Episode 1584 - Robert Zemeckis
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:How's everyone holding up here in the final stages of civilization and occupancy of the planet Earth?
Marc:How's it going for you?
Marc:Are you staying busy?
Marc:Are you staying busy in these trying times with worry and panic and maybe some tanning?
Marc:I don't know what you're doing.
Marc:Are you scrolling right now?
Marc:Are you on the treadmill?
Marc:Have you given up on that?
Marc:Are you just eating whatever the fuck you want because today it doesn't matter anymore?
Marc:It just doesn't matter.
Marc:If I wake up tomorrow, I can start over again with what I'm supposed to be doing.
Marc:But today, today I feed the whole.
Marc:Today I feed the whole.
Marc:Where are those t-shirts?
Marc:Huh?
Marc:There's only a couple kinds of people in the world.
Marc:There's fuck you people and there's I'm fucked people.
Marc:Sadly, that means everybody's kind of fucked, but the fuck you people seem to have the upper hand because they don't give a shit morally or empathetically or spiritually.
Marc:So today on the show, my friends...
Marc:Robert Zemeckis is here.
Marc:He's the director of the Back to the Future movies, Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Castaway, Flight, lots more.
Marc:Used Cars.
Marc:Yeah, go see how that one holds up.
Marc:His new movie with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright is called Here, and I saw it.
Marc:It's very interesting.
Marc:There's a device to it that works, and it's like nothing I've seen before in terms of dealing with time cinematically.
Marc:He's kind of a risk taker in terms of, I don't know if it's a risk taking thing, but he enjoys and embraces the possibilities of technology to tell a human story.
Marc:And I walked into that movie not expecting it.
Marc:to open with the dinosaurs.
Marc:Yeah, literally opens with the dinosaurs and moves right up into the present day, all on the same piece of property without moving the camera.
Marc:What do you think of that?
Marc:And also, you know, I watched...
Marc:Roger Rabbit, you know, when I was preparing to talk to Robert, I was watching, you know, Roger Rabbit.
Marc:And I don't think I'd seen it since it came out.
Marc:And I got to be honest, man, it's a fucking great movie.
Marc:It's just a great movie.
Marc:And the whole template is there for how he, you know, thinks about things.
Marc:But even even the effects of.
Marc:Hold up because they're simple.
Marc:And the actors played so beautifully with the cartoon.
Marc:I can't it's I don't even it doesn't even feel like me saying this, but you should rewatch that.
Marc:If you just want some entertainment with a lot of heart, you know, watch Roger Rabbit.
Marc:I mean, outside of the device, Bob Hoskins is fucking a marvel.
Marc:I don't know how much time you spend appreciating Bob Hoskins, but I would say it's time to start.
Marc:And I would go right from Roger Rabbit to like Long Good Friday.
Marc:Get the full spectrum of the Hoskins.
Marc:I wish I'd talked to that guy.
Marc:I'll be at...
Marc:Dynasty typewriter in Los Angeles on Saturday, October 26th.
Marc:The rest of my tour dates are scheduled for next year.
Marc:You can go to wtfpod.com slash tour to see all of them.
Marc:I had a major breakthrough on set last week, if anyone cares.
Marc:And I can't really go into it, but eventually I will be able to.
Marc:But I did a scene with a movie star, one of the great actresses.
Marc:And I got to a place I've never gotten before.
Marc:And now I can never go back.
Marc:I'm a changed man because of the work I did with this woman.
Marc:Changed man.
Marc:emotionally, creatively, and every other way.
Marc:I went and did comedy the other night after I did these two fucking scenes last week that kind of took me to a place that I never thought I could get to.
Marc:And already it's had an amazing impact on just my standup.
Marc:I can't even explain it right now, but hopefully I'll be able to.
Marc:But boy, man, we did something and I can never go back now.
Marc:I just got to a place.
Marc:And I'd rather save the story for when, you know, I can really tell it to you because it was pretty powerful.
Marc:And, you know, it's going well.
Marc:I'm tired.
Marc:There's a lot of work.
Marc:And I just want you to know, look, you guys, I'm trying to put the pieces together.
Marc:I understand now a bit more about how the fascism is going to work.
Marc:You know, look, if this election goes one way, it's going to be fucking terrible, right?
Marc:Beyond anything we can imagine.
Marc:That's one outcome.
Marc:The other outcome, it's going to be manageable and probably a bit hopeful.
Marc:Just in terms of holding back the tide of hateful monsters.
Marc:And here's the thing.
Marc:about, you know, the way what's happened, like, especially in show business.
Marc:Now you see whatever's happening with certain players in this game, the idea of comedians being important voices in, in culture, like the comedian, the idea was that, you know, you get a comedian that can speak truth to power in a certain way.
Marc:And, you know, or, or just be dirty and filthy and funny, whatever the fact that,
Marc:But the thing is, is the way it's panning out now in terms of how comedians are important and whether they know it or not, some of them.
Marc:Yeah, everybody wants to make money.
Marc:Everybody wants to be famous.
Marc:Yeah, I don't.
Marc:I think I'm famous enough, whatever that is.
Marc:And it's barely famous, which is fine.
Marc:I can have a life.
Marc:But there are people that want all the money and all the fame and show business is collapsing.
Marc:So now you have these in terms of, you know, the right or the sort of shameless, thinly veiled.
Marc:fascist future possible, you now have ideologically aligned, self-producing content creators with huge audiences.
Marc:And they, you know, can do their thing and be like, you know, hey, fuck woke, you know, fuck censorship, fuck, you know what I mean?
Marc:Like whatever it is.
Marc:It doesn't matter.
Marc:But it's tribal leadership.
Marc:It's not you're not speaking truth to power, really.
Marc:You're just steamrolling smaller voices.
Marc:But the bigger issue is that when those self-producing content creators align themselves because they're desired by platforms with huge audience, even bigger audience, global audiences.
Marc:Who, because of the nature of show business, are just looking to save money to manage their bottom line.
Marc:So you got a self-promoting, you know, popular person like we'll just put them on our thing, which makes them the larger platform ideologically aligned.
Marc:with whatever this fucking right-wing fascist bullshit is.
Marc:And then you may not be able to read it or hear it in the material, but break it down.
Marc:Look at the talking points.
Marc:Look at what everyone's talking about.
Marc:The same shit.
Marc:So once you have that in place, the larger platforms, global platforms, platforms that have investors,
Marc:are now just sort of like trying to make their investors happy by protecting the bottom line and giving voice to the worst of them, which puts that voice out there in a bigger way, but also maintains that audience, that tribe, that cult.
Marc:And so what happens is with that agenda that's sympathetic to the new fascism, you've got a lot in place there.
Marc:Old show business doesn't matter.
Marc:Interesting artistic stuff doesn't matter.
Marc:Critics don't matter.
Marc:Keep the people watching, keep them locked in, shift the narrative, shift the story just to keep people locked in.
Marc:If people want fury and, you know, regurgitation of bullying, garbage people,
Marc:Insensitive talking points.
Marc:Fucking give it to him.
Marc:Fucking give it to him.
Marc:And that's how the entertainment structure gets consumed by fascist thought.
Marc:Big corporations with a lot of money invested are very fascist friendly.
Marc:As long as they can keep being the ones that make the money.
Marc:They don't give a fuck.
Marc:What is entertainment?
Marc:Let's just fuck their brains into mush.
Marc:Into sort of just, you know, dopamine craving little sponges.
Marc:Let's do that.
Marc:That'll work.
Marc:But this guy, Robert Zemeckis, is a very, very amazing film director.
Marc:He's done a lot of great films.
Marc:And he's also a guy that likes to entertain people.
Marc:And he's a guy that likes to, you know, take chances and do new stuff.
