Speaker 1: Oh, folks, it's show tied.
Speaker 2: People say good money to see this movie.
Speaker 3: When they go out to a theater. They want cold sodas,
Speaker 3: hot popcorn, and no monsters in the protection.
Speaker 1: Booth, everyone for tend podcasting isn't boring.
Speaker 4: Let it off.
Speaker 3: The balance of power, the safety of America, and the
Speaker 3: fate of the free world are all in the hands
Speaker 3: of a woman named Whoopee.
Speaker 5: You should be happy to man, I'm not gonna press charge.
Speaker 1: This man is trying to kill me. Of course he's
Speaker 1: not gonna press charges.
Speaker 3: She's discovered a deadly secret.
Speaker 4: You don't know anything about this, do you?
Speaker 1: I don't know about this.
Speaker 3: She's fallen in with a very tough crowd.
Speaker 1: Mister Van, what do you mean?
Speaker 3: He's dead dead dead, And if she can stay alive.
Speaker 1: Face, it's the face of a woman on the deeds,
Speaker 1: she just.
Speaker 3: Might save someone.
Speaker 1: You KB.
Speaker 6: The k GB named Jumpin' Jack Flash twentieth Century Fox
Speaker 6: presents the star of the color purple in a dangerously
Speaker 6: funny new comedy, Whoopy Goldberg in Jumpin' Jack Flag.
Speaker 1: Woa, get it, get It, get it.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host. Mike White
Speaker 2: joined me for this month is mister Kevin Laine.
Speaker 7: I am in address, I have jellum wy here, I
Speaker 7: haven't slept all night, I'm starved and I'm armed. Don't
Speaker 7: mess with me. Hello, Mike, it's glad to be back.
Speaker 2: Also joining us as mister Ian Brown al Bo.
Speaker 1: Sure, Mike, what's the skinny? What's the buzz?
Speaker 2: We are kicking off woop Brewery, a whole month of
Speaker 2: films starring Whoopy Goldberg. We are looking at a trio
Speaker 2: film she made in the wake of her triumphant performance
Speaker 2: in The Color Purple plus one more. First up, we'll
Speaker 2: be discussing Jumping Jack Flash. Directed by Pemmy Marshall and
Speaker 2: written by a whole host of people. The film has
Speaker 2: Whoopee as a computer technician named Terry Doolittle. She accidentally
Speaker 2: makes contact with a British spy and gets embroiled in
Speaker 2: a web of mystery. We will be spoiling this film
Speaker 2: as we go along, so if you don't want anything ruin,
Speaker 2: please turn off the podcast and track down the film.
Speaker 2: We will still be here. So, Kevin, when was the
Speaker 2: first time you saw Jumpin' Jack Flash? And what did
Speaker 2: you think, sir?
Speaker 7: The first time I saw it in totality was yesterday.
Speaker 7: Before that, I caught it on the BBC some late
Speaker 7: evening in the mid nineties, and I saw the last
Speaker 7: half of it and I thought that was good, So
Speaker 7: I need to check that out. Never got round to
Speaker 7: watching it, so I'm happy to have finally seen it
Speaker 7: and Ian about yourself.
Speaker 1: I saw this opening weekend when I was fifteen. I
Speaker 1: saw it with my mom and my sister. My mom
Speaker 1: and I had seen The Color Purple earlier that year
Speaker 1: and loved it. I still love that movie. I think
Speaker 1: it's one of the best screen adaptations of a great novel.
Speaker 1: Though at age fourteen, I had not yet read the
Speaker 1: novel Color Purple, and we had the VHS of Whoopies
Speaker 1: one Woman Broadway show that was taped for HBO. We
Speaker 1: never had cable, but we were early VHS adapters or adopters.
Speaker 1: I can't remember if my mom liked jumpin Jackflash. I
Speaker 1: know she thought Burglar was beneath Whoope's talents, but she
Speaker 1: might and she might have felt that way about this too. I,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, loved Jumpin Jackflash. I saw it
Speaker 1: five times in the theater and at least twenty five
Speaker 1: times on VHS. It was one of those films I
Speaker 1: barely needed to rent anymore. I'd seen it so much
Speaker 1: I could just play it in my head. But up
Speaker 1: until two nights ago, I had not watched this film
Speaker 1: for at least thirty five years, so it was a
Speaker 1: true blast from the past to rewatch it. It's good,
Speaker 1: silly fun. Every other time you've had me on this podcast, Mike,
Speaker 1: it's been to talk about some great classic drama or
Speaker 1: film noir from long before I was born. So it's
Speaker 1: great to be on this show talking about a movie
Speaker 1: from my actual youth for the first time. And I
Speaker 1: enjoy this movie a lot.
Speaker 2: Wow an estimated thirty times at least at.
Speaker 5: Least I'll watch what I said, no, no, don't hold back.
Speaker 1: I mean, this ain't The Godfather.
Speaker 2: I think I watched this one first on cable or
Speaker 2: maybe it was a VHS rental. I did not have
Speaker 2: the tape. I didn't watch this multiple times at home,
Speaker 2: but I did remember really liking it, and then throughout
Speaker 2: the years, I will check it out every you know, ten, twelve,
Speaker 2: fifteen years or something. And I've been dreaming of doing
Speaker 2: this WHOOPI Goldberg series for a long time of all things,
Speaker 2: you know, But here we are. We're doing it because
Speaker 2: there are three movies that she made right in a
Speaker 2: row that I think are pretty darn good. I disagree
Speaker 2: with your mother, but you.
Speaker 1: Know, no, I like Burglar. I watched that at least eight.
Speaker 5: Times and I have yet to see it.
Speaker 2: Next week we'll be back with Burglar, so little preview there.
Speaker 2: I don't remember her stand up that much. I remember
Speaker 2: it being bad and poignant, at least like towards the
Speaker 2: end of the show maybe, But can you recall what
Speaker 2: her stand up was like? Ian?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 1: I mean it wasn't really stand up she did, more
Speaker 1: like what Eric Magosion and John Leguizamo and those types
Speaker 1: of It was a one person show where she did
Speaker 1: five characters. She did it in stand up clubs. And
Speaker 1: then I think, as I recall, the story is that
Speaker 1: Mike Nichols went to see the show and was incredibly
Speaker 1: moved by it and went backstage and like just like
Speaker 1: looked at her and they embraced each other, and he
Speaker 1: became a sort of a mentor for her and got
Speaker 1: the show to Broadway and then got it, you know,
Speaker 1: taped for HBO, and it's good it's not a masterpiece.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: well intentioned, good liberal white people in New York like
Speaker 1: saw a black woman doing characters and exploded. It made
Speaker 1: their head explode and they thought it was like the
Speaker 1: greatest thing ever. It's good, but it's not like a revelation.
Speaker 1: If you compare it, say to Lily Tomlin's Search for
Speaker 1: intelligent life in the Universe, that's I think a richer,
Speaker 1: more complicated, multifaceted one woman show that was on Broadway.
Speaker 1: But I still watch that would be go over. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, again, this was the era where I just
Speaker 1: I was living in rural Massachusetts. I did not have
Speaker 1: a car, though I did have a bike and a tractor,
Speaker 1: but you could not drive the tractor to the town
Speaker 1: where the mall and the movie theater was. So in
Speaker 1: the summertimes, I would just ride my bike to the
Speaker 1: theater and I would see the same movies over and
Speaker 1: over again, because they were at most like eight to
Speaker 1: choose from. So if you're going every weekend and staying
Speaker 1: there all day and watching five shows like I often,
Speaker 1: did you watch those movies that you like over and over?
Speaker 1: And that was you know, this is right around that time,
Speaker 1: like eighty five to eighty seven is probably when I
Speaker 1: did that the most.
Speaker 7: And the interesting thing for us is that we didn't
Speaker 7: really have the same exposure too. She was very much
Speaker 7: one of those American comedians who was big with you guys,
Speaker 7: but didn't translate over to us. So our introduction to
Speaker 7: her would have been the Color Purple and Trek the
Speaker 7: Next Generation and Sister Acting Ghosts and things like that.
Speaker 7: Her big big hits put her stand up, her comic
Speaker 7: relief stuff. None of that would have traveled, so our
Speaker 7: first introduction to her would have been the Spielberg film.
Speaker 7: But it was interesting just to see her biography and
Speaker 7: see that she did a lot of firsts. First person
Speaker 7: to host the Oscars, is a black woman, first person
Speaker 7: to win a Grammy, all that kind of stuff. Was
Speaker 7: fascinating to see how successful she was well sometimes being
Speaker 7: better than the material that she was putting up to.
Speaker 1: I mean, Color Purple was most people's introduction to her
Speaker 1: unless you saw her on Broadway or in a club somewhere.
Speaker 1: That's where all of us first saw what Pee Goldberg
Speaker 1: and Oprah Winfrey and you know, I mean, there's lots
Speaker 1: of famous people in color purple. But then there are
Speaker 1: lots of people who were non actors that Spielberg just
Speaker 1: sort of an Ann Quincy Jones, kind of instinctually cast
Speaker 1: in that way that great producers know how to do.
Speaker 1: That sometimes kind of mystifying, you know, like how you
Speaker 1: would be sure that Oprah Winfrey is going to deliver
Speaker 1: the performance that she does based on nothing. She didn't
Speaker 1: even a talk show host. I don't think at this
Speaker 1: point it's kind of amazing. I think it's all just
Speaker 1: an eye that Spielberg has.
Speaker 2: This was just so remarkable that she had this run
Speaker 2: of films, and that the films that we're talking about,
Speaker 2: at least these first three are very odd that they
Speaker 2: were all rewritten for Woopy Goldberg, every single one.
Speaker 1: This is the third one Fatal Beauty.
Speaker 2: The third one is Fatal Beauty. So Rita Rizzoli surprisingly
Speaker 2: was not supposed to be Wood Goldberg at first. I know,
Speaker 2: that's a shot. So this one, originally, from what I've read,
Speaker 2: was supposed to be a vehicle for Burt Reynolds, and
Speaker 2: then it's gender switched and it became a vehicle for
Speaker 2: Shelley Long and then it switched one more time and
Speaker 2: became a vehicle for Woopy Goldberg. And this is before
Speaker 2: they were making this movie while The Color Purple was
Speaker 2: coming out. This was before she really had her huge push.
Speaker 2: But apparently even at this time she was having difficulties
Speaker 2: with some of the people behind the scenes. It was
Speaker 2: originally what Howard Zef was supposed to direct this, and
Speaker 2: I can't remember the producer, but they both either walked
Speaker 2: away or got fired from this, and that's how Penny
Speaker 2: Marshall came in. And it's interesting to look at some
Speaker 2: of the actors that are in this and you can go, Okay,
Speaker 2: that's a pre Penny Marshall actor, like the boss with
Speaker 2: the bad tu pay because he's in My Girl, I believe,
Speaker 2: which Howard Zeff did. And then you see you know,
Speaker 2: John Lovett's and Phil Hartman and all these people, and
Speaker 2: you're like, oh, okay, well, and obviously Gary Marshall popping
Speaker 2: in as the police detective and you're like, okay, obviously
Speaker 2: that's a Penny Marshall thing.
Speaker 1: There's all the spinal tap people. I mean, she's got
Speaker 1: all the people from who are either previously on Saturday
Speaker 1: Live like Jim Blushi or we're currently on Saturday Life
Speaker 1: like John Lovett's or We're about to be on Saturday
Speaker 1: Live like Phil Hartman. And then you know she she
Speaker 1: did Lavernon Shirley with Michael McKeon, so he's in there,
Speaker 1: and she was married to Rob Reiner. So's she's got
Speaker 1: the woman June Chadwick, is that her name, The woman
Speaker 1: who plays the sort of Yoko Ono character, is like
Speaker 1: briefly in there. And then of.
Speaker 2: Course Tony Hendra, Tony Hendra.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like, so you got three spinal tap people, three
Speaker 1: SNL people, and then you've got all these action guys,
Speaker 1: you know, because this is produced by Lawrence Gordon and
Speaker 1: Joel Silver. You know, big action movie forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: It's a fire lethal weapon predator. I don't know any
Speaker 1: of the names of those guys, but like you recognize
Speaker 1: all these faces of all the people that sort of
Speaker 1: pop up that aren't comedians. So yeah, you can see
Speaker 1: who's coming from where in the cast of this movie.
Speaker 7: I'm going to say something controversial though, which is that
Speaker 7: I feel like Whoopee, as brilliant as she isn't as
Speaker 7: charismatic as she is, and this whole film hinges on
Speaker 7: her charisma as a movie star to keep us watching
Speaker 7: or keep me watching anyway. She's so entertaining, But I
Speaker 7: feel that as good as she is, she's wrong for
Speaker 7: this part, and that I can see it working the
Speaker 7: story essentially working a lot better with Shelley Long being
Speaker 7: this willowing, lovelorn, put upon bank clerk who ends up
Speaker 7: falling for a guy that she never sees.
Speaker 5: The whoopee Gobert character just feels too.
Speaker 7: Irascible and gregarious and confident to risk her life like
Speaker 7: this for someone that she's never met, and to fall
Speaker 7: for somebody over a computer screen.
Speaker 5: She just feels too street wise for that.
Speaker 7: Whereas I could imagine Shelley Long selling that a little
Speaker 7: bit more convincingly. That being said, I think it wouldn't
Speaker 7: be as entertaining with Shelley Long.
Speaker 1: Well, have you ever seen Outrageous Fortune with Shelley Long
Speaker 1: and Bette Midler?
Speaker 5: I have, She's a brilliant actress.
Speaker 1: It would be like that tone.
Speaker 7: I think, yeah, more of a twist on romantic comedy
Speaker 7: I could imagine, whereas this feels like it's taking its
Speaker 7: cues from Beverly Hills cop and saying, let's put what
Speaker 7: Pie Goldberg in a star vehicle? And have her up
Speaker 7: against all these spies and stuff, and it's very entertaining
Speaker 7: for what it is, but the character she's playing this
Speaker 7: a bank clerk who can't get a date, a false
Speaker 7: regard she never sees.
Speaker 5: I just don't buy it with her character.
Speaker 7: She's too colorful and too much of the class clone
Speaker 7: for to be successful for me as a storyline.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's really interesting about movies of
Speaker 1: this period, like Beverly Hills Cop and Burglar and a
Speaker 1: lot of these movies, they are always designed to be
Speaker 1: action comedies, but the various drafts for all these different
Speaker 1: screenwriters pull them more in one direction to the other.
Speaker 1: So it only really it's because of the star that
Speaker 1: ultimately gets cast that it goes a certain way. Like
Speaker 1: if Stallone had been in Beverly Hills Cop, it would
Speaker 1: have been Cobra, which it eventually was, but you know,
Speaker 1: instead they got Eddie Murphy and it becomes this huge movie. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills Cop is a much more successful version of
Speaker 1: that than Jumping Jack Flash. But I personally like this
Speaker 1: element of eighties action comedies where it really retains the
Speaker 1: action movie plot in a way that is not complicated
Speaker 1: This is not Chinatown or anything like. It's not a
Speaker 1: plot you have to really pay much attention to. But
Speaker 1: it's not inconsequential, and it's not like ironically or grudgingly
Speaker 1: grafted on like so many action comedy movie plots today are.
