Speaker 1: Uh, that's all right. That's it, that's the whole thing.
Speaker 1: How we're starting the episode. I welcomed Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 1: the only podcast where the host, Robert Evans is sick. Uh,
Speaker 1: Caitlyn DURRANTI, how are you doing? I'm doing quite well. Thanks.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to hear that you're sick. Just as a
Speaker 1: heads up, we're going to be relying entirely on you
Speaker 1: for our our our frenetic energy this week, so all right,
Speaker 1: you better bring it. Yeah, everybody, it's Behind the Bastards.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Caitlin. This is exactly what we needed now. Caitlin,
Speaker 1: you are the host of a podcast while the co host.
Speaker 1: But I'm in a feud with your co host. So
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say you're the only host of the
Speaker 1: Bechtel cast um to hell with James Loftus and it's
Speaker 1: god damn Webby. I don't co sign that. Also, shout
Speaker 1: out to shout out to our webby that we want
Speaker 1: shout out to your webby. Indeed, huge congrats, very proud, Caitlin.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about movies? Well, Robert, I'm so
Speaker 1: glad you asked me about how I feel about movies,
Speaker 1: because I famously have cultivated an entire personality around movies
Speaker 1: and loving them, and I really have nothing else going
Speaker 1: for me. Yeah, I mean, your nickname famously is Caitlin.
Speaker 1: I think films are not at all problematic durante, which
Speaker 1: is a little bit of a mouthful, but you know,
Speaker 1: too many syllables, too many syllables. But you know, we
Speaker 1: respect your choices. Dad. Who do you got a favorite director? Um,
Speaker 1: honestly that I should. I should, for how I I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone should, but I think, well, well, we'll
Speaker 1: be talking a lot about au tour theory in a
Speaker 1: little bit, But yeah, I think it's debatable as to
Speaker 1: whether or not you should have a favorite director. That's
Speaker 1: the thing I mean, because there's no one director who
Speaker 1: has made like every movie in their repertoire. There they're
Speaker 1: other words, maybe George Miller, George, Well, have you seen
Speaker 1: Happy Feet? Though that I thought happy It was that
Speaker 1: I am the only person apparently who thinks that Happy
Speaker 1: Feet sucks shit? But wow, strong opinions on Happy Feet? Well,
Speaker 1: what what's fun about? George Miller is number one? He
Speaker 1: comes up in this episode, although negative way, but you know,
Speaker 1: he's one of those directors where if you're talking about
Speaker 1: things you don't like, you're generally talking just about like, well,
Speaker 1: this film didn't work for me. Right today are primarily
Speaker 1: talking about a director who inspires rather more strong opinions
Speaker 1: for for important reasons. Caitlin, what do you know about
Speaker 1: John Landis? I know? Okay, here's everything I know about
Speaker 1: John Landis, which is not very much. Um. I know
Speaker 1: that he directed a film in which either some people
Speaker 1: died or some horses died. Okay, that's it starts start
Speaker 1: people dying and horses dying. Um. But we're all just animals,
Speaker 1: aren't we dying in the world on the earth? Um?
Speaker 1: I just remember there being conditioned on his set which
Speaker 1: were very dangerous and some living things. You're going to
Speaker 1: have fun with this one. You talk a lot about
Speaker 1: directors that are like their movies are problematic because of
Speaker 1: issues with like jin or and other kinds of stuff
Speaker 1: like that. With with John Landis, it is it is
Speaker 1: problematic on a level of like human rights violations that
Speaker 1: lead to this. It's a hoot. It's a hoot, Caitlin.
Speaker 1: We're going to have fun with this one. Um. First,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk a little bit about some film theory. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: you know you live in l A. Now, I lived
Speaker 1: in l A for half a decade. We both worked
Speaker 1: in and around the entertainment industry, and I think we
Speaker 1: can both agree that the worst people on planet Earth
Speaker 1: are film nerds. Right, there's film nerds and then war
Speaker 1: criminals just a little bit lower than than film nerds.
Speaker 1: You know, That's that's how I tend to think about it.
Speaker 1: As a film nerd certainly one of the worst people
Speaker 1: walking on this earth. Yes, yeah, we need a Nuremberg
Speaker 1: for people who think too much about Magnolia, P t
Speaker 1: A and other director that. Sometimes I'm just like, what
Speaker 1: are we all going to out for this guy so much? Uh? Man?
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise in that movie is a pretty incredible performance, though,
Speaker 1: you know what is as much as I love to
Speaker 1: hate Tom Cruise, I also love to love a lot
Speaker 1: of his performances. Look, you can't didn't. You can say
Speaker 1: a lot of things about Tom Cruise, and most of
Speaker 1: them are bad, but you can't deny the man is
Speaker 1: a star. He's a star, and he's attempted performer. Yeah. Absolutely, Um,
Speaker 1: So we're talking about kind of aw tour theory, right,
Speaker 1: which is a term that we get. I've read a
Speaker 1: few things on this. I'm not an expert in any
Speaker 1: of this, but it seems broadly agreed upon that like
Speaker 1: the word emerged in its common usage in the forties
Speaker 1: and fifties among a bunch of like French film nerds,
Speaker 1: and the basic idea is that the director of a
Speaker 1: film should be seen as the author of that film,
Speaker 1: and thus films are primarily reflections of the specific vision
Speaker 1: of whoever directs them. If you're looking at a film
Speaker 1: made by a specific director, it's going to have themes
Speaker 1: and visual cues that work as signatures. Um, this is obvious.
Speaker 1: Like this is not like particularly problematic. It's obviously true
Speaker 1: of a lot of directors. At least. There's certainly directors
Speaker 1: like Brett Ratner where it's like I could I couldn't
Speaker 1: tell you if that was someone else's film or Brett
Speaker 1: Ratner's film, because they're all they all look like a
Speaker 1: million films. But then there's guys like like if if
Speaker 1: you put a Quentin Tarantino film on that you've never
Speaker 1: seen or heard of, you'll you'll immediately be like in tenments, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a Quentin Tarantino film, right, Um, same with like
Speaker 1: Paul and Paul Thomas Anders, and same with even like
Speaker 1: a guy you wouldn't most people wouldn't call an artist
Speaker 1: like Michael Bay. You put a Michael Bay film on,
Speaker 1: most people are gonna be like this, this seems like
Speaker 1: a Michael Bay movie. And yeah, absolutely, it has a
Speaker 1: very recognizable conventions that he uses in his filmmaking and
Speaker 1: storytelling and you know all that stuff. So as kind
Speaker 1: of a basic sort of element of analyzing film, there's
Speaker 1: nothing like high falutin nor even like problematic about the
Speaker 1: idea of like an odd like autour theory. Right, it's not, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's just like a pretty neutral concept that's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to argue with at its basic level. The
Speaker 1: term itself was coined by again a bunch of French
Speaker 1: film critics writing in a journal I'm not going to
Speaker 1: try to pronounce um, and a lot of these guys
Speaker 1: became French New wave directors. New York University professor Julian
Speaker 1: Cornell points out that the basic idea of an aw
Speaker 1: tour in a film had existed as long as films had,
Speaker 1: and it probably originally it's most clearly from a German
Speaker 1: theater director Max Reinhardt in the nineteen teens. The concept
Speaker 1: started to gain popularity though in the United States starting
Speaker 1: in the sixties and seventies. UM and this came alongside
Speaker 1: the rise of like the directors generally seen as like
Speaker 1: the aw Tours, Right, guys like Alfred Hitchcock, Marty Scorsese,
Speaker 1: Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, and William Friedkin. Right. And
Speaker 1: these are the the area in which like this idea
Speaker 1: of like the and it kind of expands from this
Speaker 1: idea that like films have a recognizable author to like
Speaker 1: the director is this kind of is like the god
Speaker 1: of the movie they're making. Right, Um, they are the
Speaker 1: only voice that matters. And if you if you want
Speaker 1: to really make great film art, they have to just
Speaker 1: be kind of followed blindly by the people on set. Um.
