Speaker 1: I'm Anny, I'm Noah, And this is no such thing.
Speaker 1: The show where we settle our dumb arguments and yours
Speaker 1: by actually doing the research. On today's episode, we're getting
Speaker 1: to the bottom of the twin film phenomenon.
Speaker 2: No, there's no no such thing.
Speaker 1: No touch than.
Speaker 3: Touch, thank.
Speaker 1: Touch, thank.
Speaker 4: Touch, thank you.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're here to talk about twin films and why
Speaker 1: they happen so frequently. But first, obviously we have to
Speaker 1: know what a twin film is. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: a pair of movies that have extraordinarily similar premises. Uh,
Speaker 1: like that I like that pronunciation, and that release within
Speaker 1: a year of each other. There there are some outliers
Speaker 1: with this, like there are some twin films that come
Speaker 1: out more than a year apart.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: And there are some outliers that have to do with
Speaker 1: the plot as well, Like there are some movies that
Speaker 1: seem similar at first, but then when you watch them,
Speaker 1: they're not really that similar. We're dealing with that right
Speaker 1: now with Gerrameal del Toros Frankenstein in this movie coming
Speaker 1: out next year from Maggie Gillenhall. I think it's called
Speaker 1: The Bride. Sometimes both of the twin films are popular,
Speaker 1: like Finding Nemo and a Sharks Tale.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, well I forgot about the Sharks two. I
Speaker 6: was defining Nemo home, so we didn't. We didn't watch Sharks.
Speaker 1: Finding Nemo was definitely I think the more popular one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know was a classic, like Substitute Teacher.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like I remember renting that. I think renting
Speaker 3: the DVD or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you weren't going to theater that, you know, Finding
Speaker 1: Nemo we had the tape.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And Will Smith delivers a masterclass in Shark Tale.
Speaker 6: And my man's psyched has just begged me not to
Speaker 6: myrtalize all.
Speaker 5: Y'all up in here right now.
Speaker 2: I might listen to him, but I might not.
Speaker 6: And that depends on individual behavior of all the individuals
Speaker 6: in here individually.
Speaker 1: In other instances, one twin film is just way more
Speaker 1: popular than the other one to the to the point
Speaker 1: where you might not have even heard of the other one.
Speaker 1: So one example is Madagascar. We all know and love
Speaker 1: ye I'm I'm movement movement, movement, movement, not knocked up.
Speaker 1: There was a Disney movie that came out the same
Speaker 1: year called The Wild, which was the same plot. Animals
Speaker 1: from the Central Park zoo end up in Africa. Oh,
Speaker 1: and it had like I had, like a real cast
Speaker 1: wild Have you ever heard of this movie? No? Oh,
Speaker 1: I need to see it. Let me see some imagery.
Speaker 1: It just it looks like a generic, like a less
Speaker 1: stylized version of Madagascar. But in the cast we had
Speaker 1: Key for Sutherland, Eddie Lizard, Richard Kind was in there,
Speaker 1: William Shatner. And it's like the same animals too. There's
Speaker 1: a graft.
Speaker 5: Who's the zebra?
Speaker 1: There's no zebra? Okay, there's a draft in this one. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I thought that was interesting making a zoom movie, it
Speaker 1: would have a draft in line. But of course, the
Speaker 1: most referred to example of twin films is of course
Speaker 1: Armageddon and Deep Impact. Uh, we're gonna save that one
Speaker 1: for later when we talked to the what went wrong folks,
Speaker 1: But from my recollection, I think like Armageddon was like
Speaker 1: the big, dumb, loud one, and Deep Impact was supposed
Speaker 1: to be the higher brow, smartly written one. We'll see
Speaker 1: if that holds up. But before we get into like
Speaker 1: why exactly twin films happened so regularly with so much frequency,
Speaker 1: what are some other ones that I'm missing? Like, what
Speaker 1: are some big twin films.
Speaker 6: There was the like rom coms of no Strings attached,
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, and then friends with Benefits.
Speaker 1: I'm a doctor, I worked eighty hours a week. I
Speaker 1: need someone who's going to be in my bed at
Speaker 1: two am, who I don't have to eat breakfast with.
Speaker 1: I'm emotionally unavailable.
Speaker 2: I'm emotionally damaged.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying, No emotions, just sux.
Speaker 6: Those came out around the same time, around you know,
Speaker 6: like friends who are love interests or artists.
Speaker 1: You were the two Kutcher and uh who Natalie Portman
Speaker 1: Natalie Portman, and then the other one was Myla Cunis
Speaker 1: and Timberlake. And that's funny because Ashton Kutcher is married
Speaker 1: to me Lacunas. They should have just had them in
Speaker 1: the same movie.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I don't know if they were married at the time.
Speaker 6: I don't think they were, probably not, but they were
Speaker 6: on that seventies show together, which is how.
Speaker 1: They since then more than oh you're someone someone looked
Speaker 1: this up, Jame not not now?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What are some other ones? Like one I remember is
Speaker 1: Dante's Peak. Yeah, I was just thinking that in.
Speaker 3: The tone of Dante's Peak, a volcano is turning nature into.
Speaker 1: A nightmare, which was Pierce Brosnan like disaster movie that
Speaker 1: takes place in the Pacific Northwest. You know, they're escaping
Speaker 1: from a volcanic a volcanic eruption. And this was an
Speaker 1: example of one that was way more popular than the
Speaker 1: other one, I think because I hadn't even known about
Speaker 1: this movie Volcano with Tommy Lee Jones in a.
Speaker 2: City where anything can happen on April twenty fifth.
Speaker 1: It will same year or within a year of each other,
Speaker 1: and same exact plot. But just I had not heard
Speaker 1: of that one. Have you guys heard of Volcano?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but definitely Dante's peak was like always on, like yeah, TBS, yeah,
Speaker 3: TVs like constantly.
Speaker 1: Another classic one that's more recent is Olympus has Fallen,
Speaker 1: White House Down.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we're talking about the safety of the president of
Speaker 6: the United States.
Speaker 5: We're talking about all of them more than.
Speaker 1: That, sir, Which is funny because they also both have
Speaker 1: black presidents in them. Hey, what's funny?
Speaker 5: We had run all right? People forget there's been one.
Speaker 1: We did have one here. It made sense. Yes, I
Speaker 1: think Morgan Freeman is the president in one of them,
Speaker 1: and Jamie Fox is the president and I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: right whichever one say, yeah, that's crazy, that's my president
Speaker 1: right there.
Speaker 5: It's like he's young.
