Episode 489 - Ivan Reitman

Episode 489 • Released April 16, 2014 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Guest:Lock the gates!

00:00:09Marc:All right, let's do this.

00:00:10Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?

00:00:11Marc:What the fuck buddies?

00:00:12Marc:What the fuck nears?

00:00:13Marc:What the fuck nicks?

00:00:14Marc:What the fucksters?

00:00:14Marc:What the fuckstables?

00:00:16Marc:I'm recording this on the eve of my colonoscopy.

00:00:20Marc:That's the way this is going to go.

00:00:21Marc:I haven't eaten all day.

00:00:23Marc:I drank one bottle of this stuff.

00:00:26Marc:I think I'm empty.

00:00:27Marc:I'm clear.

00:00:28Marc:There's nothing going on in me.

00:00:30Marc:Zero.

00:00:31Marc:Feels great.

00:00:32Marc:I'm purged.

00:00:33Marc:I'm lethargic.

00:00:35Marc:I got the energy, man.

00:00:37Marc:I can still give it to you.

00:00:39Marc:This is Marc Maron, if you're wondering.

00:00:40Marc:Today is Ivan Reitman Day on WTF.

00:00:43Marc:We had Jason Reitman on Monday's show, and now his father, Ivan Reitman, who has made some great comedies.

00:00:51Marc:over the years, and has a film called Draft Day with Kevin Costner, which I saw, and I don't know anything about football, and I got choked up.

00:00:59Marc:I got choked up and jerked around and excited.

00:01:01Marc:That's what it's supposed to do.

00:01:04Marc:Costner was pretty fucking great.

00:01:05Marc:I'll tell you that right now.

00:01:07Marc:And, you know, he's not always great, but he was good in this movie.

00:01:12Marc:Why am I talking up the movie?

00:01:13Marc:Because I saw the movie.

00:01:14Marc:I'm going to talk to Ivan Reitman, but I'm going to talk to him about Animal House.

00:01:17Marc:I'm going to talk to him about Meatballs and Stripes and Dave and Ghostbusters and, you know, where all that.

00:01:23Marc:It's all going to happen.

00:01:24Marc:We're going to talk about his son.

00:01:25Marc:It was interesting talking to his son, Jason, and, you know, getting a heads up on a couple of things and getting Ivan's angle on it.

00:01:32Marc:This is real showbiz, folks.

00:01:34Marc:These are real showbiz people.

00:01:35Marc:This is big time showbiz, Ivan Reitman.

00:01:38Marc:He's a big time movie director.

00:01:39Marc:He changed the course of modern movie comedies.

00:01:44Marc:What else do I want to tell you before I get into stuff?

00:01:46Marc:My book in paperback, Attempting Normal, available wherever you buy books.

00:01:50Marc:I will be in Raleigh, North Carolina tomorrow night, the 18th and 19th.

00:01:55Marc:I will be in Raleigh at Good Nights.

00:01:56Marc:Come down.

00:01:57Marc:I'm also going to do a couple more shows at the Trippany House at the Steve Allen Theater.

00:02:01Marc:That's Tuesday the 22nd and Tuesday the 29th.

00:02:04Marc:I threw those on there.

00:02:07Marc:To have some more fun.

00:02:10Marc:It was thrilling to have Ivan Reitman in here.

00:02:13Marc:He's a huge director.

00:02:15Marc:And a lot of times I've had a lot of big people on the show.

00:02:18Marc:But I don't get to talk to a lot of directors.

00:02:19Marc:And talking to Jason and Ivan Reitman was special for me.

00:02:24Marc:In the sense that it's big time showbiz.

00:02:28Marc:Why am I hitting that?

00:02:29Marc:Why am I hammering it?

00:02:31Marc:Why am I telling you that twice?

00:02:32Marc:Because I was in Cleveland.

00:02:35Marc:last weekend and I had an experience that I'm not sure what it signified I'm not quite clear on it it definitely had a profound meaning to me and it seemed to be a signifier for everything wrong in show business and entertainment or perhaps everything that was that is wrong in the world it was some sort of hitting bottom it seemed I witnessed show business hitting bottom let me explain to you look

00:03:04Marc:I've done a lot of a lot of radio in my life.

00:03:06Marc:I've hosted a radio show by no means a radio veteran.

00:03:08Marc:But as a comic, I've done a lot of morning radio with morning radio people.

00:03:12Marc:I've been in some awkward situations.

00:03:14Marc:I've been in some you never know what's going to happen on a morning radio show.

00:03:17Marc:I've been in some awkward porn situations.

00:03:19Marc:I've been in some awkward, slightly racist situations.

00:03:21Marc:I've been in some awkward contest situations.

00:03:25Marc:I've had awkward conversations, but that is sort of part and parcel for morning radio.

00:03:30Marc:Now, shocking stuff is shocking stuff.

00:03:33Marc:And, you know, sometimes it's done well.

00:03:35Marc:Sometimes it's just.

00:03:38Marc:stupid and sometimes it's utterly pointless but i don't know maybe it's because i'm 50 years old that when i got to the radio station in cleveland i'm not even going to mention show the show it doesn't matter something was going on you know we're waiting in a hallway to go into a radio studio and out of a studio a short man in his underwear comes running out and running down the hall he needs a bucket or something so now i know like all right something is going on and

00:04:05Marc:And I'm a little irate because there's part of me that thinks like, what am I walking into?

00:04:11Marc:It's not even that they're trying to sandbag me.

00:04:13Marc:It's just they're trying to sandbag everything I represent as a functioning human being by whatever the fuck is going on in that room.

00:04:22Marc:So I didn't get too freaked out.

00:04:23Marc:I'm like, all right, I'll play along.

00:04:24Marc:But then a producer or someone involved with the show comes up and walks us into a room to show us the live cam of the studio, which is completely covered in plastic tarp.

00:04:36Marc:So something big is going to go on.

00:04:38Marc:These guys have been planning something.

00:04:39Marc:They're up to something.

00:04:41Marc:It's going to be spectacular, right?

00:04:44Marc:So then the guy pulls me out and he starts talking to me about what's going to happen.

00:04:47Marc:He says, well, we've got a vomit cannon.

00:04:51Marc:You're going after the vomit cannon, but I think it's going to be all right.

00:04:54Marc:And I'm like, I'm not going in there after a fucking vomit cannon.

00:04:57Marc:I didn't say that, but I'm like, really?

00:04:59Marc:What is a vomit cannon?

00:05:01Marc:Apparently these guys have put a couple of days work into reconfiguring a leaf blower and hooking a funnel up to it.

00:05:09Marc:So one guy could drink a bunch of milk and vomit into the funnel as it sprays all over the guy in his underwear and in his mouth and stuff.

00:05:19Marc:I know what you're thinking, folks.

00:05:20Marc:You're probably thinking like, man, that sounds amazing.

00:05:22Marc:Did that go well?

00:05:23Marc:No, it didn't go well.

00:05:25Marc:And no, it doesn't sound amazing.

00:05:27Marc:First of all, it's like that jackass stuff has been jackass.

00:05:32Marc:And they can do it because they got a sort of punk rock spirit to it.

00:05:35Marc:There's some creativity to it.

00:05:37Marc:This was utterly fucking pointless.

00:05:39Marc:And it was just one of those moments where I'm like, well, this is show business.

00:05:42Marc:This is this realm, this level, which is the bottom of show business.

00:05:48Marc:I'd hit the bottom of show business that day.

00:05:51Marc:That's what they want to do.

00:05:52Marc:That's fine.

00:05:52Marc:But I'm a 50 year old grown ass man.

00:05:55Marc:And now I'm wondering if I'm going to walk into a puke storm.

00:06:00Marc:So, of course, they do the puke cannon.

00:06:02Marc:They fire off the vomit cannon.

00:06:08Marc:And the one place they didn't cover was the ceiling, which is exactly where all the vomit went to.

00:06:14Marc:Because whatever they did to the leaf roller, who knew it was not made to blow vomit out of it.

00:06:21Marc:There was some engineering problem.

00:06:23Marc:The tragic man-child geniuses who reconfigured the leaf blower to be a vomit cannon, I don't know, they missed something.

00:06:32Marc:So now there's vomit all over the ceiling and there's dripping white vomit from the ceiling.

00:06:37Marc:So what did I do?

00:06:39Marc:Well, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what I did.

00:06:41Marc:I said, I don't want to go in there.

00:06:43Marc:The entire hallway smells like puke.

00:06:45Marc:And it's just, it's awful.

00:06:47Marc:This is like, what, what are you doing?

00:06:50Marc:And they're like, well, wait, they're figuring it out.

00:06:51Marc:They're figuring it out, man.

00:06:52Marc:They're going to put you in another studio.

00:06:53Marc:All right.

00:06:54Marc:So I go in the other studio and the guy who hosts the show, he's a, he's a good radio guy.

00:06:58Marc:We did a very good interview.

00:06:59Marc:He's, you know, he's good.

00:07:01Marc:Good morning guy.

00:07:03Marc:And I go, what are you doing?

00:07:04Marc:What the hell are you doing with the vomit cannon?

00:07:08Marc:And he's like, well, you know, we just do stuff like stuff you'd think about when you were younger.

00:07:14Marc:If you were younger, wouldn't you think that was cool?

00:07:16Marc:And I'm like, no, not in a fucking million years would I even think to do that.

00:07:20Marc:First of all, you don't even need the leaf blower.

00:07:21Marc:Just let the guy puke in the other guy's mouth if you want to have that weird...

00:07:26Marc:psycho homoerotic freak show going on just let the two guys in their underwear vomit in each other's mouths what do you need a leaf blower for at least it's more intimate like that I didn't say all that I said no I don't think I would have thought of that I just don't know how it felt it just felt like it was it was it was just desperate and stupid which is fine but who cares and why has it come to that I followed a vomit cannon

00:07:55Marc:I can put that on my resume.

00:07:57Marc:That's all I'm saying, all right?

00:07:59Marc:I don't know if I did justice to the vomit cannon, but boy, did I feel like, I felt like something was over.

00:08:05Marc:Just, you know, either inside of me or the world.

00:08:10Marc:or radio or entertainment.

00:08:12Marc:It was just one of those things where you're like, you know what they characterize hitting bottom when you hit bottom where nothing works anymore.

00:08:21Marc:Whatever you were doing, whatever you were hooked on, it just doesn't work anymore.

00:08:27Marc:And you know what?

00:08:28Marc:When you're in a radio station and you're running your morning show and you got a bunch of guys running around in their underwear like it's completely reasonable behavior.

00:08:36Marc:You're so insulated in the morning radio area.

00:08:40Marc:I know that because you're the only ones alive in a way you and your crew.

00:08:44Marc:But when you're in there and everyone's like, well, what are we going to do?

00:08:48Marc:There's vomit dripping from the ceiling.

00:08:52Marc:That's bottom.

00:08:53Marc:You've hit bottom.

00:08:54Marc:Do you understand?

00:08:54Marc:That's it.

00:08:57Marc:It's time to quit something.

00:09:00Marc:Reconfigure, man.

00:09:08Reconfigure.

00:09:09Marc:Yeah, Cosner was great in the movie.