Speaker 1: And this, you know, one thing you can't argue with
Speaker 1: is that this is an era in which a lot
Speaker 1: of the most influential films of all time are being made. Right.
Speaker 1: You're getting The Exorcist, You're getting Ship Like the Birds, Psycho. Um,
Speaker 1: you're getting Easy Rider, Taxi Driver two thousand one of Spade,
Speaker 1: The Godfather, UM, like some some pretty fucking good movies
Speaker 1: are getting made in this Yeah, that's defining the language
Speaker 1: of cinemas and yeah, exactly, yeah, the shining right. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this isn't the the era in which people
Speaker 1: start to see directors this way. Is also the era
Speaker 1: in which movies that are generally seen as like the
Speaker 1: most famous movies of all time are getting made. Um.
Speaker 1: And the sheer density of history making where of cinematic
Speaker 1: art in this period leads people to get a little
Speaker 1: bit carried away with kind of how important a director
Speaker 1: is and how they should be treated. Right, man, how
Speaker 1: giving an artist specifically not just giving a manpower, giving
Speaker 1: a bunch of men in their mid thirties with access
Speaker 1: to infinite money in cocaine ultimate power in any situation
Speaker 1: is going to lead to problems, right yeah. And it
Speaker 1: is not for nothing that this is the era in
Speaker 1: which cocaine goes super viral too. But one of the
Speaker 1: clearest examples of like how odd tour theory can lead
Speaker 1: to some relief, or how the idea of like the
Speaker 1: director is this kind of author of the film can
Speaker 1: lead to some fund up behavior is Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Um.
Speaker 1: This is one of the most famous horror movies of
Speaker 1: all time, and it relied heavily on the director's ability
Speaker 1: to mentally and physically abuse actress Tippy Hedron. We've discussed
Speaker 1: this at some length in our hitch Cock episodes, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to read a brief summary from a write
Speaker 1: up in People based on Hedren's recently released memoir quote.
Speaker 1: Everything was building towards the famous bedroom scene, Hedron writes,
Speaker 1: of the scene in which her character Melanie suffers a
Speaker 1: vicious on camera attack by the birds. Up until the
Speaker 1: day of the filming, Hedron says Hitchcock had promised her
Speaker 1: they'd used mechanical birds, but on the day they started shooting,
Speaker 1: Hedron was informed by assistant director James H. Brown that
Speaker 1: the mechanical birds aren't working, so we're going to have
Speaker 1: to use live ones. Hedron writes that she endured five
Speaker 1: days of filming where handlers hurled ravens, doves, and a
Speaker 1: few pigeons at her. It was brutal and ugly and
Speaker 1: relentless rites Hedron. Carrie Grant, one of Hitch's favorite leading men,
Speaker 1: happened to be visiting the set that day and told
Speaker 1: me between takes, you're the bravest woman I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: On the final day of shooting the scene, live birds
Speaker 1: were loosely tied to Hedron's costume while she lied on
Speaker 1: the floor. The actress says, when action was called, the
Speaker 1: birds that were tied to her started pecking her and
Speaker 1: the wranglers again through live birds directly at her. So
Speaker 1: that's good, great for the actor, great for the animals,
Speaker 1: for everybody involved. For an idea of like how much
Speaker 1: this fox with Tippy Hedron, the next big thing that
Speaker 1: she will do is spend five years living on a
Speaker 1: compound with several hundred adults lions and tigers and her
Speaker 1: family and filming it. They all get horribly mauled. Several times.
Speaker 1: She has her legs shattered by an elephant. Um. But
Speaker 1: it's it's oh my god, it is um a ship.
Speaker 1: What was the roar? It's called roar. It is incredible.
Speaker 1: It's an amazing because you're just watching. There's like maybe
Speaker 1: thirty minutes of actual dialogue in the film, and most
Speaker 1: of the movie is them struggling to get through their lines,
Speaker 1: and every like ten seconds someone gets brutally mauled by
Speaker 1: an animal. It's so good, it's amazing. Because like I
Speaker 1: don't want to, but I mean her tell everyone involved
Speaker 1: in it knows what they're getting into. Unlike The Birds,
Speaker 1: where Hitchcock like tricked her into traumatizing her. They knew
Speaker 1: we're living in a house with two hundred lions and tigers, right,
Speaker 1: Like nobody's misled about the danger. And it's a mark
Speaker 1: of like how much Hitchcock, how much damage he did that.
Speaker 1: I don't think Tippy Hedron considers being repeatedly mauled by
Speaker 1: giant animals to be the most traumatic event of her career,
Speaker 1: Like you know, like watching roar and realize like that
Speaker 1: to her was a lot less bad than working with
Speaker 1: Alfred often. I love this movie. It's the movie he
Speaker 1: decided to put on, and my mom and I came
Speaker 1: to his house. He was like, no volume, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't need to hear the dialogue. It's not important. M hmm.
Speaker 1: Such a good movie anyway. So there's nothing inherently problematic
Speaker 1: or wrong about using on tour theory to analyze movies.
Speaker 1: But the obsession with these directors is the sole voice
Speaker 1: and driving force behind their art. Lad repeatedly to whole
Speaker 1: teams of adults just kind of standing by while again
Speaker 1: dudes often think Hitchcock was older, but often just like
Speaker 1: dudes in their thirties or forties, abused entire cruise full
Speaker 1: of people in specifically generally female like actors like that's
Speaker 1: where most of the violence comes down. And a really
Speaker 1: good example of this would be the classic William Friedkin
Speaker 1: film The Exorcist. Now, this is still considered to be
Speaker 1: one of the scariest movies ever made. Friedkin was obsessed
Speaker 1: with the idea that his movie wouldn't be frightening enough
Speaker 1: to the audience if he didn't deeply traumatize his actors.
Speaker 1: Ellen Burston played the mother of a possessed child in
Speaker 1: the movie, and one day her daughter, played by Linda Blair,
Speaker 1: pushes Burst into the ground. Now that doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: it should be a super intense scene, but again, Linda
Speaker 1: Blair is like possessed with a demonic spirit, right, so
Speaker 1: she's super strong. So Friedkin wanted to have Burst and
Speaker 1: basically yanked to the ground by a wire police system
Speaker 1: to simulate being shoved by demonic super strike. Burston later
Speaker 1: recalled quote when she knocks me to the ground, I
Speaker 1: landed on my back, And William Friedkin said cut take two,
Speaker 1: and I said, Billy, he's pulling me too hard because
Speaker 1: I had a wire pulling me to the floor. And
Speaker 1: Billy said, well, it has to look real, and I said,
Speaker 1: I know it has to look real, but I'm telling
Speaker 1: you I could get hurt. And so he said, Okay,
Speaker 1: don't pull her so hard. But then I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that he didn't cancel that behind my back because the
Speaker 1: guy smashed me into the floor. And this is hard
Speaker 1: enough that she suffers a permanent spinal injury, right, Like
Speaker 1: she's injured the rest of her life because of this scene.
Speaker 1: And there's a bunch when The Exorcist comes out, a
Speaker 1: whole lot's made about like most of the advertising campaign
Speaker 1: has to do with like people have seizures in this movie,
Speaker 1: Like you can't come in after it started. It's too scary,
Speaker 1: Like you won't be able to handle it. Like people
Speaker 1: are like getting hospitalized like that. That's a whole big
Speaker 1: part of like the push behind this movie is that
Speaker 1: it's hurting the audience. And like I'm gonna say right here,
Speaker 1: as as someone who's watched to enjoyed The Exercist, Friedkin
Speaker 1: was nuts because that movie was not scarier because they
Speaker 1: permanently damaged Ellen Burston's spine, Like, no, they could have
Speaker 1: done without that. There's like, look, there's some very frightening
Speaker 1: movies that I have seen in my life. Um it
Speaker 1: follows very scary movie get Out, very scary movie that
Speaker 1: one VHS where their documentary crew when they come upon
Speaker 1: a bunch of like a demon cult in the jungle.
