Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 284. Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski

Episode Date: November 4, 2019

Screenwriters and producers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski return to the podcast to talk about (among other topics) the 25th anniversary of "Ed Wood," the exuberance of Milos Forman, the bizarro cinema of Rudy Ray Moore and their new Eddie Murphy vehicle, "Dolemite is My Name." Also, Jim Carrey pranks Danny DeVito, Tim Burton befriends Vincent Price, Ray Walston "replaces" Peter Sellers and Scott and Larry remember the late, great Martin Landau. PLUS: Appreciating Robert Morse! The legacy of William Goldman! Mae West seduces 007! The Marx Brothers meet the Master of Disaster! And Scott and Larry pick their favorite big-screen biopics!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're listening to Gilbert Goffrey's amazing, colossal podcast. I'm already lying, and this is my favorite podcast, including my own. Love you. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried. This is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. Our guests this week are back for a return engagement, and Frank and I couldn't be happier about it. They're producers, film historians, pop culture, obsessive Marx Brothers and Albert Brooks fanatics, Marx Brothers and Albert Brooks fanatics and two of the most prolific and

original admired screenwriters in the history of the big and small screen. You know their impressive body of work including The People vs. Larry Flint, Man on the Moon, Big Eyes,

1408, Screwed, the Emmy winning miniseries, American Crime Story, The People vs. O.J. Simpson, and of course, a little film celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, The Wonderful and Heartfelt Ed Wood. In a career that started way back at USC Film School in the early 1980s, they've worked with

Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, Milos Forman. Milos Forman. Hey! It's my show! Shut the fuck up! Respect the dead. If I want to call him Milos, I'll call him Milos. Hey, it's my show. Shut the fuck up. Respect the dead. If I want to call him Milo's, I'll call him Milo's. And a dog named Milo's.

Yeah. Let him get a podcast. He does a podcast, actually. Does he? Bill Murray, Danny DeVito, Jim Carrey, John Travolta, and even Courtney Love and George the Animal Steel. And if all that wasn't impressive enough, they also co-wrote the two greatest motion pictures ever committed to celluloid, Problem Child and Problem Child 2. The newest project premiering today on Netflix is the Rudy Ray Moore biography, Dolomite is my name, starring my fellow SNL cast member and Beverly Hills Cop 2 co-star, Eddie Murphy. Please welcome to the podcast, two rat soup eating honky motherfuckers.

Our pals Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. Wow. Hello, Gilbert. Hi. In all fairness, I swiped that from Larry's Facebook page today. The rat soup motherfuckers. Hello, boys. Hello, hello. Hello, gentlemen.

I'm going to start printing those in large print, Gil. Yes. Milos. Phonetically now. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So. Milos. That's when he was a cartoon character. We had, I was going to save this for the end, but we had Beverly D'Angelo

and Treat Williams here a couple of weeks ago talking about Milos. Oh, sure. We lost him since you guys were last here. Yeah, yeah. So, a couple of things you talking about Miloš. We lost him since you guys were last here. So a couple of things you want to say about him?

I mean, he was just an amazing guy. I mean, just really so giving and just such a great director and such a nice person to us. And he was really full of life. Yeah. Zest. It's Anthony Quinn and Zorba the Greek.

Yeah. He was. Hello, how are you come here this is everything was a big bear hug i i was uh we're staying at the essex house and i was walking past the hampshire house and i turned the person i was with and i said i think milo she used to live here and the doorman overheard me and said, Oh, he was a great man. Oh, that's nice. That's really nice. That's lovely. I didn't know he was spying on me.

You said every day, you tweeted every day was a unique adventure. Yes, because he was open to everybody. And that's what you said, even Courtney Love and things like that. I mean, he really wanted to know what you felt about things, and he cared about the input of the crew, cast, writers. We never felt like we were pretty young when we made those movies, and we never felt like we were cut out of the process in any way whatsoever. He was great.

And when we did Man on the Moon and Jim decided to become Andy and Tony, just for the hell of it, Milos went along with it. Yeah. Which was a bit of a roller coaster. So that was true, that special? Oh, yeah, absolutely, 100%. He definitely believed he was.

Well, I don't know if he believed it, but he did it. Yeah. Committed to it. Totally. And it was an everyday experience. And it definitely put the project behind schedule all the time. I would say the only thing that was different in real life than in the movie is that everyone was kind of in on it. It was this beautiful thing that Jim was doing.

It was like a performance art inside the middle of a movie, the making of a movie. And he was such a big star that he could get away with it. But it was the idea that you were actually, the shooting of the film was becoming a Kaufman-esque experience. And that was kind of cool. My favorite bit, which is not in that doc, was that Tony drove his car up to Danny DeVito's trailer. And Danny was inside it. Backed the car against the door, locking Danny inside the trailer, and then took the key to the car and threw it into the Los Angeles River.

Wow. So now Danny is trapped inside there and they can't shoot. So, it sounds funny, but it's not funny if you have to make your day. Actually, it no longer even sounds very funny. And it's probably an expensive gag, too.

Exactly. Yeah. The movie keeps coming up because we had Ed Weinberger here. We had George Shapiro here. What is Ed Weinberger thinking of the movie? We interviewed him, but we never saw him afterwards. I can't remember, but I can send you the link to that episode. We had Peter Bonners here, who was obviously playing Ed Weinberger.

Yes. We had Shapiro. Who else did we have? We had Zam Bonners here who was obviously playing Ed Weinberger. We had Shapiro. Who else did we have? We had Zamuda. Oh, yes. And we're having Mary Lou Henner in a couple of episodes. It just keeps coming up. What's funny about Ed Weinberger as a character is Ed's famous

because he has a period at the end of Ed, but you can't do that in Final Draft. Final Draft thinks it Final Draft Final Draft thinks it's the end of a sentence and then it wants to have two spaces

after the dot oh and it was just completely fucking with us as we were trying to type it so we had to drop the dot

and it's like we knew we were going to get grief from somebody like you don't realize how Ed spells his name it's like we know

Gil what's the thing that weirds you out about Man on the Moon that you talked about? The different occupying the different universes? Yes, yes. Is anyone involved with the movie aware of the fact that Danny DeVito

was in Taxi? Really? No. Oh, it's that Judd Hirsch exists in this universe. Yes. Everyone, they all exist. Carol Kane in Maryland.

Right, right. Carol Kane in Maryland. We could have hired an actor. We could have gotten Wally Shawn to play Danny. Couldn't they have had Danny DeVito in a dual role? Also playing himself? You know what? We honestly didn't think of that.

No, seriously. That would have been in the spirit of the film. Yes, it would have. We just said we won't cut to the cage. So we'll just pretend Danny DeVito was not on the show. Louis wasn't in that episode. We were not obligated to show every person who was in Taxi. Could they at least have had one of the other people go,

Hey, when's Danny getting here? What we found interesting about that movie nowadays is that for a lot of kids, it was sort of their first R-rated movie. Oh, interesting. Because Jim Carrey was kind of their comedian star at the time because of Pet Detective and things like that. This was the first time they got to see an R-rated movie. And it was also the first time they found out about a different style of comedy. So it was kind of entry-level performance art for kids. So we're meeting people who are like 30-some years old now, and they're like writers or

producers or directors or something, and they all say how that movie influenced them in a great way, because it was the first time they saw certain things. Yeah, I mean, I've got kids in their early 20s and a lot of their friends sort of discovered it on HBO, which HBO likes to buy a movie and run it into the ground. Larry Flint's on HBO a lot. Yeah. And it was sort of the introduction to meta.

Yeah. Oh, interesting. It was like self-reflexive storytelling. What did you guys say about Milos last night? Because I saw Larry and Scott last night. I saw a screening of Dolomite last night with the Writers Guild. You were saying that Milos taught you guys play it real?

Yeah, well here's the thing. We consider ourselves comedy writers. I mean, we write like old-fashioned comedy writers. Our scripts are always trying to be funny. But what we found, Milos and Tim, I think to a certain extent too, is that if you play... And Craig on the is that if you play and Craig on the new movie yeah Craig definitely

on the new movie if you play the if you play the stuff that Reed's kind of brought on the page as real it's not brought at all it actually feels more

like real life that's interesting you know cause Treat was telling us what did he tell us about Milos that he had to wait till they stopped acting

yeah I've heard that about other directors, too. I think, oh, what's his name? Ebert. Ebert said, what's that French filmmaker, Lou Besson? Lou Besson.

Lou Besson. He mentioned him and said that he's one of those directors who will rehearse you a thousand times so you're not acting anymore. Right. That was the whole Kubrick thing. Kubrick goes for 50 takes because by the time you're on take 50, you're no longer thinking about the lines anymore. You're just like, come on, Wendy. It's an exasperated thing. But Milos was not really that.

Milos was more that he wanted to feel like real life. And he wanted it to feel natural. And he didn't want to see anybody acting. And so a lot of times he would meet with great actors, but they obviously wanted to do their thing. And that wasn't really what he was about. And he had a word

he would throw at us a lot in the rewriting of different drafts, which was, discombobulate. Yes. It's wonderful. Yes. The pages are wonderful, but perhaps we should discombobulate it.

Meaning that Larry and I had written this scene that the scene starts at A and it's got to get to D. So we're going to cover A, then B, then C, then D. And Milos feels like, well, what if you flip B and C? What if you grab the bottom of the page and you put it at the top? That makes the scene less predictable and more jagged like real life. And so that was sort of a Milos lesson. Interesting.

Interesting. Yeah. I mean, there's comedy in all his work. Oh, yeah. They're very funny. Yeah. Well, that's why we actually thought. He's Milos lesson. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, there's comedy in all his work. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Very funny. Yeah. Well, that's why we actually thought.

He's unafraid of jokes. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of fantasy directors are afraid of humor. No, that's why we're the ones who thought of him for Flint, and it was because of Cuckoo's Nest, because Cuckoo's Nest is one of those movies that's hysterically funny, but it's also really serious, and it's heartbreaking, and and it's real and it has everything to it. A lot of Milos' movies are really funny.

Like Amadeus, which is just another castle picture. You watch it and it's funny. Absolutely. And it's thrown jokes at the rear balcony. I think Beverly was saying that, though, that he would wait and say, okay, I'm going to let the kids stop acting and

actually wait for natural moments to happen. There's that story Jack Lemmon said, I think when he was working with William Wilder. Yeah, Billy Wilder. Yeah, he said that he kept saying to Lemmon, okay, again,

less, less, less. And he goes, and Jack Lemmon lost it. And he said, if I do it any less, I'm not acting at all. And he goes, oh God, yes.

That's perfect. That sounds like Wilder. Now, this we found out in the last episode. Problem Child could have been released with a slogan based on a true story kind of sort of yeah kind of inspired inspired by inspired yes no we were we uh we had seen um it was in the la times i think there was an article about a couple that were suing an adoption agency because the kid they got, and the kid

was a terrible kid. I mean, the kid was like, he burned down their house. He wrote like, you know, devil stuff in his own shit and walls and things like this. Like Gilbert does. Kind of like Gilbert. You're going to play the kid now. And what's the problem?

