'm not supposed to do this, but I'm really looking forward to having
sex with you later. And I'm really glad that paranoia is not known to
anyone making the film, because a more obvious choice would be they decide they
want to get him, so there may be is a scene where they go
get all the supermarket tabloids or something about this person, and they're reading up
on him, trying to figure him out, and there's maybe on a weekly
World News or National Enquirer or something talking about, oh, he believes in
aliens and all these things, and there's none of that. It's just he's
an actor. We just want this actor and just by virtue of trying to
sneak him into their film clandestinely, they just trigger all of this stuff that
he deals with. Yeah, there's no shoeleader in the story. The other
thing that I love about the script is they introduce characters when they have the
maximum effect in the story. They don't fall into that trap of you have
to introduce all the main players and Act one characters appear when they're going to
change the trajectory of what's happening. So it's like Kit Ramsey when he gets
introduced, or when Heater Graham's character comes into it. It's a very well
written script. Again, to reiterate my point, there was another deleted scene
which is both Inger trying to find the address of Kit Ramsey and he goes
to all of these different dry cleaning places and keeps asking how much it costs
to launder a shirt, And he finally gets to a place. He goes
to one it's two fifth and other ones. I don't know, eight dollars.
He goes to one and it's just this futuristic like empty white space with
this Asian lady sitting behind a desk with a television monitor on one side,
where you can see the plastic bags just rotating, and she has one button
on the desk and he's like, how much do you charge the lundershirt twenty
five dollars. I'm here to pick up kit Ramsey's dry cleaning, and she
just hits that button and then just sits there, and it's so uncomfortable as
we're waiting for the dry cleaning to come out, and finally he finds the
address. We didn't need any of that stuff, and I was glad that
they cut that out, But at the same time, it was a neat
little scene that they kept in there for the deleted scene, so I was
glad for that. But yeah, to your point, Kevin, this script
just moves along so quickly, and they know exactly when to introduce those characters
and when to get them going. I mean, when kit Ramsey shows up,
we see a poster on a building at one point beforehand, and we
hear his name a few times, but then we finally see him. And
then when Jiff comes into the story later on again, it's at the perfect
place, like we are right there for all of these beats. And to
your point from earlier, there is no second act lull where We're just like,
Okay, when are we going to get back here? When are we
going to hit a band breakup? Yeah? Exactly, Yeah, everybody hates
both finger all of a sudden, and now he has to go back and
get them all back again. No, I'm glad that there is not that
romantic comedy breakup moment. So you just missed that. Fleet comedies that were
ninety minutes long rather than two ho's and twenty minutes. Let's see the old
John Waters line. I remember him saying, no comedy should be over ninety
minutes. He goes because no one ever says, do you want to hear
a joke? And then it just goes on forever. I went and saw
someone do a stand up set and it was they were still workshop wasn't ready
yet, and it went on for two hours, and I just got so
exhausted by it. And this is a rather well known coment who does specials,
and I was just like, this isn't funny anymore. And I think
part of it is is horror comedy has built and release and you just can't
keep working that muscle so many times before you just wear out. Not I
remember feeling that feeling watching the Austin Poe's film. I think it was the
third one gold Member, and it was hilarious, but it just kept going
and going, and after all it becomes unpleasant. We're just exhausted. You're
exhausted by the amount of jokes which don't work, and they just keep going
and keep going. But this is clockwork precision. It's they've cut out great
jokes in order to make the whole the totality of the story support the jokes
that it has, and it becomes just a pleasurable experience from beginning to end.
It's the p word pacing. It's all out pacing. And that was
the thing that was amazing to me. Like I said on that, you
had mentioned on the audio commentary already that frank Os had eight test screenings and
he took notes and he figured, Okay, this needs to be a longer,
this would be a little shorter. This is the first time I've ever
heard really a filmmaker talk about the test screening process and actually have good things
to say about it. A lot of them are just like, oh,
fucking test screenings are horrible. The fucking audience doesn't know anything, fuck them,
and just really just rip the shit out of test audiences, but Oz
obviously gets a lot. I don't know if he got a lot out of
throughout his entire career, but definitely in this film in terms of taking into
account how the audience was reacting. And I thought that was really interesting in
terms of the process. It feels like comedies benefit a lot more from the
test screenings than maybe an action film or drama or something where you're more internal.
But with comedies, you have that external reaction, You have the laughter,
and he's able to he being frank Os is able to hear that and
to write down, Okay, yeah, this work, this didn't work.
