Part One: The Twilight Zone Movie

Robert sits down with Caitlin Durante to discuss one of the greatest disasters in film history.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Uh, that's all right. That's it, that's the whole thing.
How we're starting the episode. I welcomed Behind the Bastards,
the only podcast where the host, Robert Evans is sick. Uh,

(00:21):
Caitlyn DURRANTI, how are you doing? I'm doing quite well. Thanks.
I'm sorry to hear that you're sick. Just as a
heads up, we're going to be relying entirely on you
for our our our frenetic energy this week, so all right,
you better bring it. Yeah, everybody, it's Behind the Bastards.

(00:41):
Thank you, Caitlin. This is exactly what we needed now. Caitlin,
you are the host of a podcast while the co host.
But I'm in a feud with your co host. So
I'm just gonna say you're the only host of the
Bechtel cast um to hell with James Loftus and it's
god damn Webby. I don't co sign that. Also, shout

(01:03):
out to shout out to our webby that we want
shout out to your webby. Indeed, huge congrats, very proud, Caitlin.
How do you feel about movies? Well, Robert, I'm so
glad you asked me about how I feel about movies,
because I famously have cultivated an entire personality around movies

(01:26):
and loving them, and I really have nothing else going
for me. Yeah, I mean, your nickname famously is Caitlin.
I think films are not at all problematic durante, which
is a little bit of a mouthful, but you know,
too many syllables, too many syllables. But you know, we
respect your choices. Dad. Who do you got a favorite director? Um,

(01:54):
honestly that I should. I should, for how I I
don't think anyone should, but I think, well, well, we'll
be talking a lot about au tour theory in a
little bit, But yeah, I think it's debatable as to
whether or not you should have a favorite director. That's
the thing I mean, because there's no one director who

(02:14):
has made like every movie in their repertoire. There they're
other words, maybe George Miller, George, Well, have you seen
Happy Feet? Though that I thought happy It was that
I am the only person apparently who thinks that Happy

(02:38):
Feet sucks shit? But wow, strong opinions on Happy Feet? Well,
what what's fun about? George Miller is number one? He
comes up in this episode, although negative way, but you know,
he's one of those directors where if you're talking about
things you don't like, you're generally talking just about like, well,
this film didn't work for me. Right today are primarily

(03:00):
talking about a director who inspires rather more strong opinions
for for important reasons. Caitlin, what do you know about
John Landis? I know? Okay, here's everything I know about
John Landis, which is not very much. Um. I know
that he directed a film in which either some people

(03:26):
died or some horses died. Okay, that's it starts start
people dying and horses dying. Um. But we're all just animals,
aren't we dying in the world on the earth? Um?
I just remember there being conditioned on his set which
were very dangerous and some living things. You're going to

(03:50):
have fun with this one. You talk a lot about
directors that are like their movies are problematic because of
issues with like jin or and other kinds of stuff
like that. With with John Landis, it is it is
problematic on a level of like human rights violations that
lead to this. It's a hoot. It's a hoot, Caitlin.

(04:13):
We're going to have fun with this one. Um. First,
we're going to talk a little bit about some film theory. Um. Now,
you know you live in l A. Now, I lived
in l A for half a decade. We both worked
in and around the entertainment industry, and I think we
can both agree that the worst people on planet Earth
are film nerds. Right, there's film nerds and then war

(04:34):
criminals just a little bit lower than than film nerds.
You know, That's that's how I tend to think about it.
As a film nerd certainly one of the worst people
walking on this earth. Yes, yeah, we need a Nuremberg
for people who think too much about Magnolia, P t

(04:54):
A and other director that. Sometimes I'm just like, what
are we all going to out for this guy so much? Uh? Man?
Tom Cruise in that movie is a pretty incredible performance, though,
you know what is as much as I love to
hate Tom Cruise, I also love to love a lot

(05:15):
of his performances. Look, you can't didn't. You can say
a lot of things about Tom Cruise, and most of
them are bad, but you can't deny the man is
a star. He's a star, and he's attempted performer. Yeah. Absolutely, Um,
So we're talking about kind of aw tour theory, right,
which is a term that we get. I've read a

(05:37):
few things on this. I'm not an expert in any
of this, but it seems broadly agreed upon that like
the word emerged in its common usage in the forties
and fifties among a bunch of like French film nerds,
and the basic idea is that the director of a
film should be seen as the author of that film,
and thus films are primarily reflections of the specific vision

(05:57):
of whoever directs them. If you're looking at a film
made by a specific director, it's going to have themes
and visual cues that work as signatures. Um, this is obvious.
Like this is not like particularly problematic. It's obviously true
of a lot of directors. At least. There's certainly directors
like Brett Ratner where it's like I could I couldn't
tell you if that was someone else's film or Brett
Ratner's film, because they're all they all look like a

(06:19):
million films. But then there's guys like like if if
you put a Quentin Tarantino film on that you've never
seen or heard of, you'll you'll immediately be like in tenments, oh,
it's a Quentin Tarantino film, right, Um, same with like
Paul and Paul Thomas Anders, and same with even like
a guy you wouldn't most people wouldn't call an artist
like Michael Bay. You put a Michael Bay film on,
most people are gonna be like this, this seems like

(06:40):
a Michael Bay movie. And yeah, absolutely, it has a
very recognizable conventions that he uses in his filmmaking and
storytelling and you know all that stuff. So as kind
of a basic sort of element of analyzing film, there's
nothing like high falutin nor even like problematic about the
idea of like an odd like autour theory. Right, it's not, Yeah,

(07:05):
it's it's just like a pretty neutral concept that's kind
of hard to argue with at its basic level. The
term itself was coined by again a bunch of French
film critics writing in a journal I'm not going to
try to pronounce um, and a lot of these guys
became French New wave directors. New York University professor Julian
Cornell points out that the basic idea of an aw
tour in a film had existed as long as films had,

(07:28):
and it probably originally it's most clearly from a German
theater director Max Reinhardt in the nineteen teens. The concept
started to gain popularity though in the United States starting
in the sixties and seventies. UM and this came alongside
the rise of like the directors generally seen as like
the aw Tours, Right, guys like Alfred Hitchcock, Marty Scorsese,
Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, and William Friedkin. Right. And