Speaker 1: So Olympus has fallen? Is the Gerard Butler one, Yeah, okay?
Speaker 1: And Channing Tatum's in White Houstone, I think, so White
Speaker 1: House Down will be Channing Tatum and Jamie Fox. Is
Speaker 1: Jamie Fox the president or is he just any president?
Speaker 1: James Sawyer?
Speaker 5: Oh wow?
Speaker 1: And before any Olympus has fallen heads send me angry emails.
Speaker 1: I should clear that Morgan Freeman's character is only technically
Speaker 1: acting president. The elected president is Aaron Eckert. But of course,
Speaker 1: there is one pair of twin films that the three
Speaker 1: of us have spent a lot of time debating way back,
Speaker 1: starting in twenty sixteen, and that is a Bugs Life
Speaker 1: for the colony and for a press but everywhere versus Ants.
Speaker 1: He's willing to live for the colony, to fight for
Speaker 1: the colony, to die.
Speaker 5: For the colony.
Speaker 2: This guy's crazy.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: The reason we've been debating this is that Noah and
Speaker 1: I feel like Ants is the obvious better movie, and
Speaker 1: Devin thinks that we're crazy, of course, and I actually
Speaker 1: want to break the differences between these movies down for
Speaker 1: the listeners, because I think understanding the differences between these
Speaker 1: movies might actually be useful for us in terms of
Speaker 1: trying to figure out why films happen in the first place.
Speaker 1: So let's start with the plot. Both movies are about
Speaker 1: ants that spark a revolution of sorts against their oppressors.
Speaker 1: In a bug's life, the oppressors are grasshoppers, evil grasshoppers.
Speaker 1: They're not really dynamic. They're just evil. They just come
Speaker 1: and bully and eat everything. So where is it?
Speaker 5: Where's my phone?
Speaker 2: It's a little more interesting.
Speaker 1: In Ants, the ants are in a war with these
Speaker 1: termites that are encroaching on their territory. But the war
Speaker 1: general for the ants is like sending the ants that
Speaker 1: are loyal to the queen off to war on a
Speaker 1: suicide mission so that he and the remaining ants can
Speaker 1: enact at coup d'eta damite colonies.
Speaker 2: Sir, that's suicide exactly.
Speaker 3: You have the list I asked for, Yes, General, these
Speaker 3: are the units loyal to the queen.
Speaker 1: So, Devin, why don't you tell us a little bit
Speaker 1: about why you're wrong to think that a bugs life
Speaker 1: is better and more interesting than that? Plot.
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, both of these are supposed to
Speaker 5: be kids movies.
Speaker 1: That's true allegedly.
Speaker 6: Okay, uh so A Bugs Life is picture our universe. Basically,
Speaker 6: A Bugs Life looks like I don't know if there
Speaker 6: is some sort of like Easter Egg. It looks like
Speaker 6: it's a toy story. Yeah, like that style, very similar style.
Speaker 6: You zoom in on want to Andy's Toys in the
Speaker 6: grass somewhere, and you saw A bug Life happening, You'd
Speaker 6: like this makes sense. Yes, so toy story iconic, A
Speaker 6: Bugs Life iconic. Okay, they live in the same world.
Speaker 6: Just just remember that. The thing that I love about
Speaker 6: A Bugs Life is it has so many memorable scenes.
Speaker 6: We did it back to backwashing of A Bugs Life
Speaker 6: and Ants. You know, I had not watched this film
Speaker 6: since I don't know, well, I was a child.
Speaker 5: A long time ago.
Speaker 6: That tracks and I had rememb scenes from A Bug's Life,
Speaker 6: which is crazy all these years. It's not something that
Speaker 6: really comes up, you know, in pop culture or anything
Speaker 6: that you're like, you know, I'm not, And I was like,
Speaker 6: oh my god. I remember the rain, specifically that rain
Speaker 6: scene where the ants are running for their lives because
Speaker 6: the rain drops are like, yes, and it is a
Speaker 6: thing that, like, from my childhood to now, I thought
Speaker 6: about and I didn't realize that I was thinking about
Speaker 6: it because of A bugs lif When it rains and
Speaker 6: I'm outside and I see bugs, I thought like, oh, shoot,
Speaker 6: it's to go down. And then when I just watched
Speaker 6: it more recently, it's like, oh, it's because of a
Speaker 6: Bug's life. And that, I think is when you think
Speaker 6: of childhood movies, those scenes that stay with you, that change.
Speaker 5: The way you view the world.
Speaker 6: Wow, okay, this is why we make films. And when
Speaker 6: we watched ants if it felt like some weird Woody
Speaker 6: Allen nightmare. Okay, yeah, well it's dark, it's very moody.
Speaker 6: It's just like, I'm like, what, this is not for kids.
Speaker 6: This feels like some adult was going through something and
Speaker 6: they're forcing their kids to sit down and watch this.
Speaker 6: It's like it feels like divorce dad energy.
Speaker 1: A bugs Life is certainly more colorful and easier on
Speaker 1: the eyes. And it's funny.
Speaker 6: A Buzs Life is hilarious. Scene the scene, every line
Speaker 6: is a joke. I'm watching ANTS, I'm like, what, nothing,
Speaker 6: It really is not funny.
Speaker 3: It's kind of depressing, and it's funny because there's an
Speaker 3: there's PTSD.
Speaker 1: It's that's it's funny. It's kind of cob you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's funny that the Ants have trauma.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, I don't think trauma is funny, but you
Speaker 5: know some of us, some of us, I guess.
Speaker 1: So let's go cast for cast. Here. You got Kevin
Speaker 1: Spacey obviously as the villain Hopper.
Speaker 5: Playing the proper role. Yeah, Evan Spacey, the villain, a
Speaker 5: bad guy playing exactly great casting if you think about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but this was the way before he was They
Speaker 1: knew there's something darkening. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: Julia Luis Dreyfus plays Atta.
Speaker 5: Yeah, love interest.
Speaker 1: Hayden Penny Tier is a dot the I think the
Speaker 1: Little Girl aunt Richard Kind. You've got Dennis Leary. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's pretty stacked cast. But let's look at
Speaker 1: Ants because Ants has some fucking hitters in the cast.
Speaker 1: Woody Allen obviously.
Speaker 5: Woody Allen, it's a voice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, your boy, Kevin space no problem.
Speaker 2: Okay, we don't need to go there.
Speaker 1: Both films have problematic actors and memory. This is a wash. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they cancel each other out. Gene Hackman is Mandible, who
Speaker 1: I believe is like the War General r P. Sharon
Speaker 1: Stone is Bala. You got Dan Ackroyd, You've got Danny Glover.