Exactly. And so I think a bunch of people saw that story and they pitched it around the studios. No, but then they had to go on the run. Yeah. Like they had to change their names and go into witness protection. Yeah, from the kid. The kid who was trying to find them and kill them. Yeah.

And so they sued the Orange County Adoption Agency. And so a bunch of producers and writers around town saw this story in the Times and said, this is a horror film. Right, the bad seed. And went to pitch it as spooky. And we said, this could be a riot. Right. See, now I can see this picture still being made.

Sure. Well, it's not PC. Yeah, definitely. True. Nobody's thought to remake Problem Shelf. That's interesting. They remade it as a They tried to make it as a TV series

It wasn't It was a really It was a crummy pilot Weren't you in the animated series? Wasn't Yeah, I was in the animated one Gilbert always comes back for Problem Child He's

You gotta indulge him in that Yes, exactly No, that was funny We saw the pilot I don't think it was It was pretty bad They didn't call him Junior They didn't call him Junior And they didn't call him Junior, and they didn't.

It felt more like Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He was more, less of Problem Child and more like just a wise-ass kid. Was he talking to the camera? He was talking to the camera, and he was doing, you know, he was cool. And the weird thing about Problem Child is for all its faults, and there are lots of them. But not Mr. Peabody. But not Mr. Peabody. Solid. Rock solid. for all its faults. There are lots of them. But not Mr. Peabody. But not Mr. Peabody.

Solid. Rock solid. It's off. But from the casting, there's something really wrong with it. And that's what makes it not Home Alone. Because it's not just about a smart-ass kid. There's this thing that's fucked up.

It's a fucked up movie. And the Michael Richards thing was torn from the headlines, too, a little bit? No, that was Scott and Larry making up shit. Okay.

That the kid's hero was a serial killer. Okay. Yeah. That was just, that was being creepy. Okay. What was the one

I'm going back? You know what's great about Gilbert in those movies is if you watch them very carefully, you realize that he doesn't need

to wear pants. You never see Gilbert from the third button down. Right. Park man, park desk. Like they used to say about Larry Sanders. No matter what set he's on, he never leaves the desk. It's interesting. You know what?

I don't think you get up from behind the desk in Beverly Hills Cop. No. No. No, you don't. I think you're a desk actor. Ford Fairlane. I don't think you have pants either behind the desk in Beverly Hills Cop. No. No. No you don't. I think you're a desk actor. I don't think you have pants either. Oh, yes. This is a thing. Yeah, this is

something. Well, it's hard to imagine Gilbert in motion. I'm friends with Gilbert and I actually don't think I've ever seen him walk somewhere or move at all. No action scenes all no action scenes no action scenes

for Gilbert alright then tell them the story where David Steinberg was directing you because they probably don't know this yeah he was once

directing me on some show where I had to say something he was mad about you what? he was mad about you yeah and I had to say

something to the you know Paul and then run off and then David says um could you run a little faster? And I said, yeah, I guess I could run faster. And he goes, no, no, no, no.

I mean, could you run more graceful? Oh, wow. And I said, graceful? And he goes, yeah, not so choppy. And then finally he throws his arms in the air and he goes, can you run less Jewish? Oh, wow. Wow. Wow.

Wow. We love that one. And I knew immediately. Stand up straight, basically. You're like Bigfoot. Lose the hunch. Lose the hunch. So we'll get to Dolomite.

But I want to... We'll talk about a bunch of other things. Nobody cares about it. But first we'll drive into a ditch. I just want to talk for a couple minutes, and this is indulging my co-host again because I did some deep research on Larry

on Trailers from Hell. Uh oh. And Larry has to be the only guy that would actually analyze Last of the Secret Agents. Last of the Secret Agents. Marty Allen.

Yes. Steve Rossi. Yeah. Yeah. And Gilbert loves, we have a Marty Allen fetish here. We have it here.

Hello there. He refused to work blue on the show. He wouldn't tell any of his dirty jokes. Yes. He was like 103, but he was afraid of hurting his image. And he still dyed his hair, correct? Yes.

That was always the terrifying thing about it, because he looked pretty dead. And then he had this hair. Claims to have been a close personal friend of John Lennon's, by the way. Sure. Why not? Why not? He could have been in that bed with Tony Smothers. Exactly.

He's had the love in with Marty Allen. We can't find it now, but there is the Allen and Rossi song. Oh, the Hello Day song. We'll put it in post. Yes. Yeah. But Last of the Secret Agents, which I just want to bring up,

directed by Bud Abbott's nephew, of all people, and written by Mel Tolkien. Mel Tolkien, which is wild. Yeah, I know. Yeah. It's not a very good Bond knockoff, but it's got a great theme song.

It's got a great theme song. You know, I sort of make fun of it, I think, on the Trailers from Hell. It used to be Trailers from Hell meant that the Trailers from Hell was supposed to be like genre and movies that are sort of crappy. And we sort of go away from that now.

We try to do classy films. And so every once in a while I feel like we have to go back and do some of that. You mix it up on your page. But that being said, it's actually a fairly funny movie. I watched it again do that trailer and so every once in a while I feel like we have to go back and do some of that. You mix it up on your page. But that being said, it's actually a fairly funny movie. Like I watched it again to do that trailer

and I felt kind of bad I was making fun of it because it was really... Oh really? The guys are funny. The guys are funny and I'm a sucker for those late 60s Bond parodies.

Who's this Bud Abbott nephew director? Who is he? Norman Abbott. Yeah. Did he do anything else? I think TV. I think that was

his only feature. Yeah. I remember and I always, always forget his name, even though he's been on the show 5,000 times, the writer. Bill Persky. Bill Persky. Yeah. Bill Persky, he hated them.

He hated Alan Rossi. Well, he and Sam Dunoff, his partner, were hired as young writers to work for Alan Rossi. Sam Dunoff, who was Andy Kaufman's uncle. There you go. Very good. And then so Bill Persky said they brought him in to a club to watch them. And then they said to him. It was a bowling alley.

Yeah. And they said to Bill afterwards, so, what did you think? And he said, you know, slaps his hands and goes, that was 45 minutes. He did hate them. Yeah. Wow. All right. Because it is interesting.

Because Trailers from Hell has moved a little bit away from the tall turkeys. Well, it wasn't the tall turkeys. It wasn't as much turkeys, but it was Joe Dante and John Landis and guys like that talking about monster movies. It was really monster movies. But you do a lot of classy films on there, but you still have time to analyze Skidoo and Myra Breckenridge. Exactly, but Joey's gives me hell. Oh, he's doing a subtitled movie. Larry's talking about a subtitled movie today.

Wait, come on. You're making Joe sound like he doesn't get it. No, no, no. He's doing, you know, Larry's talking about a subtitled movie today. Wait, come on. You're making Joe sound like he doesn't get it. No, no, no. He gets it. He gets it. He's like, you're trying to class up the joint. We had Joe here. Let's just talk quickly about Skidoo. Skidoo?

Yeah. Which you called a car crash. It is a car crash. Yeah. And you said this. I love this line. You said you could sell a movie on Preminger's name and then after

Skidoo they took the old man's keys yeah that's a phrase we use all the time is at a certain point you have to take away

the old guy's keys and definitely Preminger who's made some great movies that last bunch of movies are just

they're on another level Julie Moon yeah tell me they let me Judy Moon and Bunny Lake is missing Bunny Lake

is probably the last one that's kind of okay. Such Good Friends is out of its mind. It's just like a gun thriller. What is it? Oh, there is like Human Factor or something. Yeah, yeah. I've never seen it. I've never seen that one.

Two nights ago, speaking of horrible movies, they actually had on The Story of Mankind. Oh, wow. Oh, God. Wow. Did you of mankind. Oh, wow. Did you watch it? Oh, yes. Groucho, Chico, and Harpo. Irwin Ellis. Separately.

Yep. And Chico was completely, I mean, he. He doesn't even get a part. He's a supporting monk. Yes. Right. They don't even write in a slight joke for him. Yeah.

The Marx Brothers Facebook page is obsessed with Story of Mankind and what's Irwin Allen's fucking problem? You're very active on that page, on that Marx Brothers Society. I'm sorry. So they give Irwin Allen a lot of grief. Like, what kind of a bonehead gets the three Marx Brothers to all show up in the same movie and then doesn't put them in a frame together. Yeah.

But, there's sort of like a counter argument which is, Irwin and Groucho were friends, socially. And so,

Irwin called him up saying, can you do me a favor, show up in this shitty non-all-star extravaganza I'm putting together and I'll overpay you for two days of work.

And then, Chico heard about this. Oh, okay. And it became one of those things. And at that point in his life, Groucho probably did not want to do another reunion. He had shown up at the very end of the incredible jewel robbery, and it's like, all right, we're done. We're done with the three-part act.

And so there might have been just like backstage pressure. Like, I'm not getting in the frame with my brothers. Which is, I love them dearly, but that act is finished. I'm not getting...

You talked about that on Malton's podcast. I mean, they'd been together since what? He was 12, 11, some crazy age? 14?

Yeah, he was on the road when he was 14, 15. Yeah, and yet Chico kept pulling him back in to do... Yeah,

because as the classic Groucho line is, because Chico needed the money. What? Somebody just posted the one sheet to the story of mankind, and it is really funny because it's supposed to be an all-star film, but it doesn't have any stars in it. Yes. That's funny.

It's like fourth bananas. Well, Ronald Coleman's in it. Yeah, Ronald Coleman. In the 50s. He's not a star. Well, that happens with a lot of all-star movies. It's basically, you know... Usually, there'll be like one Paul Newman

or one Steve McQueen. Somebody like hold down the fort. Like when time ran out? Yes. You get your Paul Newman or one Steve McQueen. Somebody hold down the fort. Like when time ran out? You get your Paul Newman. Exactly. What I notice if it's a movie and it's got a bunch of people then they'll name

every single actor in it and they'll scream their name out to make the names more important. If you have Al Pacino in a movie, you go, Al Pacino. But if you don't have that, you name a bunch of them

and you scream each one. Like, see? They're important. We have Fritz Feld. Yes! Did you see his documentary? Yes. Doesn't it end with a Fritz Feld bit?

Yes. Doesn't it end with a Fritz Feldberg? Yes. Yeah. You know, I feel sorry for the people who make those all-star comedies. I mean, the Mad Mad World knockoffs are the worst of the movies with big casts. The Irwin Allen movies, you know, you sort of accept that, that you're going to have all of these, Fred Astaire and Robert Wagner. We're both big fans of Who's Minding the Mint, though. Oh, yeah.

Which doesn't really have a star in it either. It's a good movie. I think Who's Minding the Mint is the good version of Mad, Mad World. That could be. Interesting. That's interesting. Mad, Mad World is like, I recommend everyone see it, but it's not that good. I've grown to love it.