(07:52):
these are the the area in which like this idea
of like the and it kind of expands from this
idea that like films have a recognizable author to like
the director is this kind of is like the god
of the movie they're making. Right, Um, they are the
only voice that matters. And if you if you want
to really make great film art, they have to just

(08:13):
be kind of followed blindly by the people on set. Um.
And this, you know, one thing you can't argue with
is that this is an era in which a lot
of the most influential films of all time are being made. Right.
You're getting The Exorcist, You're getting Ship Like the Birds, Psycho. Um,
you're getting Easy Rider, Taxi Driver two thousand one of Spade,

(08:33):
The Godfather, UM, like some some pretty fucking good movies
are getting made in this Yeah, that's defining the language
of cinemas and yeah, exactly, yeah, the shining right. Um.
So yeah, this isn't the the era in which people
start to see directors this way. Is also the era
in which movies that are generally seen as like the

(08:53):
most famous movies of all time are getting made. Um.
And the sheer density of history making where of cinematic
art in this period leads people to get a little
bit carried away with kind of how important a director
is and how they should be treated. Right, man, how
giving an artist specifically not just giving a manpower, giving

(09:18):
a bunch of men in their mid thirties with access
to infinite money in cocaine ultimate power in any situation
is going to lead to problems, right yeah. And it
is not for nothing that this is the era in
which cocaine goes super viral too. But one of the

(09:38):
clearest examples of like how odd tour theory can lead
to some relief, or how the idea of like the
director is this kind of author of the film can
lead to some fund up behavior is Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Um.
This is one of the most famous horror movies of
all time, and it relied heavily on the director's ability
to mentally and physically abuse actress Tippy Hedron. We've discussed

(09:58):
this at some length in our hitch Cock episodes, but
I'm going to read a brief summary from a write
up in People based on Hedren's recently released memoir quote.
Everything was building towards the famous bedroom scene, Hedron writes,
of the scene in which her character Melanie suffers a
vicious on camera attack by the birds. Up until the
day of the filming, Hedron says Hitchcock had promised her
they'd used mechanical birds, but on the day they started shooting,

(10:20):
Hedron was informed by assistant director James H. Brown that
the mechanical birds aren't working, so we're going to have
to use live ones. Hedron writes that she endured five
days of filming where handlers hurled ravens, doves, and a
few pigeons at her. It was brutal and ugly and
relentless rites Hedron. Carrie Grant, one of Hitch's favorite leading men,
happened to be visiting the set that day and told
me between takes, you're the bravest woman I've ever seen.

(10:42):
On the final day of shooting the scene, live birds
were loosely tied to Hedron's costume while she lied on
the floor. The actress says, when action was called, the
birds that were tied to her started pecking her and
the wranglers again through live birds directly at her. So
that's good, great for the actor, great for the animals,

(11:04):
for everybody involved. For an idea of like how much
this fox with Tippy Hedron, the next big thing that
she will do is spend five years living on a
compound with several hundred adults lions and tigers and her
family and filming it. They all get horribly mauled. Several times.
She has her legs shattered by an elephant. Um. But

(11:26):
it's it's oh my god, it is um a ship.
What was the roar? It's called roar. It is incredible.
It's an amazing because you're just watching. There's like maybe
thirty minutes of actual dialogue in the film, and most
of the movie is them struggling to get through their lines,
and every like ten seconds someone gets brutally mauled by
an animal. It's so good, it's amazing. Because like I

(11:51):
don't want to, but I mean her tell everyone involved
in it knows what they're getting into. Unlike The Birds,
where Hitchcock like tricked her into traumatizing her. They knew
we're living in a house with two hundred lions and tigers, right,
Like nobody's misled about the danger. And it's a mark

(12:12):
of like how much Hitchcock, how much damage he did that.
I don't think Tippy Hedron considers being repeatedly mauled by
giant animals to be the most traumatic event of her career,
Like you know, like watching roar and realize like that
to her was a lot less bad than working with
Alfred often. I love this movie. It's the movie he

(12:36):
decided to put on, and my mom and I came
to his house. He was like, no volume, Yeah, you
don't need to hear the dialogue. It's not important. M hmm.
Such a good movie anyway. So there's nothing inherently problematic
or wrong about using on tour theory to analyze movies.
But the obsession with these directors is the sole voice

(12:58):
and driving force behind their art. Lad repeatedly to whole
teams of adults just kind of standing by while again
dudes often think Hitchcock was older, but often just like
dudes in their thirties or forties, abused entire cruise full
of people in specifically generally female like actors like that's
where most of the violence comes down. And a really
good example of this would be the classic William Friedkin

(13:21):
film The Exorcist. Now, this is still considered to be
one of the scariest movies ever made. Friedkin was obsessed
with the idea that his movie wouldn't be frightening enough
to the audience if he didn't deeply traumatize his actors.
Ellen Burston played the mother of a possessed child in
the movie, and one day her daughter, played by Linda Blair,

(13:41):
pushes Burst into the ground. Now that doesn't seem like
it should be a super intense scene, but again, Linda
Blair is like possessed with a demonic spirit, right, so
she's super strong. So Friedkin wanted to have Burst and
basically yanked to the ground by a wire police system
to simulate being shoved by demonic super strike. Burston later

(14:04):
recalled quote when she knocks me to the ground, I
landed on my back, And William Friedkin said cut take two,
and I said, Billy, he's pulling me too hard because
I had a wire pulling me to the floor. And
Billy said, well, it has to look real, and I said,
I know it has to look real, but I'm telling
you I could get hurt. And so he said, Okay,
don't pull her so hard. But then I'm not sure

(14:25):
that he didn't cancel that behind my back because the
guy smashed me into the floor. And this is hard
enough that she suffers a permanent spinal injury, right, Like
she's injured the rest of her life because of this scene.
And there's a bunch when The Exorcist comes out, a
whole lot's made about like most of the advertising campaign

(14:47):
has to do with like people have seizures in this movie,
Like you can't come in after it started. It's too scary,
Like you won't be able to handle it. Like people
are like getting hospitalized like that. That's a whole big
part of like the push behind this movie is that
it's hurting the audience. And like I'm gonna say right here,

