Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show
Speaker 2: that brings you the secret histories and the little known,
Speaker 2: fascinating facts and figures behind your favorite movies, music, TV
Speaker 2: shows and more. We are your two has been sci
Speaker 2: fi stars of years gone by. Your phaser is set
Speaker 2: to stunt. I don't think we can actually say that.
Speaker 1: Oh, legally, yes, for legal reasons, you're not really Trek.
Speaker 2: He's telling you about a not really Star Trek movie.
Speaker 2: I'm Alex Cycle and I'm Jordan run the talk.
Speaker 1: Wow, you put a lot into that. Yeah, that's good,
Speaker 1: and Jordan.
Speaker 2: Today we're taking a look at one of the most
Speaker 2: adored parodies, which may be a thing of the past
Speaker 2: in recent memory, unaffectionate spoofing of Star Trek that even
Speaker 2: its famously obsessed fans gave a pass to based on
Speaker 2: its charms. That's right, We're talking about Galaxy Quest, the
Speaker 2: little sci fi comedy that could in the year of
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1: So that's my first question, Jordan. Do we have Hollywood
Speaker 1: parodies anymore? Or do they have?
Speaker 2: They just ceeded that completely to like influencers and YouTube people.
Speaker 1: And Instagram people. Yeah, I can't think of a really solid,
Speaker 1: well done parody, certainly in the last like ten years.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it would be like the Coen
Speaker 2: Brothers man, like Hail Caesar or oh yeah, that's like
Speaker 2: honestly one of the most recent ones I can think of.
Speaker 2: But it's not that's that's not a parody, you know,
Speaker 2: that's like a that's just set in that world.
Speaker 1: It's not like explicitly taking aim at one thing. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's it's sort of about the more general
Speaker 1: studio system. I don't know, man, that is a difficult question. Here.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a Wikipedia landing page for parody films
Speaker 1: by decade twenty. I'm in the twenty tens now. I
Speaker 1: see nothing that I recognize on here at all. They're
Speaker 1: all like really low budget, yeah, very obvious. Like instead
Speaker 1: of the Hunger Games, there's the Starving Games, ah My
Speaker 1: Brother Borat and Scary Movie five. Oh yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I would.
Speaker 2: I think the last guys standing are probably the Zucker Brothers, right,
Speaker 2: that guys who did not another teen movie and stuff.
Speaker 2: And I did know that, I did know that the
Speaker 2: Wayans have Scary Movie five coming out but I don't know, man.
Speaker 1: I got nothing, I think. I mean, if we were
Speaker 1: talking about this earlier too, they don't green light movies
Speaker 1: of this size anymore, this mid size quality movie. It's
Speaker 1: either huge or like indie adjacent. Yeah, exactly. And you
Speaker 1: know this one is just done with such a sweet,
Speaker 1: cute little eye. You know, it's just like it's funny.
Speaker 2: I remember I interviewed Jason Siegel once for the Muppet
Speaker 2: movie that he did, and he got like audibly choked
Speaker 2: up talking about the Muppets because he was like, you.
Speaker 1: Know, the Muppets are funny, but they're never mean.
Speaker 2: Yeahah, well miss Piggy, well yeah, but he was like,
Speaker 2: you know, they don't punch down, they're not cruel.
Speaker 1: And I think like the key to this movie's success,
Speaker 1: you know, Sorry, just the image of you talking with
Speaker 1: probably one of maybe two dozen people on the planet
Speaker 1: who was more earnest than me about the Muppets. Is
Speaker 1: I hope there's a tape of this. I would really
Speaker 1: like to see. Is this for people?
Speaker 2: Uh no, this was from my first shows for like
Speaker 2: Nerve dot com. Oh yeah, twelve. Yeah, he was really sweet.
Speaker 2: He signed off the phone call back, going all right,
Speaker 2: talk to you later. No, we won't, but how sweet
Speaker 2: of you to say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I didn't.
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't see this movie until years later,
Speaker 2: and I think that's what happened to it on a
Speaker 2: broader scale, is exactly why I didn't see it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety nine, as you'll remember, was Star Wars
Speaker 2: Episode one, The Matrix, the Mummy and the Sixth Sense.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And then even by the time that we were in
Speaker 2: Christmas when this movie opened, it wash it up against
Speaker 2: the talented mister Ripley. It went up three days after
Speaker 2: any given Sunday Man on the Moon and Stuart Little
Speaker 2: and stut yes of course and Stuart Little and girl interrupted.
Speaker 1: So it's just like, uh, yeah, you know, I remember
Speaker 1: thinking after that year, of all those incredible sci fi properties,
Speaker 1: I remember thinking it looked dumb. And I remember being
Speaker 1: like that as a child, like being offended by it.
Speaker 1: How dare I know? It's like I'm twelve, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see that You're just a movie. I was
Speaker 1: never a sci fi guy, sorry, a Star Trek guy,
Speaker 1: I should say. I was so firmly in the Star
Speaker 1: Wars camp.
Speaker 2: And you know, I as years gone by, it have
Speaker 2: I become more of a Star Trek guy. No, just
Speaker 2: not in any way. But I still love that this
Speaker 2: movie is so lovingly aimed towards them, and also like
Speaker 2: an astonishingly other wide selection of other sci fi properties.
Speaker 1: As we'll get to, I think we we both have
Speaker 1: a soft spot for trekies, because even though we are
Speaker 1: not trekies, I think the people near and dear to
Speaker 1: us are. I know, your dear friend, David Long, friend
Speaker 1: of the Pod, David Long is a treky. My father
Speaker 1: actually is, which does not fit with his his kind
Speaker 1: of say it. We grew up in like central Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: He hunted fishes, an Emerson type. He built the house
Speaker 1: that I'm in right now, let me put it that
Speaker 1: way himself. And I just I know that that's not
Speaker 1: mutually exclusive to enjoying Star Trek, but just it doesn't
Speaker 1: fit for me.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, as I've tunneled ever deeper into my
Speaker 2: own niche interest as a way to block the howling
Speaker 2: screams of a world in decay.
Speaker 1: Your own insecurities.
Speaker 2: Yes, well done, Yes, and so I understand the Trekkies
Speaker 2: more than.
Speaker 1: Ever I do too.
Speaker 2: Actually, Yeah, but it's it's just a very and you
Speaker 2: know I don't use this adjective.
Speaker 1: It's just a very sweet film. Yeah, I agree. I
Speaker 1: hadn't seen it in many, many years, probably in college,
Speaker 1: so maybe like six seven years after it came out. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: charmed by it and promptly forgot about it and then
Speaker 1: started rewatching it for this and just very well done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean shot on film, you know, the sets
Speaker 2: are real or on location. It's just all this and
Speaker 2: it's really interesting too, because like you know, we were
Speaker 2: watching it and it just kept being like that's real,
Speaker 2: Like that's makeup, like the villain is Like you look
Speaker 2: at it and it's like that was sort of like
Speaker 2: the apex of practical effects, you know, and so you
Speaker 2: look at some of this stuff and you're like that's
Speaker 2: not twenty twenty five CG. And you're like, no, that's
Speaker 2: just rubber and goo. But it's like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: it's Stan Winston's ILM. It's all these people, and it's
Speaker 2: also just like I think there's like a real affection
Speaker 2: in it. And that's what everybody in the ensemble cast
Speaker 2: says that they were all just like, yeah, we just
Speaker 2: had a fun time the sweet movie.
Speaker 1: Like we all like we all you know except for
Speaker 1: Tim Allen. Oh so they were bonded against Tim Allen's
Speaker 1: You have to have a villain in any kind of
Speaker 1: social dynamic because that brings everybody else together. It's true,
Speaker 1: It's very true. Well that's my segue.
Speaker 2: So from the amazing ensemble cast of the film, like
Speaker 2: Tim Allen, who sucks, who's not dead and in hell yet?
Speaker 1: No? Do you think the cartels are going to get him?
Speaker 1: That would be the most incredible long game ever, is
Speaker 1: that he's like invited to some event to be honored
Speaker 1: and he shows up and it's just like a warehouse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's Joe Pesci seeing Good Fellows, comes in and he's like,
Speaker 1: oh he shut back. Then Matt Damon coming in at
Speaker 1: the end of the Department. Yeah, all right, sorry r
Speaker 1: O spoiler sorry. Oh yeah, yeah, spoilers for that one.
Speaker 1: See The Departed Idiots.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to the astounding amount of sci fi references in
Speaker 2: riffs into every nook and cranny, to the sad studio
Speaker 2: meddling and mismarketing the film suffered from upon its release,
Speaker 2: to the reactions of Trekky's including William Shatner, who sucks.
Speaker 2: Here's everything you didn't know about Galaxy Quest. The story
Speaker 2: of Galaxy Quest begins with a writer named David Howard,
Speaker 2: a playwright who moved to LA to try and break
Speaker 2: into the movies. It was much more difficult than I anticipated,
Speaker 2: Howard and told IGN in twenty twelve. One of my
Speaker 2: professors said that when you look at a play, it's
Speaker 2: seventy five percent verbal and twenty five percent visual.
Speaker 1: In a film that's inverted, I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of truth to that. Yeah, that's a hard truth I learned,
Speaker 1: and that's why I generally stuck the prose writing.
Speaker 2: So while working in the sales department at a big
Speaker 2: telecommunications company, Howard had a lot of time on his hands.
Speaker 2: They spent much of it working on a script that
Speaker 2: he'd had an idea for. While seeing an Imax movie
Speaker 2: called Americans in Space narrated by Leonard Nimoy, he said,
Speaker 2: the voiceover for this trailer was Leonard Neniemoy, and it
Speaker 2: took me a few minutes to recognize his voice. Then
Speaker 2: it just struck me, Oh, that poor guy. I could
Speaker 2: see these marketing guys putting this together, saying, who who
Speaker 2: could we get to do this? Oh, let's get William
Speaker 2: Shatner oh no, no, he's out of the country. Who
Speaker 2: else is there? Let's get Leonardie Mooy. You know, the
Speaker 2: idea of being trapped in that world struck me as
Speaker 2: something potentially very funny.
Speaker 1: This is really weird because yesterday I was interviewing Mickey
Speaker 1: Dolan's of the Monkeys as One Does, and he talked
Speaker 1: about feeling like completely just out of the blue. He
Speaker 1: talked about feeling a real kinship with Leonard Nimoy as
Speaker 1: another guy who became defined by this one role. But
Speaker 1: he felt really bad for Niemoy because Neimo was this
Speaker 1: like classically trained actor who'd been in like Richard the
Speaker 1: Third or something. I mean, I think that that joke
Speaker 1: that Alan the Workman one, well, oh yeah, says is
Speaker 1: and this was like based on Leonardnimoy. He was a
Speaker 1: Shakespeare actor, and then he just became Oh, it's the
Speaker 1: your guy, it's spuck, yeah, do the thing with your hand, yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 1: Mickey had a better, you know, more of a generous
Speaker 1: read on it in terms of his own career, because
Speaker 1: he was like, yeah, I was in a show before
Speaker 1: that where I had to write an elephant as a
Speaker 1: kid called Circus Boy. So this was like, at least
Speaker 1: I got to play a rock star, and that's that's cool.
Speaker 1: Do you know that he tried out to be the
Speaker 1: Fawns in the seventies? Too short? No, he's too tall. Apparently.
Speaker 1: It's so funny. I mean, Henry Winkler is like tiny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. Winkler was extremely short, and that's why he
Speaker 1: missed out on He's apparently too tall compared to the
Speaker 1: other cast members. Do you know that the Livelong and
Speaker 1: Prosper fingers is like a Jewish thing? No?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he grew up in actually in Boston by that
Speaker 2: I didn't know, Yeah, in like Italian and Jewish neighborhood.
Speaker 2: And yes, he based it on a blessing performed and
Speaker 2: I cannot read this in Hebrew obviously, but it's very
Speaker 2: funny because it's on the cover of a Godspeed You
Speaker 2: Black Emperor record, because some of those guys are Jewish.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I always just thought that was funny. I was like,
Speaker 2: why are they doing the Livelong and Prosper thing? And
Speaker 2: then I looked it up and it is indeed, it
Speaker 2: is indeed a Jewish blessing.
Speaker 1: Seeing you do it with two hands, it kind of
Speaker 1: looks more natural as a blessing. Yeah, it looks cool.
Speaker 1: It looks really cool. So sh at that angle. Don't
Speaker 1: I look cool? It's doing that?
Speaker 2: So, screenwriter Howard continued, I just started playing with the
Speaker 2: idea of them being in this world, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, real aliens shown up. That was a script
Speaker 2: that in a lot of ways just wrote itself because
Speaker 2: it just seems so evident once the idea was there.
Speaker 2: We will learn later the idea had already been there.
Speaker 2: The loose plot of what was then called Captain Starshine
Speaker 2: was in place from the start. Aliens have mistakenly received
Speaker 2: broadcast the historical documents of an old sci fi show
Speaker 2: and believe them to be real. I forgot how damn
Speaker 2: funny and Rico COLUMTONI is in this movie with all
Speaker 2: of those.
Speaker 1: Little vocal mannerisms.
Speaker 2: Contact the actors from the series and enlisting them to
Speaker 2: help them battle their foes. Howard continued to people ask
Speaker 2: me if I'm a Treky, and I would say that
Speaker 2: I'm a Treky once removed. I love Star Trek, and
Speaker 2: I really love Next Generation. I had a buddy who
Speaker 2: wanted to write an episode of it once, and we
Speaker 2: wrote this episode together that never went anywhere, but I
Speaker 2: got really hooked on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Next Gen. Of all the Star Trek installments, that
Speaker 1: was the one that probably I was exposed to with
Speaker 1: the most around the house because I was on my
Speaker 1: dad watch when I was a little kid. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Next Gen I have a soft spot for. Is that
Speaker 1: a violence? Yeah, that's probably true. Yeah, diplomacy. Where's the
Speaker 1: fun in that? I just realized reading this that I
Speaker 1: accidentally plagiarized the entire plot of this movie for one
Speaker 1: that I wanted to do, which was basically like I
Speaker 1: used to pitch it as like a reverse contact, but
Speaker 1: like told from the alien's perspective, where there's an alien
Speaker 1: on a planet not unlike Earth, and they're scanning radio
Speaker 1: bands looking for signs of life in the universe, and
Speaker 1: then they pick up a radio broadcast from Earth of
Speaker 1: accounting Crow's song, and so they go to Earth and
Speaker 1: try to commune with Adam Durretz. And that was a
Speaker 1: whole I wanted to write it for my friend Chris
Speaker 1: Fleming is a comedian and to give him like his
Speaker 1: his Morc role. He loves Robin Williams, and like I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: he could be like the weird sort of humanoid like
Speaker 1: alien going to Earth in search of Adam Durretz. This
Speaker 1: is all verbal copyright. By the way, I really threw
Speaker 1: you off with that one. Yeah, well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: just it's it's it is. Uh, it's a good bit.
Speaker 2: It's funny because I guess you could it's kind of
Speaker 2: a malleable concept. You could tweak it to like any
Speaker 2: concept of American pop culture and have a solid platform
Speaker 2: to write from, because as long as you're just going
Speaker 2: with aliens, think this is more of a thing than
Speaker 2: it is pretty much.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I had almost like, you know, the
Speaker 1: spaceship Lands and everybody's there and the news cruise and
Speaker 1: all the foreign dignitaries and everything, and the door comes
Speaker 1: down and then it's like John Cusack with the boom
Speaker 1: box in say anything, just playing like mister Jones and
Speaker 1: me or something, and everyone's just like bitterly disappointed mister Jones.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've come around the Counting Crows, honestly, Oh totally.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, yeah, they got some they got some heaters.
Speaker 2: Howard continued. Right after I got married, I started watching
Speaker 2: Star Trek for research. It was on five days a week,
Speaker 2: in syndication. So all of a sudden, I've got this
Speaker 2: star trek Habit watching it every night. An excellent move
Speaker 2: for a newlywed. It's really intended to be an homage.
Speaker 2: It's kidding, but it's kidding with respect, and that's a
Speaker 2: tone in my draft that was maintained throughout.
Speaker 1: He continued. I almost feel.
Speaker 2: Guilty about the success of this because it was all
Speaker 2: just waiting to happen. It's like finding a perfect artifact
Speaker 2: in the ground. You just find it. It's not like
Speaker 2: you made it. So many of the jokes were natural
Speaker 2: that it just kind of happened.
Speaker 1: This guy is very sweet and very like I guess
Speaker 1: the sweetness originates with him.
Speaker 2: That's something that I really like find artists talking consistently about,
Speaker 2: and I just love it. You know, this idea that like,
Speaker 2: whatever creative thing that you made is just out there
Speaker 2: and you just have to like attune yourself and then
Speaker 2: you get like as fast.
Speaker 1: As the pen would pool. Yes, exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: I told you that phrase, right, yeah, oh yes, yes,
Speaker 2: because I was about to repeat it and be like, uh.
Speaker 1: You know, grateful, did a lyricist Robert Hunter.
Speaker 2: Howard's lucky break was when He simply gave the early
Speaker 2: script for Galaxy Crest to a friend who knew someone
Speaker 2: at Beacon Pictures who knew someone at CAAA. He drolly
Speaker 2: notes in that interview, I wouldn't advise anyone to try
Speaker 2: and do that, because that's like coming out here and
Speaker 2: expecting lightning to strike you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Good, I mean at least he's aware. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you know, born on third or hit a triple of
Speaker 1: the phrases. Yeah. Galaxy Quest eventual producer Mark Johnson said
Speaker 1: that very few people have ever seen the original draft
Speaker 1: of Captain Starshine, written by the really quite lovely man
Speaker 1: David Howard. The producer Mark Johnson told MTV News for
Speaker 1: their twenty fourteen Galaxy Quest oral history.
Speaker 2: Tremendous read. By the way, huge props who wrote it.
Speaker 2: Jordan Hoffman, Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember, because that was when I was working at
Speaker 1: VH one and we worked a little bit with MTV News.