Speaker 1: Jennifer Lopez plays ass Teca Celeste Stallone. I mean this
Speaker 1: is nuts. Christopher Walking Jim Yeah, I'm gonna say that
Speaker 1: the Ants cast edges out A Bugs Life cast in
Speaker 1: terms of, you know, real hitters.
Speaker 5: If you just want to put names on the board, sure, yeah,
Speaker 5: what in the world? Okay, but can you name what
Speaker 5: happened these people did in the movie?
Speaker 1: Gene Hackman is Manda.
Speaker 5: Jennifer Lopez was.
Speaker 1: Well, you know that's true. I don't have a I
Speaker 1: don't have an argument against that. Sly Stallone is in
Speaker 1: there as a character that looks like him.
Speaker 3: I remember this, and I believe Chris Walking too is
Speaker 3: kind of Yeah, they do tell me that's what Sharks
Speaker 3: did too, which I think all animated movies should do that. No, well,
Speaker 3: could you talk a little bit about why you like
Speaker 3: Ants the film better than A Bug's Life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just I like more mature sorts of things.
Speaker 5: I like a PG movie.
Speaker 1: If I can get one, you know.
Speaker 3: I like kind of edgy humor, like that, So, you know,
Speaker 3: I was, you know, kind of refreshing myself on Ants,
Speaker 3: and you know, it's it really is a proper war movie.
Speaker 3: There's nods to Apocalypse now there's there was one scene
Speaker 3: that really set up to me, especially on our rewatch,
Speaker 3: was there's this huge, real pretty serious battle scene and
Speaker 3: then the leader he's decapitated.
Speaker 1: The second I remember this.
Speaker 3: Don't make my mistake, don't follow it as your whole
Speaker 3: life thinking for yourself anyway, the bodyless head is you know,
Speaker 3: kind of giving his final words of like whoa this is?
Speaker 5: Is wild?
Speaker 1: That's a dark movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just a little for me as an adult
Speaker 3: watching this, not sharing it with kids, it's more interesting
Speaker 3: to watch today. Oh grant, I didn't really watch Bugs
Speaker 3: Life as a kid. I watched it, but it was
Speaker 3: never like on rotation for.
Speaker 1: Me for whatever reason. So it didn't imprint the way
Speaker 1: where it's like these certain little scenes.
Speaker 5: You didn't have a good watch I say that? Did
Speaker 5: I say that?
Speaker 1: I did not say that. I enjoyed watching both of them.
Speaker 2: I like picking we're picking one.
Speaker 5: That's the prompt.
Speaker 2: I simply enjoy the.
Speaker 5: More, And I like you had more fun watching Ants.
Speaker 1: There's a little bit more of I guess they kind
Speaker 1: of have different goals. And that's what's tough about this is,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that they're twin films, they're not necessarily
Speaker 1: one for want. They're not so easy to compare. And
Speaker 1: I like the kind of ugly, garish art style of ANTS. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they look like something to look at.
Speaker 3: And I appreciate the kind of neurotic witticisms of you know,
Speaker 3: the Woody Allen esque character.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think here in New York the humor was really interesting.
Speaker 1: But that's not to say I disliked A Bug's Life.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's definitely I.
Speaker 6: Know, I know you two didn't dislike it because y'all
Speaker 6: were cracking up, gigglin the whole time.
Speaker 1: Again, not much being said. You think about sitting with
Speaker 1: when we're watching ANTS, taking notes.
Speaker 5: I watched movies to be entertained.
Speaker 1: Okay, you can do both ideally, you get both ideally.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So now we know what a twin film is and
Speaker 1: we've been through many, many examples. After the break, we're
Speaker 1: gonna chat with the hosts of the What Went Wrong
Speaker 1: podcast the show about the film and and see if
Speaker 1: we can get their thoughts on why twin films happened
Speaker 1: so regularly in the first place. All right, We're now
Speaker 1: joined by Lizzie and Chris from the popular What Went
Speaker 1: Wrong podcast. Thank you guys for joining us. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for having us. It's an honor to be here.
Speaker 1: You guys are so much fancier than us.
Speaker 2: You have mugste Yeah, yeah, we try, we try.
Speaker 1: Before you guys joined us, we were talking about this
Speaker 1: phenomenon of the twin films. We had just ended a
Speaker 1: rigorous debate about whether A Bugs Life or Ants is
Speaker 1: the better film. Noah and I are on the ants
Speaker 1: on team Ants, and Devin is team of Bugs Life.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious what your guys take. Are you have
Speaker 1: a strong opinion you too.
Speaker 4: With your Aunts defending I am I'm done. I'm very
Speaker 4: interested to I can't wait to hear what your argument
Speaker 4: was for both sides. But now I'm mad.
Speaker 2: I would also lean a Bugs Life, although not as
Speaker 2: hard as Lizzie. I appreciate as the manifestation of Jeffrey
Speaker 2: Katzenberg in a movie, but I still prefer I think, overall,
Speaker 2: a Bugs Life. But I have kids that age like
Speaker 2: I would show my daughter a Bugs Life. I probably
Speaker 2: wouldn't show her aunts At this point.
Speaker 1: I agree with that.
Speaker 6: It's an enjoyable film. It's so much fun, so memorable. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and it feels like, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I don't have to think of Alan marrying his
Speaker 2: stepdaughter while I'm watching it, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's you have to do you have to think about
Speaker 1: Kevin Spacey.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't need Woody Allen as the romantic lead.
Speaker 4: And you want to know, my biggest problem with Ants
Speaker 4: was that I literally screamed at the TV when I
Speaker 4: was rewatching it for this episode they're human teeth. It's
Speaker 4: the most horrible, Yeah, says so creepy horrible when he's
Speaker 4: chewing on the plastic. I was like, I'm this sit,
Speaker 4: I'm done.
Speaker 1: Yes, So Chris and Lizzie. When it comes to Ants
Speaker 1: and A Bug's Life coming out at the same time,
Speaker 1: is it true that there was an alleged intellectual property theft?
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Speaker 2: Well, my understanding is so development on A Bug's Life
Speaker 2: began before development on Ants, and so John Lassiter was
Speaker 2: the director of A Bug's Life, who was written by
Speaker 2: Andrew Stanton. Joe Ranft, who actually does the voice of
Speaker 2: Heimlich in the movie. Was co story creator with those two,
Speaker 2: and this was a well known project within the animation community.
