Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from My Heart Radio. South African filmmaker Richard Stanley
Speaker 1: is hard to define, part anthropologist, part journalist, and part
Speaker 1: Hollywood outsider, making boundary pushing films. Stanley grew up in
Speaker 1: apartheid South Africa, shooting tribal dances and rituals, and later
Speaker 1: filming in war torn Afghanistan, choices that have greatly informed
Speaker 1: his perspective. In the nineties, he wrote and directed the
Speaker 1: film's Hardware and Dust Devil, blending the science fiction and
Speaker 1: horror genres. His next film was the third adaptation of H. G.
Speaker 1: Wells novel The Island of Dr Moreau, a terrifying morality
Speaker 1: play on scientific ethics, starring Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer.
Speaker 1: The troubled production went quickly downhill, and Stanley was removed
Speaker 1: from the project only three days in. The chaos was
Speaker 1: captured in the documentary Lost Soul, The Doomed Journey of
Speaker 1: Richard Stanley's The Island of Dr Moreau. Following the fallout,
Speaker 1: Stanley produced several documentary films and covered events in Rwanda
Speaker 1: and Uganda. He returned to mainstream movie making with the
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen film Color Out of Space and Escalating
Speaker 1: Extraterrestrial Spiral, based on the HP Lovecraft short story and
Speaker 1: starring Nicholas Cage. Richard Stanley is one of the most
Speaker 1: intelligent and articulate filmmakers I've ever met, and articulate about
Speaker 1: the actual work itself. So I wanted to know how
Speaker 1: with such an interesting background, Stanley first found his way
Speaker 1: to film. I started messing around with some super eight
Speaker 1: cameras from early childhood. I think it wanted into my life.
Speaker 1: When I was about four years old, Dad brought home
Speaker 1: a sixteen millimeter Prince of King kong um Um kind
Speaker 1: of fancied himself as a filmmaker and there was sixteen
Speaker 1: million meter equipment lying around and I remember playing on
Speaker 1: I say, as a toddler, and cong caught my attention
Speaker 1: very early, and I kind of it was a gateway
Speaker 1: drug to the Ray Harry Housing movies. And by the
Speaker 1: time I was ten, I was messing around with claymation
Speaker 1: dinosaurs like a lot of other kids. Have you know
Speaker 1: that I ordered a copy of the film Fearlessly Scrapbook.
Speaker 1: That's why Harry completely important. Yeah, I ordered a copy
Speaker 1: from online today, We're inspired by you. The Ray Harry
Speaker 1: House and the film Fantasy scrap Book was really the
Speaker 1: first time I saw raised artwork, as well as the
Speaker 1: drawings by Willis O'Brien and Mario Laranaga and some of
Speaker 1: the other folks. And it's just such incredible work that
Speaker 1: even in black and white reproductions, I was mesmerized at
Speaker 1: an early age. I see my own children. So we
Speaker 1: have quite a few kids running around, and my son
Speaker 1: a couple of them have four boys and two girls,
Speaker 1: and the oldest son who's about six. When I think
Speaker 1: about it, and I get honest about it, I shouldn't
Speaker 1: be surprised by his fascination with all things horror. He
Speaker 1: wants to watch Alien, and he wants to watch the
Speaker 1: monster come shooting out of John Hurts Thorax in the
Speaker 1: middle of Alien, and he and and he loves and
Speaker 1: when I think about when you mentioned Harry Housing in
Speaker 1: this book. When I was a child, I had a friend,
Speaker 1: my best friend, and his brother, Kevin and Keith Cornelius
Speaker 1: lived behind me, and they would subscribe to Famous Monsters
Speaker 1: of Filmland magazine. Famous Monsters was hugely significant, absolutely massive.
Speaker 1: I saw my first copy when I was four years old.
Speaker 1: Famous Monsters and the other warrant titles Creepy and Erie
Speaker 1: and Vampirella that came at the same time in the
Speaker 1: late sixties early seventies, just had covers that was so
Speaker 1: bright and so i popping that they completely jumped off
Speaker 1: the stands into your life and my family. We didn't
Speaker 1: have the money, we didn't have the resources to buy,
Speaker 1: but they would buy, like the Latex, like the rubber claws,
Speaker 1: the hands of the creature of the Black Lagoon. They'd
Speaker 1: buy Frankenstein's sutured hands. They'd get the headpiece with the
Speaker 1: bolts for Frankenstein. They get and we would make movies.
Speaker 1: He had a Brownie, he had a little Super eight,
Speaker 1: and we go in the background. We would take two
Speaker 1: picnic benches and we laid them on their side so
Speaker 1: that the legs of the bench were there, and for
Speaker 1: a child, you could lay down in between, and we'd
Speaker 1: put some sheets or towels down and that was the
Speaker 1: casket of Dracula. We made a casket for Dracula, and
Speaker 1: we'd see the hand come up and gripped the side
Speaker 1: of the coffin. Slowly. We'd film We're obsessed and we
Speaker 1: were very young, we were six and seven, with the
Speaker 1: maccabb and all that other stuff. And I'm wondering, why
Speaker 1: do you think, I mean a lot of kids just
Speaker 1: love that. Is it just the drama? I guess so.
Speaker 1: And there's also a sense of taboo about it. Um.
Speaker 1: The harder that people try to sense of things or
Speaker 1: take things away from you, the more it bestows value,
Speaker 1: and the more you feel that you actually need them.
Speaker 1: I mean, to some extent, horror movies were never any
Speaker 1: fun anymore after I was old enough to watch them.
Speaker 1: Do you understand what they were trying to do to you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: At the moment you hit eighteen, you've got other concerns.
Speaker 1: There's a woman in your life, and you have to
Speaker 1: make money, and life goes out. But and somehow it's
Speaker 1: not important. But up to that point there a kind
Speaker 1: of a forbidden fruit in a way. They also speak
Speaker 1: some kind of truth that you can't get from the
Speaker 1: adults or the school teachers. I think that my kids,
Speaker 1: if they were like me, it was forbidden And it
Speaker 1: was also just the chance to completely occupy someone that
Speaker 1: was not you. You know, you really could play a character.