Speaker 1: Pretty scary. I don't think any of those movies permanently
Speaker 1: damaged somebody's spine. Um, yeah, it's not just not necessary
Speaker 1: for there to be horror in your movie. It's like
Speaker 1: that famous I forget who it is who's supposed to
Speaker 1: have said this about like method actors. But it's like
Speaker 1: you could just like act instead, Like you don't need to,
Speaker 1: You don't need like a policys them to damage your
Speaker 1: actress is spine. She could just act. That is the
Speaker 1: thing about like method acting and aw tour directors who
Speaker 1: abuse their power is just like it's not considering for
Speaker 1: a second how your choices are affecting other people, because
Speaker 1: you like seeing your vision into fruition and not compromising
Speaker 1: your vision for any reason is like the most important thing,
Speaker 1: And it's like, no, the most important thing is that
Speaker 1: your workplace is safe and it is a movie, but
Speaker 1: like the stakes are not. You don't want to nearly
Speaker 1: kill people to see your vision come to life. Is
Speaker 1: not how that works. You almost exclusively see it with
Speaker 1: people directing horror, right, Like that's where really a lot
Speaker 1: of the worst abuses come from. Um. Like you can
Speaker 1: look at the show Ning Too, where it's not so
Speaker 1: much physical, but Shelley Deval is like really mentally abused
Speaker 1: in that movie. Um. And I guess because they want
Speaker 1: realism or some ship. I'm a big Michael Man fan. Um,
Speaker 1: I you know, I'm a I'm a gun nerd um.
Speaker 1: And the movie Heat is revered is regarded by like
Speaker 1: people who are professional gun users as a perfectly accurate
Speaker 1: movie with the gunfights that that big bank is just
Speaker 1: like technically everything ideal. You noticed that Michael Mann did
Speaker 1: not put life bullets in those guns and require his
Speaker 1: actors to get shot for real, because again, you can
Speaker 1: film an incredibly convincing gunfight without killing people, and that's
Speaker 1: the beauty of cinema. Yeah, because it's a movie. It's
Speaker 1: it's just wild to me that anyway, this is not
Speaker 1: the only injury on the or even the most severe
Speaker 1: one on the set of The Exorcist. Um, and I
Speaker 1: want to note here to Burston, who suffered that permanent
Speaker 1: spinal injury. Years later, she said, in an interview of
Speaker 1: William Friedkin quote, Billy is one of those directors that
Speaker 1: is so dedicated to getting the shot right that I
Speaker 1: think some other considerations sort of fall by the wayside.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he's a brilliant director, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: knock him. However, I did injure my lower back and
Speaker 1: I had to work with it ever since. But it's okay,
Speaker 1: And like, it's not Ellen, it's not okay. You can
Speaker 1: you can knock him, and you should. Yeah, he should
Speaker 1: get knocked, especially because of the story we're about to tell. Um.
Speaker 1: So at least Burston was an adult, right she is.
Speaker 1: She was not fully informed of how dangerous the scene
Speaker 1: could be, but she was old enough to choose to
Speaker 1: get injured on a set, right, Um. Stunt actors do
Speaker 1: that all the time. Linda Blair was fourteen years old
Speaker 1: when she played the possessed little girl in The Exorcist. Now.
Speaker 1: One famous scene called for her to shoot Bolt upright
Speaker 1: in bed. Right. This is if you like, if you're
Speaker 1: watching a documentary that talks about movies, and they show
Speaker 1: a scene from the exerci Is. This is the scene
Speaker 1: they're going to generally show where she like and it's
Speaker 1: it's a very like sudden sharp movement. In order to
Speaker 1: make the scene look kind of properly unnatural, freed Can
Speaker 1: again used a mechanical rigging system to move her body.
Speaker 1: Blair later explained quote, in this particular take, the lacing
Speaker 1: came loose. I'm crying. I'm screaming. They think I'm acting
Speaker 1: up a storm. It fractured my lower spine. No, they
Speaker 1: didn't send me to the doctor. It's the footage that's
Speaker 1: in the movie. So when you see that scene in
Speaker 1: the Exorcist, her back is being broken, she is fourteen,
Speaker 1: when she's so child and a spinal injury slash. Breaking
Speaker 1: your back is so scary and has such high stakes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean speaking of high stakes, now she does.
Speaker 1: She's in a couple of other movies later on that
Speaker 1: she also gets hurt less hurt in but she winds
Speaker 1: up suffering severe scoliosis as a result of her injuries.
Speaker 1: Um and yeah, this cavalier disregard for the safe d
Speaker 1: of children in the name of shooting a good scary
Speaker 1: movie only grew more pronounced over the next decade as
Speaker 1: the tours increasingly took over in Hollywood. The Exorcist was
Speaker 1: filmed in nineteen seventy two. The movie we're talking about today,
Speaker 1: the Twilight Zone movie, was filmed in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: But before we get into that, you know, we should
Speaker 1: get into some products and services. Products and services because
Speaker 1: while the director, William Friedkin, the director of the Exorcist,
Speaker 1: injured a fourteen year old girl without her consent, we
Speaker 1: promise that all of our products and services only injured
Speaker 1: children with their consent or the consent of their parents.
Speaker 1: All Right, here's here's ads. Oh we're back. How are
Speaker 1: we feeling? How's everybody doing? I mean, I feel I
Speaker 1: feel like I usually do when I'm a guest on
Speaker 1: this show, and it's just I mean, I'm I'm very
Speaker 1: happy to be here, very happy to be with you.
Speaker 1: But then I'm also like, oh, right, people are bad.
Speaker 1: Although I do um this, this episode, this topic is
Speaker 1: is far more in my wheelhouse than anything has been
Speaker 1: any of the other times I've been on the show.
Speaker 1: So I feel I'm feeling extremely confident. Honestly, that is
Speaker 1: very good. You know, one of the documentaries I watched
Speaker 1: preparing for this was it's called Cursed Films. There's a
Speaker 1: series of like episodes about different movies that had horrible
Speaker 1: things happen on set. And on the episode that is
Speaker 1: about the Twilight Zone movie, one of the people they
Speaker 1: interview as like a voice of sanity of how like
Speaker 1: actually know all that matters is safety and it's crazy
Speaker 1: to take these kind of risks to get a good
Speaker 1: shot in a fucking movie. Um is like the one
Speaker 1: of the dudes who ran um Trauma, which is one
Speaker 1: of my favorite trauma. Oh my god, it's where m
Speaker 1: James Gunn got a start. Among other things, they did
Speaker 1: like really gory, violent, like like purposefully outrageous schlock like
Speaker 1: sex and nudity and like puppets exploding and blood and
Speaker 1: got like awesome shit. Um, but also had a very
Speaker 1: good track record for like not killing people because they
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, we're understood that they
Speaker 1: were just making movies anyway. Good documentaries to watch. Also,
Speaker 1: Trauma very fun film studio. So both actresses in the
Speaker 1: Exorcist seemed to have the opinion that the artistic qualities
Speaker 1: of the film at least mitigated their suffering, right. UM,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna make a judgment on that one way
Speaker 1: or the other. It's there. They have the right to
Speaker 1: feel however they want. Um, I have to imagine that, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if if you suffer, but the thing that gets made
Speaker 1: is like a legendary work of art, then maybe that
Speaker 1: makes it a little easier. It makes it feel like
Speaker 1: more meaningful or something. It does justify it, certainly. But
Speaker 1: I guess it's like, well, if I broke my back,
Speaker 1: at least it wasn't for the worst movie ever made exactly,
Speaker 1: And today, like we're gonna primarily be talking about people
Speaker 1: sacrificing everything for an incredibly stupid movie. Um, it's so funny.