(15:10):
as as someone who's watched to enjoyed The Exercist, Friedkin
was nuts because that movie was not scarier because they
permanently damaged Ellen Burston's spine, Like, no, they could have
done without that. There's like, look, there's some very frightening
movies that I have seen in my life. Um it
follows very scary movie get Out, very scary movie that

(15:33):
one VHS where their documentary crew when they come upon
a bunch of like a demon cult in the jungle.
Pretty scary. I don't think any of those movies permanently
damaged somebody's spine. Um, yeah, it's not just not necessary
for there to be horror in your movie. It's like
that famous I forget who it is who's supposed to
have said this about like method actors. But it's like

(15:54):
you could just like act instead, Like you don't need to,
You don't need like a policys them to damage your
actress is spine. She could just act. That is the
thing about like method acting and aw tour directors who
abuse their power is just like it's not considering for

(16:17):
a second how your choices are affecting other people, because
you like seeing your vision into fruition and not compromising
your vision for any reason is like the most important thing,
And it's like, no, the most important thing is that
your workplace is safe and it is a movie, but

(16:40):
like the stakes are not. You don't want to nearly
kill people to see your vision come to life. Is
not how that works. You almost exclusively see it with
people directing horror, right, Like that's where really a lot
of the worst abuses come from. Um. Like you can
look at the show Ning Too, where it's not so

(17:01):
much physical, but Shelley Deval is like really mentally abused
in that movie. Um. And I guess because they want
realism or some ship. I'm a big Michael Man fan. Um,
I you know, I'm a I'm a gun nerd um.
And the movie Heat is revered is regarded by like
people who are professional gun users as a perfectly accurate

(17:24):
movie with the gunfights that that big bank is just
like technically everything ideal. You noticed that Michael Mann did
not put life bullets in those guns and require his
actors to get shot for real, because again, you can
film an incredibly convincing gunfight without killing people, and that's

(17:44):
the beauty of cinema. Yeah, because it's a movie. It's
it's just wild to me that anyway, this is not
the only injury on the or even the most severe
one on the set of The Exorcist. Um, and I
want to note here to Burston, who suffered that permanent
spinal injury. Years later, she said, in an interview of
William Friedkin quote, Billy is one of those directors that

(18:06):
is so dedicated to getting the shot right that I
think some other considerations sort of fall by the wayside.
Sometimes he's a brilliant director, and I don't want to
knock him. However, I did injure my lower back and
I had to work with it ever since. But it's okay,
And like, it's not Ellen, it's not okay. You can
you can knock him, and you should. Yeah, he should

(18:26):
get knocked, especially because of the story we're about to tell. Um.
So at least Burston was an adult, right she is.
She was not fully informed of how dangerous the scene
could be, but she was old enough to choose to
get injured on a set, right, Um. Stunt actors do
that all the time. Linda Blair was fourteen years old
when she played the possessed little girl in The Exorcist. Now.

(18:48):
One famous scene called for her to shoot Bolt upright
in bed. Right. This is if you like, if you're
watching a documentary that talks about movies, and they show
a scene from the exerci Is. This is the scene
they're going to generally show where she like and it's
it's a very like sudden sharp movement. In order to
make the scene look kind of properly unnatural, freed Can
again used a mechanical rigging system to move her body.

(19:09):
Blair later explained quote, in this particular take, the lacing
came loose. I'm crying. I'm screaming. They think I'm acting
up a storm. It fractured my lower spine. No, they
didn't send me to the doctor. It's the footage that's
in the movie. So when you see that scene in
the Exorcist, her back is being broken, she is fourteen,

(19:30):
when she's so child and a spinal injury slash. Breaking
your back is so scary and has such high stakes. Yeah,
and I mean speaking of high stakes, now she does.
She's in a couple of other movies later on that
she also gets hurt less hurt in but she winds

(19:50):
up suffering severe scoliosis as a result of her injuries.
Um and yeah, this cavalier disregard for the safe d
of children in the name of shooting a good scary
movie only grew more pronounced over the next decade as
the tours increasingly took over in Hollywood. The Exorcist was
filmed in nineteen seventy two. The movie we're talking about today,

(20:13):
the Twilight Zone movie, was filmed in nineteen eighty two.
But before we get into that, you know, we should
get into some products and services. Products and services because
while the director, William Friedkin, the director of the Exorcist,
injured a fourteen year old girl without her consent, we
promise that all of our products and services only injured

(20:35):
children with their consent or the consent of their parents.
All Right, here's here's ads. Oh we're back. How are
we feeling? How's everybody doing? I mean, I feel I
feel like I usually do when I'm a guest on

(20:57):
this show, and it's just I mean, I'm I'm very
happy to be here, very happy to be with you.
But then I'm also like, oh, right, people are bad.
Although I do um this, this episode, this topic is
is far more in my wheelhouse than anything has been

(21:17):
any of the other times I've been on the show.
So I feel I'm feeling extremely confident. Honestly, that is
very good. You know, one of the documentaries I watched
preparing for this was it's called Cursed Films. There's a
series of like episodes about different movies that had horrible
things happen on set. And on the episode that is
about the Twilight Zone movie, one of the people they

(21:39):
interview as like a voice of sanity of how like
actually know all that matters is safety and it's crazy
to take these kind of risks to get a good
shot in a fucking movie. Um is like the one
of the dudes who ran um Trauma, which is one
of my favorite trauma. Oh my god, it's where m
James Gunn got a start. Among other things, they did

(22:01):
like really gory, violent, like like purposefully outrageous schlock like
sex and nudity and like puppets exploding and blood and
got like awesome shit. Um, but also had a very
good track record for like not killing people because they

(22:21):
at the end of the day, we're understood that they
were just making movies anyway. Good documentaries to watch. Also,
Trauma very fun film studio. So both actresses in the
Exorcist seemed to have the opinion that the artistic qualities
of the film at least mitigated their suffering, right. UM,
I'm not gonna make a judgment on that one way

