BONUS WTF Collections - Making Movies
Guest:Hey, Full Marin listeners, it's Brendan, the producer of WTF.
Guest:And we thought we'd give you a nice little distraction for an episode posting on Election Day here in the U.S.
Guest:And if you listen to the Friday show here on the bonus feed, you know how much I love movies.
Guest:Obviously, Mark does, too.
Guest:And I started thinking about this episode.
Guest:particular episode when I was seeing commercials for Gladiator 2 coming out and every time I saw anything having to do with Gladiator 2 it always made me smile and I had a little chuckle about it because it made me think of an episode we did with the musician Nick Cave
Guest:back in 2013.
Guest:If you remember that episode, you know exactly why, because you'll never forget it.
Guest:Basically, Nick tells a story about being asked to write Gladiator 2 way back in the day when Russell Crowe was still involved with the project.
Guest:And I've always loved the story so much, especially because it was really the first time he had ever talked about it.
Guest:Like, if you Google Gladiator 2 Nick Cave, like, right now...
Guest:Anything written about it refers back to this episode.
Guest:So I just wanted to kind of enshrine that moment as this new Gladiator 2 movie was coming out.
Guest:And I thought about doing one of these little WTF collections where we kind of take a theme and find things from other episodes and put them together.
Guest:And I think it's a good time to play some other behind-the-scenes stories from the making of several beloved movies from past guests that we've had on the show.
Guest:So after this clip here with Nick Cave, I'll explain to you what we're going to hear from Michael Keaton, Mike Myers, and Mel Brooks.
Guest:And without further ado, this is the Gladiator 2 story from episode 403 with Nick Cave.
Marc:I have this weird idea that everyone who comes from Australia at a certain level of celebrity has to know each other.
Marc:Do you know Russell Crowe?
Guest:I do know Russell, yeah.
Guest:I know Russell really well.
Marc:You do?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How'd that come about?
Guest:He read the script of The Proposition, which is a film I wrote with John Hillcoat, which is Australian Western, which he championed and was almost in, but that didn't work out.
Guest:You know, that didn't work out, but eventually he rang me up at home and asked me if I wanted to write Gladiator 2.
Marc:Of course, you know, if you want that movie, who are you going to go to?
Guest:Nick Cave is the guy.
Guest:Which for someone who had only written one film script was quite an ask.
Guest:Did you do it?
Guest:I did, yeah.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:And what happened with that script?
Guest:It ended up, you know, in everyone's... Yeah, it didn't make it.
Guest:It didn't sit like that.
Guest:When you did something like that, what did you bring to that?
Guest:I mean, what was the story for the second Gladiator?
Guest:Well, that's where it all went wrong.
Guest:You know, very briefly, it was Russell Crowe, wait, because I'm like, hey, Russell, didn't you die in Gladiator 1?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah, you sort that out.
Guest:So he goes to purgatory and is sent down by the gods who are dying in heaven because there's this one God, there's this Christ character down on earth.
Yeah.
Guest:who is gaining popularity, and so the many gods are dying, and so they send Gladiator back to kill Christ and all his followers.
Guest:And so this was already getting in.
Guest:I wanted to call it Christ killer.
Guest:LAUGHTER
Guest:And in the end, you find out that the main guy was his son.
Guest:So he has to kill his son and he's tricked by the gods and all of this sort of stuff.
Guest:So it ends with this, he becomes this eternal warrior and it ends with this 20 minute war sequence that follows all the wars of history right up to Vietnam and that sort of stuff.
Wow.
Guest:And it was wild.
Guest:That is wild.
Guest:Russian tanks.
Guest:So that was the last third of the movie?
Guest:That was the last thing.
Guest:Wow, that sounds amazing.
Guest:Yeah, it was a stone-cold masterpiece.
Guest:And how did Russell Crowe react to that when he read that draft?
Guest:I said, what did you think?
Guest:Don't like it, mate.
LAUGHTER
Guest:What about the end?
Guest:Don't like it, mate.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:That was Nick Cave from episode 403.
Guest:And another one of my favorite WTF episodes is number 349 with Michael Keaton.
Guest:And again, there are stories in this episode that I believe were told by Michael Keaton for the very first time, or at least in detail for the first time.
Guest:And that includes him explaining the origins of both Beetlejuice and his portrayal of Batman.
Guest:So take a listen.
Guest:Let's get to the fucking movie star shit.
Guest:So I'm doing this thing, this television show.
Guest:If you don't mind.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:And the guy goes...
Guest:And hey, man, you know, he went to Ron Howard and said, I'm working with this guy.
Guest:He's really funny.
Guest:And I know you're, hey, you have that movie.
Guest:You ought to see him.
Guest:So there's a night shift.
Guest:So I went over to, and I had already started, I think I shot a little short film.
Guest:That I wanted to put together because I was already thinking I want to direct these things or write my own stuff.
Guest:And I got very lazy about that, to be honest with you.
Guest:Now, not so much.
Guest:But anyway, so I go down and I audition for this movie and it goes well.
Guest:And they say, OK, you got to come back.
Guest:And I think there were a ton of auditions.
Guest:I forget how many I went through, six or something like that.
Guest:For Night Shift?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It kept coming back, kept coming back.
Guest:And they were trying to figure it out.
Guest:It was brutal.
Guest:And it was really nerve wracking.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then it happened and I got it.
Guest:And then that spawned a couple other things.
Guest:And they wanted me to do Splash after that, which was, I never saw all of it.
Guest:I'm sure it was very good.
Guest:And the reason I didn't do it was I wanted to lay down something.
Guest:Like, I guess the way people used to put albums together or something.
Guest:You know, I wanted to lay down something that I said, no, no, I want to move over in this direction.
Guest:I did Mr. Mom, and I said, because... That was huge!
Guest:Yeah, it was huge.
Guest:And, you know, that's funny, because he was really something, man.
Guest:He was really...
Guest:really funny he he i read that thing and i'm sitting in uh my house on the valley and i read and there got one got to one point and i went yeah i laughed out loud and i saw it and then he hit another one i went oh man i said you know this thing might really work i gotta go meet this guy so so instead of doing splash where i thought i'm going to be kind of at in the same kind of world i don't want to do that i want to move over to this same kind of world as night shift like a sort of broad comedy
Guest:Yeah, I wanted to move over and then say, at least I'll lay down something where I got a little bit of room here.
Guest:I can go here or here or here.
Guest:And then I moved and I did something totally different after that.
Marc:So your fear was to be typecast as a wacky leading man?
Guest:Yes, or the glib young boy.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And that's exactly what would have happened.
Guest:Because then you can do well and make a lot of dough, but you're kind of fucked up.
Marc:You're in that same situation that you're afraid of with that sitcom, which is like, these are your choices.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They're going to pay you real well to repeat that thing you do.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You know, go, come on, clown.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I, you know, it can be a, you know, you should, I should be so lucky, right?
Guest:I mean, you know, it had nothing to do with me not being grateful or excited.
Guest:I thought, I want to go, you know, I'm going to go for the whole thing here.
Guest:And yeah.
Guest:And hopefully it works, you know.