Speaker 1: It's not funny children die anyway. Um, Before we get
Speaker 1: into that, we should spend some time talking about the
Speaker 1: autour behind the Twilight Zone movie. John Landis now John
Speaker 1: David Landis, was born on August third, nineteen fifty in Chicago, Illinois.
Speaker 1: His family were reasonably well off. His father was an
Speaker 1: interior designer and decorator. Um. Also, his mother's original last
Speaker 1: name was magazine Er, which is not something I realized
Speaker 1: people had as a last name. I actually think it
Speaker 1: was like her last name from previous marriage. But I
Speaker 1: just never heard of magazine or as a last name,
Speaker 1: and I think it's silly. Um. I think we need
Speaker 1: to have an approved list of last names that people
Speaker 1: are allowed to have. I like the idea of taking
Speaker 1: a noun. It's just kind of an object, adding an
Speaker 1: R or an e r to the end of it
Speaker 1: and then making it kind of like a oh, what
Speaker 1: do you do for a living? I'm a magazine er?
Speaker 1: Well that I I guess I would know a couple
Speaker 1: of dildoers, which would actually be pretty funny. Um do
Speaker 1: they make dil doos? Do they mean? Is a last name? So?
Speaker 1: Fair enough? Um? Okay. The Landis family relocates to Los
Speaker 1: Angeles when John is four months old, which is a
Speaker 1: decision that would have cataclysmic impacts on Hollywood for decades
Speaker 1: to come. When he was a little boy, John watched
Speaker 1: the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, which he told interview where
Speaker 1: Robert Elder was the movie that made him want to
Speaker 1: become a director. Quote, I had complete suspension of disbelief. Really,
Speaker 1: I was eight years old, and it transported me. I
Speaker 1: was on that beach running from that dragon fighting that
Speaker 1: eye clops. It just really dazzled me, and I bought
Speaker 1: it completely, and so I actually sat through it twice
Speaker 1: and when I got home, I asked my mom, who
Speaker 1: does that? Who makes the movie? So this is like
Speaker 1: how he decides he wants to be a director. Right,
Speaker 1: So John gets a job as a young adult, I
Speaker 1: think he's like seventeen or eighteen, as a male boy
Speaker 1: for twentieth Century Fox. Uh. He pretty quickly moves on
Speaker 1: to working as a gopher on film sets. Basically he
Speaker 1: would just kind of hang around and do whatever odd
Speaker 1: job needed doing. Um. And this was under the logic,
Speaker 1: which is actually really good logic. In Hollywood, a lot
Speaker 1: of people get their start in a variant of this way.
Speaker 1: That like, if you're just there, eventually something you want
Speaker 1: to do will need doing, and you can be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll do that, And that's how you start getting jobs
Speaker 1: that are more of the jobs you want to do. Um.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of guys, especially in this period where
Speaker 1: things are a little more wild, um, get their start
Speaker 1: that way. So he gets his chance pretty quickly after
Speaker 1: he gets started in Hollywood in nineteen sixty nine, when
Speaker 1: he scores a rare gig as assistant director on the
Speaker 1: World War two heist film Kelly's Heroes, which was filmed
Speaker 1: in Yugoslavia. He just sort of again been on set
Speaker 1: working as a gopher, and then the original assistant director
Speaker 1: gets sick and has to go home, and the directors like, well,
Speaker 1: we need another a d and you know, John Lands
Speaker 1: is like, I can do that, and he gets the job.
Speaker 1: You know, After this, his career moves steadily upwards. Uh.
Speaker 1: He had more formal roles on Once upon a Time
Speaker 1: in the West, l Condor, and a number of other
Speaker 1: action adventure movies. He was known for being the guy
Speaker 1: who would do literally any job the film needed done,
Speaker 1: even if it was dangerous like stunt work and not
Speaker 1: something he knew how to do. As he later said, quote,
Speaker 1: I worked on some pirates movies, all kinds of movies, French,
Speaker 1: foreign movies. I worked in a movie called Red Sun
Speaker 1: where tors Shiro Mufune kills me, puts a sword through me.
Speaker 1: I worked as a stunt guy. I worked as a
Speaker 1: dialogue coach. I worked as an actor. I worked as
Speaker 1: a production assistant. So he's just doing absolutely any job
Speaker 1: that they have available. And he builds enough kind of experience,
Speaker 1: He builds enough connections with other directors and some actors
Speaker 1: that when he's twenty one years old, he's able to
Speaker 1: put together the resources to direct his first feature film.
Speaker 1: Although calling it a feature film is a little bit
Speaker 1: of grace that maybe it doesn't deserves sixty one minutes
Speaker 1: long or something or it is. It is ultra low budget.
Speaker 1: Most of the money is provided by his dad, Um
Speaker 1: he like takes up a collection from family and friends.
Speaker 1: The title of the movie is schlock Like. It's literally
Speaker 1: called schlock very good. Here's how IMDb describes it. A
Speaker 1: small town is terrorized by the Banana Killer, which turns
Speaker 1: out to be the missing link between man and ape.
Speaker 1: Now I have not watched this movie. My time is
Speaker 1: slightly more valuable than that, But I also came across
Speaker 1: a fan summary of the storyline on IMDb, and my goodness,
Speaker 1: I would be doing everyone a disservice if I didn't
Speaker 1: read that too. A monkey type monster falls in love
Speaker 1: with a blind girl, which thinks that he's a giant dog.
Speaker 1: After kidnapping the girl and fleeing King Kong like onto
Speaker 1: the roof of a gym, he gets involved with the Army.
Speaker 1: Now I have not seen this movie, John Landi is
Speaker 1: to be to be entirely fair. John Landez is on
Speaker 1: the record is saying it's terrible, right like, he does
Speaker 1: not pretend this was any good. And it was supposed
Speaker 1: to be like so bad it's it's funny movie, right like.
Speaker 1: That was the goal. This was not like a serious
Speaker 1: like it was a loving send up of of of
Speaker 1: shitty monster movies. That's why it's called schlock, you know. Now,
Speaker 1: John wrote, directed, and starred in costume as the eight Monster. Um.
Speaker 1: He had actually originally intended his first film to be
Speaker 1: an underground porn movie, but he apparently gave up on
Speaker 1: the idea when he learned that he need to cut
Speaker 1: an organized crime. UM. So, if you're wondering where John
Speaker 1: Landis is moral lines, lie, I guess that's that's as
Speaker 1: close as you're gonna get um again. Schlock was a
Speaker 1: really bad movie, but it did have the thing about
Speaker 1: it that was undeniably excellent. The monster costume was really good.
Speaker 1: And it's really good because Rick Baker did the costume. Now,
Speaker 1: Baker would go on to play King Hong in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five. He did the makeup for the Exorcist, for
Speaker 1: Star Wars, for The Rocketeer, for The Nutty Professor, for
Speaker 1: Men in Black, for Mighty Joe Young, for hell Boy,
Speaker 1: for Just Like He's a legend. Rick Baker's huge, incredibly
Speaker 1: influential makeup artist. Um Landis could never have afforded him
Speaker 1: as an actual professional, but Rick Baker wasn't yet a professional.