Speaker 2: And I have a slightly different thesis as to why
Speaker 2: these two movies are both around bugs. Lizz about Toy
Speaker 2: Story on our podcast, and one of the reasons that
Speaker 2: they chose toys was because highly reflective surfaces as a
Speaker 2: texture are a lot easier to animate. At this point
Speaker 2: in the technologies, like maturation process in the mid nineteen nineties,
Speaker 2: it's really hard to do hair. This is why like Monsters, Inc.
Speaker 2: And Shrek don't come until the early two thousands. A
Speaker 2: bug's Life makes a lot of sense because, okay, well
Speaker 2: we can animate bugs, right they have these they're exoskeletons,
Speaker 2: they're shiny. This makes sense. Also, it's ants. We can
Speaker 2: make one model and then we can clone it a
Speaker 2: bunch of times, and it's like Andy and all his
Speaker 2: friends at the birthday party and Toy Story. So the
Speaker 2: allegations were that Lasseter and Katzenberg had more unfriendly terms.
Speaker 2: Katzenberg acrimoniously left Disney. He felt he had been owed
Speaker 2: a higher position by then CEO Michael Eisner. He was
Speaker 2: looked over after Lizzie remind David Wells or Frank Wells.
Speaker 2: I can never remember.
Speaker 4: Oh man, I want I say it's Frank Wells, but
Speaker 4: let me double check. He's the he was the head
Speaker 4: of Disney who I'm sure you guys know about this,
Speaker 4: But he died unexpectedly in helicopter crash.
Speaker 2: It's Frank Wells, so frankly.
Speaker 4: And it's pretty wild because you know, we talked about
Speaker 4: this in Toy Story, but this guy dies in a
Speaker 4: helicopter crash. And then Jeffrey Katzenberg is like, oh, he's dead.
Speaker 4: Is it my turn? Is it my turn?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 2: What's up with the promotion? Let's get this going?
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Katzenberg leaves. He ends up suing Disney for an unpaid
Speaker 2: bonus of well over one hundred million dollars. He also
Speaker 2: was on the you know, Michael Ovitz, formerly of CAAA,
Speaker 2: is coming in. It's a very messy time. DreamWorks gets built,
Speaker 2: and obviously Pixar starts working with Disney for their distribution
Speaker 2: of Toy Story and then A Bug's Life. And so
Speaker 2: the accusation is that that Katzenberg stole the idea for
Speaker 2: A Bug's Life or ants from a Bug's Life after
Speaker 2: having soundboard conversations with Lassiter, who felt that he could
Speaker 2: trust Katzenberg. On Katzenberg's side, my understanding is he has asserted,
Speaker 2: although I've heard also that he has kind of admitted
Speaker 2: as much that he may have taken this idea from Lassitter.
Speaker 2: He has asserted that there was a pitch for a
Speaker 2: movie called Army Ants back in nineteen eighty eight while
Speaker 2: he was at Disney Animation that was about a worker
Speaker 2: aunt trying to bestow the benefits of individuality upon their
Speaker 2: colony that went nowhere, and that that's kind of where
Speaker 2: the idea originated, and then.
Speaker 5: He picked it up.
Speaker 2: My guess, my best guess, and you guys can tell me, like,
Speaker 2: I don't know if we know the truth, but my
Speaker 2: best guess is there are technological limitations in place, and
Speaker 2: there's only so many types of characters that you can
Speaker 2: do at this point in time. And Toy Story had
Speaker 2: already come out, and I think Toy Soldiers is maybe
Speaker 2: around this time as well, and so like the DreamWorks
Speaker 2: is this upstart, we probably don't want to do toys. Okay,
Speaker 2: we'll do bugs, and we could probably come close to
Speaker 2: doing bugs. Pixars doing bugs. They just bought PDI. I'd
Speaker 2: also heard that PDI specific data Imaging had a BUGS
Speaker 2: treatment in the works as well that was also different
Speaker 2: than a bugs life. So again, my instinct in this
Speaker 2: could get come to my big unifying theory about twin
Speaker 2: films is that maybe Katzenberg stole it, or maybe he
Speaker 2: was mulling on this and he saw Pixar as proof
Speaker 2: that this was a good direction for DreamWorks to go.
Speaker 1: Before we get your guys's thoughts and theories about why
Speaker 1: twin films kind of occur so regularly, or at least
Speaker 1: they seem to occur so regularly. I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about Armageddon.
Speaker 2: Hitting a rock from the outside and we'll be the
Speaker 2: job so we knew this thing from the inside. Ah,
Speaker 2: we drill from bringing the World's prest.
Speaker 1: Dave Cordriller and Deep Impact, two comments were discovered. Is
Speaker 1: on a collision course with Earth.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen those movies in a very long time,
Speaker 1: but from what I recall, I want to see if
Speaker 1: this is accurate. Armageddon is kind of like the big,
Speaker 1: big dumb blockbuster, and Deep Impact is a slightly more,
Speaker 1: slightly smarter, higher brow disaster film.
Speaker 5: Is that right?
Speaker 1: Am I making that out? No? No, you're right.
Speaker 4: But here's what's funny.
Speaker 2: They're closer than we remember. Yea, they are.
Speaker 4: Closer and honestly, I so we did this for our
Speaker 4: live show, which was a blast. We did these two movies,
Speaker 4: and I went into it remembering the same thing, Like
Speaker 4: I loved Deep Impact when I was a kid, and
Speaker 4: I was like, this is the smart movie. This is
Speaker 4: the movie that carries about science, and I can't wait
Speaker 4: to rewatch this. And I rewatched it and I was like, God,
Speaker 4: I'm bored. I miss Armageddon and you watch Armageddon and
Speaker 4: it's just insane. It's completely insane. I loved it.
Speaker 1: Can you show us about the similarities and the differences
Speaker 1: between these two movies?
Speaker 4: Sure? So you you know, you have an asteroid that
Speaker 4: is hurtling towards Earth and the only way to get
Speaker 4: rid of it is to blow it up, and then
Speaker 4: from there, from there it just the paths diverge in
Speaker 4: the wood.
Speaker 2: But the how they're going to deal with it is
Speaker 2: the same blow it up. They're gonna blow it up
Speaker 2: by drilling and sticking a nuke in the hole, right,
Speaker 2: and with.
Speaker 4: Deep Impact, it makes like a decent amount of sense
Speaker 4: how they're gonna go about this. They're gonna use astronauts,
Speaker 4: which you know they're going to space, so that that tracks.
Speaker 4: And then you have Armageddon where.