Marc:But Beetlejuice was, like, fucking... Like, Mr. Mom was huge.
Marc:I mean, you know, people still talk about it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:If you bring it up.
Marc:It became part of the nomenclature, actually.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That word, yeah.
Marc:He's a Mr. Mom.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then Beetlejuice was just fucking out of left field.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, that... Like, when you got... How did you meet Tim Burton, and what was that thing like?
Guest:Because he was out there, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How it happened was Geffen came and said...
Guest:I want you to meet this guy, Tim Burton.
Guest:So you were already huge.
Guest:If Jeffen's coming and asking you to meet Tim Burton, you were like a major property.
Guest:Yeah, probably.
Guest:I guess so, yeah.
Guest:And he goes, I go, okay.
Guest:Because Tim had done this thing called Frankenweenie that people really took notice of.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they said, this guy's got something.
Guest:He's a comer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then he created something else.
Guest:I forget.
Guest:Oh, he did peeweed.
Guest:So I meet him.
Guest:And I didn't really understand what he was talking about.
Guest:I didn't understand what the concept... He was trying to explain the character he had thought of, and he had this script that a guy gave him, but he said... And he couldn't really describe the guy.
Guest:And so it was a fine meeting, and I told David, and somebody else said, you know, I don't know how to do this, and I don't know what it is.
Guest:He was a really nice guy, but I really don't know how to do it.
Guest:And they said, no, no, no, just hang in there.
Guest:And he talked me into meeting him again, or somebody did.
Guest:So he said, okay.
Guest:I went and met him again.
Guest:Still didn't get it.
Guest:Not that he was... I just went, I don't get what... It was so not what it... Well, it is what... I'm sure it ended up in what Tim had in his head, basically.
Guest:But originally the guy, he described... He had a little sketch that was kind of like some of his cowboy sketches or something.
Guest:He had a conceit of the thing, but it wasn't even a guy.
Guest:It was like a concept of something.
Guest:So after two, I think two meetings or three meetings or something, I said, I really like this guy.
Guest:You know, he's...
Guest:Really imaginative, but I don't know.
Guest:And then he said something in the one meeting that made me, that took hold.
Guest:And it was something like, you know, he probably lives in all time.
Guest:He's from no time.
Guest:He's from every time.
Guest:He's lived in all time periods or something.
Guest:And I don't know why that stuck with me.
Guest:But I thought, you know, maybe I should think about this.
Guest:So I said to him, okay, you know what?
Guest:Let me at least go home and think about it.
Guest:We were in a Mexican restaurant down on Lincoln Boulevard down in Santa Monica.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I called, I had this idea and I called the wardrobe department.
Guest:I think it, uh, I forget what studio.
Guest:And I said, Hey, would you do me a favor?
Guest:Could, could I get like clothes from every time period, you know, all kinds of different things.
Guest:And, and, and, and I got a rack of them and I brought them to the house.
Guest:And he said, you know, he, he won't, he gave me another hint of, uh, of he kind of, he lives in some, he must've said something that made me get this idea of mold, you know, I said, so I'm, I'm home by myself and I'm thinking about this and I'm, uh,
Guest:I start to do this walk and this voice, and I thought, ah, you know what?
Guest:I'd like to have teeth.
Guest:Like, you can't tell, but the teeth were not only fucked up, they were just a tiny bit larger.
Guest:I wanted to put these things in, they were just tiny, because there was something about him being...
Guest:like goofy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That made it even more dangerous.
Guest:You know, if you run into some guy who's nuts and then he's kind of like goofy too, that's really scary, you know?
Guest:So I wanted to be kind of scary and dangerous, but funny.
Guest:And I thought, you know what?
Guest:I'm going to just pull up, pull everything out here.
Guest:I'm going to commit.
Guest:Like what I like about Marty short is,
Guest:You could actually look at Marty sometime and go, he's so, not old-fashioned, he's like an old-time big kind of show, but it so works, his silliness so works.
Guest:Yeah, he's a one-man show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it's like... It's so great.
Marc:The history of show business.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Every time he opens his mouth.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I thought, well, I'm going to go full out.
Guest:So I'm walking around my house, and I said, I'm going to create a walk and a thing, and I was looking at these different pieces, and I put that little thing that I thought was really kind of...
Guest:that had that said guide on it.
Guest:I thought, ooh, this is kind of out there.
Guest:You know, guide to what?
Guest:So that was all you.
Guest:That was.
Guest:And then I talked to him and I said, I want hair.
Guest:I said, this guy, I said, I'm going to start here.
Guest:Did you ever see that thing Mel Brooks used to do where he says, huh?
Guest:It was really a funny bit he used to have her and say,
Guest:Ladies and gentlemen, he's a singer.
Guest:He says, dancing in the dark.
Guest:But he starts so high, he's got nowhere to go.
Guest:Dancing in the dark.
Guest:And then that's because the song goes up and he used to go, oh, fuck, I started too high.
Guest:I can't go up higher than that.
Guest:So I said, I'm going to go up at that level.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm going up higher and I'm never coming off of it.
Guest:And I don't know if it's going to work or not.
Guest:Because Tim and I kind of discussed it.
Guest:And then I said, he should be like, every day, you know, he gets up and sticks his hand in a socket and just goes, poof.
Guest:And he just works.
Guest:So I said, let's make hair that sticks out here.
Guest:And then this great V-Neal, this great makeup artist and I started putting together mold.
Guest:I said, I want mold down my neck.
Guest:We had never done it.
Guest:I'd never done it until the first day.
Guest:I didn't know if it was going to work.
Guest:And then I showed up on the set.
Guest:And this is really interesting.
Guest:The crew saw me.
Guest:And I have no idea why, because they didn't know what I was going to do, and I wasn't even sure what I was going to do was going to work.
Guest:And they started going, juice, juice, juice, juice, juice.
Guest:It was this really funny thing.
Guest:And I just fully committed.
Guest:I said, I'm going to be, this is going to die, or this is going to work.
Guest:And Tim's so great, because when he saw it, he went...
Guest:yes he says that that that he said let's do that and let's do that i mean he had some general yeah obviously ideas about yeah but the whole conceit yeah or the look and then when you walk on i saw the set in the world i went and then he had explained he said okay your head's gonna shrink and then it's gonna spin around and i said
Guest:Okay, now I get what this guy's doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:I mean, I started to really get it, but then I went, oh, man, this is out there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then it was just huge.
Marc:It fucking rocked.
Guest:It rocked.
Guest:And then it was so fun.
Guest:And there was nothing ever been that's like it.
Guest:There's just nothing comparable.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:And I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about what he did.
Marc:And just to deal with a guy at that kind of creativity, that he's his own thing.
Marc:And that was really sort of the beginning of it.
Marc:And that sort of blossomed into whatever he becomes.
Marc:He's a visionary.
Marc:He totally is.
Marc:So that thing killed, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he comes and says, hey, a little bit of time goes in.
Guest:He says, I want to talk to you about something.
Guest:And this was gutsy on his part.
Guest:He said, I'm doing Batman.
Guest:And he goes, would you read the script?