Speaker 1: But to get back to um, your you go to
Speaker 1: the South African College of Music. Correct well, I got
Speaker 1: I got a job there basically shooting for their archival
Speaker 1: section when I was a teenager who had got me
Speaker 1: posted to some of them what they used to call
Speaker 1: the homeland states in Apartheite era South Africa. I should
Speaker 1: make a note that growing up in Apartheite era South Africa,
Speaker 1: which was essentially a police state, the horror movies, in
Speaker 1: the genre movies and particularly the horror comics of that
Speaker 1: period of the nineties seventies were really the place that
Speaker 1: I acquired my social conscience from. It definitely didn't come
Speaker 1: from my school teachers, or from the government, or from
Speaker 1: my parents, God bless their souls. All of that was
Speaker 1: coming from the comic book writers and California in places
Speaker 1: who are doing a lot of LSD at that point
Speaker 1: in time, and who were writing yeah, super challenging material
Speaker 1: or very politicized at that point in time, and all
Speaker 1: of it came through UM, through the genre. So I
Speaker 1: was super glad for that. Basically ended up was a
Speaker 1: cameraman in UM in the Truant sky shooting tribal dance
Speaker 1: and initiation rituals, which was another area that's always drawn me.
Speaker 1: If it hadn't been for the regrettable geopolitical circumstances, I
Speaker 1: think I might have stayed in South Africa and become
Speaker 1: an anthropologist. When we know in your childhood, when you're
Speaker 1: growing up your mother was an English anthropologist and you
Speaker 1: moved to South Africa. Was it Cape Town? Is at
Speaker 1: the city you grew up in? Yeah, I grew up
Speaker 1: in Cape Town. When my mom initially quit England and
Speaker 1: went to Africa, she went first to m Zimbabwe. She
Speaker 1: went to Bulawayo first because it had the word away
Speaker 1: in it. It was a sufficiently long way from hub. Yeah,
Speaker 1: post war England. She just wanted to get the hell out,
Speaker 1: more or less pected a random but because she trailed
Speaker 1: with her an interest in witchcraft and in the fairy culture,
Speaker 1: the fairy folklore of the West Country, I think she
Speaker 1: um I saw a side of Africa that the other
Speaker 1: um colonial um European settlers were oblivious to. She pursued
Speaker 1: that doggedly and ended up writing a cornerstone book on
Speaker 1: African mythology. But accordingly, in the first few years of
Speaker 1: my life, for the first three or four years she
Speaker 1: was dashing around to one bunch of tribal people after another,
Speaker 1: and always trying to find the sangoma or the the
Speaker 1: traditional healer. Um I guess instilled a set of values
Speaker 1: in me where I came to see these people as
Speaker 1: figures of extraordinary value and power. What about your dad?
Speaker 1: What did he do? He was basically a travel writer.
Speaker 1: UH had a gig for UM mobile oil that ready
Speaker 1: worked for him where he was writing UM kind of
Speaker 1: little travel brochure things for mobile and return for free
Speaker 1: gasoline and doing star rating guides for hotels and campsites.
Speaker 1: So that kept him on the move and kept the
Speaker 1: gas tankful. That's pretty much yeah, what he did the
Speaker 1: whole of his life. Now, um, when you go and
Speaker 1: shoot the tribal dances and initiation which was which was
Speaker 1: did you accompany your mother? Were you working with your mother? Then?
Speaker 1: Now I was out of my own by the time
Speaker 1: I actually got to start shooting material in the tran
Speaker 1: sky and the other Homeland places. This was when I
Speaker 1: was in my early teens, and my mom's interest in
Speaker 1: tribal witchcraft and tribal magic um I guess um influenced
Speaker 1: me hugely, mostly because it was something that none of
Speaker 1: the other kids had any real interest, and when I
Speaker 1: went to when I was old enough to go to
Speaker 1: school and mix with um other European kids, I was
Speaker 1: shocked to find that they didn't believe in any of
Speaker 1: the stuff or had only the the most horrifying kind
Speaker 1: of prejudiced notions about it. Now, when you're there, described
Speaker 1: briefly if you can, about these tribal dances in initiation rituals.
Speaker 1: And how did what I'm assuming was the richness on
Speaker 1: any level style, wardrobe, music, the choreography itself. How did
Speaker 1: this What effect did this have on you in terms
Speaker 1: of your own film career? Did you bring some of
Speaker 1: the things you observed to your other films? Almost certainly,
Speaker 1: and in a way it actually pushed me into filmmaking.
Speaker 1: At the at the top, I wasn't sure I wanted
Speaker 1: to be a filmmaker. But the more time I hung
Speaker 1: out in the on the wrong side of the tracks
Speaker 1: in South Africa with long hair and a camera, the
Speaker 1: more trouble I got into was the arm authorities, and
Speaker 1: the more I was construed as basically having a political
Speaker 1: context because that's the only way they saw things back there,
Speaker 1: and eventually did to me basically fleeing the country, Um
Speaker 1: when I ended up finding asylum in London and in England. Um,
Speaker 1: the only thing I had to show for myself was
Speaker 1: a bunch of deeply weirdly dressed people, um dancing and
Speaker 1: doing strange things a number of yeah, spectacular locations, which
Speaker 1: I was eventually able to translate into a job making
Speaker 1: music videos for the Yeah, the music business. It gave
Speaker 1: me an end, you know what I was going to say.
Speaker 1: Then at some point you go and make music videos
Speaker 1: for Public Image limited s Express Noir Desire. These are
Speaker 1: all African. Ban's South African. These are British bad Son.
Speaker 1: If you went back to this when you went to London, Yeah,
Speaker 1: public Image, it's John Lyden's bound. Yeah. The first It
Speaker 1: was the first proper union shooter I ever did. When
Speaker 1: I graduated from a Super eight coverare to a full
Speaker 1: Union Crew and honey Wagon and you know the makeup fans,
Speaker 1: the full Monty. It was a terrifying day, but it
Speaker 1: was the potential for getting drafted into the the angle
Speaker 1: in war that propelled you don't want to leave and
Speaker 1: go to London? Correct? Yeah. I was in the cadet
Speaker 1: school for two years and I was supposed to go
Speaker 1: straight into the South African Defense Force and become an officer,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to the Golden Bush War. The family
Speaker 1: had a long military tradition that was just like what
Speaker 1: you did at a certain age as you were supposed
Speaker 1: to go in the army. By then, I developed a
Speaker 1: huge antithesis for the Apartheit regime. The notion of having
Speaker 1: to pick up a gun and defend them kind of
Speaker 1: stuck in my craw And I didn't really believe the
Speaker 1: propaganda anyway, which was telling us that the Russian Army
Speaker 1: and the Cubans were across the border in Angola. Unless
Speaker 1: we confronted them, they would be Russian t sixties. Who's
Speaker 1: on the streets and Pretoria in twenty four hours or
Speaker 1: whatever the bullshit was at the time. I chose not
Speaker 1: to believe it and upstakes and left. Now, when you're
Speaker 1: in you go to the UK and you're there, and
Speaker 1: then you make your way to Afghanistan to film the
Speaker 1: Soviet Afghan War. What was the impetus for that? Why
Speaker 1: did you want to go do that? And I'm assuming
Speaker 1: put yourself a tremendous risk. Correct, Yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: crazy time. I don't regret it. Unfortunately, the cameraman was
Speaker 1: very badly injured. UM he did make a full recovery.