00:09:11Marc:He was great.

00:09:13Guest:Well, you had a chance to see it.

00:09:14Guest:I'm happy.

00:09:14Marc:I sat down and watched a movie.

00:09:16Marc:I mean, I've watched most of your movies.

00:09:19Marc:We grew up with most of the movies, and I teared up.

00:09:23Marc:I thought Cosner did a great job.

00:09:25Marc:Thank you.

00:09:26Marc:It's called Draft Day.

00:09:27Guest:Draft Day, yeah.

00:09:28Guest:That's what it's called.

00:09:29Guest:As in the NFL draft.

00:09:29Marc:That's right.

00:09:30Marc:I don't know anything about football.

00:09:31Marc:I know nothing.

00:09:32Guest:And did it work for you?

00:09:33Marc:Yeah, it worked for me because it's a story.

00:09:35Marc:It's a human story about business, about politics, politics in terms of business.

00:09:40Guest:We watch a lot of movies where we don't know really the subject matter.

00:09:44Guest:Yeah.

00:09:45Guest:We don't have to know about how to operate a nuclear plant.

00:09:48Guest:Yeah.

00:09:49Guest:And we get involved in the tension of those kinds of situations.

00:09:54Guest:Sure.

00:09:54Guest:It's going to blow up.

00:09:55Guest:Oh, my God.

00:09:55Guest:What are they going to do about it?

00:09:56Guest:And they got to do this.

00:09:57Guest:Right.

00:09:58Marc:But we also don't watch a nuclear plant every Sunday to see if it's going to blow.

00:10:03Marc:Yeah, well, that's an interesting analogy that's gone totally wrong.

00:10:12Marc:No, but it was very compelling, and I thought Cosner did an amazing job playing that character.

00:10:17Marc:I forget what a great actor he is.

00:10:20Guest:Yeah, you know, he's not had an opportunity to stretch those muscles, I think, in a while.

00:10:25Guest:Yeah.

00:10:26Guest:And he's done some smaller roles just lately, and here he gets to go full flower.

00:10:32Guest:Yeah.

00:10:33Guest:And he makes mistakes.

00:10:35Guest:I think that's one of the cool things about having a hero that makes mistakes and then sort of takes the whole movie to sort of fight his way out of it, hopefully.

00:10:43Marc:I mean, you've been a filmmaker for, what, how long now, 35, 40 years?

00:10:48Yeah.

00:10:48Guest:Yeah, if you include the really early ones, I think the first one was Cannibal Girls.

00:10:53Guest:We made for $12,000.

00:10:55Marc:I don't think I saw that one.

00:10:57Guest:You should.

00:10:58Guest:Is it available?

00:10:59Guest:I think it is on videotape somewhere.

00:11:01Guest:Uh-huh.

00:11:02Guest:But I think if you looked online, you could find it.

00:11:05Guest:I'm not so sure it's such a good idea.

00:11:07Marc:What was Cannibal Girls about?

00:11:11Guest:Well, it's Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin are the stars, long before SCTV and all the movies that you got to love them with.

00:11:18Guest:Right.

00:11:19Guest:You know, we were all growing up in Canada and Toronto, and-

00:11:23Guest:You know, we thought, hey, let's make a movie.

00:11:25Guest:I'd done a few shorts.

00:11:26Guest:I knew them because we were all hanging around in Toronto.

00:11:29Guest:And, you know, let's improvise a feature.

00:11:33Marc:Yeah.

00:11:33Marc:So from SCTV, that's where we know them from and from the Christopher Guest movies.

00:11:37Guest:That's right.

00:11:38Guest:But this is like... They're kids.

00:11:40Guest:This is like 15 or years before those movies, I guess.

00:11:43Marc:Well, how old were they?

00:11:44Marc:Were they 20?

00:11:45Marc:I mean...

00:11:45Guest:Yeah.

00:11:46Guest:Something like that.

00:11:47Marc:Okay.

00:11:48Guest:Late teens or early 20s, somewhere in that range.

00:11:50Guest:And yeah, we were all in college or just out of college.

00:11:53Guest:Right.

00:11:54Guest:Yeah.

00:11:55Guest:So I think I raised $12,000.

00:11:58Guest:Uh-huh.

00:12:00Guest:Two for me or actually my father, I think.

00:12:03Guest:And five other people put in $2,000 each.

00:12:07Guest:Yeah.

00:12:07Guest:That's how we did it.

00:12:09Yeah.

00:12:09Guest:it was harder to make movies then than it is today actually because um the technology's all here or most people have computers most people have cameras that shoot really good yeah right digital stuff yeah and it's sync sound you don't have to have an extra guy right do sound right um and there was you had to have a crew you have a crew you had to buy 35 millimeter film which is really expensive and

00:12:33Guest:So, you know, we negotiated.

00:12:35Guest:The real problem is that's the movie I found out, oh, yeah, it's good to have a script.

00:12:40Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:12:40Guest:Even though they're very talented improv people, you know, didn't all quite add up when we edited it together.

00:12:47Guest:Yeah.

00:12:48Guest:Spent a year reshooting and reshooting until it sort of made this weird...

00:12:53Guest:goofy sense and when you're shooting improvised footage i mean who know how do you know when to stop when you run out of film when you run out of budget i mean um yeah that's it's sort of the was the beginning of my training process as a director just sort of trying to organize that kind of uh improvisation and i know that seems like you know it fights that idea but

00:13:19Guest:So it's talking to them, saying cut, having another conversation, doing another take, learning how to do coverage in a situation like that.

00:13:27Marc:And it's interesting because now that's fairly common in TV production and in some movies.

00:13:33Marc:I mean, Christopher Guest shoots like that.

00:13:34Marc:I don't think a lot of people shoot like that.

00:13:36Marc:But certainly there are some television models now that only do that.

00:13:40Marc:Like Larry, you know, like, yeah, Larry David does that.

00:13:43Marc:Yes.

00:13:44Guest:And I think they outline really carefully.

00:13:46Guest:They know where those stories are going.

00:13:48Guest:Right.

00:13:49Guest:And then, you know, so they have a premise for each scene, you know, that adds up into a structure that they've already agreed on.

00:13:56Marc:Right.

00:13:57Guest:And, you know, they're just really good.

00:13:59Marc:Yeah, that's right.

00:14:00Marc:That's true.

00:14:01Marc:That also helps.

00:14:02Marc:Yeah.

00:14:03Marc:So Cannibal was the first film thing you did.

00:14:06Guest:Yeah.

00:14:07Guest:I mean, I did a short in college called Orientation, which is really a precursor to Animal House.

00:14:14Guest:It was about the first couple of days in college of a freshman student.

00:14:20Guest:It was like a propaganda film for the clubs at the university.

00:14:26Guest:It turned out to be really funny, and

00:14:29Guest:And actually, it showed at a film festival.

00:14:33Guest:Somebody from Fox Canada saw it, thought it was great, because it got a great response.

00:14:39Guest:And they put up the money, they blew it up to $35, and it played in movie theaters, like for...

00:14:44Guest:Really?

00:14:45Guest:It was on the head of the, I don't know if you remember the movie John and Mary.

00:14:49Guest:It starred Mia Farrow, Mary, and Dustin Hoffman right after The Graduate.

00:14:55Guest:It was like his second movie.

00:14:57Guest:And everyone thought, oh, this is going to be a big hit.

00:15:00Guest:Unfortunately for them, orientation got way more laughs.

00:15:04Marc:Was John and Mary a comedy?

00:15:06Marc:I think so.

00:15:06Marc:I have no idea what that movie is.

00:15:08Guest:Well, look it up.

00:15:09Marc:Oh, my God.

00:15:11Marc:Those are big names, so it didn't make the canon of must-see movies.

00:15:16Guest:No, not that year, but it was great for my film because my film looked so good.

00:15:21Guest:I always got applause at the end of it, which was kind of amazing for a little short, but it was my beginning.

00:15:27Marc:Well, was that always the plan?

00:15:29Marc:I mean, you grew up entirely in Canada?

00:15:32Guest:Well, Czechoslovakia, until five, my parents and I escaped.

00:15:36Guest:It literally escaped.

00:15:37Guest:Literally bottom of the boat escaped.

00:15:39Marc:Tell me what that means, bottom of the boat.

00:15:41Marc:I got some of this information from your son, but I'd like to hear it from you.

00:15:46Guest:You know, I think they were going to, you know, it was the communists who were running, Stalinist communism in 1950.

00:15:53Guest:So they pushed the Germans out.

00:15:55Guest:This is now four years after the Germans are gone.

00:15:58Guest:And it's occupied by, basically, Russia.

00:16:02Guest:And that's when the Czech Republic and Slovakia were a country called Czechoslovakia.

00:16:09Guest:Right.

00:16:09Guest:And...

00:16:11Guest:You know, my father was just a real good capitalist and had built up some businesses.

00:16:17Guest:He was doing vinegar and stuff like that, making vinegar.

00:16:21Guest:Biggest vinegar guy in Czechoslovakia.

00:16:25Guest:When the communists came into the country, I mean, they were always there, but when they basically took over the government, which was, I think, in 1949,

00:16:33Guest:You know, they put my father in charge of all the vinegar factories to supervise them, but he knew it was only a matter of time before he was arrested like his brother had been arrested, you know, because he was not a member of the party.

00:16:48Guest:And they were planning to leave all this time, and they were secretly converting Czech crowns to American dollars.

00:16:57Marc:Your father was?

00:16:58Guest:Yeah, which was illegal.

00:17:00Guest:Yeah.

00:17:01Guest:But it was a way to get hard currency to help us get out.

00:17:05Guest:Huh.

00:17:06Guest:And sort of one July day, you know, I was called and I was hanging out with my friends, and I was, I think, five.

00:17:14Guest:And they said, I remember saying to this kid I was playing with,

00:17:18Guest:Well, see, after dinner, and the next thing I knew, I was putting on, like, four pairs of pants and shirts.

00:17:25Guest:Because they figured we couldn't make—we had to be secretive.

00:17:30Guest:Yeah.

00:17:32Guest:We took only one suitcase—

00:17:34Guest:i kept trying to put my favorite toy was a slide projector ironically enough uh with um disney cartoon characters like mickey mouse donald duck on them yeah and i just loved that damn thing and i just it was a big chunky thing that weighed about five pounds i kept trying to put it into this tiny suitcase and um i actually thought i snuck it in at the end because my mother would keep saying look we have to go for a long time we don't have room to take that and

00:18:04Guest:Anyway, to make a very long story short, we stuck ourselves onto this boat.

00:18:11Guest:I mean, they had made a deal with the captain, paid him some hard currency to nail us down in the hold of the boat.

00:18:20Guest:To put the floor on top of you.

00:18:22Guest:That's right.

00:18:22Guest:Because those boats were all inspected by the... The communists.

00:18:26Guest:Yeah, well, by the Russian soldiers over there.

00:18:29Guest:Sure, yeah.

00:18:30Guest:So we got to Vienna.

00:18:33Marc:How long was that?

00:18:33Marc:Do you have any recollection?

00:18:35Guest:I don't know.

00:18:35Guest:I think it was overnight.