Guest:He said, I don't want to talk about it too much, but just read it, and then I want to talk to you after.
Guest:So I'm reading it, and I go... And even I thought, I know a concept of what Batman... Because I didn't really think I was familiar with the...
Guest:The TV show?
Guest:Yeah, I was familiar with the TV show, but I didn't know the whole comic, you know, the pulpy part of it.
Guest:The nerd world?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But here's what he did.
Guest:He said, but read this one, which was the Frank Miller thing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And which was- Dark Knight Returns?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I went, whoa, this is interesting.
Guest:The look of it and the colors and the thing.
Guest:So I went and read it and I went, well, I'm not, this ain't going to work, but because I read it and I said-
Guest:Yeah, let's go have coffee.
Guest:So we're sitting there talking, and I go, you want me to just talk to you?
Guest:And I think this is going to be over 10, 15 minutes.
Guest:He's going to go, well, I don't know about that.
Guest:And everything I said, his head was nodding like this.
Guest:And what was it?
Guest:What was it?
Guest:He's ridiculously depressed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's vigilante.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's got this issue.
Guest:It's so obvious, you know, and then that's what, but I thought, yeah, that's interesting if you're thinking that as an actor, but nobody's going to make that.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:And then he goes, yeah, that's what I want to do.
Guest:That's exactly what I want to do.
Guest:And I thought, oh, really?
Guest:And I go, whoa, dude.
Guest:And then I said, okay, well, whatever, let me know.
Guest:And then that started happening and we started doing that and he just had such a clear take on it.
Guest:That really changed everything.
Guest:If you look at the colors of those kind of big movies.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It was like an opera.
Guest:Like an opera.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so your decision to build the character out from that pain.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then sort of manifest it with, you know, you're naturally sort of.
Guest:But you know what you'll get?
Guest:Like, this is the truth.
Guest:I've not seen, I've seen bits of the guy who's doing them now, Chris Nolan.
Guest:I just watched it.
Guest:He's so talented.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:And the actor's so talented.
Guest:I'm sure... Christian Bale.
Guest:Yeah, and if you look at all that stuff, you go, it's so good.
Guest:But I say that like I've seen them, and I actually haven't, because I didn't even see much of the second one I did, but...
Guest:You know, you look at where he went, which is exactly what I wanted to do when I was having meetings about the third one.
Guest:I said, you want to see how this guy started?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We got a chance here to fix whatever we kind of maybe went off.
Guest:This could be brilliant.
Guest:Didn't want to do it.
Guest:So I didn't want to do it.
Guest:Tim didn't?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Tim was out.
Guest:This was a new director.
Guest:Oh, Schumacher.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I could see that was going south.
Marc:He didn't want to commit to the character you had built.
Marc:Well, I think honestly, and I'm saying this really, you were the best Batman.
Marc:Oh, thanks.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because there was some part of your natural balance.
Marc:There was no comedy to it.
Marc:But there's an instinct that you have.
Guest:You got it.
Guest:That's what I was going to say to you.
Guest:I was going to say, you'll get this.
Guest:Because I saw a little bit on the plane the other day, and it's really good.
Guest:The new one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's not that I wanted to be funny.
Guest:I just thought, it's not interesting if the guy is just really this thing all the time.
Guest:It's like there's no place to go.
Guest:As an example, and Tim was so good about it, I said, there's that scene where I have her over for dinner, and I'm thinking...
Guest:I remember Tim saying, this guy's got a lot on his plate.
Guest:And I went, oh, yeah.
Guest:So I started working for that.
Guest:I thought, wow, what's it like when you have a lot on your plate and it happened to be this guy and you saw your parents killed?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that scene where I invite her over to the dinner and I said, hey, you know what we ought to do here?
Guest:I'm going to sit here and she should sit all the way so we can see how huge, how lonely this fucking thing is.
Marc:It's like Citizen Kane.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Like when the table keeps growing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The difference.
Marc:Oh, I didn't even think of that.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So I said, there's a line.
Guest:And I said, hey, how about if I say this?
Guest:And he was great.
Guest:He said, that's a great idea.
Guest:I said, she said, this is a great room or whatever she says.
Guest:And I go, yeah.
Guest:And I go, and I look around and I go, I don't think I've ever been in this room before.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Like you laughing right there.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And that made it weirdly made all the other shit even better, even darker.
Guest:It goes, ooh, that guy's kind of off.
Guest:I mean, he's off.
Guest:Or the whole hanging thing like was not in it.
Guest:And I said, he had a hang like a bat.
Guest:Like he can't go to sleep till he hangs.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah, because he's in it too.
Marc:He's got to be in the character that he's playing.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:Because he's playing the character.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:Well, that was fucking genius.
Guest:Okay, episode 349 with Michael Keaton.
Guest:And this next one is kind of a forgotten classic, I think.
Guest:I don't hear people talk about this one a lot.
Guest:They don't refer to it.
Guest:Maybe it has to do with some of these projects not being as culturally prominent as they were before.
Guest:Back maybe 10, 15 years ago.
Guest:But Mike Myers, you know, he sat and talked with Mark for about two hours.
Guest:And this is just a full career overview about a lot of different projects.
Guest:But most specifically in this episode, number 518, Mike tells the entire story from beginning to end of the creation of Wayne's World.
Guest:And this episode was recorded at Mike's Loft in New York City.
Marc:So you were hired as a writer and performer?
Marc:Featured performer.
Marc:And writer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So when I got here, I had no idea.
Marc:Is that why Dennis was on you?
Marc:He was looking for material?
Guest:No, he's just... He's just busting balls.
Guest:He's just busting balls.
Guest:He's the new guy.
Guest:I've been the new guy so many times that you just go, yeah, I'm the new guy.
Guest:You're an idiot.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:I'm the biggest idiot that ever was.
Guest:As Lawrence says, it's the court of the boar shows.
Guest:If somebody offers you a drink, check their hands to see if they have a poison ring.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:Be wary of the first person that comes up to you that wants to be your friend.
Guest:They're ultimately going to be your enemy.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he knows what's going on.
Guest:Oh God, he knows everything.
Guest:When I first got hired, I didn't get an office.
Guest:So my office was, I was cross-legged on my coat by the elevator bank.
Guest:And he would come in and he'd say, can I help you?
Guest:I'd say, yeah, I'm on the show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Don't have an office?
Guest:No.
Guest:Should get one.
Guest:I'd like one.
Guest:Should ask.
Yeah.
Guest:Who would I ask?
Guest:Someone will get you an office.
Guest:Just don't hang out by the elevator bank.
Guest:It's weird.
Guest:So I'd go, okay, and I'd say, Lauren says I should get an office.
Guest:And he goes, no, no, there's no offices.
Guest:And so he kept running into me.
Guest:He goes, do you have a security badge?
Guest:So you should keep it out.
Guest:I guess it was a bit, but I thought he had no idea who I was.
Guest:Until the third show, and I did Wayne's World.
Guest:I did You Mock Me, which is an Al Franken sketch.
Guest:Then I wasn't on the show for the second show, and I thought I was going to get fired.
Guest:Then I wrote Wayne's World.
