Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 89. Joe Dante

Episode Date: February 8, 2016

"Gremlins" and "The Howling" director Joe Dante grew up as a horror movie-obsessed kid in Morristown, New Jersey and went on to work with many of his childhood heroes, including John Carradine, Christopher Lee and Kevin McCarthy. Gilbert and Frank dialed up Joe in his Hollywood home to inquire about everything from his love of Disney films to apprenticing for Roger Corman to developing the ill-fated "Jaws 3, People 0." Also, Joe auditions Rod Steiger, ad-libs with Tony Randall, passes on "Orca, Part II" and pays tribute to William Castle. PLUS: Keye Luke! Brother Theodore! "Bride of the Gorilla"! Horrible Herman the Asiatic Insect! And the return of "The Tingler"! Let Selfie Station be the Picture taker, Ice breaker AND your money maker. As a special introductory offer, get $500 off the professional package. Go to http://SelfieStationpodcast.com and enter promo code GILBERT. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Squeeze more summer out of summer with Skip. Did somebody say Skip? The Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast Producer of the Month is Steve Corey. Thank you, Steve. Be just like Steve and get rewarded for supporting our podcast. Head over to patreon.com slash Gilbert Gottfried. Go to patreon.com slash Gilbert Gottfried. That's patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Gilbert Gottfried. As always, thank you for your generosity. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast. I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and our guest this week is a celebrated film

and TV director, producer, and editor, and one of the first names we wrote down when we decided to put together this podcast. His long list of credits include The Howling, Interspace, Gremlins, The Burbs, Twilight Zone, The Movie, and one of our favorites, Matinee. In his long career, he's worked with dozens of legendary performers, many of whom we love to talk about on this show, including Kevin McCarthy, John Carradine, and Christopher Lee, to name a few. His terrific website is called Trailers from Hell and features hundreds of commentaries on classic and not-so-classic movie trailers. Please welcome one of the few people walking the earth who is as obsessed with old horror and sci-fi films as I am, Joe Dante.

Well, I'm humbled. We're humbled, Joe. Thanks for doing this. And we've had on the show at least two people we think you're familiar with. Just a few days ago, we spoke to Bruce Stern. I love Bruce. Bruce can tell you what Jesse Lasky had for breakfast. That's amazing.

Everybody, I noticed it, and everybody comments on Bruce Stern's amazing memory. He seems to remember things that happened before he was born, let alone before he was in the movies. Yeah, he was our first guest to ask us trivia questions. Well, he's a fabulous guy. I mean, he's so much fun to have on the set. On the Burbs, he was like the organizing group. He would do football pools. He would do trivia contests. He's just one of the most fun people to be around that I ever worked with. And we also interviewed someone who is more obsessed with saving money than i am

and that that's saying a lot roger corman well he's not as much fun as bruce of course but um no i'm kidding if it wasn't for roger i wouldn't be talking to you today yeah he he's a he's a raconteur he told us some wonderful stories. And of course, the one about the tennis game being rained out, a story I've heard you tell. business as we know it today would not exist because everybody uh in in the 70s who was who got anywhere were people who started with roger and they transformed the entire business yeah i mean it was uh francis ford coppola um mcdonough yeah jack nicholson yeah uh so many people yeah ron howard martin scorsese i mean all these all these great people and and roger's Yeah. So many people. Ron Howard. And so Roger would hire people, and he had a great talent for discovering who really cared about the movie and who would work extra hard to make their Women in Cages movie the best Women in Cages movie. And would work on Sunday, and then Roger would often say, well, nobody works for me on Sunday.

Well, we all worked for him on Sunday, because if we cared, we wanted to do the best job possible. And under the circumstances, which were rather dire, you know, he would throw every obstacle in your path that you could imagine. And yet you would still manage to come out with a movie. And that's why all those people who went through the Corman school, as we called it, ended up being, you know, fairly prominent in the business because they really learned their craft. And do you remember any stories about like the craziest ways he would save money? Well, one of the things he would like to say was sit down a lot and take all the directors out before before they shot.

And then he would give them advice. And one of them would be sit down a lot because it's difficult. And then, of course, there were no chairs, so there was nothing to sit. And then the other thing, which I actually ended up using, which everybody thought was apocryphal, but actually was true, was that you can indeed shoot night scenes by your car headlights. And on The Howling, we had a generator failure, and we were going to have to shut down for the day.

And I remember that Roger had said you could shoot scenes by the light of your car headlights. And so we put all the crew cars together, and we turned the headlights on, and we kept shooting. That's great. Now, you, I think, came to fame with the movie piranha and that was a movie if i remember the plot correctly it was about this these creatures who live underwater with powerful jaws and they're eating the swimmers and no one wants to tell anyone about it because it's a vacation community.