Speaker 2: This is where Lizzie and I differ in our opinions.
Speaker 2: By the way, this is the good, good idea.
Speaker 4: You have Armageddon where Bruce Willis walks in to Billy
Speaker 4: Bob Thornton at NASA and he's like, I believe the
Speaker 4: line is something along the lines of, you know, you
Speaker 4: want to.
Speaker 2: Send these boys into space. Fine, I'm sure they'll make
Speaker 2: good astronauts.
Speaker 1: They don't know.
Speaker 2: Jack about drilling. They don't know jack about drilling. I
Speaker 2: haven't drilling for forty years. And then he basically says, look,
Speaker 2: you need less astronauts, more oil drillers, and they send like.
Speaker 4: One William Fickner into space, and then the rest are
Speaker 4: all oil drillers and you know what they do it, guys,
Speaker 4: They get it done.
Speaker 2: So they're very similar in a lot of ways, they're
Speaker 2: very structurally different. What's interesting is obviously army and presents
Speaker 2: itself as an action movie. Deep Impact is effectively a
Speaker 2: soap opera. It's a melodrama at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: But it is interesting both were very successful. Armageddon was
Speaker 2: more successful at the box office ultimately, and the I
Speaker 2: don't know if you guys came across this advice. Some
Speaker 2: executive at one point say, you know, when you're dealing
Speaker 2: with the twin film situation, the key is to come
Speaker 2: out first. But the more I looked into it, I
Speaker 2: don't think that's really the case. The key is, if
Speaker 2: you're the lesser of the two films, come out.
Speaker 5: Come out first.
Speaker 2: What's more important, meaning like, if you don't have the
Speaker 2: star power, if you don't think you have the marketing punch,
Speaker 2: maybe you don't think your movies is good, you should
Speaker 2: probably land first. That that might be good advice.
Speaker 4: You know, as I was watching Ants and a Bugs
Speaker 4: Life and also thinking about Deep In, Back to Armageddon
Speaker 4: and so many of these other twin films, it does
Speaker 4: seem to me that the dichotomy is often one of them.
Speaker 4: As you explain this, Manny, one of them is set
Speaker 4: up as like this is the smart movie, like this
Speaker 4: is the one for all the smart people, and the
Speaker 4: other ones like this is the big dumb one, this
Speaker 4: is the big dump gun one, And that seems to
Speaker 4: be true kind of across a lot of these, and
Speaker 4: I just wonder why, Like, is that just how they
Speaker 4: start to differentiate them as they realize that they're on
Speaker 4: parallel paths.
Speaker 5: But I don't know.
Speaker 4: I'm curious what you guys think.
Speaker 1: It's a great question, especially thinking about some of the
Speaker 1: other popular twin films examples, Like we were talking earlier
Speaker 1: about Dante's Peak versus Volcano and talking about how like
Speaker 1: in some of these instances, one of the movie just
Speaker 1: becomes way more popular and famous than the other one.
Speaker 1: I actually hadn't heard of Volcano until I was researching
Speaker 1: twin films movies. But it's not like a no name
Speaker 1: movie like Tommy Lee Jones is the star of it.
Speaker 1: So I haven't seen Volcano. I don't know if that
Speaker 1: one is branded or marketed as like a dumber or okay, dumb?
Speaker 4: Is it as dumb as Dante's Peak.
Speaker 2: It's dumber in the sense that Dante's Peak is making
Speaker 2: an attempt to model itself after the eruption of Mount
Speaker 2: Saint Helens and Volcano is there's a volcano in La
Speaker 2: This is crazy.
Speaker 1: That come from? So wait, what is the story behind
Speaker 1: Armageddon and Deep Impact? How did those come out at
Speaker 1: the same time.
Speaker 2: Well, this one's really interesting. A lot of twin films
Speaker 2: are disaster films, not surprisingly, and you know, Hollywood, the
Speaker 2: peak of disaster films in Hollywood was the nineteen seventies, right.
Speaker 2: You had Airport exclamation Point in nineteen seventy, which shockingly
Speaker 2: made a ton of money. Things kind of hit their
Speaker 2: zenis with Towering Inferno, which actually was competing twin films
Speaker 2: that came together from two different studios. Irwin Allen was
Speaker 2: the producer behind a lot of these big, big disaster movies,
Speaker 2: and they were really an exploration of the peak of
Speaker 2: what could be done with modern special effects, miniatures, incredible
Speaker 2: stage builds, et cetera. That tails off at the end
Speaker 2: of the nineteen seventies. You have some attempts at eco
Speaker 2: horror like Swarm and stuff like that, and then we
Speaker 2: get into like action blockbusters of the eighties. But then
Speaker 2: you have a new technological revolution with Jurassic Park in
Speaker 2: the early nineteen nineties, and all of a sudden, we
Speaker 2: have all these new tools in our toolbox that we
Speaker 2: can play with, and so then you get this new
Speaker 2: renaissance of disaster films. You know, Twister with Jon Debant,
Speaker 2: Titanic for example, and obviously Deep Impact and Army Again.
Speaker 2: And so what's interesting is one of the films has
Speaker 2: its roots in the nineteen seventies. Deep Impact is Xanak
Speaker 2: and Brown who had produced Jaws and a number of
Speaker 2: other films, and they were going to do an adaptation
Speaker 2: of When World's Collide, which was a very famous book
Speaker 2: about another planet hitting Earth. And I think the problem
Speaker 2: was development kind of spiraled until the disaster film renaissance
Speaker 2: had run its course at the end of the seventies.
Speaker 2: They put the script in a drawer. Early nineties, they
Speaker 2: pulled the script out of the drawer. They kind of
Speaker 2: stopped working together, but they say, hey, we're going to
Speaker 2: come back for one last hurrah. They take it to
Speaker 2: Steven Spielberg at DreamWorks, who says, great, I'm going to
Speaker 2: direct this, and we have all these brand new technological tools.
Speaker 2: He's just done Jurassic Park, like, we can actually show
Speaker 2: an asteroid hitting the Earth. And then Lizzie, maybe you
Speaker 2: can talk a little bit about how this idea may
Speaker 2: have found its way to rival Studio Disney in the
Speaker 2: mid nineteen nineties.
Speaker 4: This is another dream Works in Disney rivalry across these
Speaker 4: two movies, but so unconfirmed, but there is reason to
Speaker 4: believe that the screenwriter for Uh, Deep Impact, one of
Speaker 4: the screenwriters may have had lunch with Michael Ovitz.
Speaker 2: We lunch with an unnamed president of Disney, yes, and
Speaker 2: we believe it might be Michael Ovitz.