It was like I initially was very I thought I was hipper than it's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. And then as I see it more recently, with an audience too. That's the thing. It kills with an audience. We've been spoiled in LA a couple times a year.

The Cinerama Dome, which was built to screen Mad, Mad, Mad World opening L.A., a couple times a year, the Cinerama Dome, which was built to screen Mad Mad World opening day, runs it on that big, stupidly giant screen, and it sells out every time. And I love the movie, and it's great to fight over that movie with Drew, because Drew just despises it. He does. And I'm the first to admit that it's got so many scenes that just don't work. And it's got whole characters. I don't think Sid Caesar ever works in the movie. No.

I'm not sure if Mickey Rooney ever works in the movie. But Johnny Winters kills every time he's on frame. The scene with Stan. Buddy Hackett kills every time. Phil Silvers kills. So for me, the highs outweigh the lows. Yeah. Ethel Merman's funny highs outweigh the lows. Yeah. Ethel Merman's funny.

She's an acquired taste. Yeah. I kind of like her. And Dick Sean. Yes. Dick Sean's amazing. When you were talking about the crappy all-star comedies, what do you suppose was in your mind? Stuff like The Big Bus.

The Big Bus. Oh. And Scavenger Hunt. Yeah. The Million Dollar Mystery. The Hefty Bag one. The Million Dollar Mystery. Oh, that bag one. The million dollar mystery. Oh, that's the greatest.

You've done that on the show, right? We talked about it. We gave away garbage. Yes. Okay. What I remember about... I mean, has anyone seen the big bus in a long time? I mean, is there any chance?

It's... It has to be awful. I don't think I've ever hit DVD. There's also Juan Tonton. Juan Tonton. That's awful. I was a member of a gym, which I'm not anymore. Don't worry.

Thank God. And I met an old-time guy who was just very friendly to me, and he's sort of like, what do you do? I'm a screenwriter. He says, oh, I used to be a screenwriter. He says, I go, what do you do? He says, you wouldn't have heard of me. You wouldn't have heard of my work.

I go, try me. He says, the big bus. And I just lit up. I said, you're Fred Friedman. Wow. Wow. the big bus and I just lit up I said you're Fred Friedman wow wow and he it was how about that

happiest day of his life not James Frawley he directed it yeah he just passed away we're trying to get him here there's a joke from Big Bus I've only saw the movie once

when it came out but there's a joke I always remember which is the he's got a broken milk carton what a stupid joke they're in a fight and he picks up a milk carton. What a stupid joke. They're in a fight, and he picks up a milk carton, and he hits it on the table, and he's using it as a weapon.

I remember in Mad Men World, the one part that made me laugh is they're all arguing in one of those million arguments they have, and Ethel Merman says something to Buddy Hackett. Buddy Hackett's going, okay, you know, you do this and you'll take this. And then he goes,

and you, lady, you can drop dead. Yes. I sent you guys the trailer. I don't think you had seen it. I sent it to Larry. With them just cutting up. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, the thing with Stan Freeberg directed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah, that's cool. That's really cool. I never saw Myra Breckenridge, which is amazing. I thought it would have popped up on TV. Yeah, well, it's filthy.

It is a weird one. Look at Larry's breakdown on trailers. It's just not, it doesn't really work, which is a shame, because it's like everything about it, like if you look at the trailer, it's like, I want to see that movie. I want to see that movie where Raquel Welch sodomizes a guy who's tied up. That's out of its mind. It's your kind of thing.

It's my kind of thing. But John Huston and Mae West, but it just doesn't work. Rex Reed. Rex Reed. Yeah. So it's not an enjoyably awful movie. Not really. Have you sat through Sext an enjoyably awful movie. Not really. Have you sat through Sextet?

Of course. Oh, God. You guys are wanting some punishment. Sextet is the end of the world. Officially. She's so old. I mean, the stories were that they built a whole electronic earwig thing into her wig. It was like early ear technology.

So she's got this giant beehive wig and then they're feeding her the lines because she can't remember anything. She doesn't know what scene she's in. So all these young men, Timothy Dalton trying to make love to Mae because she's the most beautiful woman in the world but she's 800 years old

and she doesn't even know they're in the room. She's as old as, and she doesn't even know they're in the room. Right. I mean, just call YouTube. She's as old as Marty Allen. Just watch Love Will Keep Us Together with Timothy Dalton and Mae West. It's stunning. There's a Mae West auction going on right now. Actually, someone sent it to me because they were selling Mae West's Myra Breckenridge scripts. Yeah.

The three things that are up for auction is Mae West's scripts for Myra Breckenridge scripts. The three things that are up for auction is Mae West's scripts for Myra Breckenridge, Marilyn Monroe's prescriptions. Oh, you just sent that email. And her psychiatrist's couch. I saw the shrink couch. And Waylon Flowers' Madame puppet. Gilbert, get in on this.

Which is technically priceless. Yeah, it is technically priceless. And was Tom Selleck in Sex, Ted also? Ooh. Wow. That sounds right. I think he was. Yeah, that sounds right.

Someone with a mustache. I think he was. Why do I think Alice Cooper was in it? Or Ringo? Ringo sounds right. Ringo's in it. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Wow. Why would you sit and watch this stuff? I mean, I know you guys see everything. I. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Wow. Why would you sit and watch this stuff? I mean, I know you guys see everything. I saw it when it came out. Yeah. Okay. The old gossip columnist, James Bacon. Oh, the guy that used to drink with Gleason.

Yeah, and he had a column in the Herald Examiner. And he would, whatever, he would plug his friends. And so him and May went way back. And so he did a column every day during the shooting of Sex Ted. So I was just salivating for opening day so I could be the first one there. I mean, I'm not proud. It happened. The story you just told where she had the earphones in,

that at times, because it was a primitive structure they built there, that in the middle of the dialogue, she'd say, well, we're at our cruising altitude. Our seatbelt sign is still on. How about Mame, speaking of somebody who shouldn't be making movies anymore? Oh, wow. Yeah, that's unwatchable. Let's talk Dolomite.

Sure. How did you guys... Segwaying from Mame to Dolomite. Well, we don't do smooth segways here. I'll plug one other thing, though, that's really bizarre. Go. That's Mae West related. There's probably one of the most obscure, weird movies of all time that no one's ever heard of. There's a movie called Dinah East.

It's not Mae West. It's Dinah East. And it's about a... Wow. It's about a... It basically runs with the rumor that Mae West was a man. And it's about...

It's basically about... This was a narrative feature? The narrative feature from like 1970 or something. Wow. It's crazy. You guys see everything. I don't know what

he's talking about. It stars one of the Warhol superstar people, like Ultraviolet or somebody. One of those. One of those people, Ultraviolet or somebody. One of those. One of those people, or Viva or somebody. Yeah. How did you guys become aware of Rudy Ray Moore?

Because this is interesting. The sex and violence. Yeah. It was after college, six guys living in a house in Silver Lake, and our buddy Dan Waters. Who wrote Fort Fairlane? Who wrote Fort Fairlane for Mr. Gottfried.

He's on Facebook, Dan Waters. Yeah, Dan was managing Video House. Video House was owned by two Chinese brothers who didn't understand anything about America. And so Dan just had free reign to order any tapes he wanted. Because he didn't know English. And so it was basically, it was an entire store of movies that Dan wanted to see.

And so he ordered The Best of Sex and Violence, which was two hours of trailers of exploitation films. Right. Hosted by John Carradine. Great. This was a Charles Band joint, right? Yes, it was. Oh, Band of the Hand. What was his company called?

Empire. Empire. Empire Pictures. Yeah, but there was something else. There was another company. There was a movie. Full Moon? Band of the Hand.

There was a movie called Band of the Hand. That's not Michael Glazer. Yeah. Yeah. Different guy. They had a band. Grandpa, it's okay. What?

They sing in the band? What, they got the band over there? But he was the guy behind this, and then you saw the Human Tornado trailer. Yeah. The three. It had Dolomite, Human Tornado, and Disco Godfather back to back. And for all you crazy listeners, it's on YouTube. The Human Tornado trailer is out of its fucking mind.

It's wonderful. It's just three minutes of complete insanity and naked people and screaming and gunshots. And we would just watch that trailer over and over and over. And because Dan managed the store, we never returned the tape. Yeah. Back in the rental days. So you guys were well aware of him when you got the initial call to go meet Eddie. Oh, yeah.

We loved him. And after that tape, Scott, for my birthday, it was the days before you actually bought videotapes. Remember they were $100 in the early days? Yes. VHS. So in the video stores, if you want to rent it, it was put up by a company called Xenon Video. So I opened the white pages, and I looked up Xenon,

and they had a warehouse, and I drove out there with cash. And I just showed up saying, I'm here to buy a copy of Human Tornado and Dolomite for my friend for his birthday. And they looked at me like, we don't have a cash register here. Can we change? Is that a retail store?

They're still putting out those movies. Oh, yeah, yes. That's how I got my hands on the DVDs. And then we became obsessed with them, and we saw all the movies. And Rudy was actually around a little bit back then. In those days, he played the Club Lingerie in Los Angeles, and I saw him.

And the album covers were so outrageous, and I saw him. The album covers were so outrageous and they were great. Oh, sure. If you were in a huge record store, you could find one of his records

and they were all... So you saw him live before you got involved with Eddie and then you met him? Yeah. Okay. No, Eddie,

about 16 years ago, we got a phone call basically that Eddie Murphy wanted to meet us. And we're like, oh, cool, Eddie Murphy wants to meet. And so we went over, oh, cool, Eddie Murphy wants to meet. And so we went over there, and we walked in,

and Eddie just started doing lines from Ed Wood. I mean, literally, he was doing Tor Johnson. It was fantastic. That's surreal. Do my pose. But it was Eddie Murphy doing it. It was really surreal. It is.

And then he said to us, do you guys know who Rudy Ray Moore is? And it was this great moment where I was just like, holy shit, we get it. Like, you want to make an Edward-style movie about Rudy Ray Moore with Eddie as Rudy. And it sounded like an amazing, amazing idea. And then you met Rudy. Yeah. Then about a week later, we got in a room with Rudy. And that's funny.

We saw Eddie this morning, and he was acting like Rudy didn't want the movie made. Yeah. Rudy wanted the movie made. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. When I was watching it, I couldn't help but thinking throughout the movie that he was kind of like a black Ed Wood. I mean, here's the thing. That's certainly how the movie got initially set up, and there's certainly parallels.

got initially set up and there's certainly parallels uh the difference is that that um i think the first hour of dolomite is really more about the x-rated album business and about the chitlin circuit and the whole racial element of dolomite makes a completely different experience it's about you know the movie is about the fact that these guys can't get through the system because of the gatekeepers and without being heavy handed about it they have to create a separate entertainment world and even Rudy in black entertainment circles was not particularly accepted.