Speaker 1: There are stakes in this movie, but you're never really
Speaker 1: asked to take them very seriously because she doesn't take
Speaker 1: them very seriously except when she's like backed into a
Speaker 1: corner and then she gets out of it, like, you know,
Speaker 1: using her wits or whatever, like a good eighties you know,
Speaker 1: comedy heroin. But I do think that you're right in
Speaker 1: the sense that I can see this being a little
Speaker 1: more effective with Shelley Long. But I don't know that
Speaker 1: I would have watched it as often, Like I had
Speaker 1: such a good time with all the shtick that Willbi
Speaker 1: Goldberg does, and I think, whatever again. I read the
Speaker 1: script you sent us, Mike, but it really was like
Speaker 1: the shooting script. It wasn't any of the early drafts.
Speaker 1: So it's hard to picture how invested I would have
Speaker 1: been with anybody else in the movie. I can't really tell.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: I wonder if it helps that it was originally an
Speaker 2: action movie and then the comedy was brought to it,
Speaker 2: rather than vice versa, where it's a comic movie that
Speaker 2: they then shove the action into. I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: that makes a difference or not. But again, also the
Speaker 2: switching of from a male protagonist to a female protagonist,
Speaker 2: from a white lady to a black lady, and then
Speaker 2: Whoopy Goldberg brings herself to this role. And I think
Speaker 2: you're kind of right as far as she's very self possessed,
Speaker 2: like when it comes to the office scenario, like she's
Speaker 2: the one I would think that everybody goes to for answers, like,
Speaker 2: isn't it. Like at the very end of the movie,
Speaker 2: she ends up getting mister Page's job correct, like he
Speaker 2: moves someplace else and she becomes the boss. And that
Speaker 2: makes total since because she knows the job better than
Speaker 2: anybody else. She doesn't follow the rules, but she makes
Speaker 2: all of her customers feel good about themselves and has
Speaker 2: this great relationship. It's that whole hug your customer business
Speaker 2: mentality that has been shoved down my throat as a manager.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, okay, yeah, this makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: She's making a personal connection with all of these people,
Speaker 2: and the whole Yankee pot roast of it all, you know,
Speaker 2: But yeah, it is very fascinating that this is a
Speaker 2: movie that is led by comedian and led by a
Speaker 2: black woman in nineteen eighty six, which I don't think
Speaker 2: had really happened before this.
Speaker 7: What a first time female director.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, first time female and she definitely did
Speaker 2: not feel very comfortable with this. Thank you so much,
Speaker 2: Ian for sharing Penny Marshall's biography.
Speaker 4: That was great.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, both Penny Marshall and Gary Marshall wrote autobiographies
Speaker 1: late in their lives and they did audiobook versions, and
Speaker 1: that's the only way with both those people, those siblings
Speaker 1: and their distinctive voices. It's like listening to a twelve
Speaker 1: hour podcast where they just tell amazing stories over and over.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I just like I made a little recording
Speaker 1: to because I was like, you guys don't want to
Speaker 1: read this, You want to hear her tell these stories.
Speaker 1: They're just so fun. But yeah, this was the era
Speaker 1: of like the studio development process just being in maximum
Speaker 1: cocaine fueled overdrive, which is why you get all you know,
Speaker 1: these big producers who are used to action movies, who
Speaker 1: I think nothing of bringing on all these high powered writers.
Speaker 1: So like the first draft is by David Franzoni, who
Speaker 1: wrote Amistad and Gladiator, but this was his first produced screenplay.
Speaker 1: Then you get Nancy Myers and Charles Shier who write
Speaker 1: a draft when Shelley Long is there. And I think
Speaker 1: that went for a long time because they still retain
Speaker 1: screen credit though under pseudonyms. But then the script you
Speaker 1: gave us, which is a shooting script, has a draft
Speaker 1: credit to davidy Desuza, who wrote forty eight Hours and
Speaker 1: Die Hard and Command and Running Man. And Richard Price,
Speaker 1: the legendary novelist of like Wanderers and Clockers, who wrote
Speaker 1: at this time like Color of Money, and he would
Speaker 1: write Sea of Love a couple of years later. Then
Speaker 1: the creator of Bosom Buddies, Chris Thompson. He's probably brought
Speaker 1: on at the very end because he was a Laverne
Speaker 1: and Shirley writer. And in her autobiography, Penny Marshall says,
Speaker 1: there was a David Mammott draft of this movie. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's so when you look at what the actual movie.
Speaker 5: Is, I can imagine how Foux Mooth that was.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well that's what she said. She's like that
Speaker 1: it was all foxed and shit and motherfucker and all this,
Speaker 1: you know, like she like it's just listening to her
Speaker 1: rattle off her anecdotes is great.
Speaker 5: Can I tell you?
Speaker 6: Though?
Speaker 7: I would say that that draft, as vulgar as it
Speaker 7: would have been, would probably have suited Whoopee's character a
Speaker 7: lot better, because, for my money, my favorite scene in
Speaker 7: the film is the scene between her and Gary Marshall
Speaker 7: where she's able to cut loose and she's being irascible
Speaker 7: and irritable and she's just swearing like a trooper to
Speaker 7: this guy.
Speaker 6: We sent a card down there, lady, I'm calling lady.
Speaker 3: We found nothing, nothing, nothing nothing.
Speaker 1: We'll drag the river there.
Speaker 8: Aunt killer is running around the fucking city.
Speaker 4: How would you like me to wash your mouth out
Speaker 4: with a wire brush?
Speaker 1: How'd you like it if I kick you in the
Speaker 1: nuts so hard that they get lodged in your fucking nostrils?
Speaker 7: And that, to me is like, that's the character that
Speaker 7: they should have been. Or the alternati would have been
Speaker 7: to have flipped it and had Carol Kane is delete
Speaker 7: that would have sort of suited this. But yeah, I
Speaker 7: can feel the energy shifting in the film depending on
Speaker 7: the day that they shot, because it changes up tones
Speaker 7: soft and it goes from slapstick to suspense to sisterhood
Speaker 7: with her character with any Potts sort of pulling off
Speaker 7: this heist to get her at the consulate.
Speaker 5: And yeah, it has a sort of.
Speaker 7: A fly by the seat of its pants sort of
Speaker 7: tone to it where it keeps changing depending on what
Speaker 7: mood they were in that day.
Speaker 2: Well, it sounds very much like that was the shooting way,
Speaker 2: like where she was talking about, oh yeah, whoopee was
Speaker 2: in a rotten mood and so we were shooting this
Speaker 2: scene and trying to find the frying pan and the
Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't even I remember that scene from
Speaker 2: the script, but I didn't remember it for frying pan. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the fryingpan is a weird way of getting information from
Speaker 2: one person to another.
Speaker 1: That scene. And I found that scene in the shooting
Speaker 1: script because she says the very first like she came
Speaker 1: on the film, it was already shooting for ten days
Speaker 1: and that's when Howard Zef and the producer was Marvin Worth.
Speaker 1: You asked who Marvin Worth? And I've do this whole
Speaker 1: past year of twenty twenty four. I've been devoting myself
Speaker 1: to revisiting all the films of nineteen eighty four on
Speaker 1: their fortieth anniversaries. So like, I've been totally immersed in that.
Speaker 1: And Marvin Worth made three real winners that year. He
Speaker 1: made Falling in Love, the Romantic movie with Robert de
Speaker 1: Niro and Meryl Streep, which is a real slog. He
Speaker 1: made unfaithfully yours, I think with Howard Zef that's the
Speaker 1: Dudley Moore remake of the Preston Surgis movie, and the
Speaker 1: infamous Rhinestone with Dolly Parton and sly Stone, which I
Speaker 1: had not.
Speaker 7: Oh, I get it. You're being sarcastic here.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yeah, I'm being sorry. I'm just saying like
Speaker 1: Marvin Worth was on a fucking roll, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, for someone for him to leave
Speaker 1: a project, you know, it might must have been in trouble.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so they shut down, and they they reach
Speaker 1: out to Penny Marshall and say, like, we're already shooting.
Speaker 1: We can't really you know, go into any new pre production.
Speaker 1: So she says the first thing she shot was the
Speaker 1: footage of the Russian woman who you know, like that
Speaker 1: comes in from Soviet television. And then the second is
Speaker 1: this scene where Woopee goes into the alleyway after she
Speaker 1: throws the frying pan out her window, and she has
Speaker 1: this interaction with a homeless person and that is not
Speaker 1: in the film, but it is in the shooting script,
Speaker 1: so it was interesting to see that.
Speaker 2: Though the Russian woman was not in the shooting script,
Speaker 2: which was interesting. And then also there's more after she
Speaker 2: is confronting Gary Marshall. Is a little bit more because
Speaker 2: I noticed yesterday when I was rewatching this, it was like,
Speaker 2: oh wow, that's a very abrupt cut when it goes
Speaker 2: back to her apartment after she's had that truth serum
Speaker 2: that Jim Belushi pumped into her, and there's a whole
Speaker 2: scene in there with Marty where he's talking with her
Speaker 2: and she's kind of like coming down from the truth
Speaker 2: serum type of stuff, and there's a doctor and he's like,
Speaker 2: you should put her to bed and all this stuff.
Speaker 2: So I'm like, okay, that would have filled that in
Speaker 2: a little bit more. But the one thing I really
Speaker 2: tried to pay attention to, and I know I'm jumping
Speaker 2: all the way to the end of this movie, is
Speaker 2: she doesn't bite Professor Falkon aka John Wood aka Jeremy
Speaker 2: Talbot's the character's name. She doesn't bite him in the
Speaker 2: dick in the script, and so I was very glad
Speaker 2: for that because that's a horrible moment in this movie
Speaker 2: and it just kind of undermines the movie a little
Speaker 2: bit for me every single time I watch it, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because it's just like.
Speaker 1: My god, it's such a great I mean.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but they say it's perfect because they have Benny
Speaker 7: like this is.
Speaker 1: But going back to what you said, Mike about like
Speaker 1: how you just didn't see a black woman heading a
Speaker 1: major like movie like this, I mean, Woopy Goldberg was
Speaker 1: a total outlier when she became famous. It's a little
Speaker 1: bit like you didn't see black people on MTV unless
Speaker 1: it was Michael Jackson. He was sort of grandfathered in.
Speaker 1: And it's the same with Whoopy Goldberg in a weird
Speaker 1: way during this period of time where she is it's
Speaker 1: not that she is like she's playing a black character,
Speaker 1: and there are jokes about being black in this movie.
Speaker 1: There's several jokes. There's that one where she's like riding
Speaker 1: through the you know, when she gets she's trapped in
Speaker 1: the phone booth and they're dragging her, and she like
Speaker 1: looks at at the guy. She's like, hey, brother man
Speaker 1: black power, like call the please help me, and he's
Speaker 1: just like right on. You know, Like there's all these
Speaker 1: references there, but there's something very I guess unthreatening, And
Speaker 1: maybe that's not the word. I don't know what it
Speaker 1: was that just like appealed to Hollywood and America about
Speaker 1: Whoopy Goldberg. Her sense of style, both in real life
Speaker 1: and in this movie is totally unlike anything else. Like
Speaker 1: I don't know how what her life, sexuality, how she
Speaker 1: identified at this point in time, but when you see
Speaker 1: her in the dress, she's like, oh yeah, this is
Speaker 1: like a thirty year old woman who can totally like
Speaker 1: rock this sexy dress, but would never choose to unless
Speaker 1: it was for a gag.
Speaker 5: She looks like Milhouse and drag.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like she doesn't do it unless she's doing it
Speaker 1: for fun, Like she would never show up to an
Speaker 1: award show in a dress like that.
Speaker 5: But she's pure charisma.
Speaker 7: She's like one of those movie stars who gets boy
Speaker 7: because of their charisma. They are so watchable and likable.
Speaker 7: You can't hate what Pie Goldburg actually ever played a villain.
Speaker 7: I don't think so, but I don't think it will be.
Speaker 7: But in her wheelhouse, she's just such a likable presence.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know if you have the view over
Speaker 1: there in England, but like, there are plenty of maga
Speaker 1: people who hate with Goldberg because she's on a talk
Speaker 1: show where she's very opinionated.
Speaker 7: I'll be honest. Do maga people like anything now?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: I don't think so now. And they don't like movies either,
Speaker 1: unless they're like mel Gibson movies. But the way she
Speaker 1: dresses is like very and shapeless. She's sort of like
Speaker 1: dressed like a cross between Flave of Flave and a
Speaker 1: Lego character, you know, Like it's like square and colorful,
Speaker 1: like bright yellows. And to me, the whole biting the
Speaker 1: dick thing is just like the perfect way for this
Speaker 1: version of this movie to end, because she did stuff
Speaker 1: that was outrageous that you weren't expecting to see. And
Speaker 1: she's got that incredible mouth with those incredible teeth that
Speaker 1: are such a huge part of the color purple, using
Speaker 1: her face and mouth in a completely different way to
Speaker 1: evoke all kinds of emotions, and in this movie she
Speaker 1: just like opens up those choppers and bites the guy
Speaker 1: in the dick. It's like the ultimate, you know, and
Speaker 1: then he is so shocked. He just looks at and
Speaker 1: he's just like as he's getting handcuffed, he's like, I
Speaker 1: don't believe it.
Speaker 5: It's so daft.
Speaker 7: I have to say it thoughays well, and maybe it's
Speaker 7: just colored boy. What I know about Stephen Collins, Well,
Speaker 7: watching this film, I just kept thinking he's the villain.
Speaker 7: He's the guy who's gonna double crossed. There's something sketchy
Speaker 7: about this guy. He's got such bad, sinister energy and
Speaker 7: he's always had that and everything I've ever seen him in.
Speaker 7: So I was watching it thinking he's definitely the bad
Speaker 7: guy and he's not. He's he's like an alloy.
Speaker 1: He is under covers. He is he is Yeah, he
Speaker 1: says CIA agent.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but he key comes true for in the end
Speaker 7: and he's like he's a good pile to her.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: The other thing is she's trying to get an five
Speaker 7: agent out of Russia. It should be an six agent.
Speaker 7: My favor is the domestic wing of the British police.
Speaker 7: That's a little bit of a slip up there.
Speaker 1: I think we get confused about those numbers and letters
Speaker 1: over here on the side of the pond. I mean
Speaker 1: even in like James Bond, he's six. Well he's six
Speaker 1: at some point, but in at least four of the
Speaker 1: movies and even one of the novels he's referred to
Speaker 1: as MI I five. So I always I was like,
Speaker 1: did they change the number? But he's in the sixties
Speaker 1: and the eighties or I don't know, but.