(22:43):
or the other. It's there. They have the right to
feel however they want. Um, I have to imagine that, like, yeah,
if if you suffer, but the thing that gets made
is like a legendary work of art, then maybe that
makes it a little easier. It makes it feel like
more meaningful or something. It does justify it, certainly. But
I guess it's like, well, if I broke my back,

(23:04):
at least it wasn't for the worst movie ever made exactly,
And today, like we're gonna primarily be talking about people
sacrificing everything for an incredibly stupid movie. Um, it's so funny.
It's not funny children die anyway. Um, Before we get
into that, we should spend some time talking about the

(23:24):
autour behind the Twilight Zone movie. John Landis now John
David Landis, was born on August third, nineteen fifty in Chicago, Illinois.
His family were reasonably well off. His father was an
interior designer and decorator. Um. Also, his mother's original last
name was magazine Er, which is not something I realized

(23:48):
people had as a last name. I actually think it
was like her last name from previous marriage. But I
just never heard of magazine or as a last name,
and I think it's silly. Um. I think we need
to have an approved list of last names that people
are allowed to have. I like the idea of taking
a noun. It's just kind of an object, adding an

(24:11):
R or an e r to the end of it
and then making it kind of like a oh, what
do you do for a living? I'm a magazine er?
Well that I I guess I would know a couple
of dildoers, which would actually be pretty funny. Um do
they make dil doos? Do they mean? Is a last name? So?

(24:31):
Fair enough? Um? Okay. The Landis family relocates to Los
Angeles when John is four months old, which is a
decision that would have cataclysmic impacts on Hollywood for decades
to come. When he was a little boy, John watched
the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, which he told interview where
Robert Elder was the movie that made him want to
become a director. Quote, I had complete suspension of disbelief. Really,

(24:54):
I was eight years old, and it transported me. I
was on that beach running from that dragon fighting that
eye clops. It just really dazzled me, and I bought
it completely, and so I actually sat through it twice
and when I got home, I asked my mom, who
does that? Who makes the movie? So this is like
how he decides he wants to be a director. Right,
So John gets a job as a young adult, I

(25:15):
think he's like seventeen or eighteen, as a male boy
for twentieth Century Fox. Uh. He pretty quickly moves on
to working as a gopher on film sets. Basically he
would just kind of hang around and do whatever odd
job needed doing. Um. And this was under the logic,
which is actually really good logic. In Hollywood, a lot
of people get their start in a variant of this way.
That like, if you're just there, eventually something you want

(25:38):
to do will need doing, and you can be like, oh,
I'll do that, And that's how you start getting jobs
that are more of the jobs you want to do. Um.
There's a lot of guys, especially in this period where
things are a little more wild, um, get their start
that way. So he gets his chance pretty quickly after
he gets started in Hollywood in nineteen sixty nine, when

(25:58):
he scores a rare gig as assistant director on the
World War two heist film Kelly's Heroes, which was filmed
in Yugoslavia. He just sort of again been on set
working as a gopher, and then the original assistant director
gets sick and has to go home, and the directors like, well,
we need another a d and you know, John Lands
is like, I can do that, and he gets the job.

(26:20):
You know, After this, his career moves steadily upwards. Uh.
He had more formal roles on Once upon a Time
in the West, l Condor, and a number of other
action adventure movies. He was known for being the guy
who would do literally any job the film needed done,
even if it was dangerous like stunt work and not
something he knew how to do. As he later said, quote,

(26:40):
I worked on some pirates movies, all kinds of movies, French,
foreign movies. I worked in a movie called Red Sun
where tors Shiro Mufune kills me, puts a sword through me.
I worked as a stunt guy. I worked as a
dialogue coach. I worked as an actor. I worked as
a production assistant. So he's just doing absolutely any job
that they have available. And he builds enough kind of experience,
He builds enough connections with other directors and some actors

(27:04):
that when he's twenty one years old, he's able to
put together the resources to direct his first feature film.
Although calling it a feature film is a little bit
of grace that maybe it doesn't deserves sixty one minutes
long or something or it is. It is ultra low budget.
Most of the money is provided by his dad, Um

(27:24):
he like takes up a collection from family and friends.
The title of the movie is schlock Like. It's literally
called schlock very good. Here's how IMDb describes it. A
small town is terrorized by the Banana Killer, which turns
out to be the missing link between man and ape.
Now I have not watched this movie. My time is

(27:46):
slightly more valuable than that, But I also came across
a fan summary of the storyline on IMDb, and my goodness,
I would be doing everyone a disservice if I didn't
read that too. A monkey type monster falls in love
with a blind girl, which thinks that he's a giant dog.
After kidnapping the girl and fleeing King Kong like onto
the roof of a gym, he gets involved with the Army.

(28:07):
Now I have not seen this movie, John Landi is
to be to be entirely fair. John Landez is on
the record is saying it's terrible, right like, he does
not pretend this was any good. And it was supposed
to be like so bad it's it's funny movie, right like.
That was the goal. This was not like a serious
like it was a loving send up of of of

(28:29):
shitty monster movies. That's why it's called schlock, you know. Now,
John wrote, directed, and starred in costume as the eight Monster. Um.
He had actually originally intended his first film to be
an underground porn movie, but he apparently gave up on
the idea when he learned that he need to cut
an organized crime. UM. So, if you're wondering where John

(28:50):
Landis is moral lines, lie, I guess that's that's as
close as you're gonna get um again. Schlock was a
really bad movie, but it did have the thing about
it that was undeniably excellent. The monster costume was really good.
And it's really good because Rick Baker did the costume. Now,
Baker would go on to play King Hong in nineteen

(29:11):
seventy five. He did the makeup for the Exorcist, for
Star Wars, for The Rocketeer, for The Nutty Professor, for
Men in Black, for Mighty Joe Young, for hell Boy,
for Just Like He's a legend. Rick Baker's huge, incredibly
influential makeup artist. Um Landis could never have afforded him
as an actual professional, but Rick Baker wasn't yet a professional.