00:18:36Guest:I know I was down there because there was no bathrooms or anything.

00:18:39Guest:They had given me a sleeping pill and they had actually given me too much.

00:18:43Guest:And so when they finally put the candle on to see what was up, I was out cold but my eyes were open like I was a dead guy.

00:18:51Guest:And needless to say, I wasn't dead.

00:18:54Guest:Yeah.

00:18:55Guest:But it scared the crap out of my parents.

00:18:58Guest:Uh-huh.

00:18:59Guest:We got to Vienna.

00:19:00Guest:From Vienna, we got to France where we had an uncle.

00:19:04Guest:My mother's brothers lived there.

00:19:07Guest:Yeah.

00:19:08Guest:We stayed there for six months until we got a visa to immigrate to Canada where we had another uncle.

00:19:14Guest:Wow.

00:19:14Guest:And they started from nothing.

00:19:16Guest:You know, they didn't speak the language, literally had no money.

00:19:19Marc:How'd they avoid the Germans?

00:19:21Guest:Yeah.

00:19:21Guest:Oh, that's an earlier story, but yeah, my mother was in Auschwitz and managed to survive that because she was in for the last year, but she was young and strong and got out.

00:19:33Guest:And my father was kind of a freedom fighter guy, and he was running around, you know, killing people.

00:19:40Guest:Really?

00:19:40Guest:Yeah, and just staying in the woods.

00:19:42Marc:Freedom Fighter, I saw a movie about that.

00:19:45Marc:It's unbelievable.

00:19:47Guest:Yeah, so it's amazing what we are the products of and how we end up making comedy movies that become famous in America.

00:19:56Guest:It's just an interesting journey we go down.

00:19:59Marc:Right, so your father has this amazing determination, clearly.

00:20:03Guest:Yeah, they both did.

00:20:04Guest:My mother was actually the braver one, I think.

00:20:07Guest:It was her idea to escape.

00:20:09Marc:Yeah.

00:20:09Marc:She was in Auschwitz.

00:20:10Marc:And what were you told about that as a kid?

00:20:13Marc:You know, it wasn't good.

00:20:14Marc:Yeah.

00:20:17Guest:Yeah.

00:20:18Guest:So they get to where, from Montreal?

00:20:20Guest:No, we got to, well, we landed in Halifax and quickly came to Toronto where my uncle and aunt and cousin were.

00:20:30Guest:And, you know, we lived with them for a month or two.

00:20:33Guest:And then finally we got our own little apartment.

00:20:36Guest:My father went to work as a presser.

00:20:38Guest:My mother, you know, was a very handy seamstress.

00:20:43Guest:And, you know, she did piecework.

00:20:45Guest:And was immediately pregnant with my sister's twins.

00:20:49Guest:Uh-huh.

00:20:50Guest:And, you know, that's how they started their life there.

00:20:52Marc:And what business did he end up going into?

00:20:55Marc:Did he stay a printer or presser or what happened?

00:20:57Guest:Well, he ended up buying a dry cleaning store.

00:20:59Guest:Yeah.

00:21:00Guest:And then a couple of them.

00:21:01Guest:And then he sold those and he eventually bought this...

00:21:05Guest:car wash property that has now become quite famous because, you know, we converted it first to a parking lot after, you know, after he worked very hard on it.

00:21:17Guest:And it's now the home of the Toronto Film Festival, you know, where we built this, we contributed it, the family did, to honor our parents as the home of the Bell Lightbox, this lovely sort of

00:21:33Guest:Film Palace in the center of the city.

00:21:36Marc:That's beautiful.

00:21:37Guest:Thank you.

00:21:38Marc:Yeah.

00:21:38Marc:And so was the original... So he didn't get back into vinegar, which is probably good.

00:21:43Guest:No, he tried to.

00:21:44Guest:Yeah?

00:21:45Guest:It wouldn't let him in.

00:21:46Guest:You know, you had to... Because the vinegar involves alcohol and things like that.

00:21:49Guest:And it was... There was no way to... It was a kind of fixed business in Ontario.

00:21:55Guest:It was tough.

00:21:56Guest:It was run by the... You know, by...

00:21:59Guest:by agencies that you had to know how to maneuver, and he was just an immigrant guy who could barely speak English and had no real money, so there was no way to get there.

00:22:10Marc:Were they able to see your successes?

00:22:13Guest:Yes, I'm happy to say, yeah, they, you know, I went to school.

00:22:18Guest:I had a music group.

00:22:20Guest:I thought I was, I always wanted to be a film composer.

00:22:24Guest:Yeah.

00:22:24Guest:And so I went into, I studied music in college, and then I started making films.

00:22:30Guest:And your orientation was actually the one I was just talking about.

00:22:34Guest:It was the first film.

00:22:35Guest:Yeah.

00:22:35Guest:And, you know, they hung in there.

00:22:37Guest:My father clearly was the guy who said, hey, look, why don't you go into law or something like that or accountancy or architecture.

00:22:47Guest:He was very concerned about how are you going to make a living in the music business?

00:22:51Marc:Uh-huh.

00:22:52Marc:But that was your dream?

00:22:54Marc:Initially, you were in a band?

00:22:57Yeah.

00:22:57Guest:Well, I want to be in the arts somehow.

00:22:59Guest:I had a, you know, I started in a kind of folk singing group.

00:23:02Guest:It was the 60s after all.

00:23:04Guest:And, you know, it was the great Chris Guest movie.

00:23:10Guest:Was it a Mighty Wind?

00:23:11Guest:A Mighty Wind, yeah.

00:23:12Guest:Sort of really brought back memories.

00:23:14Guest:That was my life.

00:23:15Marc:Well, Jason said he remembers you playing guitar and that he's very moved by it all and that he came in here and saw my guitars and he's like, I have my dad's guitar.

00:23:25Marc:He does.

00:23:25Marc:He's really sweet about that.

00:23:27Marc:It made a big impression on him.

00:23:30Guest:Yeah, he never heard my group because my group stopped playing long before he was born.

00:23:35Guest:But it was a beginning.

00:23:38Guest:And we played the local folk clubs on weekends.

00:23:41Guest:It was during high school.

00:23:43Guest:And continued to do it into university.

00:23:46Guest:But I quickly got involved in the performance arts.

00:23:50Guest:But there...

00:23:52Guest:you know there were no uh film classes yeah uh they were non-existent in right in the late 60s maybe down here they started but not where i was we didn't even know what a film director did right and uh yeah you know i just sort of learned by doing and your your your father initially he wasn't supportive did he become supportive at some point yeah he became very he knew somehow that um

00:24:19Guest:that I needed a future in the arts.

00:24:22Guest:And so he actually became very supportive, came to everything I did.

00:24:29Guest:Because he saw you had a passion for it?

00:24:32Guest:I guess.

00:24:33Guest:And I was also very entrepreneurial.

00:24:37Guest:And he kind of got it.

00:24:40Guest:He understood the sense of risk.

00:24:42Guest:I mean, these are people who risk everything a number of times in their lives and survived and did very well.

00:24:49Marc:Yeah.

00:24:50Marc:Did he ever say anything to you that gave you a certain amount of faith?

00:24:55Marc:I mean, was there a point where I imagine initially they're afraid for your future?

00:25:00Guest:Well, surely.

00:25:00Marc:Yeah.

00:25:01Guest:No, he was not really happy when I went into music.

00:25:05Guest:Yeah.

00:25:05Guest:But much later, and Jason may have told the story because he now tells this story much better than I do.

00:25:12Guest:I think after attending a kind of course in Montreal in 1967, I came home very excited to tell my dad, you know, they got these Subway shops, Subway sandwiches.

00:25:24Guest:Yeah, right.

00:25:24Guest:Yeah, Subway.

00:25:25Guest:Very common right now, but it was a really unique thing.

00:25:28Guest:And there weren't any in Toronto.

00:25:30Guest:And I said, wouldn't it be great?

00:25:31Guest:Like, you could put up a little bit of money, I'll run it, and I think we can do really well.

00:25:36Guest:And, you know, he looked at me kindly, and he said, I'm sure if you wanted to run a Subway sandwich shop, you'd do extraordinarily well, but there's not enough magic in it for you.

00:25:47Guest:Right, yeah.

00:25:48Yeah.

00:25:48Guest:And I told that story to Jason when he was sort of in pre-med at Skidmore.

00:25:54Guest:And it was clearly miserable.

00:25:57Guest:And I didn't even know he was interested in movies.

00:26:03Guest:He was on the set of Animal House when he was like 13 or 14 days old.

00:26:07Guest:And he'd been on all my sets because I tried to make it a point when I was directing at least to shoot during the summertime when the kids were available.

00:26:16Yeah.

00:26:16Guest:and um my wife could all you know we could just set up camp wherever we were yeah yeah but uh so he was always around that and i was always pissed because he didn't seem to pay any attention to me you know he was so much more interested in what everyone else was doing right and um i actually thought he was just goofing off right and um he wasn't he was really paying attention

00:26:37Marc:Yeah, it sounded like it to me.

00:26:39Marc:He's very thoughtful about his process, and I have to assume a lot of that he learned from you, one way or the other.

00:26:45Marc:Whether he was paying attention to you or not, it certainly had an impact.

00:26:50Guest:It was remarkable when he first came back to USC after...

00:26:53Guest:I told him the magical subway sandwich story, and I told him, look, it's okay if you don't want to be a doctor.

00:27:00Guest:Yeah.

00:27:01Guest:You know, go into the arts.

00:27:03Guest:You only go around once and do something that you love.

00:27:08Guest:And he decided to quit, and he talked his way into USC.

00:27:12Guest:And I don't know if he told you the story of his – initially, as soon as he got back, he raised about $8,000.

00:27:20Guest:selling advertising to the local kind of shops that are around USC.

00:27:26Marc:No, he didn't tell me that.

00:27:28Guest:He had a desk calendar that he invented that he was going to lay down on the desks of every freshman incoming student in the dorms.

00:27:39Guest:And so he went to the local dry cleaning store to the pizza place and said, look, I'm going to be doing this.

00:27:45Guest:I'm going to distribute 2,000 of them.

00:27:47Guest:And here's the cost for this little square.

00:27:49Guest:And you'll be that square on every page.

00:27:52Guest:And so when they want pizza, they're going to call you.

00:27:54Guest:And he sold it out.

00:27:56Guest:And he profited it.

00:27:57Guest:He netted out about a grand.

00:28:00Guest:I said, so, Jason, what are you going to do with the grant?

00:28:01Guest:I was really proud of him for raising all this money.

00:28:04Guest:Yeah.

00:28:04Guest:I said, well, I'm going to direct the movie.

00:28:08Guest:I said, you want to direct?

00:28:09Guest:This is really the first time I realized he was kind of interested in the movies.

00:28:14Guest:And, you know, I think the first movie was Operation, I think.

00:28:21Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:28:21Guest:And it's short that then went on to, you know, when everything had entered into.

00:28:28Marc:Yeah.

00:28:29Marc:That must have been a proud moment for you.

00:28:31Guest:Oh, it was extraordinary.

00:28:32Guest:See, not only did he write and direct and really did a spectacular job of it, but he had the initiative to actually go raise the money.