Speaker 4: Right, and this is Bruce Joel Rubin. It could be
Speaker 4: Michael Ovitz. But regardless, they sat down, they had lunch,
Speaker 4: and you know, he asks Bruce what he's working on?
Speaker 4: What are you working on? And Bruce is like, wow,
Speaker 4: you know, I probably shouldn't tell you. It's for dream
Speaker 4: for It's for DreamWorks. And he's like, we're buddies. We're
Speaker 4: buddies here, you know, we're just guys, just a couple
Speaker 4: of guys.
Speaker 2: Michael Ovitz formerly Steven Spielberg's agent, so maybe said to him, Hey,
Speaker 2: I've worked with Steve for you know, twenty years. We're friends.
Speaker 4: I'm a safe space. So anyway, they have this lunch,
Speaker 4: Bruce explains what he's working on. He you know, gives
Speaker 4: the full elevator pitch and more for Deep Impact, and
Speaker 4: then taking notes during the lunch, which at that point
Speaker 4: you should probably stop talking yes, that's how I remember
Speaker 4: what I like about my friends. You know, it's so
Speaker 4: funny because shortly thereafter, Michael Bay and Jonathan Hensley go
Speaker 4: in to pitch Armageddon and they have like the loosest
Speaker 4: of loose napkin scribbled ideas for this movie and they
Speaker 4: go in and the pitch is so fast. Disney's like, yes, Greenlit,
Speaker 4: it's happening. We're doing it. And by the way, it's
Speaker 4: called Armageddon, and you're gonna be in the theaters in
Speaker 4: you know, a year. And the theory is that, you know,
Speaker 4: perhaps they were already noodling this after that lunch, and
Speaker 4: so when Michael Bay came in and he was like, uh,
Speaker 4: what about astronauts and oil drillers, they were like, done, done, Michael,
Speaker 4: we love it.
Speaker 5: I can't wait.
Speaker 2: And what's funny is Armageddon is the production that worked
Speaker 2: closely with NASA, and so it's.
Speaker 4: The one that they had to have approved by NASA
Speaker 4: for scientific accuracy.
Speaker 2: And what is interesting too, Lizzie, you know, as we
Speaker 2: talked about in our episode, is there were two other
Speaker 2: asteroid related projects in development. So James Cameron's Bright Angel
Speaker 2: Falling was set up at I believe twentieth century Fox
Speaker 2: at the time, with Peter Hyams maybe set to direct.
Speaker 2: That never went anywhere, but if you can read the script.
Speaker 2: I found a copy of it, and it's clear somebody
Speaker 2: ripped off somebody because between Armagedon, armag has thown so
Speaker 2: much from Bright Angel Falling or vice versa. And then
Speaker 2: you also have Asteroid, which becomes an NBC mini series
Speaker 2: that's released I think in the back half of nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety seven.
Speaker 1: And all of this isn't coming out of thin air, right,
Speaker 1: Like all of these all of these movies and TV
Speaker 1: shows about asteroids were inspired by the news of a
Speaker 1: comet that NASA foundin Yeah.
Speaker 2: The Shoemaker Levy comet had hit Jupiter, and there was
Speaker 2: all of this imagery of it, and we all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, really is holy shit. Outer space is like
Speaker 2: a shooting gallery, and there are asteroids flying by us
Speaker 2: and comets flying by us all the time that we've
Speaker 2: been unaware of. And also, you know, this hypothesis that
Speaker 2: the dinosaurs had been destroyed by asteroid or comet hitting
Speaker 2: the Earth had been formulated in nineteen eighty five, but
Speaker 2: I think had really permeated the popular culture in the
Speaker 2: early nineties with the advent of something like Jurassic Park,
Speaker 2: for example, dinosaurs ares top of mind. So again, I
Speaker 2: do think it's there are a lot of minds in
Speaker 2: Hollywood and we're all processing the same information at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, and so it does make sense
Speaker 2: that these ideas, maybe they're stolen from time to time.
Speaker 2: But what seems more likely is, like asteroids, there are
Speaker 2: so many hurling past us in any given moment, and
Speaker 2: what's more unusual is that two studios have the hubris
Speaker 2: to play the game of chicken and decide to go
Speaker 2: head to head with developing these movies. And so to me,
Speaker 2: it's like the way possibly to think about it is
Speaker 2: that there is actually a lot of potential for twin
Speaker 2: films at any given moment, and the reason that we
Speaker 2: don't have them is that studios tend to back away
Speaker 2: from going head to head with one another with a
Speaker 2: given film because it's incredibly risky. And I mean, Lizzie
Speaker 2: and I talk about this all the time. Studios, you know,
Speaker 2: they move movies off of certain weekends because they don't
Speaker 2: want to compete with a different movie that may overlap
Speaker 2: in terms of audience. And so one way to think
Speaker 2: about it might be less I'm going to shoot another bullet,
Speaker 2: you know, with my gun in mid air, and instead say,
Speaker 2: there are so many bullets traveling through the air at
Speaker 2: all times, I'm actually going to remove my other bullets,
Speaker 2: you know, from time to time, so they don't you
Speaker 2: interfere with the other studio.
Speaker 4: I actually really like twin films. I like watching them.
Speaker 4: I'm not mad at their existence at all because there's
Speaker 4: such a great example of it's not about the story
Speaker 4: or the idea, it's how you tell it. And it's
Speaker 4: so fascinating to see two completely different directors like Michael
Speaker 4: Bay and Mimi Leader. You can't get more different than
Speaker 4: those two in terms of armageddon and deep impact telling
Speaker 4: what is a very similar story, and yet the movies
Speaker 4: are so different and they are individually enjoyable, And I
Speaker 4: like when studios plow ahead with this and like, yes,
Speaker 4: I'm sure there's borrowing, you know, there's osmosis of ideas
Speaker 4: all the time everywhere. I don't know that that's necessarily
Speaker 4: a bad thing, because they're not going to be the
Speaker 4: same movie if it's different people making them.
Speaker 1: So what I'm hearing is that to us it feels
Speaker 1: like twin films are happening so frequently, But what you
Speaker 1: two are saying is that, actually, considering the way films
Speaker 1: are produced, twin films could be occurring way more frequently
Speaker 1: than they are.