Speaker 1: So I regret the cameraman's injuries, but I'm glad that
Speaker 1: we took that decision. It was an insane thing to do. Basically,
Speaker 1: it came out of three years of doing music video
Speaker 1: work in London and it had gotten to the point
Speaker 1: that in order to pay everyone's rent and keep everything moving,
Speaker 1: we had to do pretty much one music video a month,
Speaker 1: which meant the quality started sliding. We weren't able to
Speaker 1: pick the bands and the songs as well as I
Speaker 1: would have liked. UM I was on a particularly lousy
Speaker 1: music video shoot. I've got a generally in my career,
Speaker 1: I've taken a first on, last off policy. I'd like
Speaker 1: to get their first thing in the morning before the
Speaker 1: crew arrives, and UM I like to stay until after
Speaker 1: all the cable is washed and all the lenses have
Speaker 1: gone safely back into their boxes and everything's wrapped. So
Speaker 1: UM I was coming out of the shoot and the
Speaker 1: last van to UM to leave the location. UM the
Speaker 1: driver was grumbling about the stick shift on the van
Speaker 1: and said, this thing is as hard to drive as
Speaker 1: a BTR sixty, which I recognized as a lightweight Soviet
Speaker 1: troop transporter used in the invasion of Afghanistan. And I
Speaker 1: asked him what the funk you'd been doing driving a
Speaker 1: BTR sixty to begin with, and he told me that
Speaker 1: he was a g hardy uh, that he was down
Speaker 1: his luck and M London was trying to doing odd
Speaker 1: jobs essentially to try and save up enough money to
Speaker 1: go back to Afghanistan and fight the g Hard And
Speaker 1: I was in such a vile mood after the promo
Speaker 1: shoot that day, I said, look, if I give you
Speaker 1: the Boddy to go back to the g Hard, will
Speaker 1: you take me with you and allow us to bring cameras? So, um,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much. Yeah, how it happened. It was the
Speaker 1: spur of the moment. I've been obsessed with Afghanistan for
Speaker 1: a long time ever since, so I guess reading about
Speaker 1: it as a kid and the works of Robert E.
Speaker 1: Howard or U. Rudget Kipling's um Man, it would be king.
Speaker 1: So when you arrive in Afghanistan, when you first give
Speaker 1: him this is eighty nine? Correct? Yeah, what do you mean?
Speaker 1: Is there a lot of is it very furtive? Are
Speaker 1: you sneaking around and you're having to kind of here
Speaker 1: with this guy. You're accompanying him, are you? You're still
Speaker 1: with him when you get there. You we're following him.
Speaker 1: But you had yeah, and we had to. We had
Speaker 1: to trick our way over the over the border and
Speaker 1: UM coming well. First we tried doing it legitimately the
Speaker 1: first way. The first trip we made in we did
Speaker 1: with the Red Cross was the United Nations and UM
Speaker 1: we drove in trucks of flower to UM a bunch
Speaker 1: of locations in Ningraha Province. So we came in first
Speaker 1: ULL saying legit un food delivery. That was the first
Speaker 1: time that I was in country. UM had my first
Speaker 1: um yeah vision of Afghanistan, saw the light and the
Speaker 1: space of the place and got the smell of it.
Speaker 1: But UM, on the first trip out with the u N,
Speaker 1: we deviated from the path. When you're around doing those
Speaker 1: kind of runs for around the u N, you have
Speaker 1: to really stick to the agreed course and we UM
Speaker 1: we made a stop on the way which freaked them out.
Speaker 1: So after the first food run we were stripped of
Speaker 1: that position and grounded back in Frontier Province, Pakistan. We
Speaker 1: then volunteered our services to the Moderate Guerrilla Party to
Speaker 1: the Jamati's dummy under armored Chamasud and they took one
Speaker 1: look at us and refused. So we volunteered ourselves to
Speaker 1: the Who the heck would I want to take us today?
Speaker 1: Over there? You couldn't give it away, but yeah, we have.
Speaker 1: We've eventually gotten in with the servietive party. Instead was
Speaker 1: the Hespis Love Me under Gilbert and Heck Mattia, who
Speaker 1: are kind of the bad guys and in cahoots with
Speaker 1: the CIA at that point in time. But they took
Speaker 1: us and we were able to cross the borders through
Speaker 1: a secret crossing at a place called now Our Pass
Speaker 1: and entered the country indefinitely, stayed through till after the
Speaker 1: end of the Soviet occupation. Now the give me the timeline.
Speaker 1: How long do you last in that area before you
Speaker 1: decided to go home? And where is the home you
Speaker 1: go to? Do you go back to London? Yeah? We
Speaker 1: got zapped after about three months. Um shot. Yeah, meaning
Speaker 1: we got blown up by some kind of missile. It
Speaker 1: hit us on the second day of the Siege of
Speaker 1: jelal About. I don't really know what it was, but
Speaker 1: that um this was it was early in the going.
Speaker 1: You hadn't been there for very long. Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: it was about the Russians left on Valentine's Day on
Speaker 1: February fourteenth, This would have been about three months after.
Speaker 1: It was the onset of the civil war. Essentially there
Speaker 1: was it was, you know, um, our side, the Western backed,
Speaker 1: Saudi backed muja hidden versus the remaining socialist back to
Speaker 1: Afghans who were cornered inside of the city of Jelalabat
Speaker 1: and under massive siege. But they had also been heavily
Speaker 1: armed by the retreating Soviet forces, so there was a
Speaker 1: full on confrontation. Unfortunately our side word where I found
Speaker 1: out later also not taking prisoners and doing terrible things
Speaker 1: to some of the folks they were capturing. So um,
Speaker 1: no one was surrendering. So and when folks know that
Speaker 1: they're fighting to their deaths um, they put everything they've
Speaker 1: got into it. So it's a terrible scene and I
Speaker 1: think approximately a thousand people a day were getting killed
Speaker 1: and in the first week of the civil war. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because thereafterwards devolved into a civil war, which is basically
Speaker 1: between it was a struggle between the different Afghan warlords
Speaker 1: to try to take power over the country. Once the
Speaker 1: once the Soviet army had retreated Um. Eventually the sheer
Speaker 1: chaos of that, which I think finally resulted in a
Speaker 1: tank battle in the streets of couple Um, led to
Speaker 1: the Taliban stepping in and saying, Okay, this has got
Speaker 1: to end. UM. Now we need Shario, we need strict
Speaker 1: religious government, and we need to clean this mess up.