And really, just like you said, to find Hugh everything in the script
in this film in order to maximize those laughs. It's very similar to the
Zaz guys. They would do the same thing. I found it fascinating when
he spoke about the beginning of the film on the other commentary and that the
audience didn't know why they were seeing these scenes where he was going to find
Robert Downey Junior's restaurant in order to dupe him into reading his script on what
have You? And he felt the way to tell the audience that you can
relax that the film knows it hasn't started yet, is to put music over
that, and it changed the whole energy of the first act. It was
fascinating to hear a film I could talk about practical applications of how you can
manipulate or condition the audience and know that, yes, we were aware that
the story hasn't kicked in yet. We're still in the setup stage, so
we're going to have music play over this and make it into more of a
montage, skillful direction. That was another thing I was glad that they dropped
from the movie. Is that car, the one that Jerry Renfrow is talking
about, Oh yeah, this is the only one in la and all this,
And of course Dave ends up liberating it because he's a valet, and
we have Sleader driving it later on in the film, and we see him
drive it a few times, and then you see Jerry Renfrow in the theater
looking up at that car and he gets this puzzled look on his face.
In the script, he actually sees that car and it's like, I can't
have another one of those around that I don't own, And he ends up
buying his own car back from the movie people, and it's just like,
Yeah, how quickly are you going to find out about that? And there's
pink slips and all these kind of things. I'm just like, no,
leave that alone. And I was glad that they did. They just needed
that look on his face in the theater when they're having their huge moment of
triumph. And that one shot where you get Kit and Jiff next to each
other is the only time that we're doing that kind of double screen thing.
Glad that we limit that so much because we don't need Jeff and Kip to
ever talk in this movie. And I love the going back to what you're
saying, Rob, As far as the doubling of stuff, it's so simple,
the doubling of these characters, and it's much more that physicality of Jeff
versus Kit that you have. Kit is so close to an Eddie Murphy regular
role and then Jeff. Luckily, and I know Frank As even said,
I don't want a lot of prosthetics. I don't want this to be completely
different. He does have to look enough like Kit Ramsey to fake Kit Ramsey,
but he pulls it off so well with just the ears sticking out a
little bit. The braces the glasses, but just even the way that he
holds his eyes when he's not wearing his glasses and when he's doing the fighting
at the end in that Taiwanese kung fu film, just the way that he's
moving his arms just like a spas he's getting it. It's so fun.
And those stunt guys just go flying away when he just like moves his arm,
waves it around a little bit, they fly off across the room so
good. Which as I rewatched that now knowing that one of Eddie Murphy's more
recent films that he did, Dolomite, it has this kind of chopshaki horrible
low budget kung fu movies. But for me, what sets the film over
the top is the premiere at the end, when they've pulled it all off
and they're all sitting there and they're watching the film play out, and it's
just the pushings on their faces and they've done it. It's so sincere and
sweet, and I just love the fact that it went there, that it
didn't try and layer it with so many levels of irony, or it didn't
try and be glib or try and diffuse it. It just pushed in on
Steve Martin's face and just allowed us to feel what he felt, which is
just awe and joy and it's so I just love it for that. It
always chokes me up because it's so sincere, because it's it's wearing its hat
on its sleeve and can I also talk about in that scene, I love
the fact that he doesn't go with Heather Graham's character. I feel actually that
he belongs with Christine Baranski's character. I think that would have been an extra
piece in the script where it's finally they realize that we're misfits and we should
be together and they're more appropriate for each other in certainly. But I just
love her and this she's so good. Like I say, she did a
lot of TV sitcom work, but her work in here is great. I
think the first time I ever saw her, I believe, was in the
ref where she plays the mother great film in the family, and she's just
perfect that It's one of my favorite holiday comedies. But I just always have
thought she's just a great actress. I was trying to find out if this
is true or not, but there was a moment where she's driving around and
she's kit and she goes to stop. It's when he's basically shilling for clothes,
like, but when he's got this one of his entourage wearing the suit,
Okay, do the thing and he holds up the face of Kid Ramsay
in front of his own face. Yeah, I'll look good in that.
I like that. It's so good. But when she's driving around in that
scene, there's music playing on her radio, I swear to sing singing,
Yeah that's what I thought. Okay, yeah, I was looking for that
in the credits and I was like, I'm not crazy, yeah, because
she just seems so full of herself, but in a lovable way. Like
she could be the most insufferable character in this movie because she's so much about
the craft and all this, and she ends up being so super sweet.