Speaker 1: Good for Jordan Hoffmann, But producer Mark Johnson told MTV
Speaker 1: News the original concept was brilliant, but still he brought
Speaker 1: in another writer, a guy named Robert Gordon, to do
Speaker 1: some punch ups. And this guy, Robert Gordon, his only
Speaker 1: credit at that point was nineteen ninety seven's Addicted to Love.
Speaker 1: Who's in that again, Drew Barrymore, not that first appearance
Speaker 1: of a weird late nineties Drew Barrymore movie in this episode.
Speaker 2: If any of this sounds familiar, scream, I guess, But
Speaker 2: it's Drew Barrymore, Matthew Broderick, Meg Ryan, Mark Wahlberg, Kelly Preston,
Speaker 2: Jessica Biel, Freddie Prince Junior, and Luke Wilson.
Speaker 1: That's stacked. Wow. Okay, that's a great nineties core sample.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the producer, even though he said he really
Speaker 1: liked the original Galaxy Quest Draft, brought in another writer,
Speaker 1: Robert Gordon, whose only movie credit at this point was
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven's Addicted to Love starring Drew Barrymore and
Speaker 1: all those other stellar members of the nineties. Yes. Yes,
Speaker 1: he's since gone on to do Men in Black, Two Lemony, Snickets,
Speaker 1: a Series of Unfortunate Events, and he also helped produce Sky,
Speaker 1: Captain in the World of Tomorrow and also Wonder Park,
Speaker 1: which I'm not familiar with. Yeah, this punch up. Writer
Speaker 1: Robert Gordon told them TV News, I didn't read Captain
Speaker 1: Starshine the original draft until after the film was made,
Speaker 1: which it could be read as a dickish thing to do,
Speaker 1: although maybe he intentionally avoided it so that he like
Speaker 1: came to it with his own fresh ideas. I don't know,
Speaker 1: that's so weird. Do you think it's that one and
Speaker 1: you think it's just laziness? Yeah, he added, I heard
Speaker 1: the logline from my agent. I thought that it could
Speaker 1: be a great idea or it could be a terrible idea.
Speaker 1: I didn't take the job at first because I thought
Speaker 1: it was too hard. But I would go in with
Speaker 1: a scene like Tommy takes the ship out of the
Speaker 1: dock and scratches it on the side, and they would
Speaker 1: say that's great, you should write this, and I'd say
Speaker 1: I don't have it yet. Only when I nailed the
Speaker 1: scene where the captain has to admit he's a fraud,
Speaker 1: then I said, okay, I've got it. Robert Gordon had
Speaker 1: an earlier love of Star Trek than David Howard, the
Speaker 1: original screenwriter, so at least he had that going for him.
Speaker 1: He'd say, I've watched them from the time I was
Speaker 1: six years old in nineteen sixty six when Start Trick
Speaker 1: was premiered, but at least he and Howard were aligned
Speaker 1: on one thing. He'd say. I can't say I specifically
Speaker 1: had William Shatner's cadences in my head or in my dialogue,
Speaker 1: but the plight of Captain Kirk and William Shatner and
Speaker 1: his situation was certainly in the back of my head.
Speaker 1: I mean, you must have seen the the SNL sketch.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, because there was a when I was
Speaker 2: coming IMDb, there was a Tria factor on there that
Speaker 2: was like the scene where Tim Allen's character overhears people
Speaker 2: talking about him in a bathroom stall was something that
Speaker 2: actually happened to Shatner at a fan convoy. Oh really, yeah,
Speaker 2: But in trying to verify that, I didn't find anything
Speaker 2: about it. It might be in his book, but I'm
Speaker 2: not going to read that. But all the results because
Speaker 2: if you do, if you just look up William Shatner
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty six, all you get is that SNL skin,
Speaker 2: the famous Get a Light skit as it has become known.
Speaker 1: Yes, out in there for anyone who hasn't seen that,
Speaker 1: is at a fan convention and he kind of has
Speaker 1: a meltdown to all the fans and just shrieks at
Speaker 1: them to get a life, which is really kind of
Speaker 1: the first you know. Now, I think Trekki's are kind
Speaker 1: of They've been parodied so much that, as you say,
Speaker 1: it's viewed as punching down. But I want to say,
Speaker 1: in like eighty six, that was kind of like the
Speaker 1: first time anybody, especially Shatner, took a with them, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was so much of a subculture before,
Speaker 1: like the HNT.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's almost a I have to think
Speaker 2: he came in with that idea. It's so because like what,
Speaker 2: how would I mean unless someone in this on the
Speaker 2: writing staff at that point was a treky like, I
Speaker 2: don't know that you would even have been exposed to
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. And at this point, I mean,
Speaker 2: eighty six, maybe that's twenty.
Speaker 1: I mean, I because it was before TNG launched, right,
Speaker 1: so that was eighty seven. I want to say eighty
Speaker 1: eight maybe, yeah. I mean, I'm very confused about how
Speaker 1: big Star Trek was during its initial run because it's
Speaker 1: been so course corrected in recent years of everybody saying,
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't that big of a phenomenon when
Speaker 1: it was on the air, you know, and it was
Speaker 1: only years later. But now I almost think it's gone
Speaker 1: too far in that direction. And it was actually bigger
Speaker 1: than like we think now, like it actually you know,
Speaker 1: it was on NBC for three years, like it was
Speaker 1: a big deal.
Speaker 2: I think it was in syndication honestly that it became
Speaker 2: a bigger thing, because I mean, yeah, they canceled it
Speaker 2: after three seasons.
Speaker 1: Although The Monkeys was only on the from sixty six
Speaker 1: to and the sixty eight and they were huge. Okay, man,
Speaker 1: another NBC show Man, we should do the Monkeys, although
Speaker 1: that would take forever. There's so much lore in that,
Speaker 1: so that's like Star Trek level of like fan obsession.
Speaker 1: M yeah, no, it's crazy, okay, Yeah. Well back to
Speaker 1: Galaxy Quest producer Mark Johnson, who's best known for the
Speaker 1: string of hits he produce with Barry Levinson, including rain Man,
Speaker 1: Good Morning Vietnam, The Natural, Tin Men, Toys, Young Sherlock Holmes,
Speaker 1: Avalon Diner, which we were just talking about, great movie,
Speaker 1: and Bugsy. He had a first look deal with DreamWorks
Speaker 1: at the time, and he knew that they were thirsty
Speaker 1: for movies. As you write thirsty, I don't know why
Speaker 1: I wrote that, so he purchased Captain Starshine, and once
Speaker 1: Robert Gordon had his shot at rewriting, it passed along
Speaker 1: to the studio who green lit it. He said, I'm
Speaker 1: probably the last person to be doing science fiction. But
Speaker 1: then I read this script from David Howard. I saw
Speaker 1: the potential for humor and the concept of actors in space.
Speaker 1: Think of all these producers probably would love the idea
Speaker 1: of just blasting a bunch of actors in the space.
Speaker 1: That's also true.
Speaker 2: I also just I just love how like every everything
Speaker 2: ends up in space. You know, Muppets in space. Well,
Speaker 2: it's it's a joke with the horror and horror stuff.
Speaker 2: And I think it actually originates with John Carpenter because
Speaker 2: at some point somebody, as they constantly did, We're.
Speaker 1: Like, oh, you're gonna do another Halloween? What are you
Speaker 1: gonna What would you do for Halloween if you came
Speaker 1: back and did Halloween? And at some point he was
Speaker 1: just like cranky.
Speaker 2: John Carpenter was just like, ah, send them to space
Speaker 2: like exhales cigarette takes off his gaming headset for one second,
Speaker 2: and it was like, ah, it's just like grabs any Yeah,
Speaker 2: but no, he he made that a joke, and then
Speaker 2: I think the first one that they actually did it
Speaker 2: with was Pinhead.
Speaker 1: There's a like the fourth.
Speaker 2: I think hell Raiser movie is in space, and then
Speaker 2: if I and then I think in short succession, Leprechaun
Speaker 2: went to space after going to the after going to
Speaker 2: the Hood. If anyone hasn't seen Leprechaun in the Hood,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's a treat.
Speaker 1: It's a great entry into movies.
Speaker 2: Canvas. Yes, yes, it's certainly a movie. And then Jason Jason.
Speaker 1: Went to space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jason, x uh, this is it's the tenth one.
Speaker 2: It's I think that's also be his name in it
Speaker 2: because he gets like upgraded. They like he gets like
Speaker 2: a Nano suit. He gets like a Iron Man suit.
Speaker 1: Starts. It's terrible.
Speaker 2: It does have a hilarious like blink and you'll miss it.
Speaker 2: Cameo from David Cronenberg, who just like pops in as
Speaker 2: as like a random guy who gets like that random professor.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so going to space was a real concern
Speaker 2: actually for a lot of concern.
Speaker 1: Yeah, don't don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they say, what kind of a bit do you
Speaker 2: have with Freddy Krueger singing please mister Kennedy from Inside
Speaker 2: Lewin Davis.
Speaker 1: That's a high concept.
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow yeah, just galaxy braining out with that one.
Speaker 2: Please mister Kennedy, Older Space, that's movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah the song isn't that really good too? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: think it's God who wrote a lot. I was just
Speaker 1: gonna ask you. Yeah, I don't think it was. I
Speaker 1: was going to say, was it t Bone? No?
Speaker 2: I don't think he's that much of a writer. He's
Speaker 2: always credited as like curator.
Speaker 1: Music.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean some of it was just traditional T
Speaker 2: Bone Burnett. Yeah, and Marcus Mumford.
Speaker 1: How about that? Ah that makes sense?
Speaker 2: Oh okay, wait. Actually, the novelty song Please Mister Kennedy
Speaker 2: appears to be a fourth generation derivative of the nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty song Mister Custard about the Battle of Little Bighorn
Speaker 2: Motown put out a please mister Kennedy. I don't want
Speaker 2: to go, But that was about that was about Nam.
Speaker 1: Wow. They were putting out protest songs about Nam before
Speaker 1: the golf of talking. That is so funny. Wow, nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two there was another one another, So yeah, they
Speaker 1: just took it.
Speaker 2: They just took the bit and instead of making it
Speaker 2: about Vietnam made it about going to space against your will.
Speaker 1: Oh Man goats love him so much, so I gotta
Speaker 1: say I feel bad for the original guy who came
Speaker 1: up with this premise and wrote the first draft of
Speaker 1: the script, David Howard, the starry eyed young man who
Speaker 1: went west and worked at a telecom company and banged
Speaker 1: out a script and actually had it fly all the
Speaker 1: way up to CIA and then just get taken from
Speaker 1: him and totally rewritten. But he's very optimistic. It seemed
Speaker 1: to be too bitter about it, and it was quite funny.
Speaker 1: He told IGN. I was there briefly in the beginning,
Speaker 1: and I worked with them for a few weeks and
Speaker 1: submitted some ideas, some of which did get fleshed out
Speaker 1: and ended up in the final script. But a lot
Speaker 1: of it is Robert Gordon's work too. I think he
Speaker 1: did a terrific job. And asked how the film changed
Speaker 1: from his first draft to the final product, sweet David
Speaker 1: Howard said, diplomatically, the easiest way to answer that is
Speaker 1: just by saying, it's the same guy's journey. My script
Speaker 1: followed just the captain much more closely, where I was
Speaker 1: focusing on the rest of the crew a lot of
Speaker 1: that was Robert Gordon. I feel bad for him. Oh,
Speaker 1: I think he's fine. I hope you God, did he
Speaker 1: do anything else after this great question?
Speaker 2: So this is where production got complicated in an early stage,
Speaker 2: which is never a good sign. The producer Mark Johnson
Speaker 2: had worked with this director named Dean Parasot before on
Speaker 2: this largely forgotten Drew Barrymore project called Home Fries, which
Speaker 2: was weirdly enough, written by Vince Gilligan when he was
Speaker 2: at NYU. That's right, that's right, right, future.
Speaker 1: X Files writer and Breaking Bad show runner Vince Gillian creator. Right,
Speaker 1: he's created Breaking Bad, didn't he? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you know. Dean Parasat also
Speaker 2: seems like a nice guy. So I was looking up
Speaker 2: his career and I was like, why did this guy
Speaker 2: get handed this movie? And what else hasn't he done?
Speaker 2: Then I found out he's married to Sally Menck, who.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Oh, she's like one of the most famous editors of
Speaker 2: this era of a film. Menke was Quentin Tarantino's Oh Shall.
Speaker 1: We Die recently y ten Time Isn't Real.
Speaker 2: She was nominated twenty five times for her editing for
Speaker 2: various Awards and won twelve.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so Dean Parasot was married to her, and
Speaker 2: he had one Academy Award in nineteen eighty eight for
Speaker 2: a short film called The Appointments of Dennis Jennings, which
Speaker 2: was a collaboration with Stephen Wright, which I think is
Speaker 2: really interesting during that brief era when when stand up
Speaker 2: comics were everyone was just rating la for whatever stand
Speaker 2: up comics they could find. That's how Sam Kinnison, I
Speaker 2: was just gonna say.
Speaker 1: Got a career.
Speaker 2: But yeah, he didn't do any other movies until Home Fries,
Speaker 2: which was a solid ten years after winning this Academy award.
Speaker 1: Anyway, no other movies, no more to movies, the movies.
Speaker 2: So Mark Johnson won a Dean parasatt but DreamWorks was
Speaker 2: understandably reluctant to handover. They were still kind of new
Speaker 2: at this point. They were reluctant to hand over a
Speaker 2: major production to guy who'd only done one feature film,
Speaker 2: which was a flop. So Variety reported in November nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight that legendary comedy director and actor Harold Ramis.
Speaker 1: Spoffos comedy actor and director.
Speaker 2: Who was then he was then completing production on analyze this.
Speaker 2: He was named for Galaxy Quest early on. I see that,
Speaker 2: so Harold Ramis did not end up directing Galaxy Quest.
Speaker 2: So what happened, Well, like a lot of things in life,
Speaker 2: this was Tim Allen's fault. So sorry to piss off
Speaker 2: anyone with an enormous attachment to buzz light Year or
Speaker 2: home improvement or I guess the Santa Claus or the
Speaker 2: remake of the Shaggy Da wasn't he didn't he also
Speaker 2: do that?
Speaker 1: Or maybe it was that darn cat that he was
Speaker 1: one of those. Yeah, Tim Allen sucks. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: we all accept that. I think that that's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not a hot take.
Speaker 2: I would say, all right, great, but tells well Tim
Speaker 2: Allen in fairness, he was born in Colorado, and his
Speaker 2: mom moved to Michigan after his father died in a
Speaker 2: car accident. He grew up in Detroit and eventually went
Speaker 2: first to Central Michigan University and then Western Michigan, where
Speaker 2: he met his first wife. But also while there, he
Speaker 2: developed a coke addiction, and, like so many before him,
Speaker 2: turned to dealing to fuel his habit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's why I started dejaying, vented soul forty five's
Speaker 1: as I had to find out way to pay for him. Ooh,
Speaker 1: that's a hard that's the hard stuff. First one's free.
Speaker 1: But he was married to his first wife when he
Speaker 1: became a coke rat. Yes, and they stayed married until
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. It's good for him. I guess
Speaker 1: she's a better person than I am. So.
Speaker 2: In October of nineteen seventy eight, two years after Alan graduated,
Speaker 2: he was arrested at Kalamazoo Battle Creek International Airport in
Speaker 2: Michigan in possession of more than six hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: grams of cocaine.
Speaker 1: I just want a visual about how much six hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty grams of cocaine looks like? Well, don't they do?
Speaker 2: I mean, so, if like your average bottle of coke
Speaker 2: has like twenty eight grams of thirty whatever, how many
Speaker 2: grams of sugar in it? And those are always registered
Speaker 2: like rendered with like sugar cubes, right, imagine six hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty sugar cubes.
Speaker 1: Okay, Oh wow, that is Yeah, that's a lot. That's
Speaker 1: like a gallon size back. That's quite a lot.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately for Tim Allen, Michigan had just passed a law
Speaker 2: that issued a life sentence to those in possession of
Speaker 2: six hundred and fifty grams are over war on drugs?
Speaker 2: Actually no, that's it predates the War on drugs. Michigan
Speaker 2: was just ahead of its time in draconian drug policy.
Speaker 1: So they recently passed an ordinance or a law of
Speaker 1: the exact amount that he was caring.
Speaker 2: It is quite funny. And he also, I mean he was,
Speaker 2: he was. It was like a full on sting operation.
Speaker 2: Like he dealt he handed it over to an undercover cop.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just like he got flagged within his bag randomly.
Speaker 1: So I mean, is that the Do you think they
Speaker 1: were like, Okay, bring this very precise amount. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Tim Allen in particular, so, as documented in Allan's hilariously
Speaker 2: titled biography by John F. Wukowitz called Tim Allen parentheses
Speaker 2: Overcoming Adversity Parentheses Closed Old Timmy had been set up
Speaker 2: by an undercover police officer named Michael Pifer, no relation
Speaker 2: to Michelle, who had allegedly been tracking him for months.
Speaker 2: Alan put an Adidas holdall full of cocaine in a
Speaker 2: locker and handed the key to Pifer. The next thing
Speaker 2: I observed was a gun in my face. Alan later
Speaker 2: told the Detroit Free Press. Alan had been told he'd
Speaker 2: be getting a cool forty two thousand for the trafficking,
Speaker 2: but was now facing a possible life sentence, so naturally
Speaker 2: he tucked his little tail between his legs and started
Speaker 2: ratting people out. Now, the pigs obviously loved this, and
Speaker 2: Alan was sentenced at a federal court rather than a
Speaker 2: state one, meaning the newly passed law no longer applied
Speaker 2: to his case. Ultimately, since to three to seven years,
Speaker 2: he served only two years and four months, probably because
Speaker 2: his information quote helped authorities indict twenty people in the
Speaker 2: drug trade and resulted in the conviction and sentencing of
Speaker 2: four major drug dealers.