Speaker 1: The civil war kind of created the conditions that enabled
Speaker 1: the Taliban to rise. So you were there for how
Speaker 1: long total? UM? I was probably in country UM, not
Speaker 1: much more than four months in total, and I was
Speaker 1: probably I was probably stuck in Pakistan for about eight
Speaker 1: months between are waiting trying to get in. There were
Speaker 1: two different trips in and we've spent most of our
Speaker 1: time trapped in Frontier Province on the wrong side of
Speaker 1: the border. After falling out of Afghanistan, it was a
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to actually leave when I did, but
Speaker 1: the Romain was severely engined and had to had to
Speaker 1: be taken to surgery. And then UM because of a
Speaker 1: series of insane events, I've lost my I D I'd
Speaker 1: lost my backpack and passport and had no way of
Speaker 1: proving who I was. So yeah, I ended up in
Speaker 1: a jail cell in Pakistan. Uh was sprung by the
Speaker 1: British embassy and his lamabouts who gave me a fresh
Speaker 1: set of travel documents and got me back to London
Speaker 1: via ab Abu Dhabi is Stadfold and that finally Heathrow
Speaker 1: writer director Richard Stanley. If you enjoy conversations with genre
Speaker 1: bending filmmakers, listened to my episode with William Friedkin, director
Speaker 1: of The Exorcist the films that I've made. I'm more
Speaker 1: interested in spontaneity than anything else, so I don't rehearse.
Speaker 1: I would talk to the actors and find the things
Speaker 1: that move them, either that caused them to laugh or
Speaker 1: cry or be frightened, and I would use those things
Speaker 1: from time to time in the making of the film
Speaker 1: to suggest, whenever it was necessary, some emotion. But I
Speaker 1: would never tell an actor really how to do it.
Speaker 1: Here the rest of my conversation with William Friedkin in
Speaker 1: our archives at Here's the Thing dot org. After the break,
Speaker 1: Richard Stanley tells us his critique of the Island of
Speaker 1: Dr Moreau, film that got made without him. I'm Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Writer director
Speaker 1: Richard Stanley had written a low budget horror screenplay when
Speaker 1: he received a call from a high powered Hollywood producer
Speaker 1: while I was away in in insane series of events,
Speaker 1: the screenplay for Hardware, which had been written a while
Speaker 1: before and been pushing around, had gotten passed from hand
Speaker 1: to hand to hand and had somehow come into the
Speaker 1: hands of Harvey Weinstein. Uh. Yeah, Harvey wanted to make hardware,
Speaker 1: which I first found out about while I was still
Speaker 1: in Frontier Province. A very um angry man managed to
Speaker 1: get through to me on the switchboard at the Saudi
Speaker 1: Red Crescent Hospital and in um Frontier Province, who was
Speaker 1: a producer named Tricks Warrel and Tricks was freaked out
Speaker 1: because he had been through share hell to actually reach
Speaker 1: me on the telephone. So every third word was an
Speaker 1: F word. You don't have fucking hard've been looking for
Speaker 1: a mate, etcetera, etcetera making this fucking movie. And I
Speaker 1: was trying to explain that hardware was getting set up
Speaker 1: at Mirrormax. And I remember, because the had been long
Speaker 1: and um the hospital was full of people who had
Speaker 1: lost their eyesights, or children with berlins or missing limbs.
Speaker 1: Tom hearing this guy swearing down the phone at me
Speaker 1: was seemed somehow offensive, and my reaction was simply to
Speaker 1: hang up on him, and then I tried to ignore
Speaker 1: it for a while. I'm looking. I'm looking at the
Speaker 1: one liner here on hardware. You shoot this movie it's
Speaker 1: released in you must have gotten to it pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: You must have shot it in eighty nine, or it's
Speaker 1: released in September where you shot it in ninety. Dylan
Speaker 1: McDermott is your lead, that's right? And what was when? When?
Speaker 1: So so? Harvey Weinstein, I would presume and tell me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong. He's putting everything together, he's passing the
Speaker 1: script onto the cast, he's producing the film. Uh, you're
Speaker 1: in the Harvey business. Harvey's in control. Correct. Well, thankfully
Speaker 1: not because it wouldn't have been hardware otherwise, but well,
Speaker 1: it obviously became a grapple, the match for control over
Speaker 1: what really happened, with some different schizophrenic forces trying to
Speaker 1: change the material. I fell into it right after the war,
Speaker 1: So I hard ware is what I had in place
Speaker 1: of therapy. Um, that's my way of working out the
Speaker 1: the PTSD. Essentially, Mirrormax put their money through a company
Speaker 1: called Palace Pictures in the UK who brought on a
Speaker 1: super tough, m young producer Joanne Seller, who had never
Speaker 1: produced a movie before, but then did a bang on
Speaker 1: job and produced the hell out of hardware and were
Speaker 1: She was also strong enough to be able to keep
Speaker 1: Harvey at base so that me and Harvey didn't kill
Speaker 1: each other or achieve some kind of state of critical
Speaker 1: mass because these insane directives from Mirrormax were coming in
Speaker 1: on a daily basis, only we had fax machines in
Speaker 1: those days. Like I think after three weeks in they
Speaker 1: decided they didn't like John Lynch, the actor playing um Shades,
Speaker 1: the space jockey of the movie, and suggested can we
Speaker 1: write John out of the movie and replace it with
Speaker 1: a dog, and that because we gave Dylan the dog,
Speaker 1: it would make him bore acceptable to a younger audience
Speaker 1: to pay less money. Well, we don't want kids to
Speaker 1: like this this guy because it's it's an R rated
Speaker 1: movie with shoot a good X rated film here. Uh, Well,
Speaker 1: what's the matter if the kids like the dog? Or
Speaker 1: it just got more more and more crazy as it
Speaker 1: went log I think most of Harvey's directors whether he
Speaker 1: wanted more kids in the movie, younger kids and was
Speaker 1: constantly trying to push it towards a younger audience than
Speaker 1: it was intended. So this is your first film. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't want to dwell too much on Morrow,
Speaker 1: but this is your first film Hardware. And you've got McDermott,
Speaker 1: who has made quite a few films and TV shows.