And Universal Studios said in their legal terms, this is a fucking ripoff of Jaws. Well, I don't know if I would use the word fucking. Well, I don't know if I would use the word fucking. But I think it was fairly apparent to all of us that it was indeed a ripoff of Jaws. And they didn't really get involved with it except for the fact that they had a sequel coming up for Jaws, Jaws 2. And that was why they wanted to protect their franchise. And there were a number of other pictures. There was a couple of shark pictures from Mexico that they managed to get injunctions against

and keep off the market. Wasn't there one called Great White? They tried. They tried to actually keep it off the market. And to my everlasting gratitude, Steven Spielberg saw the movie and said, no, no, you guys don't understand. It's a spoof. It's a parody of Jaws. It's not a ripoff. Well, that was very kind of him because it really

was a ripoff. I tried to turn it into sort of a parody. And it was, you know, it was the movie that put me on the map because it actually made quite a bit of money, particularly considering how little it cost. And from then on, you and Steven Spielberg worked a lot together. Yes, he had, it turned out he had seen Piranha and I had no idea that he had been instrumental in getting the picture, you know, released and not injuncted. But then he apparently had seen The Howling, which is a picture I did after Piranha. And he liked the performance of Dee Wallace, who was the lead in that picture, and he put her in E.T. And then when it came time for him to start his own company, Amblin, which was initially conceived as a low-budget film company, he wanted to do a low-budget horror film, and he came to me because I had done them before. And he asked me to do a picture that eventually turned out to be Grumman's.

Take us back a couple of steps, Joe, before you made Piranha. I mean, how'd you get hooked up with Roger Corman in the first place? You started as an editor with him? Well, my friend John Davison, who I had met in Philadelphia, had come out here to be the head of publicity for New World Pictures, which is the company that Roger was running at the time. And they needed a trailer editor because Roger was annoyed that he kept bringing people in and trying to explain to them how the trailers were made. And then he would have to explain to the new guy how the trailers were made. And so they decided they'd make a trailer department.

And so they brought me out, and I started to make some trailers for pictures like Candy Stripe Nurses and Caged Heat, which was Jonathan Demme's first. Yeah, we know that. And that picture, both those pictures made money. And so it was like, well, the trailers must have had something to do with it. Let's keep this guy. And then Alan Arkish came out, who was also an NYU buddy of John's, came out. And we became the trailer department for New World Pictures. And we would make all the trailers for the movies.

And some of the movies were better than others. And some of them weren't really very good at all. and some of them weren't really very good at all. But we learned while making trailers that you can take a scene that runs four minutes and you can condense it into 30 seconds by just taking the best parts of it. And so we started to think, well, maybe we could make a movie. And so we asked Roger if we could make a picture and he said it was okay. As long as it's the cheapest movie they'd ever made there. Uh, and we all had 10 days and we had to keep making trailers at night. So we couldn't figure out how to make a releasable

movie under those circumstances until we figured out that if we made a picture that was, uh, conceived around the footage that we've been using in the trailers for other pictures we could make a movie and Roger was doing these three girl movies at the time there were teachers and nurses and they would like have adventures and take their clothes off and have left wing vaguely left wing adventures and um and we said well let's do starlets let's do actresses and then the act the movies that the actresses are in all the scenes that they're in that we could take from other movies that we've been working on so we made this picture called hollywood boulevard about these

three girls who come to hollywood and make these movies which are large which largely consist of scenes from other movies that already existed and And we did it in 10 days. And Alan and I co-directed the movie. He would call cut, and I would call action. And then he would set up the next scene, and I would call cut, and he would shoot his scene, and then he'd be finished. And then I'd call action, I'd shoot my scene. And we managed to get the whole movie made in 10 days.

And, you know, it was a pretty arcane movie. It's now kind of a cult following. But at the time, it was not exactly, didn't exactly set the world on fire. With Paul Bartel and his wife from Eating Raoul fame. Paul Bartel and Raoul were in it. You know, they both, Paul made Death Race, which Mario was in. And Candice Rousen, who was the reigning B-movie queen at the time, was the star. And it's a pretty silly movie, but it's a fairly decent picture of actually the way things work that New World Pictures in the 1970s.

And you did the movie Gremlins. In the 1970s. And you did the movie Gremlins. Now Gremlins set off a bunch of rip-off movies. Like Ghoulies and Trolls. We don't call them rip-offs. We call them homages. You know, there was Critters. Oh yeah, Critters.

Yes! Which was probably the best ones of those because they were done by the Chiodo brothers who were really clever. Oh, I worked with them. Those are the killer clowns from Outer Space guys? Yeah, those guys are out there. I worked with them and Howie Mandel in Adventures of the Amazing Sea Monkeys. Really? Yes. There you go. It must have been in-between gizmo gigs for him. Oh, yes.

And then there was, of course, Ghoulies. Oh, yes. It was Charles Band's version. Now, which one had Sonny Bono? I think Ghoulies. I think Ghoulish. I think Ghoulish. That sounds safe.

And then there was another one called Munchies. Oh, that's right. Which was actually made by Roger and was directed by Tina Hirsch, who edited Gremlins. And the thing about Munchies was, and Harvey Korman was in it, and so, you know, it had its moments. But the thing about the Munchies was, and Harvey Korman was in it. And so, you know, it had its moments.

But the thing about the Munchies were they didn't want to have animatronics, and they didn't want to have dolls. So basically the monsters were played by these clothing remnants that looked kind of like dolls, and then we just sort of throw them around in the frame. Not a particularly good movie. and then we just sort of throw them around in the frame. Not a particularly good movie. So Roger wound up making a film that was an homage to one of your films.