00:28:42Guest:I think my wife and I, when we heard that he had raised the $8,000, I think we contributed a few thousand.

00:28:51Guest:I said, well, you'll probably need a little bit more, so here's a couple of grand.

00:28:56Guest:But he just really did it all himself.

00:29:00Marc:Uh-huh.

00:29:01Marc:Do you think he had something to prove to you?

00:29:04Guest:I think he had something to prove to himself.

00:29:05Guest:Yeah.

00:29:05Guest:It's what you finally have to do.

00:29:07Marc:Yeah.

00:29:08Marc:When you got done with college and you had a music focus and you made the first film, I mean, what brought you around to directing?

00:29:15Marc:What jobs did you do in show business that had you arrive at what you became?

00:29:22Yeah.

00:29:22Guest:Well, college was a very kind of creative, explosively creative time for me, where I was a crappy high school student.

00:29:30Guest:Somehow, by the time I got to college, I decided I was just going to do well, both in school and...

00:29:38Guest:And also get involved in the school.

00:29:40Guest:And that for me meant, like I got, you know, I was reviewing it for the newspaper.

00:29:46Guest:I started directing in the Dramatic Society.

00:29:49Guest:These weren't all courses.

00:29:50Guest:This was, because there were no arts courses in the school.

00:29:53Guest:It was really- Like clubs.

00:29:55Guest:There were clubs, you know, funded by the Student Society.

00:29:58Guest:Right.

00:29:59Guest:From student fees.

00:30:00Marc:So you're directing plays and writing for the paper?

00:30:02Guest:I did plays.

00:30:03Guest:I did a musical.

00:30:04Guest:I did a full scale version of Little Abner.

00:30:07Guest:Directing.

00:30:08Guest:Yeah, directing it.

00:30:09Guest:And I really liked it.

00:30:12Guest:And there was a film club, because they had done so well on the other clubs.

00:30:15Guest:The film club had gone bankrupt, as film clubs tend to do.

00:30:19Guest:And I sort of convinced the student council to sort of...

00:30:24Guest:lend me a little bit you know to fund it a little bit i would turn it around yeah and i put two clubs together i i put the film society which showed films and the filmmaking club the board yeah film board together and and the movie the money that we received from showing films went to pay for the

00:30:42Guest:movies that we make kind of a really the hollywood system and um and just instituted there at mcmaster university it was very successful and um and through that i made that first film that i spoke about orientation and after college what'd you start doing immediately i actually started distributing films i forgot about that i um i had met when i was out trying to sell cannibal girls i met bob shea who ran you long and you

00:31:10Guest:New Line Cinema, now a very famous company.

00:31:14Guest:And I became his Canadian distributor.

00:31:19Guest:Really?

00:31:20Guest:Yeah.

00:31:20Guest:I remember the first movie they had was Sympathy for the Devil.

00:31:26Guest:Jean-Luc Godard directed it.

00:31:27Guest:Sure.

00:31:28Guest:It's a weird movie.

00:31:29Guest:Yeah, with the Rolling Stones doing Sympathy for the Devil.

00:31:31Guest:intercut with uh radicals wasn't it yeah it was a goofy movie yeah and uh not your not your thing huh well it was sort of my thing uh-huh i love the stones part of it yeah sure and watching them in a recording studio but i thought godard generally was pretty pretentious but the um i'm gonna get letters about that or you will oh you think so i hope so

00:31:53Marc:If someone's writing his letters about what you say about Godard, I got a good audience.

00:31:58Guest:You sure do.

00:32:01Guest:You know, it was just... We would take it to universities and show it on... Basically, what I was doing in college is what I started doing.

00:32:09Guest:We would do these one-night four-wall deals where we split the take with the college, part to us, part back to New Line in New York.

00:32:20Guest:And that was really...

00:32:21Guest:It allowed me to have a one-room office and sort of get going on stuff.

00:32:27Guest:From there, we did Cannibal Girls, I guess.

00:32:29Guest:And you stopped doing live stuff?

00:32:33Guest:No.

00:32:33Guest:Doug Henning, the star, one of the stars of Little Abner, who I went to school with at McMaster, the magician.

00:32:40Guest:What was his Broadway show?

00:32:41Guest:It was The Magic Show.

00:32:43Guest:I saw that.

00:32:44Guest:Yeah, well, I produced it.

00:32:45Guest:I actually started... I was a kid.

00:32:49Guest:Yes.

00:32:49Guest:Yeah.

00:32:50Guest:I was barely a kid.

00:32:51Guest:And the story of The Magic Show started as a show called Spellbound.

00:32:57Guest:Yeah.

00:32:58Guest:Again, being entrepreneurial, I talked to a man named Ed Mirvish who had...

00:33:02Guest:who ran the Royal Alexandra Theater, a beautiful theater, legit theater, just down the street from the car wash.

00:33:09Guest:And I talked him into giving us two weeks at Christmastime to do this special magic show.

00:33:18Guest:And it all came.

00:33:20Guest:I'm telling the story backwards.

00:33:21Guest:But my only job ever was to work for about six months on a startup cable...

00:33:31Guest:television network uh television station called city tv yeah i was doing two shows there every week one was sweet city women which was a talk show five days a week yeah uh for women sweet city women yeah and um the second show was a

00:33:49Guest:which was a 90-minute live program on Saturday night starting at 8 o'clock against a hockey game where God knows what we did, but it was a $500 budget, and there were sketches.

00:34:01Guest:There was, you know, Bikini Girls of the Week, and there was an audience of sort of geriatric people that we picked up from the local old folks' home.

00:34:12Marc:And you were running the station?

00:34:13Guest:I was running that show.

00:34:14Guest:I was the producer-director of that show.

00:34:17Guest:Anyway, Doug Henning, who I knew from school, appeared on the talk show.

00:34:21Guest:And we went out for coffee after.

00:34:24Guest:I said, so what do you want to do?

00:34:26Guest:Because I knew he was doing, like, magic all around the place.

00:34:29Guest:And he said, well, if I could raise some money to do this...

00:34:32Guest:big illusions, I'd like to do kind of, I was going to go on tour with a rock group and do these theatrical events with rock music and magic.

00:34:42Guest:And I said, well, that sounds like going to be expensive to go from place to place.

00:34:47Guest:Why don't we do it as a kind of a theatrical show?

00:34:49Guest:And he said, yeah, okay, that makes sense.

00:34:52Guest:And he just wanted somebody to raise money for him.

00:34:55Guest:And I was able to do that.

00:34:59Guest:And we started this show.

00:35:02Guest:Amazingly, David Cronenberg wrote the book.

00:35:07Guest:I directed and produced.

00:35:08Guest:Howard Shore, who will be the musical director of Saturday Night Live about five years later, was my composer slash...

00:35:19Guest:These are all Canadian guys.

00:35:20Guest:All living together in Toronto at this moment.

00:35:23Guest:Yeah.

00:35:23Guest:And Paul Schaefer, the great pianist, he was our band leader.

00:35:33Guest:Really?

00:35:34Guest:Yes.

00:35:34Guest:And this is the show that went on.

00:35:36Guest:And then we did this really complex, lovely show with magic tricks and stuff.

00:35:41Guest:Yeah.

00:35:41Guest:That eventually became the magic show that you saw on Broadway.

00:35:44Guest:That's crazy.

00:35:44Guest:And so this is Schaefer's first gig.

00:35:46Guest:It's Shore's first gig.

00:35:47Guest:It was my first foray into something like I had never done before, and we ended up in New York.

00:35:53Guest:Now, the magic show got totally converted into the show that you saw, which was, frankly, a much goofier show than what we did.

00:36:01Guest:I just remember him walking around the stage with his long hair.

00:36:04Guest:That's right.

00:36:05Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:36:07Guest:But it was the same illusions.

00:36:09Guest:What stuck was the magic.

00:36:12Guest:Right.

00:36:13Guest:And they built this other book around it with another composer.

00:36:17Guest:Actually, Stephen Schwartz, the famous composer, did Pippin and Godspell, did the music for the magic show.

00:36:24Guest:It's unbelievable.

00:36:25Guest:But I got to hang around.

00:36:26Guest:They wouldn't let me direct it because I had not done much.

00:36:30Guest:Right.

00:36:31Guest:But I co-produced it.

00:36:33Guest:And that was a big hit.

00:36:34Guest:Five years.

00:36:35Marc:That's unreal.

00:36:37Marc:Yeah.

00:36:37Marc:And how did you meet all these other, like the guys that are usually associated with Second City?

00:36:44Guest:I knew the Second City guys because we were all growing up together.

00:36:46Guest:A lot of them were in Canada.

00:36:48Guest:Yeah.

00:36:48Guest:So, you know, Dan Aykroyd, for example, was the announcer on Greed, the show I was just talking about.

00:36:57Guest:Come on.

00:36:57Guest:He was doing it straight?

00:36:58Guest:No, he was funny.

00:36:59Marc:He was funny.

00:37:00Guest:You know, we'd just make up the show in the afternoon, on Saturday afternoon, and there we were, live.

00:37:07Guest:And you guys are, what, 20 years old?

00:37:09Guest:We're in our sort of mid-20s by now.

00:37:11Guest:We're sort of early 20s, somewhere in there.

00:37:12Guest:Yeah.

00:37:13Guest:And, no, what happened is I had wanted, having now directed Cannibal Girls, I wanted to do, and I had produced a couple of horror movies as well in the meantime for David.

00:37:27Guest:For Cronenberg.

00:37:28Guest:Which ones?

00:37:29Guest:Shivers and Rabbit.

00:37:29Guest:Those are early.

00:37:31Guest:Those are crazy.

00:37:32Guest:The first two.

00:37:32Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:37:33Guest:I actually had directed more than he did by the time he was.

00:37:37Guest:He had written this wonderful script called Orgy of the Blood Parasites, which was Shivers.

00:37:42Guest:Yeah.

00:37:43Guest:Did you retitle it?

00:37:45Guest:Shivers, yeah, actually, I think was my title.

00:37:49Yeah.

00:37:49Guest:And it was my brilliant idea to bring Marilyn Chambers as the star of Rabbit.

00:37:55Guest:Because I was living in New York quite a bit.

00:37:58Guest:And I'd seen her.

00:37:59Guest:There used to be a really funny talk show on.

00:38:04Guest:Robin Bird?

00:38:05Guest:Or something like that.

00:38:06Marc:Or Goldstein Show.

00:38:07Guest:It was the one where they interviewed people in the nude.

00:38:10Guest:In the naked one.

00:38:11Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:38:11Guest:And I saw her being interviewed, and she's really smart, actually, and lovely.

00:38:15Guest:Yeah.

00:38:16Guest:And I said, why not her?

00:38:19Guest:And as the star of Rabbit, it would be good for us.

00:38:22Guest:We were making it for like $100,000.

00:38:25Guest:Bring a different audience in.

00:38:27Guest:Well, it would give us notoriety.

00:38:29Guest:For $100,000, you don't get to...

00:38:31Marc:A lot of press.

00:38:32Guest:Yeah, you got a lot of press, and it was just kind of a way of bringing attention to that project, and it worked.