Speaker 2: So the way I maybe encourage people to think about
Speaker 2: it after looking into this a bit is, you know,
Speaker 2: historically a classic form of twin film has been like
Speaker 2: the A feature in the B feature, right, and so
Speaker 2: sometimes this has been on the big screen, and sometimes
Speaker 2: it's either the big screen versus the small screen. So
Speaker 2: like post disaster film renaissance, you would oftentimes see an
Speaker 2: A picture in theaters and either a mini series or
Speaker 2: a television B picture on television. And I think the
Speaker 2: thinking here is there is an idea that has seemingly
Speaker 2: captured the zeitgeist, and the television corollary to the studio
Speaker 2: is saying, we are going to make our low budget,
Speaker 2: very fast, cheap and dirty version of this, you know,
Speaker 2: Tornado versus Twister, the television two part mini series of
Speaker 2: Titanic in ninety six versus James Cameron's epic in ninety seven.
Speaker 2: Because a we think that if an audience is interested
Speaker 2: in the big feature version, maybe they'll just watch this
Speaker 2: because they're also interested in this, but also be we
Speaker 2: could capture a section of the market that that studio
Speaker 2: is not going to be able to capitalize on, which
Speaker 2: are the people that are not going to go to
Speaker 2: the theater necessarily, the people that are just going to
Speaker 2: stay home and watch it on television. And this is
Speaker 2: kind of morphed over time into the Blockbuster more recently,
Speaker 2: which you guys might you know the guys who do Sharknado, etc.
Speaker 2: And they do things like transmorphers and paranormal entity and
Speaker 2: it almost seems like the movie, but it's not the
Speaker 2: movie that was really born out of two thousand and
Speaker 2: six as War of the World. Spielberg was doing an
Speaker 2: adaptation of World the World's at the same time that
Speaker 2: these producers, who are kind of Roger kormanesque are trying
Speaker 2: to do their version of War the Worlds because it's
Speaker 2: public domain. This ip they realize, wait, a second Blockbuster
Speaker 2: has ordered one hundred thousand copies of our vhs, mistakenly
Speaker 2: thinking they've ordered the Steven at Bilberg one. There's a
Speaker 2: business opportunity here, and so I think that's that makes
Speaker 2: sense from a business perspective, and like what you're saying,
Speaker 2: is the more rare instances to kaiju, you know, going
Speaker 2: at it in the water, like Olympus has fallen and
Speaker 2: White House down, for example, And those are rare. I
Speaker 2: think again, not because the inception of those ideas is rare.
Speaker 2: They're actually incredibly common. It's that usually one of the
Speaker 2: drivers pulls out of the skin and says like, I
Speaker 2: don't want our cars to hit head on.
Speaker 1: Just to kind of distill the reasons why we think
Speaker 1: twin films are happening in two kind of easily consumable explanations.
Speaker 1: What I'm hearing so far in this conversation is one
Speaker 1: reason is, you know, literal intellectual theft. Another reason is
Speaker 1: that something happened in the Zeitgei said influenced multiple films
Speaker 1: to be developed at the same time. Example of that
Speaker 1: would be like Steve Jobs dying and then there's two
Speaker 1: biopics happening all of a sudden. And then the third
Speaker 1: reason we were talking about is kind of just like
Speaker 1: technological limitations or breakthroughs, like on the breakthroughs.
Speaker 4: I think that's exactly right. I think it's a confluence
Speaker 4: of those three things. And I also just think, you know,
Speaker 4: it's it's so tempting to think you stole my idea.
Speaker 4: You know, it's something that we've probably all experienced. But
Speaker 4: the thing that's harder to come to terms with is
Speaker 4: that I don't know that any of our ideas are
Speaker 4: actually that individual when you break them down, and there's
Speaker 4: there is kind of a collective, unconscious pool I think
Speaker 4: we're always pulling from, and I do think that's where
Speaker 4: twin films come from. Like, yes, sometimes you go to
Speaker 4: lunch with your quote unquote friend who's taking notes, probably
Speaker 4: kicking your idea, but there's other times where it's just
Speaker 4: asteroids and comments are in the news, or it's something
Speaker 4: people are thinking about. It's something that's in the back
Speaker 4: of your mind. It's something and that's in the back
Speaker 4: of millions of people's minds, and it's something that you realize, hey,
Speaker 4: I could make money on this, and the fact that
Speaker 4: somebody else has that idea does not necessarily mean they
Speaker 4: took it from you. And I think that we underestimate
Speaker 4: our sort of common brain a bit.
Speaker 2: There are also you know, anniversaries, for example, this would
Speaker 2: tie into the zeitgeist thing. You know, you had fourteen
Speaker 2: ninety two conquest of Paradise Ridley Scott. You know Christopher Columbus,
Speaker 2: nobody saw it, and then you have Christopher Columbus the
Speaker 2: Discovery from the producers of a bunch of Superman films.
Speaker 2: Also nobody saw that movie. So like, nobody was really
Speaker 2: interested in the five hundredth Anniversary of Chris, but it
Speaker 2: was there. It was embraced by a couple of studios
Speaker 2: to the tune of one hundred million dollars, Like Lizzie
Speaker 2: is saying, we are all collectively filtering the same information
Speaker 2: and looking for stories in a lot of these places,
Speaker 2: and sometimes it's influenced by twin events inside of other
Speaker 2: forms of media. So you know, you have like the
Speaker 2: mid odds to twenty thirteen sort of ya dystopian future phenomena,
Speaker 2: right where you have the Hunger Games, and you have Divergent,
Speaker 2: and you have the Maize Runner and these are all
Speaker 2: based on like they're all literary adaptations. But that's because
Speaker 2: the literary landscape was very much riddled with ya dystopian
Speaker 2: and you know novels. Well, Okay, why is the literature
Speaker 2: landscape riddled with that? Okay, maybe it's because we're in
Speaker 2: the middle of a recession. Right now, and all of
Speaker 2: the you know, hope and change that everybody said Obama
Speaker 2: is going to bring, it doesn't see to be happening
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, and it's gonna be the Hunger Games.
Speaker 2: And so these books are really resonant. Who knows, but
Speaker 2: I do think Hollywood is very reactionary. At the end
Speaker 2: of the day, We're simultaneously incredibly unique, and that the
Speaker 2: scene to scene differences in these movies could not be
Speaker 2: more drastic, and yet the big picture ideas that we're
Speaker 2: coming to are very universal. I think. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if, for example, Devin and I wanted to make
Speaker 1: a movie about ants separately, of course they're both gonna
Speaker 1: have the Queen Aunt. They're both gonna have the ant
Speaker 1: colony or the army. They're both gonna you know exactly,
Speaker 1: I'll go. I'll see if I can get I don't know.
Speaker 2: Who Kevin Spacey problematic.