Speaker 7: It's the difference between the FBI and CIA.
Speaker 2: I didn't know until reading those books. When it finally
Speaker 2: came to the Moonriker book where it was like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is a domestic thing. He shouldn't be on this,
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, I never really picked that up
Speaker 2: before that all of his cases take place around the
Speaker 2: world rather than in itself.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but the exploding pen is totally realistic.
Speaker 1: That's sex they never had.
Speaker 5: That's the upgrade I have to say. As well.
Speaker 7: I felt quite sorry for her at the end when
Speaker 7: she got the big reveal of who this guy was
Speaker 7: that she'd been courting, and.
Speaker 2: I was wondering. I was like, is Jonathan Price really
Speaker 2: worth all the trouble?
Speaker 7: Yeah, it should be like Pierce Brosnan or somebody. Daniel Craig.
Speaker 7: You know somebody that's like a knockout for her, and
Speaker 7: it's John Deprice Falding receding here.
Speaker 5: And I don't know.
Speaker 1: I like Jonathan Price a lot, but did you guys
Speaker 1: read this in Whoopee in Wikipedia? According to Wikipedia, Sam
Speaker 1: Kinnison was originally cast to play that role because he
Speaker 1: was I don't know, this may be completely apocrypal. Wikipedia
Speaker 1: says Sam Kinnison was dating Penny Marshall at the time.
Speaker 1: She offered him the role of Jack, but Whoopy Goldberg
Speaker 1: nixed the deal, causing Marshall and Kinnison to end their
Speaker 1: relationship and starting a bitter feud between Kennison and Goldberg.
Speaker 1: That sounds like complete Wikipedia bullshit to me, But there's
Speaker 1: not a lot on this Wikipedia page, and that's like
Speaker 1: prominently there. I was sort of shocked to see that,
Speaker 1: but I've always liked Jonathan Price. I do think that,
Speaker 1: as you were saying, like if it was Shelley Long
Speaker 1: or Anti Potts, or even Carol kin Well not Carol Kane.
Speaker 1: I think if both if Carol Kine or Whoopy Goldberg
Speaker 1: are playing this part, you have to get the feeling
Speaker 1: that like it's not going to be an overwhelming James
Speaker 1: Bond masculine presence that walks in. Reading the script was
Speaker 1: really interesting because there are so many things that are
Speaker 1: not in the final cut of this movie that are
Speaker 1: in the shooting script that really make him sound like
Speaker 1: a player and a ladies man. And there's like when
Speaker 1: she's listening to the answer machine message, there's even like
Speaker 1: a woman was like, by the way, the baby's not yours.
Speaker 1: When she's like calling to find out, like where have you?
Speaker 1: All the messages that say where are you? And like
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, so this jump and jack flash.
Speaker 5: She got catfish?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. I like him. He's got a great voice.
Speaker 1: I love that we don't hear his voice until she
Speaker 1: hears his voice on the answering machine tape, and then she.
Speaker 5: Can hear excuse yeah, I was nice.
Speaker 1: That's like that little bit of cinema language that like
Speaker 1: just lit up the brain of this budding fifteen year
Speaker 1: old cinephile. I was just like, ooh, more of that,
Speaker 1: more of that.
Speaker 7: I never trusted him though, because he spoken all caps,
Speaker 7: you know those a well.
Speaker 1: The way the dialogue between the computer and her is
Speaker 1: depicted in this movie is very bizarre because there are
Speaker 1: definitely times when she's always just reading text and hearing
Speaker 1: things in her mind. His voice, but like he he
Speaker 1: knows when she's like turned around and not looking at
Speaker 1: the camera. She knows when he knows when she's not
Speaker 1: answering because she's emotional as opposed to she's just like distracted,
Speaker 1: a stepped away.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It really feels like an actual conversation, which which is
Speaker 1: a choice. I don't know how well it works, but
Speaker 1: especially since the whole payoff at the end is that
Speaker 1: he is watching her from that room as they text.
Speaker 1: It's a little strange, but I like hearing his voice.
Speaker 1: I think it's important to have a really good voice.
Speaker 1: Maybe Hugh Grant, if this had been shot like ten
Speaker 1: years later, would have been an ideal jump in Jack
Speaker 1: Flash because he's suave.
Speaker 7: But goofy, Yeah, you want to start out with her
Speaker 7: just meeting all these schmucks and these guys that are
Speaker 7: just like beneath her, and then she gets the ultimate
Speaker 7: prize at the end, like Adonnis walks in and it's
Speaker 7: like that's the guy who owes his life to her
Speaker 7: and is like, let's go on a date. But instead
Speaker 7: it's kind of like uh, okay.
Speaker 2: I would have thought that Gero and Crab would have
Speaker 2: been a better choice than Mark Van Meter. But again,
Speaker 2: seeing him, I'm just like, oh, he's evil, you know,
Speaker 2: like be careful, like, don't meet him near the docks.
Speaker 1: That's a guy who killed Richard Kimball or not.
Speaker 2: He's got the whole Devila McGregor things stewing up. They're
Speaker 2: going to be selling that drug pretty soon.
Speaker 1: So damn Bond. His defection was phony.
Speaker 2: I can never trust that dude, but in this one,
Speaker 2: I guess you can.
Speaker 1: That was the first time I ever saw him though
Speaker 1: I had never seen any of his Dutch films, and
Speaker 1: Crossing Delancey hadn't come out yet, so this was my
Speaker 1: first exposure to Jerome Krebe and I thought he was
Speaker 1: like he was a memorable actor from this movie.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, even though he's only in here for a
Speaker 2: few seconds. What I'm seeing, Yeah, And then veto rugg Reginnis,
Speaker 2: I think it is is the guy Carl. He just
Speaker 2: shows up with the tow truck, and then he shows
Speaker 2: up later on and shoots up the office. And it's
Speaker 2: funny because he'll be in next week's movie. When we
Speaker 2: talk about Burglar. He's got a little bit larger of
Speaker 2: a part, but he's one of those guys where I'm
Speaker 2: just like, whenever he shows up, I'm like, Okay, I
Speaker 2: don't know if he's going to be evil or if
Speaker 2: he's going to be good, because I want to say
Speaker 2: he's the guy that saves the day in Cliffhanger and
Speaker 2: throws the briefcase with the money outside of the plane,
Speaker 2: and the whole movie wouldn't exist if it wasn't for him.
Speaker 7: It's a stacked cast. I mean, if you look at
Speaker 7: somebody that you recognize from something else. Almost at the
Speaker 7: point where it became a bit distracting, where it was like,
Speaker 7: where are the rest of our office workers? That lovely
Speaker 7: camaraderie that she had with all of them, I wanted
Speaker 7: to see more of those, And that's why we ended
Speaker 7: up feeling like, Yeah, they are trying to plug holes
Speaker 7: here in a shifting target, and maybe that's what's happening
Speaker 7: where you've got all these great character actors coming in
Speaker 7: for a little bit and then the story just moves
Speaker 7: away from them and it feels like, no, they're more
Speaker 7: of a distraction than anything.
Speaker 1: I don't find them a distraction I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it was one of the things I responded to the
Speaker 1: most was that feeling of camaraderie. But it is just work,
Speaker 1: Like you know. This is the thing that I think
Speaker 1: gets down to the heart of why this movie works
Speaker 1: at all, aside from Whoopie Goldberg, is that the initial premise,
Speaker 1: in the initial draft whenever that was written, is kind
Speaker 1: of good. It's this idea that you know, like computer
Speaker 1: like computers are still relatively new, this idea of being
Speaker 1: an office drone or in the case of this film,
Speaker 1: they're just people who work at a bank literally doing
Speaker 1: stuff that within years would just be completely automated. But
Speaker 1: at this point you actually need to have a whole
Speaker 1: room full of people doing nothing but accepting the transfer
Speaker 1: of funds from one bank to another, which seems like
Speaker 1: the dullest job you can imagine. I mean, it's data entry,
Speaker 1: and she makes it fun by like striking up these
Speaker 1: little relationships. And as you said, Mike, like she's obviously
Speaker 1: she's not a slacker, she's not a bad employee. When
Speaker 1: mister Page is dressing her down at the beginning, even
Speaker 1: says like, you're my most productive employee. But whatever it is,
Speaker 1: you got a bad attitude or you you know, you
Speaker 1: swear at work or whatever it is, you know, and
Speaker 1: then he takes out all these transcripts about how or
Speaker 1: these printouts about how she's like using the computer time
Speaker 1: for personal chitchat with these people and that that's unprofessional.
Speaker 1: But of course, then to have an MI six agent
Speaker 1: backing into this what I imagine is very secure, but
Speaker 1: secure on a certain level that probably has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with however stuff was encrypted for espionage. It's all
Speaker 1: like financial encryption or whatever. So he's able to kind
Speaker 1: of break in there. And that is the cool thing.
Speaker 1: And what Penny Marshall said she really responded to when
Speaker 1: she initially read the script was just the idea of
Speaker 1: a woman who's smarter than her job and bored at work.
Speaker 1: And everybody understands that. It's a very relatable thing. And
Speaker 1: her first thing that she did was like, we got
Speaker 1: to make this workplace fun, and that's why she called
Speaker 1: in all these favors. I don't know who was cast,
Speaker 1: if Carol Caine was already cast, and I mean John
Speaker 1: Lovett's like all his character is there in the script,
Speaker 1: you know, but obviously Phil Hartman he wasn't cast in
Speaker 1: this movie his whole like don't shave with a sickle
Speaker 1: baby line, Like all these lines that are just obviously
Speaker 1: wild lines or adyrd or improper or whatever are really
Speaker 1: really fun. I like that she kind of brings in
Speaker 1: all this color, all this comedy royalty or pre royalty
Speaker 1: to fill out what could be a sort of dull
Speaker 1: scenario in a bank.
Speaker 7: But I think the trade off of that then is
Speaker 7: that the office is more exciting than the actual mission
Speaker 7: that she's going on.
Speaker 5: So for an awful long time, I was like, I.
Speaker 7: Want to be back at the office with all those guys,
Speaker 7: not with her listening to Mick Jagger lyrics and trying
Speaker 7: to decipher what the code is. It's funny because there's
Speaker 7: so much of this film which is a product of
Speaker 7: his time, and you look back at it and think
Speaker 7: she could just google it. You could just get the
Speaker 7: actual lyrics on Google and seconds do you know exactly
Speaker 7: what he's trying to send them as a coded message.
Speaker 7: But that's what I mean in terms of them being
Speaker 7: in distraction, is that they're so entertaining that as soon
Speaker 7: as the story shifts away until Gud's coming to play.
Speaker 1: But what is it that you want to see, like
Speaker 1: you want to see them going out to dinner and stuff,
Speaker 1: or you want to see that in an eventual adventure, like.
Speaker 5: If you're fun, you see it's need a feast a
Speaker 5: fall for me.
Speaker 1: What I really need is somebody like John loving exact competency.
Speaker 7: I wish to Stephen Collins character was John Levits, but
Speaker 7: obviously Stephen Collins is going to be the villain. And
Speaker 7: I got disabused at that notion. But yeah, I just
Speaker 7: felt like spiceduff was not as fun or as entertaining
Speaker 7: as the office stuff for the most part.
Speaker 1: Well, I agree that Stephen Collins is not a high
Speaker 1: point in this movie, like his character. I mean, as
Speaker 1: a kid, I had no idea. I did not see
Speaker 1: that twist coming because I just hadn't seen enough movies
Speaker 1: to be able to predict stuff like that, and I'd
Speaker 1: only seen them in Star Trek the motion Picture and
Speaker 1: probably didn't even make the connection that it was the
Speaker 1: same guy.
Speaker 7: And I was again when he was on screen, and
Speaker 7: that's saying, get off screen, I want to watch corknut you.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, everybody felt that. I mean, that was oh.
Speaker 2: Come on, you guys, weren't Tails of the Gold Monkey fans.
Speaker 1: Well, that's part of the fun of Motion Star Trek
Speaker 1: the motion picture is that rivalry between them, you know,
Speaker 1: like and you can tell they're stead of one upping
Speaker 1: or you know, anyway, that's a that's another movie.
Speaker 2: He's no William Riker.
Speaker 1: I know that I would have liked to have seen
Speaker 1: Phil Hartman in that role. Like, I think that would
Speaker 1: have been a more you know, having Phil Hartman come
Speaker 1: down to the police station and bail her out and
Speaker 1: talking about how she has Tourette syndrome to get like
Speaker 1: that would have been a better casting, I think. But
Speaker 1: Phil Hartman was, you know, the guy who wrote with
Speaker 1: Paul Rubens. At this point, he hadn't even been on television,
Speaker 1: you know, except for that Pee Wee Herman special. He's
Speaker 1: not even credit like if he doesn't get an on
Speaker 1: screen credit. If you look at the Wikipedia, he's only
Speaker 1: listed as by the way, this guy is also in here,
Speaker 1: not as like an actual cast member.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: They miss Speller's name, don't.
Speaker 5: They, Phil E.
Speaker 2: Hartman? Yeah, and they put an extra n at the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The whole thing with Carol Kane, with all the dates
Speaker 2: that she was on. I was kind of hoping for
Speaker 2: more of that or the things where because at the end,
Speaker 2: Woody Goldberg says to the one woman that's not Carol
Speaker 2: Kane in the office, just admit that it's yours or something,
Speaker 2: or like she was like basically, oh yeah, Phil Hartman's
Speaker 2: character had been sleeping with her and got her pregnant
Speaker 2: and oh that was when she was on the The
Speaker 2: Truth serum. So she's just letting it all fly. And
Speaker 2: it is funny because at one point there's a security guard,
Speaker 2: like we have one of a few scenes of what
Speaker 2: be after Hours, waiting for Jack to come on so
Speaker 2: she can talk with him and figure stuff out. And
Speaker 2: you've got a security guard who's just like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: there's just this one woman here, Terry Doolittle, and she
Speaker 2: talks to herself all the time. And after he said that,
Speaker 2: I was like, fuck, yeah, she does. She tugs herself
Speaker 2: all the.
Speaker 1: Fuck you need scene this show.
Speaker 2: I mean, with her talking on the computer, I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh okay. But then like she leaves that and she's
Speaker 2: just talking to herself while she's walking down the street,
Speaker 2: especially where it's like when she's there waiting for Mark
Speaker 2: van Meter to show up, She's like, this is great.
Speaker 4: This is great.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm down here one thirty in the morning
Speaker 1: on the docks. I should just pait one hundred dollars
Speaker 1: bills on my ass.
Speaker 9: The screams victim hands, victim hand till complaints shut up.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, you're just talking all the time, aren't you.