00:38:39Marc:Yeah, and so you're still friends with Cronenberg, I imagine?

00:38:43Guest:Yeah, I saw him just about a year ago.

00:38:45Guest:I don't see him a lot anymore, because he lives in Toronto still, and made his career there, an extraordinary, wonderful career.

00:38:53Marc:So how do you get to know, like, you know, from there?

00:38:55Marc:Because I imagine we're moving towards Animal House.

00:38:58Marc:So how did you get to know Kenny and those people?

00:39:01Guest:Well, I cold-called the publisher of the National Lampoon.

00:39:07Guest:It was always kind of a favorite magazine of mine.

00:39:10Guest:Uh-huh.

00:39:10Guest:And in the sort of mid-'70s, when we're talking about it right now, it was this... Great.

00:39:15Guest:It was the thing, you know.

00:39:17Guest:It was the hippest comedy thing around.

00:39:19Guest:Uh-huh.

00:39:20Guest:His name, I look up on the masthead.

00:39:23Guest:It's Matty Simmons.

00:39:24Guest:I call him up.

00:39:24Guest:I said, hey, I've got this show, Magic Show, on Broadway.

00:39:27Guest:But what I really want to do is direct comedies.

00:39:30Guest:And let's do a comedy together.

00:39:32Guest:And he says, hey, look, we've got Hollywood bothering us a lot about making comedy movies.

00:39:37Guest:But we're talking about doing this sketch show.

00:39:40Guest:You want to produce it for us.

00:39:41Guest:You really, hey, after all, you've got a Broadway hit.

00:39:44Guest:I said, yeah.

00:39:45Guest:Yeah.

00:39:46Guest:don't do it i said i figured and the deal i had with with maddie was i was going to produce the show i raised i think it was i can't remember 15 or 20 thousand dollars yeah and um not a lot not a lot but um i was going to produce the show and then if for some reason any part of that show became a movie

00:40:08Guest:For sure I would get to produce it with Maddie, with the Lampoon, and perhaps direct it if I could convince the studio or whoever was going to finance the movie that I could direct it.

00:40:19Guest:I said, okay.

00:40:20Guest:And that's the reason I really did it.

00:40:21Guest:It was kind of a first step.

00:40:23Guest:And that show, this is before Saturday Night Live.

00:40:28Guest:And before Lemmings?

00:40:31Guest:It was right after Lemmings.

00:40:32Guest:It was the same period.

00:40:34Guest:I think it was a year after Lemmings.

00:40:35Guest:Right.

00:40:37Guest:It's a live show.

00:40:38Guest:It's a live sketch show in this place that we did in Midtown in a little theater.

00:40:48Guest:And it had, here was the cast, and this is before any of these people were known.

00:40:52Guest:It was Gilda Radner and John Belushi, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis.

00:41:00Guest:Brian Murray, Bill's brother.

00:41:02Guest:Yeah.

00:41:03Guest:And Joe Flaherty.

00:41:04Guest:Unbelievable.

00:41:04Guest:So it's a crazily talented group of people.

00:41:09Marc:In their 20s.

00:41:10Guest:Yeah, first time out.

00:41:11Guest:I mean, some of them had worked for the Lampoon and the radio show.

00:41:15Guest:Some of them worked, not SCTV, but in Second City in Chicago.

00:41:18Guest:Right, right.

00:41:21Guest:remarkably unknown and remarkably gifted and remarkably arrogant already and they're just uh because they knew they were the best and they were the best it turned out yeah they were the best and sketch comedy at at being funny and special uh-huh in a way that no one had ever seen before and i remember i remember the first rehearsal i was in with all of them and i

00:41:46Guest:No, I was the producer.

00:41:47Guest:I wasn't the director.

00:41:47Guest:Belushi was basically directing it.

00:41:50Guest:Harold was kind of the intelligent calm force that sort of when things went wrong, people would turn to as kind of a peacemaker.

00:41:59Guest:Yeah.

00:42:00Guest:And so they're in the middle of working out some sketch.

00:42:04Yeah.

00:42:04Guest:and they're arguing about something, and I suddenly, I don't know, I say, hey, wouldn't it be good if, and I can't even remember what the hell I said, and they just stopped and looked at me like, who's this asshole?

00:42:16Guest:Who's this guy talking to us?

00:42:19Guest:I said, whoops.

00:42:21Guest:Bill Murray, always Bill.

00:42:24Guest:It was wintertime in New York, and

00:42:27Guest:He walked me over to where all the coats were, and he took my scarf, which was on top of my coat, and he wrapped it really dangerously around my neck.

00:42:35Guest:And then he put the coat around my shoulders, and he patted me condescendingly on my back and said, hey, man, thanks for dropping by.

00:42:44Guest:See you later.

00:42:45Yeah.

00:42:45Guest:He kicked me out of my show.

00:42:48Guest:And that was my sort of first real experience trying to direct this remarkable group of people.

00:42:55Guest:And I said, God, what am I going to do?

00:42:58Guest:I'm supposed to be the producer.

00:42:59Guest:They don't really have a director.

00:43:01Guest:And I decided I'd just tough it out and just keep coming back.

00:43:06Marc:Did you build a relationship with them eventually?

00:43:08Guest:Yeah, I just had to.

00:43:08Guest:The wonderful thing that happened is when the show finally...

00:43:12Guest:got on stage and was going in front of audiences, they needed someone to talk to, someone from the outside, someone who wasn't on that stage who could say, you know, I think that sketch is going too long, or why don't you invert this thing?

00:43:27Guest:Just little basic things, and I just sort of built a friendship with the group.

00:43:32Guest:Belushi was actually the first one who sort of befriended me, and that finally helped with everybody else.

00:43:39Guest:uh because belushi unlike his sort of reputation was actually very professional and um he was the one who was worried about that we didn't have enough signage right on the street and he would call me up on sunday and say look there's not enough advertising and uh we're not gonna make it and uh

00:43:59Guest:You know, the show turned out to be a big hit, and they were all extraordinary in it.

00:44:04Guest:Did you tour with it?

00:44:07Guest:We tried it out first in Toronto because we were booked into kind of a bar.

00:44:14Guest:You know, they did the first show, and the show went great.

00:44:17Guest:Mm-hmm.

00:44:17Guest:and that's the only show we had it was 90 it was about an hour long and um we thought they were going to clear the bar out and get a whole new group in right for the 10 o'clock show yeah lo and behold it's the same people it's like hey they're drinking they're not going anywhere and we're i remember we're sort of crowded into this little back room right and and

00:44:39Guest:Everybody's the same audience is still over there.

00:44:42Guest:I remember it was Harold, and I think I wrote about this after Harold passed away because it was such a remarkable thing to remember.

00:44:50Guest:Harold said, well, okay, so let's just do it again.

00:44:53Guest:Let's just change the punchlines.

00:44:55Guest:And they're going on in like 10 minutes.

00:44:57Guest:Right.

00:44:59Guest:And they all sort of looked, and it was an audacious thing to say.

00:45:02Guest:But everybody sort of calmed down and said, okay, yeah, that's a great idea.

00:45:06Guest:Let's just change all the punchlines.

00:45:08Guest:And it was like one of the greatest shows I had ever seen, that second show.

00:45:13Guest:Because it was funny in its whole new way, and it was remarkably funny if you had seen the first show and seen the turns on what... Because they not only sort of just changed it and made it funny in itself...

00:45:26Guest:It was funny because of what you remembered from the first show.

00:45:30Guest:Right, okay.

00:45:31Guest:It's like this remarkable, adroit kind of comedy mindset work in panic.

00:45:38Marc:Right, but so the audience that had actually seen it would have gotten more out of it than any audience would have.

00:45:43Guest:Yeah, so the ones who were not drunk, because some of them were so drunk, they said, hey man, we just saw this, and didn't actually hear the changes.

00:45:50Guest:The people who were paying attention, which was most of the audience,

00:45:53Guest:It was like one of those great events.

00:45:55Guest:And this is before, just at the beginning of the VCR era.

00:46:00Guest:So it was never recorded.

00:46:01Guest:It was never taped.

00:46:03Guest:And it's too bad because it was just the two shows together would have been a remarkable lesson in how to create comedy.

00:46:10Guest:And it was for you.

00:46:12Marc:And it certainly was for me.

00:46:13Marc:And the memory of it is crisp.

00:46:15Marc:It's a big memory.

00:46:17Marc:That was an amazing thing to witness.

00:46:19Marc:Yeah.

00:46:20Marc:Now, as you moved forward with this stuff, because it seems to me just talking to you, that you were always very adept and on top of the idea that film was a business.

00:46:29Marc:You're an entrepreneur, and making movies is a business.

00:46:32Marc:The art form of making movies is what it is, but you always wanted to make commercial movies.

00:46:39Guest:Well, particularly back then, there was no way to be...

00:46:42Guest:There was no way to be making films unless you had some kind of at least minor business understanding.

00:46:50Guest:You knew it was going to cost a lot of money.

00:46:53Guest:Right.

00:46:53Guest:Even if it was a million dollars, that's a ton of money.

00:46:55Guest:Right.

00:46:56Guest:And that was extraordinarily cheap.

00:46:58Guest:So you had to sort of find a way to convince people that it was worth it to make the investment, even if it wasn't a studio.

00:47:08Right.

00:47:08Marc:So now when you got Animal, how did your involvement, how did the Animal House evolve?

00:47:14Marc:That was the first big movie, right?

00:47:16Marc:What was that in the 70s?

00:47:18Marc:What was it?

00:47:18Guest:79 or so.

00:47:20Marc:Okay.

00:47:21Marc:Right before Meatballs.

00:47:22Guest:You know, what happened with Animal House, just if you remember my deal with Matty Simmons.

00:47:27Guest:Right.

00:47:27Guest:So Lorne Michaels, also a fellow Canadian, sort of shows up to the show and basically hires most of the cats.

00:47:34Guest:Hires Gilda.

00:47:35Guest:Your show.

00:47:35Guest:Yeah.

00:47:36Guest:Yeah.

00:47:36Guest:And he found many, many other wonderful people after as well.

00:47:40Guest:Yeah.

00:47:40Guest:And Bill Murray doesn't get on Saturday Night Live right away.

00:47:45Guest:He gets on another show with his brother, also called Saturday Night with Howard Cosell.

00:47:51Guest:And so the only person who didn't have a job was Harold.

00:47:56Guest:And I said, look, let's go write a movie.

00:48:01Guest:based on this show, because I knew that's the way that I get to be involved in some future National Lampoon film project.

00:48:09Guest:And so the conversion of that show first became, believe it or not, Charlie Manson in high school.

00:48:17Guest:And because it was high school, it involved Doug Kenney, who had written the high school yearbook

00:48:24Guest:That was a great parody.

00:48:25Guest:It was one of the great parodies that Lampoon ever put out, where I started my friendship with him.

00:48:33Guest:And then it became clear this was an extraordinarily hard-R, raunchy comedy, and we probably shouldn't set it in high school, that we should set it in college.

00:48:43Guest:And that's when Chris Miller became part of the writing team, because he had written these...