He couldn't just go out and make black exploitation movies at American International or something like this. So what we found fascinating about him was here's a guy who everybody said no to

all the time and yet he kept going and kept going. You said he didn't have any money because he was constantly reinvesting his money he was always betting on himself yeah

but I mean there was this whole you know separate but equal thing going on with black entertainers you know as late as the 70s yeah

you know and the and the and the and the and the and the and the

and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the

and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the

and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the

and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the

and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the

and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the and the that sort of exemplified it, where Rudy and his peers couldn't break in past the white gatekeepers and whatever. He wasn't playing in the comedy store. Of course. But they were playing these black clubs through the South, which were for black performers

to play for black audiences. And so there was this whole world of actors and writers and singers who couldn't get in. And then Larry and I had lunch with Glenn Turman, the great actor who goes back to Cooley High. Sure, I remember him.

And Glenn was telling us stories about this theater called the Inner City Cultural Center where all these, like some famous ones, like Paul Winfield, black actors and actresses would hone their craft and perform there because they weren't getting jobs. They weren't getting cast at the Music Center and they weren't getting cast on

Rockford Files. And then one of the guys, the guy who ended up writing and directing Human Tornado and Petey Wheatstraw, Cliff Rokemore, directed a lot of plays there. And so we put the Interstate Cultural Center into our movie too

because we really wanted to hit this idea of these black artists having to do it themselves because no one was going to do it for them. Well, they're an odd couple too, Rudy and Jerry. Yeah, Rudy is an artiste. Well, Jerry took himself very seriously and wrote the Jerry Jones, the character that Keegan-Michael Key plays.

And his plays were very culturally significant and he's a completely odd person to be mixed up with Rudy Ray Moore because Rudy

you know Rudy just wants to joke someone made a joke the other day that Rudy's like he's the worst studio executive of all time

he just wants more titties more explosions more kung fu it's like no matter what the scene is, that's the solution to fix it. I mean, after Rudy died, Larry

did a night at the cinema check, and Jerry came down, and even as late as whatever year that was, 2008, 2009... I think he passed in 2008, right? Yeah, I mean, Jerry still didn't get the joke. Really? Jerry was still just talking about the films and their social value. And we're telling it like it is in the streets.

And it's just like, pal, have you seen the films? And Jerry's gone now, I assume. So he can't see this. But, you know, Jerry actually had a little bit of a career. I mean, Jerry's in two Robert Altman movies. He's in MASH and he's in The Long Goodbye. Oh, and I recognized him. He's, I mean,

he's got a real part in Long Goodbye, but in MASH, if you remember the movie MASH, the opening scene is a soldier gets his jeep stolen. And actually, it's in the opening scene and the closing scene, and he's a soldier who gets his jeep stolen. Okay, so he had some work in Legit Hollywood. Yeah, exactly.

I think it was when Ron Delsner was on the show, he was talking about, well, they'd have black groups perform for free because they were told that this is the way

you promote it. Even though they were making money. Yeah, we had Willie Tyler here too. He told us some stories, stories about the Chitlin' Circuit. And they said,

like a lot of times with the Chitlin' Circle. And they said, like, a lot of times with the Chitlin' Circle, they would have a performer, and if they didn't feel like paying them, they wouldn't pay them. It's like the Internet. Yeah. A little bit. Like podcasting, kind of.

Yes. And to give process to Redd Foxx, when he hit the big money with Sanford and Son, LaWanda Page and Whitman Mayo, they were chilling pals. That's where they came from. Oh, yeah. She's in the documentary about Rudy.

She's all over that thing. She loved Rudy. Her, Rudy, and Wild Man Steve would occasionally do tours together. And Blowfly. Blowfly. Right. That sounds like what a great fucking show that would be. Absolutely.

Come on. I can see Gilbert's point about the similarities, though, because both films are made would be. Absolutely. Come on. I can see Gilbert's point about the similarities though because both films are made with affection. Great affection for these two guys who assemble a team. They put a family

together. They're a bunch of misfits who kind of believe in themselves and try to make art. They're lovable losers who strive to be so much more.

Eddie's always said about Rudy, he was a loser who refused to lose. That's great. I mean, I think it's funny because Eddie's original what brought you guys to him was Ed Wood. And I think this also captures what's one of the things that's special about Ed Wood

is that sense of a family that comes together. And I think one of you, I forget which one of you said that without Rudy Ray Moore there couldn't be an Eddie Murphy. I think Eddie's kind of said those kind of things. I didn't say it. Did you say it Larry? I didn't say it.

Well take credit. Frank did you say it? Not me. I said it. You just heard me. But all those guys were influenced. They were totally influenced but they were also more like guys like Snoop says that. Oh, yeah, Snoop said it. Snoop has said that more. Yeah, because Eddie always talks about how he's fascinated by Rudy because Eddie's life and Rudy's life, they were totally different, where Eddie had instant success.

Eddie never failed. Eddie never failed. Yeah. Like, at 17, you know, Eddie literally has auditioned once in his entire life and knows how to get on SNL. There was some SAG Q&A the other night and everyone on the stage was asked, how did you get your SAG card

because you're in SAG and everyone's keeking up. Oh, I was in this commercial. I did this thing. I did a walk-on. It got to Eddie. He's like, I think it was 48 hours. It was like, I think it was 48 hours. But all those guys, Paul Mooney and Pryor and

Chris Rock and Arsenio, they all give Rudy Ray more, his props. Do you know that Eddie has a Paul Mooney ventriloquist doll? That's scary. Now that's your next movie. That's our next movie.

I know that Craig Bierko has a Richard Kind doll. Oh, wow. Is that true? Yes. I'm assuming it was custom. It was custom. It's not off the shelf. I'll send you a picture. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast right after this.

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And now, back to our show. Back to the story. So, you guys, even with Eddie attached, nobody wants to make this movie. Yeah, no, it wasn't. Rudy Ray was still with us. Rudy was excited. And Rudy was always looking for respect and looking for some more money and looking to be bowed to as the guy who started it all.

And the idea that Eddie's going to star in a big Hollywood movie about him was very exciting to Rudy. And he told us a bunch of stories, and then he ordered a lot of food, which he then made off with in brown bags afterwards. Didn't he want to go on tour with Eddie? And then he tried to sabotage it by trying to get Eddie just to go on the road instead.

Hilarious. Let's go on the road together. But you guys felt that, you know, his story should be told. Oh, yeah, absolutely, 100%. We were completely fascinated by this guy and really fascinated with the idea of

Eddie doing him. You know what I mean? For us, we're gigantic Eddie fans and the idea of Eddie tackling this subject, it just became just kind of irresistible.

You know, it was a movie we wanted to see. Absolutely. That's something that Scott and I are very proud of, the fact that we kind of write movies that we want to see. And that just sounded too good. But no one would buy it.

And so it all went away. It just went away. And we all moved on. And we died and moved on. And everyone I would hear said someone's going to reboot Dolomite. There's always been a remake Dolomite. It would turn up in pop culture on Mad TV and things like that. Sometimes we'd get phone calls.

We want to do the new Dolomite. We want to do a Rudy movie. They'd show up in our office and give us their song and dance. We'd say, look, we're not going to work on your project, but we'll be the first ones in line. We'll buy a ticket. Then no one made it. No one did it.

It never got developed at all. Another 15 years goes by by which is just absurd uh and then after oj um you know you know in this business you're hot you're cold you're hot you're cold and so we were you know hot for 10 more minutes and so it was this moment where we could go set up the crazy rudy movie you had a little capital and we were meeting with john Davis and John Fox and John's worked with Eddie many times and we started telling him about it

and he says, well, let's give him a call. And so we called up Eddie and he says, well, come on over. Let's talk about this.

And the next day, Eddie says, all right, let's do it. Which was great because we didn't know that, I mean,

Eddie, I wouldn't say was semi-retired, but he was. Yeah, I mean, he really hadn't made a movie

in a long time. The amazing thing, Eddie hasn't said fuck in a movie for over 20 years. You said that last night. That's great. You also said he was a little subdued when you were first pitching it to him,

and then gradually he sort of started to come alive. You know, Eddie, or maybe you know some comics. When they're not on, they're off. Yeah. And we were sort of like doing our spiel with Eddie and he's just very quiet and head down and just taking it in. Then the light comes

into his eyes and then his shoulders rise and then his body starts turning into Rudy Ray Moore and then suddenly, down in the jungle deep. Then the magic happens and we go, okay, he's in. That's also strange enough that we felt something similar with Rudy in the jungle deep. Yeah. And then the magic happens and we go, okay, he's in. I have to say.

And that's also, strangely enough, we felt something similar with Rudy when we had those meetings with Rudy that Rudy, we were all expecting

Dolomite to walk in. You know, this braggart, this big guy. And that was certainly there where Rudy was that. But he also was just that quiet guy

eating lunch and talking to, you know, and so it was one of those things where we realized that Dolomite was a character he created. In a sense that became almost the thesis of our movie, which is why it's called Dolomite Is My Name. It's about

the creation of this other person that becomes a star. And the real person, you know, seemed vulnerable and a bit wounded and whatever. He'd had his ass kicked a lot of times over the years. But a survivor. It's a long road. He's been playing comedy clubs for 50 years.

And didn't he, it shows he originally got the idea for the Dolomite character from like basically a street guy. Yeah, hobos. I mean, there were old hobo stories. Hobos. Yeah, they're these African-American toes.

They go back hundreds of years. And it's funny. Every once in a while, someone will ask us, well, did those guys ever get any royalties from the records? No. No. But it's funny. It really bugs some people.

And I always say, it's like if we made a movie about Pete Seeger, and Pete Seeger went out to some homeless encampment, and they were singing old folk songs, and he took them back and played Carnegie Hall, you wouldn't be like, hey, wait a second, wait a second. Pete Seeger's stealing those, you know. It was really smart of him to do. Yeah, I mean, whatever, he worked on them. He worked on them. But it's not like Rico the bum invented Signifying Monkey.

That wasn't Rico's creation. He put dirty spins on it, and then Rudy put his dirty spins on it. And there's that weird character in Dolomite that I guess is Creepo. Oh, Creeper. In the original Dolomite. Yeah, in the original Dolomite movie. What's amazing about that guy, I mean, he's just another level. He's unbelievable.

Was he a real junkie? He's a real junkie. And he's strung out on camera. He's just totally strung out on camera. It's clear. But he's wearing Rudy Ray Moore merch. In the middle of this movie, he's wearing a Rudy Ray Moore t-shirt. He must have not had a shirt.

So he gave it to him, but they reversed it so it's white on the outside. But you can totally see Rudy Ray Moore's face and his name backwards. The first time you watched Dolomite. There is a recurring theme in Rudy's movies, the product placement of himself. There's some scenes in the movie where he's playing Dolomite, but there'll be a Rudy Ray Moore album on the wall behind him, which makes no sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's sort of like for set deck, it's all they got. I think it violates Gilbert's rules of the universe. I think there's actually a scene in Dolomite where a lot of the movies, the movies just stop cold for nightclub sequences. Almost all the movies just shut down. You'll see several people have songs and some people have dancers come out. At one point, I think Lady Reed says, give it up for Mr. Rudy Ray Moore. That's not who he's playing in the movie.