Speaker 1: That's one of the only scripted lines like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: the first five minutes of this movie are just her
Speaker 1: talking to herself through the entire opening credits, and she
Speaker 1: never stops. And yeah, that line where she's waiting for
Speaker 1: van meter is actually in the script, but it is amazing,
Speaker 1: And I do think like that's something going back to
Speaker 1: the alternative casting, Like if that had been Shelley Long,
Speaker 1: I would have shut that. I would have walked out
Speaker 1: of the theater. I mean, I don't want to hear
Speaker 1: Shelley Long talking to herself for ninety minutes the way
Speaker 1: I do want to hear wo Pee Goldberg do that.
Speaker 5: It would have been a very different character.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't think Shelley Long would
Speaker 1: have been doing that. But I think that it's one
Speaker 1: of the ways that this movie kind of cuts through
Speaker 1: the narrative to a large extent and it's obviously not
Speaker 1: all in post production, Like these are not adr lines.
Speaker 1: This is like, this is what she's doing a little bit,
Speaker 1: like turn the camera on, and she is kind of
Speaker 1: grounding us in what's going on as she's typing. She
Speaker 1: says different things than what she's typing, like she's having
Speaker 1: a conversation with herself, but only like which is like
Speaker 1: three lines long, but she's.
Speaker 5: Only rather than being voiceover in a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's not going on in her head.
Speaker 1: She's just like an eclective person. And I think that
Speaker 1: shot with the security guard is a great addition. I
Speaker 1: like it when movies do stuff like that because it
Speaker 1: reminds you that, like, yes, this is odd that this
Speaker 1: woman not only is staying late, that's not the strangest thing.
Speaker 1: He even says maybe she's trying to get a promotion
Speaker 1: or something. But he also is like, yeah, she's wandering around.
Speaker 1: She's not just sitting at her computer. She's like pacing
Speaker 1: around talking to herself like she's a little cracked. Maybe
Speaker 1: you know, people look at her as an odd duck,
Speaker 1: which also I think helps kind of sell the idea
Speaker 1: that she can get into all these situations, which obviously
Speaker 1: you know she never would in real life, but it
Speaker 1: feels like more of a fantasy, more of an eccentric character,
Speaker 1: so that when she's like sneaking into the British Consulate
Speaker 1: or talking her way in, You're like, yeah, that would work,
Speaker 1: would be gold would would be able to sneak into
Speaker 1: an invitation only party by pretending to be a dress queen.
Speaker 1: I mean sure that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with the little tape recorder that's stuck to her,
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay.
Speaker 1: With like a little transistor speaker that like, I'm sure
Speaker 1: that that went over.
Speaker 7: Really the same song and look in the same way
Speaker 7: she does in Cis Direct, So I thought, oh, maybe
Speaker 7: they went to her because of that.
Speaker 5: It was like, let's get whoope, well or what.
Speaker 1: You said, Mike was that she really looks like she
Speaker 1: does in that Moonlighting episode, And you're totally right. I mean,
Speaker 1: the wig, the dress, she looks almost it literally looks
Speaker 1: like she ran off the set that one day to
Speaker 1: do that Moonlighting episode in that costume. As soon as
Speaker 1: I read that you had noticed that, I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, yeah, forgot about that Moonlighting episode.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, because I used devil in a blue dress
Speaker 2: through the whole thing, and then she shows up in
Speaker 2: a blue dress in this and you get that comic
Speaker 2: moment of her dress getting caught in the shredder and
Speaker 2: the saber dance starts playing and everything, And I'm like,
Speaker 2: that's really the most physical type, you know, like overt
Speaker 2: physical comedy that you have in this whole movie. And
Speaker 2: I do like the whole idea of like her being
Speaker 2: so out of place at the British Consulate. Again, Shelley
Speaker 2: Long probably could have, you know, passed, but her Whoopi
Speaker 2: Goldberg coming in to the British Consulate where every fucking
Speaker 2: person there is white except for like just a few
Speaker 2: people were.
Speaker 5: Cousins by marriage.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Shellie Long would have just waltzed in there
Speaker 1: like no problem, put on a little and she would
Speaker 1: have done great in the shredder scene too.
Speaker 2: Not only is Whoopi Goldberg such an an outrag character,
Speaker 2: but her hair is such a statement as well. And
Speaker 2: like even at the beginning in the opening credits when
Speaker 2: she's like brushing her hair and stuff and just like
Speaker 2: going kind of crazy with it, I'm like, yeah, that's great,
Speaker 2: Like I love that not only is she a black woman,
Speaker 2: but she's a black woman with natural hair, and it's
Speaker 2: such a statement especially. I mean it's a statement now,
Speaker 2: but in nineteen eighty six, that's huge.
Speaker 7: She's also a dark skinned black woman, which you don't
Speaker 7: get to see that much. Colorism is a thing as
Speaker 7: well that they have to contend with the African American community.
Speaker 7: When you're talking about that consulate sequenced do that whole
Speaker 7: set piece, there's some lovely little directorial flourishes that did
Speaker 7: get me where I thought, Oh, it's the director here
Speaker 7: that's making me laugh, not the performance.
Speaker 5: Not the script or whatever.
Speaker 7: But it's the moment where the all the equipment starts
Speaker 7: beeping and sending off all these different alarms. The security
Speaker 7: guy gets up from the Benny Hill TV show he's watching,
Speaker 7: and he walks in and he goes to bend down't
Speaker 7: to check a plug or something, and she's under the
Speaker 7: table and the way that the camera just panned down
Speaker 7: and she just looks like a deer in headlights. That
Speaker 7: got me or like before, and I thought, that's a
Speaker 7: lovely little directorial moment of selling a joke by Marshall
Speaker 7: did really good in this.
Speaker 1: And also selling a suspense moment. Yeah, like that is
Speaker 1: actual suspense moment because you kind of like go like
Speaker 1: when he's starting to go down and the camera bends
Speaker 1: down with him and she's like, oh my god, she's
Speaker 1: gonna get caught. Like that's what I mean by the
Speaker 1: film does have steaks.
Speaker 7: It's like an eggorte moment, a little bit of a
Speaker 7: directorial gag, but subtle but subtle.
Speaker 2: Well, it was nice to using John Wood and Tony
Speaker 2: Hendra as the British guys, because I mean John Wood
Speaker 2: but War Games had been out at this point and
Speaker 2: so I was more familiar with him as Professor Falcon,
Speaker 2: where he's like the kindly, grandfatherly type of person. Tony Hendra,
Speaker 2: I know, he had been around for a long time,
Speaker 2: had done like Lemmings and things at this point, and
Speaker 2: of course spinal tap, but he's great. He's got such
Speaker 2: a menace and he doesn't even need to use a
Speaker 2: crickapad in this one.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: John Wood is also in Purple Rows of Cairo. He's
Speaker 1: one of the main characters in the movie. Within the
Speaker 1: movie of that, I think he's the guy who goes
Speaker 1: like I hope you like Yama Tini's very dry, which
Speaker 1: is like a scene that's repeated often. There, he's in
Speaker 1: Choc a Lot, the Juliet Pinoche movie, He's in the
Speaker 1: Ian McKellen Richard the Third, that sort of quasi contemporary version.
Speaker 1: He had a lot of good eighties and early nineties movies,
Speaker 1: but yeah, Professor Falcon is probably the most iconic because
Speaker 1: it's such a late introduction to a character that you
Speaker 1: hear about from the very beginning. I watched that movie
Speaker 1: not too long ago when Dabney Coleman passed away. I
Speaker 1: had a lot of people over. I have a thirty
Speaker 1: five milimeter print of that movie, and that movie still plays,
Speaker 1: so damn well, that is a great, great little eighties
Speaker 1: gem of a movie. Even though like the technology is
Speaker 1: totally forty plus years old, it feels very timely and
Speaker 1: interesting ways like a good movie.
Speaker 7: Well, there's one thing about eighties comedies. It's the Hollywood
Speaker 7: eighty eighties comedies that I really like, and I wish
Speaker 7: we'd get back to them. Well, just in general, I
Speaker 7: wish we'd make more comedies.
Speaker 1: Back to comedies.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I missed them, but there was a grit to
Speaker 7: eighties comedies where the characters were aspirational versus where we
Speaker 7: were up until the twenty tens, where the films themselves
Speaker 7: were aspirational, where you were looking and thinking, I wish
Speaker 7: I had their life. But in this like the apartments
Speaker 7: aren't too flashy, they don't look like they've got a
Speaker 7: lot of money to spare. There are thrifty characters, and
Speaker 7: I like that. I like that there's that texture to
Speaker 7: the films where they feel lived in and they feel
Speaker 7: like these are one of the mill working class characters
Speaker 7: who've probably gotten themselves into predictment that's beyond their capabilities.
Speaker 7: That's far more enjoyable that it works so much better
Speaker 7: for comedy, and I love that about eighties films like
Speaker 7: This had that as well, where you know, she's in
Speaker 7: a frigid apartment and she's just getting buoye working in
Speaker 7: linked to Flave.
Speaker 1: What a perfect way to set the character up to
Speaker 1: she wakes up, she has no heat in her apartment,
Speaker 1: and she's wearing fifteen layers of clothes, and like the
Speaker 1: whole opening of the movie is her like taking these
Speaker 1: clothes off, trying to stay warm while she's like brushing
Speaker 1: her teeth and getting ready for work, and then she's
Speaker 1: got to run for the.
Speaker 7: Bus and all that stuff while she gets involved in
Speaker 7: a Cold War espionage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, exactly. No, that's the sort of everyman aspect
Speaker 1: of eighties comedies was great, and I think then you
Speaker 1: get this other layer though, of Whoopy Goldberg playing and
Speaker 1: every man character, except she's like Whoopy Goldberg. There's no
Speaker 1: other person like her on screen, any on any screen
Speaker 1: at this point. So she's like an everyman and also
Speaker 1: a complete outsider, which is an interesting man.
Speaker 2: What it is interesting too that she doesn't have a friend,
Speaker 2: she doesn't have the sidekick in this movie, because we'll
Speaker 2: see that as we go through the rest of this month,
Speaker 2: especially with the last film with Theodore Rex where she
Speaker 2: got a fucking dinosaur as her partner in that one.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, you're in for a treat. Let me tell
Speaker 2: you that.
Speaker 7: I'm sure she hasn't seen anydo.
Speaker 2: But she doesn't have that other person, so then her
Speaker 2: talking to herself makes a lot more sense. But she
Speaker 2: uses people or has people when she needs them. She's
Speaker 2: got Annie Potts when she needs her. She's got Stephen
Speaker 2: Collins when she needs him. But she doesn't really take
Speaker 2: anybody too much into her orbit. You know, it's very
Speaker 2: much just her alone, facing off against all of this stuff.
Speaker 2: And yeah, to your point, she seems very capable. I
Speaker 2: like too that when we see her in her apartment,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of old movie posters around. She's got
Speaker 2: you know, tapes and all these things, but it doesn't
Speaker 2: define her and it doesn't become this thing where it's like, oh, oh, well,
Speaker 2: that sounds like the plot of Sahara and I'm gonna
Speaker 2: have to do this, this and this. It's like, no, no,
Speaker 2: She's not like the lonely woman with the spy novels
Speaker 2: who then gets thrust into a spy caper or something
Speaker 2: like that. I'm like, okay, we're going to see that,
Speaker 2: and like Romancing the Stone and those kind of things,
Speaker 2: but where they do it very well. But then you
Speaker 2: get movies like Argyle where it's like, oh, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe this isn't the best thing to do. That's like
Speaker 2: the last real female led adventure film that I can
Speaker 2: think of offhand.
Speaker 7: But there are still echoes of that in the film
Speaker 7: as it stands. Because that was a moment that stood
Speaker 7: out to me where she's watching Love Affair and she's
Speaker 7: just enraptured with this Love Affair on screen, and that
Speaker 7: feels like a character's longing for that kind of relationship
Speaker 7: in their life, and that to me feels like it
Speaker 7: was probably an echo of the Nancy mos Shelley Long
Speaker 7: draft and.
Speaker 1: The Casablanca poster on the wall too. I feel like
Speaker 1: that's obviously from Nancy Myers and Childs Shire, Like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's almost feels like a Nora Efron set up in
Speaker 1: that situation where it's like, yeah, this is a woman
Speaker 1: who lives alone and she watches old movies and eats
Speaker 1: ice cream in bed. And in the script, it's interesting
Speaker 1: that the Carol Kine character and her have much more
Speaker 1: of a rival, which you can picture Shelley Long, you know,
Speaker 1: like Carol Kine is much more of like a slutty
Speaker 1: character in the script and not a cute pixie like
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the same dialogue, but when Stephen Collins
Speaker 1: is over at her house after the whole incident with
Speaker 1: the Gary Marshall cop, that character notices that Stephen Collins
Speaker 1: was in her apartment, it starts to get jealous, and
Speaker 1: there's even a line where she's like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: make a play for him, unless I'm stepping on your
Speaker 1: territory and Terry's like, what are you talking about? He's married.
Speaker 1: Like they still have the joke too, where she's like,
Speaker 1: you know, welcome to our little family. Oh, I see
Speaker 1: you've got a little family. Well, shit, welcome anyway, you know,
Speaker 1: like that's in the script, but then she picks it
Speaker 1: up again later on where and like, so I do
Speaker 1: feel like those characters, even though there aren't so many
Speaker 1: of them, and the artists developed the actual like John
Speaker 1: Lovet's character and Carol Kane character are maybe slightly larger
Speaker 1: presence in the screenplay as it were, because if it's
Speaker 1: Shelley Long, you kind of get the feeling that she
Speaker 1: really is one of these people, whereas Whoopy Goldberg does
Speaker 1: feel like some bit of an outsider, you know, like
Speaker 1: she's not part of any of these worlds to a
Speaker 1: certain to a huge extent, but she's also not really
Speaker 1: a woman who sits alone watching romantic old movies on TV,
Speaker 1: except that she's got nothing else to do. You feel
Speaker 1: like it's more like insomnia with Whoopy Goldberg than it
Speaker 1: is some kind of longing.
Speaker 7: I wonder what was the twoth portion to David Mammadraft.
Speaker 2: The Giant Toothbrush that she used it.
Speaker 1: The trailer starts with that, like you know, like that's
Speaker 1: like the first image you see in the trailers are
Speaker 1: opening the door with a giant toothbrush and going, Hey.
Speaker 7: To your point, what you're saying about her being alone character,
Speaker 7: it's sort of to me when she mentioned her motor
Speaker 7: and I thought, oh, she actually has a motor. I
Speaker 7: wonder what her mother is like. And you don't really
Speaker 7: see family members in will Bigberg films. She's always a
Speaker 7: force of nature, just this individualistic character who draws all
Speaker 7: the focus. But yeah, I found that interesting because I
Speaker 7: thought to myself, I wonder what her family life is like.
Speaker 1: In Ghost, her mother is dead, Like there's the whole
Speaker 1: backstory of her mother really had the gift to talk
Speaker 1: to go. Yeah, and she's got her sisters, but like
Speaker 1: she's kind of living in her mother's shadow because she's
Speaker 1: a charlatan and we assume her mother really was a
Speaker 1: psychic and then all of a sudden, she's got this
Speaker 1: psychic power for the first time. So there's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I but in general, you're right, and certainly like
Speaker 1: in Burglar and Fatal Beauty, like she doesn't have family,
Speaker 1: like she does feel outside of the sort of realm
Speaker 1: of normalcy.