00:48:48Guest:Wonderful stories, but mostly about his life at Dartmouth, where the main character, Pinto, which is really him, and his adventures in mostly the frat house, in the Delta house.

00:49:06Guest:And so now we have Harold and Doug Kenney and Chris Miller, and really the result of that was Animal House.

00:49:15Guest:Wow.

00:49:16Guest:Which I wanted to direct.

00:49:17Guest:Wow.

00:49:17Guest:The studio was universal.

00:49:20Guest:They hated the scripts.

00:49:22Guest:And they finally got convinced to do it after a very long two-year gestation.

00:49:27Guest:And I said, please, I'd like to direct.

00:49:29Guest:I've been working on this for two years.

00:49:31Guest:I got John Belushi here, who was becoming famous as a result of his first year on Saturday Night Live.

00:49:37Guest:And they said, nah, because the only movie I'd done, Cannibal Girls, was not that impressive to them.

00:49:44Guest:Well, what had Landis done?

00:49:46Guest:Landis had done...

00:49:47Guest:He'd done Schlock, which was no better than Cannibal Girls.

00:49:50Guest:But just before Animal House, he had done really the movie with the Zucker Brothers, Kentucky Fried Movie.

00:49:59Guest:Oh, right.

00:49:59Guest:Which actually was quite a big hit.

00:50:01Guest:With Belzer and a bunch of other guys.

00:50:02Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:50:03Guest:And so the...

00:50:06Guest:You know, we checked him out, and we hired him.

00:50:12Guest:And he turned out to be great.

00:50:13Guest:He did a great job.

00:50:14Guest:You like him?

00:50:15Guest:Yeah, I like him.

00:50:16Guest:I think he had wonderful energy.

00:50:18Guest:You know, his tone is different than mine.

00:50:20Guest:Yeah.

00:50:21Guest:And had I been so fortunate to direct it...

00:50:27Guest:It would have been a different movie.

00:50:29Guest:I don't think it would have been as hard-edged and as physical as Animal House became.

00:50:36Guest:And I think Animal House was better for it.

00:50:40Guest:A little raw, more raw.

00:50:43Guest:And I think the combination of the two of us together on that was... And, of course, the brilliance of the writing.

00:50:51Guest:Because it was really one of the great...

00:50:53Guest:scripts that sort of created a new comedy language.

00:50:56Guest:Sure, it could change the game.

00:50:57Guest:It changed the game.

00:50:58Guest:You know, it was the first time the baby boomers were sort of speaking their own words, their own comedy words.

00:51:04Guest:It had already started before that film, but in serious movies.

00:51:09Guest:Movies like Easy Rider and Bonnie and Clyde all had sort of

00:51:15Guest:were kind of a fresh view on how movies would work.

00:51:19Guest:Right.

00:51:19Guest:But it was the first time somebody was... MASH was kind of a stepping stone movie a few years before, and then boom, there was something.

00:51:26Guest:And Paul Mazursky was doing stuff, but he really was war generation, not post-war generation.

00:51:31Guest:Right, right, right.

00:51:32Guest:animal house uh weirdly even though it was kind of a college picture set in 1962 written in 1978 77 um just sort of hit the button the baby boom generation were all just postgraduate and so it resonated in a whole new way it resonated with kids my age i mean you know 13 14 15 years old all the way through college yeah and it's

00:51:57Guest:you know wonderfully it's continued to resonate you know people still put it up as one of the great comedies and and still appreciate it and it was an extraordinary beginning for me and and and it set you moving towards i mean i i think stripes which you all you directed and did you produce that as well yeah that changed the game too i mean those were like that was a you know well then became

00:52:18Guest:i had a really hot run after that meatballs too yeah well meatballs was i saw oh god i you know the studio was paying no attention to me once it became clear that animal house was going to be a hit even though i'd worked on the movie and sort of really yeah a fought for it to get made and had a lot to do with the the writing of the script

00:52:39Guest:you know everybody else sort of got deals and um i said god i better start directing and i called my friends up from toronto who i'd gone to school with back at mcmaster and i said let's do a summer camp movie and we literally this was in march and we wrote in a couple months and we were shooting in july or end of july we started shooting a week before animal house came out and um that's how fast it was the turn around yeah and

00:53:05Guest:I called up Bill, who I knew from my show.

00:53:08Guest:He is yet to be on Saturday Night Live.

00:53:11Guest:He was going to be the new kid coming on.

00:53:13Guest:I think he had done one or two performances for Lauren during the year, that very first year, and then he was coming on as a full-time player.

00:53:21Marc:And a genius, comedy genius.

00:53:23Guest:Yeah.

00:53:23Guest:Very unique.

00:53:24Guest:Yeah, but Bill was busy golfing and playing softball, and he said, look, no thank you.

00:53:31Guest:And I said, please, you've got to help me on this.

00:53:35Guest:Right.

00:53:35Guest:He refused to agree until the day before I started shooting, and I refused to hire anybody else.

00:53:43Guest:And I think he took pity on me.

00:53:45Guest:Really?

00:53:46Guest:I don't know.

00:53:47Guest:But he finally agreed.

00:53:49Guest:It was a big movie for him.

00:53:51Guest:It was his first big movie.

00:53:54Guest:It turned out to be a real wonderful hit.

00:53:57Guest:Yeah.

00:53:58Guest:It was probably the most important movie for me because it was really the first real movie I directed.

00:54:03Yeah.

00:54:03Marc:And it sort of defined his early comedic persona.

00:54:06Guest:Yeah.

00:54:07Marc:Yeah, that lasted for years.

00:54:09Guest:Yeah, well, the combination of, I think, the movies that I directed, Meatballs, Stripes, and The Two Ghostbusters really kind of were part of it.

00:54:18Guest:And then the movies that Harold directed, you know...

00:54:22Guest:Groundhog Day, Caddyshack, that combination really set his comedic persona.

00:54:32Guest:We're all really fortunate to have gotten to work with him.

00:54:35Marc:Yeah, it's amazing to me that Animal House Stripes, Ghostbusters, that defined, and Groundhog Day, you and Harold defined what modern film comedy was for years.

00:54:45Guest:Thank you.

00:54:47Marc:Do you feel that?

00:54:48Marc:And I'm sure Harold thanks you as well.

00:54:49Marc:It's sad that he's gone, huh?

00:54:51Marc:Yeah.

00:54:52Marc:So now, how did you not end up producing with him?

00:54:55Marc:He was just running his own thing over there?

00:54:57Guest:Well, look, you know, I can understand it.

00:55:01Guest:Because I was producing and directing those movies that he was co-writing.

00:55:06Guest:Uh-huh.

00:55:06Guest:And I think he wanted to direct, and it was time for him to go out on his own and sort of build his own reputation.

00:55:13Guest:And so I think Caddyshack, he was in – I think he wrote Vacation first, actually, and that was the first – and I had nothing to do with that.

00:55:24Guest:And so he got on to sort of his own world with that film.

00:55:29Guest:That's another extraordinary movie he directed.

00:55:31Marc:And when you see yourself in your evolution as a filmmaker, I mean, obviously you're an amazing producer and you do both.

00:55:37Marc:It looks like you produce more than you direct in the overall picture, right?

00:55:41Guest:Yes.

00:55:42Marc:So I see on here that heavy metal was your production.

00:55:45Marc:And I remember seeing that when I was a kid, probably inappropriately.

00:55:48Marc:Yeah.

00:55:48Marc:And it was, yeah.

00:55:50Marc:And it was, you know, because it was 81.

00:55:52Marc:Well, I wasn't that young.

00:55:53Marc:I was graduating from high school, so that was about right.

00:55:57Marc:But, I mean, I remember that movie came out, the whole Ralph Bakshi thing, and then, you know, all those animators.

00:56:03Marc:I mean, how did you get involved with something like that?

00:56:06Marc:It seems like off the grid a little.

00:56:08Guest:Well, actually, the National Lampoon Magazine also published heavy metal.

00:56:13Guest:So one of the publishers called me and said, because I had done well with the Lampoon because of Animal House, he said, well, would you be interested in this?

00:56:24Guest:And I was.

00:56:25Guest:I was a fan of the magazine.

00:56:26Guest:I was a fan of the...

00:56:27Marc:Yeah, that was amazing stuff.

00:56:31Guest:Yeah, it was fun.

00:56:31Guest:And I basically directed that movie, even though I called myself.

00:56:36Guest:We had an animation director, but really I did all the voices.

00:56:41Guest:I got Candy in there as kind of the voice of Ben.

00:56:44Guest:Candy.

00:56:45Guest:It's just a wonderful time.

00:56:48Marc:Those guys were so good.

00:56:49Marc:It was such a generation of amazing comedians.

00:56:51Marc:It really was.

00:56:53Marc:So as your evolution as a filmmaker,

00:56:55Marc:When did you like because I can see like the you continue doing comedies, but then like something started to change a little bit.

00:57:02Marc:I mean, something got you got attracted to a different type of comedy eventually.

00:57:07Guest:Well, you know, you grow older and you shift and you try to do different things.

00:57:10Guest:So an early one for me was Legal Eagles with Robert Redford just after he'd won an Academy Award.

00:57:16Guest:you know for ordinary people and that was a handful yeah uh to direct and we had like three quarters of a wonderful script and it's three quarters of a wonderful movie and uh it was just really interesting to work with him and deborah winger and daryl hannah right as the stars of that film and um you know that was right after ghostbusters an odd thing to sort of do and it was it was kind of cool and

00:57:41Marc:And did you feel yourself changing in terms of moving away from schtick or from young people's movies necessarily?

00:57:49Marc:No.

00:57:50Guest:No, I mean, it was right after that I did Twins, which I certainly worked for young people as well as, you know, it was a kind of a...

00:57:59Guest:It was one of those silly ideas that sort of occurred because I met Arnold just after I did Ghostbusters.

00:58:06Guest:So I'm up in Aspen.

00:58:07Guest:He was skiing with his family as I was.

00:58:09Guest:Right.

00:58:10Guest:He said, oh, you're the Ghostbusters guy.

00:58:12Guest:And I said, yeah.

00:58:15Guest:I could be a Ghostbuster.

00:58:16Guest:And, you know, I took him at his word.

00:58:21Guest:Yeah.

00:58:23Guest:And Danny and I, DeVito, go way back when I was producing in Canada, and he was supposed to co-star in a film that I was producing, a kind of big-time action movie with Don Stroud and Brenda Vaccaro.

00:58:38Guest:Yeah.

00:58:38Guest:And he actually came up, and it was about the time he was doing...

00:58:44Guest:uh the great michael douglas produced film one flew over the cuckoo's nest and uh we couldn't get him into the country i mean we got him in the country but he wasn't allowed to work and so i had to turn him away and we became friends after that he had a good sense of humor about it

00:59:04Guest:Fortunately.

00:59:05Guest:And, you know, I saw him at one of these Disney cartoon events with his family and my young family.

00:59:13Guest:And he said, let's do a film now together.

00:59:17Guest:And it was just about the time I saw Schwarzenegger and I sort of...

00:59:21Marc:That was it, huh?

00:59:22Guest:Well, I started thinking about it, and I pitched an idea to a couple of writers.