An homage, yes. I love how you said... That's your picking up on the terminology. I love how you said they expected, talking about Corman and working for Corman, how they expected the movies at New World to be bad. Well, that was the great thing about working for Roger Roger was that the industry, such as it was, and any kind of notice that it took of these movies, which was not very much, was that if the movie wasn't terrible, maybe you were talented. And maybe you'd be worth bringing on to some studio kind of a movie or at least a more expensive low budget movie. And that was one of the keys of working for Roger. As he often said, if you're good and you work for me, you won't have to work for me more than twice.

Right. And another unseen star of Gremlins who we've had on the show, Howie Mandel. Yep. Well, Howie was unseen because he was just doing voices. But Howie was one of the keys to the success of the movie because at the time he had this sort of baby character that he was doing voices with. Uh, and, uh, he, he sort of brought that, that childishness to this gizmo character who, who didn't really have a lot of dialogue in the sense that you could understand it, but there was a sort of a glossary of things that he would say, and he would imitate things that people would say

and, and how he would do it in this baby voice that was just revoltingly cute. And I think it's one of the reasons, along with the design of the character, which is based on one of Steven Spielberg's dogs, because he kept not approving the design, and we finally said, well, let's make it the same color as his dogs, and maybe he'll approve it.

And when Howie came along, I mean, he really made this thing into a character. And I actually like the sequel better. Yeah, Gremlins 2 is fun. They're both fun. Yeah, it's a closely guarded secret, but I prefer the sequel as well. Yeah, because there you just went all out. Yeah, it's wilder.

Yeah. Well, they were desperate for a sequel, and they had tried, apparently, over a number of years. They came to me right after the first movie, and they said, let's make a sequel right away. And I was so exhausted. It was such a difficult movie to make because we were inventing that technology. And no one really believed in it at the time. And so it was a great vindication that it became a big hit. But they came back, and they said, let's make another one.. I said, no, I can't do it. I'm, I just, I'm, I'm, I'm done. And so they worked on it for five years, trying to figure out a reason

to make the sequel. But since they didn't really quite get the first movie, I mean, they were happy that it was successful, but they didn't really understand what the appeal was. Uh, they finally came back to me and Mike Fennell, the producer, and they said, well, if you guys will make a sequel for us, you can do whatever you want. And you don't get that kind of offer very often. And so we said, well, let's make a sequel that's about sequels and about how this movie doesn't really need one. Very smart.

And, you know, we have this character played by John Glover, who is a combination of Donald Trump and Ted Turner, who started out as the villain. But then as the movie progressed, he became he was John played it so likably that he ended up being kind of a pseudo hero. And I can only look back at the current political situation and regret that decision. only look back at the current political situation and regret that decision and i remember a tony randall was in it yes tony randall was the voice of the brain gremlin and one of the best days of my life in the movie business was in a new york uh recording studio working with tony randallall to do this voice, which he sort of based on George Plimpton.

Oh, interesting. And he was just so hilarious and so funny and so witty. And he came up with so much stuff. I mean, a lot of the stuff that's in the movie wasn't scripted. I mean, it's just stuff that he came up with. And there was this design that didn't exist when we made the first film, which is now completely obsolete, of course, but it was called a Gilder Fluke. And what it was was it allowed the puppet to move its lips to a prerecorded track.

And so Tony's tracks would be edited, and then they would be played back on set and the characters would move their lips and look like they were actually speaking. And it was one of the one of the best aspects of that movie. I mean, it's just it's just so much fun. And today, of course, everything will be CGI. Right. Of course. And I remember he had a little bit of George Sanders in the character, too.

Yeah, a very supercilious attitude. I know. One funny part is in the original, Phoebe Cates does that whole story about her father dresses up as Santa Claus and he falls down the chimney and dies and then they re had to redo it in the second one as I think it was Lincoln's birthday well you know that was a very controversial aspect of the first movie with the studio because they really didn't understand what was funny about that scene and uh they kept wanting me to cut it out. And I said, no, I think this really sort of encapsulates the whole movie because it's funny. But if it happened to you, it's not funny, you know. And and so we had to fight about keeping it in the movie. And we had this great preview

and everybody thought it was wonderful and the studio was thrilled. And they said, all we have to do is cut out that one speech by Phoebe Cates and then the picture will be perfect. And I appealed to Steven Spielberg. I said, Lee, I really think I like this scene. I think it's really important. And it's the only character moment she's got in the movie. And he, you know, because he was filmmaker friendly, as Amblin was, he said, OK. And the studio was grumbled, but they went, OK. And the picture went out and made a lot of money anyway.

So when we made the sequel, I couldn't resist doing a riff on that scene. I like the casting of Gremlins very much, too, Joe. What can you tell us about Key Luke or Hoyt Axton or both of them? Well, for Hoyt Axton's part, we saw all these actors. I mean we saw everybody in town. And we saw great actors. We saw Pat Hingle. Oh, love him.

And did such a reading of this failed inventor that it was as if william soroyan had written it and it was like we can't hire him it's it's it's too it's too real it's too emotional and the same thing with with uh polly holidays character i mean she there were there were moments in the movie where she played Mrs. Deagle so sympathetically that we had to cut the scene out. You know, it was more of a cartoony

movie than that. She's great in the film, though. She is wonderful in the film. And it was wonderful to work with. But they all were. And Hoyt was, you know, he was a great guy. And I had particularly been you know, he was a great guy. And I had particularly been impressed with him in the Blackstown. And, you know, of course, I knew his music and everything.