Speaker 1: Max land or John Landis stumbles into Rick Baker when
Speaker 1: he's like living with his parents and cooking latex costumes
Speaker 1: and their kitchen oven. Um So, he's basically able to
Speaker 1: get this kid for his first gig, this guy who
Speaker 1: becomes like a legendary um like monster kind of prop
Speaker 1: maker type dude. Um So. That's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why this movie is noteworthy is that, like as much
Speaker 1: of schlock as it is, there's a pretty fucking cool
Speaker 1: monster costume in it. Um So, for two years, Landis
Speaker 1: is unable to get any kind of distribution for his
Speaker 1: weird film. He makes it in seventy one, it doesn't
Speaker 1: get distributed until seventy three. The closest he gets is
Speaker 1: an offer from Roger Corman. Roger Corman is an incredible
Speaker 1: schlock director. He's the guy who taught James Cameron everything
Speaker 1: by the way, um, and Corman offers to distribute it
Speaker 1: if John Landis quote adds tits Roger Corman, Okay, agree,
Speaker 1: if every movie needs more TIS. If you have, if
Speaker 1: you have spent thirty seconds googling Roger Corman, you will
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, that makes sense. That's totally scarce. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: Luckily for John Landis, and probably mostly due to the
Speaker 1: quality of the monster costume, the film does eventually get
Speaker 1: distributed because of a single influential fan, Johnny Carson. Now, well,
Speaker 1: we will do a whole episode on Johnny Carson because
Speaker 1: he was a monster. He was just a horrible, horrible
Speaker 1: human being. Um. But he is also like the absolute
Speaker 1: king of late night television for like half a century.
Speaker 1: Like basically, if you have if your parents are boomers,
Speaker 1: for most of the time they were alive, Johnny Carson
Speaker 1: was like the most influential man and entertainment pretty much. Um,
Speaker 1: there's no one alive today who has the kind of
Speaker 1: cultural cachet that Carson had in the seventies. Like that,
Speaker 1: we just it's not possible to be that influential in
Speaker 1: pop culture anymore. Um. I want to play a little
Speaker 1: audio of John Landis explaining what happened next so you
Speaker 1: can get a feel for the guy. Uh and because
Speaker 1: I think the story is kind of interesting, very generous,
Speaker 1: and he had me on his show and it was
Speaker 1: funny because that time I was twenty three. The movie
Speaker 1: was finished for over a year and a half. Buddy,
Speaker 1: I was told I had to say I was twenty one,
Speaker 1: because that's the gimmick was, I was twenty one year
Speaker 1: old filmmaker. I go, yeah, but I'm twenty three, now
Speaker 1: shut up. So anyway, I was on that show and
Speaker 1: they showed clips and that's I got a distributor like that.
Speaker 1: So that's how he like, right, It's like a little
Speaker 1: bit of a con from Johnny like he Johnny Carson
Speaker 1: being a guy who knows what gets people interested is
Speaker 1: like nobody's gonna care about some kid made a movie,
Speaker 1: But some twenty one year old makes a movie. Well
Speaker 1: that's a little bit of a star, right, you know,
Speaker 1: My Carson is not a good accent um, but fuck
Speaker 1: fuck him. He sucked. So one of the people who
Speaker 1: watched the Johnny Carson Show that night and saw John
Speaker 1: Landis on it and saw clips from his movie schlock
Speaker 1: was Bob Zucker. Now that's the last name that should
Speaker 1: be familiar to people, right. The Zucker brothers are the
Speaker 1: people who eventually will give us Airplane and the Naked
Speaker 1: Gun trilogy and also a bunch of much worse movies. Um.
Speaker 1: At this point there again in like their early twenties,
Speaker 1: and they're part of a sketch troup called Kentucky Fried
Speaker 1: Theater Um. And they eventually get together with John Landis
Speaker 1: and he's the director. They write the screenplay and they
Speaker 1: put together what's like Kentucky Fried movie, which is like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like we've all seen like hot Rod
Speaker 1: is like the movie from fucking um what's his name,
Speaker 1: m Andy Samberg? Andy Samberg sketch Troup. Like you get
Speaker 1: like this is the thing that's been happening for for forever.
Speaker 1: This is one of the first cases of it where
Speaker 1: like you've got this sketch group, they're pretty big and
Speaker 1: they get a movie, right. Um, Like it's this thing
Speaker 1: that will become kind of a big part of how
Speaker 1: comedians break into having their careers. Um. And this is
Speaker 1: this is like a reasonably successful a comedian how to
Speaker 1: have a career. Well, it helps to be a Zucker brother. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would. I would definitely try being Bob Zucker if
Speaker 1: you can. Um. So with this movie, it's a big
Speaker 1: enough hit that John Landis makes a name for himself
Speaker 1: and a Universal executive picks him out to direct their
Speaker 1: next big movie in the pipeline, a college comedy film
Speaker 1: called Animal House. Yeah. Have you seen Animal House? I have.
Speaker 1: It's been many years. I don't remember it very well,
Speaker 1: but I remember like the noteworthy parts of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: drinks the whole bottle of liquor. Yeah, there's some there's
Speaker 1: some fun stuff in it, like no, but Belushi like
Speaker 1: really was a very talented comedic actor. It's a movie
Speaker 1: that's got some really good parts. I haven't seen it
Speaker 1: in a couple of years. I'm sure there's some stuff
Speaker 1: that hasn't aged well. It has aged better than its
Speaker 1: descendant film, Revenge of the Nerds, UM, which is like
Speaker 1: maybe the worst aged movie I have ever seen. It's
Speaker 1: right up there. It's real hard to beat that one
Speaker 1: in terms of is now unwatchable? Um animal House unless
Speaker 1: I said, like again, there's some really good bits and
Speaker 1: Animal House um, And it's one of those things Animal
Speaker 1: House invince like the college comedy genre. Um, Like there's
Speaker 1: a Futurama episode, bat turned off it. There's episodes and
Speaker 1: like a ton of different TV shows based on it.
Speaker 1: And like every college comedy movie that's come since is
Speaker 1: patterned off of Animal House. It's also like the first
Speaker 1: gross out comedy. Like it effectively invinced that genre of comedy,
Speaker 1: like fucking um um uh American Pie, Like a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of fucking movies um that that come later are
Speaker 1: all kind of made in the image of Animal House
Speaker 1: one way or the other. Um. It also is what
Speaker 1: kind of really electrifies the career of John Belushi, um,
Speaker 1: which does tragically lead us to the career of Jim Belushi.
Speaker 1: But you can't blame John Landis for that. So John's
Speaker 1: first contribution to the film, when it's still kind of
Speaker 1: in production, was to make it, in his words, much
Speaker 1: less hateful. Uh. The original draft was it was a
Speaker 1: National lampoon movie and they liked mean comedy. Um, and
Speaker 1: so he felt was nobody to root for. He made uh,
Speaker 1: you know the frat that is, the heroes like a
Speaker 1: lot less awful. Um. It's kind of the way he's
Speaker 1: put it. I haven't seen the original draft of the script.
Speaker 1: He also wanted it to be more authentic, right, He
Speaker 1: really wanted it to feel real, so he wanted to
Speaker 1: film at a real university. They actually picked the University
Speaker 1: of Oregon in Eureka. Um, and he arranges for his
Speaker 1: cast to party with a bunch of actual seventies frat
Speaker 1: brothers so that they'll understand what like real frat parties are. Like.