It's really nice. My biggest guffar that I got on a rewatch because I
remember all the big moments, but it's the little ones that just catch you
off. Guarreth And it's when both Finger is laying out the plan and it's
you only get one take with Kit and she goes one take. It's the
horror of what It's the way that she just delivers such a throwaway line,
but I just go forward, because yeah, there's nothing funnier to me than
somebody lying and trying to hold on to a lion and keep a secret and
duping others, and yeah, she's hilarious. She's always criticizing other people where
it's like Robert de Niro couldn't play this role. She's oh, he annoys
me. Going back to that premiere, of course, I was reminded so
much of ed Wood when I was watching that, And there are quite a
few times throughout this movie where I was just like, this lovable band of
losers making a movie despite all odds, and really in a very illegal way,
like when the cop pulls up you get that that great I think frank
As calls it the back of headline. Have you ever thought about being an
actor? But yeah, that whole idea of these lovable losers who are doing
this illegal filming so reminds me of Edwood, and I to your point,
Rob, as far as like movies about movies, it feels like that really
kicked off a movement in the nineties. I was thinking about this as I
was watching this, because basically, between about nineteen ninety five and two thousand,
there is at least a half dozen movies specifically about movie making and the
backstage and front stage of movie making, and also not just movie making big
budget movies, but low budget and bad movie making. And so I have
to say it probably is Edwood that really kicked it off a little bit before
that, but a little bit artier about the backstage process a little bit although
it's not really on the set is the player, And I was thinking about
maybe Altman opened up the whole thing about agents and the process kind of thing,
but really I think it was Edwood that did it, and then for
me following right after that, and I can't remember which one came out first.
I have to look at release dates. Is Bofinger has a lot of
similarities to get Shorty in that the Harry Zim character is Bowfinger. He's this
low budget guy and he and he's got this little office and all that stuff.
And then the movie that we've done on the show, and this is
the cynical one. They're all cynical, though, I think all the films
are boats the Hollywood and filmmaking, but this one is the really cynical one.
Is my good friend Lloyd and Terror Firmer and when he made that one.
You can obviously tell that Lloyd's fucking pissed. He's just I've been making
these low budget movies for twenty years. I don't make any fucking money.
Everything sucks. Hollywood's run by a bunch of fucking idiots, and I've got
to make I'm playing a blind film director making a low budget movie. Terror
Firmer, go watch that and listen to that. But I've it is also
even thinking about documentary and how another really quotable film is American move and about
the guys in Wisconsin trying to make this low budget horror movie. There must
have just been something in the water in that period. I don't know what
it was that, for some reason there was just a bunch of filmmakers that
wanted to make movies about low budget filmmaker. I wonder if it was a
reflection of the indie boom that was happening. I mean, starting in ninety
two, I'm trying to think of So you have like Blood Simple, You've
got your sexualized videotapes, you've got your reservoir dogs, and like those movies
really start to re shape Hollywood and it becomes much more of the what was
it called the slackers, Dikes, Mikes and Spikes of the world. I
can't remember the name of the book, but you've got like the Robert rodriguezz
and all of these folks that are coming up. I'm thinking that it's a
reflection of that with look at how easy or difficult it is to make a
movie and how you need all of the spirit to do it. Living in
Oblivion. It's amazing to me that Living in Oblivion is ninety five, same
year as ed Wood and Get Shorty. It's like that movie is already parroting
making these independent films. There's even that line, you know, the only
reason I took a part in this movie is because someone said that you were
tight with Quentin Tarantino, which was allegedly based on I think Brad Pitt or
something. Now that I think about it, Mike, I really do think
that it probably was related to that, because that was when I was in
high school, and I remember discussions about, oh, we like clerks.
We made this on our credit card, or we snuck these shots. So
it was much more of a move away from everything being studio bound, big
budgets and all of these things, and I think took people into movie making
in a way that whole kind of sun Dance raft basically from Sex Flies forward,
so eighty nine forward really brought the scale of film down and made it
more accessible. So I think probably you're right. I like to hear that
that you're right. Absolutely, you're always right. What are you wrong?
Living in Oblivion actually has probably the truest representation of what it's like to make
a film where he has that moment where Katherine Keener gives this incredible performance and
there's no film in the camera, and then when they have to do it
again, she can't recapture it, and it's that moment it's just gone,
and the heartache and heartbreak of that. But also you had lots of films
at the time that were about very literate characters, like the screen films where
they are film fans. You wouldn't really have films about characters who were aware
of films in general. They almost used to just exist in this bubble.