(29:32):
Max land or John Landis stumbles into Rick Baker when
he's like living with his parents and cooking latex costumes
and their kitchen oven. Um So, he's basically able to
get this kid for his first gig, this guy who
becomes like a legendary um like monster kind of prop
maker type dude. Um So. That's one of the reasons

(29:52):
why this movie is noteworthy is that, like as much
of schlock as it is, there's a pretty fucking cool
monster costume in it. Um So, for two years, Landis
is unable to get any kind of distribution for his
weird film. He makes it in seventy one, it doesn't
get distributed until seventy three. The closest he gets is
an offer from Roger Corman. Roger Corman is an incredible

(30:13):
schlock director. He's the guy who taught James Cameron everything
by the way, um, and Corman offers to distribute it
if John Landis quote adds tits Roger Corman, Okay, agree,
if every movie needs more TIS. If you have, if

(30:34):
you have spent thirty seconds googling Roger Corman, you will
be like, yeah, that makes sense. That's totally scarce. Yeah. So,
Luckily for John Landis, and probably mostly due to the
quality of the monster costume, the film does eventually get
distributed because of a single influential fan, Johnny Carson. Now, well,

(30:55):
we will do a whole episode on Johnny Carson because
he was a monster. He was just a horrible, horrible
human being. Um. But he is also like the absolute
king of late night television for like half a century.
Like basically, if you have if your parents are boomers,
for most of the time they were alive, Johnny Carson
was like the most influential man and entertainment pretty much. Um,

(31:17):
there's no one alive today who has the kind of
cultural cachet that Carson had in the seventies. Like that,
we just it's not possible to be that influential in
pop culture anymore. Um. I want to play a little
audio of John Landis explaining what happened next so you
can get a feel for the guy. Uh and because
I think the story is kind of interesting, very generous,
and he had me on his show and it was

(31:40):
funny because that time I was twenty three. The movie
was finished for over a year and a half. Buddy,
I was told I had to say I was twenty one,
because that's the gimmick was, I was twenty one year
old filmmaker. I go, yeah, but I'm twenty three, now
shut up. So anyway, I was on that show and

(32:01):
they showed clips and that's I got a distributor like that.
So that's how he like, right, It's like a little
bit of a con from Johnny like he Johnny Carson
being a guy who knows what gets people interested is
like nobody's gonna care about some kid made a movie,
But some twenty one year old makes a movie. Well
that's a little bit of a star, right, you know,
My Carson is not a good accent um, but fuck

(32:24):
fuck him. He sucked. So one of the people who
watched the Johnny Carson Show that night and saw John
Landis on it and saw clips from his movie schlock
was Bob Zucker. Now that's the last name that should
be familiar to people, right. The Zucker brothers are the
people who eventually will give us Airplane and the Naked

(32:45):
Gun trilogy and also a bunch of much worse movies. Um.
At this point there again in like their early twenties,
and they're part of a sketch troup called Kentucky Fried
Theater Um. And they eventually get together with John Landis
and he's the director. They write the screenplay and they
put together what's like Kentucky Fried movie, which is like,

(33:05):
you know, it's like we've all seen like hot Rod
is like the movie from fucking um what's his name,
m Andy Samberg? Andy Samberg sketch Troup. Like you get
like this is the thing that's been happening for for forever.
This is one of the first cases of it where
like you've got this sketch group, they're pretty big and
they get a movie, right. Um, Like it's this thing
that will become kind of a big part of how

(33:28):
comedians break into having their careers. Um. And this is
this is like a reasonably successful a comedian how to
have a career. Well, it helps to be a Zucker brother. Um, yeah,
I would. I would definitely try being Bob Zucker if
you can. Um. So with this movie, it's a big

(33:51):
enough hit that John Landis makes a name for himself
and a Universal executive picks him out to direct their
next big movie in the pipeline, a college comedy film
called Animal House. Yeah. Have you seen Animal House? I have.
It's been many years. I don't remember it very well,
but I remember like the noteworthy parts of it. Yeah,

(34:16):
drinks the whole bottle of liquor. Yeah, there's some there's
some fun stuff in it, like no, but Belushi like
really was a very talented comedic actor. It's a movie
that's got some really good parts. I haven't seen it
in a couple of years. I'm sure there's some stuff
that hasn't aged well. It has aged better than its
descendant film, Revenge of the Nerds, UM, which is like

(34:36):
maybe the worst aged movie I have ever seen. It's
right up there. It's real hard to beat that one
in terms of is now unwatchable? Um animal House unless
I said, like again, there's some really good bits and
Animal House um, And it's one of those things Animal
House invince like the college comedy genre. Um, Like there's

(34:58):
a Futurama episode, bat turned off it. There's episodes and
like a ton of different TV shows based on it.
And like every college comedy movie that's come since is
patterned off of Animal House. It's also like the first
gross out comedy. Like it effectively invinced that genre of comedy,
like fucking um um uh American Pie, Like a whole

(35:21):
bunch of fucking movies um that that come later are
all kind of made in the image of Animal House
one way or the other. Um. It also is what
kind of really electrifies the career of John Belushi, um,
which does tragically lead us to the career of Jim Belushi.
But you can't blame John Landis for that. So John's

(35:45):
first contribution to the film, when it's still kind of
in production, was to make it, in his words, much
less hateful. Uh. The original draft was it was a
National lampoon movie and they liked mean comedy. Um, and
so he felt was nobody to root for. He made uh,
you know the frat that is, the heroes like a

(36:05):
lot less awful. Um. It's kind of the way he's
put it. I haven't seen the original draft of the script.
He also wanted it to be more authentic, right, He
really wanted it to feel real, so he wanted to
film at a real university. They actually picked the University
of Oregon in Eureka. Um, and he arranges for his
cast to party with a bunch of actual seventies frat
brothers so that they'll understand what like real frat parties are. Like.