Speaker 1: I worked with him once and he's a very accomplished actor.
Speaker 1: What was it like for you to go from ritualistic
Speaker 1: dance who war torn a civil war Afghanistan and now
Speaker 1: you're making a movie with an American actor? What did
Speaker 1: you find was your strengths and weaknesses and directing actors
Speaker 1: in narrative films. But I think the pleasure of coming
Speaker 1: surviving the events in Afghanistan stumbling straight onto set was
Speaker 1: that at least Hell held no fear for me. Other
Speaker 1: different circumstances, I would have found it a lot more intimidating. Uh,
Speaker 1: at least McDermot wasn't in the Taliban. Yeah, yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: And UM didn't brought a lot to it. Um it
Speaker 1: was a mccab's state of affairs because Um. In fact,
Speaker 1: the character each he plays changed a lot in the
Speaker 1: course of setting the movie up. Because Moe is very
Speaker 1: different in the Scriptum, I'd originally wanted Bill Paxton for
Speaker 1: the part for whatever crazy reason. Um, this was coming
Speaker 1: off the time of Near Dark. Um Mirrama's were really
Speaker 1: anti Paxxton kind of dug their heels and and Dylan
Speaker 1: was the best choice out of the very limited field.
Speaker 1: Term there is a term they gave us. I think
Speaker 1: there was three guys. They said you have to have
Speaker 1: one of these three in the movie other as we
Speaker 1: won't make the movie. It was very very very um
Speaker 1: tight and um Dylan's came into it very pumped up,
Speaker 1: very clean shaven, short hair. Um moas written was originally
Speaker 1: a heroin addict dying of cancer, who has been irradiated
Speaker 1: the zone and as seriously not well, who has already
Speaker 1: had like one arm replaced the prosthetic limb and is
Speaker 1: on the way out, which Dylan did not seem that way.
Speaker 1: It was a powerhouse of energy and superbuff and just
Speaker 1: didn't resemble the character as written. Um yeah, we essentially
Speaker 1: rewrote it on the on the spot and reworked it
Speaker 1: or so. Dylan came in as a card carrying Christian
Speaker 1: with his copy of the Bible. U immediately noticed that
Speaker 1: the main cyborg in the movie Marked thirteen was a
Speaker 1: publical reference, which is something that had escaped my attention
Speaker 1: up to that point. That that detail became a very
Speaker 1: interesting plot pivot. Now you do this film and uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously there's all the legend and Laura about
Speaker 1: Harvey and his hands on approach to filmmaking. Was the
Speaker 1: film was something you were genuinely willing to take credit
Speaker 1: force that you were filmed by and large or was
Speaker 1: it completely co opted by other people. Hardware is pretty
Speaker 1: much my beast. I'm happy with hardware. The worst that
Speaker 1: happened was we had lost a couple of scenes which
Speaker 1: were trimmed out afterwards in You're in Afghanistan And I'm
Speaker 1: assuming that Moreau, which was released in ninety six was
Speaker 1: probably shot in Have you seen Lost Soul? The Doomed
Speaker 1: Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr Moreau? Have you
Speaker 1: seen the documentary? Oh? Yeah, several any times? The film
Speaker 1: is I mean, I'm a documentary junkie, and this is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite docs of all time. But what
Speaker 1: I realized was this movie is unusual in terms of
Speaker 1: it's almost like everybody involved in the film just wanted
Speaker 1: to get the funk out of there. I mean, nobody
Speaker 1: wanted to be there. They all everybody phoned it in.
Speaker 1: Frankenheimer phoned it in, Brando phoned it in. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe not David Toulis or for Rusa Balk. Maybe they're
Speaker 1: trying to keep their head above order. Val Kilmer phones
Speaker 1: and and everybody just is coming for a paycheck. They're
Speaker 1: all there for the wrong reason. And and the film
Speaker 1: shows the film looks like there's so many missing scenes.
Speaker 1: The film looks like they just slapped this thing together,
Speaker 1: like let's just get this over with. Whatever we got,
Speaker 1: we got shut down. Stop spending money. Initially, your work
Speaker 1: on the film before You're gone involves, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of your greatest woric I mean the art conceptions
Speaker 1: and all the art design and things like that for
Speaker 1: what you wanted in the film. You were hired to
Speaker 1: do the film, and who hired who was producing Pressman, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a big ad ad pressman. Um it's my fault.
Speaker 1: I mean, I developed Island of Dr Moreau for years
Speaker 1: and years and years. Um. At the point of the
Speaker 1: thing got going, Um, I made another movie between Hardware
Speaker 1: and Moreau, I made a movie called Dust Devil in
Speaker 1: um in the Mabia. By the tail end of Dust Devil,
Speaker 1: which I was convinced Dust Devil was the worst fucking
Speaker 1: thing that could ever happen to anyone. It was really
Speaker 1: a thousand miles of rough road and a nightmare experience
Speaker 1: beyond hell. But by the end of Dust Devil, I
Speaker 1: was about yeah, forty grand in debt and basically on
Speaker 1: my ass in London and needed to sell a property
Speaker 1: fast in order to um basically payoff Dust Devil. Um
Speaker 1: that somehow that became Island of dr Burrow Um. I
Speaker 1: was in no position to hold onto Moreau. I mean
Speaker 1: m coppola could make Apocalypse now and next he was
Speaker 1: coming off the back of Godfather. I was coming off
Speaker 1: I was coming off the back of Dust Yeah, I understand,
Speaker 1: I understand. That's Dust Devil wasn't the ultimate calling card,
Speaker 1: wasn't um. No, it didn't give me any power or
Speaker 1: leverage over the over the majors at that point in time.
Speaker 1: But what's the genesis? Meaning? Did you write the screenplay? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I write the screenplay. But how did somebody get the
Speaker 1: screenplay and say I'm gonna make this movie? Forget about
Speaker 1: Dust Devil? This guy that made Dust Devil pressman's talking
Speaker 1: to his investors or his backers. Everybody. Let's just put
Speaker 1: Dust Devil out of your mind. And this guy in
Speaker 1: this script, they've got it. Meaning how did Ed find
Speaker 1: you or you pitched him? You know how it actually happened.