We should remind our listeners that he was a songwriter. He wrote Joy to the World. Absolutely. A very big song and never been to Spain. He would serenade the crew at lunch. A renaissance man. With his bony fingers, you know, guitar thing uh he was a great guy to have around and um it was just one of those lucky things where look you the elements fit together it's the right movie at the right time if it had come out a year earlier a year

later seven months earlier who knows i mean but the particular time it came out, it was the movie that the zeitgeist wanted to see. And you use a lot the old star, well, old supporting actor, Dick Miller. Oh, we love Dick Miller. Well, I'm a, you know, I started out as a movie fan before I was a movie maker. And I, you know, grew up watching a lot of these people. And for me to have a Dick Miller, I had Dick in my first movie because I thought,

it's my first movie. It may be my only movie. I want to put Dick in it. Because I had always enjoyed watching him. And of course, we became friends. And he became sort of an avatar for me. And he was in almost every movie I ever did. But then there were other movie, other actors that I worked with, like Kevin McCarthy and Bill Shallard and Scott Brady and people that I had seen growing up that

I always liked. And I remember the, the, the, the meeting I had with Scott Brady for the sheriff and gremlins, he said, you know, Mike Fennell and I said, well, you know, we went over how much we enjoyed this performance and that performance or whatever. And I guess this guy was so used to going into meetings with people who didn't know who he was that he said, I don't care what the part is. I'll do it. Wow.

And that was true with Gail Gordon as well. Oh, yes, Gail Gordon in the Burbs. Yes. He said, no, fine. I don't care what – I don't need to read it. I'll do it. Because, you know, there was a not a lot – during that period, there were people who were film buff filmmakers, and there were people who were just making films,

and they weren't necessarily that invested in film history. And so when somebody said, well, why don't you see this actor? They really weren't that familiar with their previous work. And, you know, since I grew up watching all these people, I was like, I was thrilled to meet people. I was supposed to do a movie called The Phantom, which ended up getting made by somebody else. But I remember interviewing Rod Steiger for a part. And, you know, I'd always been very impressed with Rod Steiger. And he practically begged us for the part because his career had not been going well. And it was just a very interesting position to be in. For a kid from Morristown, New Jersey, who's going to revival theaters and watching these people, and here you are.

And it's not that many years later you're auditioning them for your movies. Absolutely. It had to be an out-of-body experience. That's true. You know, I mean, people that you thought you would never even get to meet, let alone work with. Right. And then when you did get to work with them, I mean, of course, the majority of them, I can't think of an actor who disappointed me

in the sense that, well, he's an asshole. You know, I mean, I just never encountered any of those. And the Rod Steiger story brings me back to a story that Rod Steiger said later in his life. He was meeting with a producer. He was up for a movie, and the producer said to him, well, this is a Southern character. Can you do a Southern accent?

Didn't know their history. How old is it in the heat of the night by then? Yeah. And I think Steiger said, well, I won an Academy Award for my southern accent. And the producer said, well, do you have a copy of this film? Well, look, I mean, that gets into a whole different area of discussion, which is, you know, film history. which is, you know, film history. And we live in a time when there are more movies available, if you care to look for them, than have ever been available in my lifetime.

And when I was a kid, you know, you went to the movies. If you saw a movie you liked, you would wait five years and maybe you'd see it on TV. And if you missed that TV showing, you'd have to wait another year and a half before another TV showing. I mean, that was just the way things worked. Now, there's so many things available to see that have been restored or, you know, on the digital or whatever.

But yet, the majority of people are completely unfamiliar with anything that was made before 1990. I remember when I was a kid, I would look, I would check the local listings of Route 66 every day to see if they'd be showing, I think it was Lizard's Tail and Owlet's Wing. I'm sure Joe's familiar with it. I'm sure Joe's familiar with it. Forrest Karloff, Chaney Jr., and Peter Lorre.

And the one day I didn't check the listing that was on. And you wanted to kill yourself. Yes. Right. Well, but, you know, when I was a kid, TV Guide was your Bible. Oh, sure. I mean, they had a listing of movies in the front. And it was like, what movies are going to run this week and where?

And that was like, okay, that was the only place you could go to find that stuff out. Now, of course, you know, there's Wikipedia and IMDB. I mean, there's all this information available and all sorts of discussions about movies that you could never have because, you know, when I, as a kid, uh, you didn't even know if there were people who really liked the kind of stuff that you liked. It really took the emergence of Famous Monsters of Filmland in 1958 for kids to realize that there were other kids, geeky kids, out there like themselves. There's other kids who like these movies. From Famous Monsters of Filmland, I have a few feet from me in my house a poster of Frankenstein. That six-foot poster they used to sell.

In the back. In the back. The Captain Company. And I had, I ordered one of these in the ads. They called it Herman the Asiatic Insect. And you'd see some enormous insect with fangs and claws and hair. And I ordered it, and it came in like a little like the size of a matchbox. And it was a stick with some fur glued on it and rubber bands for

antennas. But that was the whole secret of all those comic book ads. Oh, yeah. Thousands of soldiers, you know, and you buy them, and it turns out they're so skinny. You turn them sideways, they're like the size of, they're like razor blades. I mean, there's like nothing there.. There was one called Surprise Package. Do you remember this one? Just the question marks around it.