Marc:I mean, you can see that by his whole catalog.
Marc:The movie that I went to see that I told you about earlier that's coming out in theaters on Friday, November 1st, is called Here with Tom Hanks.
Marc:And it's got a very interesting conceit to it.
Marc:And I always like talking to directors because you really do get the full picture.
Marc:This is me talking to Robert Zemeckis.
Marc:So, you know what I did last night, which I hadn't done.
Marc:I can't remember.
Marc:I watched Roger Rabbit last night.
Marc:Oh, you did?
Marc:I did.
Marc:And it's kind of amazing how well it holds up.
Marc:That's good to know.
Marc:Everything about it.
Guest:That's pretty cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you have memories of that?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, it was an adventure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, and Hoskins is so good.
Marc:He's great.
Marc:It's unbelievable.
Guest:He's a great actor.
Marc:Oh, of course he's a great actor.
Marc:But even the technology of it all, it's all still seamless.
Marc:It doesn't look like something like, oh, well, they perfected that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Finally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and the thing that's great about Bob, unfortunately he passed away, but what's great about is he was amazing because he's just a complete, you know, he would come on and the first thing he'd say is, are we filming or fucking about?
Guest:What is that?
Guest:Are we filming or fucking about?
Guest:And he'd say, what's the verbal?
Guest:And he'd walk over to the script supervisor and scan the page and say, okay, I'm ready.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I don't think he read the scene since he read the script the first time.
Guest:And he would just step up there and just nail it.
Guest:So that's how he did it.
Guest:Like he would just put it into his head right before.
Guest:Right before.
Guest:And it just hit it perfectly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:I mean, it's, well, what's your experience?
Guest:Well, from an acting point of view, you'll appreciate this.
Guest:Because here's the reason that the illusion really works in that movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:is because the live action actors are acting for both.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They're believing that the rabbit is there.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Certainly in the case of Bob.
Marc:He played it, he was really engaging with that rabbit.
Marc:What was in its place?
Marc:A piece of tape.
Yeah.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:No, those were the old days.
Guest:We didn't have computers.
Guest:We had to have just the smallest little target.
Guest:And you had to look at a target because if you looked at something that was out of frame, it would look like you were looking through the other actor, which is a performance thing.
Guest:So you have to actually focus your eyes exactly where the cartoon character was going to be to make the illusion true.
Marc:Well, out of curiosity, when working with actors, and this is not, you know, this is sort of an off road question.
Marc:Do you find that most of them sort of load up right before the scene?
Marc:Like they kind of do their line work the night before or what have you or have sides on the set and stuff like Tom, how's Hank's work?
Guest:No, I don't know.
Guest:Tom is, I don't know, because I never ask actors about their process ever.
Guest:But I'll tell you what I see.
Guest:Tom will be on his mark, finishing a joke with a crew member, another cast member, and they're rolling the camera, and they mark the shot, and he would finish the punchline, and I would say action, and he would do the scene.
Marc:No kidding.
Marc:So I wonder if that's his way of getting into the present.
Guest:Could be.
Guest:It could be kind of like just kind of some kind of a verbal zen thing or something.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:So here's what I thought of moments before you came here in terms of what seems to be a through line even up to this new movie.
Marc:But there's something about time travel.
Marc:And you that it because it seems like there was a perfection, a perfecting of time travel in this movie.
Marc:There's some sort of in the movie here.
Marc:It's almost like an organic approach to moving through epochs, literally thousands of years.
Marc:Right.
Marc:In a way that is smooth.
Marc:I mean, you know, with Back to the Future, it's actually a time travel movie.
Marc:And with Gump, you're inserting a guy into actual history through images.
Marc:But I mean, is that something you think about?
Guest:I don't think about... Well, listen, now that I've made a bunch of movies, I think about this time travel thing.
Guest:And here's what I think might be the reason, and I don't really know, is nothing does it better than movies.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I mean, and movies are actually...
Guest:time-shifting art form yep you know i mean film's going well the old days film was going through a gate or like what we're doing now yeah cursor moving across a timeline yeah and that's what you call it's the timeline right sure and um so that might have something to do with it but um i just i i you know i just fell in love with the book here the graphic novel yeah and just immediately saw the movie saw the movie that uh i made you know i
Marc:I just saw it.
Marc:When I watched it, I didn't know it was from a graphic novel, but the way the technology works, it's pretty clear you're honoring with the squares.
Marc:The panels.
Marc:The panels.
Marc:That you're honoring a graphic novel format.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But do you think...
Marc:Now, with all this discussion about AI and everything and about technology in general, seeing that, you know, you were at the cutting edge of all this cinema technology.
Marc:I mean, you obviously don't think it's a threat to anything and it's obviously an amazing tool.
Marc:But are you concerned about the human element?
Guest:Well, look, I mean, I think, okay, I'll go into my whole feeling about it.
Guest:I mean, my feeling about it is, first of all, every new technology is instantly feared.
Guest:So, that we know.
Guest:I mean, people were terrified of electricity.
Guest:They were terrified of steam trains going faster than 30 miles an hour.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, they thought the human body couldn't, you know, it would be bad for your health to travel that fast.
Marc:Faster than 30 miles an hour.
Guest:30 miles an hour, right.
Guest:So we'll get through that.
Guest:But yeah, but I think that it certainly can be misused.
Guest:I mean, we're going to see it big time in this election.
Guest:And then on the other side, I've read things where I said, well, this could cure cancer.
Marc:Sure, but like, you know, something that's directly, you know, screwing with your mind.
Marc:It turns out that the mind is a lot more fragile than anything else.
Marc:Oh, yeah, completely.
Guest:Well, the way I look at what I do, though, I don't really, I mean, I don't use, I don't even like using the word for what I do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, AI, because I'm just making images for movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So for what I use it for, it's,
Guest:really fast computing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it creates now, I think, you know, flawless digital makeup.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And you... Because, like, there is, in this movie and here, I mean, it's a movie... It's a human movie.
Marc:100%.
Marc:And, you know, the heart of the humanity of the thing has to be at the forefront.
Marc:It's what's driving the whole thing.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And the other thing that it has to... The other thing that...
Guest:The other thing that makes it all work are the performances.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I mean, it's just like it's no different than putting old age prosthetics on a great actor and having him do a magnificent old age performance when he's middle age.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Tom and Robin and Kelly and Paul, they all said, okay, we know what we have to do here.
Guest:We have to approach this like we were doing another age and we're gonna be young.
Guest:So the other way I can look at it is music.
Marc:You've been working with the same guy a long time, right?
Guest:Yeah, but no, I was gonna say about the synthetic creation of music.
Guest:It's to a point now where it can be done flawlessly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But well, that's the big question.
Marc:Do you want flawless?
Marc:I mean, it's all relative to the technology.
Marc:Like I'd rather listen to somebody like I'll listen to music from the 70s, you know, over overly produced or things that don't even sound human anymore.
Marc:But that's just might be my age or my preference.
Guest:Well, I think it's another – what I was getting at is even though we have these tools, we still need musicians.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:That's what I'm getting at.
Guest:So I think the big fear with AI is, oh, my God, we're going to replace all actors.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, not really.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It's like saying we're going to replace all musicians.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:But I think the other fear is, as you know, with this type of technology, is people will eventually adapt to anything.
Marc:And if the actor goes, you give it a decade and people aren't going to miss it.
Guest:So, look.
Guest:So, what's going to probably happen?
Guest:I don't know if it's going to happen in my lifetime.
Guest:Right.
Guest:About what's probably going to – it could.
Guest:You know, they say this stuff is moving fast.
Right.
Guest:What could happen is that a, whatever you want to call him, a movie maker could just be in his basement with his computers and do every performance.