Guest:When I wrote Wayne's World, it was a sketch I had done on Canadian TV on a show called It's Only Rock and Roll.
Guest:And it was kind of my big character, you know.
Guest:So I wrote it on a yellow pad and I wrote it until about 4 o'clock in the morning and I put it on the big pile of submissions.
Guest:And the next morning, the secretaries type them up and they make the packs of scripts that you read at the read-through table.
Guest:You have to hand it in by noon.
Guest:So I was there at four o'clock in the morning.
Guest:I just handed it in.
Guest:One of the senior writers came in and went to the pile and started looking at people's scripts, which as a Canadian, I was like, you can't look at the pile.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The pile looking at the big board.
Guest:So he looks through the scripts and then he picks out mine because mine was the only one that was on yellow pad written like a serial killer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Handwriting.
Guest:Anyway, is this yours?
Guest:And he read it, read it, read it, and he took it off the pile and put it on the read-through table some 15 feet away.
Guest:And I thought, what just happened?
Guest:I was only being there for three days.
Guest:I didn't even know where to eat my lunch.
Guest:It's one of those things.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, hey, fellas, do you eat your lunch at home?
Guest:Does the wife make your lunch?
Marc:Does everyone go out to lunch together?
Guest:Yeah, what's the deal?
Guest:Well, with those prices down in the cafeteria, but I guess they got you in over, guys, where are you going?
Guest:Guys, wait up.
Guest:Had nothing, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Another writer comes in, who had obviously spoken to the first writer, goes to the table, reads it, and says, oh, man, you're not going to hand this in, are you?
Guest:It sucks.
Guest:It sucks.
Guest:And he throws it on the floor.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's 4.30 in the morning.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm like, this is my big sketch.
Guest:I'm dead.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had that kind of like going to cry, going to maybe crap my pants.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I want my dad to come pick me up.
Guest:You know, that horrible thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And something just reached back to the scruff of my neck, lifted me up, pulled me over to my sketch.
Guest:I put the staple back in and put it on the pile and walked home.
Guest:And it was like cold.
Guest:It was like April.
Guest:So it hadn't quite locked into warm yet.
Guest:And a light rain was falling.
Guest:And I was just like...
Guest:Well, all I can do is try.
Guest:Like, you know, maybe it didn't work out and whatever.
Guest:And I'm sure Ben will be fine.
Guest:He's really funny.
Guest:And, you know.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I was just like, these guys are so awesome.
Guest:Dana Carvey is a fantastic comedian.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, the power.
Guest:When you're working with him, you feel this jet engine of...
Guest:Of talent coming off of them.
Guest:It so raises your game.
Guest:So everything's real estate.
Guest:The next morning, I got two hours sleep.
Guest:I walk in.
Guest:I want to die.
Guest:And I look to see where my sketch is.
Guest:And it's the second to last sketch.
Guest:Which means by then, Lorne is eating food as he does the stage directions.
Guest:So it'll be like, ah, Wayne's World.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so it kills your sketch.
Guest:Everybody wants to go home because it's 40 sketches.
Guest:Everybody has, you know, when you're like a guy on the show, you're sketched four.
Guest:And when you're a stupid new guy from Nowheresville, sketch 39.
Guest:So I just went, you know what, Myers, just don't give up.
Guest:Just go down swinging, dude.
Guest:Go down swinging.
Guest:Just do it up.
Guest:So we got to the sketch.
Guest:He goes, Wayne's World.
Guest:Lauren looks around.
Guest:He goes, do we really want to read it?
Guest:And I went into my hand.
Guest:I went, hell yeah.
Guest:That's a joke.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he looked up at me and sort of like, be ready.
Guest:You know, this table will kill you.
Guest:He said that?
Guest:He looked at me like that.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And I went...
Guest:Like that.
Guest:And I read it and it killed.
Guest:It killed.
Guest:It killed.
Guest:And Lauren got this delighted look on his face.
Guest:Writers back there were like, oh no.
Guest:It killed.
Guest:And then it got in the show.
Guest:I had no idea what to do.
Marc:Third show, and it killed.
Marc:Killed.
Marc:And that was the birth of the Mike Myers career.
Guest:I was on... My office was my sketch, being on at 5 to 1, the last sketch.
Guest:So all of my sketches started at 5 to 1 and moved earlier in the show.
Guest:Because the ratings by 5 to 1 are absolutely nothing.
Guest:But I thought...
Guest:It played really well in the house.
Guest:But on Monday, because the crew is fantastic on Saturday Night Live.
Guest:They're the nicest people in the world.
Guest:They've seen everything.
Guest:They're the least jaded people in the world.
Guest:And they were like, wow, that sketch is great.
Guest:That Wayne's World.
Guest:Are you going to do another one?
Guest:I said, I don't know.
Guest:Should I?
Guest:He went, yeah.
Guest:you didn't hear people doing the Wayne's World song?
Guest:He goes, I was on the train, and all these kids were doing the Wayne's World song.
Guest:I was like, what?
Guest:Are you kidding me?
Guest:And so then I was walking, and Lauren said, you're going to do another world?
Guest:Already it was world?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Shortened?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wayne's World?
Guest:Yeah, world.
Guest:You're going to do another world?
Guest:Should I?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said, okay.
Guest:And it got in.
Guest:And it got higher and higher in the show.
Guest:So he saw it as a hit.
Guest:He knew it.
Guest:I guess, but his cards are close to his chest.
Guest:Always?
Guest:Always.
Guest:And so in the second or third season, it was Wayne's World with Aerosmith and Tom Hanks.
Guest:And it played well in read through.
Guest:And it killed at dress.
Guest:But for some reason, I didn't think it killed.
Guest:And I went into a plummetation.
Guest:And Dennis Miller, I just started crying.
Guest:I said, I blew it.
Guest:This is my big chance.
Guest:I blew it.
Guest:It sucked.
Guest:And I heard it since.
Guest:And I was like, what are you, a lunatic?
Guest:It played great.
Guest:I just couldn't hear it.
Guest:For some reason, I just didn't think the audience was buying it.
Guest:And the sketch was nine minutes long.
Guest:It's the longest sketch ever.
Guest:There's never been a nine-minute sketch on the show.
Guest:But Lauren wasn't making me cut it.
Guest:Usually they go, your sketch is in.
Guest:It's a five-page sketch if you can take three pages out.
Guest:It's like, what?
Guest:There's no sketch.
Guest:But you do it.
Guest:You have to do it.
Guest:It's broadcast news.
Guest:And the lady sits there with a stopwatch and you go through and you do all this stuff.
Guest:So I'm in there and I started to cry.
Guest:And they have a dresser who dresses you because there's no time between commercials.
Marc:And this is your third season already?
Guest:My third season.
Guest:I just thought I was getting fired.
Guest:It's just one of those crazy things.
Guest:People always say being a successful or public person is ego-boosting.
Guest:It's mostly ego-death.
Guest:You mostly feel like... You're waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Guest:There's that, too.
Guest:That's certainly how I've grown up.
Guest:It's a little bit like putting your penis on the table and someone saying, that looks like a penis, only smaller.