So yeah, it was just everyone was quite literate in the nineties and postmodernism,
and I suppose peeling back the curtain and the charad and the facade of
filmmaking in general I think was I'll be ripe for send them the whole thing
with the screen films and that postmodernism. I think a lot of that has
to do with the fact you and I Mike both worked in one video stores
and because of everything shifted to oh, we can just watch tapes, so
we can just rent tapes, we can get into backlogs of all this stuff
and really become extremely film literate. And you can see where that leads leads
only to madness, it leads to podcasts exactly. Especially in our current era,
the audience was much hipper in that way, So I think it probably
is that combination, as you guys were pointing out, was the Sundance indie
boom, and then also just people were more film literate thanks to vhs and
home videos. Send them a new vool, good way to take it right
back to the beginning, moving beyond just riffing on low budget indie film in
that period in late ninety two thousands, what other films about filmmaking do you
like? Would you recommend to someone? It's there in the film. I
don't particularly like watching films about filmmaking because it's so naf to me. It's
that very recently there was that film by Jarappato, The Bubble, and it
was just like it's such low hanging fruit. You've got the pretentious actor and
the torture director and the conniving producer, and it's all about like how superficial
and dumb it is to make a film. And it just feels like it's
so obvious that it's not funny or it's not enlightening. There's nothing to really
say about anything with that. It's snake eating its own tail. So for
me, it's it's when they go so far outside the realm of making a
film that it becomes about the characters that would inhabit that world, the types
of people. It's like Tropic Thunder where you're pulling them out of making a
film and seeing how they cope with the reality situation. Or Three Amigos or
Galaxy Quest, where it's the archetypes in an unfamiliar situation and trying to continue
with the delusions that they have. That's where I find those types of characters
the most entertaining. Really, those are all really excellent choices. For me.
I was thinking about contempt, like Guard's contempt, but really the other
guy true Fau's Day for Night, so depressing those really good I like it
though it's just me. But the one that has always stuck with me,
and it's this I don't know if either of you have seen William Greeves's Symbio
Psychotaxaplasm. It's the It's this layering of they're trying to make a film,
and then there's a documentary about the film taking place at the same time,
and then there's this third layer. It's a odd film. It is experimental
in the best way that I can think of it. And this is nineteen
sixty eight. What this movie with me? If you're interested in sort of
these layers of kind of meta media discussion, I think Symbio Psycho Tax of
Pleasure it's probably worth your time. And I'm not doing it justice by explaining
it, because I don't think you can. I think it's a movie that
you really have to see in its own slum. What's weird? I guess
I like one that's more tangential to it because I always go back to Sunset
Boulevard when it comes to movies about making movies, but so little of it
takes place on a sound stage and they never get the movie made. But
that whole quest to make this new version of Salame that Norma Desmond is going
to star in and more of the old days and talking about that the whole
wax works things with the silent actors who are cast aside Buster Keaton and whatnot.
That's probably my favorite movie about making movies, even though like I said,
it's more in the background of that my favorite movie. But making movies
is Bullfinger ring us around again? Glad you're on this episode, No,
but I genuinely I just find it disinteresting to me. It's like, the
things that I love about this film is that it doesn't do the obvious.
It doesn't have the tortured I've said it already on this episode, but like
a more cleaner take if it would probably be you open with some chaos happening
on screen and then someone yells cut and you're on a set and I've seen
that hundreds of times. At this stage. It's never funny. And I'm
glad that both Fingers doesn't fall into those traps. And speaking of and I
think this might be part of the reason why when I saw this movie,
I was like, it's good, but it feels didn't really was Hail Caesar
Kale Caesar feels like that where it's I expected better of the Coen Brothers.
In certain ways, it's good, but it's not great. It has this
way, it does that kind of thing where there's a big scene and the
cut, yeah, whistle, what's going on? Where I'm the set and
then and then there's all these personalities that the Josh Browling character has to interact
with and deal with in all their various and I just felt like it didn't
elevate for me. And granted, I haven't seen it since it was in
the theater, so I only saw it once, but I haven't gone back
to it, which is rare because Collen Brothers Movies album what was that film?
But the making of Hitchcock that was interesting. I think it was just
called Hitchcock, wasn't it. So the making of the Birds was it?
It was the one with Scout at your Hanson when she was playing John Lee
and Helen Mirriam was Missus Hitchcock, and I think it was, you know,
often because there were two Hitchcocks right around the same time. Yeah,
because it was the one with Anthony Happen. There was Anthony Hopkins and there
was it. Toby Jones was the other one. Yeah, he always tends
to get the deep impact of the Armageddon role in those films Capote or whatever.