That's not who he's playing. But it's funny because there's a scene in the movie where Jerry Jones and Rudy are talking about writing the screenplay. And Jerry says, you've got to write what you know. And when you look at Rudy's movies, he actually did make movies about what he knew. They all revolve around a nightclub. They all revolve around booking problems and gangsters coming into the nightclub. Yeah, it's crazy. They're all about nightclub cash flow.

Yeah. But yeah, it's crazy. I mean, the pot of... They're all about nightclub cash flow. Yeah. Which one is it where Skill and Leroy actually murder an entire church of people just because... In slow motion. In slow motion because Rudy Ray is going to open his... It's going to be a nightclub on a Friday night.

They've got another big act coming. That's not Petey Weed's truck. That's Petey Weed's truck. another big act coming. That's not Petey Weedstraw. Petey Weedstraw. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's Petey Weedstraw. That one is beyond. Petey Weedstraw is amazing, yes. That one is out of its mind.

Out of its mind? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, you could say that about all of them in a way. The Petey Weedstraw is surrealism. Very, very, very strange. I mean, we tried to do, even though technically the movie is about the making of Dolomite,

there's little bits and pieces of all the movies kind of in there. You know, there's so many great... You snuck the sex scene where the ceiling collapses from Human Tornado. There's so many great things in Human Tornado that we feel like the fans want to see that stuff. And there's things like Put Your Weight On It is from Disco Godfather. You know, he's got the pimp cane in the hands at the end of the thing. That's Petey Weetraut's pimp cane. Even Disco Godfather, I's got the Pimp Kane in the hands at the end. That's Petey Weestroth's Pimp Kane. Even Disco Godfather.

I mean, all of them. The NAACP was pushing back at a certain point against black exploitation. Is that why Disco Godfather... There was an organization called CORE, Congress of Racial Equality. Rudy came in late. Rudy came in at the tail end of black exploitation.

So CORE was already pushing back against studios and theater owners about these bad images of African Americans. And, I mean, the people in Hollywood didn't like this pushback because the black actors and actresses were getting jobs. Yeah. And so, these movies started getting toned down and stopped getting made, and that's when Rudy hit. So it started becoming diminishing returns after Human Tornado because the tide had turned, and now you've got Cornbread Earl and me. Sure, sure. I mean, Disco Godfather, he's almost a responsible character.

Well, no, he is. He's trying to clean up drugs. He's fighting crime. Disco Godfather is a problematic movie. Yeah, you don't want to see him fighting crime. You want to see him shooting. Fucking up motherfuckers. Fucking up motherfuckers.

On an L.A. street. It's like one of those movies with old comics who would make a lot of crazy comedies, and then they become middle-aged, and then they become nice. Yeah. And then you kind of turn against them. And it happened prematurely with Disco Godfather where now he has to be the good guy. And nobody wants him

to be the good guy. Absolutely not. Eddie Murphy did his share of like... Kids movies, sure. Yeah. I mean, even the Marsh Brothers

where even, you know, when they go to MGM, they stop being anarchists. Oh, yes. Stahlberg. They want to help the lady keep the sanitarium. It's awful.

They want to help and bring the couple together. Who cares about that couple? Harpo goes from being an anarchist to a guy being beaten. To a victim who's beaten by a little tenor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of a sudden, he's chaplain. The late Marx Brothers movies were horrible. I do defend Night in Casablanca.

Yeah, it's sort of a blip. I think it's terrific. I need to see it again. Who told you guys back in the day, and this is interesting too, never write for a star?

Okay, that was our agent of more than 20 years, Tom Strickler, who said to us, he told us horror stories from CAA back in the 80s

and early 90s where people would develop for the biggest movie stars in the world and CAA had more stars than there are in MGM in 1940. And all these stars would be attached to all these scripts around town and the secret that the writers never knew

was that the stars never read the scripts. They might not even be aware of the scripts. And then the stars would show up for a meeting twice a year and there'd be a big stack. And the agent would go, alright, what's twice a year, and there'd be a big stack. And the agent, they'd go, alright, what's that? Alright, this one is about a dad who loses his job,

so he and his family are going to move to... Pass. Oh. Alright, pass. Fine. Here's a western. Alright. Okay, this one's a western. Pass. I don't like horses. Alright. Fine. Moving on. And so the writer is unaware that after doing a year of work, he got as far as three seconds into an agent

just pitching the cover page of his script. And so our agent said, don't ever write for a star because you do all this work and if the star, odds are the star won't even read it and then your script is dead. Also what happens too is,

you know, you get really excited when a star wants to be attached to your project, but it takes you like six, eight months to write it or whatever it is. So you go off and write it, and in the meantime, they go off to do a Quentin Tarantino movie

or they go off to do a Michael Mann movie or somebody else, and all of a sudden, it's all about like, even if they like it, they're like, oh, I want to do it. I'm going to do it in two years after I do this, and then by the time two years come up,

it's out of the old script and they don't want to do it in two years after I do this, and then by the time two years come up, it's out of the old script, and they don't want to do it anymore. So it's allowed us, by not attaching stars to our thing, it's allowed us to be a little more, like Big Eyes, for example, took a long time to make, and we kept on casting and uncasting it, but

we always owned the script, and we always were able to get out of those situations where we weren't as attached with one company or one star. And yet in this case, you were writing for a star. We broke the rule because this one was special and we sold it to Netflix

and Eddie came in the room and once he got Eddie in the room, it's a slam dunk. And Larry and I internally decided we don't care what anyone thinks. We only care about Eddie. I mean, with no disrespect to our employers and our producers, if Eddie loves this, the movie goes.

And if Eddie doesn't dig it, why is Netflix going to make this movie? The whole point of it was to bring back Eddie. Sure. It's reflexive in that way. It's a tribute to both men. It's a movie-ray tribute, and it's an Eddie Murphy tribute. Every day, we would come in, and we would be writing a scene, and then we'd say, and then there's a magazine stand,

and let's see, what can be on the magazine? Ooh, Players Magazine. That'll be on the magazine stand, which Eddie will get. Oh, you put Easter eggs in there. We put in Easter eggs just for Eddie. We wanted to make him happy. That's great. I had a question, and this is interesting too.

I heard you guys talking. Leonard Moulton. This is like a beautiful mind over here. Index cards. I have a question, and this is going to be interesting. Not like that other stuff you guys have been talking about for 45 minutes. This is actually an interesting one. Not like that other stuff you guys have been talking about for 45 minutes.

This is actually an interesting one. We're going to also talk about bad biopics because Gilbert has an issue with bad exposition in biopics. Well, my favorite is the Kevin Spacey. Oh, Beyond the Sea. Yeah. Okay. So far, so good. John Goodman's his manager. And Kevin Spacey, as Bobby Darin says, look at me.

I'm like whatever years old, and I haven't achieved anything. And then John Goodman has this long speech of, what are you talking about, Bobby? You've had five albums that went platinum. You've had seven gold albums. You've been picked Performer of the Year 20 times in a row. You were nominated for an Academy Award. And, I mean, it just gives Rita a list. That's hysterical.

He reads Bobby Darin's Wikipedia page. Yes. It's the clumsy modern-day version of spinning newspapers. Yes. Well, I mean, it's a sign of bad screenwriting when there's two characters, and they're discussing information that they both know already. Yes.

Yeah. And that's to be avoided at all costs. It's just for the audience. It's for the audience. Like, we've known each other since we were kids. You're a doctor and I'm a lawyer. And you were married to Brenda, but then you got divorced. Yes.

You had an alcohol problem. But I find it interesting that you guys knew so much about your subjects. You're so deep into these movies that it made you harder to replace than typical screenwriters. Well, I think that's one of the reasons we embrace the true story genre in that we, on these projects, it's harder to replace you. On a family comedy, they can just hire anybody else to come write jokes. Any schmuck. Any schmuck. But on these films, it's a little bit,

they can definitely decide not to make it. That's totally fine, but it's harder to, we're sort of the experts on this subject because these are very obscure people. We're not doing Abraham Lincoln or something. We're doing, and so. Of course. And that's also made us much more a part of the production.

And luckily we've worked with really cool directors like Craig and things like that who invite us in to talk to the set people or the costume people because we have pictures. We can tell them what, on Ed Wood, we can show them what Tor Johnson's house

looked like. And so you become a part of the process. And actors always have those questions about what's real, what's not real. Of course. And the craziest thing is legal affairs. We're like, we're the only writers in town who actually have like, you know, on a first name basis with legal affairs people because we always have to have all these clearance issues about, you know, what's real, what's not real, who's real, where does that film come from,

where does this go, you from, where does that go? So you're their best friend. Yes. But you said last night you're the opposite of that. You're the enemy of what, production managers? Production managers, because we love pointless locations. We love to have characters drive up to see. All right, so back to Problem Child.

Gilbert Gottfried played a character named Mr. Peabody. Is that your first name? Igor. Igor Peabody. Wow. Yes. Good memory. And Ben and Flo Healy need to go meet with him. I feel so sorry. So the way Scott and Larry write a scene is Ben and Flo drive a car.

And then they pull up to a parking garage. And they have to get their ticket validated. And then they get out of the car and then they walk across a plaza to a building. And the guy at the bottom says, you've got to go up to the fourth floor. And then they go up, and then they're here to see Mr. Peabody. But first, someone has to offer them a beverage. We always have the beverage scene. And then they will finally get into the room with a character.

And meanwhile, there have been 11 other locations that had to be filmed. Yeah. And so we're very indulgent that way. For some reason, we just love the pointless process of life. All the junk you have to go do to get through the important thing. What's the one you lost, the scene you lost in Dolomite that you said you were sad about? Because it was a great location, right? Here's a random one.

When people see the movie, or whatever, this podcast isn't dropping today. It's not dropping because you mentioned it was coming out today. No, next week. Next week, fine. So everyone's seen it by now.

All right, so when the white boys show up, when the UCLA students show up, we had a driving up scene, which was fun, which was a bunch of these white college kids driving a little VW Bug. Looking for a studio. Looking for a soundstage,

and they're lost. And whatever, there's no Waze in 1974. They don't know what's going on, and they're all nervous. And then they pass a dead body on the sidewalk. They're not sure it's dead. They're like, is that guy dead, or is that guy just passed out? And they're freaking out. And then they pass a dead body on the sidewalk. They're not sure it's dead.

They're like, is that guy dead? Or is that guy just passed out? And they're freaking out. And that was the set. And then they walk onto the set. And at the end of the day, driving scenes are a nightmare to film. Because the director is riding in the back of a truck. And there's walkie-talkies.