You didn't even know what you were going to get. How about X-Ray Specs? Oh, yes. For every horny kid out there. Because you'd see that dorky kid would be staring at a girl and seeing her naked body underneath it so of course every boy wanted those right johnson smith wasn't that the name of the the uh the catalog yeah yeah that's all all that stuff where are we yeah we are oh and you used to be able, and this was the most crooked thing ever, you used to be able to order monkeys by mail order.

No, sea monkeys. No, no, real monkeys. Where did you order real monkeys? Real monkeys. What do you mean real monkeys? It was totally black market shit. I don't know where you were looking. They would send you, you would get a monkey. It was totally black market shit. I don't know where you were looking. They would send you, you would get a monkey.

I thank God I never ordered it. Are you serious? Who ever got a monkey? The monkeys, when the kids received them, the monkeys were either dying or dead. Are you serious? I swear to God, there were monkeys you could buy by mail. It was the most total black market. Midgets and suits.

And by the way, since we brought up Famous Monsters of Filmland, you wrote for Famous Monsters of Filmland at one point, Joe. To validate your existence, you had to get your name in Famous Monsters of Filmland, you wrote for Famous Monsters of Filmland at one point, Joe. To validate your existence, you had to get your name in Famous Monsters. And as a letter, you had to write a letter, and if it got published, you were like a celebrity. So I wrote all these letters. I wrote the best movies I'd

ever seen, the scariest movies I'd ever seen, and finally I wrote the worst movies I'd ever seen, and that one got turned into an article. Even though I hadn't seen like about 15 of the movies. Well, that counts. But I became a celebrity. You wrote for Castle of Frankenstein, another film magazine. Castle of Frankenstein was the magazine that was for people who were too old for famous monsters.

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New eligible clients only. Complete criteria june 30th 2024 new eligible clients only complete criteria by august 30th 2024 visit rbc.com student 100 our our crack research team look out joey's got a cell phone found found an ad here man's account of ordering a live monkey from a comic book ad. And it's a drawing of a monkey, America's most amusing pet, the squirrel monkey. Good, healthy. How could the FDA allow this? Oh, you could get away with all this shit back then.

Oh, and you could get it for just $13.95. A live monkey. Shipped it in a box. Yeah, probably with no holes in it to breathe. Incredible. I'll bet John Landis ordered one. He loves monkeys.

Talking about your childhood, since we're talking about it joe and and gilbert's childhood you're a local kid you're from new jersey jersey yeah and i thought you're doing research about you it was very touching your story about going your your dad i mean your dad was a golf pro he was on the road a lot uh him taking you to see tarantula i thought that was such a sweet story. Well, you know, the movie theater, the local movie theater used to play movies

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, Sunday. So if you, on Thursday, the movie was over. And like, I saw the trailer for Tarantula and I really wanted to see it. And my father, I begged him to take me.

And he got up really early, and he came back really late. And he took me to see the movie. And I was so scared that I hung out in the lobby. I was pacing in the lobby. I remember the manager laughing at me. I was going to the cashier saying, look at this kid. He can't take it. Leaving my father alone to watch a giant spider movie by himself now i remember like tarantula is to use your words joe an homage

to the movie them yes indeed but it's the best homage and all the ones that followed were worse. The funny thing is Them is the respected film, and I like Tarantula better. Well, Them is a better movie. Is that the one with James Whitmore? Them, yeah. That's really a really good movie. It's really well written, and it's really

well paced, and I must add that I had seen Them, of course, and I had nightmares for years because the sounds of the ants sounded somewhat like crickets. Of course, we had crickets in the backyard of my house. Them takes place in the desert. In the back of my house, there was a development that had been raised, and it was full of concrete and sort of sticking up out of the ground. And it looked kind of like a desert. And then in the wind, the leaves, the branches, the trees would would would scratch against my windows. And it was like giant antennas. And my parents would say, why do you see these movies when they make you have

nightmares and and my only answer was i can't help it i just i just love these movies i love being scared and that's why i ended up making so many horror movies that's great it's a good story and of course i i mean i remember tarantula is the one with Leo G. Carroll. Right. Leo G. Carroll. Yeah, yep. And that's the reason I wanted to see it because he was on Topper, which was a TV show. Yes.

That's right. That was very popular at the time. Wasn't he on it? And he was actually one of Hitchcock's favorite actors. Why do I remember him being in It Takes a Thief with Robert Wagner? Was he in that show? Probably. Leo G. Carroll?

He was the man from Uncle. Oh, the man from Uncle. Yeah, oh, that's right. That's right. He was the head of the organization. Right, right, right. And I remember in Tarantula, it's all based on finding a cure for,

as they called it, acromegalia. Which is actually acromegalia. I know. Yeah, we've talked about it on the show a lot it was based on a science fiction theater episode about uh called no food for thought which was about creating artificial nutrients and that's the backbone of the basic story of of tarantula which is that in creating the artificial nutrients they create giantism and they have giant, you know, guinea pigs and giant rats and this giant spider, which was, you know, it was scary when it was 50 feet tall, but it was a lot scarier when I was a kid, when it was only three feet tall and it was under

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if they had a real announcer, he would know how to professional package. That's right. $500 off. Go to SelfieStationPodcast.com Support our show by entering promo code Gilbert. That's selfie station podcast dot com promo code Gilbert. Speaking of big, the guy, the king of the big films who we named our show after, and that's Bert I. Gordon. Yeah, we were just talking about him. Mr. Big. Yes, and he was always, he was just always making things larger for his movies. Lizards, bugs, everything.