Speaker 7: It's good to see that as well, though, to have
Speaker 7: that version of a character.
Speaker 2: I'm curious about the editing because I believe in that
Speaker 2: Penny Marshall book she talks about bringing in two editors
Speaker 2: to help her with the final cut, because it's Mark
Speaker 2: Goldblad is credited.
Speaker 1: He left after the first cut, which she wasn't happy with,
Speaker 1: and she was big friends with James Brooks, and she
Speaker 1: brought his editor, Richard Marx in and another guy whose
Speaker 1: name I didn't recognize, but Richard marx you know cut
Speaker 1: terms of endearment and broadcast news and a lot of
Speaker 1: romantic comedies, and they definitely do you know all those
Speaker 1: scenes we were talking about that are in the script
Speaker 1: that are like plot scenes, You can sort of feel
Speaker 1: how like those scenes must have melted away, the scene
Speaker 1: in the alleyway with the frying pan, like these these
Speaker 1: things that are that might have sold the espionage story
Speaker 1: better in theory but not in practice, and probably would
Speaker 1: have maybe not in practice even with a Shelley Long
Speaker 1: or another actor in there. You get the feeling that
Speaker 1: it's trying to bring out more heart.
Speaker 2: I think, all right, guys, Let's go ahead and take
Speaker 2: a break, and we'll be back with an interview with
Speaker 2: the original screenwriter of Jump and Jack Flash, David H. Franzoni.
Speaker 2: Right after these brief messages.
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Speaker 2: Can you tell me about some of your adventures and
Speaker 2: how you got into screenwriting.
Speaker 4: Actually, I drove out of graduate school that was a
Speaker 4: geology major. We're have emphasis and vertebrate pialeontology. Just so
Speaker 4: we get this strip. I go stroll. I just was
Speaker 4: you know, the sixties had ended, in the seventies were
Speaker 4: coming on, and those two periods of time were as
Speaker 4: far as I'm concerned. Yes, so your head was very free.
Speaker 4: And a friend of mine said, hey, let's go around
Speaker 4: with all the motorcycles. That's done, you know, I said sure.
Speaker 4: So we sold everything and there were three bikes and
Speaker 4: we went to West Berlin picked up the bikes and
Speaker 4: they were to North America smoke cash and not what East,
Speaker 4: and I hitched up with the betrayal. In fact, I'm
Speaker 4: working on a product right now about this. And you know,
Speaker 4: I just went all the way to Australia and it
Speaker 4: was the best thing that ever happened my life. You know,
Speaker 4: the music scene was unexpected, like everything there, all our
Speaker 4: music we you know, the the evolvement of music in
Speaker 4: the West had become a revolution in the East, and.
Speaker 8: You know the end of the Hippie Trail, and the
Speaker 8: end of that movement, the end of the spiritual travels
Speaker 8: came when they executed Penron, who was this really cute
Speaker 8: little rock and roll singer in Cambodia, and they started
Speaker 8: showing their clubs down and arresting bands and and that
Speaker 8: that you can't go back.
Speaker 4: You can't go back. The Hippie Trails. One of the
Speaker 4: most dangerous places on earth right now. But it was
Speaker 4: fantastic while it was alive, and it was very much
Speaker 4: alive in the sixties and seventies. And I was there
Speaker 4: in the seventies, and you know that's why I came.
Speaker 4: You may know, I can't put the idea for gladiare H.
Speaker 4: I was living in Baghdad.
Speaker 2: When did you decide? You know what, I'm good with
Speaker 2: the pantology. I think I'm going to go work on
Speaker 2: some writing.
Speaker 4: Being dishonest with myself all my life and in writing
Speaker 4: all my life. And I've read Ink she Wells the
Speaker 4: time Machine. When I was a little little kid, and
Speaker 4: the whole idea that you could take a pen and
Speaker 4: create a worlds went to blew my mind. It never
Speaker 4: really left me. It was revived. I grew up in
Speaker 4: a small town in Vermont, and what you had at
Speaker 4: the movies were Roger Cordin or you know what's the names, oh,
Speaker 4: John Wayne movies Ford. That was the choice. I mean,
Speaker 4: I prefer to Rodne Corman being houst with you, because
Speaker 4: he was much more like you know. But I got
Speaker 4: to college and I just still to remember the night
Speaker 4: that my roommates said, Hey, we're going to go see
Speaker 4: a stupid little movie called Lostrata. And I had never
Speaker 4: heard of it, you know, being a potoun from Vermont,
Speaker 4: and but that was changed my life. I said, Jesus Christ,
Speaker 4: you can pray worlds, and not just worlds, but you
Speaker 4: can control people, worlds everything. This is like, you know,
Speaker 4: to do a movie like Lestrada and have it work.
Speaker 4: I mean, come on, you know that that's amazing.
Speaker 2: So that's when did you decide, Hey, I'm gonna start
Speaker 2: writing screenplays or were those on the trip? On the
Speaker 2: trip so did you have to pick up, like, you know,
Speaker 2: the books and figure out the screenplay format or you
Speaker 2: just thought then you just we're in the stars.
Speaker 4: That seens somebody, you know, Gladiator, you know, Landfills if
Speaker 4: you will, and so much of the graffiti and the sculptures,
Speaker 4: and you know, I was in Italy and Anatolia by
Speaker 4: the time I got the bag dabb Actually I was
Speaker 4: on the Yeah, I was on bank that a girl
Speaker 4: gave me and we traded. I traded a book on
Speaker 4: the Irish Revolution, which I wish I still had with
Speaker 4: the book called Those About the Guy, which is now
Speaker 4: you know, a TV series and blah blah blah. And
Speaker 4: that's It's not that Gladiator was based on those about
Speaker 4: to Die, but what Those about the Die did was
Speaker 4: created a direct wire between them and us, and so
Speaker 4: it wasn't me studying them, it was me being them.
Speaker 4: And that's when I thought, hey, I got to write
Speaker 4: a movie about a bladdier. So if I if I
Speaker 4: ever become a writer, I ever become a screenwriter, we's
Speaker 4: to Varno Gladiator and it happen'ed.
Speaker 2: So it was glad to gto your first screenplay.
Speaker 4: You know, the first one to sell was Jumping Jack Flash,
Speaker 4: but I had written a couple before that, Leaster maybe three.
Speaker 4: I wrote one on mercenaries in the Belgian Congo. We'll
Speaker 4: get the Jumping Unit Flash, but you know that that
Speaker 4: was that I'll be the first one that got made.
Speaker 4: It's my first when I wrote them.
Speaker 2: Where did the idea for Tempa Jack Flash come from?
Speaker 2: And what was it originally?
Speaker 4: Well, it was not a comedy. I mean, it would
Speaker 4: have goodheaded moments, but it wasn't a comedy. This stury
Speaker 4: the okay. I got the idea from an article on
Speaker 4: the walls figure about transferring funds to banks at night.
Speaker 4: And this is when you still had to have somebody
Speaker 4: eat it, push a button yes, no, left right, whether
Speaker 4: they couldn't just automate everything, and so there were there's
Speaker 4: sort of these people who did that, and Terry the
Speaker 4: girl and jem j Flash was was that girl. And
Speaker 4: I thought, well, what happens if something comes in on
Speaker 4: your computer that you're totally not expecting, and you know,
Speaker 4: changes your life and nobody believes you. They think you're insane,
Speaker 4: and maybe you think you're insane. And so that's where
Speaker 4: that came from. So with my first Saddle to the
Speaker 4: lad Company, every buddon had a problem with it in
Speaker 4: that it was a love story, but it never met
Speaker 4: the guy in the original, and you didn't meet the
Speaker 4: guy until the very end, I think in the current
Speaker 4: when they did the same one that exists. I mean,
Speaker 4: I must have met with every big director and I
Speaker 4: had no idea that it was making the impression that
Speaker 4: was made. Everybody wanted to find a way to make it,
Speaker 4: except they didn't want to do it the way I
Speaker 4: thought that should be done, because who the fucking mind?
Speaker 4: So I kept saying, I remember, I'm meeting with one
Speaker 4: director and they keep asking you. It's like, you know, well,
Speaker 4: what is it? You know, it's like subtext? Is this
Speaker 4: Gone with the Wind? Is this space odyssey? You know?
Speaker 4: Is this whatever?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 4: And then funny, I picked this script up and I said,
Speaker 4: this is what it is, and I just banged it
Speaker 4: down on the table. I was like, you know, guys,
Speaker 4: that's what you gotta make. You want to make it
Speaker 4: otherwise do something else. But I was lollig wrong. So
Speaker 4: you know, they you know, they look I don't. I
Speaker 4: don't hate what they do with it. I thought it
Speaker 4: was sort of fun. And the rock video with Keith
Speaker 4: Richard's and Aretha Frankl was to die for. So what
Speaker 4: they do was they sort of covered up the fact
Speaker 4: that they couldn't find a way to bring the lovers
Speaker 4: together or the lovers could, you know, with the jokes
Speaker 4: and stupid ship and that that's what they usually do
Speaker 4: that you know, it's like a cat bearing its ship, right,
Speaker 4: they just you know, keep moving stuff around to you
Speaker 4: dune veldous anymore. But what I what I I was
Speaker 4: sort of sad was that, I know, aunt of trouble
Speaker 4: of creating this profile of Jemmy jack Flash, who was
Speaker 4: you know, a young kid because I was a kid
Speaker 4: in the sixties, so I meant him a kid in
Speaker 4: the sixties. He was a radio operator in the Congolese Wars,
Speaker 4: and you know, I thought i'd, you know, i'd bring
Speaker 4: up stuff that probably not a lot of people knew
Speaker 4: much about. Let's talk about it, because the Congolese Wars
Speaker 4: were you didn't want to be on certain sides. It was,
Speaker 4: you know, a fucking mess. But that's okay. I wanted
Speaker 4: it to be a fucking mess. And his predicament was
Speaker 4: the result of his life being a fucking mess. And
Speaker 4: and the only person he can talk to was this
Speaker 4: girl working the midnight shift of the bank. And so
Speaker 4: the idea is is, you know, can she saved him not?
Speaker 4: Do they fall in love and get married with the problems, Well,
Speaker 4: none of they got to fall in love and if
Speaker 4: they do, but can she save him? Is she being used?
Speaker 4: Is she going nuts? You know? Well, you know those
Speaker 4: are the questions. It had to be a girl because
Speaker 4: I was sick of hearing seeing movies about men heroes
Speaker 4: and women are much more clever and you know, more
Speaker 4: strong anyway, So I wanted to see how she would
Speaker 4: grapple with this. And I thought that obviously everybody liked
Speaker 4: the draft. I did because everybody wanted to do it,
Speaker 4: but nobody wanted to do it.
Speaker 2: So were you just kind of shopping it all around?
Speaker 4: And no, none at all? You know, I didn't have
Speaker 4: an agent. I mean I I'd written a specscript that
Speaker 4: was a billy action piece that brought me with Cea
Speaker 4: seeing it was just starting up. They were the action piece,
Speaker 4: and went, yes, so we need so they signed me.
Speaker 4: But I was just finishing Jumping Jack Flash and so
Speaker 4: one person got it to a lad company that was it,
Speaker 4: and they bought it and shopped it anywhere. I mean
Speaker 4: Sissy's basic Greta and hired me to write a project
Speaker 4: for her, WHICHOK, a meeting with Sissy, I came out
Speaker 4: and this little al form brold in a you know,
Speaker 4: just a fun little car that I rebuilt the engine
Speaker 4: myself in the back there and I had flat hire
Speaker 4: so I opened the trump and the spear was flat.
Speaker 4: I heard of the meeting was good. The next week
Speaker 4: I had six figures in the back, so it worked.
Speaker 2: You went down the hippie trayal. So, obviously you can
Speaker 2: be in uncomfortable situations, but it feels like Hollywood is
Speaker 2: such a different situation.
Speaker 4: Okay. Vermont was the most conservative state naming that never
Speaker 4: voted for a democratic pression until What's gold Water came
Speaker 4: on and they couldn't do that. Vermont is obviously legendarily
Speaker 4: now very liberal socialists. They support the YPJ and Syria.
Speaker 4: It's like, you know, so for me when I came
Speaker 4: out here, I remember I woke up in this apartment
Speaker 4: that somebody had set me up with it. I drove
Speaker 4: there in the night and I woke up in the
Speaker 4: morning and it was like filthy air and palm trees.
Speaker 4: I'm fucking still in Bagdad, like nothing has changed except
Speaker 4: they speak my language. So my feeling on being out
Speaker 4: here was a bit of contempt because there were so
Speaker 4: many people lying about everything they were doing and not
Speaker 4: living in the hours you know, getting for eleven and
Speaker 4: you know that kind of stuff. So I didn't really
Speaker 4: I didn't really knix to the town. I felt like
Speaker 4: I was still on the at the trail.
Speaker 2: So after the Lad Company buys it, they seemed to
Speaker 2: still have problems with it. Do they say, Okay, well
Speaker 2: thanks Dave, we'll get back to you eventually, or we're
Speaker 2: just going to hire another writer or how did that go?
Speaker 4: They brought her director in, Michael at Ted and you know,
Speaker 4: we had the same problem, which was trying to bend
Speaker 4: it into somebody else's shape instead of just going, hey,
Speaker 4: you know what this is different, let's just fucking shut
Speaker 4: up and shoot it. So what he did was he
Speaker 4: fired me and hired a female buyer, I think a
Speaker 4: female and figure it out because the lead character, she
Speaker 4: totally destroyed it and it probably wasn't her fault. I
Speaker 4: can't remember her name. This is the joke. The girl
Speaker 4: who showed her to the Lad Company was working at
Speaker 4: Fox at the time. She'd shurek as Sherry Lanson and
Speaker 4: Sherry pooh poo. And then with the Lad Company they
Speaker 4: bought it. Then Fox bought it back from the Lad Company.
Speaker 4: It made it. I mean what I could assumed you
Speaker 4: the middleman, you know, after.
Speaker 2: They brought in this new writer, where you're just completely
Speaker 2: out of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I'm like glad that it was a
Speaker 4: good guy and he kept me appraised of what was
Speaker 4: going on. He sent me drafts and stuff, and I
Speaker 4: like Gareth Wigan who was the lad Company and Laddie,
Speaker 4: I mean they were it was. It was a family
Speaker 4: sort of thing over there, so nobody totally cut me out.
Speaker 2: So the next time you encounter it is that at
Speaker 2: the premiere.
Speaker 4: I mean London, working with Bob Swain. I wrote him,
Speaker 4: but Bob I just wanted to say czar for lav Alones.