00:59:29Guest:Yeah.

00:59:29Guest:I said, let's make them brothers.

00:59:31Guest:Yeah.

00:59:31Guest:I think I was the one who said twins.

00:59:33Guest:Yeah.

00:59:35Guest:And it went from there.

00:59:36Marc:When you look at it, because I talked to your son about this as well.

00:59:38Marc:I mean, because he did Dave, which I thought was a great movie.

00:59:41Marc:Thank you.

00:59:41Marc:And that was very well received, wasn't it?

00:59:43Guest:Yes, very well received.

00:59:43Marc:And when you look at a script that you don't write, you know, what is appealing to you?

00:59:50Marc:What makes you decide to do it?

00:59:54Guest:Well, it's like what happened on Draft Day.

00:59:56Guest:It's where I see characters that I sort of can get my head into and where there's both conflict and emotionality.

01:00:06Guest:And it doesn't necessarily have to be funny at all.

01:00:08Guest:I mean, Draft Day wasn't particularly funny when I read the screenplay.

01:00:13Yeah.

01:00:13Guest:Certainly Dave was.

01:00:16Guest:But I did a lot of work with Gary Ross, who wrote a wonderful initial draft, and then we worked together for about six months.

01:00:25Guest:And the same thing happened here on draft day.

01:00:26Guest:So I get myself very involved in...

01:00:30Guest:in the development of the script.

01:00:32Guest:But those are the two that I didn't get into right from the beginning.

01:00:36Guest:There were these wonderful gifts that came to me over the transom.

01:00:41Marc:And with something like, with draft day, I mean, you used a lot of great character actors surrounding Cosner.

01:00:50Yeah.

01:00:50Guest:I felt, you know, this has got to feel real.

01:00:53Guest:Yeah.

01:00:53Guest:You've got to feel like these guys belong in these rooms, that they know football.

01:00:57Guest:Right.

01:00:57Guest:That they have that call.

01:00:59Guest:It's a sound of a voice.

01:01:01Guest:Right.

01:01:02Guest:I think it's partially the musical background that I have.

01:01:05Guest:I actually listened to the Tambra.

01:01:08Guest:of how they speak.

01:01:09Guest:It's not even how good an actor they are, although that's really very important.

01:01:13Guest:But it's just the sound, the actual sound.

01:01:15Guest:It's what's remarkable about Costner.

01:01:18Guest:Costner is like Gary Cooper.

01:01:19Guest:He's got this all-American thing about him, and it's the way he delivers the lines, the actual sound of it.

01:01:27Guest:I remember the

01:01:29Guest:I remember one of the first times I was sitting around with him, I suddenly stopped and I said, God, you're so American.

01:01:36Guest:You represent really what we think of as the best.

01:01:40Guest:There's something really grounded and real and trustworthy and a kind of quiet dignity about him that has made all the roles that he's played really sing.

01:01:55Guest:And I thought that quality is what...

01:01:57Guest:This guy has to be, is a guy who's under amazing pressure, makes mistakes, but still is the kind of guy that men want to follow and women want to sleep with.

01:02:12Marc:Yeah, it's the compressed kind of character that he played.

01:02:17Marc:That, to me, is the most challenging thing to see an actor do, to hold back.

01:02:22Guest:you know because like he's got to hold back and and play his cards close to his chest through the whole movie and the relief of that at the end is is pretty phenomenal yeah and it's but it's also what real life is like you know most people don't get up and scream and pontificate and they're boring to watch anyway right um and to be with yeah and yeah

01:02:43Guest:So it's the quiet strength that we admire.

01:02:48Marc:Right.

01:02:48Marc:And now when you work with actors, I mean, do you have a method that you do or do you just trust them?

01:02:54Marc:I mean, how do you direct?

01:02:56Guest:I get involved.

01:02:58Guest:I think I've learned to sort of speak to actors.

01:03:05Guest:It's a process.

01:03:07Guest:It's different than blocking.

01:03:08Guest:I've never sort of focused on...

01:03:10Guest:It's probably because I didn't go to film school.

01:03:12Guest:I think my films are actually visually elaborate, more elaborate than most comedy filmmakers have been.

01:03:20Guest:I think Ghostbusters is a very elaborately designed film.

01:03:24Guest:And Draft Day, for a film that is really about people in rooms on telephones, is a very visually exciting film.

01:03:32Marc:You used an interesting device as some sort of sweep.

01:03:35Marc:It was almost like a take on the 70s stuff, the compartmentalizing of the screen.

01:03:40Guest:Well, because I had to create some kind of split-screen technique because there's a lot of phone calls.

01:03:47Guest:And just a standard split-screen where people are on two edges seemed like it would get very dull very quickly.

01:03:54Guest:So I just developed some new ideas.

01:03:57Guest:Using digital technology, I could take people out of their backgrounds.

01:04:01Guest:I could violate that line that we understand, oh, that's that place and that's that place, this other place.

01:04:07Marc:Yeah, they had some people sort of floating until they kind of came into place.

01:04:10Guest:Well, their elbows would go, and then suddenly their whole bodies were in this other room where the other guy was.

01:04:16Guest:And it's really what telephone calls, if you think of what a telephone call is, whether your eyes are open or closed and you're speaking,

01:04:25Guest:You know, your ear is just taking all this information, and it's as if you're in the place with this other person.

01:04:30Guest:And so for you, the phone call is quite intimate.

01:04:34Guest:If you're watching two people talk on a phone, it's just a kind of a dull thing.

01:04:39Guest:So I was trying to recreate...

01:04:42Guest:That sort of sense of seeing these people be together in an environment, in a single environment, and make that work even though they're in two places.

01:04:50Marc:Yeah, well, you put it that way.

01:04:51Marc:It was very effective.

01:04:52Marc:Because now, having just seen it two hours ago, and it's in my mind, that you did get the feel that they were engaged.

01:04:59Guest:Yeah, and we quickly learned that we could do things that, you know, we could invent our own stuff, which is a whole scene didn't have to be all that.

01:05:08Guest:We could just cut it in a traditional way and then suddenly go to that where it was most effective, that one guy could be on a wide shot and the other guy could be in a close-up.

01:05:18Guest:Right.

01:05:18Guest:We could sweep the screens across and now suddenly be in a different piece of coverage that could edit within one half of the scene and not...

01:05:27Guest:edit on the other side.

01:05:29Guest:And the most interesting thing for me was also when the scene was over, I could stay with both of them, even though they weren't talking to each other anymore.

01:05:37Guest:And because it allows the viewer to watch two responses to the same conversation and

01:05:44Guest:In their private moment.

01:05:46Guest:And because this is all about negotiations and what people are thinking and how people get affected emotionally through those kinds of things, it gave us a lot of internal emotional experience and knowledge by doing things like that.

01:06:03Guest:By being able to stay on the beats after.

01:06:06Marc:Yes.

01:06:07Marc:Which is interesting because there's a pivotal point in the movie where they have to watch footage to assess something that was suggested that they overlooked.

01:06:14Marc:That's right.

01:06:15Marc:The beat after the play.

01:06:16Marc:Yes.

01:06:17Marc:So the thought processes around creativity as a director has got to be running on a lot of levels.

01:06:24Guest:Yeah, I mean, and part of it is just instinctive, you know.

01:06:28Guest:I mean, we figured this out as we were doing it.

01:06:31Guest:And I had a sort of very early take on it done by these brilliant designers.

01:06:37Guest:And I said, wow, there's just so much opportunity in it.

01:06:40Guest:And it really encouraged me to shoot in a certain kind of way.

01:06:44Marc:Right.

01:06:44Marc:And are you a football fan?

01:06:46No.

01:06:46Guest:Yeah.

01:06:47Guest:Yeah, I mean, I'm not one of those statistical guys who knows every player and how they did.

01:06:52Guest:I mean, I basically know the rules, and I follow the teams, and I bet on the games on Sundays.

01:06:59Guest:I have a group of guys.

01:07:00Guest:We hang out together on Sunday mornings up in Santa Barbara, and they've been doing it for about 25, 26 years.

01:07:07Guest:I've been involved for about 18 years with them, and it's a remarkable group of very sort of –

01:07:15Guest:successful men from all walks of life.

01:07:18Marc:It's amazing to me because I don't watch sports at all.

01:07:21Marc:It's not part of my life at all.

01:07:23Marc:And I was completely engaged in the movie.

01:07:26Marc:I love to hear that.

01:07:26Marc:And I got choked up.

01:07:28Guest:And I hope your audience will hear it as well.

01:07:30Marc:you know i'm i'm also a guy like i like you know as whatever i claim to be well it's not a matter of whatever i claim to be i mean i like uh you know arty things but i also like you know i you know i cried at the right places there you know and there was moments where i wanted to you know ask you where are you aware of where you know like all right this is where we're gonna get the tears

01:07:53Guest:No, not that way.

01:07:56Guest:I'm aware that certain scenes have an emotional impact, and I go for them.

01:08:01Guest:I mean, I'm sort of an old-fashioned guy in terms of, I think, I believe in a certain kind of structure in the storytelling.

01:08:13Guest:But I shake it up, and I...

01:08:16Guest:And I, you know, I'm optimistic about, you know, about humankind.

01:08:23Guest:Yeah.

01:08:23Guest:I think it's come from what my background is and with my parents.

01:08:30Guest:And so my stories tend to be uplifting, even if they're raunchy or goofy or silly.

01:08:36Guest:Right.

01:08:38Guest:There's a kind of certain structure that I've...

01:08:41Guest:I mean, I didn't even notice it.

01:08:42Guest:I wasn't conscious of it, but I suddenly, as I started to evaluate what I've done over these years, you become more aware.

01:08:50Guest:Oh, yeah, you're sort of doing that.

01:08:52Guest:And I just try to focus the moments.

01:08:57Guest:I think a good director needs to focus his moments and build them.

01:09:01Marc:Yeah, well, I mean, I talked to your son about it, and he emotionally does not play in the same ballpark that you did.

01:09:07Guest:Not at all, no.

01:09:08Marc:But he's compelled by like, you know, when you talk to him, as I'm sure you have, you know, he says he'll find a moment that resonates the sort of, you know, grotesque but beautiful nature of human beings and celebrate those things and challenge himself to shed light in the darkness of characters that are hobbled.

01:09:29Marc:Yes.

01:09:31Marc:And celebrate them.

01:09:32Yeah.

01:09:32Guest:and you know but clearly his his you know love of narrative it has to come from you in some way do you think i would hope so but i think a movie like young adult um uh which i think is just like this really brilliant movie that he did and i mean it's it's just looking into this broken alcoholic

01:09:55Guest:a woman brilliantly played by Charlize Theron and um you know he wrote that and he just I think he just did it it's such a special film it's not a film that I could do yeah you know I mean I I could get the performance yeah but it's really not in my DNA and it's not who I became um as a result of the way

01:10:18Guest:You know, I grew up and the struggle that I had to go through, which was a totally different struggle than he had to.

01:10:25Guest:He had to sort of overcome a kind of, you know, successful dad and living with success in his life and not becoming a fucked up kid, you know.

01:10:35Guest:Yeah.