Speaker 1: Was Ed found me? Um Ed found me and said,
Speaker 1: I want you to direct Judge Dread was sliced alone.
Speaker 1: I was hugely down in my luck and in trouble,
Speaker 1: and he needed a break. Um I said, sure, but
Speaker 1: he has to keep his helmet on. We need to
Speaker 1: do Dread like he has the fucking covert book. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was a sticking point. Uh yeah, that's right, it's
Speaker 1: it's a Dread had to keep the helmet on. And
Speaker 1: because I'm hardware owed and unacknowledged debt to two thousand
Speaker 1: a d and to Judge Dread. I felt I couldn't
Speaker 1: stab the Dread franchise in the back twice. I had
Speaker 1: to be kind. I had to stand by Dread, so
Speaker 1: I had to turn down the project. Um, but I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to let the opportunity go. So in
Speaker 1: the middle of it, I said, well, why don't we
Speaker 1: do Island of Dr Brow instead. So in that sense,
Speaker 1: were you similar to Brando and Frank and I were
Speaker 1: and other people who they were. You were there for
Speaker 1: a paycheck. You just wanted to do a job and
Speaker 1: get a check and do your best work and get
Speaker 1: the hell out of here. Now, I always wanted to
Speaker 1: do round of Dr Brow. This was a und of
Speaker 1: Dr Brow was a personal obsession that probably came into
Speaker 1: my life when I was when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: And as I mentioned to my producers here, the Island
Speaker 1: of Dr Moreau is too horror films. What a star
Speaker 1: is born is to melodrama, you know. I mean there's
Speaker 1: been three incarnations, Island of the Lost Souls with Charles Lawton,
Speaker 1: one of my favorites, Moreau with Lancaster Lancaster, and then
Speaker 1: your version, which, uh, and you've been dreaming about this
Speaker 1: for quite a while. Yeah, I mean I saw the
Speaker 1: Bert Lancaster version of Cinemas as a kid, and as
Speaker 1: a fan of the Wells novel, I came out so enraged.
Speaker 1: It was probably the first time that I felt I
Speaker 1: wanted my money back after seeing a film, and I
Speaker 1: think that planted the seed in my head that I
Speaker 1: could do a better job. Um, From that point in time,
Speaker 1: I kept thinking about how to improve The mouse Trap
Speaker 1: and what a better Dr Moreau would look like, because
Speaker 1: I mean, there's all kinds of problems with the material.
Speaker 1: For whatever reason, they insistent always playing the beast people
Speaker 1: as monsters. But the potential inherent within giving animals vote
Speaker 1: larynxes and vocal cords and what the hell would the
Speaker 1: animals say and do is so huge, and it's such
Speaker 1: tasty material that I really don't feel that the material
Speaker 1: has been well understood or has yet found its cinematic potential. Perhaps,
Speaker 1: and now that the effects and bow cap work has
Speaker 1: moved on to the point that it's reached, a better,
Speaker 1: more complex adaptation of Wells's book might finally reach the screen.
Speaker 1: How deep into the pre production process did you go
Speaker 1: before you were separated from the material? Shall we say? How? Well?
Speaker 1: How far into where were you? I went all the
Speaker 1: way through. I went through the hall of prep, cast
Speaker 1: the film and we started shooting. Um. Well, the Brando
Speaker 1: was the first to come aboard. The moment we had Brando,
Speaker 1: we figured he was basically an actor magnet that even
Speaker 1: though the script yeah yeah, So I immediately went after
Speaker 1: Bruce Willets for the male lead, and for a while
Speaker 1: Bruce was in and at the point when we had
Speaker 1: Bruce and Brando for Mr Montgomery Um the third lead,
Speaker 1: I went after James Woods Um. So there was there
Speaker 1: was a point in time when Way Um and then
Speaker 1: this enabled us to put together a formidable cast of
Speaker 1: beast people with Ron Pullman as the Sayer of the Law,
Speaker 1: m Frousa Bulkers u Asia the cat Lady, Um Tomorrow
Speaker 1: Morrison as Um as a Zello the chief Dog, the
Speaker 1: Bill Hootkins as the bristly bear Guy Um. It was
Speaker 1: all of the beast people were tremendous actors, which is
Speaker 1: one of the biggest tragedies of the Frankenheim evosionists that
Speaker 1: none of these people get to do anything. They're standing
Speaker 1: around the film and they've all lost everything, like every
Speaker 1: one of them's lust, their scenes, lust, their material, and
Speaker 1: it's just a huge number of geniuses on that set
Speaker 1: who are not getting the chance to express themselves. Richard Stanley,
Speaker 1: if you're enjoying this conversation, be sure to subscribe to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app, Apple
Speaker 1: podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back,
Speaker 1: Richard Stanley tells us what it was like to direct
Speaker 1: Marlon Brando in the Island of Dr Moreau. I'm Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and this is here's the thing from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: The production snaff foods on the set of the Island
Speaker 1: of Dr Moreau were no secret, so much so the
Speaker 1: documentary film was made about the Troubled movie. I was
Speaker 1: curious about the circumstances leading up to Richard Stanley's termination
Speaker 1: as director of the Island of Dr Moreau and how
Speaker 1: he learned he was being let go. Well, I guess,
Speaker 1: um the first inkling it was the middle of a
Speaker 1: hurricane as well. There was there was a tropical storm
Speaker 1: bright blowing in and we were in the one of
Speaker 1: the worst places in the world. We were in a
Speaker 1: place called Cape Tribulation, which is named that for a reason.
Speaker 1: Um Mount Sorrow as the big mountain brooding over it
Speaker 1: because the places broken the backs of all kinds of
Speaker 1: folk in the past. Um and yeah, the production vehicles
Speaker 1: stopped responding to my orders, so I couldn't basically get
Speaker 1: an uber um. Um. Yeah. That was yeah, the end
Speaker 1: of the wedge then, um, yeah, we've censed it coming
Speaker 1: for a few days particularly was a hurricane. Because we've
Speaker 1: been desperately trying to shoot, but it had really reached
Speaker 1: a point where it was like horizontal rain. We were
Speaker 1: unable to go and get a shot off the set
Speaker 1: and washed away. How much did you shot before they
Speaker 1: fired you? Um? We shot for about two days. I
Speaker 1: shot some basically second unit stuff before the before principal
Speaker 1: photography started, So she didn't shoo, didn't shoot any of
Speaker 1: the principal photography. No, I mean we shot two days
Speaker 1: of principal photography that wasn't used in the eventual films.