Speaker 1: It's insane to think that Tim Allen did years of
Speaker 1: prison time, Like I know, that's nowhere near what it
Speaker 1: could have been, and it didn't humble him in the slightest.
Speaker 2: He just came out still being like I'm great, I'm
Speaker 2: Tim Allen. Yeah, And so that segues into my next point.
Speaker 2: It does not seem like he became a nicer man
Speaker 2: from there. Pamela Anderson's memoir Love Pamela, she notes that
Speaker 2: Alan flashed her on the set of Home improvement when
Speaker 2: she was twenty three years old, claiming he said it
Speaker 2: was only fair because he had seen me naked and
Speaker 2: now we were even.
Speaker 1: I don't understand the flashing desire, the exhibitionist desire, I
Speaker 1: should say, ask Luis k Man. I, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Barry Sonenfelder called an incident on the set of Big
Speaker 2: Trouble when not Big Trouble in Little China.
Speaker 1: The it was in Trouble at the pad of a
Speaker 1: Dave Barry book, I believe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this is the one that was like it
Speaker 2: was like about bombing an airplane nine to.
Speaker 1: Eleven, got right before an eleven. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Tim Allen met co star his co star in
Speaker 2: that movie, Renee Russo, for the first time, and Barry
Speaker 2: Sonenfeld was like, Okay, you guys need to act like
Speaker 2: your your direction in this scene is that you have
Speaker 2: instant burning chemistry, Tim, In other words, you are attracted
Speaker 2: to Renee Russo. And Tim Allen pushed back and said,
Speaker 2: why would I be, and Sonenfeld explained that this was
Speaker 2: a movie and that Alan's job was to act, and
Speaker 2: Alan retorted acting darling, yeah, And Alan retorted I'm not
Speaker 2: attracted to her, and Russo tried to play it off
Speaker 2: by joking, I'll act attractive, Tim, I promise that's good
Speaker 2: in what Sonenfeld described.
Speaker 1: As a Marilyn Monroe voice. But Alan, but Alan.
Speaker 2: Declared it's hard to act attracted to someone if they're
Speaker 2: not attractive. Sounenfeld got frustrated and said, you're an actor, Tim,
Speaker 2: just act like you're attracted to one of the most
Speaker 2: beautiful women in the world. Okay, And all Alan could
Speaker 2: muster was I'll try or I'm sorry. And all Alan
Speaker 2: could muster was I can try like he's a prize.
Speaker 2: You see that mugshot with that mustache.
Speaker 1: He looks like a non union John Holmes. Wow, yes Yes.
Speaker 2: More recently, Casey Wilson claimed that Tim was fining rude
Speaker 2: to her and other cast and crew members on the
Speaker 2: set of Disney Pluses the Santa Clauses, which I'm just
Speaker 2: now learning existed. Tim Allen was such a bitch. It
Speaker 2: was the truly single worst experience I've ever had with
Speaker 2: a co star, she said on a December twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three episode of her podcast. Never made eye contact, never
Speaker 2: said anything. It was so uncomfortable. It's the end of shooting,
Speaker 2: and Tim Allen goes leaving, takes his Santa Cape, takes
Speaker 2: his Santa Cape, picks it up and drops it on
Speaker 2: the floor and walks out, and they hustle in his
Speaker 2: stand in a lovely man who is much nicer to
Speaker 2: act against. And she continued, I will not say who
Speaker 2: said this. This was someone that I do not know,
Speaker 2: perhaps in the crew. They breezed past me and just
Speaker 2: go you're seeing him on a good day.
Speaker 1: Picturing him as like James Brown taking his cape off,
Speaker 1: just like dropping it on the floor leaving. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to end every episode now from now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a good bit. Uh.
Speaker 2: And as you may not be surprised to learn given
Speaker 2: that his Network TV show, which is like has went
Speaker 2: for like ten or eleven season, may actually is it
Speaker 2: still on the air?
Speaker 1: I you know, he's in a new show with Kat
Speaker 1: Denning's man Standing, So I don't think he's in two
Speaker 1: sitcombs at the same time. Maybe wouldn't put it past me.
Speaker 1: He seems to have like that same like weird like
Speaker 1: Jay Leno level work ethic. Wow twenty eleven to twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one.
Speaker 2: Jesus, anyway, that show was like just Tim Allen wondering
Speaker 2: around going.
Speaker 1: Black people have rights. God, I hate him so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he's basically leaning into the whole like
Speaker 2: republicans of the really oppressed ones.
Speaker 1: He are like the punk rockers of today. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: don't get me started on that one. I think it
Speaker 1: was to Kimmel or Fallon. He was.
Speaker 2: He said being Republican in Hollywood was like being in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties Germany. Just I mean, what do you say
Speaker 2: to that?
Speaker 1: Right? No, it's not, Tim, It's just such.
Speaker 2: A testament to like, I don't be a late night
Speaker 2: show must suck at least one where you're like under
Speaker 2: mandate to be nice to these people.
Speaker 1: Yes, I can say to that. Okay, Tim, cut to commercial,
Speaker 1: Like what you want to do some karaoke? Tim? Okay,
Speaker 1: Well here, let's let's move on to somebody that I know.
Speaker 1: You love. Kevin Kline. You love Kevin Klin, I love Yeah.
Speaker 1: Kevin Klein was actually original Galaxy Quest writer David Howard's
Speaker 1: first choice to play the Shatner Captain Kirk Anna role
Speaker 1: Jason Nesmith. He would have been great, yeah, and knocked
Speaker 1: it out of the park. He plays in the show
Speaker 1: within the movie, Commander Peter Quincy Taggart, and that is
Speaker 1: a monkey's reference. Actually, wait, so the actor who plays
Speaker 1: the Gouxy Quest captain of the movie, the name is
Speaker 1: Jason Nesmyth. That is a reference to Mike Nest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they did, they did.
Speaker 2: There's like seventeen layers of name references for most of
Speaker 2: these characters, like Peter Quince. Even the fact that he's
Speaker 2: middle of the fictional character's name is Quincy is a
Speaker 2: reference to something.
Speaker 1: Oh Quin's from Midsummer Night stream right, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: but I don't why is it being referenced because it's fun?
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so it's what it's what we called an
Speaker 2: easter egg in the industry.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, read the trades. God, it's like, you
Speaker 1: don't even know what boffo is. Does the word boffo
Speaker 1: mean nothing to you anymore? I just imagine a very heated,
Speaker 1: uh conversation in the in the variety like masthead room,
Speaker 1: just like when.
Speaker 3: We say something's boffo, that that used to mean something.
Speaker 1: Get out of my newsroom. This is I think maybe
Speaker 1: the fourth episode we referenced boffo. We need it's like
Speaker 1: a sound like a ding or something. People. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: uh so, okay. Kevin Kline was pretty much everybody's first
Speaker 1: choice for the Tim Allen roll. The original writer David
Speaker 1: Howard wanted it to be Kevin Klin. Original director Harold
Speaker 1: Ramis wanted Kevin Kline or Steve Martin or Alec Baldwin.
Speaker 1: All could actually those are really good, right, possibly a
Speaker 1: better movie. It's part of it is Tim Allen's unlikeability
Speaker 1: works for him in this, which is kind of exactly
Speaker 1: in thirty Rock is the same deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and I mean, uh, wouldn't have been coming
Speaker 2: off Glengarry gunn Ross, but like that was one of
Speaker 2: the things I think he would have like that Hunt
Speaker 2: for Red October would have been like his big things
Speaker 2: at this point when this was getting developed, right, yeah, oh,
Speaker 2: how for Red October I think it.
Speaker 1: Was like ninety and then Glengarry glen Ross I think
Speaker 1: was like ninety three. But yeah, so you're right, mid
Speaker 1: mid nineties. But Disney insisted on Tim Allen, and Harold
Speaker 1: Ramis was so against this that he dropped out of
Speaker 1: the project and directed so much respect yeah I know,
Speaker 1: and director Dean Parasawt took the reins within three weeks.
Speaker 1: Although Harold Ramis later backpeddaled. He admitted that he was
Speaker 1: wrong for dropping out, and so that Tim Allen had
Speaker 1: been great in the part. Tim Allen was great at
Speaker 1: playing a dick was how I choose to read that.
Speaker 1: Tim Allen recalled the frostiness from Harold Ramis in an
Speaker 1: interview with The Hollywood Reporter in twenty nineteen. He said,
Speaker 1: I had a very peculiar lunch with Enemy of This
Speaker 1: Pod Jeffrey Katzenberg and Harold Ramis. Katzenburg pitched me the
Speaker 1: idea of the and her character in Galaxy Quest, and
Speaker 1: then they started talking and it became clear that Ramis
Speaker 1: didn't see me for the part. It was pretty uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: I just can't imagine Harold ram Is being that like
Speaker 2: assertive or petty. But good for him, I guess, oh,
Speaker 2: come on petty.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, with his thing with with Bill Murray. Yeah
Speaker 1: that's true, although I mean he was kind of mostly
Speaker 1: the victim in that, I would say, but still.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't have to relitigate that now. No, No,
Speaker 2: that's so sad, so so so sad. Check out our
Speaker 2: Groundhog Day episode for more sadness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, despite it being very apparent that at
Speaker 1: at least several high ranking members of the production didn't
Speaker 1: want him there. Tim Allen was very jazzed about this
Speaker 1: because he saw the role in Galaxy Quest as a
Speaker 1: prime way for him to break into the sci fi genre,
Speaker 1: and he ultimately chose Galaxy Quest over another movie he
Speaker 1: was up for, bi Centennial Man. He chose wisely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Robin William went on to star in that. It's the
Speaker 1: one where he's like a household robot who lives for
Speaker 1: and then he opts for mortality.
Speaker 2: He becomes Forrest Gump, right like he basically just like
Speaker 2: lives through hundreds and hundreds of years of US history
Speaker 2: while still maintaining the characteristic twinkle in.
Speaker 1: His eye we all loved so much. But then there's
Speaker 1: in the opt to like die at the end because he's, oh, probably,
Speaker 1: I don't know, because he's just like, life isn't life
Speaker 1: if it's just indefinite something like that. That's a good line.
Speaker 1: Go with that. That's a gry That's a really good line.
Speaker 1: I'm proud of that. I've had a lot. I haven't
Speaker 1: slept much this week's folks, So I'm on like so
Speaker 1: much coffee right now. I've been pitching a lot. I've
Speaker 1: been because as soon as we wrap this, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: desperately try to finish Great Gatsby Part two. Sorry, folks,
Speaker 1: I know, Sorry, it's late. I have the bottleneck. I know.
Speaker 1: I've apologized to several friends of the pod about that,
Speaker 1: to mention that this was a reader request through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, give us money and we'll consider your
Speaker 2: podcast was a good pitch.
Speaker 1: We've fund a lot of great calls. Yeah, I haven't
Speaker 1: done all of them, so there was a lot of them.
Speaker 1: We'll get to them. Probably. Of his love of science fiction,
Speaker 1: Tim Allen told Starbus magazine, I love science fiction. It's
Speaker 1: my favorite thing, is it. Well, now that Cocaine's off
Speaker 1: the table, maybe wo Galaxy Quest was a baby step
Speaker 1: for me. I like other scripts that are a bit
Speaker 1: more serious, but I'm doing this first. It's really funny
Speaker 1: right up front, then gets more serious technically. It isn't
Speaker 1: what I would want, which would be a Larry Nivens
Speaker 1: sort of thing. I don't know who that is. It
Speaker 1: isn't right on, but it's a Saturday afternoon Star Trek
Speaker 1: Deep Space nine kind of dramatic science fiction. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the Saturday Afternoon thing is I don't know
Speaker 1: that escapes my ken. Accordingly, Tim Allen didn't base his
Speaker 1: performance on anything from science fiction, he said, but I
Speaker 1: was in that captain's chair. I was not mimicking William
Speaker 1: Shatton there with whom I'm now friends because of this movie.
Speaker 1: He told them TV News. But I like the way
Speaker 1: Yule Brenner sat in his throne in The Ten Commandments.
Speaker 1: I worked off that. I studied that well.
Speaker 2: I rented the tape, So, I mean, you know, he's
Speaker 2: some of his quotes are funny and self effacing, but
Speaker 2: I also do believe that he uh, that's what that
Speaker 2: was the sole bit of research he did for this.
Speaker 2: It's funny hearing him position himself as a sci fi
Speaker 2: fan when like the closest he'd done was buzz light Year.
Speaker 1: No, that was later, Oh no, you're right, ninety five
Speaker 1: was Toy Story, right, Yeah? Yeah, So I don't know,
Speaker 1: why were you lying about that, Tim app Why would
Speaker 1: you lie? Tim Allan?
Speaker 2: In Hollywood, of all places, Alan was his usual self
Speaker 2: On the set. He annoyed Sigourney Weaver constantly to sign
Speaker 2: some piece of the alien set, to the point where
Speaker 2: when she actually did it she signed it stolen by
Speaker 2: Tim Allen love Sigourney Weaver.
Speaker 1: He was so upset. Weaver recalled he said, why would
Speaker 1: you write that?
Speaker 2: I was gonna put it my screening room, ah, which
Speaker 2: was such a Hollywood thing to say. In the Oral History,
Speaker 2: Allen's next comment is, she never asked me to sign anything.
Speaker 2: She doesn't care. And it just continues. The cas went
Speaker 2: to a twentieth anniversary screening of Alien, and when Sagourney
Speaker 2: Weaver is stripped down to a bronz panties in the
Speaker 2: final scene, Tim Allan yelled yeah baby in the theater,
Speaker 2: to which Sam Rockwell recalled in the Oral History, Tim
Speaker 2: really liked saying yeah baby. Case in point, Justin Long
Speaker 2: went to see Deep Blue Sea with Tim Allen, Sam Rockwell,
Speaker 2: and Philip Seymour Hoffman, in which was must have been
Speaker 2: just a delightful evening, Sons, Tim Allen, And when Samuel
Speaker 2: Jackson's character dies in that film spoilers, Justin Long said
Speaker 2: Tim went into a whole routine in the theater. Also
Speaker 2: from Tim Allen himself, I was really rude to Justin
Speaker 2: Long when I first met him. Pretty much everyone remembers
Speaker 2: Alan not really having an off button on. Tony Shallhoub
Speaker 2: dryly noted a lot of fart jokes with Tim. Some
Speaker 2: weren't jokes, some were actually farts. But the person Alan.
Speaker 1: Off in the middle distance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, The person that Alan rankled the most was the
Speaker 2: dear departed Alan Rickman.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's unforgivable. It is.
Speaker 2: Tim Allen used to kick the door open to the
Speaker 2: makeup trailer. He wrote in his now published diary. We
Speaker 2: would all be lined up and he would say number
Speaker 2: one is here. Sam Rockwell confirmed this MTV. If the
Speaker 2: chairs were taken, Tim would shout, that's fine, I'm first
Speaker 2: on the call sheet, but I'll go take a walk
Speaker 2: and come back when you're ready. However, the most famous
Speaker 2: quote concerning Tim Allen in Alan Rickman's diary is this,
Speaker 2: Tim Allen has this perverse need to needle, antagonize, provoke, demoralize,
Speaker 2: takes every opportunity to belittle. That's a nice thing to
Speaker 2: write about someone. Darryl Chill Mitchell, who played the ship's pilot,
Speaker 2: told the Hollywood Reporter Tim would go on a ten
Speaker 2: minute rant, and I would look at Alan Rickman and
Speaker 2: God bless him. He was by the letter. Even though
Speaker 2: it was a comedy. Alan Rickman approached that movie like
Speaker 2: any drama.
Speaker 1: That's where the best comedy comes from.
Speaker 2: Peter do that too, playing it straight. Michael Caine him
Speaker 2: up at Christmas Carol.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh well no, that's too far. Hurt But it's
Speaker 1: not funny. I mean, it's that just hurts. But he
Speaker 1: played it straight, and that's what's so great. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: but no, But but comedy is funny when the person
Speaker 1: all the stuff's happening to is like treating it very seriously.
Speaker 1: It's Steve Martin, It's Peter Sellers as in SPECTACLEU. So no,
Speaker 1: Michael Kin and him up as Christmas Carol is just devastating.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean it's Michael Kaine when he goes.
Speaker 1: I live in constant because because you very sweetly gave
Speaker 1: me one of my prize possessions, which is a signed
Speaker 1: it by ten glossy of Michael Kaine, which is on
Speaker 1: the front door to my apartment. So every time I
Speaker 1: come and go, I see it, and I'm confronted every
Speaker 1: day with the thought of I'm confronting Michael Kaine's mortality
Speaker 1: every day.
Speaker 2: It bothers me. I'm sorry speaking me. I feel a
Speaker 2: lot of feelings I don't.
Speaker 1: Like like them up. It's Christmas, Carol, after all, there's
Speaker 1: only one more sleep till Christmas. Bay, there's your Kermit.
Speaker 1: That's not bad. Nice. It's Stewie the other night. Yeah,
Speaker 1: come talk to me sometimes, sweetheart. I know what it
Speaker 1: takes to be cool. Sleep deprivation looks good on you.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of caffeine. I actually feel like happier
Speaker 1: and more powerful than I have in the months sexually.
Speaker 2: So Mitchell continued. They would call action four times and
Speaker 2: we didn't hear because we were laughing so hard, and
Speaker 2: Alan would be looking at us like really, man, Tim
Speaker 2: and I would do this dumb thing where we'd just
Speaker 2: say I am Spartacus all the time, Mitchell continued. One
Speaker 2: day out of nowhere, Alan Rickman went Spartacus and we
Speaker 2: all laughed big time. But then Tim went for another
Speaker 2: ten minutes, and you could tell that Alan was regretting
Speaker 2: that choice.
Speaker 1: God like just such a fee. Moments like this, you
Speaker 1: remember that he got his start and stand because he
Speaker 1: just always.