I don't think he did any small things. He didn't do any Incredible Shrinking Man kind of things. That was Jack Arnold. And he's still with us, Burt Gordon, in his 90s. Burt is still around, and he is still working. We're going on IMDb. He's got a picture. We're going to pursue him for this show if it kills us.

I think it's a great idea. He's not particularly loquacious and one short one one person frank and i would have loved to have had on the podcast and that's sammy petrillo oh yeah well we went to we we discovered the the website joe and we're absolutely in love with it with with uh with from Hell. And the first one that we saw was Bela Lugosi meets a Brooklyn gorilla. Well, I remember seeing that picture when I was a kid on TV under the title Boys from Brooklyn. And I was a huge Martin and Lewis fan. And as a seven-year-old or eight-year-old or however I was, I thought, is this really a martin and lewis movie that i

never heard of because they they actually were a pretty good approximation of martin and lewis well same petrillo more than dukey mitchell yeah yeah petrillo was like an exact replica well jerry had hired him apparently as to play baby Jerry on an episode of the Colgate Comedy Hour. And I guess Sammy figured this is a pretty good gig. And he, you know, continued to play Jerry much apparently to Jerry's distress. Yeah. And I heard that I think Hal Wallace, who produced the Martin and Lewis movies, at first wanted to get a lawsuit to stop Bela Gossi meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. But when he saw clips of it and he saw how terrible it was he thought it's not even worth it

well it didn't exactly set the guys on a large career trajectory my dad knew Dookie Mitchell growing up in Brooklyn not for nothing as they used to say I didn't have a big career either but Sammy as they used to say. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He didn't have a big career either.

No, but Sammy persisted for many years, apparently doing a variation of that act. Yeah, it's a strange film. It's very creepy. It's like you feel like you are watching a Martin and Lewis movie, but it's a Martin and Lewis nightmare. Yeah. No, it's an alternate world. Bizarro world. Yes. Is this one time we don't have to use the word homage? Yeah.

I think so. Now, you are going to do a Jaws 3. Oh, Jaws 3, people, nothing. I was supposed to do, after I did Piranha, I got a lot of offers for aquatic movies. A lot of barracuda kind of movies. And I worked with Dino De Laurentiis briefly on Orca 2. Oh, wow. And Dino said, Orca, he's a coma crazy.

He's a kill everybody. That was great. Orca was going to go on land and kill people and leave seaweed at the crime scene. This actually didn't strike me as a particularly viable idea. I managed to talk him out of it. So the whale was, was the whale going to walk on land? He's a couple of crazies.

So then I got offered Jaws 3 by the National Lampoon, by Matty Simmons, who was running the National Lampoon, and in conjunction with the Zanuck and Brown people who had done Jaws 2. And John Hughes, the late John Hughes, was one of the writers of the script. And the idea was that it was going to be a comedy version of Jaws. The problem was that the National Lampoon people wanted to make an R-rated version and the Universal people wanted to make a PG. And so they couldn't really decide on the tone of the movie. And we got fairly far with it. I mean, we had Bo Derek was hired to star, or at least we talked to her about it. Uh, and the, the problem became that there was just so much tension involved in the two different approaches that the movie ultimately never got made. And, um, which was lucky for me because I was able to bail out and, and do the howling on which I replaced

somebody who was supposed to do a different version of the howling. And I think Jaws 3 People Zero probably, under the circumstances I was dealing with, wouldn't have been a very good movie. I think the script is available online. I'm not sure which script that is. Oh, okay. I'm curious. I've never is oh okay i'm curious i've never read i'm sitting at my desk cutting up with the scissors different versions of the script and pasting them together

so i'm not sure wow now with the howling i heard they had originally started work on american werewolf in london and rick Baker was devising all the transformation scenes, and Rob Bottin was an apprentice. Well, that's true. Rob was Rick's apprentice, and Rob had worked with me on Piranha. And we went to Rick when The Howling came about, and Rick had been intending to do John Landis' movie, The American World from London, but the financing never came together. So Rick said, well, okay, you know, I mean, you know, if John's movie isn't going to happen, I'll do yours. And magically,

as soon as Rick said he would do ours, and John found out about it. Suddenly, Polygram came up with some money, and John was making his movie, and Rick said, I really promised John I have to do his movie. And he had done some tests for us that were really pretty remarkable. But I'm going to leave it in the hands of Rob. And so you guys make your movie, and we'll make our movie. And I think we made our movie first, and I think we were finished first, but John's movie was much more expensive than was the studio picture, and came out make our movie. And I think we made our movie first, and I think we were finished first, but John's movie was much more expensive than was the studio picture,

and came out a little later. Howling's a lot of fun. It is, because Howling's one of those movies that it's like not a comedy, but certainly filled with laughs, like sick laughs. Oh, and wonderful in jokes. Well, it was a movie supposedly for people who like werewolf movies.