Speaker 1: This does not go well. Um. See, the frat kids
Speaker 1: were not impressed with having like be these guys at
Speaker 1: the time. Like most of these folks like B and
Speaker 1: C list Hollywood types right there. Mostly the folks who
Speaker 1: show up at the party at least are mostly not
Speaker 1: big names. Um. And a misunderstanding occurs, and the frat
Speaker 1: boys beat the ship out of Landis's actors. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really fun. They just fucking wail on them. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote from Stumped magazine. Now. Landis was never told
Speaker 1: about the fire, as he was saved by his first
Speaker 1: assistant director, Cliff Coleman of Krusty Cowboy boot wearing Sam
Speaker 1: Peck and Paul Veteran. It was Coleman who insisted that
Speaker 1: nobody tell the director a thing about the brawl. And
Speaker 1: he also found the necessary medical care for the actors bruises,
Speaker 1: chipped teeth, and other wounds. He was gruffin big and
Speaker 1: we were kind of like the grizzled old sergeant Private,
Speaker 1: Landis says of Coleman, adding that he was glad he
Speaker 1: never heard about the fight, noting I would have freaked out. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: given what comes next, I don't know if I believe that. Um,
Speaker 1: But whatever you want to say about his tactics in
Speaker 1: this movie, Animal House is a huge success. It changes
Speaker 1: the game for comedy blockbusters, and it turns John Landis
Speaker 1: into something approaching a household name. Now. That was nineteen.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty, John co wrote and directed what will
Speaker 1: probably always be his best film, The Blues Brothers, starring
Speaker 1: John Belushi and dan Ackroyd and featuring every living musician
Speaker 1: worth anything in the United States. And I know I'm
Speaker 1: a big Blues Brothers fan. UM, honestly never seen it.
Speaker 1: It's a good ass movie. I watched it very recently.
Speaker 1: That motherfucker holds up. That is a good ass movie. Um.
Speaker 1: It's got like a wreath of Franklin in it. It's
Speaker 1: really quality quality film. Um. Features like the most police
Speaker 1: cars ever destroyed in a movie. There's a bunch of
Speaker 1: cool ship in and it is also this is something
Speaker 1: I think people may not realize who have watched it
Speaker 1: more recently, because most of us encountered it twenty thirty
Speaker 1: years after it was filmed. Um, Animal House was a
Speaker 1: two and a half million dollar movie, right, which is
Speaker 1: not like micro budget, but it's not high budget for
Speaker 1: the era. Blues Brothers is a thirty million dollar movie.
Speaker 1: It is one of the most expensive films in history
Speaker 1: at the time that it's made. Um, it's a budget, yeah,
Speaker 1: thirty million, which is like, yeah, huge, Well, because there's
Speaker 1: I mean, the climax of it. There's like hundreds of
Speaker 1: police cars crashing into each other, flying off of overpasses
Speaker 1: like it is a it is a like the the
Speaker 1: climax of that movie is pretty spectacular. Um, it's really good.
Speaker 1: It's a really good Max Landis or sorry, man, I
Speaker 1: keep mixing them up. Max Sitis is a bad director.
Speaker 1: John Landis is not a bad director. He's a bad
Speaker 1: person and not all of his films are good, but
Speaker 1: like he directed some solid movies and Blues Brothers is
Speaker 1: a really good movie. Um, and so this rockets This
Speaker 1: makes it. He's a list now right after Fucking Blues Brothers.
Speaker 1: It's it's still one of the most successful comedy movies
Speaker 1: of all time. Um. And at this point he has
Speaker 1: become like one of the aw tours that studios are
Speaker 1: going to shovel money at and try not to funk with.
Speaker 1: You know. He and Steven Spielberg become friends in this
Speaker 1: period from seventy eight to like the early eighties. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the two allegedly have a friendly competition to see
Speaker 1: who can get the most expensive movie made. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: so like they're competing, you know, they're they're like thirty three,
Speaker 1: thirty four in this period of time, they have unlimited money.
Speaker 1: Everybody's telling them their geniuses, and they're all powerful on set, right,
Speaker 1: They're both crazy in this period of time. Scary talk
Speaker 1: about horror movies. That's a horror movie. Yeah. Now, in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, John gets to make another one of
Speaker 1: his screenplays into a movie, An American Werewolf in London. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was another really big hit. It effectively invented the
Speaker 1: comedy horror film as a viable profit making genre. There
Speaker 1: had been like comedic horror before. This is the first
Speaker 1: time it's actually like, oh, you can make some fucking
Speaker 1: money doing this ship. Right. Um, So, by the time
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two runs around, John Lannis has directed one
Speaker 1: of the highest budget movies of all time. He's invented
Speaker 1: gross out comedy, and he's he's effectively like invent helped
Speaker 1: to invent like comedy horror as like viable profitable genres. Right.
Speaker 1: He didn't like create the idea, but he was the
Speaker 1: guy who like made them make money for Hollywood. Um,
Speaker 1: he's a fucking he's he's he's on top of the
Speaker 1: goddamn world. Right. Um, Animal House more like Powerhouse. No,
Speaker 1: I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you, Jesus Christ
Speaker 1: and I love you, Caitlin. We're the same person anyway.
Speaker 1: Moving on, So, when Warner Brothers decided they wanted to
Speaker 1: release a reboot of perhaps the most beloved franchise and
Speaker 1: American horror history, The Twilight Zone, they knew exactly who
Speaker 1: to go to, John Landis, so he signs on to
Speaker 1: produce the movie alongside his buddy Steven Spielberg. Right, it's
Speaker 1: fucking nineteen eighty two. You've got John Landis and Stephen
Speaker 1: fucking Spielberg on the same production, Like yeah, like right,
Speaker 1: you couldn't be more set up for success, you know.
Speaker 1: Um Now, it's a little bit of a weird movie
Speaker 1: because again it's based on a TV series that's kind
Speaker 1: of an episodic series. They decide the right thing to
Speaker 1: do with the Twilight Zone movie is to make it
Speaker 1: an anthology with four segments directed by four front directors. Now,
Speaker 1: two of them, Spielberg and Landis, are some of the
Speaker 1: biggest names in Hollywood at the time. The other two
Speaker 1: are less well known, Joe Dante and George Miller. Now,
Speaker 1: George Miller had just directed Mad Max two, which is
Speaker 1: most people have not seen the first Mad Max. It's
Speaker 1: like a really kind of niche like he's still a
Speaker 1: cop in the movie. It's set before like the world
Speaker 1: really completely crumbles. Um. And it's very much like an
Speaker 1: Australian movie as opposed to Mad Max two, which is
Speaker 1: obviously still Australian but as a huge hit. Right. Um. So,
Speaker 1: Miller had just directed Mad Max to like the year before,
Speaker 1: so he just kind of broken out as a big director,
Speaker 1: and Joe Dante hadn't yet. He was about two years
Speaker 1: off from making Grimlin's which is the film that makes
Speaker 1: Joe Dante huge. Right, So you've got Spielberg and Landis,
Speaker 1: which are these huge names, and then you've got George
Speaker 1: Miller and Joe Dante, who are gonna be huge names,
Speaker 1: but they're still like kind of earlier in their in
Speaker 1: their careers at this point. Um. Although I shouldn't say
Speaker 1: George Miller is early in his directing career. He'd already
Speaker 1: spent decades working as like an emergency medical doctor. Um,
Speaker 1: which a lot of people don't know about George Miller.
Speaker 1: He was an r doctor for years and years. Wild
Speaker 1: I learned that, I feel like every few years, and
Speaker 1: then I promptly forget, and then I relearned it, and
Speaker 1: I'm just just as amazed all over again. If you
Speaker 1: watch I mean, this is still more or less the
Speaker 1: case in Fury Road. But if you watch The Old
Speaker 1: Man Max Is, whenever there's a car crash, nobody like
Speaker 1: walks away from a car crash in one of his movies,
Speaker 1: they like crawl while like puking and concussed, because he's
Speaker 1: treated like he's specifically the reason he made the Mad
Speaker 1: Max movies, he says, is that like well as a
Speaker 1: doctor in Australia, we don't have a gun culture, but
Speaker 1: the thing that our young men do to get each
Speaker 1: other killed is street racing and so like, that was
Speaker 1: the big part of why those movies are the way
Speaker 1: they are because he's treated a lot of people from
Speaker 1: car accidents and that's why Happy Feet is the way,
Speaker 1: such a brutal movie about penguin based crime, which is
Speaker 1: the primary cause of death in Australia to this day. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Um So, anyway, the Twilight Zone movie opens with a
Speaker 1: prolog scene featuring Dan Ackroyd and Albert Brooks. Um Ackroyd is,
Speaker 1: you know, most famous for Ghostbusters and Albert Books. Brooks
Speaker 1: is most famous for voicing Hank Scorpio on The Simpsons.