(36:28):
This does not go well. Um. See, the frat kids
were not impressed with having like be these guys at
the time. Like most of these folks like B and
C list Hollywood types right there. Mostly the folks who
show up at the party at least are mostly not
big names. Um. And a misunderstanding occurs, and the frat
boys beat the ship out of Landis's actors. Yeah, it's

(36:51):
really fun. They just fucking wail on them. Um, I'm
gonna quote from Stumped magazine. Now. Landis was never told
about the fire, as he was saved by his first
assistant director, Cliff Coleman of Krusty Cowboy boot wearing Sam
Peck and Paul Veteran. It was Coleman who insisted that
nobody tell the director a thing about the brawl. And
he also found the necessary medical care for the actors bruises,

(37:12):
chipped teeth, and other wounds. He was gruffin big and
we were kind of like the grizzled old sergeant Private,
Landis says of Coleman, adding that he was glad he
never heard about the fight, noting I would have freaked out. Um. Now,
given what comes next, I don't know if I believe that. Um,
But whatever you want to say about his tactics in
this movie, Animal House is a huge success. It changes

(37:33):
the game for comedy blockbusters, and it turns John Landis
into something approaching a household name. Now. That was nineteen.
In nineteen eighty, John co wrote and directed what will
probably always be his best film, The Blues Brothers, starring
John Belushi and dan Ackroyd and featuring every living musician
worth anything in the United States. And I know I'm

(37:58):
a big Blues Brothers fan. UM, honestly never seen it.
It's a good ass movie. I watched it very recently.
That motherfucker holds up. That is a good ass movie. Um.
It's got like a wreath of Franklin in it. It's
really quality quality film. Um. Features like the most police
cars ever destroyed in a movie. There's a bunch of
cool ship in and it is also this is something

(38:20):
I think people may not realize who have watched it
more recently, because most of us encountered it twenty thirty
years after it was filmed. Um, Animal House was a
two and a half million dollar movie, right, which is
not like micro budget, but it's not high budget for
the era. Blues Brothers is a thirty million dollar movie.
It is one of the most expensive films in history

(38:40):
at the time that it's made. Um, it's a budget, yeah,
thirty million, which is like, yeah, huge, Well, because there's
I mean, the climax of it. There's like hundreds of
police cars crashing into each other, flying off of overpasses
like it is a it is a like the the
climax of that movie is pretty spectacular. Um, it's really good.

(39:04):
It's a really good Max Landis or sorry, man, I
keep mixing them up. Max Sitis is a bad director.
John Landis is not a bad director. He's a bad
person and not all of his films are good, but
like he directed some solid movies and Blues Brothers is
a really good movie. Um, and so this rockets This
makes it. He's a list now right after Fucking Blues Brothers.

(39:26):
It's it's still one of the most successful comedy movies
of all time. Um. And at this point he has
become like one of the aw tours that studios are
going to shovel money at and try not to funk with.
You know. He and Steven Spielberg become friends in this
period from seventy eight to like the early eighties. Uh,
and the two allegedly have a friendly competition to see

(39:46):
who can get the most expensive movie made. Right. Um,
so like they're competing, you know, they're they're like thirty three,
thirty four in this period of time, they have unlimited money.
Everybody's telling them their geniuses, and they're all powerful on set, right,
They're both crazy in this period of time. Scary talk

(40:07):
about horror movies. That's a horror movie. Yeah. Now, in
nineteen eighty one, John gets to make another one of
his screenplays into a movie, An American Werewolf in London. Uh.
It was another really big hit. It effectively invented the
comedy horror film as a viable profit making genre. There
had been like comedic horror before. This is the first

(40:28):
time it's actually like, oh, you can make some fucking
money doing this ship. Right. Um, So, by the time
nineteen eighty two runs around, John Lannis has directed one
of the highest budget movies of all time. He's invented
gross out comedy, and he's he's effectively like invent helped
to invent like comedy horror as like viable profitable genres. Right.
He didn't like create the idea, but he was the

(40:50):
guy who like made them make money for Hollywood. Um,
he's a fucking he's he's he's on top of the
goddamn world. Right. Um, Animal House more like Powerhouse. No,
I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you, Jesus Christ

(41:10):
and I love you, Caitlin. We're the same person anyway.
Moving on, So, when Warner Brothers decided they wanted to
release a reboot of perhaps the most beloved franchise and
American horror history, The Twilight Zone, they knew exactly who
to go to, John Landis, so he signs on to

(41:31):
produce the movie alongside his buddy Steven Spielberg. Right, it's
fucking nineteen eighty two. You've got John Landis and Stephen
fucking Spielberg on the same production, Like yeah, like right,
you couldn't be more set up for success, you know.
Um Now, it's a little bit of a weird movie
because again it's based on a TV series that's kind

(41:52):
of an episodic series. They decide the right thing to
do with the Twilight Zone movie is to make it
an anthology with four segments directed by four front directors. Now,
two of them, Spielberg and Landis, are some of the
biggest names in Hollywood at the time. The other two
are less well known, Joe Dante and George Miller. Now,

(42:12):
George Miller had just directed Mad Max two, which is
most people have not seen the first Mad Max. It's
like a really kind of niche like he's still a
cop in the movie. It's set before like the world
really completely crumbles. Um. And it's very much like an
Australian movie as opposed to Mad Max two, which is
obviously still Australian but as a huge hit. Right. Um. So,

(42:32):
Miller had just directed Mad Max to like the year before,
so he just kind of broken out as a big director,
and Joe Dante hadn't yet. He was about two years
off from making Grimlin's which is the film that makes
Joe Dante huge. Right, So you've got Spielberg and Landis,
which are these huge names, and then you've got George
Miller and Joe Dante, who are gonna be huge names,

(42:53):
but they're still like kind of earlier in their in
their careers at this point. Um. Although I shouldn't say
George Miller is early in his directing career. He'd already
spent decades working as like an emergency medical doctor. Um,
which a lot of people don't know about George Miller.
He was an r doctor for years and years. Wild
I learned that, I feel like every few years, and

(43:15):
then I promptly forget, and then I relearned it, and
I'm just just as amazed all over again. If you
watch I mean, this is still more or less the
case in Fury Road. But if you watch The Old
Man Max Is, whenever there's a car crash, nobody like
walks away from a car crash in one of his movies,
they like crawl while like puking and concussed, because he's

(43:35):
treated like he's specifically the reason he made the Mad
Max movies, he says, is that like well as a
doctor in Australia, we don't have a gun culture, but
the thing that our young men do to get each
other killed is street racing and so like, that was
the big part of why those movies are the way
they are because he's treated a lot of people from
car accidents and that's why Happy Feet is the way,

(44:00):
such a brutal movie about penguin based crime, which is
the primary cause of death in Australia to this day. Yeah.
Um So, anyway, the Twilight Zone movie opens with a
prolog scene featuring Dan Ackroyd and Albert Brooks. Um Ackroyd is,
you know, most famous for Ghostbusters and Albert Books. Brooks

(44:23):
is most famous for voicing Hank Scorpio on The Simpsons.
Um So, both guys are kind of driving through the
night and discussing their favorite Twilight Zone episodes. As the
prolog ends, dan Ackroyd convinces Brooks to pull over so
he can show him something scary. He then turns into
a pretty corny monster and eats him. It's not a
great start for the movie. Um kind of not very
imaginative for again, you know, Landis is directing this scene.