Speaker 4: He's in town in Hollywood, you know, basking by some
Speaker 4: swimming pool, and I go to see him and we
Speaker 4: he likes the script and working on so to develop,
Speaker 4: but he wants me to be in Paris, and which
Speaker 4: is okay whatever. So I go over to Paris for
Speaker 4: quite a long time, and in the middle of that
Speaker 4: quite a long time, he starts to make half Moon
Speaker 4: Street the Sigournia weaver Michael Caine. So shove our butts
Speaker 4: to London and and while I'm in London, I got
Speaker 4: a call from my agent saying they were casting will
Speaker 4: be go over And I said, well she's great, that's
Speaker 4: that's this is now a comedy and yes, of course,
Speaker 4: and I said, okay, well, I said she's great. I said.
Speaker 4: The only thing is, you know, like this guy is
Speaker 4: supposed to be jumping jack fly, I supposed to be
Speaker 4: hiding in Albania. I think, you know, some black guys
Speaker 4: is going to stand out pretty much in the Albania landscape.
Speaker 4: And her her time was what was oh real quick
Speaker 4: staff they fixed everything else. So that's why I knew
Speaker 4: I would go to the premiere and see what were
Speaker 4: your thoughts. Well, then I was a big premiere, a
Speaker 4: lot of fun. You know. It was you know, it
Speaker 4: wasn't gonna hurt me, but you know, look like you
Speaker 4: can't be rush. She had to, you know, to move on.
Speaker 2: What was the project you were working on with Bob Swain?
Speaker 4: I was called La Gold I think that was the
Speaker 4: working title. It was about the heist piece. It was,
Speaker 4: you know, knocking out a bank or something. It did
Speaker 4: change a lot, but Bob them Bobo is he couldn't.
Speaker 4: He didn't want me writing by myself and he didn't
Speaker 4: have time to write. So I called the executive student
Speaker 4: and said that maybe I should go home because we
Speaker 4: were spending a lot of money over here. Ya. No, no, no,
Speaker 4: let's go for us. So I'm stuck in Paris. And
Speaker 4: I loved it. I mean I loved Paris. I really
Speaker 4: really got into Paris. And the fact that I'm doing
Speaker 4: it probably now a script that I wrote about the
Speaker 4: years on Rooney the Suvi poet and a Mulloch the
Speaker 4: French rapper wants to direct it a finance and you know,
Speaker 4: they just got to cast it and again, going and
Speaker 4: then I'll be back is great. It was running with
Speaker 4: a French crowd because Bomb was so busy doing what
Speaker 4: he was doing. And I learned so much about the
Speaker 4: makeup of the Parisian character. They had that one one
Speaker 4: phrase I remember not called the crushed people and the
Speaker 4: quant sea people or something. They're crushed people. They were
Speaker 4: the ones who always wore suits and the girls always
Speaker 4: wore like school suits and they but they were like
Speaker 4: they crushed in their society and they they well, you know,
Speaker 4: I had ninety of these and anyways, so that that
Speaker 4: was a fantastic experience.
Speaker 2: How did Citizen Cone come to you?
Speaker 4: Okay, we're probabuct on Diligent and then John Millius was
Speaker 4: my my overlord if you will, which was a lot
Speaker 4: of fun and I love Mollis and okay, what it
Speaker 4: was was so this was it there. So there were
Speaker 4: there were problems with the script and the writers are
Speaker 4: about to go on story. So I told the studio
Speaker 4: I said, look, I'll go through it and clean it up,
Speaker 4: but you gotta pay me for a polish over his
Speaker 4: backdate that jacker whatever, and I mean we got it
Speaker 4: in the fluid stride. So what I did was I
Speaker 4: rewrote the entire thing talk a bottle for almost nothing.
Speaker 4: Now it blew them awa when I went from a
Speaker 4: script was very problematical to one that was ready to go.
Speaker 4: So THEO I wanted to do it with then ADC
Speaker 4: or CBS. He said it was doing a dilient thing
Speaker 4: or something, so I said no. So then I saw
Speaker 4: they had gotten the rights to Citizen Cone. I said,
Speaker 4: we would like to do Citizen Cone. They said we
Speaker 4: want Fred Pearson to do it, and I said, okay,
Speaker 4: well whatever, and then they followed me and said, Frank's
Speaker 4: too expensive. What do you do like? I said, yes,
Speaker 4: I earned the right with HBO, you know, as I
Speaker 4: you know, and anyway, so it was I alerted a
Speaker 4: lot from that experience of HBO too.
Speaker 2: So did I ReadWrite that you wrote the Hannibal movie
Speaker 2: that's been trying to get made for a long time.
Speaker 4: Right, well, I wrote the one that's being made is
Speaker 4: not the one I wrote, all right, I wrote one
Speaker 4: for a Vin Diesel. It's a brilliant story. Denzel. I
Speaker 4: was too old. He should be playing Amokar the father
Speaker 4: and he's African and the Hannibal was Phoenician. You know, however,
Speaker 4: a Vin Diesel racially was actually sort of perfect, you know,
Speaker 4: kind of a nominals. You know, he's like, he's dark,
Speaker 4: but he's not exactly African. He's not exactly he was.
Speaker 4: He would be like, okay, so if the Phoenicians had
Speaker 4: moved to North Africa for a couple of centuries, they'd
Speaker 4: look like Vin. So we went through a lot of them.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying actually the equal to it. We would
Speaker 4: spend a lot of time trying to sort out what
Speaker 4: the army would look like, whether we have sub Sidharan Africans,
Speaker 4: and yes we we we did, and we should have
Speaker 4: because you know, Ethiopia was an area presently. When you
Speaker 4: when you watch a movie on ancient Greece, you never
Speaker 4: seen what he's black. But there were England boys. They
Speaker 4: were called the Ethiopians because they were and it's like
Speaker 4: so as but you know they still a'll do it.
Speaker 4: You know, it's like, hey, how many blacks did you see?
Speaker 4: And Glad here too? Yeah? Who was? I mean the
Speaker 4: Briddles issue was we were every great director in town.
Speaker 4: Here was like Joe and Jack flash for a due
Speaker 4: and all calling me and going in a world this
Speaker 4: is great. Ron Howard, who I knew from years ago anyway,
Speaker 4: and Michael Man and you know, we just call it
Speaker 4: because they wanted to get involved with it was a
Speaker 4: great just like you're saying, it was a great idea.
Speaker 4: And then I see, you know, I see the agents
Speaker 4: who we no longer is a Wither of course, because
Speaker 4: the guys whatever talked him into doing Riddick instead of Hanmile.
Speaker 4: It's like, okay, so now you're going to make yourself
Speaker 4: into a tent pole hero and remove the possibility of
Speaker 4: doing now because if you're going to do ritic, you're
Speaker 4: not going well. We tried for years. In fact, it's
Speaker 4: a great story. A friend of mine, Chris Grucci, was
Speaker 4: that Hell's Angels and then he was Angels and he
Speaker 4: went to work for Tippy Hedrin, who has the animal
Speaker 4: sanctuary north of there, and they had just got Timbo,
Speaker 4: this male bull elephant that was the biggest dual elephant
Speaker 4: in North America. Half of him. Chris was, you know
Speaker 4: he was. He got a job there and he was
Speaker 4: taking care of the elephant. Yeah, the Angels come in
Speaker 4: and they said, look, I can't be at the clubhouse.
Speaker 4: I got to give Timbo twenty four to seven. They said,
Speaker 4: we got gray. So one day Chris had a very
Speaker 4: bad accident and I thought of his motorcycle. I thought
Speaker 4: his motorcycles. Motorcycle of a tree. He fell into a gully.
Speaker 4: Then the most like I fell on top of them,
Speaker 4: and he was pretty messed up, and he was in
Speaker 4: this wack award getting drugs, and so we got to
Speaker 4: see him. And the second time I go to seeing
Speaker 4: the doctor pulls me aside, used to look, you know this,
Speaker 4: this obviously got brain damage and I said, no, I
Speaker 4: can't wait for you to explain that to me. Well,
Speaker 4: what do you mean, he said, he claims it an
Speaker 4: elephant team and then Vin Diesel was sending him around
Speaker 4: the world to collect elephants, and I said, you know,
Speaker 4: biggest now practice suit in history coming up. It was
Speaker 4: an elephant trainer, and Vin Diesel did sit to cos
Speaker 4: the guy was gonna that was pace maker. We're gonna
Speaker 4: ball up. But look, in this town, you never know
Speaker 4: who you're talking to. He's at the elephant.
Speaker 2: How much in movement did you have with glennyat or two?
Speaker 4: Noting that a lot, I mean a lot of my
Speaker 4: stuff found its way in there. To leave it at that,
Speaker 4: although contextually misused was miking. You know a lot of
Speaker 4: reviews have noticed that beat by beat by beat, it's
Speaker 4: the same script with different people, and I just think, look,
Speaker 4: I think the bottom line is what no one seemed
Speaker 4: to understand is the Glady order was about Russell. It's
Speaker 4: about Maximus. This is Maxillus. It's not about let'sically you
Speaker 4: sure gliders in there. It's thereism. It's not about them.
Speaker 4: It's about max. So I'm not going to play because
Speaker 4: I had to separated races ladder. I'm running a stage play.
Speaker 4: I'm glad here and it's called Max and I think
Speaker 4: it's pretty great. And when I find out shortening when
Speaker 4: I take it out. I had to go to Paramount
Speaker 4: first and give them a chance to invest. I mean,
Speaker 4: I little look I lighted Gladier too. Yeah, I do.
Speaker 4: I like I love seeing the people that I remember
Speaker 4: from the first one. I do feel strongly that a
Speaker 4: lot of what I created is zoom there, and I
Speaker 4: think Ridley is one of the greatest shooters out period.
Speaker 4: We had a great time Laia what I mean they
Speaker 4: it was a nightmare, but we have a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: What was nightmarish about it?
Speaker 4: Well, they didn't think they had. There was a script
Speaker 4: they got. I flew to New York, sorry, flew to London.
Speaker 4: We were getting ready to have a read through, and
Speaker 4: I was a friend stody because I created I brought
Speaker 4: the steed and so they couldn't get rid of it.
Speaker 4: And they still can't. And so I mentioned to the crowd.
Speaker 4: I said, look, there's a problem, big problem of this.
Speaker 4: He said, well, you know, it's a big round this
Speaker 4: iss sheet blah blah blah. And they didn't see it
Speaker 4: that way. Says okay, well, and I'm out voted. So
Speaker 4: that's the way it is. So we go to the
Speaker 4: read through and Russell's not there and he's pissed because
Speaker 4: of what I had pinpointed. He had also pitpoint. So
Speaker 4: now we're getting like six weeks eight weeks out, we're
Speaker 4: going to go start making the movie, and there's no
Speaker 4: scramp I had. I had written the draft and done
Speaker 4: everybody's notes and you know, brought that rewrite Wiedman, so
Speaker 4: every saniel we pulled it out of our ass and
Speaker 4: you know, it's all bullshit. And I brought a script
Speaker 4: with me. I wrote the thing, everything that retakes credit
Speaker 4: for is in the scraft, you know, not every single thing,
Speaker 4: but you know, and so I didn't feel that freaked
Speaker 4: out about it. But we shot it in sequeens, so
Speaker 4: everybody was a little you know, nervous. The thing was,
Speaker 4: it was brilliant about Stephen was my first mission to Spielberg.
Speaker 4: Is you could see there was a war going on
Speaker 4: with him. One is you know, he you know, doesn't
Speaker 4: go there you will. But the movie was very risky.
Speaker 4: He was just you know, you know, DreamWorks was just
Speaker 4: taken off. But he sees, you know, he had the
Speaker 4: guts to say let's do it. So I'll always you
Speaker 4: know a lot, I will always, always always appreciate that
Speaker 4: you know, everybody's doing, everybody's taking credit for and A.
Speaker 4: But he's the one who said yes, wrote the check
Speaker 4: and you know, got it going. He's doing it.
Speaker 2: It seems like you are still really super busy these
Speaker 2: days with all these projects you're talking about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm warning my wife. I said,
Speaker 4: when God's sick of me writing, should I'll pull you down.
Speaker 4: But you know no, Yeah, I mean really, I just
Speaker 4: got to endove our email for my net and it's
Speaker 4: another producer wants to do. Rooney's a ruler against crib.
Speaker 4: This is the thing because I spent so much time
Speaker 4: in the Arab world, but on my motorcycle chap, you know,
Speaker 4: I sort of got it, and Rooney is. It's a
Speaker 4: really great script. I'm doing another one from Mira max
Speaker 4: On Raban, the first who was started, basically started the
Speaker 4: golden age of Islam in Spain. Always wanted to do.
Speaker 4: I had to beg a project on the Sakina who
Speaker 4: was the daughter of like that pronounce his name, who
Speaker 4: was chilled about little Cabala, sort of an Islamic A
Speaker 4: friend if you and I did another one which I love,
Speaker 4: love love about Zaiyad the guy who crad the you know,
Speaker 4: the un Republic, and I really it's it's a great script,
Speaker 4: but I just you know, the thing is oddlemn is
Speaker 4: there's a there's a there's a disconnect between the East
Speaker 4: and the western there and you know, in that way,
Speaker 4: it's nothing. It's an artistic disconnect. It's sort of a
Speaker 4: you know, get your arms around at disconnect. I remember
Speaker 4: I got some notes from Isaiah's family going, well, you
Speaker 4: can't do that. He didn't do that, and I'm going
Speaker 4: to knowledge how do you know you weren't bad with him?
Speaker 4: I mean, how did you must be to do that?
Speaker 4: And I didn't say that. I do you order?
Speaker 6: That?
Speaker 4: The only name we have to go with. And that's
Speaker 4: the next that that one. And it is so great
Speaker 4: because he was such a goddamn cowboy, you know he was.
Speaker 4: There was a grave Hollo and the Iran's about to invade,
Speaker 4: you know, because the the nine of their republic is
Speaker 4: nothing right, it's and he doesn't have an army and
Speaker 4: he's got these you know, basically order guards. They're fighting
Speaker 4: with Iran over the straits of the Moves and so
Speaker 4: he calls up Sally and goes, hey, can I runt
Speaker 4: An army front and they go share because everybody has something.
Speaker 4: God down, it's money back then, right, So he were
Speaker 4: in with his army and he brought in chefs so
Speaker 4: that everybody had really great food. And so Iran looked
Speaker 4: across the streets and went, who the hell would they
Speaker 4: come from? And back off? But I mean what And
Speaker 4: in Russaid is the buddy who founded Abadavi is always
Speaker 4: driving around the rolls and the thing is solely disintegrate. Right.
Speaker 4: That's because he's you know, there's no will. It's just
Speaker 4: like a pre terrible it's real it. I love the piece,
Speaker 4: I love the people. And you go back to a
Speaker 4: time when they know before they will, when all men
Speaker 4: were dying from the pearl industry, and there's boats every
Speaker 4: time you go to like the Cutter or or Abadaba Dubai,
Speaker 4: they have a pearl boat, a sort of monument to
Speaker 4: those days. And they were terrible days, terrible days, and
Speaker 4: so you got to remember, Okay, they got a lot
Speaker 4: of oil now and they're flexing their muscle, but before then.