Speaker 1: Um So, both guys are kind of driving through the
Speaker 1: night and discussing their favorite Twilight Zone episodes. As the
Speaker 1: prolog ends, dan Ackroyd convinces Brooks to pull over so
Speaker 1: he can show him something scary. He then turns into
Speaker 1: a pretty corny monster and eats him. It's not a
Speaker 1: great start for the movie. Um kind of not very
Speaker 1: imaginative for again, you know, Landis is directing this scene.
Speaker 1: He's certainly a guy who's capable of some imagination. It's
Speaker 1: maybe a sign that the movie was not actually in
Speaker 1: great hands and that Landis wasn't a good pick um.
Speaker 1: But you know, in general, most critics agree that Joe
Speaker 1: on Taste segment of the film, which focuses around a
Speaker 1: child with the power to warp matter torturing a bunch
Speaker 1: of strangers he's forced to act as his family, as
Speaker 1: like the best part of the movie. It's it's got
Speaker 1: some really cool monster work too. There's like a cartoon
Speaker 1: the kid pulls out of the TV. It looks pretty good. Uh.
Speaker 1: George Miller's segment is also fine. It's a recreation of
Speaker 1: Nightmare at twenty feet that's the episode with the Grimlin
Speaker 1: on the wing of the plane, right. Um, but this
Speaker 1: time John Lithgaw is like the dude who's seeing the Grimlin.
Speaker 1: Which anything with John Lithgow is instantly a piece of
Speaker 1: beloved Americana. Absolutely, absolutely, John Lithgow has never done anything wrong.
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree on that. Um. Spielberg
Speaker 1: segment is weaker. Um, it's a weird thing about old
Speaker 1: people temporarily becoming young, and it just doesn't fit in
Speaker 1: well with the rest of the movie. I don't get
Speaker 1: Spielberg's not not like a great horror director in my opinion. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean the only other thing I can think of that,
Speaker 1: Uh well, I guess Poulter Geist. And then he did
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, he's got Poulter Guys. But I still
Speaker 1: don't think Poulter Guys is very scary anyway. Whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what is good at horror these products and services,
Speaker 1: Because there's nothing more frightening than capitalism, Caitlin. It's an
Speaker 1: engine of blood sharing us all ever closer to destruction,
Speaker 1: just as churned us ever closer to a delicious meal
Speaker 1: by shipping a box directly to your home, filled with ingredients,
Speaker 1: all wrapped in individual plastic packages. Um um m m plastic.
Speaker 1: We're back, Sophie seems happy. No, what's up, Sophie, You're
Speaker 1: just so annoying. Yeah, well yeah, well you know you're
Speaker 1: trapped here, Sophie. Caitlin's lovely. We have a network. Now
Speaker 1: you are my business partner, forever, forever. So um. Now
Speaker 1: we've talked about the other segments of this movie, which
Speaker 1: again are not bastard worthy, and I'm just going over
Speaker 1: to give you kind of a context of what's in
Speaker 1: this film. We're gonna spend the rest of our episode
Speaker 1: talking about John Landis's segment, which would turn out to
Speaker 1: be one of the most disastrous things ever filmed. It
Speaker 1: was a reworking of the old Twilight Zone episode A
Speaker 1: Quality of Mercy Now that episode. The original Twilight Zone
Speaker 1: episode had been about like a young army officer at
Speaker 1: the end of World War Two ordering like there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of trapped Japanese soldiers and they're like sick, and
Speaker 1: he orders an assault on their position, even though a sergeants, like,
Speaker 1: the war is almost over, we don't need to do this,
Speaker 1: and he's like transported to earlier in the war as
Speaker 1: a Japanese soldier in the opposite situation. Anyway, he learns
Speaker 1: that it's bad to want to kill people, right, like whatever,
Speaker 1: It's not one of the better Twilight Zone episodes, I
Speaker 1: would say, um Landis decides to reimagine the episode in
Speaker 1: some baffling ways. It folks is on Bill Conner, an
Speaker 1: angry racist who's like at a bar and he's pissed
Speaker 1: that he lost a promotion opportunity to a Jewish colleague,
Speaker 1: and then he like curses says a bunch of racial
Speaker 1: slurs in front of like a black dude, and he
Speaker 1: does a bunch of like racist ship and then like
Speaker 1: suddenly finds himself transported to Nazi occupied France as a
Speaker 1: Jewish man, and then he is transported to Alabama in
Speaker 1: the fifties, is a black man fleeing the KKK. And
Speaker 1: then he winds up in Vietnam is a random villager
Speaker 1: avoiding blood thirst to US troops. Now, the script was
Speaker 1: supposed to end with him transported back to the Holocaust,
Speaker 1: being shipped off to a camp. And that is a
Speaker 1: questionable story in and of itself. Shall we say? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is the story I think that the studio
Speaker 1: wants him to tell. Landis has some Sorry, this is
Speaker 1: the story Landis initially wants to tell. I think the
Speaker 1: studio has some notes. In any case, they want to
Speaker 1: make the the ending less bleak uh, and they want
Speaker 1: to have like a redemption for the character Bill Connor.
Speaker 1: So Landis rewrites the script so that it ends with
Speaker 1: Cooper as a Vietnamese villager rescuing two young children from
Speaker 1: an attacking American helicopter. Right, Um, So they change you know,
Speaker 1: what's supposed to be the climax of the episode. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: as you'll remember from Animal House, John Landis had a
Speaker 1: thing for realism, and that's you know, it wasn't necessarily
Speaker 1: a great decision for making a movie about fraternity kids partying.
Speaker 1: It's going to be a real problem now that he's
Speaker 1: making his first big war movie because he wants to,
Speaker 1: really he wants to. He wants his Twilight Zone scene
Speaker 1: to have like deadly accurate combat recreations that are like
Speaker 1: as harrowing as the actual Vietnam War. So he's really
Speaker 1: obsessed with having a helicopter swoop in on actor Vic
Speaker 1: Morrow who plays Connor, and the children as they're struggling
Speaker 1: through a raging river, as like explosions detonate this village
Speaker 1: behind them and gunfire stitches through the foliage around them.
Speaker 1: This presents some problems for one thing, if if you're
Speaker 1: gonna hire children, there's certain complications, right, Um, there's certain
Speaker 1: things you can't do with child actors on set. For example,
Speaker 1: have them next to explosions and a helicopter that is
Speaker 1: flying so low that it could hit a human being. Right,
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to do that with small children on
Speaker 1: a film set, even in the eighties, Right, Things are
Speaker 1: looser than but even in the eighties, you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to do this. Also, he wants the scene is at night. Now,
Speaker 1: everyone around John Landis is like, well, let's shoot day
Speaker 1: for night, right, which is a way of shooting a
Speaker 1: night scene in the day that doesn't look as good,
Speaker 1: but is safer because it's safer to have a helicopter
Speaker 1: swooping low over people while explosions happen in the day
Speaker 1: than it is in the dead of night. You know,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have to explain why, but it is safer. Um.
Speaker 1: John Landis is like, no, that's not real. But it's
Speaker 1: also illegal to have children working at night, in addition
Speaker 1: to all of the other things about this that are illegal.