And no one can hear anybody. And you have to close down the street with policemen. And so driving. All the driving scenes actually got cut out of Dolomite. None of them got filmed. We had a bunch of them. In the movie, you watch the film and the kids just walk into the door and it's fine. It was

unnecessary. Let's come back to Dolomite, but just because it's the 25th anniversary, just a couple of quick things about Ed Wood. We told you we had Rick Baker here and we were were talking about and he's obviously a very big fan of the movie and you guys and he was talking about the challenges of turning martin landau into bela because they had very different faces so i got a question here from a listener eric connor he says i need to ask the guys did they pump up the Ed and Bela relationship once Tim Burton expressed interest to reflect his own

bond with Vincent Price? I don't know if we pumped it up as much as we, because we always referred to the project even before Tim got involved as Ed and Bela love story. But knowing Tim's relationship with Vincent Price, we definitely

knew that this was going to be even more important. We might have added scenes. Whenever we tried to add something that was designed for Tim, it wound up not happening. We wrote a scene where Bella liked to run out in cemeteries

and hang out in cemeteries. We wrote this whole scene where he dances around a cemetery with Ed and it was very Tim Burton-esque and it was like the first thing Tim cut, I think. No, Larry, it got shot. It only got shot, I'm saying. I never saw it in a

completed film. I mean, we met with Tim before. We wrote the script on spec, but we didn't meet Tim before we wrote it. And so, again, you're playing to your audience't meet Tim before we wrote it. And so, again, you're playing to your audience. We wanted Tim to love it. And so we suddenly,

in modern parlance, leaned into Ed and Bella. Because you were coming off of Problem Child, and you wrote a couple of projects. No, we were coming off of Problem Child 2. Excuse me, Problem Child 2. And you said you wrote some, I'm trying to remember what the word was you used. Some smart-alecky scripts, or scripts or super smart scripts that nobody was buying into

when you guys realized you had to write something on spec. No, there were pitches, really. Pitches, yeah. It was around the time of the David Souter Supreme Court confirmation battle. That's how long ago. And we had the idea for a Supreme Court satire about a fight over a guy being seated okay and we came up with a snazzy dazzly smart ass three-act pitch and we pitched around town people thought it was really impressive and clever and they said but you guys aren't good

enough to write it yeah you guys write problem write Problem Child movies. Gilbert had killed our careers really what happened. You guys write Godfrey vehicles. You write for Gilbert. Go back to Godfrey. That gets me to another story where Larry,

there was one time I did a pilot for Cinemax called Norman's Corner and Larry David wrote it. Oh, wow. And it was so bad that years later when they were pitching Seinfeld, they said, well, who's

going to be the main writer on this? And they said, Larry David. And one of the execs at NBC said, isn't he the guy that wrote that piece of shit for Gilbert Gottfried? Wow. Wow. What a good memory. It was a sweet memory.

It was toxic. It was so bad, I almost kept Seinfeld from being a series. Exactly. It's an inspiring story to all writers because, you guys, it was a Hail Mary pass. Let's write something that we love. Let's write something that's important to us, even if it's only important to us. Correct. You got it. In all fairness,

we thought we were going to Rudy Ray Moore in a weird way. We were writing and when we came up with the idea, it was to make like a Sundance movie.

You thought it was going to be fringe. Yeah, that was going to be super fringe. We thought we were going to go make a $2 million fringe movie. Yeah.

That was our goal. That was our goal because the studio system had made us make Problem Child. But when Tim got involved, all of a sudden it became the biggest deal that ever happened to us. Big turning point.

Yes, very big. Tell us about Landau too, because we lost him since we last saw you guys. Oh my god. He's such a good guy. What a sweetheart. I mean, we were total fanboys with Martin. So we would just sit at his feet on the set every day

and indulge him with, well, he'd tell us Marilyn Monroe stories and James Dean stories. He was close to Dean very much. Hitchcock stories. It was just so delightful. He was such a piece of history, and he had such a warm attitude. And Tim had cast him. Tim was being a little snarky, but

truthful, saying he's had the same career as Lugosi. That he was in North by Northwest and he was in the Harlem Globetrotters on Gilkin Island. He's seen the highs and he's seen the lowest of the lows. And so he knows what it's like. And

Martin was very, sort of, he could laugh at all that stuff. And he'd have this career that just went back like. And Martin was very, sort of, he could laugh at all that stuff. And he'd have this career that just went back forever. And he loved the process. He just loved being on the set and hanging out. And we stayed in touch with Martin until he passed away,

which was really lovely. We could not throw a secret screening of Ed Wood anywhere in Southern California without Martin just showing up. That's great. That was amazing. We would book someplace like the New Beverly. New Beverly was a double feature

of Problem Child and Ed Wood. Wow. That was the only time Problem Child has been shown theatrically in the last 20 years. And Martin shows up. We get a phone call from New Beverly. I think Martin Landau wants to come to the thing. That's great.

It's like, does he understand it's a problem child of ours? But here's the thing that happened at that screening. You guys would love this. Martin, we hung out with Martin

afterwards and Martin was, I have another idea for you guys. Oh, yes. And he started doing Karloff. He had totally perfected

a Karloff imitation. Old Karloff. Old Karloff. And he was like, let'sloff imitation. Old Karloff. Old Karloff. And he was like, let's make a movie about targets, about the making of targets. What a bad idea.

That's a great idea, actually, yeah. And so he was like about an old horror story who's coming into new Hollywood and it's like, you know,

the theme of Target which is old horror and new horror. And his Karloff was spot on. It was fantastic. It was fantastic. Oh, how about that. Now it kills me that we didn't get him. Exactly. We tried. His health Karloff was spot on. It was fantastic. It was fantastic. Oh, how about that?

Now it kills me that we didn't get him here. Exactly. We tried, his health was just so touch and go, but we tried hard to get him here.

Yeah. And that's a movie I'm thinking, oh Christ, why wasn't that movie made? Yeah. Yeah. That would have been...

Yeah. Was anybody, when you guys were writing the script, I mean, that must have been one of the challenges that popped in your head.

Who the fuck's going to play Bela Lugosi convincingly? It didn't cross our minds. It didn't. You knew you'd find somebody. We were just picturing Bela Lugosi. Yeah. That's the benefit of writing

the true life movies. You kind of just think of the real people until it becomes the director's problem. And we had a certain cockiness while we were writing it, even though we were unemployable, which was that we'll get someone great because it's that kind of part. He's old.

He's Hollywood. He's got an accent. He's got a drug problem, and he dies. So it's a good part for an old guy. We knew writing it that it was going to be awards bait for that particular part. And Martin was on a roll at that point. Martin was coming off of Crimes of Mr. Wieners and Tucker. So he'd gotten two Oscar nominations back to back.

But what a wild Hollywood story this is. You guys just say, we're going to write this fringe movie, this vanity project. Winds up winning an Academy Award. I mean, it's crazy. None of us are young, but looking back on it, it's like, wow, we made a movie with a guy who's one of the stars of North by Northwest. Pretty cool. How weird is that?

Pretty goddamn cool. Now you got me thinking about that Targets movie. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this. Meet our summer collection of grillable faves that come on sticks in spirals with bite-sized bursts of flavor and more. From pork belly bites full of barbecue flavor to skewer sensations that will keep the grill going for dessert.

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supports the planting and preservation of Canadian forests through the Miele Forest Initiative. Join us in making an impact today for a better tomorrow visit mila.ca to learn more yeah here's a question from our mutual pal michael weber who you guys were hanging out with last night uh some of my favorite part of dolomite was, Dolomite is my name, were the recreation scenes. He says that was the most fun they had making disaster artists was the shot-by-shot recreations from the room. So were there any Dolomite scenes you wanted to recreate but didn't? That's an interesting question.

Okay. I mean, there were certainly scenes that were in the script that didn't get shot. There was, there's a preacher character who's smuggling guns. There's a scene where Rudy walks

into a church and maybe it shows a spooky joint. And the people in the caskets are actually, you got machine guns. Is that where she

says I'm afraid of seeing ghosts? Oh, yes. He says if you see a ghost, cut it. The actor is Wes Gale. ghosts? Oh, yes. He says if you see a ghost, cut it. The actor is Wes Gale.

Wes Gale, yeah. He gone too? I'm assuming, yeah. Yeah, he was a little mysterious, but when we researched Wes, if you look at his IMDb page, he has a bunch of appearances as jungle native.

Yeah. Like Bumba, as jungle native. Yeah. And like Bamba, the jungle boy, kind of serials, like Republic serials from the 40s and 50s and then early jungle TV shows and they would always have

the jungle savages. Right. And we had him as a character and we gave him this whole speech about these young, a couple of young, good-looking young black guys who've been brought in for a day or something, and they're kind of making fun of him. He says, you guys have no idea what it used to be like.

It's like we would play Savage number one, Native number two, Spearchucker number three. You're living in a more enlightened time, so shut the fuck up. Wow. give Eddie props he's employing us and we're actually playing people Rudy I do that all the time I actually use Rudy and Eddie all the time so that was like

we try to bring in interesting history lessons but the scene got cut and the character got cut one of the sweetest things in the movie is his relationship with Lady Reed. Yeah. I mean, it's like a platonic love story. Yeah, yeah, it is.

It's very sweet. You know, he kind of rescued her from the... Yeah, we didn't actually know that much about Lady Reed, but we knew of a couple things that, you know, she had a son and that Rudy had discovered her on the road and also just the way he put out her albums those always like rudy ray moore presents you know lady reed as queen b as well she had a she had double persona as well as lady reed and queen b um and we just there was something about it that just felt like there was an affection between these

two characters where they were sort of like she was different than all the other buddies you know i mean she had her own little platform and she and even in the movies where it's like between these two characters, where they were sort of like, she was different than all the other buddies. You know what I mean? Yeah. She had her own little platform, and even in the movies where, it's like the movie Dolomite, it's like Lady Rita is a special friend to Rudy.

Sure. And so it just became, you know, it just became that character. Well, it's touching, too, that she's talking about how, you know, you don't see me on the big screen, that you guys managed to get something of real substance in there, too, about representation or lack thereof of representation.

It's one of my favorite parts of the movie. Divine Joy Randolph. She was great. Yeah, it says when she did that scene, she felt she wasn't really acting. She was literally just expressing how she felt to Eddie about being in this movie and having to play a character like this because she's never seen

someone look like her on the big screen. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of the best parts of the movie. Thank you. And I was talking to you guys about this off mic, but Derval Martin.

Derval Martin. Another fascinating character. And I was saying to Scott, he wasn't as fee as Wesley Snipes. Play some of the movie. All right, here's the deal. Here's the deal. So we wrote this script, and it's about rooting a bunch of his wacky wannabe friends.

And then they hire this one experienced real person, a person with credits. He has an agent. Richard Polanski. He's been employed by Paramount Studios. He has an agent. He works for Polanski. He's been employed by Paramount Studios. And so he represents real working actor. And then

the casting of this sort of became like Mad World in that every comic in town wanted to be in the movie. Every one in the film is a comic except for D'Urville. And so the idea was let's cast an actor with gravitas who will have a different energy than everybody else.