Guest:The scrutiny isn't ego-boosting.
Marc:But also it seems that there was a self-scrutiny.
Marc:There was some sort of inner thing
Marc:That's how you must drive yourself to that perfectionism or that moment where you no longer can tell if something is really working.
Guest:You just want it to be good.
Guest:It's a lot to ask.
Marc:But at that moment, you couldn't trust yourself.
Guest:i i think that the monitor foldback wasn't switched on and i couldn't hear it that's what i think happened oh so it was a technical problem i think ultimately in the end wasn't in your head well it was to the extent that i was seeing laughs i just wasn't feeling them okay and one of the joys of saturday night live is just that feeling dude sure being shot out of a cannon yeah and it's live yeah and you know i had like
Guest:My best friend had came to see the show once from Toronto, and I said, hey, did you get in all right?
Guest:And it's like 10 seconds to the show, live show.
Guest:And he went, shut up.
Guest:Don't talk to me, asshole.
Guest:Shut up.
Guest:Five seconds, I said, I know, but there's a key that was left for you.
Guest:Two seconds, he goes, shut up.
Guest:Waynesboro.
Guest:Afterwards, after the show, I came up to him, I said, wasn't that amazing?
Guest:Punched me in the face.
Guest:If you'll ever do that to me again.
Guest:He said, I shat my pants, you asshole.
Guest:And...
Guest:So what happened?
Guest:So Miller says what?
Guest:Miller comes and goes, Mikey, I've been on this show for eight years, babe.
Guest:I haven't seen love like that.
Guest:And he goes, you're crying?
Guest:Oh, so you're one of those self-torturing weirdos.
Guest:I get it, babe.
Guest:Yeah, do yourself and all of us a favor and get over that quick.
Guest:It killed.
Guest:Don't be an asshole.
Guest:got it together, and I did it for dress, and it was 9 minutes and 22 seconds.
Guest:Right before Dana and I were about to go out, Lauren came out with a glass of wine, and we set up, and by then, just us showing up got like cheers and stomps from the crowd, which is so unimaginable.
Guest:Because, again, I thought you'd have to have grown up in my house to get almost everything I did.
Guest:And it was like, you know, and Lauren comes out, and it's like 10 seconds, and Lauren goes...
Guest:Don't milk it.
Guest:And walks away.
Guest:And I thought I was in trouble.
Guest:And Dana just goes like this.
Guest:Hits me on the arm.
Guest:Just goes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we did it.
Guest:And it went nine minutes in dress.
Guest:Nine minutes and 22 seconds.
Guest:Dana started to milk it.
Guest:Because he was told not to.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's why I love Dana Carvey.
Guest:You guys still talk?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It's fantastic.
Guest:He's the most fun and most relaxed performer.
Guest:I've been like 4,000, no, it was 20,000 people in Chicago for Wayne's World Rally.
Guest:And we would do the joke.
Guest:He'd do like, I think I'm going to hurl, right?
Guest:It was one of those things where you just basically do the catchphrases.
Guest:And then we're like, ah!
Guest:And under it, Dana's going, should we eat at the hotel or find a whole conversation?
Guest:I'm doing this to him.
Guest:No, shut up, shut up, we're on stage.
Guest:He goes, you know, they have a gym here, dude.
Guest:They have a gym.
Guest:Under the lap.
Guest:It's like being under a wave.
Guest:That's wild.
Guest:And then he could feel it coming and then he'd be like, then the next line.
Guest:And I had to look at him going,
Guest:You're making me nervous.
Guest:But he's so relaxed on stage.
Guest:And he has that glint.
Guest:He has that fun glint in his eyes.
Guest:You never have to worry about Dana.
Marc:So was that really the first major franchise that came out of SNL?
Guest:Well, one might argue it's Blues Brothers.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Definitely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But yeah, I think it was.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:You went on to write both movies.
Marc:And Lorne produced them?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And your relationship with Lorne, did it get more candid, more intimate?
Marc:I mean, as you started to earn... Well, I have such respect for Lorne.
Guest:Like, truly, truly is a Canadian hero.
Guest:This is a man who...
Guest:I guess it's how I was brought up, but he's my boss.
Guest:And that's how I feel about the audience, by the way.
Guest:They're my boss.
Guest:They pay my bills, and they are kind enough to come see what I do.
Guest:And if I'm out...
Guest:and they want to come up and take a photograph, you have to be nice to your boss.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And so, absolutely, of course.
Guest:And you still have a relationship with Lorne?
Guest:Yeah, fantastic.
Guest:I have dinner with him every two months.
Guest:Really?
Guest:He's so, when Lorne had kids, he turned into everybody's grandfather.
Guest:And he was really on me to have kids.
Guest:It was his big thing.
Guest:He goes, you know, it's all good.
Guest:You won't regret one moment of it.
Guest:It's all great.
Guest:And he had one when he was like 60, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had a kid when I was 48, my first one.
Guest:And then I just had one in April.
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:It's fantastic, dude.
Marc:So you did the Austin Powers movies, which you also wrote.
Marc:So you're kind of an industry.
Guest:I don't feel that way.
Guest:All right, but you did.
Guest:But I'm just saying, when I look back now, yeah.
Guest:But I've always felt like an outsider.
Guest:I was never on any power.
Guest:I was on powerless, but I was never like... You weren't playing the game.
Marc:You were doing your own thing.
Guest:But I didn't know that there was a game.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:You know Paul Myers, my brother.
Guest:We're those people.
Guest:No, I get it.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:But you're a hard worker.
Guest:We're more thrilled by an Instagram and a garage band that we've made than anything.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, I get that.
Marc:Now, how do you assess the sort of rumors of you being difficult?
Guest:Are you difficult?
Guest:I am a quality control person of stuff that I've created.
Guest:And one of the hardest things...
Guest:I actually am really, really super glad you asked me that question because it's something that I've never been in a context, a safe context, to talk to somebody who also makes things, to understand the misperception.
Guest:When you write and you create and you're the owner of something...
Guest:the system is geared to have the actor acts and the director directs and the producer produces.
Guest:But when you're doing all of those things at once, they're really, you know, it's like Woody Allen.
Guest:It's, uh, you know, Steve Martin, uh, Chaplin, Keaton, um, Sasha Baron Cohen, uh,
Guest:you know, Ben Stiller, that's the world that you're in.
Guest:And as Lauren says, nobody's going to care about your material as much as you are.
Guest:And also no one's going to care about your privacy or your money or your children as much as you're going to.
Guest:It's another thing that Lauren always says.
Yeah.
Guest:And what I learned at Saturday Night Live was you have to protect your material.
Guest:And I never attack anybody, but I will defend myself when they're going after the freshness of my material.
Guest:And I fight for the fresh.
Guest:Now, there are some people... And what do you mean by freshness exactly?
Guest:Comedy where comedy hadn't existed before.
Guest:So to give an example of something that I fought very, very hard for, and it was my first movie, was Bohemian Rhapsody in Wayne's World.
Guest:They wanted Guns N' Roses.
Guest:Guns N' Roses were very, very popular.
Guest:They're fantastic.