Speaker 2: And thank you so much for your time. This was
Speaker 2: such a pleasure talking with you.
Speaker 4: Take care.
Speaker 2: All right, We are back and we were talking about
Speaker 2: jumping Jack Flash.
Speaker 7: What happened to the anti Pots character because she went
Speaker 7: run to the house and then she got jumped, she
Speaker 7: got moved, Yeah, and the CIA moved just felt like
Speaker 7: a dropped that's like the that's the rug being pulled
Speaker 7: out from under her because she she's realizing that in
Speaker 7: the world of espionage.
Speaker 5: Well, we never go back to her, there's never any
Speaker 5: sort of.
Speaker 1: Like she finds out, I mean, her husband has been
Speaker 1: murdered and she's not sure that's happening. But the more
Speaker 1: she talks to Terry Doolittle, the more she realizes, hey,
Speaker 1: my husband may be killed, like because he's supposed to
Speaker 1: be with Flash. Then we find out later that that
Speaker 1: was what Jeremy Talbot has sort of set jumpin Jack
Speaker 1: Flash up that he murdered his colleague and that's why
Speaker 1: he can't come back. So the CIA kind of hushes
Speaker 1: her up and whisks her and her children out of
Speaker 1: the house and that's when Roscoe Lee Brown comes and
Speaker 1: like gives her And that's a good scene. I don't
Speaker 1: know who's responsible for that scene. Maybe that scene goes
Speaker 1: all the way back to the original writer because it's
Speaker 1: a really good, like plot scene that comes at just
Speaker 1: the right point the way eighties, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: formula I used to termine a positive sense, not a
Speaker 1: negative sense that way, that sort of formula narrative structure
Speaker 1: works so well in the eighties. Is like, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: have this character and we've cast a great actor to
Speaker 1: play him. He's only in like a couple of scenes,
Speaker 1: but he brings with him great gravitas. Rascal Lee Brown
Speaker 1: is a great actor, and he just sort of like
Speaker 1: lays things down. He's like, this is what you're in for,
Speaker 1: and you know, explains the whole point of like a pawn.
Speaker 1: Like Jack Flash is just a pawn, but you're not
Speaker 1: even a pawn. I mean, he doesn't use those words,
Speaker 1: but that's what He's a prawn. You're a prawl.
Speaker 2: I do like the prawn thing.
Speaker 9: Yes you know what a pawn is.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's a shrimp.
Speaker 9: That's a prawl.
Speaker 5: Is the smallest piece on the chest.
Speaker 9: I'm the most expendable the ones you sacrifice. Jack and
Speaker 9: I have been friends for many, many years, and Jack
Speaker 9: knew it could come to this going in. So let
Speaker 9: me give you a little bit of advice, amateur, and I,
Speaker 9: mister little is over get off the stage before you're
Speaker 9: getting carried off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's so freaking good. I'm so glad he shows
Speaker 2: up in this movie. Yeah, Like you guys are saying,
Speaker 2: it's just this stack stacked cast of so many faces
Speaker 2: where you're like, oh, I know that, Oh I know
Speaker 2: that person too, and this person and this person. It
Speaker 2: is interesting that Jim Belushi shows up as the computer
Speaker 2: repair man, and then he comes back two more times
Speaker 2: than I do, like the idea that he was supposed
Speaker 2: to have died in the second time, but then they
Speaker 2: just put that bandage around his head so he can
Speaker 2: come back a third time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he does die. I mean in her book, she's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: Jim Belushi died. But then after Richard Marx comes in
Speaker 1: and they re edit, we need another scene and it's
Speaker 1: supposed to be I think it might have been supposed
Speaker 1: to be the you know, the other guy, the guy
Speaker 1: with a gun. But she's like, well, this needs to
Speaker 1: be funny. So when she does the reshoot, she calls
Speaker 1: you in Vlushi. She's like, I know you're dead, but
Speaker 1: you're gonna be alive. I'm gonna put you in a
Speaker 1: neck brace, you know, And and that's a ridiculous scene,
Speaker 1: but like, I'm so glad did the whole shooting her
Speaker 1: up with the truth serum and then that she's like
Speaker 1: sort of drunk and unable to not express herself even
Speaker 1: more than Whoopy Goldberg character would already express themselves because
Speaker 1: she's got tooth serm, you know, coaxing through her veins.
Speaker 1: It's just such a great setup, And I love how
Speaker 1: Jim Belushi just gets so pummeled in this movie, Like
Speaker 1: every time he shows up and he is a threatening presence.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you've seen Twin Peaks the Return, like
Speaker 1: Jim Belushi can really pull off being a heavy but
Speaker 1: like the second time he's there, when he like she
Speaker 1: comes back in the cab and the cab driver is
Speaker 1: gone and he's now the cab driver and he's got
Speaker 1: a gun on her and all she does is like
Speaker 1: you know, basically shifted into high gear and he like,
Speaker 1: you know, he he doesn't.
Speaker 7: Wasn't a very convincing repair mandol with very sinister yeah,
Speaker 7: But like what happens to his car is so like
Speaker 7: a thousand times more damage.
Speaker 1: It's like a Joel Silver moment. Like it's like a
Speaker 1: Penny Marshall escape followed by a Joel Silver like death.
Speaker 1: You know, it just almost like two but it works.
Speaker 1: I think it's it makes it all the more funny
Speaker 1: that this cab that was probably going seven miles an
Speaker 1: hour like double flips and explodes over a trash can
Speaker 1: or whatever happens to him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I.
Speaker 2: Forgot that he was in at least one episode of
Speaker 2: Lavernon Shirley. And yeah, he plays a great character in
Speaker 2: Like Salvador, which I think is the same year that
Speaker 2: this comes out.
Speaker 1: Also, Penny Marshall's very first directing job, aside from directing
Speaker 1: episodes of Laverne and Shirley, was the very short lived
Speaker 1: sitcom called Working Stuffs, which was Jim Belushi and Michael Keaton. Yet,
Speaker 1: that's what that's all about. Go to work, get it work,
Speaker 1: and we work to work. We can't leave me.
Speaker 11: What is too tied.
Speaker 1: So we work and we work. It works out right.
Speaker 1: So that was I think just six episodes. I think
Speaker 1: she did the pilot.
Speaker 5: So it's all about who you know.
Speaker 1: Well, she knew everybody. I mean, that's what it's so
Speaker 1: fun about reading these books from these people.
Speaker 7: Getting advice from Spielberg whatever she should do to film
Speaker 7: or not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, their buddies with Spielberg and like, I mean, she's
Speaker 1: best friends with Carrie Fisher. She's super close with John
Speaker 1: Belushi and Laurene Michaels and you know, all these all
Speaker 1: these people and her the sort of again like diving
Speaker 1: into nineteen eighty four and and kind of just reading
Speaker 1: reviews and doing all this research. Like she came very
Speaker 1: close to directing Peggy Sue got married, her daughter was
Speaker 1: dating Geo Coppola, who you know, Francis Coppola ends up
Speaker 1: making that movie. But it was originally going to be
Speaker 1: Deborah Winger not And this isn't like originally when you
Speaker 1: read like I AMDB, like, oh, you know, Ronald Reagan
Speaker 1: was almost in Castleblake, Like no, he wasn't. He was
Speaker 1: barely close. Like it's not just like this was a
Speaker 1: famous star, so they were considered, Like Deborah Winger was
Speaker 1: definitely on a trajectory to starring in Peggy Who Got Married,
Speaker 1: and Penny Marshall was being considered as a director.
Speaker 7: I like that she walked away as well in Solidarity.
Speaker 7: That was a nice show of solidarity.
Speaker 1: And the same thing happened with Joy of Sex, which
Speaker 1: is like, you know, one of nineteen eighty four's worst movies,
Speaker 1: and is much more famous for the role it played
Speaker 1: in the end of John Belushi's life, because that again,
Speaker 1: Penny Marshall was set to direct that movie when they
Speaker 1: were going to do the John Hughes version of it.
Speaker 1: This was going to be National Lampoon's Joy of Sex.
Speaker 1: And this was before Vacation and Sixteen Candles. He had
Speaker 1: written this and the screenplay was in the Chateau Marmaut
Speaker 1: bungalow where Belue she died. He was very despondent when
Speaker 1: he was sent the script and talked to the head
Speaker 1: of Paramount. It's like Don Simpson and he finds out
Speaker 1: that they want to sell this movie with a poster
Speaker 1: of him in a diaper, and don't I've read that script.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he was supposed to be cupid
Speaker 1: or a baby. There's no scene with anybody in a
Speaker 1: diaper in the John Hughes script. But clearly this information
Speaker 1: got to him and he calls Penny Marshall, really despondent thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, is this what they think of me in Hollywood?
Speaker 1: Am I just a fucking joke? And this is She's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we'll go into Paramount, we'll talk to these people. She
Speaker 1: sets up a meeting and like that night, like the
Speaker 1: night before that meeting is supposed to happen, is when
Speaker 1: he overdoses on the speedball. So that script is like
Speaker 1: obviously goes into turnaround. It doesn't really happen for another
Speaker 1: two years, and then they literally develop it in nine
Speaker 1: days and shoot it in twenty with Martha Coolidge, and
Speaker 1: it's sort of a movie that everybody, everybody connected with
Speaker 1: absolutely hated making and is not a success. But it's
Speaker 1: just so interesting how close she gets to everything. And
Speaker 1: then with her relationship with Rob Ryner and all the
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live people and all the Star Wars people
Speaker 1: and all the Spinal Tap people, she seems like such
Speaker 1: a not a She doesn't seem like Carry Fisher, Like
Speaker 1: Carry Fisher seems like the kind of person who was
Speaker 1: going to be at every party and everybody's buddy, and
Speaker 1: like Penny Marshall seems like someone who doesn't even want
Speaker 1: to get out of bed. Like so it's so funny
Speaker 1: to think of her as this like social butterfly who's
Speaker 1: like dating Art Garfunkle and you know, all like it's
Speaker 1: It's really really fun to listen to her her book
Speaker 1: if it's on audible, if anybody wants to give it
Speaker 1: a listen.
Speaker 7: I just had the image of Fred Armison as from
Speaker 7: Senate Leave directing this.
Speaker 5: She's such a character, pull on Penny Marshall.
Speaker 4: This by book. My mother was not memoir by Penny Marshal.
Speaker 4: That's me. My mother was not Got so good stories,
Speaker 4: isn't it. The book's coming out September eighteenth.
Speaker 5: Are we gonna have a phone number?
Speaker 4: Here?
Speaker 1: A link to what Amazon? You gotta go to the
Speaker 1: Amazon and get a book, buy it. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: pick out a few words from the book.
Speaker 5: Shut up, Jim Brooks.
Speaker 2: This is just two pages I open up to and
Speaker 2: then that she just embraces that accent, and I just
Speaker 2: love hearing her talk, and just to hear the way
Speaker 2: she stretches out those vowels. Oh my god, it was
Speaker 2: such a treat hearing her voice again.
Speaker 1: I remember in the late eighties, after Tom Hanks made big,
Speaker 1: he was on some show like Friday Night Videos or something.
Speaker 1: I can't I can't remember what the show was, but
Speaker 1: he says something like, you know, I've now been directed
Speaker 1: by both of the Marshall siblings. And it's a very
Speaker 1: different experience because when you're working with Gary Marshall, everything's
Speaker 1: high energy and it's like, Okay, we're making a movie now,
Speaker 1: and Tom, you're gonna come over here and you're gonna
Speaker 1: be very funny and it's gonna be great, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be amazing. And when you're working with Penny Marshall, it's
Speaker 1: more like, oh, I'm making a movie now, and Tom,
Speaker 1: can you go over here? And hopefully you'll be very
Speaker 1: funny and it'll be okay, but it'll be you know,
Speaker 1: like and it's just like a really amusing anecdote that
Speaker 1: he told, but it's totally true, And in listening to
Speaker 1: those audiobooks, it is exactly like that they had the
Speaker 1: same upbringing. They tell the same stories about their childhood
Speaker 1: and their mother and father and stuff, but like he
Speaker 1: tells it in this like very upbeat, buoyant way, and
Speaker 1: she's more like, I wonder what my mother was really
Speaker 1: thinking at that moment. I was concerned, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: just it's just fun to get and they're obviously good friends.
Speaker 1: They obviously enjoyed being related to each other.
Speaker 2: Speaking of Rob Reiner, I know Tracy Reiner, their daughter
Speaker 2: is in this as well. Is she the one that
Speaker 2: plays the secretary at the Consulate.
Speaker 1: No, she's mister Page's secretary. So any scene with mister Page,
Speaker 1: she's sort of like at his right hand.
Speaker 5: Oh beautiful.
Speaker 2: It feels like he's trying to sleep with her. Is
Speaker 2: that what's going on? There's that weird moment that he's
Speaker 2: like closing her mouth. Yeah, okay, And then it took
Speaker 2: me forever. It took me until I read the script
Speaker 2: to realize that the woman at the British counsul it
Speaker 2: is supposed to look like Princess Diana. Then when I
Speaker 2: saw it after I read the script, I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I can see what they're doing. But having just watched
Speaker 2: Oh God Vacation, I think it was where there's the
Speaker 2: fantasy where oh no European vacation. Yeah, and Princess die
Speaker 2: you know, she's flirting with him. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that was a much better looking Princess Diana.
Speaker 1: Well, this is more like somebody who wants to look
Speaker 1: like Princess Diana, but it's just a secretary in the
Speaker 1: lobby of the British Consulate in New York. So I
Speaker 1: think it's good casting, but it is funny that the
Speaker 1: script says she's trying to.
Speaker 5: Look seeing Tracy Olman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pregnant Tracy Ullman.
Speaker 2: That was such a treat to see her show up in.
Speaker 1: This and because she's pregnant and young, you barely recognize her.
Speaker 1: I mean she's only like two years younger than she
Speaker 1: is when she started to do her American show. It's like,
Speaker 1: is that Tracy Ullman's like pudgy or sister? Like it's
Speaker 1: like or is it makeup? Or but I saw in
Speaker 1: the somewhere in the book. Oh yeah, it's in in
Speaker 1: Peenny Marsha's book. She says, pregnant Tracy Ullman. I'm like, ah,
Speaker 1: of course she's pregnant.
Speaker 2: Well, and she was such a chameleon, I mean that
Speaker 2: was her whole stick. Like, wasn't there a music video
Speaker 2: where she's like tons of different people and things, And
Speaker 2: then on the Tracy Ullmans Show, you never knew what
Speaker 2: she was going to look like from once get to
Speaker 2: the next.
Speaker 1: One and Tracy takes on even more so.
Speaker 7: He was also a pop star in the UK. Yeah right,
Speaker 7: I love that song.