He was serious. He was a serious guy. He's a real person. He's not a goof. And so we cast Wesley, who's whatever. He's a great fucking actor. And we like to think

that driving to this set on his first day he said what the hell everyone gets to be funny about me fuck this oh what can i do and we were we were there on on his first day when he just suddenly turned into this wacky guy with the pinkies. It kind of works. It's so funny. It works. It works because he didn't change the lines. He's just reinterpreting as this is what a real Hollywood person looks like.

That was really made an impression on me in that he didn't really change the lines. He didn't change the lines, but completely reinterpreted the part. And it showed what you could do and what a different actor can do. And he's one of the funniest things in the movie. He really is. He killed. He really is. Yeah.

Here's just a generic question for you guys. A generic question. Best biopic that you guys didn't write in your opinions. We got some bad ones written down here. Yeah, the bad ones are obvious. Milos made a good one. Yes, I mean, Amadeus is great. Amadeus is fantastic.

That's fantastic. Capote is quite good. I'm a big fan of Patton, but Patton goes against my rules about that three-hour great man kind of biopic. But Patton is... If you can see Patton but Patton goes against my rules about that three hour you know great man kind of biopic but Patton is Patton if you can see Patton

on the big screen I notice you've got a lot of rules like you don't like films with punctuation in the titles the question mark you don't like question marks

you know I thought that but actually I find that there's actually a lot of movies that are like you know What's Up Doc that's a good one What's Up Doc

is officially my favorite film that's not a biopic, though. No, but anytime I include it in an email to somebody about something, it's so hard to write it. Because it's got a comma and a question mark. Right. And so if it's in the middle of a sentence, you don't really know what to do after the question mark. What about you, Scott? What's a biopic that you admire?

What do I like? I don't know. He doesn't like anything. No, he doesn't. I have to think slowly. Okay. I know what you like. You like, oh, shit.

Help me out. You know, the Beach Boys one was good. Love and Mercy. That was okay. That was good. The Gary Oldman playwright. Oh, Prick Oldman playwright Oh Prick Up Your Ears Prick Up Your Ears Oh Joe Orton picture

Yeah the Joe Orton movie That's a good one Prick Up Your Ears is terrific Good movie Yes Yeah I don't hear Valentino Or Gable and Lombard

Or the Babe Ruth story On your list Well there's that period In the mid 70s Universal in the 70s What's that about? They clearly Well they made a lot

Here's the thing They made a lot of money with The Sting. Right. Sting broke the rules. And they had all those back catalog titles that were actually

probably really doing great on television. So they thought, like, we'll make nostalgic movies. W.C. Fields and Me. W.C. Fields and Me, Gable and Lombard,

you know, and whatever. They made the movie that we kind of make fun of in Dolomite, which is The Front Page. Front Page. Which is desperately

wanted to be the sting. And we're not really going out, I mean, here's the thing, a bunch of people have come up to us like, why are you picking on Billy Wilder? Why are you picking on those guys? And we're not really picking on that movie. We're not saying that movie's bad. We're saying that it isn't speaking to these guys.

Yes, clearly. It makes the point loud and clear. If you just showed a clip of Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, it'd be like, oh, what a nice piece of entertainment. But you cut to those people laughing in the theater, and then you get to the row of Rudy and his friends, and they got a lot of jokes. But before they even say anything,

almost your breath gets taken away. Like, well, of course, this fucking movie is not speaking to these people in any way whatsoever. He does a great line about it. Yeah, and so there's that thing where he looks up in the light and it's like, wait, we should make our own movies. Now, just to go into the weeds, because that's what your listeners want. Oh, yeah. You know this show. In our original draft, it was supposed to be, I just forgot the title.

A Touch of Class. A Touch of Class with Glenda Jackson and George Segal. I know that one. Utterly forgotten film. Nominated for Best Picture. Beloved in the Sun. Won Best Actress. I think it was nominated for five Oscars. Yeah, Glenda Jackson won an Oscar.

Giant hit. It was just a middle-brow, middle-class romantic comedy. And we thought, this is so perfect because nobody remembers this film. And it just cracked us up. And we wrote drafts where we looked at the movie and we put in witty boulevard comedy dialogue between these two flirting people. And then you're cutting to Rudy and his guys in the audience just like, this is like science fiction. Who are these people? How did it become the front page?

We couldn't get the rights. Well, the rights were complicated. A Touch of Class was made by Brute, which was owned by Brute Shampoo. My God. And so,

it was trying to clear up the rights with a movie owned by a shampoo company, and it became easier to get a movie that was owned by Universal Studios. So, at the last second,

we swapped out the front page. I actually think for the point, the front page actually makes the point better. I think Tedder Class would have worked. It would have worked. It would have worked. And there were a lot of jokes about let's just say Rudy's friends really didn't understand

the appeal of Glenda Jackson. They really didn't understand how that woman was starring in movies. But in terms of theme, I mean also front page represents the past. Yeah. So that helps our story. Yeah. Also the fact that it's theme, I mean, also front page represents the past. Yeah.

So that helps our story. Yeah. Also the fact that it's like, you know, the Billy Wilder movie version is not very good, but when you think of the front page, it's like the front page, of course. It's that classic Broadway thing, you know. Sure. And then put in the context of right there, right at that time, it's wrong. I dispute the idea that audiences were actually laughing at the front page. That's true.

1974, as you depicted in the movie. I think it did actually. It did okay. Did it? Yeah. Boy, that was the beginning of the end for Wilder. I mean, it didn't get good reviews, but I think it was actually. It's no buddy-buddy. As we're talking about Preminger, we're talking about Wilder.

I mean, it's that thing where, like, you know, there's something to Quentin's theory of like, I'm going to make 10 movies and walk away. I get that. Though,

I watched Fedora about a year ago. I mean, it's not a winner, but it's not a loser either. Wow. Okay. It's got enough good stuff

that it's not an embarrassment. I want to see the uncut Private Life of Sherlock Holmes before the studio. Was it UA? You'll never find it. They got their hands on it and mangled it. Because that's probably his last great picture. I don't know.

You can go that far. Yeah. I don't even like 1, 2, 3. Oh, I like 1, 2, 3. I like 1, 2, 3. It gives me a headache. I like Kiss Me Stupid. I'm with Larry on that one.

I do too. Amazing. Can you imagine Kiss Me Stupid. I'm with Larry on that one. I do, too. It's amazing. Can you imagine Kiss Me Stupid with Sellers, though? If he hadn't had that heart attack. That's one of those. Ray Walston makes me laugh, but it's one of those things where you watch that movie. It feels unfair. You just watch the movie and it's like, oh, my God, it could have been Peter Sellers.

It could have been Peter Sellers. That's all you think of. And I'll use that as a segue. But before you do your segue, that probably isn't really a segue. If you announce a segue, it's not really a segue. It's called changing the topic. You got me. The first script we ever sold was influenced by the fortune cookie, which is terrific,

which is a later era Wilder. It was a courtroom comedy about malfeasance. Okay. That wasn't Jupiter Needs Parking. No, it wasn't. No, it was Homewreckers. I won't ask about that. But on the subject of sellers,

because we could do a six-hour show, Gilbert's obsessed with After the Fox, and I found that as one of your picks. I am the Fox. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Great song. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Scott is Great song. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Scott is not a lover of After the Fox.

No, it's really annoying. That last scene where they all watch the movie. That's fantastic. That's amazing. That's a great, great scene where they actually, yeah, the plot of the movie is a guy. Here we go. A master thief wants to rob this gold. And he pretends to be a film director.

And he goes into this small town and basically casts the entire town as extras in this movie he's shooting. But what he's really having them do is steal the gold. Smart premise. It's kind of a stupid film but there's a lot of like stupid movie making stuff in it and

in the final they get caught and they have a courtroom scene and they actually project the movie that they shot and it makes all the jurors start crying

yeah and it's one of those things where it's like it's like you know everyone is shown to be the fool that they are

and it's a very well done Mature is good in it yeah and it's directed by I mean it's insane Victoria De Se is good in it. It's directed by, I mean, it's insane. Credits are crazy. It's directed by Victoria DeSiga. It's written by Neil Simon. Music by Burt Bacharach.

I know. And it stars Peter Sellers. It should be the best film of all time. It really should. And there's that part when they show the film and it's awful in the courtroom. And the critic stands up. Yes. Yeah.

One guy. It's a genius. Yes. And they go, he's the movie critic. Yeah. Yeah, in the courtroom. And a critic stands up. Yes, yeah. One guy. It was a genius. Yes. And they go, he's the movie critic. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And we stole a joke from it. You did.

We did. From Problem Child. We did? Oh. That's how. Maybe you stole a joke. No, no. It's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, how he gets out of prison.

How the botanical gets out of prison. Oh, Michael Richards. The wrong man has escaped. Exactly. No, no, no. Right, right. It's totally. He's the prison, how the botanical gets out of prison. Oh, Michael Richards. The wrong man has escaped. Exactly. No, no, no. Right, right. Who is the fox? I am the fox.

Who are you? I am me. Who is me? I am a thief. You caused your poor, poor sister grief. Oh, after the fox. After the fox Fox Wow. That's great.

Scott's right. With all that talent it should have been the best movie ever made. Of course. Yeah. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So what's happening now? It's on Netflix. It's on Netflix. Does that mean it's no longer in theaters? It's still in a few theaters. It's hanging on. It's hanging there.

Santa Monica in Santa Monica. But aren't I've been saying this for years now. Movie theaters are dead. Movie theaters are not dead. Actually,

attendance is fine in movie theaters. It's just not for, it's for those blockbuster things. You know what I mean? So it's like, it's like,

Those movies that Scorsese loves. Exactly. Yeah. And Coppola. And Mike Lee. You know, but thankfully,

you know, some places like Netflix are still in the business of making these mid-budget kind of movies. Well, that's one of the best parts of the story is you go in to pitch Netflix, and you're thinking you have to tell Ted Sarandos who Rudy Ray Moore is. Yeah, we were so nervous because of our PTSD from the bad meetings 18 years earlier. Okay, we've got 10 minutes of explanatory who the hell is Rudy Ray Moore

and Ted just cut us off and he said, guys, I ran video stores in the 80s. Rudy kept us in business. Everything fell into place. Yes, it did.

For a movie that took 16 years to make, it happened very quickly. Can you guys talk about anything else that's in the planning stage or in the works?

Not really. Okay. We might jinx it if we do. Okay. I am going to it if we do. Okay. I am going to hit you up to just talk a little bit about interviewing Robert Morse

because he's somebody we've been trying to get here. Oh, he'd be great. Bobby's great. He did the front page in New York. You should have got him when he was doing the front page.

Oh, yeah. He was here. We had a hard time getting to him. And I saw that production on the front page. That was funny. How was he? That was great.