Marc:Oh, yeah, they were trying to... You talked about that.
Marc:Where did I hear about that?
Marc:Was that in the Shep's documentary?
Marc:Did you talk about that?
Marc:No, that was a different thing.
Guest:I wanted 18 in schools out.
Guest:Okay, right, right, right.
Guest:From Alice Cooper.
Guest:Right, okay.
Guest:Because that's what I knew from my thing.
Marc:So you had to fight for Bohemian Rhapsody because the industry wanted you to showcase.
Guest:Yeah, because at that time, Queen had, they were somewhat, not by me, of course, and by true, true hardcore music fans, but the public had sort of forgotten about him a little bit.
Guest:Freddie had gotten sick.
Guest:The last time we had seen them was on Live Aid.
Guest:And then there was a few albums afterwards where they were sort of straying away from their arena rock roots.
Guest:But I always loved Bohemian Rhapsody.
Guest:I thought it was a masterpiece.
Guest:And so I fought really, really hard for it.
Guest:And at one point I said to everybody, well, I'm out.
Guest:I don't want to make this movie.
Guest:It's not Bohemian Rhapsody.
Guest:And they were like, who the are you?
Guest:I said, I'm somebody that...
Guest:that wants to do that movie.
Guest:That's the movie I want to do.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:They're like, you've never done a movie?
Guest:You're going to quit even though you've never done a movie?
Guest:I go, but I don't want to do that other movie.
Guest:I want to do this movie.
Guest:It's Bohemian Rhapsody.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And the song went to number one again.
Guest:Yeah, because of the movie.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I don't think any song has done that, whether it goes to number one or exceeds its original performance.
Guest:Sales.
Guest:That's not me being Nostradamus.
Guest:That's about me just going, what do I want to see?
Guest:What movie would I want to see?
Guest:I would want to see the movie where it's Bohemian Rhapsody.
Guest:Well, also because that beat, when you guys all start... That beat, comedically, is profoundly memorable.
Marc:And it was not going to work with any other song.
Marc:It wasn't.
Guest:And that was the beat.
Guest:That's what I said to them.
Guest:I said, I love Guns N' Roses.
Guest:I just don't happen to have a joke for them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Because that was the beat, right?
Guest:It was like... And, you know, cut to like five years ago, I went to a casino in Europe.
Guest:And it was an escalator to get in the casino.
Guest:Somebody put on Bohemian Rhapsody.
Guest:And it was 8,000 people in this casino floor.
Guest:And when it kicks into... It was 8,000 people in Europe doing the headbanging thing.
Guest:And I was like...
Guest:Look what you did.
Guest:Jesus.
Guest:I mean, that's crazy.
Guest:Now, do I regret really making a fuss and putting my foot down for something that I created from Molecular One?
Guest:I did an audition for Wayne's World.
Guest:There was one day there wasn't Wayne's World, and then another day there was, and I created it.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I wrote it.
Guest:That was my vision.
Guest:That was my childhood in Toronto, in Scarborough, Ontario.
Guest:My brother had a...
Guest:a Toyota that had a vomit stain on the side of it.
Guest:We're all given a Galileo.
Guest:You know, Galileo, you didn't take somebody's Galileo, right?
Guest:And that's what it was.
Guest:That was what the no money fun, a couple of idiots who are trying to be cool and Garth thinks that Wayne is cool and Wayne is so obviously not cool.
Guest:And that's what this... I wanted to maintain that sweetness.
Guest:And I thought that song...
Guest:I also wanted to take a page out of Pee Wee's Big Adventure, which is you're not sure if it's the 50s or if it's the 80s.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Because that's the designer childhood.
Guest:That character is very much like Howdy Doody.
Guest:And it's played by a fully grown man.
Guest:I was 30 at the time, playing an indeterminate aged teenager.
Guest:And it was 1991 that we shot it.
Guest:with music and a car from 1974, the AMC Pacers.
Guest:So you weren't quite sure what year this was.
Guest:Yeah, timeless.
Guest:I was trying to make an immaculate universe.
Guest:It truly was Wayne's world, if you will.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And so I fought very, very hard for that.
Marc:And that got you that reputation?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, and, you know, the other thing that got me a reputation was I was working on Saw I Married an Axe Murderer, and it went over.
Guest:And I was shooting it in the...
Guest:in the uh hiatus and uh then there was like oh he's too big to come back to the show and i was like i didn't make the movie go over like that's the you know happens i was telling you guys exactly when my movie's done and it went three weeks over and i missed i think i missed five shows and lauren got very very mad
Marc:Even after Wayne's World, he got mad.
Guest:Especially after Wayne's World, he got mad.
Guest:He got very mad.
Guest:And I didn't blame him, but there was nothing I could do about it.
Marc:And how did that reconcile?
Guest:Um...
Guest:He's Lorne Michaels.
Guest:He's a Canadian hero.
Guest:And we just kept talking, kept seeing each other and stuff.
Marc:Eventually it just sorted itself out.
Guest:Well, I stayed on the show for another four seasons.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He must have respected it somehow.
Guest:He's very respectful to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've always challenged him.
Guest:He'll say stuff, and if I think it's something like, well, you know, the Maginot line did its job, or something like that, and I'll say, what are you talking about?
Guest:It's a symbol of false complacency.
Marc:This was an actual conversation.
Guest:The conversations we have are all things like that.
Guest:Talking about empire.
Marc:But you would challenge him?
Marc:If I thought something was wrong.
Marc:But not about the show, necessarily.
Guest:I challenged him a couple times.
Guest:I was very, very upset when Nancy Kerrigan hosted.
Guest:I really got in his face about it.
Guest:I didn't think she should be a host.
Guest:This is after the Tonya Hardy thing.
Guest:I think getting back to the difficult thing, what people don't know is I actually write and create and produce and own the things that I do.
Guest:And so when I call up
Guest:the marketing department, they go, that's not in the movie star handbook.
Guest:You're not supposed to call it the marketing department.
Guest:And I go, should I, what should I do?
Guest:I don't know what to do.
Guest:Cause I'm the producer and I'm the creator and owner of this thing that I wrote.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:That's kind of what happens.
Guest:And I have not one regret.
Guest:I'm glad I fought for Bohemian Rhapsody.
Guest:I'm glad I did Austin Powers because I did Austin Powers.
Guest:The first screening of Austin Powers, they had 100 respondees.
Guest:Hands up, who knows James Bond?
Guest:Only two hands went up.
Guest:And then they said, oh, well, we're going to have to do massive rewrites and do this, that, and the other.
Guest:I said, no, don't release the film.
Guest:That's the film.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's the film, you know?
Guest:And it worked, right?
Guest:That's what I hear.
Guest:This thing I'm doing with Jimmy Fallon lately, this false modesty guy.
Guest:You tell me.
Guest:That's the catchphrase.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:You tell me.
Yeah.
Guest:That's Mike Myers from episode 518.
Guest:And finally, a watershed moment for both Mark and myself.
Guest:And it was having a hero of both of ours on the show, Mel Brooks.
Guest:I'd heard a lot of stories about the making of both Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein throughout my life.