Speaker 1: You did? You shot two days? Prince who was in
Speaker 1: those scenes? Val Kilmer and Rob Morrow and yeah some
Speaker 1: bits with some yeah throughs the bulk and Morrow eventually
Speaker 1: left to be replaced by two lists. Correct, that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: By the time all this came down to Morrow couldn't
Speaker 1: take it anymore. He was pretty much broken on day one. Um,
Speaker 1: I think, but like all of us, by the circumstances, Um,
Speaker 1: we were on a tramp freighter at sea with a
Speaker 1: hurricane blowing in of off Endeavor Reef by tape tribulation
Speaker 1: of tribulation, not sorrow. Yeah, Yeah, it was on a
Speaker 1: tramp freighter full of live animals. Uh yeah, there was
Speaker 1: a puba on board. Um so I would live puba.
Speaker 1: Um so yeah, Rob was I think on day one
Speaker 1: already in the on the telephone and the captain's a wheelhouse,
Speaker 1: desperately trying to get hold of his agent and trying
Speaker 1: to find some way out of there. So just two
Speaker 1: days of principle, you did the prep. You're you're, you're
Speaker 1: really kind of the starter's pistol has been fired and
Speaker 1: you're off to the races here. And who tells you?
Speaker 1: Who gives you the official? Was it ed? It d
Speaker 1: take responsibility and call you and say we're going to
Speaker 1: replace you? Or how did you find it? It It was?
Speaker 1: It just some But I always say that Hollywood likes
Speaker 1: to take a note and they write down you're fired,
Speaker 1: and they put that note in a bottle and they
Speaker 1: throw off the end of the Santa Monica pear and
Speaker 1: they hope it gets to you. Yeah. I think I
Speaker 1: got it from Tim Zinnaman, the line producer faced the facer.
Speaker 1: My phone, It was my phone. Um. Then there was
Speaker 1: the followed a desperate scene in a sushi restaurant in Kent's, Queensland,
Speaker 1: where um, I seem to recall Um for ruiser. Um
Speaker 1: stood up and passionately. Um defended me. Um cried real tears,
Speaker 1: explained to Tim the bottomless pits of chaos and everlasting
Speaker 1: hell fire that would be opened if they made that decision.
Speaker 1: Rue was one hundred percent right. Uh, one hundred percent
Speaker 1: didn't listen to her. I think she said, if you
Speaker 1: do this, I will cut out my heart with the
Speaker 1: sushi life right here. And it was. It was a
Speaker 1: flabboratory scene that but if it's pointless, they weren't gonna
Speaker 1: listen to her. They didn't understand what they were doing
Speaker 1: and what was what was coming as a results, So
Speaker 1: then the documentary comes out a lost soul. And one
Speaker 1: of my favorite moments is for Rousa talks about going
Speaker 1: in to speak to Brando and she wants to talk
Speaker 1: to Brando, and Brando says, you know, what can I
Speaker 1: do for you? And she said, when we have these
Speaker 1: scenes together and I want to talk to you about
Speaker 1: the scenes, maybe we could chat a little about the
Speaker 1: scenes and maybe run some lines. And there's a pause
Speaker 1: and Brando says, oh no, no, he said, I haven't
Speaker 1: even read the script, and uh, do you feel Um?
Speaker 1: Because I'm somebody who as much as I worshiped Brando,
Speaker 1: and I do worship Brando and I and I went
Speaker 1: to go meet him at his home once and at
Speaker 1: a lengthy meeting, a lunch that went on for four
Speaker 1: hours while I was trying to enlist him to do
Speaker 1: a TV movie with him with me because I knew
Speaker 1: he wanted money. So we were gonna do Cat on
Speaker 1: a Hot Tin Roof for CBS. I was gonna play Brick,
Speaker 1: he was gonna play Big Dead. It was my one
Speaker 1: chance to work with the unensurable Brando. You know, this
Speaker 1: is Brando at a time when nobody would write a
Speaker 1: policy to hire him. And I went to his house
Speaker 1: and he was, you know, unhealthy, he was big. We
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about his acting career. He could
Speaker 1: tell he was pretty much done with though he didn't
Speaker 1: have any passion for that. I mean, Brandon was a
Speaker 1: guy who just stopped caring a long, long time ago.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like you dodged a bullet that you
Speaker 1: didn't have to deal with that or were you really
Speaker 1: looking forward to working with Brando? Um? Now, I was
Speaker 1: vastly looking forward to working with Brando, and I feel
Speaker 1: that one of the great tragedies of the Island of
Speaker 1: Dr Burrows, that we were deprived of a potentially great
Speaker 1: um Swan song performance by the man. I'm super sorry
Speaker 1: that I've heard about the chance to try and direct him.
Speaker 1: I did actually direct him a little with because um
Speaker 1: I also went up to Mulholland a bunch of times
Speaker 1: before I did. How did you approach him someone who?
Speaker 1: I mean when you when you go on a set.
Speaker 1: I'm not Marlon Brando, and I still go to want
Speaker 1: to set in the latter twenty years of my career,
Speaker 1: and people are reluctant to direct me. Well, they're too
Speaker 1: eager to direct me. They really feel that they have
Speaker 1: to come in with a whip and a chair and
Speaker 1: feel like they've got to kind of tame me of
Speaker 1: what I well, what path I might go off on.
Speaker 1: And so relationships between actors, forget about how celebrated you are.
Speaker 1: Relationships between actors who are experienced and directors can always
Speaker 1: be potentially thorny. How did you approach him when you
Speaker 1: talk to him? Well, I guess m We came into
Speaker 1: Morows through the character of Cuts, because Brando is still
Speaker 1: very hung up on Cuts from Apocalypse Now and kept
Speaker 1: trying to turn Moreau into cuts, suggesting initially that he
Speaker 1: should be wearing black, just be a face hanging in
Speaker 1: the shadows and disappear into darkness, which he'd done before
Speaker 1: on Apocalypse Now, and no intention going down that route.