Guest:create avatar characters, do the voices, do the performances, write the whole thing, do the music, do everything, and it'll be a different art form.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then the old art form will just be on YouTube, and then people will be like, look, they just moved like real people.
Guest:Yeah, like if you look at how magnificent the charge at Aqaba was in Lawrence of Arabia.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was real.
Guest:I know.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:I mean, it's crazy.
Guest:But you can feel that.
Guest:It's wonderful.
Guest:Can't you feel it?
Marc:Oh, God, you can totally feel it.
Marc:That's a big difference.
Marc:I agree.
Marc:I mean, like, so that becomes the shift that's the concern in terms of the danger of visual technology is that, you know, you kind of lose, you know, that feeling, that human element.
Marc:And I think it's already happening.
Marc:Well, here's what I think.
Guest:Look, I mean, it's going to come.
Guest:Here's what.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Here's the thing.
Guest:Okay, so it's supposed to be a medium that's entertaining.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay, so we have to entertain.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:That's all you ever thought of.
Guest:I always understood that I'm in a mass entertainment industry.
Guest:That's what I always understood.
Guest:And that was your goal.
Guest:Because that's what I loved.
Guest:I loved going to movies, and I had a thing happen.
Guest:I had a thing happen in my hometown of Santa Barbara.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A couple weeks ago.
Guest:This summer, they ran in.
Guest:There's an old theater there called the Granada, and they're celebrating its 100th year.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're going to remind everyone that they used to run movies there as well.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And they only wanted to run movies from local filmmakers, right?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So they ran all my big hit movies.
Guest:And I have people who come up to me and they were saying, and they're much younger than I am, they go, oh my God, we went to the movie, went and saw Back to the Future.
Guest:And people were cheering in the movie and they were laughing and they were applauding when things would happen.
Guest:And I'm thinking, yeah, well, that's what it used to be like to go to, when you weren't watching stuff in isolation.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's the human side of it.
Marc:I mean, like, I guess that that's the counter to the mass entertainment or being sort of involved and compelled to push the envelope technologically is that, you know, in your mind, you have to sort of accommodate the idea that most people are going to watch this at home.
Marc:And they're going to be alone or they're going to be with their.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's hard for me to, I got to, I'm having a hard time wrapping.
Guest:I'm, I, but I can only, well, let me put it this way.
Guest:I've, I've, I've decided that I'm only, I can only do what I used to always do and, you know, and see what the movie feels like.
Guest:I mean, seeing here in a full theater, like when we were previewing is it's, you know, it's got an emotional wallop.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did it play?
Marc:Oh God.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, I mean, but was this... Do you remember your first experience with movies?
Marc:When I was a kid?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Like the one that was like, you know, oh, my God.
Guest:Well, I can tell you the movie, interestingly, I can tell you... I'll tell you the movie that... So, when I was a kid...
Guest:You know, I loved going to movies.
Guest:I loved going to see war movies and anything with special effects in it.
Guest:You know, monster movies.
Guest:Did you go with your dad or something?
Guest:I would go with my dad.
Guest:I would go with my, you know, where I grew up.
Guest:Where was that?
Guest:Far south side of Chicago.
Guest:Um...
Guest:And we'd go on Tuesday nights because ladies would get in free, you know, that kind of thing.
Guest:And, I mean, they took me to see Psycho.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you know, I mean, it was great.
Guest:I remember the first movie I ever saw ever, and it was The Blob.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I remember it vividly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So when I was in high school, all the kids in school were saying, hey, you got to go see this movie called Bonnie and Clyde.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's got this great machine gunning thing at the end.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:You got to go see it.
Guest:And so I talked my dad into taking me to see Bonnie and Clyde.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And which is one of my favorite.
Guest:Obviously, it's one of my favorite movies.
Guest:Arthur Penn, great, great.
Marc:Yeah, I've been watching that again.
Marc:You know, the layers of the sexual elements of that movie.
Marc:You can't take that in when you're a kid.
Guest:I can't take it in when you're a kid.
Guest:But I did fall in love with those characters.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then there's that great scene when Gene Hackman gets shot in the head.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And he's dying in this field.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Cars parked around with the headlights on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I felt so...
Guest:And it was the first time I really remember saying, wait, something's going on here.
Guest:I'm saying, this is really, this is powerful because I'm in this movie theater with these people and I feel really bad for this thing that doesn't even exist.
Guest:These shadows.
Guest:Andy's a criminal.
Guest:Andy's a criminal.
Guest:And I thought, and that's what I said, I got to figure, I got to find out what this is.
Guest:The magic?
Guest:The magic.
Guest:And then I started understanding, oh, wait, there's writers, and then there's a director, and I started learning everything about how films were made.
Guest:The magic works.
Guest:And where all that came from.
Guest:And then I just had to do it.
Marc:Well, so did you, how did your...
Marc:your parents feel about this obsession?
Marc:I mean, were they supportive?
Marc:What kind of family you come from?
Marc:Was it a working class family?
Guest:A working poor family, yeah.
Guest:Well, we thought we were middle class, but when I look back on it, we were, we were, we were.
Guest:No, it was, it was, it was.
Guest:Were they immigrants, your folks?
Guest:My mother, interestingly enough, came over.
Guest:My mother, my father, my name is, my father is Lithuanian.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:His family.
Guest:And my mother is Italian.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's a combination that can only happen in Chicago.
Guest:Chicago's an amazing city.
Guest:Yeah, it really is.
Guest:And so my mother came over when she was one year old.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So she was born in Italy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So anyway, that's the family I grew up in.
Guest:Your dad grew up, he was born here?
Guest:My dad was born here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what was his business?
Guest:He was a carpenter.
Guest:He was a trim carpenter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he would make cabinets in the basement.
Guest:He had a little woodworking shop.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:That didn't strike you as an occupation.
Guest:I can't hammer a nail straight or do a saw cut.
Guest:I can't do one speck of it.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:So you grew up with that saw in the basement, the sound of it?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, all those, you know, the DeWalt rotor saw.
Guest:All that running down there, you know, all the time.
Guest:Do you have brothers and sisters?
Guest:I have one sister who's two years younger than I am.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What'd she end up in?
Guest:No, she lives in the suburbs of Chicago.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:She's married, so she's got...
Guest:Not in the show biz racket?
Guest:Didn't follow me.
Marc:So when you share your obsession with this film, I mean, what was the reaction?
Guest:All right, well, I'll tell you the two.
Guest:Well, where the reaction came was when I miraculously got accepted into the USC film school.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:After undergrad?
Guest:No, I was there as an undergrad.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My uncle got me a job.
Guest:I was making all these movies all through high school.
Guest:Super 8.
Guest:All these Super 8 movies, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All these Super 8 movies and- Stop action stuff?
Guest:A bunch of that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because the actors would do what I wanted them to do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because the only actor, my sister was always the actor and the actress in the movie.
Guest:And my cousins and stuff, we would do, and I would make these 8mm movies and-
Guest:And then my uncle knew a guy who had a small production company in Illinois.
Guest:And I got a job there as a gopher and doing like painting, lawn furniture and stuff.
Guest:But I worked my way up into becoming, I would call like an assistant editor.
Guest:And they're making these industrial films.
Guest:And so I used all their equipment.
Guest:And on the weekends, I made a 16 millimeter short film.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I. That's what you submitted to USC?
Guest:I submitted to USC.
Guest:What was that about?
Guest:It was sort of like it was a it was like a rock video.
Guest:I used Golden Slumbers from the Beatles as my soundtrack.
Guest:And it had kids running through a cornfield and it was it was pretty avant garde.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Were you aware of that?
Guest:Were you aware of avant-garde movies?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:I was a Hollywood... I was a Hollywood... A product of... Mainstream.