Guest:I'm a huge Mel Brooks fan, as I have been since childhood.
Guest:But I had never heard so many great details about the making of both of those films as the ones that Mel tells here.
Guest:And this is from episode 358, a true WTF classic.
Guest:I'm ready to do Blazing Saddles.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And, you know, and I'm I'm I'm there's too much hubris and too much arrogance in me.
Guest:Really.
Guest:I admit it.
Guest:There was not now.
Guest:Now I'm humble.
Marc:No rage?
Marc:No.
Guest:Now I've lost height.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, you get older, I'm shrinking, so I'm not such a big shot anymore.
Marc:You're going to be reaching for your mother's hand again.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Literally, I'm afraid.
Guest:So anyway, we...
Guest:It's a very complicated story.
Guest:I called Dan Daly.
Guest:You wouldn't know him.
Guest:He was a song and dance man at 20th Century Fox, usually in a Betty Grable movie.
Guest:And he was terrific.
Guest:But I heard he was the best horse rider.
Guest:He was a great horseman, and he had a leather face, and he was a good actor.
Guest:He could be the Waco Kid.
Guest:First I asked John Wayne.
Guest:He read it.
Guest:And John Wayne said, I was at Warner's.
Guest:I was having lunch, and I gave him this guy.
Guest:I said,
Guest:It's ridiculous.
Guest:He saw the producers.
Guest:He loved the producers.
Guest:He said, sure, I'm glad to read it.
Guest:He read it, and he gave it to me back, and he said, I couldn't do this.
Guest:My fans wouldn't allow it.
Guest:But I swear to God, Mel, I'll be the first one online to see it.
Guest:It's hysterical.
Guest:He was just a sweet guy.
Guest:So anyway, Dan Daly, I called him.
Guest:He said, I'm wearing Coke bottles.
Guest:I said, what?
Guest:He said, I'm wearing the bottom of Coke bottles.
Guest:I can't see.
Guest:My eyes are so, you know.
Guest:So he's done.
Guest:Yeah, I'm done.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I said, okay.
Guest:Then I had a brilliant idea.
Guest:I'd just seen a movie called They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With a guy who was supposed to be a comic, and he was brilliant, and he won the Academy Award.
Guest:Gig Young.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who later went crazy, shot himself, shot his young wife.
Marc:Did he?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I saw him in the Peckinpah movie.
Marc:Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.
Guest:Yes, yeah.
Guest:So he was a great actor, really.
Guest:So I asked him to do it, and he said, fine.
Guest:And his agent brought him, and I said, action.
Guest:We got on the set.
Guest:You know, he rehearsed for a week or two.
Guest:We got on the set.
Guest:He's upside down in the jail.
Guest:I say, action.
Guest:He says, black sheriff comes over.
Guest:Cleavon comes over and says...
Guest:Are we awake?
Guest:And he says, are we black?
Guest:You know, it's 1974, you know?
Guest:See the black show?
Guest:Are we black?
Guest:Are we black?
Guest:And then he starts spitting a little green stuff.
Guest:And I said to my assistant director, this fucking guy is incredible.
Guest:Look, he's playing a recovered alcoholic.
Guest:Look, look.
Guest:And then it became the exorcist.
Guest:He never stopped.
Guest:He's spewing green stuff all over Cleveland, all over the jail.
Guest:I mean, it's just a lot of green stuff.
Guest:It's like spewing.
Guest:What the hell was it?
Guest:He was having the DTs or something.
Guest:So he was a real alcoholic.
Guest:He had cleaned up for one day to come in and do the part.
Guest:And they took him away in an ambulance and I was crushed.
Guest:Then...
Guest:I go right to the phone.
Guest:As soon as the ambulance took him away, I went to my office.
Guest:I said, oh, my God.
Guest:And I called Gene.
Guest:I told him what happened.
Guest:He was hysterical.
Guest:He said, you're kidding.
Guest:I said, no, I thought I was getting Academy Award acting and I was just getting green vomit.
Guest:And Gene said, all right, all right, relax.
Guest:I was kind of half crying, half laughing, laughing and crying at the same time, I swear to you.
Guest:And Gene Wilder says, I'll see you at noon tomorrow.
Guest:He was in New York.
Marc:And he flew out.
Marc:And he killed it.
Guest:He was the only one to do it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's interesting.
Guest:What a bounce.
Guest:And the same thing happened with Cleavon.
Guest:So I took two great bounces.
Guest:I lost Richard Pryor, but I got Cleavon Little.
Guest:who is a fantastic talent.
Guest:And I got Gene Wilder, my buddy and my soulmate and the true genius of my career.
Marc:You lucked out.
Marc:I lucked out.
Marc:The picture was great.
Marc:Are you still friends with Gene?
Marc:What's up with him?
Guest:Are you kidding?
Guest:Of course I am.
Marc:What's up with him?
Guest:Is he all right?
Guest:He's great.
Guest:He's in Connecticut.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He'll be out here in a couple of weeks because he has a house somewhere near San Diego that he rents for two months every year in the winter and sometime in the middle of January to April 1st.
Marc:And then you did Young Frankenstein.
Marc:I mean, it's hard to go through other movies.
Guest:And then when we were doing it, I'll tell you the story.
Guest:You're the only one who knows this.
Guest:You want to hear the story?
Guest:Yes, that's the setup.
Guest:He's got a yellow, he's got a legal pad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, and he's eating by himself in the commissary.
Guest:I couldn't get there.
Marc:Who, Gene?
Marc:Gene.
Yeah.
Guest:Where?
Marc:At the studio?
Guest:At the comp's area, at the studio, you know, in Warner Brothers.
Guest:So I said, are you busy?
Guest:Can I sit down?
Guest:He said, sure, sure.
Guest:So I brought my tray, you know, and I'm eating.
Guest:He's writing, he's making notes.
Guest:I said, okay, I am prying.
Guest:What the hell?
Guest:What are you writing?
Guest:What are you doing?
Guest:And he said, I have an idea for a movie, and I'm laying it out.
Guest:I said, what is it called?
Guest:He said, Young Frankenstein.
Guest:I said, I like that title.
Guest:He said, would you join me?
Guest:I said, well...
Guest:Tell me the idea.
Guest:He said, well, it's very simple.
Guest:It's a guy that calls himself Frankenstein because he's ashamed of his grandfather.
Guest:He's ashamed of the Frankensteins.
Guest:He thinks they're all nuts.
Guest:He's a scientist.
Guest:You don't want to go along with, you know, with these, with these.
Guest:He says, you know, dead is dead.
Guest:You know, you can't reanimate that tissue.
Guest:You know, he's a great, you know, and I want to play him.
Guest:I said, OK, let's do it.
Guest:So he said, all right, I'll.
Guest:Can you get me to stay out here?
Guest:I said, yeah, I will.
Guest:I can.
Guest:I'll pay for it.
Guest:And he said, okay, I want a bungalow.
Guest:Son of a bitch.
Guest:He said, I want a bungalow.
Guest:He wants a bungalow at the Bel Air.
Guest:Give me a tea, an English tea.
Marc:Earl Grey?