Yeah, I can't remember which what the name of that one was.
It's funny when you talked about movies at the very first episode of this podcast
was The stunt Man, and feel might have You're right, that might have
that, oh we're on a movie set moment, but it just works for
me. That whole movie works really well. And going back to the Coen
Brothers, I mean after they gave is Barton Fink, It's like that is
so perfect. Talk about tortured artists, but an artist that you almost want
to see tortured because I don't like Barton Fink as a person, and I
like when he's being tortured, and it will show you the little life of
the mind with fun footage even count because you've taken into the hands of like
regular people making their own film. Perhaps No, I hate found footage movies
so much of the time. Like there's some good ones, I will grant
you that, but so much of the time the conceit of this actually being
a found piece of media somehow, VHS film whatever, it loses. Are
you seeing this? Yeah, he loses it so quickly, and just the
VHS movies, I'm just like, first off, this doesn't look like VHS,
And second off, who is editing all this stuff together? This is
if this is shot on a VHS camera. You've got one camera. How
are we doing all these multiple angles here? So yeah, there are a
few good ones that are out there, definitely, but for the most part,
I'm just like, oh, it just drives me crazy, Like when
you what was that one that was supposed to be, oh, the Survival
of the Dead, one of those George Romero later films where it was just
like Diary Diary Dead. It's just like, who's setting up all these lights
everywhere? Why we're out on this road at night? How come there's so
many lights everywhere? I haven't seen it in twenty years, but I always
felt that of the found footage, I always thought Blair Witch worked, but
it really worked when I always loved telling the story of working at the theater
where we had the two week exclusive and he had to go. It was
either Detroit or Toronto or Chicago and that was it. So it was like
five hour drive either way, and people would common to be like, oh,
it's real, and I go, come on, if you disappeared in
the woods and all they found was your footage, Are your parents really that
cynical to sign off to let filmmakers make a movie out of it? Of
course? Really, yeah, that's what you do these days. It would
open with World Star. I remember Blair Witch and that moment when he was
standing in the corner. I'd been conditioned for jump scars, for people to
scream, and instead there was just an inhale. It was like three hundred
people just inhaled, and you could feel the blood drained from people. It
was a chill rather than the scream, and just knew that you were watching
a film that was very it felt unsafe, more innocent times. Nineteen ninety
nine. Speaking of nineteen ninety nine, because this movie came out, it's
not mentioned in the book, but Best Movie Year Ever is the title of
the book, and it's a good survey of nineteen ninety nine in which they
say, basically, it was the last really interesting year of film, and
they go into a history of why these kind of different threads all came together
to make nineteen ninety nine probably one of the more interesting years in cinema history.
All right, guys, let's go ahead and take a break and play
a preview for next week's show right after these brief messages, Remember the stories
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I want to thank this week's co host Rob and Kevin. So, Rob,
what has been going on with you? Sir? Just living out in
the high desert. I'm enjoying it and doing some writing, trying to learn
some Espanol and so I don't sound too much like a gringo at times,
and enjoying life. See Kevin, how about yourself? Just writing away from
my sins and releasing episodes of my podcast with my more accomplished co host,
Will Collins. It's called The Best Bits and yeah, you can find this
wherever you listen to podcasts. Will's want a BAFTA and I've been nominated for
a Razzie and that the gist of talk about films. What I find really
irritating is that he records with the BAFTA behind him, have to keep oh
oh, and you didn't even work you No, I didn't know. I
don't know. Is that considered a good thing or desperately wanted to win a
Razzie. I've never won anything for writing, and to have won a Razzie
is the first thing I'd ever for anything I'd ever written. I would have
dined out in that for the rest of my life. So I'm got it.
It was that Diana film that won instead. That's just not fair.
I think that whole thing has fixed myself. That whole thing is bullshit,
I think myself. I don't know. Maybe you should have did one of
those big carpet bombing pr campaigns for your consideration, For your consideration, please
vote for me for the Razzie. Would have wanted that sit up with a
deck chair and a code vote for me. The thing is, I was
a co worder on that project with about seven other writers, and I think
the other six were mortified about being nominated, while I was just constantly telling
everyone that I was nominated. So I was drawing more attention to the fact
that the film that we will call writers on was nominated for a Razzie.
But I don't care about that stuff. It's good fun. Some of the
best movies that we've covered have been nominated for Razzie, so they have absolutely
zero taste exactly. Thank you so much guys for being on the show.
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world. Life's like a movie. Write your own ending, keep be leaving,
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