(44:46):
He's certainly a guy who's capable of some imagination. It's
maybe a sign that the movie was not actually in
great hands and that Landis wasn't a good pick um.
But you know, in general, most critics agree that Joe
on Taste segment of the film, which focuses around a
child with the power to warp matter torturing a bunch
of strangers he's forced to act as his family, as

(45:07):
like the best part of the movie. It's it's got
some really cool monster work too. There's like a cartoon
the kid pulls out of the TV. It looks pretty good. Uh.
George Miller's segment is also fine. It's a recreation of
Nightmare at twenty feet that's the episode with the Grimlin
on the wing of the plane, right. Um, but this
time John Lithgaw is like the dude who's seeing the Grimlin.

(45:28):
Which anything with John Lithgow is instantly a piece of
beloved Americana. Absolutely, absolutely, John Lithgow has never done anything wrong.
I think we can all agree on that. Um. Spielberg
segment is weaker. Um, it's a weird thing about old
people temporarily becoming young, and it just doesn't fit in
well with the rest of the movie. I don't get

(45:48):
Spielberg's not not like a great horror director in my opinion. Um,
I mean the only other thing I can think of that,
Uh well, I guess Poulter Geist. And then he did
do it. Yeah, he's got Poulter Guys. But I still
don't think Poulter Guys is very scary anyway. Whatever. Yeah,
you know what is good at horror these products and services,

(46:11):
Because there's nothing more frightening than capitalism, Caitlin. It's an
engine of blood sharing us all ever closer to destruction,
just as churned us ever closer to a delicious meal
by shipping a box directly to your home, filled with ingredients,
all wrapped in individual plastic packages. Um um m m plastic.

(46:39):
We're back, Sophie seems happy. No, what's up, Sophie, You're
just so annoying. Yeah, well yeah, well you know you're
trapped here, Sophie. Caitlin's lovely. We have a network. Now
you are my business partner, forever, forever. So um. Now

(47:05):
we've talked about the other segments of this movie, which
again are not bastard worthy, and I'm just going over
to give you kind of a context of what's in
this film. We're gonna spend the rest of our episode
talking about John Landis's segment, which would turn out to
be one of the most disastrous things ever filmed. It
was a reworking of the old Twilight Zone episode A
Quality of Mercy Now that episode. The original Twilight Zone

(47:28):
episode had been about like a young army officer at
the end of World War Two ordering like there's a
bunch of trapped Japanese soldiers and they're like sick, and
he orders an assault on their position, even though a sergeants, like,
the war is almost over, we don't need to do this,
and he's like transported to earlier in the war as
a Japanese soldier in the opposite situation. Anyway, he learns
that it's bad to want to kill people, right, like whatever,

(47:50):
It's not one of the better Twilight Zone episodes, I
would say, um Landis decides to reimagine the episode in
some baffling ways. It folks is on Bill Conner, an
angry racist who's like at a bar and he's pissed
that he lost a promotion opportunity to a Jewish colleague,
and then he like curses says a bunch of racial
slurs in front of like a black dude, and he

(48:12):
does a bunch of like racist ship and then like
suddenly finds himself transported to Nazi occupied France as a
Jewish man, and then he is transported to Alabama in
the fifties, is a black man fleeing the KKK. And
then he winds up in Vietnam is a random villager
avoiding blood thirst to US troops. Now, the script was
supposed to end with him transported back to the Holocaust,

(48:33):
being shipped off to a camp. And that is a
questionable story in and of itself. Shall we say? Yeah,
and this is the story I think that the studio
wants him to tell. Landis has some Sorry, this is
the story Landis initially wants to tell. I think the
studio has some notes. In any case, they want to
make the the ending less bleak uh, and they want

(48:55):
to have like a redemption for the character Bill Connor.
So Landis rewrites the script so that it ends with
Cooper as a Vietnamese villager rescuing two young children from
an attacking American helicopter. Right, Um, So they change you know,
what's supposed to be the climax of the episode. Um. Now,
as you'll remember from Animal House, John Landis had a

(49:16):
thing for realism, and that's you know, it wasn't necessarily
a great decision for making a movie about fraternity kids partying.
It's going to be a real problem now that he's
making his first big war movie because he wants to,
really he wants to. He wants his Twilight Zone scene
to have like deadly accurate combat recreations that are like

(49:38):
as harrowing as the actual Vietnam War. So he's really
obsessed with having a helicopter swoop in on actor Vic
Morrow who plays Connor, and the children as they're struggling
through a raging river, as like explosions detonate this village
behind them and gunfire stitches through the foliage around them.
This presents some problems for one thing, if if you're

(50:01):
gonna hire children, there's certain complications, right, Um, there's certain
things you can't do with child actors on set. For example,
have them next to explosions and a helicopter that is
flying so low that it could hit a human being. Right,
You're not supposed to do that with small children on
a film set, even in the eighties, Right, Things are

(50:22):
looser than but even in the eighties, you're not supposed
to do this. Also, he wants the scene is at night. Now,
everyone around John Landis is like, well, let's shoot day
for night, right, which is a way of shooting a
night scene in the day that doesn't look as good,
but is safer because it's safer to have a helicopter
swooping low over people while explosions happen in the day

(50:45):
than it is in the dead of night. You know,
I shouldn't have to explain why, but it is safer. Um.
John Landis is like, no, that's not real. But it's
also illegal to have children working at night, in addition
to all of the other things about this that are illegal.
Because the way he wants to shoot this is illegal,
John Landis decides to break the law. Yeah, bad boy.