Guest:Mainstream movie guy.
Guest:Always mainstream.
Guest:Always mainstream.
Guest:So you didn't even tell... But I got to tell you the story of how I found out about... The real miracle... Yeah.
Guest:Was finding out about the USC film school.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I always stayed up...
Guest:Every night, my family would go to bed, and I'd watch Johnny Carson.
Guest:And one night, Johnny's guest was Jerry Lewis.
Guest:And Johnny says, hey, Jerry, I understand you're a professor.
Guest:And he goes, yeah, that's right.
Guest:I teach filmmaking at the USC School of Cinema.
Guest:And I literally stood up.
Guest:in the room, and I said, School of Cinema?
Guest:Such a place exists?
Guest:And the next day, I went to the local library branch in my neighborhood, and I went through the college catalogs, and I found USC, and I found the School of Performing Arts, and I opened up the page for the Cinema School, and there's a picture of Alfred Hitchcock standing in front of a class.
Guest:And you were like, and I said, this is where I got to go.
Guest:I told this, I was working with Jim Carrey.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said, you ever tell that story to Jerry?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said, no.
Guest:He said, I'll get him on the phone right now.
Guest:And he called up Jerry Lewis and said, tell him the story.
Guest:And what did Jerry say?
Guest:He said, oh, that's great.
Guest:I really appreciate it.
Guest:But, you know, Bob, I'm still working.
Guest:So, you know, anytime you need it.
Marc:The sad ending to the call.
Marc:It's so funny that he's the delivery.
Marc:He's the delivery, the guy, the messenger, Jerry Lewis.
Guest:Jerry Lewis.
Guest:I mean, there's the power and the great window on the world kind of thing of television.
Guest:I mean, that's the only way.
Guest:So when I got accepted into the film school, my father literally said, are you telling me my son is going to go join the circus?
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:That was what my father's exact quote was.
Guest:The circus.
Guest:The circus.
Guest:He was kind of right.
Guest:He's totally right.
Guest:Totally right.
Guest:And my mother said, she said, Bob, kids who grow up in the south side of Chicago don't become movie directors.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she was doing it not to hurt my feelings, but not to have me break my heart.
Guest:It was impractical.
Guest:Completely impractical.
Guest:Impossible.
Marc:And also is that kind of working class idea of, like, there's a whole other world.
Marc:How do you even get into that world?
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like, it's crazy when you think about it.
Marc:So how old are you?
Marc:You're, like, 19?
Guest:Yeah, I'm, like, 19.
Guest:And you come to Hollywood?
Guest:I come cold turkey...
Guest:Right to downtown.
Guest:Did you drive a car out?
Guest:I drove my car out.
Guest:What kind of car?
Guest:It was a 1964 Thunderbird.
Guest:It had a giant engine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Gas guzzling, but it was fast.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No air conditioning.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I drove it across country, and I showed up at...
Guest:I showed up in downtown L.A., a couple miles from USC, checked in to Holiday Inn.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:And you show up for school and you don't know what to expect.
Guest:I don't know what to expect.
Guest:But it was very dramatic because on the first day of the first class,
Guest:which is some kind of introduction to cinema type of thing.
Guest:The instructor came.
Guest:I remember his name.
Guest:His name was Dick Harbor.
Guest:And he got in front of the class and he said, okay, well, here we are.
Guest:Welcome to the USC film school.
Guest:He said, so I'll just give you a little idea of what we do here.
Guest:And the lights went down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And up on the screen came George Lucas's THX.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:His student film.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was like, holy shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is a high bar.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it was very dramatic.
Guest:Did that appear to you as an art film?
Guest:To me, that was just... No, that was a science fiction story.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was like a spectacular student film with just... I mean...
Guest:A student film that takes place in the future.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So that was... It was like giant, brilliant, huge production.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So you realize there's no limits.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like you can do anything.
Marc:So what did you... Because I noticed my girlfriend brought it to my attention that the tracking shot at the beginning of Back to the Future...
Marc:You know, and then, you know, you got to go back.
Marc:You must have watched Touch of Evil.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, that seems to be anyone, anybody who does it.
Marc:I think Altman did it in the player, too.
Marc:Anytime you're opening with a tracking shot that lasts a half hour.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You're just trying to beat Wells.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I had to put one cut in that shot, though.
Guest:But, you know, because the timing of the of the dog food didn't hit the didn't didn't hit the things.
Guest:So anyway, that almost was a Touch of Evil shot.
Guest:But I had to put.
Guest:Did you have that in your head?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, that was exactly the idea.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:To pay homage.
Guest:No, I wasn't thinking... It is a homage, but it was just kind of like, hey, you know, this is... No one's... This is... I guess what I was thinking was...
Guest:There's nobody here.
Guest:This is just us showing all of this to the audience.
Guest:And the character walks in.
Guest:So the way to, again, the way to do that is in the most entertaining way that you can think of doing it.
Marc:Well, also like, you know, I mean, you're kind of like an amazing storyteller at the base of all this and a writer.
Marc:And I think like even I noticed that in Roger Rabbit, you know, you just you just go around that office.
Marc:And you get like an hour's worth of story.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:You know, just shooting that desk and those pictures.
Marc:And it's like, all right, that's done.
Marc:We know exactly who this guy is.
Marc:Yeah, that's true.
Marc:That was exactly the point.
Marc:Exactly the point of that shot.
Marc:And you did it with Dr. with Doc Brown in his lab.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, you kind of like you laid out.
Marc:There's the whole movie.
Marc:There it is.
Guest:Let's fill in the gaps.
Guest:And then, yeah.
Guest:And in that shot in Roger Rabbit, it's also you're also transitioning through time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We start at night, and by the time that camera shot is done, we're in the next morning.
Guest:Where he wakes up.
Guest:Where he wakes up, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what was the relationship with...
Marc:With Spielberg.
Marc:I watched Used Cars recently.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's one of my favorites.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I like them all.
Guest:But yeah, that's a good one.
Guest:That's a fun movie.
Guest:That's a good one.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, Jack Warden.
Guest:I mean, come on.
Guest:Jack Warden.
Marc:Jack Warden and Kurt Russell's fabulous in that movie.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:But so were these, do you look at those movies as you figuring it out?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, of course, because you're always learning something new.
Guest:As a matter of fact, I will say I could never have made here, and I don't think, as a novice filmmaker.
Marc:No.
Guest:I think I had to have a whole lifetime of work and a body of work to figure out how to do that.
Marc:Well, and also the confidence of not moving a camera shot.
Guest:Exactly, because I had done enough...
Guest:what we call, you know, singles or high concept shots to know what the problems are going to be.
Guest:What were they?
Guest:Well, you got actors that are different heights and different sizes and you can't adjust the camera to accommodate anything.
Guest:With the one shot.
Guest:The one shot.
Guest:So we had elaborate trenches and ramps.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Each one for different actors with their sizes.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:So that they could all walk up into their close-up and back.
Guest:And then just the amount of weeks it took to figure out what lens to use.
Guest:It took that long?
Guest:Yeah, because everything had to work.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you start at the dinosaurs.
Guest:I mean, you're going way back.
Guest:Oh, yeah, you go back, yeah.
Guest:The whole thing is one perspective.
Guest:That's it.
Marc:One perspective.
Guest:One perspective on the world.
Marc:So I'm like, oh, my God, what's this going to be?
Marc:Oh, God.
Marc:And then it opens, and it's just like dinosaurs running through the land.
Marc:And then it kind of moves into the house, and you sort of start to understand it, like knowing it was a graphic novel.
Marc:In retrospect, that all tracks.
Marc:You can do that with a graphic novel.
Marc:So you're like, I can do it with a movie.