Speaker 1: No we we get that, We got that that they
Speaker 1: don't know about us. Song over here, yeah.
Speaker 2: Her and Paul at the end of it in the
Speaker 2: car driving.
Speaker 1: That's a great song.
Speaker 2: The opening song is an interesting one because when it starts,
Speaker 2: I thought it was money for Nothing.
Speaker 1: I thought that true, Thank you too. But this money
Speaker 1: for Nothing is later? Right when did Brothers and Arms
Speaker 1: come out?
Speaker 2: I mean I remember weird Al was parioding it in
Speaker 2: I want to say eighty six. I want to say
Speaker 2: it was right around this time.
Speaker 1: Eighty five. Yeah, just I just googled it. It literally
Speaker 1: came out a little bit beforehand, so it's a pretty
Speaker 1: direct lift.
Speaker 11: IO agents have arrested Air Force Sergeant Michael Prescott in
Speaker 11: connection with the plant sell weapon sigarettes to an unnamed
Speaker 11: foreign government. Prescott was arrested last night in a Staten
Speaker 11: Island supermarket. Turning to whether the city remains in the
Speaker 11: grim usual Sibella, did you temperature and Central Park drop
Speaker 11: to thirty.
Speaker 12: Six degrees overnight? It's been to sety nine because the
Speaker 12: prints of thirty nine next whether again at eight o'clock
Speaker 12: backs Big or music station.
Speaker 1: That's more of a direct lift than Ghostbusters. It's from
Speaker 1: I Want a New Drug.
Speaker 7: It's a unique score. For Thomas Newman as well. It
Speaker 7: doesn't sound like him. It's kind of got a bit
Speaker 7: of a Baltimore kind of son to it.
Speaker 1: Yes, it has the exactly it has that. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of this movie has that Beverly Hills
Speaker 1: cop feeling of like, let's try to mine go to that.
Speaker 7: Well, it's strange they never worked together herself on Eddie
Speaker 7: Murphy would have thought that would have been a dynamic peering.
Speaker 7: Maybe it would have been there's been too much of
Speaker 7: the same kind of energy.
Speaker 1: Well, they're both they're both two big stars too, so
Speaker 1: you wonder if they would have room for each other,
Speaker 1: sharing sharing the screen, or would it have wound up
Speaker 1: like another nineteen eighty four film with Clintie and Burt
Speaker 1: Reynold's City Heat, which totally suffers from two big egos
Speaker 1: that do not want to share the screen together. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know if necessarily Jump a Jack Flash is
Speaker 2: a great name for this. It's okay for the code
Speaker 2: name and everything, but I guess the original title was
Speaker 2: Knock Knock, which also is not that great of a
Speaker 2: name or a movie.
Speaker 1: But I like Jump a Jack Flash just because it
Speaker 1: gives you this the redo of the song with Aretha
Speaker 1: Franklin and Keith Richards, Like when that song kicks in
Speaker 1: at the end of the movie and it's this new
Speaker 1: version and Aretha's really selling it, like she's singing Hallelujah
Speaker 1: at the end and everything, and they did a music
Speaker 1: video and Keith Richards is like dancing around doing the
Speaker 1: music video like they were into it. It didn't feel
Speaker 1: like let's just cash a check. They seem to really
Speaker 1: put their all into this cover.
Speaker 5: It had a great poster as well. That film. I
Speaker 5: just remember seeing it.
Speaker 7: Every time you go into a video shop, you noticed
Speaker 7: jump a Jack flush.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's like jumping over the city with her you know,
Speaker 1: eyes big and her mouth wide jump and uh not
Speaker 1: as big. Well, but did Elon spread eagle like that.
Speaker 5: Because x.
Speaker 2: X I did not realize that.
Speaker 1: I don't spend enough time on X. Okay, yeah, that
Speaker 1: makes total sense, masse. Instead he looks like Whoopi Goldberg.
Speaker 2: A man named Jack has got her jumping and the
Speaker 2: world may never be the same.
Speaker 1: Penny Marshall. There was another poster tagline that Penny Marshall
Speaker 1: complained about and thought really hurt the marketing, which says, like,
Speaker 1: you know, Whoopy Whoopye is here to save the world
Speaker 1: or something like that where it identifies the character. It
Speaker 1: seems like it's identifying the character as Whoopy, And in
Speaker 1: the trailer it says that too. It's like the fate
Speaker 1: of the world is in the hands of one woman.
Speaker 1: And then she's open there with the toothbrush going hi,
Speaker 1: and the narrator goes called Whoopie and they just Penny
Speaker 1: Marshall thinks, like, it's confusing, Miss Terry do little. Why
Speaker 1: are we saying whoopee?
Speaker 2: I could listen to you do Pemmy Marshall all day long.
Speaker 1: Well of the best line in like literally in every
Speaker 1: chapter where she's talking about a movie, she's like, I've
Speaker 1: said it before. Director is a dog's job. I learned
Speaker 1: that on Jumping Jack Flash. It's a dog's job. You
Speaker 1: gotta wake up before in the morning. Not my finest hour.
Speaker 7: I love that she called the crew together and said,
Speaker 7: you know, if I make a mistake, please don't laugh
Speaker 7: behind my back. Come up and explain to me what
Speaker 7: you think should be done, and we'll do this together.
Speaker 7: I thought, Oh, that's a lovely spirit to set a
Speaker 7: lovely tone to set on her on quite a tumultuous production.
Speaker 1: Before she said yes to directing the movie, She's she
Speaker 1: met with the DP Matthew Lionnedi who shot Breaking Away
Speaker 1: and Poltergeist and Fast Times Ridgemont High and I think
Speaker 1: weird science maybe, but like, you know, established cinematographer. And
Speaker 1: she was just like, are you gonna have a problem.
Speaker 1: I'm a first time director when I'm woman, can you
Speaker 1: walk with a woman? And he was like, yeah, no problem.
Speaker 1: And you know, she comes highly recommended. She's buddies with
Speaker 1: Spielberg and obviously they made Poltergeist together. You do get
Speaker 1: the sense that she probably really meant it. Like she
Speaker 1: seems like a very down to earth person. So when
Speaker 1: she gathers the crew together and says, I really want
Speaker 1: you to call me out if I'm making dumb mistakes
Speaker 1: since I don't know what I'm doing. I've only directed
Speaker 1: three camera live television before and everybody does it. So
Speaker 1: like setting that sort of tone of humility is good.
Speaker 1: But she also says like she doesn't look good and
Speaker 1: Whoopy Goldberg like on day three of the shoot, like
Speaker 1: drags her into the makeup chair and she's like, you
Speaker 1: gotta look good, like maker Joel Silver comes on the
Speaker 1: set and it's like what, Yeah, Like, why are you
Speaker 1: in the makeup chair? She's like, ah, gotta look good
Speaker 1: for the.
Speaker 2: Crew, you know.
Speaker 1: Like so that's fun too. Yeah, yeah, you get again,
Speaker 1: it's like so many nightmare stories. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: read the again Barry Sonenfeld's book, you know, he he
Speaker 1: sounds like he had a terrible time working with Penny
Speaker 1: Marshall on Big because she wanted to shoot everything like
Speaker 1: TV and didn't understand that you could like pan up
Speaker 1: from feet to a head and you know, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: there're panting shots from feet to head and jumping jack
Speaker 1: flash like there are several of them.
Speaker 7: Yeah, with that joke I was talking about that was
Speaker 7: you know, the Pandona and it was it was a
Speaker 7: big laugh.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. You know, again, you got to
Speaker 1: read all these biographies with a grain of salt, you know,
Speaker 1: it's obviously just each person's perspective. But yeah, I think
Speaker 1: she really kind of she does exactly the right thing
Speaker 1: with this movie, not only for the movie but for
Speaker 1: her career, and she got a lot of good advice,
Speaker 1: like Gary Marshall when she was debating whether to get
Speaker 1: into this movie, at such a late date with no
Speaker 1: prep time. He gave her the really good advice, saying
Speaker 1: filmmaking is a strange business. They pay you to learn,
Speaker 1: so just show up and as long as you finish
Speaker 1: and make your days, you know. And James L. Brook said,
Speaker 1: this is a great situation because it's not your movie.
Speaker 1: So if this movie is a hit, you become a hero.
Speaker 1: If this movie is a flop, it's not your fault,
Speaker 1: like you can't lose, which is actually quite true, especially
Speaker 1: in this day and age.
Speaker 7: You know, it could have been in like an Lame
Speaker 7: May situation only if she had gone over But I mean,
Speaker 7: Elaine May goes over schedule by you know, two thirds
Speaker 7: as long, So I mean, I don't think Benny Marshall
Speaker 7: was going to do that on her first first time out.
Speaker 2: It is weird that Vincent can be called her out
Speaker 2: as in his review he's just like, oh yeah, it
Speaker 2: looks like she wants to direct the decorps rather than
Speaker 2: the performance. It's like, okay, dude, that's a lame, lame criticism.
Speaker 2: I found the performances in this to be absolutely fine,
Speaker 2: if not really good.
Speaker 1: God forbid, we are direct her apartment. I mean, come
Speaker 1: on now you know.
Speaker 7: No, that's a selling point. That's you know, that's all
Speaker 7: character stuff as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a selling point for sure.
Speaker 7: Even just what she's wearing, Like Howard the chase scenes
Speaker 7: and she's wearing these big, bright, luminous red sneakers.
Speaker 5: It's like, yeah, it didn't.
Speaker 7: Have to be right, I looked at the It's like
Speaker 7: every little decision, a choice matters.
Speaker 1: Those costume choices for Whoop, we are really great. I mean,
Speaker 1: she just pops. She totally pops.
Speaker 5: She's a cartoon character in amongst this spy world.
Speaker 1: Well, are there any other films named after Stone songs?
Speaker 1: First of all, because there are a lot of Stone
Speaker 1: songs we think of any is there is there an
Speaker 1: as Tears Go Buy movie?
Speaker 7: There must be a film called Satisfaction, but probably on
Speaker 7: the wrong side of the internet.
Speaker 1: I think that.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: I think actually there is a Justine Bateman movie called
Speaker 1: Satisfaction from the eighties. Yeah, so that can be your
Speaker 1: next you know, when you're on episode oney eighteen and
Speaker 1: you really need a new month, you can do four
Speaker 1: movies based on Stones movie and we can talk about
Speaker 1: this movie again.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember I was making a list when I was
Speaker 2: working at Blockbuster, of all the movies that are based
Speaker 2: on song titles, which is pretty much impossible because there
Speaker 2: are so many. Yeah, that was right around the time
Speaker 2: of things like Only the Lonely and I don't remember
Speaker 2: what else was coming out then I was like.
Speaker 1: Can't Buy Me Love?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, oh gosh. Just comedies based on song titles
Speaker 2: is one thing, much less espionage films.
Speaker 1: Like Pretty Woman was originally called you know, eight days
Speaker 1: or something, however long the contract is, or a certain
Speaker 1: amount of hours, however long their agreement is, And it's
Speaker 1: one of those things. Again, Gary Marshall, there's a wonderful
Speaker 1: commentary on that Blu ray where he basically like, that's
Speaker 1: the great thing about working in Hollywood, Like I get
Speaker 1: all the you know, they just give me all these songs.
Speaker 1: So like every song choice he's using is like there's
Speaker 1: that song where they break up and rock Set is
Speaker 1: playing must Have Been Love, and he's just he's just like,
Speaker 1: what a wonderful song. Like who knew what this rock
Speaker 1: set band was? I had no idea, but he's like,
Speaker 1: this is the perfect song, and it's it's fun to
Speaker 1: you know, people complain about studio filmmaking, so much, and
Speaker 1: it's fun to listen to someone who just was like
Speaker 1: I loved it. I mean, he just loved show business.
Speaker 1: He loves his work. But yeah, Like, they had three
Speaker 1: titles for pretty Woman. One was She's a Late, which
Speaker 1: was for the Tom Jones song. Then there was another
Speaker 1: song title I can't remember what it was, and the
Speaker 1: other was pretty Woman. And it's like, yeah, well, obviously
Speaker 1: it should be pretty Woman, even though that's a very
Speaker 1: sad song, like that's a Roy Orbison song about longing
Speaker 1: and not being able to get a pretty woman and
Speaker 1: all that stuff, But it doesn't matter.
Speaker 5: It should have been she drove on nice.
Speaker 2: All right, we're going to take another break and play
Speaker 2: a preview for next week's show right after these brief messages.
Speaker 3: As a burglar, Wow, she's in a high risk job.
Speaker 13: You know what I mean?
Speaker 5: Know why you're here as a beautician?
Speaker 1: Count?
Speaker 4: So is he?
Speaker 3: At first, we'd like you to go brush your teeth together.
Speaker 6: They've got to solve a murder.
Speaker 13: Hello, we'll kill him.
Speaker 5: We'll be Goldberg.
Speaker 1: Flight of Bob Goldwait.
Speaker 5: Burglar. It's not just a job, it's an adventure, righted r.
Speaker 3: It starts Friday, March twentieth at a theater near you.
Speaker 2: That's right. We'll be back next week, but they look
Speaker 2: at Whoopy's next film, Burglar and adaptation of Lawrence Block's
Speaker 2: Bernie Rosenthal Books. Until then, I want to thank my
Speaker 2: co host Kevin and Ian. So Kevin, what is the
Speaker 2: latest with you?
Speaker 1: Sir?
Speaker 7: I will be sitting down to watch Burglar?
Speaker 1: Are you doing all four of these movies?
Speaker 2: He's my co I believe so four of that?
Speaker 1: Yes, Well, have a good time. Burglar's fun.
Speaker 5: I've only seen Failed Beauty.
Speaker 7: That's the only one of the four that we've got
Speaker 7: schedule I've seen before or didn't that. You can catch
Speaker 7: me on the Best Bits podcast, which I do my
Speaker 7: co host Will Collins, where we break down our favorite
Speaker 7: film scenes depending on a different topic each episode and
Speaker 7: it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 5: So you can check us out there.
Speaker 2: And Ian, what's the HAPs with you?
Speaker 3: Sir?
Speaker 1: You can always hear me every month on the Bratlefilm podcast,
Speaker 1: and you can read my blog film five thousand dot
Speaker 1: com where you can see what I had to say
Speaker 1: about all one hundred and seventy five movies from nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four that I just watched last year and Starting
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four, I will be programming movies at Boston,
Speaker 1: the Boston Area's oldest continuously running cinema, as well as
Speaker 1: the Capital Theater in Arlington. Excited to finally be breaking
Speaker 1: out of programming things for myself to do some actual
Speaker 1: programming for people in the great city of Boston.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much guys for being on the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear
Speaker 2: more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some
Speaker 2: of the other shows that I work on. They're all
Speaker 2: available at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community.
Speaker 2: If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot
Speaker 2: com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the
Speaker 2: Projection Booth take over the world.
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Speaker 13: Name and I'm good.
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Speaker 15: Fare now wore