Guest:He wants Earl Grey.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He wants a stash of Earl Grey.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he wants a big bunch of digestive biscuits.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Every night.
Guest:This is the deal.
Guest:This is his writer.
Guest:And his own bungalow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At the Bel Air Hotel.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Okay?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said, okay, I'll arrange it.
Guest:And every night for about three and a half weeks, every night, we met and we wrote Young Frankenstein.
Guest:At the bungalow?
Guest:At the bungalow.
Guest:We met.
Guest:He had his, I had my dinner at home.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He had his dinner at the Bel Air.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then in the dining room,
Guest:And who knows, with people, with friends.
Guest:And then he would go to his bungalow and he'd have Earl Grey, you know, and digestive biscuits, whatever they are.
Guest:Ginger, they're kind of a ginger, you know.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:They're a wheat kind of ginger.
Marc:I know what they are.
Marc:Yeah, they're like a circle and they're kind of grainy.
Guest:Grainy, exactly.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You got it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And we'd munch on those.
Guest:him more than me, and we would come up with characters.
Guest:And he had an agent called Mike Medavoy who later became an important movie kind of executive and ran TriStar.
Guest:He ran studios.
Guest:But anyway, at that point, Mike, this is amazing.
Guest:So Medavoy handled as an agent Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman,
Guest:And Gene Wilder.
Guest:The only one he didn't handle, I think, was like Terry Garr and Madeleine Kahn.
Guest:I mean, he handled all the important players.
Guest:Hackman?
Guest:No.
Guest:Hackman was a tennis friend of Gene Wilder's.
Guest:That scene is like he... I know.
Guest:And he said, is there anything for me... Incredibly large, man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and he just volunteered to do it.
Marc:He just wanted to do it, yeah.
Guest:He volunteered to do it.
Guest:He wanted to do it.
Guest:So, you know, he was great.
Guest:You know, one take.
Guest:I mean, he was incredible.
Marc:So that's the writing process.
Guest:That's the writing process.
Guest:Now, so Gene and I, I said, we're kind of bonded.
Guest:So we go with Mike Gruskopf, who's the producer, to Columbia.
Guest:We made a deal at Columbia, and we made it for $1.750, not yet, not $2 million.
Guest:And we went over.
Guest:I said, let's go over it carefully.
Guest:I'm very good with budgets, very good with making a movie for a given budget.
Guest:And so is Gene.
Guest:He can do things in one take.
Guest:So we said, now we're going to need two, maybe two-two, maybe even two-four to really make this right.
Guest:He said, why?
Guest:I said, the sets, the gadgetry, the sweating stone, it's got to be big.
Guest:So the comedy works against hard stuff.
Guest:So we tell Columbia this.
Guest:The truth is we're going to need.
Guest:So there's big fighting.
Guest:And we have a big meeting with the Schneiders, with all the people running Columbia at that time.
Guest:And they said, OK, OK, we'll consider two million tops.
Guest:We'll consider it.
Guest:You know, we can't let you know now.
Guest:And then we got to the door.
Guest:And I turned back to the, these are the big shots running Columbia.
Guest:And I said, oh, by the way, we're going to make it in black and white.
Guest:And then I left.
Guest:They all screamed, chased me down the hall and got me back in.
Guest:They said, it's impossible.
Guest:Peru just got color.
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:What are you, crazy?
Guest:What are you, nuts?
Marc:No one had really done that, right?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Nobody made anything in black and white.
Marc:When did Bogdanovich do that thing?
Right.
Marc:I don't know, maybe something, you know, but it was still... It was experimental.
Guest:It was bizarre.
Guest:They didn't want to do it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so, you know, we were there for another hour, and they said, you know, and they said, Columbia said, you know, this might be a deal breaker.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay, well, meet us again tomorrow at noon, you know, we'll get sandwiches, we'll talk.
Guest:So...
Guest:That night, Michael Gruskopf called Alan Ladd Jr., who has just taken over 20th Century Fox as the studio chief.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Did you know his father?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean.
Marc:As an actor.
Marc:Just to salute him and say hello.
Guest:Shane!
Marc:Shane!
Marc:So anyway.
Marc:Was he dead riding away or was he not?
Guest:No.
Marc:All right.
Guest:Not at all.
Marc:Some people speculate about that.
Guest:No, he was fine.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:So I got that for the end of Blazing Saddles.
Guest:I have other bad guys to conquer.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So anyway...
Guest:Laddie reads it.
Guest:Something like 2 or 3 in the morning, he calls Kroskow and he says, we got to make this.
Guest:Kroskow says it might be 2-2, 2-4.
Guest:He's fine.
Guest:It's going to be black and white.
Guest:Laddie says it should be black and white.
Guest:It should be in black and white.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If you're going to do a satire.
Marc:Did they not get it?
Marc:What you were trying to do?
Guest:No.
Marc:They didn't.
Marc:It's like the movie's a satire of that.
Guest:So, uh...
Guest:We waited patiently.
Guest:Columbia finally said it's a deal, but they couldn't do it in black and white.
Guest:They would have to pass on the movie.
Guest:And the next day we set up a 20th Century Fox.
Guest:I started auditioning set designers or, you know, costume designers, wranglers, you know.
Marc:Of course, Weachman.
Guest:You know, whatever, not wranglers, but we need... We actually went to a garage in Santa Monica where the guy who had done...
Guest:The James Whale Frankenstein still had his... All his equipment, all that crazy... All that shit from the original set?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he gave it to us.
Marc:That's all from the original Frankenstein?
Marc:He gave it to us.
Marc:That's hilarious.
Marc:And you guys, you directed it, but you both wrote it, and you fought a little bit.
Guest:We fought desperately on... I didn't want to do... I was so wrong.
Guest:I said, no, if we do putting on the wrist... A musical number.
Guest:If we do a musical, we'll tear it.
Guest:It's beautiful.
Guest:It's pristine.
Marc:I had that the other way.
Marc:I thought you would have been the one that... No, no.
Guest:It was Gene.
Guest:And he said... And finally one day I came in and said, I'll shoot it.
Guest:I'll shoot it.
Guest:We'll see.
Guest:And he said, well, why did you...
Guest:I said because you were so passionate, so insistent, and you so saw it that I said, there must be something.
Guest:So I said, okay, I'll shoot it.
Marc:I can't imagine, like, was he volcanic?
Guest:Everybody gave me, yeah, he was volcanic.
Guest:He was nuts.
Guest:But everybody gave me credit, and the truth is it was Gene Wilder all the while, who's crazier than I am.
Guest:Is he?
Guest:He's crazier than I am.
Guest:That was Mel Brooks on episode 358.
Guest:Really a great treat if you go and listen to that entire episode.
Guest:But I'm glad that we could bring you some of these stories today.
Guest:Hopefully took your mind off things for an hour.
Guest:And you can, as always, go check out other archives.
Guest:You can spend your whole day doing that.
Guest:Maybe spend your whole week doing it, depending on how things go.
Guest:But we will have more bonus content for you on Friday and, of course, right here next week.
Guest:So thanks for sticking with us here on The Full Merit.