Yeah.
Guest:That's what I thought.
Guest:When I saw the graphic novel, I said, this could be a really good movie.
Guest:I said, I think this could work as a movie because it was the way Richard Maguire painted the novel.
Guest:It was filmic.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Marc:And also, like, if you live in an old house, which is rare now because there's so many people living in developments and new homes, like, this house is old.
Marc:You always wonder, like, no matter where you live, what was here?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, what was here?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And it's interesting, when the camera is in that one fixed perspective and it never moves, the one thing that surprised me that I didn't expect happening is it created a different kind of a super intimacy.
Guest:And, of course, it was a big chore writing because only what can happen is
Guest:in this one view is what we're going to see.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So there was kind of... I found out that there was like a power to that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, once the conceit is accepted by the audience, then, you know, you've got to load it up.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So if you want to find out something about some characters, you can't cut to the bedroom.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or you can't go into the kitchen and hear what's going on.
Guest:It all had to happen right in this one... Yeah.
Marc:And that's...
Marc:And you really take on the history of America.
Marc:I mean, that's what that movie's about in a lot of ways.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, yes, it's about the history of America, I guess, in my life.
Marc:Well, but not just in your life.
Marc:It goes further back.
Marc:Colonial, Native American.
Marc:Oh, yeah, of course, of course, of course.
Marc:And then, like, you know, that interesting decision, I guess it would have been, what, the 20s or 30s with the inventor?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That guy was great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was fun.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because it's a whole different like, you know, what you know about what went on in your house.
Marc:It's always an interesting question.
Marc:It is.
Guest:And if you think about houses that are in Europe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're hundreds and hundreds of years old.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:And just think about all the lives and the exuberance.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's kind of really – well, that was really fascinating for me to like just to think about that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then to be able to kind of do this kind of –
Guest:meditation on, I hate to use that word, but I don't know what else you would call it, kind of.
Marc:I like it.
Marc:It's okay.
Guest:Is it too arty for you?
Guest:Yeah, I don't want to scare anybody who might be listening on the idea that everything changes.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Nothing's permanent.
Guest:And lives come and go.
Marc:Lives come and go.
Marc:And then, like, you know, the button at the end, you know, has its own implications, the human element.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And, you know, it's powerful and it's a powerful last moment because, you know, it makes you think like, what do we hold on to if we can?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what was the how did the relationship with Steven Spielberg evolve?
Marc:Because I know those first few movies, I mean, 1941, which I haven't seen in years.
Marc:Was, you know, with him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Bob Gale and I wrote that.
Guest:He directed that.
Guest:No, again, it started at USC Film School.
Guest:I'm in a class where every Thursday night they would bring in – we were fortunate enough that filmmakers would bring in a movie that wasn't released yet.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And then they would come and –
Guest:talk to the class and then do a little Q&A with the film students.
Guest:And before that class, in the class I had earlier today, my instructor said, hey, we're going to have Steven Spielberg.
Guest:He's this young, new director.
Guest:But I want you guys to see this thing that he did for television.
Guest:before we see his new movie, and they ran Duel.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:I know, ran Duel, and it was like, oh, man, that was like one of the, I mean, great movies.
Guest:The whole movie is a car chase.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:I mean, the whole thing, but the villain is this machine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's great.
Guest:And so then...
Guest:They run Sugar Land Express, which is a beautiful movie.
Guest:Vilmos Zygmunt was all in widescreen Panavision and Goldie Hawn.
Guest:And then this kid walked in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This kid walked in and I said, oh my God, he's like a couple years older than me, like maybe two years older than I am.
Guest:And he instantly became my hero.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so he was able to do that movie and then this movie and he's this young.
Guest:So immediately right after the screening, I just ran right up to him, buttonholed him, said, hey, you want to see my student film?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said, yeah, sure, yeah.
Guest:He said, here, I called my office.
Guest:And I said, where is your office?
Guest:He said, I have an office at Universal.
Guest:So I followed up on that.
Guest:And those were the days before there was video.
Guest:So he set up a screening room at Universal.
Guest:And I brought my movie over.
Guest:And we sat there together.
Guest:And I showed it to him.
Guest:And he said, I love this.
Guest:This is great.
Guest:Good job.
Guest:And then we sort of just...
Guest:I just kept in touch with him.
Guest:And then it turned out that another of what we used to call the USC mafia was John Milius.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:And he loved the way Bob Gale and I wrote.
Guest:Well, that's something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's the one who set it up for us to develop 1941.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And then he gave the script to Stephen.
Guest:And Stephen said, I love this.
Guest:And then it turned out that, okay.
Guest:And then that was it.
Guest:Then Bob and I were always in the writer's room with Stephen.
Guest:And you met Bob at USC?
Guest:We met in our first class together.
Marc:And he wrote All the Back to the Futures with you.
Marc:All the Back to the Futures, Use Cars.
Guest:No, no, that was Eric Roth.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:He wrote, I want to hold your hand, use cars, and all three, the Back to the Futures.
Marc:Well, it's interesting because I'm reading, I read Al Pacino's new memoir.
Marc:And it's wild that because those movies...
Marc:As good as the script or whatever, but the box office wasn't great, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, I mean, in those days, that could really stifle your career.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:So, I had this conversation.
Guest:So, Bob Gale and I, we were working on 1941.
Guest:This is how it was back in the day.
Guest:We were just two young guys.
Guest:We didn't have anything, no money, no family, nothing else.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hey, I'm going to fly you guys down to Alabama.
Guest:I'm shooting a movie there.
Guest:I'm shooting Close Encounters.
Guest:And we'll work on the script at night.
Guest:With 1941?
Guest:1941.
Guest:And you guys can – I'll put you up in – I got a giant house there.
Guest:And you guys, I'll just put you up in that house.
Guest:I got a – Yeah.
Guest:So we're down there working on this.
Guest:But on the side, Bob and I are writing –
Guest:um, we're writing, no, I want to hold your hand.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I want to hold your hand.
Guest:So we, you know, we're in the process of making, uh, 1941 and, uh, we gave Steven the, the script for, I want to hold your hand.
Guest:And he said, um, we need to, you know, give us some notes.
Guest:And he read it and he said, Oh, this is, I really liked this.
Guest:But he said, you know, Bob, you should direct this.
Guest:Literally like that.
Guest:He said, you should direct this.
Guest:I said, I know, I know, but how am I going to do that?
Guest:He said, let me make some calls.
Guest:Now, don't forget, this is after he made Jaws.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he had juice.
Guest:So he had a lot of juice, and he had a lot of juice.
Guest:So he called Sid Sheinberg at Universal, and Sid read the script and said, yeah, okay.
Guest:And then we had...
Guest:You know, she said, yeah, this could, this is a, you know, young kids running around, Beatles songs.
Guest:All right, this could work.
Guest:So I made that.
Guest:That was, you know, that was one of those experiences you were talking about earlier where we were at a preview and it was like, they loved it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We thought, okay, this is amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Obviously, you know, didn't make a penny.
Guest:What do you think that was about?
Yeah.
Guest:I can tell you exactly what it was about.
Guest:I was thinking back at what it was about.
Guest:I remember driving into the lot every day, making a movie.
Guest:I'm going, I can't believe this.
Guest:I'm making a movie in Universal Studios.
Guest:Culver?
Guest:No.
Guest:Over here in Burbank?
Guest:Yeah, Burbank.
Guest:And I'm driving in every day, and I'm thinking, oh, my God.
Guest:I'm in this giant infrastructure.
Guest:This is great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then when it's time to release the movie, we had our first meeting with whoever was the head of the marketing department said, oh, so, oh, yeah, what do you want us to do?
Guest:I went, oh, I'm sorry.