Speaker 1: Because the way he wants to shoot this is illegal,
Speaker 1: John Landis decides to break the law. Yeah, bad boy.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from a write up by Crime Library here.
Speaker 1: The second assistant director, Anderson House, had reservations about working
Speaker 1: children after hours and around a helicopter and special effects explosives.
Speaker 1: He shared those concerns with Allingham. House wanted to know
Speaker 1: if Landis planned to film the kids during the daytime
Speaker 1: and artificially simulate night and then insert those shots into
Speaker 1: ones actually made at night. Allingham told him no. Later,
Speaker 1: House asked if Allingham new Landis had considered using dummies
Speaker 1: or dwarf stunt people instead of children. Allingham replied that
Speaker 1: Landis had rejected those ideas because he thought they would
Speaker 1: look phony. House pursued the issue and Allingham told him
Speaker 1: there was no point in discussing it further. In early
Speaker 1: July and two, Landis asked George Folsey to locate two
Speaker 1: young Asian children for the roles. Folsey agreed to do
Speaker 1: so despite misgivings. Production assistant Cynthia and I recalled Folsey
Speaker 1: coming out of a meeting with Landis and production manager
Speaker 1: Dan Allingham. The trio discussed the illegal hiring of kids, and,
Speaker 1: according to Ny Folesy joked, we probably will probably all
Speaker 1: be thrown in jail for this. Folsy phoned doctor Harold Schumann,
Speaker 1: husband of Folsey's production secretary Donna Schumann. Folsey knew that
Speaker 1: Dr Schumann had often worked with Asian people and asked
Speaker 1: for his help. Dr Schumann called a former associate of his,
Speaker 1: Dr Peter Chin, and explained that he had friends who
Speaker 1: were trying to cast a couple of Asian children in
Speaker 1: a movie. Dr Chinn phoned his brother Mark, who had
Speaker 1: a six year old daughter named Renee. Mark discussed this
Speaker 1: idea with his wife, Sheenne Hui, and little Renee. She
Speaker 1: and Whui thought that being in a movie would be
Speaker 1: a very fine experience for Renee, who would have a
Speaker 1: lot of the memories of what she had done when
Speaker 1: she grew up. The prospect of acting thrilled the girl.
Speaker 1: So they get two kids six and seven years old
Speaker 1: for this movie. Obviously, you see why, like the kids
Speaker 1: are excited. You see why the parents are excited. The
Speaker 1: parents are not. We will talk more about out this
Speaker 1: in part two. The parents are not being told entirely
Speaker 1: what these scenes will involve. Um and the kids share,
Speaker 1: don't now now. From the beginning, John Landis showed a
Speaker 1: distinct preference for realism in his Twilight Zone segment over
Speaker 1: the safety of the crew. At one point, he grew
Speaker 1: furious that his proper teen couldn't suggest a way to
Speaker 1: realistically there was a scene where like troops were shooting
Speaker 1: through jungle underbrush and the blanks weren't realistically tearing up plants.
Speaker 1: Um and his crew had some suggestions for how to
Speaker 1: like blow up the foliage, you know, to make it
Speaker 1: look like gunfire, but they were all going to take
Speaker 1: too much time. Um and Max or John Landis grew
Speaker 1: furious about it, and I'm gonna quote now from the
Speaker 1: book outrageous Conduct. How long will it take? Landis asked.
Speaker 1: When Stewart said, who's his prop? Guy said that he
Speaker 1: would need fifteen or twenty minutes. Land Is shot back impatiently.
Speaker 1: We don't have that kind of time. Camera operators Stephen Lydecker,
Speaker 1: who observed that exchange, next, saw Landis and Stewart walk
Speaker 1: back towards the special effects truck. When Stewart returned a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes later, he was carrying three Remington's pot guns.
Speaker 1: Stewart handled one of the shotguns himself and distributed the
Speaker 1: others to members of his team. Lydecker saw twelve Gage
Speaker 1: shotgun shells set on top of the camera battery. Vic
Speaker 1: Morrow wanted to know what was going on. Landis reassured him,
Speaker 1: and in a moment, cried action. The scene called for
Speaker 1: Morrow to duck under the water in front of the
Speaker 1: banana plants, come back up, and then leap out of
Speaker 1: the frame as the guns began firing to make sure
Speaker 1: that Morrow escaped in time. Kenny and Doso, a stuntman
Speaker 1: who was standing out of camera range, actually pulled Vic
Speaker 1: away from the banana plants. Just three seconds later, the
Speaker 1: effectsmen began firing at the plants. According to Stuart, they
Speaker 1: fired twelve rounds of ammunition at the target. About halfware
Speaker 1: shotguns shells that Lydeker had observed, and the other half
Speaker 1: were red jets, plastic projectiles that are less potent than
Speaker 1: real bullets but can still be lethal. So they are
Speaker 1: firing live AMMO towards an actual human stunt man who
Speaker 1: is only not shot because he is physically pulled out
Speaker 1: of set immediately before the gunfire starts. Yikes, this is
Speaker 1: not good film safety. No, this is not how you
Speaker 1: should do anything with guns, um, except for shoot at people.
Speaker 1: This is actually pretty close to how you shoot people.
Speaker 1: Just don't have someone pull them away if you actually
Speaker 1: want to shoot a person and hit them. That sounds
Speaker 1: like this is two thirds. Yeah. So Vic Morrow finds
Speaker 1: all of this really unsettling. Um, he's not happy with this,
Speaker 1: but he's also an old actor. He's on the downswing
Speaker 1: of his career. This movie is kind of like a
Speaker 1: comeback attempt for him, right, He's had a couple of
Speaker 1: rough years and he's he's seeing this as like his
Speaker 1: best hope for revitalizing his career. And so he doesn't
Speaker 1: confront Landis directly because he feels like if he goes
Speaker 1: to Landis and complains about how dangerous things are starting
Speaker 1: to see him on set and this will yeah, and
Speaker 1: Landis will blacklist it, right because the director is God,
Speaker 1: you know, Landis is a is famous for being dictatorial.
Speaker 1: That's what a lot of people will say. And he
Speaker 1: does not take being questioned well. So, as is the
Speaker 1: standard in Hollywood back then, safety concerns by the crew
Speaker 1: are put aside because the autour in charge of the
Speaker 1: production had a vision and unfortunately for everyone that in
Speaker 1: that vision. Next included a helicopter hovering low over Vick Morrow,
Speaker 1: six year old Renee shiny Chen, and seven year old
Speaker 1: Micah Dinley. In part two, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: what happened next. But now, Caitlin, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about your double Oh my gosh. Well, you can follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter and Instagram at Caitlin Durante. You can
Speaker 1: check out my podcast about film in which my co
Speaker 1: host Jamie Loftus and I often talk about aw tour
Speaker 1: directors and the fucory that happens um on their sets,
Speaker 1: usually as a result of their tyranny. So um check
Speaker 1: check that out. The Bechtel Cast produced by are very On,
Speaker 1: Sophie Lifterman, Hi hi, and uh yeah those that concludes
Speaker 1: my plocables. Well, you should also check out my new
Speaker 1: podcast where I listened to episodes of the Bechtel Cast
Speaker 1: and devise new drinking games to go with them. It's
Speaker 1: called Get Rectal Cast with the Bechtel Cast, and you
Speaker 1: can catch it five days a week on cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: So you check it check out. I was like, what
Speaker 1: was it called again, get rectal cast with Okay, so
Speaker 1: but it just sounds like rectal Yes, yes it does.
Speaker 1: That's actually what everyone involved in production told me, and
Speaker 1: I bravely did not listen to them. Well that's because
Speaker 1: you're an a tour. That's exactly what I shouted to
Speaker 1: them while waving a shotgun. Uh good stuff, all right,