(51:09):
I'm gonna quote from a write up by Crime Library here.
The second assistant director, Anderson House, had reservations about working
children after hours and around a helicopter and special effects explosives.
He shared those concerns with Allingham. House wanted to know
if Landis planned to film the kids during the daytime
and artificially simulate night and then insert those shots into

(51:29):
ones actually made at night. Allingham told him no. Later,
House asked if Allingham new Landis had considered using dummies
or dwarf stunt people instead of children. Allingham replied that
Landis had rejected those ideas because he thought they would
look phony. House pursued the issue and Allingham told him
there was no point in discussing it further. In early
July and two, Landis asked George Folsey to locate two

(51:52):
young Asian children for the roles. Folsey agreed to do
so despite misgivings. Production assistant Cynthia and I recalled Folsey
coming out of a meeting with Landis and production manager
Dan Allingham. The trio discussed the illegal hiring of kids, and,
according to Ny Folesy joked, we probably will probably all
be thrown in jail for this. Folsy phoned doctor Harold Schumann,

(52:13):
husband of Folsey's production secretary Donna Schumann. Folsey knew that
Dr Schumann had often worked with Asian people and asked
for his help. Dr Schumann called a former associate of his,
Dr Peter Chin, and explained that he had friends who
were trying to cast a couple of Asian children in
a movie. Dr Chinn phoned his brother Mark, who had
a six year old daughter named Renee. Mark discussed this
idea with his wife, Sheenne Hui, and little Renee. She

(52:36):
and Whui thought that being in a movie would be
a very fine experience for Renee, who would have a
lot of the memories of what she had done when
she grew up. The prospect of acting thrilled the girl.
So they get two kids six and seven years old
for this movie. Obviously, you see why, like the kids
are excited. You see why the parents are excited. The

(52:58):
parents are not. We will talk more about out this
in part two. The parents are not being told entirely
what these scenes will involve. Um and the kids share,
don't now now. From the beginning, John Landis showed a
distinct preference for realism in his Twilight Zone segment over
the safety of the crew. At one point, he grew
furious that his proper teen couldn't suggest a way to

(53:18):
realistically there was a scene where like troops were shooting
through jungle underbrush and the blanks weren't realistically tearing up plants.
Um and his crew had some suggestions for how to
like blow up the foliage, you know, to make it
look like gunfire, but they were all going to take
too much time. Um and Max or John Landis grew
furious about it, and I'm gonna quote now from the

(53:39):
book outrageous Conduct. How long will it take? Landis asked.
When Stewart said, who's his prop? Guy said that he
would need fifteen or twenty minutes. Land Is shot back impatiently.
We don't have that kind of time. Camera operators Stephen Lydecker,
who observed that exchange, next, saw Landis and Stewart walk
back towards the special effects truck. When Stewart returned a
couple of minutes later, he was carrying three Remington's pot guns.

(54:00):
Stewart handled one of the shotguns himself and distributed the
others to members of his team. Lydecker saw twelve Gage
shotgun shells set on top of the camera battery. Vic
Morrow wanted to know what was going on. Landis reassured him,
and in a moment, cried action. The scene called for
Morrow to duck under the water in front of the
banana plants, come back up, and then leap out of
the frame as the guns began firing to make sure

(54:21):
that Morrow escaped in time. Kenny and Doso, a stuntman
who was standing out of camera range, actually pulled Vic
away from the banana plants. Just three seconds later, the
effectsmen began firing at the plants. According to Stuart, they
fired twelve rounds of ammunition at the target. About halfware
shotguns shells that Lydeker had observed, and the other half
were red jets, plastic projectiles that are less potent than

(54:42):
real bullets but can still be lethal. So they are
firing live AMMO towards an actual human stunt man who
is only not shot because he is physically pulled out
of set immediately before the gunfire starts. Yikes, this is
not good film safety. No, this is not how you

(55:04):
should do anything with guns, um, except for shoot at people.
This is actually pretty close to how you shoot people.
Just don't have someone pull them away if you actually
want to shoot a person and hit them. That sounds
like this is two thirds. Yeah. So Vic Morrow finds
all of this really unsettling. Um, he's not happy with this,

(55:27):
but he's also an old actor. He's on the downswing
of his career. This movie is kind of like a
comeback attempt for him, right, He's had a couple of
rough years and he's he's seeing this as like his
best hope for revitalizing his career. And so he doesn't
confront Landis directly because he feels like if he goes
to Landis and complains about how dangerous things are starting

(55:48):
to see him on set and this will yeah, and
Landis will blacklist it, right because the director is God,
you know, Landis is a is famous for being dictatorial.
That's what a lot of people will say. And he
does not take being questioned well. So, as is the
standard in Hollywood back then, safety concerns by the crew
are put aside because the autour in charge of the
production had a vision and unfortunately for everyone that in

(56:12):
that vision. Next included a helicopter hovering low over Vick Morrow,
six year old Renee shiny Chen, and seven year old
Micah Dinley. In part two, we're going to talk about
what happened next. But now, Caitlin, we're going to talk
about your double Oh my gosh. Well, you can follow
me on Twitter and Instagram at Caitlin Durante. You can

(56:35):
check out my podcast about film in which my co
host Jamie Loftus and I often talk about aw tour
directors and the fucory that happens um on their sets,
usually as a result of their tyranny. So um check

(56:55):
check that out. The Bechtel Cast produced by are very On,
Sophie Lifterman, Hi hi, and uh yeah those that concludes
my plocables. Well, you should also check out my new
podcast where I listened to episodes of the Bechtel Cast
and devise new drinking games to go with them. It's

(57:18):
called Get Rectal Cast with the Bechtel Cast, and you
can catch it five days a week on cool Zone Media.
So you check it check out. I was like, what
was it called again, get rectal cast with Okay, so
but it just sounds like rectal Yes, yes it does.
That's actually what everyone involved in production told me, and

(57:41):
I bravely did not listen to them. Well that's because
you're an a tour. That's exactly what I shouted to
them while waving a shotgun. Uh good stuff, all right,