Guest:I didn't know I'm supposed to do the marketing, too.
Guest:I'll go try to figure some stuff out for you.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:So that was an important lesson.
Guest:They didn't know how to sell it.
Guest:Well, and it was kind of like, oh, yeah, this movie's here.
Guest:It was kind of like it was some little movie where it wasn't on the... Yeah, but they didn't ice it intentionally.
Guest:No, it was just that it had bigger fish to fry.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And so you had to get into the pecking order system of how these movies are.
Guest:And understanding that your job isn't just to make... It wasn't like...
Guest:this giant, you know, giant studio that was protecting you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it wasn't like that.
Guest:It was just kind of like, okay, every movie has to, you know, fight for itself.
Marc:And also, like, you know, at that point in being in film school, you got to realize at a certain point that...
Marc:You know, this is post-studio system, but they used to make hundreds of movies.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:That would go nowhere.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And every time you see them, you're like, how did I not know about this?
Marc:Oh, because they made 50 other movies that year.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:And you're just in the competition.
Marc:Right, exactly.
Marc:But after that, you direct The Used Cars.
Guest:Used Cars, and that flopped at the box office.
Guest:And what's interesting about that movie is everybody somehow, it came...
Guest:It didn't make any money at the box office, but it exploded right at the birth of cable television.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So everybody sees that movie of mine.
Guest:It was like a giant cable television, early cable television hit.
Marc:But that doesn't add up with the big encounters at the studio.
Marc:No, it didn't and didn't.
Marc:But it got you the directing gig on Romancing the Stone?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Yeah, yes.
Guest:Yes, because Michael loved it.
Guest:Michael Douglas loved it.
Guest:He liked used cars, and he liked my directing style.
Guest:But what we had done, Bob and I, we had gone to Columbia, and Frank Price was the head of the studio, and he liked used cars, and he made used cars.
Guest:And so we went and we pitched him an idea, and it was the...
Guest:It was the most spectacular pitch that Bob and I ever did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was one minute long.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we went in and he said, okay, and, you know, and, you know, Frank was great.
Guest:He put his feet up on the coffee table.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he leaned back in his chair.
Guest:He said, okay, guys, what do you got?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we said, a high school kid goes back in time and meets his parents in high school.
Guest:He goes, done, deal, go right.
Yeah.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:Why not?
Guest:Why wouldn't he say anything else?
Guest:What's he got to lose?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Consequently, he didn't make the movie.
Guest:He put it in turnaround.
Guest:And so, put the movie in turnaround and... Did you know that Back to the Future would be an ongoing story for several films at the beginning?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, never.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Never.
Guest:Not even after... No.
Guest:Not even after we made the first movie.
Guest:We never... I mean, because, you know, because...
Guest:I wouldn't have put the girl in the car if I knew it was going to be a sequel because we had to write her out to get on with the story and the sequel.
Marc:But it's interesting.
Marc:So Romancing the Stone was kind of a surprise hit.
Marc:So you had a little juice going in, right?
Guest:Well, what happened was we got turned down from every single studio on Back to the Future on.
Guest:I mean, 100%, even after, sometimes twice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the only person who said, I really love this, is Steven.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I sat down with him and I said, you know, Steven, you produced...
Guest:two of my movies and they didn't perform.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I think if you produce the third one and it doesn't perform, that might be the end of it for me.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he saw it and he went, I think you're right.
Guest:He said, I think you're right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So then I, I, I looked for another and, and all I kept getting offered or, or these teen comedies like, and, and just as a director, you mean the director.
Guest:And then finally, um, I, you know, Michael, um,
Guest:gave me Romancing the Stone.
Guest:And then fortunately that was my first hit movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, and then everybody wanted to make Back to the Future.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, but Bob and I said, Hey, we're going to go to the guy who, the only guy who ever had any faith in it.
Marc:Go back to Steven.
Marc:So he did it.
Marc:And so he did it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And the other, like you're very protective of the franchise.
Yeah.
Marc:Oh, God, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:No, there can't be a four.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And also no one can do a TV thing.
Marc:No, no.
Guest:And it's like, yeah.
Guest:I mean, no, we don't.
Guest:We have a musical, which is fabulous, but that's sort of a companion to the movie.
Guest:It's not a remake of the movie or anything or a sequel to the movie.
Marc:Yeah, and it's fun that you somehow or another walked in onto Christopher Lloyd, you know, for that character, but also for Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Marc:He's a singular kind of guy.
Marc:He's great.
Marc:He's great.
Guest:And, you know, he would do this thing.
Guest:He would ride his bike.
Guest:across the country.
Guest:And I sent him the script to, we had to find him and send a script to a hardware store in North Carolina where he was somewhere on his bike.
Guest:And I sent him the Roger Rabbit script and I got a call from him a couple days later.
Guest:He said, I just want to make sure this is, I can't do voices, but he goes, I just want to make sure I got this right.
Marc:uh i'm a tune right i said yeah you're a tutor great i'm in i'm doing it as a character yeah but then you like have this amazing run but it's interesting because you know with the back the futures and then forrest gump and in what lies beneath castaway like there was a few other movies in there that i don't remember seeing not as an insult but i mean you were just making movies
Marc:And you had enough freedom to do it that if one didn't perform as well as the other, it didn't kill you.
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I was fortunate that most of the movies that I was making in the 80s and the 90s and the early 2000s were connecting pretty good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what was the relationship, you know, with it's interesting.
Marc:I just realized there's another time travel element to the new one is that, you know, you cast Robin and Tom again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that's that was only because, well, I've I made quite a few movies with Tom.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm and I made quite a few movies with Robin, but we never did anything together.
Guest:And when Tom signed on to do here.
Guest:I said, you know, Tom, I think, you know, who would be great would be, you know, we should, is Robin.
Guest:And he went, oh, my God, that's fabulous.
Guest:I called her, immediately sent her the script, and she said, I'd love to do it.
Guest:And so there's the three.
Guest:So four of us from Forrest Gump are, well, and plus there's a whole bunch of crew people, too.
Guest:But Eric and I, that guy,
Guest:You know, Eric wrote Gump.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Tom and Robin were in Gump.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I directed Gump.
Guest:So, with Gump... But it's not Gump.
Guest:No, of course not.
Marc:No, it's just interesting that the pairing has sort of a romantic pairing.
Marc:Like, I always wonder, because I've done a little acting, but like...
Marc:You know, you always assume that everybody stays friends and they know each other.
Marc:It's not the case, you know, really for most people.
Marc:You know, they work together and they go have their lives.
Marc:But I imagine for those two to get together in a romantic way again, there must have been some sort of sense memory to the whole thing.
Guest:Yeah, no, it was great.
Guest:I mean, most movies are really, you know, people will see my movies and go, oh, my God, that must have been so much fun.
Guest:I go, no, it's fun to watch.
Guest:But believe me, it wasn't fun to make.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But here it was fun to make because it was like, okay, you know, and seeing Tom and Robin working together, it was fantastic.
Marc:And when does this sort of like the obsession or the compulsion to stay on the cutting edge of technology really kind of click into place?
Marc:After Roger?
Yeah.
Guest:No, I never really – I mean, people think that Back to the Future is a special effects movie and it's only got 30 shots in it.
Guest:And most of them are lightning.
Guest:I've never put that cart before the horse.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I do –
Guest:I do like to use every tool that's in the toolbox.
Guest:Right.
Guest:If I can.
Guest:If I can afford it and if I think it can work.
Guest:And I love the idea of saying, hey, how can we present something we've never seen before?
Guest:Which I think is what filmmakers are kind of supposed to do.
Marc:Well, that's the thing about Roger is that, like, you know, I don't think I've seen that before or again in the same way.