Speaker 2: Has to like top it, yep, yep, the desperate, sad
Speaker 2: thirst of a stand up comedian. Obviously, Rickman is not around,
Speaker 2: having died in twenty sixteen to give his side of this,
Speaker 2: but he was enough of a professional that he never
Speaker 2: really said anything about Alan in public, and according to
Speaker 2: Alan anyway, apologized for his standoffishness. Alan wrote in The
Speaker 2: Hollwood Reporter when Rickman died, I don't think Alan liked
Speaker 2: me all that much. When we first started shooting Galaxy Quest,
Speaker 2: I was a stage performer, a concert comic, and I
Speaker 2: was coming into this group of very polished lesbians, Sigourney
Speaker 2: Weaver and Sam Rockwell and Tony Shelhube and then Alan
Speaker 2: adding his English roots. All of them had this process
Speaker 2: and method, voice stretching and all that kind of prep,
Speaker 2: and it was so different from mine. I was doing
Speaker 2: Penis jokes right up to action. That's a tremendous Pool quote.
Speaker 2: But then one day on set Alan came to me
Speaker 2: and apologized. He said he mistook my behavior for lack
Speaker 2: of commitment.
Speaker 1: I just want to say, Hi, Tim, this actor you
Speaker 1: worked with dog, what are some memories and thoughts you
Speaker 1: have of working with them? He was not that great
Speaker 1: to me, and then apologized, Yeah, like I'm gonna use it.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna use the death of this beloved actor to
Speaker 2: sanitize my own reputation.
Speaker 1: Real class act there, Timmy.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I'm gonna close with one of my absolute favorite
Speaker 2: Alan Rickman stories of all time.
Speaker 1: Yeah uh. Director Dean Parasot recalled.
Speaker 2: That after one emotional take, he said, quote, I turned
Speaker 2: back and Tim is just completely emotional. He says, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't like these feelings I'm having. I'd
Speaker 2: like to go back to the trailer. And Alan Rickman said,
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I think you just experienced acting.
Speaker 1: That's incredible.
Speaker 2: Oh man, man, I think you just experienced I don't
Speaker 2: like these feelings I'm having.
Speaker 1: I'd like to come out Dullard. Oh God love him.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right
Speaker 1: back with more too much information in just a moment. Wow,
Speaker 1: Harold Ramis had already established a dictat. You write, what
Speaker 1: is a dictat? Like an edict or an edict? Okay,
Speaker 1: Harold Ramis had already established an edict that, in order
Speaker 1: to be considered for Galaxy Quest, actors couldn't have started
Speaker 1: anything sci fi or fantasy related up to that point.
Speaker 1: I like that. But but Sigourney Weaver, she told Starbarus
Speaker 1: magazine in two thousand. I had heard about this movie
Speaker 1: and I asked my agent about it. He told me
Speaker 1: that they didn't want anyone from science fiction in the movie,
Speaker 1: only science fiction virgins, as it were. I said, that's silly,
Speaker 1: because if anyone can spoof science fiction, surely it's me. Then,
Speaker 1: to my surprise, I was offered the part. I love
Speaker 1: Sigourney Weaver. You know she There's a footage of her
Speaker 1: as like a twelve year old Beatles fan in the
Speaker 1: crowd at the Beatles Hollywood Bowl concert in nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 1: I love her for other reasons too, but I especially
Speaker 1: love that there's your Beatles reference for the episode of
Speaker 1: Folksing Boffo is now rivaling Beatles for references in The Lord. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sigourney Weaver played the actress Gwen DeMarco in the movie.
Speaker 1: In the movie, and DeMarco plays Lieutenant Tawny Madison in
Speaker 1: the show within a show Galaxy Quest, and it's a
Speaker 1: movie long riff on women's underserved role in the sci
Speaker 1: fi genre.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a nod to that when Weaver as Gwen
Speaker 2: lampshades the fact that her character basically just repeats information
Speaker 2: that the computer already spits out a protracted gag for
Speaker 2: the computers, just saying things, and she just goes it's malfunctioning,
Speaker 2: and she's, look, I have one job in this lousy ship.
Speaker 1: It's stupid, but I'm gonna do it. We've were elaborated
Speaker 1: to MTV News explaining it's funny considering my backgrounds, you know,
Speaker 1: Alien and everything. But I was never into science fiction.
Speaker 1: I like the Twilight Zone. That's about as close as
Speaker 1: I got. I thought Flash Gordon was stupid. I think
Speaker 1: Star Trek happened and I missed it. I was in
Speaker 1: the theater, and then suddenly I did Alien. Suddenly I
Speaker 1: was straddling two very different worlds. But I just felt
Speaker 1: Galaxy Quest as a comedy with such a love letter
Speaker 1: to all the insecure actors in the field who had
Speaker 1: done so many wonderful and somewhat underappreciated projects. You know,
Speaker 1: that's really what this is about. It's a movie about
Speaker 1: actors who are worried what what their legacy.
Speaker 2: Is and fans. I mean, really appreciate thing about this
Speaker 2: movie is that it hits like this crazy intersection of
Speaker 2: actor and fan that was like in place with the Trickies,
Speaker 2: but just there's no like the whole I mean whatever,
Speaker 2: I'll get to it in the end. Shut up, shut up,
Speaker 2: all of you. Let me breathe for just a second.
Speaker 1: Night after night up here, up and down the court,
Speaker 1: carrying your ass.
Speaker 2: So the character's blonde wig and prominent cleavage were Weavers choices.
Speaker 2: The first thing I said to Dean was that Lieutenant
Speaker 2: Tawny Madison had to be blonde and she had to
Speaker 2: have big boobs. Ever, totally Hollywood reporter. I love Tawny
Speaker 2: from the first moment I read the part. To me,
Speaker 2: she was what a lot of women feel like, including myself,
Speaker 2: in a Hollywood situation. There's a couple of things that
Speaker 2: might have gone into the conception of this character. One
Speaker 2: is Aaron Gray, who played Colonel Wilma Deering in these
Speaker 2: short lived buck Rogers in the twenty fifth century series
Speaker 2: from like the late seventies. I think she later went
Speaker 2: on to be in Silver Spoons, but she was a
Speaker 2: natural burnette who has dyed to a blonde in the show,
Speaker 2: and she was often clad in skin tight uniforms.
Speaker 1: I think Actually, let me check one second, because when
Speaker 1: did Deep Space nine start? Ooh, I want to say
Speaker 1: ninety four it'll be amazing if I got that ninety
Speaker 1: three to ninety Oh it ended in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1: So what's her name? Seven of nine? Jerry Ryan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was not in this. Wait, she might have been
Speaker 1: a voyager, So this is we're having a trecky father.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure. Yeah, Jerry Ryan is a voyager. So yeah,
Speaker 1: nine the character seven and nine as a voyager, right.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think it's either the Buck Rogers riff
Speaker 2: or it's on about it's kind of on Jerry Ryan,
Speaker 2: who had been in Star Trek Voyager for two years
Speaker 2: at this point, ninety seven that launched. There's a reference
Speaker 2: for Sigourney Reaver when she goes. My TV Guide interview
Speaker 2: was forty minutes about asking how my boobs fit into
Speaker 2: this costume? And I will point out at one point
Speaker 2: that Scarlett Johansson in one of the like an Avengers interview,
Speaker 2: was like asked about like, oh, what exercises did you
Speaker 2: do to fit into the suit, and she's like she
Speaker 2: pointed caught out the journey. She was like, you asked
Speaker 2: them about their character preparation and like what they what
Speaker 2: they enjoyed about this, and you asked me about my
Speaker 2: suit anyway. I think that line could also be a
Speaker 2: reference to like, I believe there was an interview where
Speaker 2: Jerry Ryan like the interview was just very creepily asking about, like,
Speaker 2: how did she fit in the suit anyway. H Weaver
Speaker 2: would often leave the set still wearing her prosthetic breasts
Speaker 2: and blonde wig. Sam Rockwell said Sigourney changed with that wig,
Speaker 2: and Rickman added I remember Sigourney walking around saying she
Speaker 2: was experience a whole new world with the blonde wig.
Speaker 2: We were confirmed that to MTV, saying blondes definitely have
Speaker 2: more fun. I loved being a starlet. I miss my breasts,
Speaker 2: I missed my blonde hair, I missed my insecurity. And
Speaker 2: she kept the wig after filming wrapped.
Speaker 1: Huh. That's an interesting insight into Sigournny reavers Psyche. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we got to talk more about dear Sweet Alan Rickman,
Speaker 1: who plays the actor Alexander Dane, a serious thesb in
Speaker 1: a Man of the theater. Huh. Trapped in the role
Speaker 1: of doctor Lazarus, the film's spock stand in. We'll get
Speaker 1: into how productions strenuously avoided any possible grounds for legal
Speaker 1: action by star Trek A little later on Rick mattld
Speaker 1: MTV about his role. There were all these different layers
Speaker 1: with these characters. It's such a great acting challenge. You're
Speaker 1: only as good as the script. Though. Really he did
Speaker 1: mention on the DVD commentary about the film that quote,
Speaker 1: I did grow up, as it were, inside the Royal
Speaker 1: Shakespeare Company and other similar environments, so I know what
Speaker 1: my character was going through on some level. I remember
Speaker 1: when Sigourney and I were sitting at the autograph table
Speaker 1: the convention and saying this is a bit too close
Speaker 1: for comfort. There were constant images and moments where you
Speaker 1: just sort of thought, I have lived this. Funnily enough,
Speaker 1: Rickman saw that his character had made a night in
Speaker 1: the script, or an early version of the script, i
Speaker 1: should say, and he felt that that rang false, which
Speaker 1: is why it's not mentioned in the film, though it
Speaker 1: appears in the final credits. It's a testament to his
Speaker 1: commitment that one of the film's defining lines, by gabthers
Speaker 1: hammer grab thar excuse me by grab thars hammer was
Speaker 1: originally a temp line, just a dumb riff on Thor's hammer,
Speaker 1: but apparently he just committed so hard to the bit
Speaker 1: and it absolutely killed the table reads and by the
Speaker 1: time the crew had made homemade T shirts with the
Speaker 1: line it was too late to make a change.
Speaker 2: That's when you know something's locked in when the crew
Speaker 2: is made there, when they made the cruise shirts.
Speaker 1: That's all. I'd love a coffee table book on like
Speaker 1: cruise shirts from famous movies. That'd be great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think the most famous one is
Speaker 2: the is the Alien one or a blade Runner or
Speaker 2: Alien blade Runner? Yeah, the Blade Runner and the American
Speaker 2: crew was in open revolt against Redley Scott. The famous
Speaker 2: Yes Governor T shirts inspired by an interview where really
Speaker 2: Scott described the difference between working with Americans and working
Speaker 2: with British people wise just the British will often and
Speaker 2: just accept directives with yes Govna that story.
Speaker 1: We told that story him probably like fifty percent of
Speaker 1: the TI episodes. I love it so dearly.
Speaker 2: There were a couple of rehearsals where we rewrote some
Speaker 2: things sitting around the table, Sam Rockwell said to the
Speaker 2: Hollywood reporter Alan Rickman was very instrumental in making sure
Speaker 2: the script hit the right dramatic notes. Everything had a
Speaker 2: strong logic and reason behind it. He wanted the grab
Speaker 2: Thar's hammer moment to be set up perfectly so it
Speaker 2: had a motion when he delivered it to Patrick Breen,
Speaker 2: who was a fantastic actor. Rickman even worked with iconic
Speaker 2: effects and makeup wizard Stan Winston on his character's prosthetic
Speaker 2: head cap that he wears constantly. He said, I thought
Speaker 2: it was important to be good enough to convince the
Speaker 2: aliens who believed were the real thing, Rickman told Starburst,
Speaker 2: but also cheesy enough to imagine that it was something
Speaker 2: he applied himself a good So when we were watching this,
Speaker 2: Low was like, why would he keep it on overnight?
Speaker 2: And that was actually something that Alan Rickman said. He
Speaker 2: was like, he reasoned that this character, that this actor
Speaker 2: would like not want to reapply it two days in
Speaker 2: a row, and since they had two back to back appearances,
Speaker 2: one at the convention and one at the store opening,
Speaker 2: that he would have just kept it all overnight.
Speaker 1: Great stuff. Yes, speaking of catchphrases, the never give Up,
Speaker 1: Never Surrender was writer Robert Gordon's work. He's the second
Speaker 1: guy who came on to write the script. He said
Speaker 1: it came from Winston Churchill via a super Tramp song
Speaker 1: because I was a huge super tramp fan, which is
Speaker 1: not something you hear being admitted as such. Nope, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's all. It's also the one that I remember it
Speaker 1: from is it's in uh.
Speaker 2: I think Iron Maiden uses that speech that we shall
Speaker 2: fight them on the beaches in as like a live
Speaker 2: introt to Aces High, which is one of their best songs.
Speaker 1: It's in a Kink song on Arthur the Rise and
Speaker 1: Fall of the Decline and Fall the British Empire. Mister
Speaker 1: Churchill says, I think the para we shall fight them
Speaker 1: on the beach is never on the course of human conflict.
Speaker 1: Has so much been owed to so few, And we'll
Speaker 1: make our British Empire a greater place for me and you,
Speaker 1: and this is our finest hour something like that narrator voice.
Speaker 1: It did not, it was not. Yeah, the sun eventually
Speaker 1: set on the British Empire after a long, painful decline.
Speaker 1: I love the British I know you.
Speaker 2: Do, I mean, but it is funny like I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, they were devastated by World War Two and
Speaker 2: then went into a protracted depression so.
Speaker 1: Like from which they've not really emerged. Yeah. So Churchill
Speaker 1: was wrong.
Speaker 2: Not the first time I've said that unsurprisingly, Yeah, well
Speaker 2: you know what, Winston, You're dead, so it's gonna say
Speaker 2: checkmate me my favorite.
Speaker 1: We talked about the in one of the many episodes
Speaker 1: talked about Orson Wells. Did I ever tell you that
Speaker 1: the Orson Wells Winston Churchill story, I don't think so. No.
Speaker 1: I love this is very cute. So Orson Wills for
Speaker 1: reasons that I really sort of don't remember. As a
Speaker 1: very young man ran in I think as he was
Speaker 1: such a respected man of the theater that he ran
Speaker 1: in circles of like incredibly powerful men, one of whom
Speaker 1: was Winston Churchill. And I think Churchill had seen him
Speaker 1: act in one of the many Shakespearean plays he was in,
Speaker 1: and he Churchill came backstage and visited him, and they
Speaker 1: were a little better than nodding level acquaintances, but they
Speaker 1: weren't friends, but they were, you know. And so in
Speaker 1: the fifties, when Orson Wells was kind of on the
Speaker 1: outs with the studios and was really struggling to get
Speaker 1: his projects made, he was like having to go court
Speaker 1: wealthy businessman himself to try to raise money for these projects.
Speaker 1: And he was taking some kind of Russian oligarch to
Speaker 1: a white Russian, as he would make the distinction to
Speaker 1: a white meaning not red like white meaning like Azaris Russian,
Speaker 1: not a communist. And it took him to lunch and
Speaker 1: Churchill happened to be there, and so they walked in
Speaker 1: Warson Wells with this Russian guy and Churchill like yeah,
Speaker 1: and the Russian guy flipped out and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. You know Churchill acknowledged you, and oh
Speaker 1: my goodness, you are clearly a man. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: the next day whatever resort they were staying at, Orson
Speaker 1: Wells was swimming in the water in the surf and
Speaker 1: Churchill happens to be swimming nearby, so he swims over
Speaker 1: to Doggie paddles over to Winston Churchill. He's an enormous man,
Speaker 1: bobbing bobbing, and or someone else goes, you know, mister Churchill,
Speaker 1: I just want you to know what you did for me.
Speaker 1: That was really helpful, and he kind of explained. And
Speaker 1: then the next day Orson walks back into the restaurant
Speaker 1: with another guy that he's trying to get to give
Speaker 1: him money, and Winston Churchill was also there, and Churchill
Speaker 1: sees Orson walk in with this financier, and Churchill stands
Speaker 1: up and just does a deep bow. That's got his money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's uh.
Speaker 2: I mean my favorite calling someone over to the table
Speaker 2: story of all time is Frank Sinatra and Don Rickles.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and I told that before. Okay, no, please
Speaker 1: tell so Rickles, Uh, Rickles is that doing? You know?
Speaker 2: He and Frank knew each other from just doing these
Speaker 2: these the Vegas Hotel and the Vegas gigs. So he
Speaker 2: at one point, uh knows that Frank is going to
Speaker 2: be at the same restaurant with him or whatever, and
Speaker 2: he's like, Frank, you know I could I got these
Speaker 2: two girls with me and and and it would be
Speaker 2: a you know, you would be doing me a favor
Speaker 2: if you could come over and say hi to the table,
Speaker 2: you know, and and and that would really go a
Speaker 2: long way for me. And Frank, eager to oblige him,
Speaker 2: later on, approaches the table and he goes to, you know,
Speaker 2: introduce himself, like, I'm Frank Sinatra. By the way, you know,
Speaker 2: Don Rickles is a great friend of mine. And before
Speaker 2: he gets a word out, Don rickleses not now, Frank,
Speaker 2: please meeting I classic bit great stuff. Great Stuff's Quest
Speaker 2: has a deep bench of ensemble actors. Hube auditioned for
Speaker 2: the role that eventually went to Sam Rockwell, and we
Speaker 2: will get to Sam, but he was cast as Fred
Speaker 2: Kwan actor Fred Kwan, and Sloop called parasot, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to play an Asian guy, but I got I'll
Speaker 2: play a guy that plays an Asian And so the
Speaker 2: role evolved into a riff on late not enthusiast David
Speaker 2: Carradine's role in Kung Fu and the mid century habit
Speaker 2: of casting white dudes to play characters of Asian descent.
Speaker 1: Who else is in that white dudes playing guys of
Speaker 1: Asian descent?
Speaker 2: Well, Peter Sellers, Peter Sellers, Mickey Rooney and Breakfast Tiffany's.
Speaker 2: Also famously, Genghis Khan was played by John Wayne and
Speaker 2: yellow Face.