Speaker 1: So instead, I seem to recall we entered into a
Speaker 1: very lengthy roundabout discussion about the horror of whiteness, and
Speaker 1: the particular horror of the ship of the shade of white,
Speaker 1: going through Melville and Moby Dick and Edgar Allen Poe
Speaker 1: and um the whole colonialist underpinnings of Well, it's just
Speaker 1: the number of shock horror moments in post stories which
Speaker 1: come down to being white, like Madeline Usher and her
Speaker 1: white dress outside the door and Roderick and the House
Speaker 1: of the Usher opens it, or the death of the
Speaker 1: characters in same manuscript found in the Bottle, or Arthur
Speaker 1: Gordon Perm surrounded by ice, the inhabitants of the black
Speaker 1: Island of Salal and Arthur Gordon Perm who have a
Speaker 1: horror of whiteness, the a bunch of different Yeah, Takidi
Speaker 1: lee is what the seagulls scream, and Arthur Gordon Perm
Speaker 1: keidy Lee, which is apparently the word for white in
Speaker 1: the post story, but even the seagulls scream and scream
Speaker 1: at the explorers. So this horror of whiteness theme and
Speaker 1: yeahs coming around through Melville as well. Um was something
Speaker 1: was I think the way I lead it with some
Speaker 1: brando and that's actually why he's wearing that white gauze,
Speaker 1: the white zinc cream. In the movie. It went to
Speaker 1: the opposite of the black. Um, here's we've got to
Speaker 1: get away from Kurts and go the other way. The
Speaker 1: white zinc cream was because of that. It's meant to
Speaker 1: be in the near future. It's meant to be in
Speaker 1: the original draft that Gottamp things after them a nuclear
Speaker 1: exchange legitimately worried about skin councer and the lack of
Speaker 1: the ozone layer, which but this reasoning has taken away
Speaker 1: in the Frankenheimer movies, so we never get an explanation
Speaker 1: as to wine Burrow is wearing this white zinc cream
Speaker 1: and these white veils when he's going outside. But there
Speaker 1: there is a legitimate reason for it. It's not just
Speaker 1: because he's screwing around. Um. If there had been something
Speaker 1: resembling a script and if it hadn't been a complete
Speaker 1: abbot far On the actual set, um Brando was also
Speaker 1: coming off the recent death of his daughter's cheyenne and
Speaker 1: was in terrible emotional shape. Um, and he wasn't given
Speaker 1: a lot of help in um in Australia. I don't
Speaker 1: think he got a lot of moral support out there.
Speaker 1: I think by the time he reached the place and
Speaker 1: found that the island was a total shambles, that the
Speaker 1: script had imploded. Um, yeah, he stopped caring. But there's
Speaker 1: there's the ghost of a performance and there, yeah, where
Speaker 1: you see that in the biography the that wonderful duck
Speaker 1: listened to me Marlon where once the daughter killed herself,
Speaker 1: it was just kind of much of the life went
Speaker 1: out of him. Um. So you take off several years
Speaker 1: before you're back on a set with Nick Cage and
Speaker 1: you're into the love crafty and vain there. I love
Speaker 1: real Lovecraft as well. How did that come together? How
Speaker 1: did you put that film together after how many years
Speaker 1: of taking off a series of events. I've always been
Speaker 1: a lifelong Lovecraft fan, been huge him since I was
Speaker 1: a kid. Really feel that the man's time has come
Speaker 1: the term for whatever reason, A lot of the concepts
Speaker 1: and the Lovecraft stories are landing extremely well now in
Speaker 1: the in the twenty one century, and that there's probably
Speaker 1: some kind of crazy reason for that. So it's been
Speaker 1: something of a crusade. It was. It was largely the
Speaker 1: commitment of Nick Cage that enabled Color out of Space
Speaker 1: to get made the Color out of Spaces of script
Speaker 1: you wrote, Yeah, I adapted Color out of Space from
Speaker 1: the classic HP Lovecraft story myself co writer. How did
Speaker 1: you connect with Nick? Yeah? I was put in touch
Speaker 1: with Nick and around about way it was actually I
Speaker 1: think the producer Josh Waller who managed to get a
Speaker 1: copy of the script into into Nick's hands. Then he
Speaker 1: read the thing and it turned out he too was
Speaker 1: a Lovecraft fan, uh, connected with the material and wanted
Speaker 1: to be on Nathan Gardner. That then enabled us to
Speaker 1: get the Beast rolling. We only had Nick for four weeks. Um, um,
Speaker 1: we're basically able to put together a two month shoot
Speaker 1: in Portugal which I got the thing done. What's next?
Speaker 1: What do you do next? Well, um, I want to
Speaker 1: make another Lovecraft movie and I've got a script and
Speaker 1: I think it's the best god damnthing I've ever written.
Speaker 1: I think my entire life has been leading up to it.
Speaker 1: And it's a movie called Dunwich. It's much horror away
Speaker 1: and it's going to take it. We need to go
Speaker 1: back on campus and we need to go back to
Speaker 1: Miss Quoton at university now in the present day, um um,
Speaker 1: confront the things that are in that story. And yeah,
Speaker 1: what I wanted to ask you is, what do you
Speaker 1: consider making a Lovecraft movie? Yes, this is ending. I
Speaker 1: mean most of this is ending on a note I
Speaker 1: only dreamed of. I mean, it's very hard for me
Speaker 1: to pitch myself. And here I am with you. I
Speaker 1: am a great admirer of yours. I think you are.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is an overworked word, but you are
Speaker 1: a visionary. You are a visionary filmmaker. I will come
Speaker 1: and just play the butler. I don't care. I'll ring
Speaker 1: the dinner bell and say, you know, dessert has served,
Speaker 1: my Lord, I don't care. I'd like you to read
Speaker 1: for Professor Armitage, who is the lead and he's also
Speaker 1: essentially the script's version of Richard Dawkins. I'm very interested
Speaker 1: in Dawkins, a series about religious memes, and consider that
Speaker 1: the Cosla Mythos is a perfect illustration of his series.
Speaker 1: I think you are an amazing filmmaker and I really
Speaker 1: want to explore this with you because I would love
Speaker 1: to work with you. I would love to work with you,
Speaker 1: and I would love to work with you. Sir. I
Speaker 1: think you're a super fine actor and it's a run privilege,
Speaker 1: Director Richard Stanley. You can learn more about his work
Speaker 1: at the official Richard Stanley dot com. This episode was
Speaker 1: recorded at c DM Studios in New York City. Were
Speaker 1: produced by Kathleen Russo, Zack McNeice, and Maureen Hoban. Our
Speaker 1: engineers Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Daniel Gingrich.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to you
Speaker 1: by iHeart Radio.