Marc:And I think a lot of that had to do with, you know, having license, being able to license those characters that we all grew up with.
Guest:Oh, that was Stephen's – that was Stephen's –
Guest:magnificent contribution he was the and that's the one thing the only way that that movie could have gotten made is with that one guy who was the executive producer who could call every studio and say hey I'd like to put your cartoon character in this Disney movie
Guest:and that'll never happen again and it was a miracle that it was able to happen.
Marc:But I'd forgotten even Betty Boop shows up and it's just like it's and the jokes are so great and all the actors were able to get that tone of that period and those type of movies it was like I was you know and it's just in my mind from last night I was completely taken with it you know as a grown up and that's the weird thing about movies as we were talking about even with Bonnie and Clyde that if the movie is worth its
Marc:whatever, that it grows with you, that you're always going to find new stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I think so.
Guest:I mean, and the thing that's interesting, I mean, but, you know, I made Roger for adults.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:I mean, it's got cartoons in it, but it was never supposed to be a kid's movie, although, you know, why not?
Guest:You pulled a couple of punches with the patty cakes, but it was... Well, yeah, but that was... It's funny.
Guest:But, you see, but that was all, like...
Guest:That's what a tune would have thought.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:So we weren't, like, violating any—we were doing it the way that we think a tune would do it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but Patty Cake is pretty funny.
Marc:It is pretty funny.
Guest:That's really funny.
Marc:So with, you know, moving through, you know, Gump, that was—like, did—your expectations of that movie—
Marc:I mean, it was one of the biggest movies ever, you know, a lot of prizes.
Marc:But when you're making it, you're not really thinking of that.
Marc:You're just trying to pull it off, right?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:No, you can never.
Guest:I mean, that's the thing.
Guest:Yeah, you're just—and that one was—the studio, they didn't know what we were making.
Guest:And we were going a lot over budget, and we were hiding our overages.
Guest:And so they got—
Guest:they got really angry and so at one point when we finally got the movie yeah uh back to um la um we still had to do the scene where tom is running in monument valley yeah and um they were so angry at us uh i mean that the guy was running the studio at the time yeah i mean he was screaming he said you do you realize do you realize what problems you're causing me in new york you realize what problem said i'm sorry i'm
Guest:He says, shoot the goddamn thing in Griffith Park.
Guest:Shoot it in Griffith Park.
Guest:And so, you know, Steve Starkey and my producer and I, we broke it down, broke it down, broke it down.
Guest:And we said, look, we can do this.
Guest:We found this money.
Guest:We can do it.
Guest:We'll take a skeleton crew.
Guest:We can fly into Monument Valley.
Guest:We got it all laid out.
Guest:We'll be there for one day.
Guest:One day.
Guest:And it's perfectly on budget.
Yeah.
Guest:And then someone said, yeah, but it's December.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What if it snows?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We go, yeah.
Guest:Well, we're not going to pay the insurance bond.
Guest:So I said, well, what do you want us to do?
Guest:Well, why don't you and Mr. Hanks put it up, put the bond up for the insurance?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I went to Tom and I said, they want us to, he goes, got to do it.
Guest:So...
Guest:We paid for our own weather insurance, and then they had to say, yes, go do it.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:It worked out.
Guest:It did.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was a beautiful day.
Marc:Yeah, and Castaway was like it with Tom.
Marc:What is it about him?
Guest:He's like, well, he's a great actor.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And like in my opinion about all really great dramatic actors, they know how to do comedy.
Guest:Yeah, oh yeah.
Guest:And he's a great.
Guest:Well, he was on a sitcom.
Guest:Oh yeah, yeah, 100%.
Guest:And from where I'm sitting, making all these movies with him, the thing that is, the thing that, the reason, one of the reasons why I love working with him so much is he completely understands the medium he's working in.
Guest:And he's so generous.
Guest:He'll be on a movie and he'll say, this isn't my scene.
Guest:I know what I'm supposed to do here.
Guest:I'm just here holding the papers.
Guest:Right?
Guest:This is what I do.
Guest:And he's just so much fun to work with.
Guest:And he completely gets it.
Guest:And he's always coming up with brilliant ways to improve everything.
Guest:It's just great.
Marc:Well, I think it's that graciousness that makes him such an enduring movie star.
Marc:I think so, too.
Guest:And he's got that every man quality that kind of works for being a movie star.
Guest:You identify with them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you go on this run of animated stuff.
Guest:Well, performance capture stuff.
Guest:Okay, yeah.
Guest:Right, because it's not animated, but it's actors who are driving the... Yeah, well, that was a thing where we were at this point where finally we had this way to perfect doing 3D movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was because we were projecting them digitally.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And so 3D finally worked.
Marc:Yeah, and you were excited about that.
Guest:I was excited about that, and I loved the control of doing a complete digital movie.
Guest:In the sense that— You don't have to go outside.
Guest:You don't have to worry about the weather.
Guest:You don't have to worry about whether it's going to snow.
Guest:And you're losing the light and all those things that are just—I call it the tyranny of production.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, the things that make it risky.
Guest:The things that make it risky because what you're doing, it's funny because when you're making a movie, you're doing like crimes against nature.
Guest:You want the sun out at night and you want it to be sunny when it's snowing.
Guest:It's always that way.
Marc:So on some level, it was kind of like, you know, I'm going to take it a little easier.
Guest:From not having to— A production standpoint with real things.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:In other words, it was a way to completely control what I wanted it to look like, what I wanted it to do, and that was—
Guest:We broke a lot of ground.
Guest:You know, we broke a lot of ground.
Guest:I mean, whether, again, whether for good or for bad, but where we are now in the, you know, where everything, everything is digital.
Marc:Is going.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, when did you start the Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts at USC?
Guest:That was right around, right around the year 2000, I think.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So it kind of coincided with a lot of that in a way.
Guest:Yeah, but that was... Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And they have a volume in there now for performance capture.
Guest:They have a giant IMAX theater in there.
Guest:Do you teach?
Guest:I did.
Guest:Before that, in the early 90s, I did teach an entire...
Guest:film production class.
Guest:And it was a ton of work.
Guest:It's interesting when you enter that, you're like, yeah, sure, I'd like to share my experience.
Guest:And then all of a sudden you got a job.
Guest:Well, it was my favorite professors took me to lunch one day.
Guest:And they said,
Guest:They said, it's time.
Guest:I said, okay, how much you want?
Guest:And they said, no, no, no.
Guest:We want your time.
Guest:And I said, oh, okay.
Guest:And then after, you're like, I'm going to write you a check next time.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:So anyway, I taught this class, and it was great.
Guest:And I insisted that my screenwriting teacher...
Guest:co-teach it with me because I wanted to combine directing and writing because I'm a big believer in that.
Guest:Story's the utmost importance.
Guest:Well, yeah, and I really think that the writer and the director have to be tied to the hip.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I, I've never, I've never replaced a writer on any movie I've ever made.
Marc:And when you were with, was Bob always on set with you and all the writers?
Guest:Oh, oh yeah.
Guest:All my writers.
Guest:And, and I, and I, and, and some of them, some of them, very few of them say, you know, I really, I got other stuff to do, but most of them are, are always there.
Guest:And I, I like having them, I mean, I like having them sit right next to me.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you can problem solve in the moment if you have to.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, where does flight come from out of nowhere?
Guest:So you do this, all this, the- I was, the script, yeah, the script showed up and I completely, you know, I just completely got it.
Guest:It's a beautiful script.
Marc:Oh, it's a great movie.
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And like, you know, I mean, you know, Denzel, I mean, that guy, you just put him on screen.
Marc:It's like, you know, he's- He is the real deal.
Marc:Yeah, and you got to, you're worried that like he's going to upstage the plane.
Yeah.