Speaker 1: And wasn't there a Marlon Brando movie that was a
Speaker 1: Mexican movie? Well?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's actually funny bringing up Hoarson Welles
Speaker 2: because you know, famously Charlton Heston in brown Face in
Speaker 2: Touch of Evil, right, right, And it's really funny because
Speaker 2: I was actually I did not connect these thoughts previously,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to there's a there's a restoration of
Speaker 2: Touch of Evil that I'm going to next week. And
Speaker 2: in just like googling around, do you remember Robert Rodriguez
Speaker 2: once upon a Time in Mexico?
Speaker 1: No, I mean I know of it that I don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So Willem Dafoe is in that movie as
Speaker 2: like a cartel leader, and he is in brown face,
Speaker 2: and I want to say, it's a nod to Charton
Speaker 2: Heston's brown face because they look almost at He gave
Speaker 2: him the same mustache and they look almost identical.
Speaker 1: Yes, Hollywood, super racist.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Tony brought up David Carridine and Kung Fu Dean
Speaker 2: Paraso Tolt MTV, and the story goes, I don't know
Speaker 2: if it's true that David Carridine was just completely stoned
Speaker 2: all the time on that show. Dialogue would just come
Speaker 2: out of his head and people would just stare at
Speaker 2: each other and think where did that come from? So
Speaker 2: we knew we couldn't do a stoner because we need
Speaker 2: to hit a PG. Thirteen, But we basically suggested that.
Speaker 2: Tony Shelleh continued, I'd heard Carrodine was high the entire time,
Speaker 2: and whether it was true or not, we used it
Speaker 2: as a jumping off point for Fred Kwan. It's nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine, fifteen years after the Galaxy Quest TV series ended,
Speaker 2: and Fred Kwan is just a burnout with one foot
Speaker 2: outside reality, and that's why he's just he's just completely
Speaker 2: unfazed by everything that happens in the movie.
Speaker 1: He like shows up later, like for the teleportal, he's
Speaker 1: the last one there, and he's like, he's like wow, wow, guys,
Speaker 1: and he's like the only guy that goes along with
Speaker 1: Tim Allen's like, must you the space ship and he's
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, everyone else just like what.
Speaker 2: The other nod that Shell who made of this was
Speaker 2: his character's habit of always having his own snacks with
Speaker 2: him in a brown paper bag. Paris Hunt said, there's
Speaker 2: a lot more of Tony eating with the munchies out
Speaker 2: of that paper bag that we had to cut. He's
Speaker 2: the tech guy. You might think he would be into
Speaker 2: gadgets and devices, but instead he just carries around this
Speaker 2: large paper bag with his snacks. And funnily enough, we
Speaker 2: actually have the goat Steven Spielberg to thank for the
Speaker 2: subplot with Shell Hub and Missy Pile's alien character.
Speaker 1: Missy Pile was cast relatively late.
Speaker 2: Production was finding a hard time casting a female who
Speaker 2: could match the alien a female. When I say that
Speaker 2: a female, Pile was cast relatively late, as production was
Speaker 2: finding hard time casting a woman who could match the
Speaker 2: alien performances given by Enrico Cole and Toni Rain Wilson
Speaker 2: and Jed Rees. Casting agent Debra Zane showed Pile the
Speaker 2: first minute of Rees's audition, and she said, Missy saw
Speaker 2: it and got it immediately. Zane continued to Backstage dot Com,
Speaker 2: she was so great that when I sent the audition
Speaker 2: tape to Dean Parasat on her picture and resume, I
Speaker 2: put a little post it that said, well, I actually
Speaker 2: made a xerox copy of my Casting Society of America
Speaker 2: membership card I said, if this is not Laliari, I
Speaker 2: will resign from the CSA. Apparently Missy Piles up against
Speaker 2: Jennifer Coolidge for this, so this.
Speaker 1: Would have been the same year that she was Stiffler's
Speaker 1: mom in American Pie. That's interesting.
Speaker 2: And then the character of Loy also stuck with a
Speaker 2: man of an American man of the letters John Updike
Speaker 2: in the novella Rabbit Remembered and names a character after
Speaker 2: La La Lowry.
Speaker 1: Apparently he was a fan of this movie. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: not done with I'm not done with Jennifer Coolidge. That's
Speaker 1: an interesting Oh, it might have been inspired by Kristin
Speaker 1: Johnson in Third Rock from the Sun. This very tall
Speaker 1: blonde woman. I wonder if that was the bad of mine.
Speaker 2: I forgot Third Rock was so big at this time. Yeah, man,
Speaker 2: whither Third Rock? Whither French Stewart Mmm?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And whether Harlan Williams, Oh, yeah, man himself, I
Speaker 1: love rocket Man.
Speaker 2: There's one line from that movie that I that I
Speaker 2: quote a little too much was when he slides down
Speaker 2: the safety railing and he goes.
Speaker 1: The flesh it burns. Yeah, say that a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a bit of a deep, deep cut for you guys.
Speaker 1: Oh that was such a good that was a great movie.
Speaker 1: It's a good movie. Yeah. Well, Spielberg, who was obviously
Speaker 1: a co owner of DreamWorks Studio making this movie. Haiti,
Speaker 1: visits the set at one point, suitably freaking everyone on
Speaker 1: the set out.
Speaker 2: And what do you do if you're just casually filming
Speaker 2: your little star Trek purioed in Stephen Steven Spielberg, who's
Speaker 2: the head of the studio also shows up.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, when we were doing uh Close Encounters, Oh,
Speaker 1: when we were doing et Like, oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, yeah he did those movies, and then he's
Speaker 2: actually what he did.
Speaker 1: His presence on this. Yeah. Alan Rickman told MTV it
Speaker 1: was hard to have a conversation. You could hear every
Speaker 1: word coming out of your mouth and you just want
Speaker 1: to stop talking, which is an incredible way to phrase
Speaker 1: a sensation we all know far too. Yeah, exactly, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Producer Mark Johnson said, Stephen can come in even with
Speaker 1: so so many balls in the air and look at
Speaker 1: what you're shooting and cutting and get right to the
Speaker 1: heart of the matter and say why not do this?
Speaker 1: It's awes powers too opening. Austin's like, I do have
Speaker 1: some thoughts and he just prays with his oscars. Like
Speaker 1: my friends here think it's great the way it is.
Speaker 1: M Spielberg's two suggestions were beefing up Justin Long's role
Speaker 1: in the movie He's the overly famous super fan Yes,
Speaker 1: as well as Missy Pile's pointing out that without Pile,
Speaker 1: the sole female presence of the film would have been
Speaker 1: Sigourney Weavers. Long's role had been cut down to nothing,
Speaker 1: and Spielberg suggested correctly that in a movie poking fun
Speaker 1: at the concept of fandom, they needed to have long
Speaker 1: super fan feature. More prominently, Missy Pyle was only in
Speaker 1: two scenes until the director made his note or studio
Speaker 1: head I should say, made his note.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not acting in capacity as director. No, acting in
Speaker 2: capacity of everyone's boss, Yes, at.
Speaker 1: Which point the subplot between her and Tony Shaloub was added.
Speaker 1: Justin Long in his his first feature role, beat out
Speaker 1: Allan Culkin Eddie K. Thomas, speaking of American Pie, he
Speaker 1: was the guy that I used to get compared to
Speaker 1: an American pie, the pretentious do we what was his name?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: The guy I'm not huge on that movie, Paul Finch Finch,
Speaker 2: that was his name, Finch, Yes, Yes.
Speaker 1: And Tom Everett Scott, who stars as the drummer Guy
Speaker 1: Patterson in My Beloved That Thing You Do. I can't
Speaker 1: see him as a nerd, though he's too. He's too
Speaker 1: handsome and genial. True. Yeah, just long prepared for his
Speaker 1: role by watching Trekkies, a documentary about the star Trek fandom.
Speaker 1: He said of his role, I was channeling Phil Hoffman,
Speaker 1: Philip Seymour, Hoffman from Boogie Knights mixed with the comic
Speaker 1: book guy from the Simpsons, which makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: That's very good. Yeah, that is.
Speaker 2: The aliens who enlisted the cast of the show in
Speaker 2: the film are called Thermian's and you can think just
Speaker 2: shoot me star Enrico Cole and Toni for their voice.
Speaker 2: I'm sure he's done things. Towards the end of Colntoni's audition,
Speaker 2: Dean Parasat told ign I said, Rico, it seems like
Speaker 2: you've got something on your mind. Rico, Baby, what do
Speaker 2: you hold him back from me? He goes, well, I
Speaker 2: have this voice. I don't know if it works. I said,
Speaker 2: what is it?
Speaker 1: Try it?
Speaker 2: He did, and I just went, oh my god, that's it.
Speaker 2: As the other Thermians were added, you know, Missy Pile, Jedrees,
Speaker 2: Patrick Breen, and even Rain Wilson also in his feature
Speaker 2: film debut. They held an alien school to work on
Speaker 2: posture and mannerisms. But everyone followed col Antoni's lead with
Speaker 2: the voice as well. We it's such a pid like
Speaker 2: the fact that he came in with that already prepared. Ah,
Speaker 2: that's so damn funny. Good for him. An actor prepares.
Speaker 1: You peasants.
Speaker 2: It's like, none of you have read who wrote that Stanislawski.
Speaker 2: I think so none of you have read Stanislavsky.
Speaker 1: I also have not. But it was not an auspicious
Speaker 1: debut for rain Wilson. He would later tell GN I
Speaker 1: kept forgetting my line. I couldn't get it right, especially
Speaker 1: because there were all these A list movie stars behind me.
Speaker 1: There's Tim Allens, Gourney, Weavers, Sam Rockwell, and Tony Shaloube included.
Speaker 1: Tony shalub in that I just kept blanking. I got
Speaker 1: so nervous. I remember my tinfoil suit was filled with sweat. Gross. Yeah,
Speaker 1: his biggest scene was ultimately axed from the final cut.
Speaker 1: And we also have to mention Sam Rockwell's character, Guy Fleiegmann,
Speaker 1: who's constantly got friend of the pod, Guy Fleegman.
Speaker 2: I am such a child for funny sounding names. I
Speaker 2: still find good fact that they pitched Vince Vaughan's character
Speaker 2: and Anchorman as Wesman Tooth simply because of the way
Speaker 2: that Will Ferrell bites into that line in the movie.
Speaker 2: Ah Man, I'm just a simple a simple boy from
Speaker 2: the country. You give a character a silly name, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna laugh at it Guy Fleiegman.
Speaker 1: I named the character and something I was working on,
Speaker 1: John LeFarge, and it still cracks me up. It's good,
Speaker 1: it's good. It's and it's very close to Jordi LeFarge,
Speaker 1: so little Jordi Forge. Yeah, the Star Trek crept in there.
Speaker 1: Sorry to burst that bubble for you. Gas Pothier Gaston
Speaker 1: called gas for short. Gas Pothier is another one. That's good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: These are getting into like these are getting into like
Speaker 1: pinsion names. Yeah. The gas Pathier is a is a
Speaker 1: French Canadian bass fisherman. That's the that's the character. Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably played by current age Jim Carrey in his sixties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good stuff. Yeah, thank you. John LeFarge is Will Ferrell,
Speaker 1: current age m so. Yes, Guy Fleiegmann played by Sam Rockwell,
Speaker 1: who I wholly forgot what's in this movie. He's constantly
Speaker 1: paranoid about being killed, which is a riff on Star
Speaker 1: Trek's famous Red Shirts, or the anonymous crew members who
Speaker 1: are always clad in red and are always the first
Speaker 1: to be killed off during any altercation. It's since become
Speaker 1: a trope across the genre, but it's important to note
Speaker 1: that of the fifty five crew members, killed in the
Speaker 1: original Star Trek series. You write twenty four, we're wearing
Speaker 1: red shirts. It's a real thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we love tropes that are real, at least
Speaker 2: in media.
Speaker 1: You'd think that, like it wouldn't be red so you
Speaker 1: could see the blood, you know what I mean. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was. Maybe it was though you know, network standards
Speaker 1: and practices. Uh, that's a good point, okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Sam Rockwall supposedly beat out Paul Rudd for the role
Speaker 1: of Say It with Me Now, Guy, and the character's
Speaker 1: name is a reference to an actor named Guy Vardaman,
Speaker 1: who'd played several no name characters in Star Trek the
Speaker 1: Next Generation and doubled for Brett Spiner as Data and
Speaker 1: Will Wheaton as Wesley Crusher on that show. Yep, yep.
Speaker 1: Sam Rockwell has two scenes in which he emits prolonged screams.
Speaker 1: For the teleportation scene, he downed quote four cups of
Speaker 1: coffee and two etcron which is about what I'm on today,
Speaker 1: as he told MTV, and afterwards a couple of beers
Speaker 1: to calm down. Maybe that's in my future. So Gourney
Speaker 1: Weaver was not told that he was going to do this,
Speaker 1: so her shocked reaction when he screams is completely real.
Speaker 1: Rockwell said that he wanted to quote Ennoble the coward archetype,
Speaker 1: and thought of, in his words, the best cowards in
Speaker 1: cinematic history, like John Taturo and Miller's Crossing, as well
Speaker 1: as Bill Paxton in Aliens with Michael Keaton in Night Shift.
Speaker 1: Know that one. But to me, Bill Paxton is the
Speaker 1: is the perfect coward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's good. All film history. Yea, all this bravado
Speaker 2: immediately folds and starts freaking out amazing, Ah Paxton.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I still it doesn't feel right to me
Speaker 1: that he's not here. Yeah, you know what I mean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: In any event, we have now exiled Hollywood sexual predator
Speaker 1: Kevin Spacey, then doing the Iceman Cometh on Broadway. To
Speaker 1: thank for Sam Rockwell's role, the younger actor went to
Speaker 1: see Spacey, who encouraged him to do Galaxy Quest over
Speaker 1: another smaller movie that he'd been mulling over. Rockwell told
Speaker 1: the Hollywood Reporter, I thought about Sean Penn fast times
Speaker 1: at Ridgemont High, as one does. I figured I could
Speaker 1: play Guy Fleegman and still do say the Deer Hunter.
Speaker 1: I can play a buffoon and then turn it around
Speaker 1: with a versatile role in the next film. What was
Speaker 1: his next film.
Speaker 2: Let's see you're doing this out of spite to Sam
Speaker 2: Rockwall to be like nice try idiot. He was very
Speaker 2: good as Bob Fosse and uh Sam Rockwell's great.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he was in Boscot too. Oh yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: small role in basket Okay. Yeah. That year he was
Speaker 1: in A Midsummer Night's Stream, he was in The Green Mile,
Speaker 1: and he was in Galaxy Quest. And his next movie
Speaker 1: was You Ready I Am Charlie's Angels. Oh, which is
Speaker 1: not Check's Notes Dear Hunter, No, but.
Speaker 2: You know it is the movie that kind of was
Speaker 2: his mainstream breakthrough, so he chose well.
Speaker 1: I suppose he was in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,
Speaker 1: that movie about the game show host uh Chechuck.
Speaker 2: Barris, Yeah, claiming he was a contract killer for the CIA.
Speaker 1: That's a great book.
Speaker 2: I don't know if the movie is as charming, but
Speaker 2: the whole bit about that is so funny in.
Speaker 1: A way, kind of like Galaxy Quest. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that movie has been completely forgotten too, even
Speaker 2: though I think was that a George Clooney directorial.
Speaker 1: Ooh, it might have been I think it was. That's
Speaker 1: how it got to Julia Roberts on the cheap Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was Screamway by Charlie Coffin. Yeah, whoa wow.
Speaker 2: I read the book before I saw the movie. Actually,
Speaker 2: I don't think the movie quite comes off, but the book,
Speaker 2: written by Chuck Barris, is pretty.
Speaker 1: Good, suitably insane.
Speaker 2: Galaxy Quest had a respectable forty five million dollars reported budget,
Speaker 2: which is a little over eighty six million today, which
Speaker 2: films like this do not get anymore. No, you know,
Speaker 2: this is a straight to Netflix shot on digital lit
Speaker 2: for coverage pieces that you will forget immediately after you've
Speaker 2: seen it. That's what the role of this movie would
Speaker 2: have been today, and much of it thankfully went into
Speaker 2: the careful production design and effects. Production designer Linda Dessenna
Speaker 2: told Starlog one of the reasons that I wanted to
Speaker 2: do Galaxy Quest was because it didn't have to be
Speaker 2: real high tech and vacuu formed.
Speaker 1: It could be, you know, kind of tacky.
Speaker 2: We were going to use blue and violet, but we
Speaker 2: ended it up with the same color of gray, just
Speaker 2: three different values. That's hilarious because that is one of
Speaker 2: my beasts. With the next generation like Star Trek period.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't like sci fi that looks like clean.
Speaker 2: My ideal sci fi is like dusty Star Wars sci fi.
Speaker 2: And then like the set of Alien because like, I
Speaker 2: don't know how you would keep space so clean. You
Speaker 2: can't open the door and brush dust out.
Speaker 1: You know, what's the deal with with the with the enterprise?
Speaker 1: Where's the dust go the window?
Speaker 2: They probably would have immediately after building that, they would
Speaker 2: have figured out a way to find some poor immigrant
Speaker 2: to clean the enterprise for pennies on the dollar.
Speaker 1: That's what the real Federation would have done, Folks Confederation.
Speaker 2: When I start a movie, she said, aside from the
Speaker 2: things you would normally focus on, like how to lay
Speaker 2: out a set, et cetera, it's color. In this movie
Speaker 2: we have Sarah's world where everything is green. So in
Speaker 2: Sarah's men are aboard of the ship, they stand out
Speaker 2: because everyone else is in gray and they're green.
Speaker 1: And then we go into the real world.
Speaker 2: In this movie, everything stays with the steel blues and
Speaker 2: the greens. In case you doubted her, bona Fides Dessenna
Speaker 2: was a set decorator on Star Trek, the motion picture
Speaker 2: Love that like you get a real set designer from
Speaker 2: Star Trek to do your Star Trek parody.