He was great and Nathan was amazing. It was great. He was the first one to play Truman. Yes. Yeah. No, he's fantastic. He won the Tony for that.

Yeah. Oh, Truman. True. Yeah. Truman. Yeah. Truman. Yeah.

Truman. Truman. Yeah. Oh, I got Harry Truman. Yeah. Yeah. He would have been a great Harry Truman. Put Whitmore out of it.

Yeah, exactly. James Whitmore would be very pissed off. Bobby Morris is stealing my act. Stealing my act. And jumping back to the movie. Actually, I thought you were going to say he's the first person to play the Wiz. Not the Wiz, because that's a black show from the 70s. He played Richard Pryor, wasn't he?

Yeah, he's in the movie version. Oh, Wicked. In Wicked, yeah. He played Wiz until it opened on Broadway. Technically, Frank Morgan was first. True, technically. Very true. But no, Bobby was fantastic.

I had a screening recently of How to Succeed in Business. And it was packed. We sold out the American Cinematheque. You enjoy doing those things. I saw you and Scott last night at the theater. I don't do it as much as I used to. I used to do it quite a bit. Now it has to be, you know, we're just so busy these days.

I enjoy talking about other people's movies rather than my own movie. But right now we're talking about our own movies. But this is beautiful because, you know, Bobby's so entertaining. And that movie is great. That was a beautiful print. That was a beautiful print. And it's crazy. It was Bobby 50 years later telling war stories. And it's an. It was Bobby 50 years later. Yeah. Telling war stories.

And it's an amazing performance. Oh, he's so good. He's great. He's great and a loved one. Yeah, he is. I did the screening with that, too. I did him and Haskell Wexler. And I like to show off that I got to see Bobby Morris and Rudy Vallee in How to Succeed.

They did a revival in the early 70s that came through LA. Wow, wow, wow. That was a big deal. I was that kid standing at the dressing room door to get my program autographed. Did you guys do any 25th stuff for Ed Wood? Did we miss anything? No, we're hoping to. We may still do something.

Okay. We want to throw something together. Last thing, there was Bobby Morris. And this is a movie of its time. It could only be made in that time and that was Guide to the Married Man.

Oh, that's a good one. That's a massive movie. Should Kelly direct that? Yes. That movie, like, is the Joy Bishop scene. The Joy Bishop scene. Yes.

The greatest scene of all time. Guys are like a married couple. Deny, deny, deny. He knows what's going on. Joy Bishop is making love to his mistress, and his wife comes in and catches them. And the mistress and Joey Bishop just get up,

and the wife is yelling and yelling and yelling, and Joey just puts on his clothes. He makes the bed. He makes the bed. He does everything. The mistress grabs her clothes, and she leaves, and Joey Bishop goes to the living room and sits down and starts reading the paper.

And he looks up, and he's like, oh, honey, what's going on? Whatever. Completely doesn't say it happened. But that movie is like, I think the Me Too-er, that's a toxic, toxic film. Oh, yeah. Because I was actually with more than How to Murder Your Wife. He likes that one.

Yes. How to Murder Your Wife. I always liked that one. Yeah. But I remember after the Bobby Moore screening at the Cinematheque, I was standing there with a couple people from the American Cinematheque, and some person came over to me and said, you guys should show Guide for the Married Man.

And they walked away, and the Cinematheque person said, no, we won't show Guide for the Married Man. That's not going to happen. Oh, yeah, they firebombed the theater. Can I put in a request to your listeners? Please. Here's a trivia question, which we don't know the answer to. Oh.

These freaks will know. There we go. When we were making Dolomite, we knew everything about everything, except we don't know the name of the actor who played the warden. Yeah. And he is recreated in our film in that very funny scene where Dolomite's getting out of prison and the lady reads in the Santa suit. And his name has been lost to time.

So if anyone, if that was somebody's uncle, let Frank and Gil know. I'm confident somebody's going to come up with that. Someone is screaming it. Yeah.

He's not listed on IMDb. He's not in the credits. No. It's so frustrating. Credits are weird because they've got the director listed next to third in the opening credits. They don't even know where the director goes.

That's a great thing. You look at 70s posters, and the director will be in the middle of the building block, and it'll be like the editor is last. Yeah, it's weird. Or the production designer. What I wanted to do with our movie, I forget which movie does this of Rudy's,

but the credits all have the person's zodiac sign. That's Human Tornado. Human Tornado. Larry Karzyski, you know, Scorpio. That's what I wanted. Speaking of credits, you do like the Harry Nielsen sung credits. Oh, that's amazing. That's fantastic.

It's the only good thing about that. We had Austin Pendleton here, talked about Skidoo. He's got good memories of it. Fred Clark is the car, I think. Well, Gilbert, We had Austin Pendleton here, talked about Skidoo. He's got good memories of it. Fred Clark is the Clark, I think. Well, Gilbert, what do you think of Groucho and Skidoo? It's kind of like Groucho and those later Marx Brothers movies. It's worse. He's reading.

He's reading cue cards. Austin liked them, though. They got along. Okay. He said once they understood it was a piece of shit they were doing, they enjoyed themselves. Okay. So we should tell people, if they don't know

Rudy Ray Moore's canon, that they should watch these things. Certainly Petey Whitestraw. I find starting with Human Tornado is probably the best entry level, but if you see the movie Dolomite, you're going to want to start with Dolomite. Because even though we recreate scenes from both films,

Dolomite is certainly... Is she cutting off the guys' Johnson in the scene in Dolomite? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's off camera. Yeah, yeah. And the infamous scene at the end of Dolomite, which we recreate, where he pulls out Dervil Martin's guts,

actually had a last-minute MPAA meltdown where they got an X rating. Really? And at the end of the day, Rudy just went over to Ralph's supermarket and bought some tenderloin. It's not much of a special effect. And so there is a jump cut

in the final version of the movie where Rudy starts to reach down and then just pops up and now he's holding it. You don't actually see it happen. Explain to me how he takes the bullet. Is it supposed to be to his shoulder? It looks like a shot to his heart. Who knows? It doesn't make any sense. You don't go to Dolmite for realism.

I have to say too, it was an absolute pleasure to see Eddie Murphy back in that form again. It really, in that form it's again it really it i mean it's a star performance eddie doing everything he's great at i mean he's he's funny and he's doing stand-up and he's doing singing and he's and he's vulnerable at times yeah no i remember really sweet first day of shooting uh eddie was doing his stuff and kind of looked at each other and it and we're like,

I just feel like we're making a movie at Humphrey Bogart or something. There's this great star who has come back. Come back with full power. I can't think of anyone who's come back with full power. And the love comes off the screen that he's playing this guy. That he really loved. That he really admired. That he feels he owes something to.

And that comes across too. Great passion that it's a passion project before you guys get out of here one more person we lost this year i have to ask the master screenwriter is just about william goldman and what what in your opinion because it's also the 50th anniversary of the release of butch Cassidy. Oh, Jesus. This week. It's really that old? Yeah, I know, depressing. What does he mean to you guys? I mean, he's a great craftsman.

I mean, Butch Cassidy and all the president's men, they make it look so easy. I mean, all the president's men shouldn't work on any level. It's just not very interesting material for drama. And yet, it's just completely engrossing. It's just scenes with people dropping off packages in parking garages. And you're on the edge of your seat. They're going through phone books. They're doing process.

I mean, I think the influence on us is that all the President's Men is about process. It's about how you get the story. You're walking through all the steps. And it was a little influential on the O.J. thing when people would always ask that question of like, how can you do a thriller where you know the ending? We know that O.J. gets away with it. And we're always like, well, in all the President's Men, you know what history is, but you're at the edge of your seat through a lot of that film.

I mean, I don't know if I'm being a good film historian with Bush-Cassey, but I feel like, isn't it the first cheeky action film? I say Goldfinger, but definitely, you're correct. In terms of that buddy rep part, hey. It's one of the first buddy movies, isn't it? Yeah, he might have invented that. He might have. I mean, I like to say that, I've said too many times that Freebie and the Bean invented the modern, crazy action comedy buddy film. But Bush Cassidy did come first.

Well, Bush Cassidy, they're playing historical figures, but they're modern dudes. You know what I mean? They are. It's Paul Newman and Robert Redford. It's modern attitude. Yeah, modern attitude. And what has Gilbert meant to you? One day, I want to see his legs.

Walk for us, Gilbert. Walk for us. Run, Jew, run. You guys going to another screening? Yes. A junket what? We're going to some British Academy, I believe. BAFTA.

BAFTA. Thanks for finding time to squeeze this in. We love you guys. Yeah, you guys are great. And I also have to credit you for your hilarious emails. No, that is the greatest. That's the joy of my life. That is the greatest thing in the world. of my life. That is the greatest thing

in the world. But every once in a while, I'll go to a movie, turn up my phone, and I come back out, and I'm like, oh my God, 20 emails.

Who died in my family? It's like, it's Frank Sadropadre and Dana Gould showing pictures of Jerry Lewis. It's like, Don Knotts.

What the hell? Yeah. What the hell? You guys put some great stuff up there. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Well, that's a great group.

The Seven Seal parody pictures that you did with Sweden were great. And you found that Loose Cannons thing with the group. The seven seal parody pictures that you did with Sweden were great. And you found that loose cannons thing with the guy that thought it was a snuff film. That was your discovery.

That was crazy. That was crazy. Wait, let's finish with this. There's an email group with Conan and Drew and Patton and Leonard Maltin.

Okay, but the, was it in Canada? They found it in Canada. The guy found it in the trash and thought it was a snuff film. But it turned out it was... It was a Don Deleuze film.

Close enough. It snuffed some of their careers. I think that's really what it was. Thanks, gents. All right, take care, guys. Thanks, guys. You want to sign off? This has been Gilbert Gottfried's

Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre. And our guests are the creators of Problem Child 1. And more importantly, Problem Child 2. Scott Alexander and Larry Karazus. Thank you, guys. See the movie, everybody. I agree. Thank you, guys. See the movie, everybody. I agree.

Go to Dolomite. Oh, he's bad The man is out of sight He's a tough son of a gun, y'all The man's name is Dolomite I heard of his coming Even before his time And I ain't lyin' On the day that he was born

His pappy wore a sign Sayin' Dolomite is here And this bad little brother is mine Dolomite And this bad little brother is mine Hey, hey, hey, hey Dolomite, Dolomite Oh, man, you're out of sight Dolomite, Dolomite Dolomite, Dolomite

Yeah, oh, brother, you're right Dolomite, Dolomite, Dolomite He's here to let the whole world know How bad a man is he Yeah So won't you stop Look and listen Dolomite is here for your sea

Mm-hmm Oh, oh, oh. Web and social media is handled by Mike McPadden, Greg Pair, and John Bradley-Seals. Special audio contributions by John Beach. Special thanks to John Fodiatis, John Murray, and Paul Rayburn.