And I figured I might not ever get to make another one. And so I wanted to put all of my werewolf lore interest into this one movie. And, you know, it was made for a small company called Apical Embassy, which at the time was making pictures like scanners, and we're having some success with it. And it became a surprise hit, even though it was a pretty low-budget movie. I remember one scene where they're in someone's office

and on the desk is a little framed portrait of Lon Chaney Jr. And it came from, it was Ron Botin's original picture of Lon Chaney Jr. who was like 17 or 18 in the picture. And we just felt that, you know, we needed to make all the homages that we could get away with in this picture. And also, the trick was that at the time, werewolf movies were considered kind of corny, because there hadn't been really very many successful ones lately, and everybody associated them with the late show.

And so we sold it as a slasher movie uh and we kept the supernatural elements out of the ad campaign and even out of the movie until the first half hours over so that the audience would be gradually supposedly you know uh dragged in to believing uh in what is always a problem in horror movies which is the suspension of disbelief i love that you named so many characters after movies, which is the suspension of disbelief. I love that you named so many characters after the directors of werewolf movies, too. That was a wonderful joke. Yeah, that was my idea.

I wanted to call all the characters after the directors of werewolf movies, except for John Sayles, the writer. He was a big baseball fan. So all the characters who aren't named after werewolf directors are named after baseball players. I love that. And there's one scene

where Dee Wallace Stone has to meet a guy in a porno theater. And I think they said Dee Wallace Stone was very afraid of going into a porno theater. Well, she was and is a very sensitive

person. uh when we we the porno booth scene was shot on a stage but the porno place was actually on western avenue and it was a real porno store and her the discomfort that you see on screen of her walking into this store and looking at the covers of these magazines is real. That is not acting. That is her. And I remember what's funny is when she's, the guy is attacking her, who's turning into a werewolf,

and you hear outside the porno booth all these, like, loud growls and screams. Well, you know, if you've ever been in a porno booth, all these, like, loud growls and screams. Well, you know, if you've ever been in a porno booth. Oh, yeah. Maybe he has once or twice. Joe, there's so many directions we can go in. There's so many things that we have to ask you about, Matt and A, because since we talked about Burt Gordon, we have to talk about The Great William Castle. And it's my personal favorite Joe Dante movie.

Well, matinee came to me as a script by a writer named Jericho Stone who had envisioned it as a movie about people who are lamenting the loss of a movie theater. It's being knocked down and turned into a video store. And it was much more of a fantasy about, you know, they're remembering their visits to the theater where the projectionist was a vampire and the usher was a monster. And that just didn't sell. So when we try to reimagine it as a more realistic picture, the idea of coming up with it as a Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 movie

seemed a little bit more realistic. And so therefore, the character in the original script, who was a horror movie star, who was making a personal appearance, became a horror movie director who was trying out his new science fiction movie in Key West in 1962. And the whole idea, of course, was that it juxtaposes the real fear that I had. I mean, it's a semi-autobiographical movie for me, because I was the age of the lead kid in 1962. And we did believe that weekend that there would be no Monday, and there would be no school, and the world would be over. And so, there's a lot of realism in that picture.

I mean, all of the reenactments of the kind of drills, the duck and cover drills and stuff that we had at the time are very accurate. And when you approached John Goodman and you said you were going to have to give him an education about Castle, but he didn't need one. No, I thought that John Goodman, I put together a reel of Castle trailers to show John Goodman. He said, I don't need to see that. I know who he is. And he's not exactly William Castle because William Castle didn't make those kind of movies. He made straight horror movies. He didn't make science fiction movies.

And in any case, by 1962, nobody was making giant monster movies. And by, and in any case, by 1962, nobody was making giant monster movies, but, um, still it, you know, it was enough close enough to the real story that it does, I think, have a certain authority. And, um, it's, it's a pretty, it's a pretty convincing version of how people felt in 1962. I know, I know from my experience, it's very accurate. I didn't live in Key West. I lived in New Jersey, and I never was lucky enough to have a horror movie guy come to my neighborhood. If that was the case, I think it would have been like

this movie. And since we spoke about Tarantula and them, we should talk about Mant, which was the movie within matinee. Half man, half ant, all terror. It's wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. we were confronted with two concepts one of which is make fun of it and by making it shitty and the other one is let's try to do a kind of a realistic version of what this kind of movie was in that era and so the special effects are kind of state-of-the-art for 1962.

And the movie itself looks kind of, you know, with the kookaluruses and the style of shooting, it looks like a kind of a Columbia B-movie. And there's a lot of quotes from actual dialogue from 50s science fiction movies, many of which were by Burt Gordon, where we literally stole the dialogue. I mean, word for word. And that's part of what makes it fun. Yeah, the Disney film, too, the shook up shopping cart is also wonderful. Well, that's a pretty accurate trend. I mean, who of my generation can't remember the horror of having to sit through one of those movies that was like, holy crow, there's just nothing interesting in this movie. It's like it's from my parents. And you were going to do Godzilla Reborn. Well, Michael Schlesinger and I were going to do a Godzilla Reborn movie for Sony,

and it was sort of a spoof, but then the Toho people, I think, kind of cooled on it, because I think they saw bigger paychecks in the future. What if we told you you're already off to a great start with so many ways to squeeze the most out of summer right here. From our largest shrimp skewers ever to a Vietnamese-inspired dish ready in minutes, PC makes any culinary adventure an on-budget breeze. Navigating adulting isn't always easy. You're not just working, you're working late. And dinner dates are all, what's your five-year plan and you're thinking paying off the bill for this fancy pants meal probably so when you need to break free from responsibility and

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I hope it happens, too. We find it funny, the two that Dern, we were talking to Bruce Dern, and he didn't take drugs at all. No, Bruce doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke, he doesn't take drugs. I mean, he is a pure, he does his run, which I don't think he can do anymore because of his physical condition. But he's one of those guys who is just into the adrenaline thing. Yeah, yeah.