Speaker 1: All right, So we learned a little bit about why
Speaker 1: Twin films happened so regularly. But after the break, I
Speaker 1: want to return to a bugs life and see why
Speaker 1: Chris and Lizzie think this movie works so well, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're bad. We're still here with the hosts of what
Speaker 1: went wrong Chris and Lizzie. At the top of our discussion,
Speaker 1: we were talking about A Bugs Life Versus Ants, and
Speaker 1: more broadly, these kind of Disney Pixar versus DreamWorks twin films.
Speaker 1: I've always felt like the dream Works titles were a
Speaker 1: little more interesting because they were weirder essentially and a
Speaker 1: little more nuanced. But I'm curious about what makes the
Speaker 1: Pixar movies click for you two.
Speaker 4: I feel like the it's very tempting to call these Pixar,
Speaker 4: if we're talking about Pixar versus DreamWorks, to call the
Speaker 4: Pixar movies in particular Bugs Life the more sort of
Speaker 4: simplistic ones. I actually think that they're deceptively complicated when
Speaker 4: I watched, because I watched both A Bugs Life and
Speaker 4: Ants back to back ahead of this, and honestly, yes,
Speaker 4: A Bugs Life is more geared towards children for sure. However,
Speaker 4: I think that the sort of the complex like emotional
Speaker 4: things you have to wrangle with in A Bugs Life,
Speaker 4: to me are a bit more complex than they are
Speaker 4: in Ants and tells you exactly what it is upfront,
Speaker 4: you know, it's yeah, Whitty Allen Aunt is in therapy.
Speaker 4: They literally tell him you're insignificant. He's like, Okay, I
Speaker 4: get it. And then he's like, maybe I'm not insignificant.
Speaker 4: Maybe when you to start a revolution and the people.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's like, it's listen, it's fun. I actually
Speaker 4: I'm not. I shouldn't crap on it too much. It's
Speaker 4: a totally fun movie, but with a bugs life. It's
Speaker 4: more like, I think, in making something that is easier
Speaker 4: for children to relate to, but still very smart, they
Speaker 4: actually explore something that to me has a bit more
Speaker 4: depth to it. And in the same and toy story, like,
Speaker 4: the characters are actually very complex. You don't you know
Speaker 4: Woody is the main character in that he's he's kind
Speaker 4: of a jerk to buzz like. He's a great guy
Speaker 4: until he's confronted with someone who could, potentially you stir
Speaker 4: up his position, and then he's not such a great guy. Well,
Speaker 4: if you and shown up your stupid little cardboard spaceship.
Speaker 3: And taking away everything that was important to me, talk
Speaker 3: to me about importance because of you, the security of
Speaker 3: this entire universe.
Speaker 5: Is in jeopardy.
Speaker 4: What And it's this question of like having to wrangle
Speaker 4: with yourself in a way that I actually think the
Speaker 4: Pixar films explore better than some of the dream works.
Speaker 1: Interesting. Yeah, it's like it's taking these complicated ideas and
Speaker 1: making it digestible for kids. Is more impressive. You're saying
Speaker 1: than this is music to Devin's ears.
Speaker 5: Is exactly exactly the Bugs Life. They're playing around with gender.
Speaker 5: Remember the lady.
Speaker 4: A real bug being a lady by automatically makes me
Speaker 4: a girl?
Speaker 1: Is that it?
Speaker 5: Fly boy?
Speaker 3: She's a guy.
Speaker 1: Time.
Speaker 2: Also, you know self love and embody image. And I agree,
Speaker 2: it's like that was lying.
Speaker 4: Out loud through all of Bugs Life. I gotta tell
Speaker 4: you how laughing. I couldn't believe how funny that was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like in a drama, a line has to
Speaker 2: work dramatically. In a comedy, it has to work dramatically
Speaker 2: and comedically. Right if you're like, a Pixar film has
Speaker 2: to work for children and adults an equal measure. And
Speaker 2: like Lizzie's saying, that's a that's a hard target to hit.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is.
Speaker 4: And I think interestingly enough to me, Aunts the characters
Speaker 4: were less dynamic and more sort of characters versus a
Speaker 4: Bugs life. They were very complex, Like you know, the
Speaker 4: Julia Louis Dreyfus, Princess Aunt, total jerk to Dave Foley.
Speaker 4: I can't remember any of the actual characters names. I
Speaker 4: just want you guys to know that.
Speaker 2: The main character's name is Flick.
Speaker 4: She's such a jerk to him and and she like
Speaker 4: recognizes that in herself halfway through, which was really nice
Speaker 4: because I was like, man, I hope he doesn't just
Speaker 4: go for her when she's being you know, such as him.
Speaker 4: But she turns it around and I just, uh, yeah, man,
Speaker 4: I loved it, And the whole idea of the bird
Speaker 4: is so clever and something you would think. Sorry, guys,
Speaker 4: I'm really sorry.
Speaker 1: Great points. Yeah, something I wanted to make it. Something
Speaker 1: interesting that Noah mentioned earlier was that in the dreams
Speaker 1: works ones like shark Tail and Ants, the characters are
Speaker 1: often caricatures of the people voicing them. Yes, which like
Speaker 1: you got the creator for walking exactly yeah, which I
Speaker 1: don't know. I just thought that was interesting.
Speaker 4: I'm not a fan of that.
Speaker 1: You don't want to see like Christopher walking that.
Speaker 4: I don't want to see Christopher walking and I don't
Speaker 4: want to see its teeth.
Speaker 1: I salon was awesome. You have to agree, Uh, well, guys,
Speaker 1: this has been so insightful and useful. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us and hope to chat to you
Speaker 1: guys soon.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having us. This is great. You
Speaker 2: guys have a great show. We will be listening.
Speaker 1: No such thing as a production of Kaleidoscope Content. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are Kate Osborne and Mangesh Hatakedor. The show
Speaker 1: was created by Manny Fidel, Noah Friedman, and Devin Joseph.
Speaker 1: The theme and credit song is by me Manny. This
Speaker 1: episode was mixed by fran Bandy. Our guests this week
Speaker 1: where Chris and Lizzie from the What Went Wrong Podcast.
Speaker 1: Definitely be sure to go check that show out. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun and visit No such Thing dot
Speaker 1: show to subscribe to our newsletter. If you had feedback
Speaker 1: or a question, our email is Manny Noah Devin at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. Or if you're in the US, you
Speaker 1: can leave us a voicemail by calling the number in
Speaker 1: our show notes. We'll see you next week.
Speaker 2: Thay