Speaker 1: Amazing stuff. The bad guy in the movie, General Saras,
Speaker 1: I love this so much. This is so petty, is
Speaker 1: named after film critic Andrew Saras, who was outspoken about
Speaker 1: his dislike of producer Mark Johnson's previous effort The Natural.
Speaker 1: Sarah's responded to this ignoble honor in Entertainment Weekly, equipping
Speaker 1: the Galaxy quest quote, this is pretty good. Probably won't
Speaker 1: make enough money for me to sue for ten million dollars.
Speaker 1: I mean it did, but you know he didn't. There
Speaker 1: are also two shakespeare references made via character names. Commander
Speaker 1: Peter Quincy tag as we mentioned earlier, is named for
Speaker 1: Peter Quince in A Midsummer Night's Stream, which Sam Roquah
Speaker 1: had just been in, so maybe that's where that connection
Speaker 1: comes from. And Alexander Dane is a reference to Hamlet
Speaker 1: the Lonely Dane. Rickman's line I played Richard the Third
Speaker 1: is also pointed because of all the Shakespearean roles, Rickman
Speaker 1: played Richard the Third was never one of them, but
Speaker 1: a funny coincidence. When Alan Rickman joined the Royal Shakespeare
Speaker 1: Company in nineteen seventy eight. He was an Antony and
Speaker 1: Cleopatra alongside friend of the pod really Patrick Stewart, friend
Speaker 1: of us. All. Yeah, the film's aspect ratio, this is
Speaker 1: really cool, switches from one point eight five to one
Speaker 1: to two point three eight to one when the ship
Speaker 1: lands on Thermia to give the effect of a new
Speaker 1: wider world opening up. Very Wizard of Oz, which Dean
Speaker 1: Parasat admits was him being quote a little too clever
Speaker 1: for my own good. He added, it kind of backfired
Speaker 1: on me with projectionists. They wouldn't open the curtains wide enough.
Speaker 2: It's funny because I actually the trick in that actually
Speaker 2: repeats twice because you're first watching a four to three
Speaker 2: ratio like old square TV size of Galaxy Quest the show,
Speaker 2: and then it's revealed.
Speaker 1: That they're watching.
Speaker 2: Us on the screen at the convention, and as they
Speaker 2: they they as they zoom in on it, the aspect
Speaker 2: ratio also changes to become like the window boxed widescreen.
Speaker 2: It's really, it's like really clever kind of flexes on
Speaker 2: camera work and directing that again went over everyone's head, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: or some people or projections were just too lazy to do.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Thermia, apparently the design for the thermi I
Speaker 1: can never say it. Apparently apparently the design for the
Speaker 1: Thermian's station was influenced by Roger Dean's album cover Free
Speaker 1: Yes Songs, which is incredible. One of our younger friends
Speaker 1: of the Pod friends of the Pod, Cyrus uh has
Speaker 1: but been taking music suggestions from our shows, which I'm
Speaker 1: deeply touched by uh and and he's been a big
Speaker 1: fan of of Yes of Oh, hell yeah A roundabout
Speaker 1: So there's another is roundabout on Yes Songs. I forget.
Speaker 2: No, I think it's on Imaginary Oceans. Possibly, don't quote
Speaker 2: me on that. No, it is, It's it's on uh Oh,
Speaker 2: it's on Yes Songs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hell yeah, Sorry, it's on Boat Yes Songs is
Speaker 3: the greatest hits like compilation, So it's on two things
Speaker 3: can be true.
Speaker 2: I want to know which sci fi movie will be
Speaker 2: brave enough to recreate the armadillo tank on the cover
Speaker 2: of Emerson Lake Edward Palmer's album Tarcas.
Speaker 1: While we're doing.
Speaker 2: While we're doing, prog rock album covers one of the
Speaker 2: highest forms of art of the twentieth century. As I
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier, our boy, Stan Winston handed the creature effects
Speaker 2: the guy behind terminator, the guy behind aliens, the guy
Speaker 2: behind another one, another one, although one huge element of
Speaker 2: the film was nearly thrown off by his buddy Steven
Speaker 2: Spielberg's studio notes Winston crew had built five cable operated
Speaker 2: silicone puppets of the Thermians in their true form, forty
Speaker 2: five tentacles for each one. Steen's were blocked with them
Speaker 2: lit Hurst. Two weeks before they were scheduled to be shot, though,
Speaker 2: Winston got a call from Spielberg, who decided the aliens
Speaker 2: were too weird looking and should be more humanoid like
Speaker 2: the ones in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. So
Speaker 2: Winston phone his effects supervisor, Shane Maham with the news
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: And this is from.
Speaker 2: The Stan Winston School of Character Arts website, which is
Speaker 2: a wonderful like look at all of the work that
Speaker 2: he's ever done, and really detailed notes about it. He said,
Speaker 2: we'd gone through so much trouble for these things, and
Speaker 2: at this point we had two weeks to come up
Speaker 2: with something entirely new. Winston listened to man and said,
Speaker 2: let me call Stephen Spielberg back and whatever he said
Speaker 2: worked because the original designs made it into the movie.
Speaker 1: And this is funny.
Speaker 2: The Winston crew used technology that they were simultaneously working
Speaker 2: on for Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes remake for Sarah's.
Speaker 2: And this is a guy named the Winston Shop. One
Speaker 2: of the mechanics workers, Richard Landon. He says, we were
Speaker 2: testing things for Planet of the Apes and Stan came
Speaker 2: up to me one day and said, figure out a
Speaker 2: way to make a transfer mechanism so that an actor's
Speaker 2: face can actually move a prosthetic muzzle.
Speaker 1: He said.
Speaker 2: That was another case of Stan saying I don't know
Speaker 2: how to do this because I'm technically averse, and then
Speaker 2: exactly describing the mechanism to me.
Speaker 1: And so it's this little linkage.
Speaker 2: Device that made the makeup move when the actors face move,
Speaker 2: and that's what they use for Sarah's. And again, like
Speaker 2: that thing looks amazing. The prosthetics on that the character design,
Speaker 2: it looks like really amazingly excellent.
Speaker 1: Twenty five CGI. Wasn't that the problem with the original
Speaker 1: Planet of the Apes in nineteen sixty eight, where they
Speaker 1: had these like monkey masks that just the actors couldn't
Speaker 1: move their faces because the mask would move along with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like instead, it's the move that was like,
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't think it was precipitated by Planet
Speaker 2: of the Apes, but like, as they went from just
Speaker 2: like one piece applications to many smaller individual pieces, and
Speaker 2: I think that was largely the innovation of Dick Smith
Speaker 2: Affects Wizard.
Speaker 1: Dick Smith, who also worked on Exorcist.
Speaker 2: His big innovation at the time with the aging makeup
Speaker 2: for Dustin Hoffman's character and Little Big Man was multiple
Speaker 2: small pieces so that the facial features can move independently
Speaker 2: instead of just this huge chunk of rubber that just
Speaker 2: gets kind of glued onto your face or around your head. Anyway,
Speaker 2: Sarahs has a spiked eye patch, and that's supposedly an
Speaker 2: allusion to one worn by Christopher Plumber as General Chang
Speaker 2: in Star Trek six The Undiscovered Country. I don't think
Speaker 2: I've seen any of these past Wrath of Khan, the
Speaker 2: gross pig lizard that's beamed up inside out at.
Speaker 1: Under the pod Ping Lizard. Pig lizard was naturally a
Speaker 1: full sized costume with a dude inside it. I just
Speaker 1: love that man.
Speaker 2: Just a big old pig lizard that a guy got
Speaker 2: in and wriggled around him, just having a big old
Speaker 2: fun time making to movies.
Speaker 1: And there was no way for me to know this.
Speaker 1: I just can't believe I'm into movies.
Speaker 2: I'm making my love, making a living in the movies.
Speaker 2: Crawls into sweat drenched pig lizard costume and rolls around
Speaker 2: in the dirt with Tim Allen movies, movie magic.
Speaker 1: And there was no way for me to know this
Speaker 1: before I rehearsed this.
Speaker 2: But the little blue guys, little blue aliens who are
Speaker 2: all cute and then suddenly become terrifying. That character art
Speaker 2: was designed by Bernie Wrightson, who's a comic book artist
Speaker 2: who created my beloved swamp thing, and they did that
Speaker 2: just for me. The film's desert planet was the iconic
Speaker 2: Goblin Valley State Park in Utah, which is the place
Speaker 2: that has all of these like round, creepily eroded rocks
Speaker 2: amidst this very red tinged desert setting, and it is
Speaker 2: for such a cinematic location. It is really bizarre to
Speaker 2: me that Galaxy Cluster was one of the first films
Speaker 2: to shoot there. They were preceded by city slickers to
Speaker 2: the legend of Curly's Goal.
Speaker 1: I just rewatched that recently. That movie's great. I will
Speaker 1: not real word against City Slickers one or two, okay.
Speaker 1: And then later Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, very
Speaker 1: different movie.
Speaker 2: Speaking of Goblin Valley, as we often do, a young
Speaker 2: man's mind often turns to Goblin Valley.
Speaker 1: This would be a great.
Speaker 2: Place to segue into what the film is and isn't,
Speaker 2: referencing from the wider sci fi cannon and the lanes
Speaker 2: to which production went to make sure they weren't going
Speaker 2: to get sued. So Galaxy quests Rock Monster from that Goblin.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, no no no no no no
Speaker 1: no no no no, no no no, thank you.
Speaker 2: Good stuff, good stuff, good stuff. That is not a
Speaker 2: nod to William Shatner twos William Shatner's disastrous directorial debut,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine's Star Trek five, The Final Frontier. It
Speaker 2: sounds like rock Lobster, it does. That's the bit, Follow
Speaker 2: me here on a journey. This film is notable in
Speaker 2: the Star Trek movie fandom because Star Trek four The
Speaker 2: Voyage Home had been directed by Leonard Nimoy, and that
Speaker 2: was a huge hit and so Shatner faced immense pressure
Speaker 2: to follow that with his bloated ass in.
Speaker 1: The directorial's chair.
Speaker 2: Four Star Trek five just so funny that everything Shatner
Speaker 2: does is like a spikee for other people towards other people.
Speaker 2: So Shatner's film introducts the character Sybock, the half brother
Speaker 2: of Spock, who hijacks the Enterprise on a quest to
Speaker 2: find God like a golden compass. So he was apparently
Speaker 2: inspired by like the prominence of televangelists like I guess
Speaker 2: Tammy fay Baker and jam Baker would have been hitting
Speaker 2: around this time, and he wanted the film to culminate
Speaker 2: in a sequence where Kirk, Spock, and Bones are pursued
Speaker 2: by angels and demons, though.
Speaker 1: He realized Scooby Doo, Yeah.
Speaker 2: He realized eventually that having Star Trek characters confront Judeo
Speaker 2: Christian concepts might not have been the smartest move, and
Speaker 2: his work around for this was somehow dumber and less realistic.
Speaker 2: Shatner decided that the film's climax would feature Kirk chased
Speaker 2: by a number of rock monsters. I've read anywhere from
Speaker 2: six to twenty on the mythical planet.
Speaker 1: Of Shaka Rie where lived.
Speaker 2: No, it's actually anoun to Sean Connery, who Shatner wanted
Speaker 2: to play Spock's brother, Sybock.
Speaker 1: Connery turned this down to be in the third Indiana
Speaker 1: Jones movie Say It with Me. He chose wisely so.
Speaker 1: The cost of shadow his rock Monster's concept would have
Speaker 1: come in at over three hundred thousand dollars, and Shatner
Speaker 1: had to settle for one, which was promptly cut from
Speaker 1: the film when everyone saw how shot It's out there
Speaker 1: on YouTube you can see it. Star Trek five ended
Speaker 1: up as the lowest grossing and worst reviewed of the
Speaker 1: Star Trek movies starring the cast of the original series,
Speaker 1: and once again, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
Speaker 1: Rick been seen.
Speaker 2: By the way, accusing Allan's character of stealing his best
Speaker 2: lines and cutting him out of episodes is a direct
Speaker 2: jab at William Shatner, who was a huge divo on
Speaker 2: the set of the original series. He would ask for
Speaker 2: additional takes and extend his lines, and allegedly ordered lines
Speaker 2: of dialogue to be written for his own character. I've
Speaker 2: also read that he demanded all of the set lighting
Speaker 2: to be based around Kirk. Anyway, the Galaxy Quest rock Monster,
Speaker 2: which sounds like rock Lobster, was not direct was not
Speaker 2: a direct shot at Star Trek five, but screenwriter Robert
Speaker 2: Corton did allow that that entire scene of them on
Speaker 2: this desert like planet was a nod to the famous
Speaker 2: episode of the original series where Shatner fights a lizard
Speaker 2: like creature called the Gorn in the desert. The transporter
Speaker 2: malfunction and the sequence of the ship leaving its dock
Speaker 2: were both inspired by Star Trek the Motion Picture and
Speaker 2: this is amazing. I don't know why they didn't roll
Speaker 2: with this on original draft. One of the drafts of
Speaker 2: the screenplay referred to this as Galaxy Quest the Motion Picture,
Speaker 2: which they really should have run with. The scene on
Speaker 2: the rock planet, also where Brickman's doctor Lazarus is chided
Speaker 2: for holding his tracking device upside down, is apparently also
Speaker 2: a reference to the first scene of Star Trek, where
Speaker 2: Spock is repeatedly seen holding one of his gimmicks, Gimgauz,
Speaker 2: upside down before someone corrected him for the final time.
Speaker 1: Other sci fi references goredon the snuck in Sigourney Weaver's
Speaker 1: character saying ducks why is it always Dunce, which, in
Speaker 1: addition to Beth definitely being some form of an Indiana
Speaker 1: Jones riff, is also obviously a reference to the as
Speaker 1: you described, ducked Heavy alien franchise. When Quelex says I'm shot,
Speaker 1: that's a direct reference to James Brolin in Westworld and
Speaker 1: the Little Blue Aliens I actually caught. This are a
Speaker 1: nod to Barbarella, the nineteen sixty eight schlocky Roger Corman
Speaker 1: adjacent Jane Fonda starring Barbarbrella in a scene where she's
Speaker 1: waylaid by two cute children with horrible mechanical dolls with
Speaker 1: razor sharp teeth. Yes, that's that's their preferred that's their
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, god, it's so upsetting. Yeah, it really is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: see Barbarella though, Yeah, we watched it all together. That's fun.
Speaker 1: It's a good day. The Omega thirteen device was supposedly
Speaker 1: a nod to the climax of say It beneath the
Speaker 1: Planet of the Apes. That's right, my favorite, it's my
Speaker 1: new favorite sequel format title name. Absolutely, what's beneath the planet? Guys?
Speaker 1: A moon of a like, mister show thing, Like we're
Speaker 1: gonna blow up the moon well, we what else do
Speaker 1: you do with that? We walked on it, we hit
Speaker 1: a golf ball on it. Time to kill it. We're Americans.
Speaker 1: Beneath the Planet of the Apes features a doomsday device
Speaker 1: labeled Alpha Omega. No one could have gone back to
Speaker 1: the drawing board alpha omega omega? Which is more powerful?
Speaker 1: Alpha or omega? Well, I mean, you know, Christ is
Speaker 1: famously the beginning and end of all things, which is
Speaker 1: what I believe that was. That was fy the beginning
Speaker 1: and end. I think one of the things that the
Speaker 1: alpha and the omega is supposed to reference. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's been a long time since I got that PhD
Speaker 1: in divinities. Narrator voice, he did not have a PhD
Speaker 1: in divinities. Uh, Universal Life Church. That's what doctor Hunter S.
Speaker 1: Thompson did. That's true. That's true. And if you get
Speaker 1: the Ordained, you get a little thing that says, like
Speaker 1: priests that you can hang from your rearview mirror and
Speaker 1: you can park anywhere you sure can, You sure can.
Speaker 1: That's gonna come in handy for you. I know what's
Speaker 1: up next. I'm just rily you don't have to, you
Speaker 1: don't have to highlight it for me. On the outline,
Speaker 1: I'm getting the hook the planet of the Thermians Plaateau
Speaker 1: Nebula as a nod to the day the Earth stood still.
Speaker 1: That's right. The alien coming out of the spaceship is.
Speaker 2: Plato nickto barat Yeah, which is like one of the
Speaker 2: most famous sci fi RIfS of all time. It's in
Speaker 2: It's in the Book of the Dead and all the
Speaker 2: Army of Darkness movies from the from the Raimies.
Speaker 1: It's one of the incantations that you read in the
Speaker 1: in the Evil Dead and Army of Darkness. And there's
Speaker 1: a sort of proggy pop band of the seventies called
Speaker 1: Clatau named after that alien, and they sounded so beatlelike
Speaker 1: that there was like underground rumors of the like Paul
Speaker 1: is Dead variety that the Beatles had secretly reformed as
Speaker 1: this band Platoo. Did you know that? I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of not a lot of people
Speaker 1: know that. Yeah, there's a song called sub rosa Subway,
Speaker 1: which sounds so it sounds like Paul McCartney singing, sounds
Speaker 1: something he would have written. It's yeah, it's good stuff too.
Speaker 1: Galaxy Quest was even parrotying contemporary sci fi. The insane
Speaker 1: chompers room that the crew has to go through was
Speaker 1: riffing on nineteen ninety seven's a vent Horizon, A wonderful
Speaker 1: slice of cheese about a spaceship whose engine opens up
Speaker 1: a portal to hell. Great movie. Another easter egg. One
Speaker 1: of the robots from The Ill Fated Toys, the Robin
Speaker 1: Williams movie. Yeah, also Barry Levinson. Oh that's right. I
Speaker 1: love that movie as a kid. Movie was nuts, which
Speaker 1: I guess producer Marke the Box I know it was not.
Speaker 1: Any one of those robots is on stage with Sam
Speaker 1: Rockwell's character at the contention Guy Fleegmanleegman. Yeah, this is nuts.