01:10:35Guest:And he's just a great guy.

01:10:38Guest:All our children, knock wood, have turned out good.

01:10:41Marc:Yeah.

01:10:42Guest:He did something right.

01:10:44Guest:I think it was mom.

01:10:45Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:10:45Guest:He did something right.

01:10:47Guest:Yeah.

01:10:48Marc:But you did produce Up in the Air for your son.

01:10:50Guest:Yes.

01:10:51Guest:It was the first time and actually the only time we technically worked together.

01:10:54Guest:And it was a really good experience for both of us, I think.

01:11:01Guest:I don't know what he said.

01:11:02Marc:No, no, of course.

01:11:03Marc:I think that the interesting thing about him, and it was completely coincidental that I talked to him, is that there's an amazing amount of respect for you, but also he hears everything you say.

01:11:14Marc:And he has absolute appreciation and respect for your wisdom in producing and directing.

01:11:22Marc:And he's going to filter that through.

01:11:24Marc:Like, none of it's lost on him.

01:11:26Guest:Yes, no, but it has to go through his instrument.

01:11:28Guest:Right.

01:11:29Guest:The most critical moment in our relationship, both as producer-director on that film and the really...

01:11:38Guest:as father son came in the middle of that movie or during the editing process where i was being a little critical of him and i was sort of fighting too hard and he suddenly stopped and he said you're being too rough on me you're not treating me with enough respect and i looked at him like what

01:11:56Guest:I talk like this to all the guys.

01:11:59Guest:And I said, no, other producers I've worked with have treated me with more respect.

01:12:05Guest:And it broke my heart.

01:12:08Guest:But I stopped, and I really paid attention.

01:12:11Guest:I realized, oh, I'm talking presumptuously like his dad.

01:12:17Guest:And that's not the relationship here.

01:12:19Guest:He's this extraordinary director that you're lucky enough to produce.

01:12:23Guest:And he's written this brilliant movie.

01:12:27Guest:We're in the middle of it.

01:12:28Guest:And you should pay more attention and treat him.

01:12:31Guest:And I probably wouldn't speak to directors of his caliber

01:12:35Guest:the way it was.

01:12:38Guest:And it was like this two-hour conversation we had in the middle of a day where we ended up both crying.

01:12:45Guest:It makes me emotional just thinking about it right now.

01:12:48Guest:And it was a big turning point.

01:12:51Guest:And we both actually started listening in a different way.

01:12:55Guest:I think he shifted as well as a result of the conversation.

01:13:00Guest:And

01:13:01Guest:And I found that since then, and our relationship was always good.

01:13:05Guest:I mean, we've had our normal strain moments, you know, when he was a younger guy and, you know, when you're going through high school and the stuff that you get into.

01:13:15Marc:He talked about dating that woman for years.

01:13:17Guest:Yeah, right.

01:13:21Guest:You'll have to explain that.

01:13:23Guest:But this was kind of this lovely adult moment between us that just has helped us.

01:13:33Guest:And it was a two-hour conversation.

01:13:35Guest:Yeah, at least.

01:13:36Guest:I remember being out in the parking lot and both of us bawling and sort of speaking just in a very direct, honest way to each other.

01:13:46Marc:Uh-huh.

01:13:47Marc:And there was no shouting, no?

01:13:50Guest:No, quite the opposite.

01:13:51Guest:Right, right.

01:13:52Guest:I think we both wanted to hear each other and to understand each other.

01:13:55Guest:And I think there was a remarkable understanding, actually, finally.

01:14:01Guest:But it had to get out in the open.

01:14:02Guest:And he was brave enough to confront me at that moment.

01:14:07Guest:And I guess I was brave enough to sort of admit when I was wrong.

01:14:10Marc:Wow.

01:14:11Marc:Yeah.

01:14:12Marc:And could you see yourself working together again now?

01:14:15Yeah.

01:14:15Guest:Oh, I love it.

01:14:16Guest:And we do in a kind of unofficial capacity.

01:14:20Guest:I think, you know, much like the relationship with Harold Ramis back at the beginning and after those movies where he had – I think he felt that he had to at least initially build his brand and build his own legacy and his own –

01:14:36Guest:most importantly, his own identity.

01:14:40Guest:And it was such an important part of it.

01:14:43Guest:It was important for him to realize there was no nepotism involved in his life, that he fought for everything.

01:14:49Guest:And he really did.

01:14:49Guest:I mean, when I think of the things that I did for him, yes, I got to produce something there, but that was a gift to me.

01:14:56Guest:I think he had talked to me two years prior.

01:15:01Guest:I think it was about the time he did Thank You for Smoking.

01:15:04Guest:He said, you know, I've...

01:15:06Guest:He always was encouraging me to do sort of more serious work because he felt that I could do it, and I was very happy when I did Dave, and he was extraordinarily happy when I found Draft Day.

01:15:17Guest:He loved that script and thought it would be a great thing for me to do at this time.

01:15:22Guest:But prior to that, just before he started Juno, he had found this book up in the air and he said, you should direct this.

01:15:29Guest:You should go turn this into a movie and go buy it.

01:15:32Guest:And so I did.

01:15:33Guest:I read it and I didn't really understand it or the way the book was, which is quite different than what the movie is.

01:15:41Guest:Right.

01:15:41Guest:We hired a bunch of really fancy writers, none of them who could get it at all.

01:15:48Guest:And we went through two or three drafts, spent quite a lot of money, and could never get it right.

01:15:54Guest:And I remember at the Toronto Film Festival, right after Juno had premiered,

01:15:59Guest:I knew he was ready for something else, and I saw him for dinner after the premiere, and I said, I think you should do Up in the Air.

01:16:08Guest:You clearly love it.

01:16:09Guest:You get it.

01:16:10Guest:I don't get it.

01:16:11Guest:I mean, I get it.

01:16:13Guest:I think I get it in terms of what you want to do with it, but I have not been able to find someone who can write it.

01:16:20Guest:So why don't you give it a shot?

01:16:22Guest:And he thought about it for about a week.

01:16:25Guest:And he said, OK, I'm going to give it a try.

01:16:27Guest:And he wrote a draft in like 40 days.

01:16:31Guest:It was so much better than anything we'd slaved over for a couple of years.

01:16:36Guest:And it was just brilliant.

01:16:39Guest:I said, we've got to do this.

01:16:40Guest:And we showed it to the studio.

01:16:42Guest:They got it right away.

01:16:43Guest:And we made the film.

01:16:45Marc:That's an amazing story.

01:16:46Marc:It's got me choked up.

01:16:48Marc:It really is.

01:16:51Marc:And just to hear the mutual respect that he gave to you when I talked to him and going back like that, I can't imagine the pride and depth of the relationship.

01:17:06Marc:It's a beautiful thing.

01:17:07Marc:It doesn't happen too often.

01:17:08Guest:no i guess not yeah so you look forward to working with him again if you can yes i'd like to work with my daughter katherine is like this brilliant actress comedian um who's just on the cusp of being sort of getting that right part that where people can see it and um you know she's gotten close a bunch of times and uh uh

01:17:30Guest:I would love to be that director, but I'm worried that it'll sort of, you know, that whole nepotism, it'll be too weird.

01:17:36Guest:It'll be, it will not help her.

01:17:38Marc:It'll put a stink on it.

01:17:39Guest:Yeah.

01:17:40Guest:So you got to wait it out.

01:17:42Marc:Got to wait it out, I think.

01:17:43Marc:But she's got the stuff.

01:17:44Marc:That's great.

01:17:45Marc:And do you think that you did draft day because of Jason's encouragement?

01:17:49Marc:Do you think that he gave you confidence in that?

01:17:51Guest:No, I mean, that just was good news, you know.

01:17:54Guest:That he was into it?

01:17:54Guest:Yeah, that was kind of like – just helped me be more confident about the choice.

01:18:02Guest:But I think I had – I read the script in the middle of the night, and it was just like something I got from my agent, which never happens.

01:18:11Guest:I mean, I get scripts, but never –

01:18:13Guest:Something that I couldn't put down.

01:18:14Guest:And I read it in about an hour.

01:18:17Guest:And I knew by the time I finished reading it that I wanted to make it.

01:18:20Guest:I wanted to direct it.

01:18:22Guest:And the writers, they live out of town, but they happen to be in the city.

01:18:26Guest:And I met with them two days later.

01:18:28Guest:And first words out of my mouth is, look, I don't know how, but somehow I want to direct this.

01:18:32Guest:I'm going to make it.

01:18:33Guest:And I got actually Paramount at the time, bought it on my behalf.

01:18:39Guest:And we worked on it a little bit.

01:18:41Guest:And then finally, we got the script where I wanted to shoot it.

01:18:44Guest:which was about three or four months later, and got Costner to want to do it.

01:18:48Guest:And Paramount, in their wisdom, decided to put in a turnaround.

01:18:53Guest:And fortunately, Lionsgate fell in love with it as well, and we just made it.

01:18:58Guest:You got a great supporting cast.

01:19:00Marc:You got Leary in there.

01:19:01Guest:You got Dennis Leary, wow.

01:19:03Marc:What a talent.

01:19:04Marc:Yeah, he produced my show, my TV show, him and Jim.

01:19:08Marc:Oh, good.

01:19:09Marc:Yeah, yeah.

01:19:11Marc:But when he's cast right, it's spectacular.

01:19:13Marc:You know what I mean?

01:19:15Marc:It was like a nice, big, meaty meal for him.

01:19:18Marc:Yeah.

01:19:19Guest:Yeah.

01:19:20Guest:And there's something.

01:19:21Guest:Speaking of music.

01:19:22Guest:Yeah.

01:19:23Guest:You know, there's something in the musical rhythms between the way he talks and the way Costner talks.

01:19:28Guest:Yeah.

01:19:29Guest:They just make those scenes delicious.

01:19:31Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:19:32Guest:They're really great.

01:19:33Marc:It was an honor talking to you.

01:19:35Marc:So much fun.

01:19:36Marc:And I'm glad I got to meet father and son in two days.

01:19:39Marc:Ah, thank you.

01:19:40Marc:Yeah.

01:19:40Guest:He had a good time.

01:19:41Guest:I know he called me up this afternoon and said, hey, I hear you're doing it.

01:19:45Guest:I just did it.

01:19:46Guest:Oh, yeah, great.

01:19:48Marc:No, it was beautiful.

01:19:49Marc:Thank you, Mr. Reitman.

01:19:50Marc:Thank you.

01:19:53Bye.

01:19:55Bye.

01:19:56Marc:Okay, folks, that's it.

01:19:57Marc:That's our show.

01:19:58Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.

01:20:02Marc:I will be in Raleigh, North Carolina at Good Nights tomorrow night, Friday the 18th and Saturday the 19th.

01:20:08Marc:I will be at the Trippany House at the Steve Allen Theater April 22nd and 29th.

01:20:13Marc:Those are Tuesdays.

01:20:15Marc:You can get my book, Attempting Normal, at booksellers everywhere.

01:20:19Marc:And now, hang out, all right, because I got to set up the Vomit Cannon, which is great radio.

01:20:28Marc:Boomer lives!

01:20:40Boomer lives!