Marc:You know, because he's like so good.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:I mean, he's fantastic.
Guest:He's just absolutely fantastic.
Guest:I mean, he's just he's he is.
Guest:I mean, I can't say enough about him.
Guest:And he's different than Hanks.
Marc:Completely different.
Marc:In the sense that, like, you know, as as great actors, what makes Denzel like so awesome?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, because he would put these earbuds in, and he would show up...
Guest:You never knew, you know, you never had a call for him.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because he would, we would still be set up the shot.
Guest:And then all of a sudden I'd look in the corner and he's sitting there.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he's in his wardrobe and he's ready to go and he's got these earbuds in and he's just sitting there.
Guest:And I'm thinking, okay, well, this is his process.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he gets on his mark and he just, you know, just perfect for this.
Guest:Whatever he does just blows your mind.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just perfect.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:So we're starting to edit the movie and, um,
Guest:I was telling this story to my editor.
Guest:I was saying, you know, I noticed he listens to music.
Guest:And his editor said, well, maybe give me, find out what that music is because, you know, maybe I can use it.
Guest:And I said, hey, Denzel, I noticed that you're, you know, listening to this music.
Guest:You mind if you share the playlist?
Guest:He said, no way.
Guest:No.
Guest:I said, okay.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:I said, no.
No.
Marc:End of conversation.
Marc:End of conversation.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:It's really a stunning movie.
Marc:And you're a pilot as well, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you kind of like the idea of that happening.
Guest:Well, I don't like the idea of that happening, but I was able to do it so that it was all real.
Guest:Right.
Marc:You had a personal connection.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I knew what would...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was able to really make all the tech talk and everything.
Marc:The tower and everything was virtual.
Marc:And the science of that is correct?
Marc:The way he handled that situation would have worked?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And it's based on a tragic Air Alaska flight that –
Guest:this happened to.
Guest:And, and there's theories.
Guest:I mean, no one, no one ever.
Guest:So, so what, so, you know, the way, the way airplanes work, you know, your, your, your flight, your, your, your flight services, surfaces direct the air.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so what happened was in our movie, the, the,
Guest:the elevator got stuck in the nose down position.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it was forcing the air to push the nose of the airplane down.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:So in theory, if you were to invert the airplane, it would go back up.
Marc:And then flip it right at the right moment.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I don't think anyone ever, I mean, they could maybe try to make that happen in simulators or aerobatic guys might be able to do it.
Marc:It's crazy, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Very exciting.
Marc:So that was your reentry into live action.
Marc:Live action, yeah.
Marc:And you did a few.
Marc:But am I wrong in remembering that there were two Pinocchios competing in the box office?
Marc:There was no box office.
Guest:I don't think there was any box office for either one because they were both streaming.
Marc:It was interesting, though, right, that there were two Pinocchios?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, yeah, there was the del Toro one, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then there was ours.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:There was ours.
Marc:The differences are kind of interesting, right?
Marc:Well, ours is the Disney version.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And we use the Pinocchio from the Disney movie.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:The Disney movie.
Guest:And we use all the characters from the Disney movie.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:It's sort of interesting that this –
Marc:Stranger take that the takes are so different of the same story.
Guest:Well, the book and the book, the Italian book that it's based on is completely dark.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, you know, Pinocchio actually kills the cricket.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You can't have that.
Guest:And Pinocchio in the book is like just a little asshole from the beginning.
Guest:But that wasn't the Disney version.
Guest:And so the Disney version basically has nothing to do with the original.
Marc:But that's sort of interesting in terms of what would be seen as an art movie and an entertainment movie.
Marc:Well, yeah, it depends on how you're going to do it.
Marc:Right, exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:So, like, after this new movie here, which is, it's going to be out when we have this conversation.
Marc:I hope people watch it.
Marc:What's the next big, what's the plan?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Really?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Things are slow.
Guest:I mean, when I say slow...
Marc:It's business in general.
Guest:Well, there's a strange thing happening that I've never seen before, which is nobody's in a hurry to make anything.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, nobody's making anything.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, nothing.
Guest:Scary?
Guest:I think, I don't even know how to figure out what it might be, but I think nobody knows what to do.
Guest:In terms of how to sell?
Marc:No.
Marc:What do you make?
Marc:What do you do?
Marc:Why is that?
Marc:Because the market is so fragmented?
Marc:Because it seems like the desire to make wouldn't go away.
Marc:It just seems like money versus money coming in.
Marc:Money going out versus money coming in is the issue.
Guest:Yeah, I guess.
Guest:But it used to be the whole time that...
Guest:The whole time that I've been making movies, it was always about figuring out a way to make a movie that the audience wants to pay to see so that we can make money to make more movies.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I don't know how this works in the streaming world.
Guest:With movies being fundamentally a tech company.
Guest:With there being no box office.
Guest:Right.
Guest:where talent and excellence in an endeavor isn't rewarded.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Can you?
Guest:I can't think of anything.
Marc:Well, I think that, yeah, everything's been muddled by social media and by streaming.
Marc:So they've realized that not unlike other technologies, if you just churn out the same thing and hold the audience, whatever that is, according to the algorithm, why not just keep doing that?
Guest:And then I guess there is no incentive to.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, look, the truth is, is all the movies that you just listed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I wouldn't be able to make any of those today.
Guest:That's terrible.
Yeah.
Guest:It's true, though.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, because they're all too, I mean, making here is a miracle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, because it's just so, there's no comp.
Guest:Right.
Guest:As the word we use in the business.
Marc:There's no comp for it.
Marc:Well, that's good when you want to make a movie.
Guest:It's good when you want to make a movie, but, yeah, but I mean, but it's tough to get it, it's tough to get them green lit, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's the problem.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, I hope people see it.
Guest:I enjoyed it.
Guest:Well, I hope you, yeah, well, appreciate that.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:It was great talking to you.
Guest:Great talking to you.
Marc:That was what you call a nice, deep, good talk about film and stuff.
Marc:Story stuff.
Marc:Life stuff.
Marc:Great guy, that guy.
Marc:Here opens in theaters on Friday, November 1st.
Marc:Hang out for a minute, folks.
Marc:Hey, people, on Thursday, I talked to country star Keith Urban, and Keith was actually on the show once before for a few seconds.
Marc:It was back during the pandemic when we were doing stuff over Zoom.
Marc:And when I talked to Nicole Kidman, Keith made a brief cameo.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:A country music star and a movie star in the same frame.
Marc:You play guitar.
Marc:I do.
Marc:I got a lot of guitars right behind me.
Marc:What does Keith play?
Marc:What do you usually play?
Marc:What's your guitar?
Marc:Telecaster?
Marc:Everything.
Marc:Telestrats, Gibson's, Les Paul's.
Marc:What's your favorite one, though?
Marc:It changes.
Marc:You like that single coil sound?
Marc:I just got a 62 West Paul Jr.
Marc:a few weeks ago.
Guest:Oh, 62.
Guest:Very nice.
Marc:With just the 1P90 on there?
Marc:It's great.
Guest:There's nothing like it.
Marc:I know.
Marc:It's a good rock guitar.
Guest:Great rock guitar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Billy Armstrong agrees.
Marc:Bye.
Marc:Nice to talk to you.
Marc:That's who you should be talking to.
Marc:That's episode 1191, and you can listen to that for free right now wherever you're listening to this episode.
Marc:To get every episode of WTF ad-free, go to the link in the episode description or go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF+.
Marc:A reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by Acast.
Marc:Here's some guitar after I listen to Pink Floyd at the gym.
guitar solo
guitar solo
Guest:guitar solo
Guest:guitar solo
Guest:guitar solo
guitar solo
Thank you.
Guest:guitar solo
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey and LaFonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.