Speaker 1: It's about this like owner of a toy company dies
Speaker 1: and then leaves it in his will to his brother,
Speaker 1: who's like a general. And Robin Williams is the son
Speaker 1: who was passed over and is rightfully sad that he
Speaker 1: didn't inherit the toy company because he's the whimsical one,
Speaker 1: damn it. Yeah, and then the general. I think he
Speaker 1: starts off by like releasing what kids think are video
Speaker 1: games and taking advantage of their like incredible hand eye coordination.
Speaker 1: But the kids think they're video games, but they're actually.
Speaker 2: Like real things. Yeah, yeah, quite quite predictive, are very much.
Speaker 2: You know, you wouldn't be able to make that movie
Speaker 2: today because of the tariffs.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, too expensive. Can't get those cheap, cheap rubber
Speaker 1: crap from China anymore until he fixes it, which I'm
Speaker 1: sure he will. Director Dean Parasol told MTV everybody was
Speaker 1: afraid of being sued. Same when we made that movie.
Speaker 1: Everything we would start, the designer come up with it
Speaker 1: couldn't help but be relevant in some way to Star Trek. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: he says, DreamWorks were more focused on Gladiator at the time,
Speaker 1: and they were able to duck too much scrutiny, though
Speaker 1: for instance, they couldn't say beam in reference to teleporting.
Speaker 1: That's so funny. Yeah, they were worried about the captain's chair,
Speaker 1: they were worried about the uniforms. Parasol continues, I ignored it,
Speaker 1: so I was actually terrified when the movie came out.
Speaker 1: Even the protector of the spacecraft serial number NTE three
Speaker 1: one two zero stands for not the Enterprise and te
Speaker 1: that's really funny. Love it. Other Slight language adjustments included
Speaker 1: using medical quarters instead of sick bay. That's dumb. That's
Speaker 1: like a sick base, like a widely used term, is
Speaker 1: it though? Yeah? But because of Star Trek though, you know,
Speaker 1: and the transporter is referred to as the Digital conveyor,
Speaker 1: and the chief Engineer is now a X sergeant. Is
Speaker 1: this funny? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean you think about all that stuff that's bled
Speaker 2: into just like the vernacular, you know, an influential show
Speaker 2: one might say Star Trek one dedicated Trekky. Though James
Speaker 2: Burrdnelli discovered that this whole thing was a farce.
Speaker 1: He was reviewing Galaxy Quez and.
Speaker 2: He discovered a piece of extended media, Star Trek Minutia.
Speaker 2: A short story by Ruth Boerban titled Visit to a
Speaker 2: Weird Planet Revisited Now. This was published in the nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six anthology Star Trek The New Voyagers, and the
Speaker 2: plot of this story is that actors William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy,
Speaker 2: and DeForest Kelly are transported to the Real Enterprise while
Speaker 2: filming an episode of Star Trek and are pursued by Klingon's.
Speaker 1: So defores Kelly was into movie? No? Well, defores Kelly
Speaker 1: was not into movie. No he was not, But did
Speaker 1: you got it right?
Speaker 2: Like a short story from nineteen seventy six unnarrowingly predicted
Speaker 2: the plot of this movie in a way that no
Speaker 2: one would have found out because it was in a
Speaker 2: short story anthology in nineteen seventy six of Star Trek
Speaker 2: Extended Cannon Stories.
Speaker 1: It's like wicked. Yeah. But the other thing, the other.
Speaker 2: Quiet part loud about Galaxy Quest is that it is
Speaker 2: essentially Three Amigos, which starred Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and
Speaker 2: Martin Short as actors invited to a Mexican village to
Speaker 2: assume their fictional roles as protective bandidos in real life.
Speaker 1: And I want to say that they knew this because
Speaker 1: when Alan's character is watching himself in an old episode
Speaker 1: of Galaxy Quest, the monologue his character's doing resembles the
Speaker 1: rallying cry of the Three Amigos when he's like in
Speaker 1: his house and he's like in his house with the
Speaker 1: whiskey or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, wherever there's darkness, there will be And that's
Speaker 2: like the Three Amigos bit.
Speaker 1: You know that house that Tim Allens in, like his
Speaker 1: character's house is like a very famous house in the
Speaker 1: Hollywood Hills called the Stall House. I believe it's like
Speaker 1: a lot of famous photos. It's just like beautiful mid
Speaker 1: century modern house by architect named Pierre Kanig, and it's
Speaker 1: like on the National Register it's called the Stall House
Speaker 1: s T. A. H. L. And it's a very very
Speaker 1: famous house because it's been in I want to say,
Speaker 1: it's been in its definitely and other stuff. Is it
Speaker 1: in Longa by Oh? Well, the guy designed it designed
Speaker 1: similar houses because it reminds me, it reminds me of
Speaker 1: the one in actually the one in Charlie's Angels that
Speaker 1: Sam Rockwell, yeah, but it is not. It's been. It
Speaker 1: was in the pilot episode of Colombo, which I love.
Speaker 1: Oh that's cool. Well, that's wonderful. The Stall House, Ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen.
Speaker 2: As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with
Speaker 2: more too much information after these messages.
Speaker 1: Well, for years, there's been a rumor persisting that there's
Speaker 1: an R rated cut of Galaxy Quest out there, and
Speaker 1: as you write, that's not strictly true. Writer Robert Gordon
Speaker 1: told MTV, let's talk about the so called R rated
Speaker 1: version of the film. When I originally wrote it, I
Speaker 1: wasn't thinking about a family film, just what I wanted
Speaker 1: to see. So when the ship lands in the convention
Speaker 1: hall and the original draft it decapitates a bunch of people.
Speaker 1: So there's also stuff we shot where Sigourney tries to
Speaker 1: seduce some of the aliens. It was cut and that's
Speaker 1: why her shirt is ripped at the end. Also the
Speaker 1: worst dubbed F bomb ever. You have thoughts about this, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's the worst dubbed F bomb ever.
Speaker 2: It's when they get into the chompers room and Sigarette
Speaker 2: A Reaver's immediate reaction is, well, that.
Speaker 1: Wasn't this PG, at least on Amazon. It's like pg's
Speaker 1: at that.
Speaker 2: So they cut the because you can get one F
Speaker 2: bomb in PG thirteen movie, but you can't a PGPG.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so they cut it and made the studio
Speaker 2: made them dub it is screw that and it's terrible.
Speaker 2: The director made it perfectly the end. Sigourney Weaver, she
Speaker 2: was like, I made it the worst dub I've ever done.
Speaker 2: And Dean Parasog didn't shoot any other cut of it, coverage,
Speaker 2: he shot nothing, no other safeties for that, so he
Speaker 2: was just and he was like, I dubbed it poorly,
Speaker 2: and apparently I wasn't able to verify this. But when
Speaker 2: they restored this movie and re released it for either
Speaker 2: DVD or I'm not sure if it's got a four
Speaker 2: K yet, but DVD or Blu ray, they were like,
Speaker 2: do you want to redo that and make it and
Speaker 2: make it a better dub? And he was like, no, no,
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 1: Another cut scene was a visit to Alan Rickman's character's
Speaker 1: crew quarters, which Tim Allen described as quote a proctologist
Speaker 1: dream and nightmare, all of these sharp things around his anus.
Speaker 2: That might also be a nod to Event Horizon, which
Speaker 2: is like some of the funniest interior ship design ever,
Speaker 2: because it's like, you know, they get this transmission that's
Speaker 2: like just all of them, like all the characters at
Speaker 2: one point in this like Horrible Blood Orgy, it's like
Speaker 2: all these weird BDSM club design things, Like it's really
Speaker 2: it's really a great film, and there is actually about
Speaker 2: that film there is supposedly like for a long time
Speaker 2: people were obsessed with like finding an unrated cut of
Speaker 2: it that had all of this extra like graphic and
Speaker 2: horrifying footage still in it, or at least to get
Speaker 2: it recut and re released.
Speaker 1: And Paul W. Said, Paul W. S Anderson, who has
Speaker 1: since done all the Resident Evil movies. He did the
Speaker 1: first Mortal Kombat movie, he did a bunch of other
Speaker 1: just shlock. And he is married to Milli Jovovich, which
Speaker 1: is why she's in all of the Resident Evil movies.
Speaker 2: He was just like, He's like, no, it doesn't literally
Speaker 2: does not exist. Like all of that extra film went
Speaker 2: into like a backlot somewhere and then fell apart in
Speaker 2: like an Eastern European storage facility for the studio.
Speaker 1: Which I'm just very sad that that is what happens.
Speaker 1: But sometimes it doesn't happen. Sometimes it just gets burnt
Speaker 1: in a fire. M M. This was an universal movie,
Speaker 1: was it? No? Oh, well Spielberg, close enough? Yeah. Writer
Speaker 1: David Howard, the guy who originally came up with this premise,
Speaker 1: told IGN I understood there were two factions. One that
Speaker 1: wanted to make the movie more edgy, make the movie
Speaker 1: more edgy and hip, and another who wanted to make
Speaker 1: it more family friendly. And I don't mean that in
Speaker 1: a pejorative sense. This guy's too sweet for his own good.
Speaker 1: But they did make a deliberate choice to tone down
Speaker 1: some of the violence and take some of the language out.
Speaker 1: Sigourney Weaver told The Hollywood Reporter it may have been
Speaker 1: competition from another studio that nudged Galaxy Quest to the
Speaker 1: safer side of things. She said, to me, DreamWorks didn't
Speaker 1: seem particularly interested in what we were doing, which gave
Speaker 1: us more freedom during the shoot. But then at the
Speaker 1: last minute, DreamWorks it needed a movie to go up
Speaker 1: against Stuart Little The Mouse Movie, she helpfully adds, so
Speaker 1: they chose this one and started making cuts to the
Speaker 1: film Bummer Tales Oldest Time. Yeah. I do remember when
Speaker 1: this came out, thinking like, is this a kid's movie? Like,
Speaker 1: I don't h yeah. Uh.
Speaker 2: Dean director Dean Parast told MTV Terry Press now president
Speaker 2: of communications for Spielberg's Ambulance Entertainment, so he does indeed
Speaker 2: keep his friends close. She was the head of marketing
Speaker 2: for DreamWorks at the time and didn't believe in the movie.
Speaker 2: We had a critical screening in the Valley and Terry
Speaker 2: was pregnant with twins and couldn't go. Had she been there,
Speaker 2: she would realize this was an audience movie. So the
Speaker 2: film was in the top ten for nine weeks in
Speaker 2: the US, but it was a very slow climb to
Speaker 2: its total gross, which was a respectable doubling of its
Speaker 2: forty five million budget, made ninety mili. Early trailers also
Speaker 2: came out, though before the post production.
Speaker 1: VFX had been completed, so they didn't even have any
Speaker 1: of the beautiful like any of the nice CGI to
Speaker 1: show off. They just had you know, Tim Alan mugging.
Speaker 2: They had other things made out of rubber, like Tim
Speaker 2: Allen's face, and Parasawt continued.
Speaker 1: It became this thing where I would walk.
Speaker 2: Into meetings and people would say, it's a shame how
Speaker 2: they marketed that movie. They looked at it as a
Speaker 2: Christmas movie for kids. They put it in theaters that
Speaker 2: were for kids, and Matt nays, our big argument was
Speaker 2: that there was a much larger audience, but they didn't
Speaker 2: believe that. By the second week, adults started showing up,
Speaker 2: which sustained the film in a very strange way.
Speaker 1: It kept making the same amount of money each weekend
Speaker 1: for four weekends in a row, unheard of today.
Speaker 2: Parasat maintains that even enemy of the Pod Jeffrey Katzenberg,
Speaker 2: called him on the second week of the film's release
Speaker 2: and told him I'm sorry. I think we screwed up
Speaker 2: the marketing on this, to which I say, bully for him. No,
Speaker 2: it's amazing how Jeffrey Katzenberg has multiple allegory or anecdotes
Speaker 2: about him calling up and apologizing after things that he
Speaker 2: directed or things that were under his supervision flopped.
Speaker 1: I mean, which is that a enough to earn him
Speaker 1: a disciplinary committee hearing for TMI to see if we
Speaker 1: should be downgraded from enemy of the Pod to nuisance
Speaker 1: of the Pod. I mean, I had not believed that
Speaker 1: such a thing could be, But I love that nuisance
Speaker 1: of the Pod. I mean, that's good stuff. Self awareness,
Speaker 1: I guess would downgrade you to touse some nuisance? Yeah,
Speaker 1: self awareness, but no desire to actually affect anything demeanor? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Who among us? I do have to say one.
Speaker 2: However, there is one thing that the marketing department did
Speaker 2: have a genius stroke of which which they again might
Speaker 2: have been a little too clever for their own good.
Speaker 2: They built Galaxy quest dot com, which was not a
Speaker 2: page about the actual movie. It took the whole fake
Speaker 2: television show to the gag to its next level.
Speaker 1: This was like a.
Speaker 2: Purposefully janky looking fake fan site for the show Galaxy
Speaker 2: Quest that had a giant trove of fake episode guides
Speaker 2: and it was all hosted written by a fake fan
Speaker 2: named Travis Latki, who at one point thanks his mom
Speaker 2: for paying for the hosting servers in her basement.
Speaker 1: Great stuff. It doesn't live anymore. But you can see
Speaker 1: you can see in the way back machine. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can see captive in the wayback machine. Nice. Speaking of fans,
Speaker 1: Trekki's love Galaxy Quest and why shouldn't they, right, there's
Speaker 1: very little mean spirited judgment in the film, and Justin
Speaker 1: Long's super fan character actually saves the entire cast of
Speaker 1: the show via his nerd knowledge your words. Yes, In fact,
Speaker 1: one of your favorite bits of trivia about the film,
Speaker 1: Oh here, you should you should take this is this
Speaker 1: is your favorite? It is my favorite. Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite bits about this film is that
Speaker 2: there was a Star Trek convention in Vegas and all
Speaker 2: of the attendees this was in twenty thirteen or fourteen,
Speaker 2: and all of the attendees voted on which was the
Speaker 2: best Star Trek movie, and Galaxy Quest came in at
Speaker 2: number seven. And you will note that there are far
Speaker 2: more than seven Star Trek movies, so a bunch of
Speaker 2: trekids decided that this was quote more of a Star
Speaker 2: Trek movie than several Star Trek movies on this list.
Speaker 1: I love that. That's really great. But what is the
Speaker 1: original source material? You may ask? Yes, Patrick Stewart, who
Speaker 1: come on, do we even need to ide him? He
Speaker 1: played Captain Jean Luke Lecard on Next Gen, a.
Speaker 2: Character name that introduced me to I want to say
Speaker 2: the concept of Jean Luke as a name in total, yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: the most famous Jean Luke of all time. That's for
Speaker 2: the fans to decide.
Speaker 1: He had this to say, I had originally not wanted
Speaker 1: to see Galaxy Can I read this as him I
Speaker 1: had originally I can't do it. No, he got so close.
Speaker 1: I can have a cadence, but like, don't have the
Speaker 1: tambur I had originally, No, I can't. No, it's too deep.
Speaker 1: I had originally not wanted to see Galaxy Quest because
Speaker 1: I heard it was making fun of Star Trek. This
Speaker 1: is him talking to the BBC. Then Jonathan Frank's rang
Speaker 1: me up. Oh, I almost had it there and said
Speaker 1: you must not and said you must not miss this,
Speaker 1: you must not miss this movie. You must not miss
Speaker 1: this movie. See it on a Saturday night in a
Speaker 1: full theater. Frank's definitely did not deliver it like that. No,
Speaker 1: and I did, and of course I found it was brilliant, brilliant.
Speaker 1: No one laughed louder or longer in the cinema than
Speaker 1: I did. Tim Russ or Tuvac on Star Trek Voyager
Speaker 1: under my name there Cat Tuvak Nice, I had flashbacks
Speaker 1: of Galaxy Quests that the many conventions I've gone to
Speaker 1: since the movie came out. I thought it was an
Speaker 1: absolute laugh a minute. Yeah, I mean this movie for
Speaker 1: people who've been in the many Star Trek iterations, it
Speaker 1: must be like spinal tap for anybody who's ever been
Speaker 1: in a bends, Like, yeah, exactly, this is how much
Speaker 1: it can suck. I'm comfortably close. Yeah, thank you for
Speaker 1: seeing us. Will Wheaton Wesley Crusher on Next Shin had
Speaker 1: this to say, I loved Galaxy quest I thought it
Speaker 1: was brilliant satire not only of Trek but a fandom
Speaker 1: in general. Real heads call it Trek. There's a heat.
Speaker 1: That quote continues, and I cut it, and I'm not
Speaker 1: actually sure why, because well, it's a bit inside baseball.
Speaker 1: He said, all it needed was some sweaty guy yelling
Speaker 1: at the child actor why was there a child on
Speaker 1: the Star Trek Enterprise, which is something that dogged Will
Speaker 1: Wheaaten for years. I do have to say that his
Speaker 1: character sucks and should never have been on a spaceship.
Speaker 1: But that is like the poor kid was like, you know,
Speaker 1: eleven or whatever and having grown men scream in his
Speaker 1: face about how it was that he existed pure. I mean,
Speaker 1: so pretty could let's start on life in Hollywood and
Speaker 1: maybe life in general. It's true? Yeah, I mean they
Speaker 1: did you know, they broke his cherry early, popped his
Speaker 1: cherry early. Don't put that in. I hate that although
Speaker 1: this was the era of cherry pop. Was Will Wheaton
Speaker 1: the son of son of famous people? I know I
Speaker 1: might be getting confused with Mikey from Goonies, who was
Speaker 1: Patty Duke's kid. Oh yeah, no, I don't know if
Speaker 1: Will Wheaton's a Will Wheaton is a NEPO baby, so
Speaker 1: I'm not sure about that. Probably not. George Takai or
Speaker 1: Sulu from the original series of Star Trek had this
Speaker 1: to say, I think it's a chillingly realistic documentary. He laughs. Also,
Speaker 1: the details in it I recognized every one of them.
Speaker 1: It's a powerful piece of documentary filmmaking. I was rolling
Speaker 1: in the aisles and Tim Allen had that shat in
Speaker 1: the esque swaggered down at George Takai and Shatner famously
Speaker 1: been feuding probably in a series decade now, like a
Speaker 1: long long time, and I roared when the shirt came off,
Speaker 1: and Sigourney Weaver rolls her eyes and says, there goes
Speaker 1: that shirt again. How often do we hear that on set?
Speaker 2: I have to you know, I have to mention there's
Speaker 2: another thing in this movie that Sigourney Reaver made reference
Speaker 2: to in one of these oral.
Speaker 1: Histories, which is she said Tim Allen chickened out when
Speaker 1: it came time to kiss me. And indeed when they
Speaker 1: like embrace at the end of the movie, it does
Speaker 1: look like their characters were supposed to kiss, and there's
Speaker 1: like a very obvious like going in for the kiss,
Speaker 1: like no, and then they just hug uh. And I
Speaker 1: think that is so funny that they decided they again
Speaker 1: decided to keep that in as something that they would
Speaker 1: all mock Tim Allen four years later and laugh about, well,
Speaker 1: didn't they like early on in like the convention scene
Speaker 1: or something when one of the fans there.
Speaker 2: Are nots to them, like there are nots to them,
Speaker 2: like having had a relationship or something. And when he
Speaker 2: hits on her at one point, actually she delivers a great,
Speaker 2: a great line where he's like trying to like get
Speaker 2: her to come hook up with him, and she said,
Speaker 2: He says, come on, like you you know you found me,
Speaker 2: you found me beautiful once something like that, and and
Speaker 2: she says, that.
Speaker 1: Was before I knew you. Yes, yes, yes, yes, He's
Speaker 1: a devastating thing. Yes, And speaking of devastating things, William Shatner, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do love Shatner though Why, I've heard people say
Speaker 1: the most horrible things about him, and I've also heard
Speaker 1: people say the most wonderful things about him. No. In between, Well,
Speaker 1: there's there's a Henry Rowlands bit during one of his
Speaker 1: spoken word things. Yeah, OK, because he Henry Rowans and
Speaker 1: Bill Shatner did a spoken word piece on an album
Speaker 1: that Ben Folds was producing. It's the William Shatner Album
Speaker 1: has been, which is actually great. And so Henry Rowans
Speaker 1: worked with him, and he said that he was just
Speaker 1: like helped him fall in love with life again. He
Speaker 1: was just so passionate, enthusiastic about like everything. They go
Speaker 1: out to dinner, and he said, just like watching William
Speaker 1: Shatner eat was just like a revelation because he's like
Speaker 1: every bite was going to be the best bite of
Speaker 1: his life. Like that was how how he described like
Speaker 1: watching him Shatner eat. I mean, wait, joke aside, Like
Speaker 1: it was very it was very touching. So I'm sure
Speaker 1: he's a nightmare to work with.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean I I the the thing that
Speaker 2: I like most about him is when he went up
Speaker 2: on Deep Blue or space X or whatever. No it
Speaker 2: wasn't space X because that would have exploded the Deep
Speaker 2: Blue something. Yeah, deep Blue, the Amazon one, the Amazon spacecraft.
Speaker 2: He went up on one of Bezos's little vanity trips
Speaker 2: and came back not wide eyed in wonder, but like
Speaker 2: genuinely horrified in a way that like Lovecrafty and Horror
Speaker 2: has tried to portray since Lovecraft wrote it, of just
Speaker 2: being like my god, we are.
Speaker 1: Alone yeah actually.
Speaker 2: And being like and being like why what are we
Speaker 2: doing to this planet?
Speaker 1: Like there were alone out there, yeah, and there's so
Speaker 1: much space, and oh what are we doing?
Speaker 2: And I was like, good for you? For like actually
Speaker 2: having a moment of genuine like recoiling horror, as I
Speaker 2: assume everyone actually does in space, and then lies about
Speaker 2: coming back and being like, how oh, it's so wonderful
Speaker 2: and beautiful horrifying.
Speaker 1: I actually have a lot to say about this. A
Speaker 1: couple of days ago, one of the new podcasts they
Speaker 1: have been working on is called American History Hotline, and
Speaker 1: we take like, you know, listener questions and then we
Speaker 1: have various experts come in and answer them. And one
Speaker 1: of the questions was why did we stop going to
Speaker 1: the Moon. So we had this incredible journalist and space
Speaker 1: historian and expert Andrew Chaikin, who wrote an amazing book
Speaker 1: called A Man on the Moon, which then Tom Hanks
Speaker 1: made into an HBO mini series in the late nineties
Speaker 1: I think called From the Earth to the Moon. I
Speaker 1: think something like that, but it's it's the best. It's
Speaker 1: like twelve hours long. It's like it's so long, but
Speaker 1: it's like the most thorough, amazing document of the Apollo
Speaker 1: program that I've ever seen. It's really great. So we
Speaker 1: have this historian on and we were talking about that
Speaker 1: and he mentioned Shatner coming down. He mentioned what you
Speaker 1: said about how he phrased it slightly less lovecraft Dan.
Speaker 1: He said something like, yeah, Shatner said that going up
Speaker 1: to space, I wasn't really focused on space at all.
Speaker 1: I just kept looking back at Earth and it made
Speaker 1: me realize how beautiful Earth was, which I mean, the
Speaker 1: sentiment is true. I mean, Earth is a lifeboat basically
Speaker 1: in the vast blackness of space. And there's also a
Speaker 1: phenomenon called the overview effect. And there's a book called
Speaker 1: the overview Effect that's been written about this, where basically
Speaker 1: studying the psychological effect of going into space, especially the
Speaker 1: people in the Apollo program, how it changed them in
Speaker 1: profound ways about how they just viewed life and humanity
Speaker 1: and you know, in ways you could probably expect but
Speaker 1: not truly internalize, which is like, you know, it's just
Speaker 1: the ultimate perspective check. He's going to the moon and
Speaker 1: looking back at everything you knew, everyone you knew, everyone
Speaker 1: you've ever, everything that you know about existence is just
Speaker 1: like you can stand on the moon and put your
Speaker 1: thumb up and like completely cover it with your thumb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would like to.
Speaker 2: I mean, just in case people thought I'm misrepresenting lovecrafting horror,
Speaker 2: I would like to read.
Speaker 1: From the op ed that William Shatner wrote, oh please
Speaker 1: please about the experience. I'm not going to do it
Speaker 1: in his voice, although maybe I should, I should try it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love the mystery of the universe. I love the
Speaker 1: mystery of it, all of the questions that have come
Speaker 1: to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses.
Speaker 2: That's annoying, stars exploding years ago, They're light traveling to us,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah, etc. All that has throwed me for years.
Speaker 2: But when I looked in the opposite direction into space,
Speaker 2: there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold.
Speaker 1: All I saw was death.
Speaker 2: I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness, unlike any blackness
Speaker 2: you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping,
Speaker 2: all encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home,
Speaker 2: the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the
Speaker 2: white clouds, the.
Speaker 1: Blue of the sky. Everything I had thought was wrong,
Speaker 1: Everything I had expected to see was wrong. I had
Speaker 1: thought that going into space would be the ultimate Catharsis
Speaker 1: of that connection I had been looking for between all
Speaker 1: living things, that being up there would be the next
Speaker 1: beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. My trip,
Speaker 1: Yes this is the pool quote. The contrast between the
Speaker 1: vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth
Speaker 1: below filled me with overwhelming sadness. My trip to Space
Speaker 1: was supposed to be a celebration. Instead it felt like
Speaker 1: a funeral. Wow. I mean okay, first of all, yes,
Speaker 1: as a profound sentiment and very interesting, but also sure,
Speaker 1: he's probably a nightmare to work with. But to actually
Speaker 1: have that awareness and be able to articulate it so beautifully, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean. Also, you know, the original series or whatever
Speaker 1: it was decades ago, and he was a young a
Speaker 1: younger man. I'm sure that there's been some life's beating
Speaker 1: him down enough. Yeah. I although I think him and
Speaker 1: like Spack had a weird or him and nimoy I
Speaker 1: had a weird thing towards because.
Speaker 2: Weren't they like, well, yeah, that's like cannot stand him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: has made it like a pillar of his personality in
Speaker 2: later years.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like I hate Bill Shatner in a way that
Speaker 1: I sort of find off putting. Okay, Well, you know
Speaker 1: you hate a guy, you hate a guy, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's noble. I hate people I hate people
Speaker 1: I've worked with, and yeah, I never mind. Don't you
Speaker 1: want to carry that with you for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life. My stepbrother, he was graduating from UMass. Lowell
Speaker 1: and Shatner came to speak at the commencement, and my
Speaker 1: dad always talks about how moving the speech was, about
Speaker 1: how I don't remember all of the part that I
Speaker 1: always remember my dad especially being moved by was I
Speaker 1: think it was right after Nimoy had died and he
Speaker 1: was talking about friendship and loss, and he said that
Speaker 1: the weirdest thing and the toughest thing about losing but
Speaker 1: getting you in age, when you're starting to lose your
Speaker 1: friends in sure, you know, in rapid succession, was you
Speaker 1: lose somebody to like fact check your memories with, which
Speaker 1: I thought was a very small but poignant but also
Speaker 1: that's really devastating. Yeah, that's a tough one. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I thought that was very touching. And I think about
Speaker 1: that from time to time, that you know people that
Speaker 1: you had these really intimate experiences with that there no
Speaker 1: longer there, and then suddenly it's like you're kind of
Speaker 1: left hoping you have it right in a sense, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is making you feel a lot of feelings that
Speaker 1: you don't like. Do you want to go back to
Speaker 1: your trailer? No? I mean I just think as much
Speaker 1: as he's probably as a gigantic egon, as much as
Speaker 1: he's probably not going to work with, I feel like
Speaker 1: he has a rich inner life. And I mean you'd
Speaker 1: have to to think spoken word was an art form.
Speaker 1: But sure that was great? Is incredible? You say that
Speaker 1: you would actually like it. It's called has been and it's.
Speaker 2: Where I know of the record because he has Joe Jackson,
Speaker 2: Joe Jackson and he covers a pulpse common Sorry. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a great performance from Joe Jackson. Oh yeah, Joe
Speaker 2: Jackson whips So Jackson's incredible.
Speaker 1: Not that Joe Jackson, not not no, no, yeah. The
Speaker 1: English guy contemporary of Elvis Costello, who did go out
Speaker 1: with him, Yes, and the rest. I'm shocked. You know him,
Speaker 1: he doesn't seem like something. He's English. So that's one
Speaker 1: reason why I'm shocking, you know. I you know what
Speaker 1: it was, dude. It was one of the g TA soundtracks.
Speaker 1: Had had one of his songs on one of the
Speaker 1: rings look Sharp or something like that, or stepping out,
Speaker 1: stepping out, stepping out and it was just got stuck
Speaker 1: in my head and I was like, who is this song? Rules?
Speaker 1: That sounds?
Speaker 2: And the second I found that he has a song
Speaker 2: called Everybody's.
Speaker 1: Everything gives You Cancer? There's no kill, There's no answer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: A seven out whips. Yeah. That whole album's great night
Speaker 1: and day or no day and night. Great album. Wow
Speaker 1: we went we ventured far off anyway. Oh, we never
Speaker 1: actually said what William Shattener had to say about Galaxy Quest. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is what William Shattner had to say about Galaxy Quest.
Speaker 1: I thought it was very funny, and I thought the
Speaker 1: audience that they portrayed was totally real, but the actors
Speaker 1: that they were pretending to be were totally unrecognizable. And
Speaker 1: he said that with a laugh.
Speaker 2: So good for him, I say, bully for him. Yes,
Speaker 2: in a rare moment of self awareness. Okay, so ever,
Speaker 2: since the success of the film, you know, doubled its budget.
Speaker 2: That's not nothing. People have been talking about a sequel.
Speaker 2: Tim Allen mentioned in the MTV Oral History, this was
Speaker 2: published in twenty fourteen that there was a script already
Speaker 2: written in Sigourney Weaver and Sam Rockwell mentioned that they
Speaker 2: would both be interested in returning A year later. In
Speaker 2: April twenty fifteen, Paramount Television, along with the movie's co
Speaker 2: writer Robert Gordon, director Dean Parasat, and the OG executive producers,
Speaker 2: announced they were looking to develop a television series based
Speaker 2: on Galaxy Quest, positioned similarly to Paramount's revivals of Minority
Speaker 2: Report and School of Rock as television series, but because
Speaker 2: no one takes Paramount seriously. By August of twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: it was announced that the series was off Paramount and
Speaker 2: on at Amazon Studios. However, Alan Rickman's death in January
Speaker 2: of twenty sixteen shut that down. On the nerdst podcast
Speaker 2: in April twenty sixteen, Sam Rockwell revealed that the cast
Speaker 2: had been about ready to sign on for a follow
Speaker 2: up with Amazon, but Rickman's death, together with Allen's television schedule,
Speaker 2: proved to be insurmountable obstacles. A year after that, in
Speaker 2: November of twenty seventeen, Paul Sheer was announced as the writer,
Speaker 2: and he said that his first drafts for Amazon had
Speaker 2: been delivered. However, after Amy Powell's exit as president of
Speaker 2: Paramount Television in July twenty eighteen, Sheer said that the
Speaker 2: Galaxy Quest series had been put on hold while Paramount
Speaker 2: Management was being re established. As recently as early twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, Tim Allen said that a film sequel script
Speaker 2: was nearly ready to go, having been heavily reworked following
Speaker 2: Rickman's death. The world was understandably not as interested at
Speaker 2: this point in US history. In June of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: Georgia Pritchett claimed that she had she and Simon Pegg
Speaker 2: were working on developing Galaxy Quest television series, and most
Speaker 2: relatively recently, in April of twenty twenty three, Paramount said
Speaker 2: that they were in the early stage of developing a
Speaker 2: Galaxy Quest series for their streaming service, with production overseen
Speaker 2: by Galaxy Quest's original producer Mark Johnson. You know, like
Speaker 2: I mentioned, I completely forgot how good this movie is
Speaker 2: until we got a pitch for it. And Sam Rockwall,
Speaker 2: I think, really hit it on the head in the
Speaker 2: MTV Oral History. He said, somebody must have sprinkled fairy
Speaker 2: dust on that movie, because everything just clicked into place
Speaker 2: somehow in the long run. And I agree, every single
Speaker 2: thing about it works. And this movie, like you said,
Speaker 2: like you said earlier, you on this idea of a
Speaker 2: mid budget parody with you know, actual sets and actors
Speaker 2: and everything. Those movies are gone, they are phased out
Speaker 2: and Star Trek reference. But of them, I think Galaxy
Speaker 2: Quest has like serious legs. It might be one of
Speaker 2: the most influential of any of these movies. For starters,
Speaker 2: It's lightly irreverent, more gentle, comedic tone towards Star Trek
Speaker 2: basically anticipated the tone that noted hack jj Abram that
Speaker 2: would take with his two thousand and nine reboot of
Speaker 2: Star Trek and then later years following not one but
Speaker 2: two shows Star Trek Lower Decks and Seth MacFarlane series.
Speaker 2: The Orville took this whole parody with love approach to
Speaker 2: Star Trek, and I think more trenchantly, Galaxy Quest basically
Speaker 2: predicted how twenty first century fandom would evolve. You know,
Speaker 2: fan conventions have gone from the opening scene in this movie,
Speaker 2: which are depicted as quasi sad, to these huge tent
Speaker 2: pole features every year, with major studios debuting trailers and
Speaker 2: making cast announcements. An entire online ecosystem of coverage has
Speaker 2: cropped up specifically around cons now with like costumes and
Speaker 2: all the you go to the celebrity panels, and every
Speaker 2: single minute quote from that is overanalyzed, and even just
Speaker 2: the very power that fan bases would have is somewhat
Speaker 2: depicted by this movie. You know, Family Guy was canceled
Speaker 2: like two years later, and fan campaigns brought it back.
Speaker 2: Same thing that happened with Firefly. Firefly was canceled and
Speaker 2: then they made a movie about it, spurred by the
Speaker 2: reaction of the fans to it, and coming out six
Speaker 2: months after The Phantom Menace, Galaxy Quest offered this very
Speaker 2: rosy eyed view of the power of fandom, especially on
Speaker 2: the Internet with all of these niche message boards and
Speaker 2: fan sites, and it was a very positive model for
Speaker 2: cinematic fandom that hadn't even gotten underway yet, that would
Speaker 2: only gain steam with the success of Lord of the
Speaker 2: Rings franchise. The Fellowship came out in two thousand and
Speaker 2: one Harry Potter, and then of course the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
Speaker 2: and now we're at this stage where fandom has started
Speaker 2: to curdle. As I mentioned in a different podcast, you know,
Speaker 2: you're at this point where fan reaction on Reddit can
Speaker 2: dictate the entire direction of a remake series, as famously
Speaker 2: happened with the Last Jedi, and then that direct that
Speaker 2: film's director Ryan Johnson being booted from the Star Trek
Speaker 2: franchise in favor of jj Abrams, who made the essentially
Speaker 2: remake of a New Hope that is called The Force Awakens,
Speaker 2: and then the absolute steaming pile of dog called Rise
Speaker 2: of Skywalker third film. Anyway, I could get sappy about
Speaker 2: all this. I could have a finely crafted kicker that
Speaker 2: explored the impact of what it means to truly love
Speaker 2: a piece of media and how that can curdle into obsession.
Speaker 2: But instead I'm just going to quote Sigourney Weaver's character
Speaker 2: Gwen DeMarco. Whoever wrote this episode should die. Thank you, folks,
Speaker 2: this has been too much information. I'm Alex Heigel and
Speaker 2: I'm Jordan run Tag. We'll catch you next time.
Speaker 1: Too Much Information was a production of iHeart Radio. The
Speaker 1: show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtalk. The
Speaker 1: show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June. The show was researched, written,
Speaker 1: and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Heigel, with
Speaker 1: original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra.
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