And you worked with John Carradine. I worked with John Carradine in The Howling. I tried to get him for Piranha, but he didn't have a high enough TVQ. And part of the deal of making Piranha was you had to sell it to a network. And so they had to, well, these people are approved and you can hire them. So we hired Keenan Wynn instead. But when I worked with John on The Howling, he was in a period where he was literally doing anything. I mean, he had ex-wives to support, you know, a lot of reasons to do anything that came his way.

a lot of reasons to do anything that came his way. But I spent so much time talking to him that I would literally do the slates at the beginnings of the shots so that he could tell me stories while they were adjusting the lights. And then I would click the slate and we'd do the scene and then I'd do another take to hear the end of the story. Wow.

Any you can remember? Oh, he had stories about everybody. He worked for everybody from Jean Ford to Jean Renoir. I mean, he was – and he remembered everything. I mean, he had an incredible memory. And he was just a great – him and Slim Pickens was in that movie. I mean, Patrick McNee. I mean, all these great people.

I mean, one of the great things about making these movies is that you get to work with people that you had always admired and grew up watching and always wanted to be able to talk to. And the problem with low-budget movies is there isn't any time to talk to them. Right. Speaking of Carradine, I found it interesting,

a quote you said, you were talking about Carradine and Walter Brennan and people like that, that they would make 200 films or 300 films. And you said people can't have that kind of career anymore because the business has changed. It's not possible because, you know, in the studio system, there was a pool of people that you could work from and the movies were largely made in the same place. And so people had a lot of chance to be seen and discovered and understood. And, you know, a guy who's known to be a drunk can play drunks, and he's the guy who plays drunks. And there's another guy who blows his top, and he's the guy who blows his top, and that's his career.

But you can't do that anymore because, first of all, there's just not enough continuity. And if you look at the number of TV shows that are currently out that no one can keep track of and that are using up constantly new, new, new actors, nobody really has a chance to make that kind of connection. connection. Every so often you get a Walton Goggins or somebody like that who's managed to make a big splash in a particularly well-watched show and then gets a part in a big movie, and then that's a career. But that used to be much easier to do. That used to be much more common than it is now. And I've heard stories in the studio system, not only the supporting actors, but the stars, since it was all on the same set, would do one scene of a movie and then rush across to the other. Absolutely. Actors are still doing that.

I mean, I just did an episode of Legends of Tomorrow, which is a new show on The CW. And, you know, they're often shooting more than one episode at a time so actors have to you know run around change clothes and you know learn the scenes learn the script for another scene and whether it's a different movie or a different episode it's still the same you know concept um there's just a lot it Things are done to save money. I mean, that's why people do stuff. And it's hectic. It's very hectic.

I want to ask you about a couple of these other names, if you have any memories at all, Joe. Slim Pickens, you mentioned. Gilbert's obsessed with Kevin McCarthy. We've talked about him on the podcast a lot. Oh, Kevin, I work with numerous times. The first time in Piranha, where he played a part that was vacated by Eric Braden, because Eric Braden had done a couple of days in a swimming pool playing this part. And he saw how tatty our production was. And he called me up and he said, you know, I just can't do this. This is just not something I can

do. And so we had to replace him. And Kevin was in New York and he apparently walked around Central Park deciding whether or not to do it. But he was friends with Bradford Dillman, who was the star of the movie. And so he said yes. And we got along. And then I had Kevin in the Twilight Zone movie, and I had him in The Howling, and I had him in Inner Space. And we became great friends. And he was one of my favorite actors before I even met him. So, and Henry Gibson is another character who is somebody that i always admired and particularly when i saw the long goodbye and i saw how great his character was and how different it was from the laughing image oh yeah he's great great national too it's like

oh well this is another guy i really like and the the problem with amassing these people is that you know you want to put them in every movie but you know they may not be a part for them. You know, you can't, I got to a point where I was reading scripts and I was going, where's the part for Dick Miller. And I, and I started to kick myself in the head. Like I can't turn down movies just because there's no part for them. Or Kathleen Freeman. Exactly. And I can't have him playing Kathleen Freeman's part just out of the

movie. So, uh, you know, and, but, but the great thing about it is that you do work with people. I mean, I just did a picture with Anton Yelchin, who is a wonderful actor, and I would love to work with him again. So you get all these people, you know, that you've worked with, and you just, they become part of your stock company. I mean, look at Ingmar Bergman, look at John Ford, look at Preston Sturgis. You see the same faces over and over and over.

It's not just because they're good. It's because they're copacetic. They're people that you can work with. Oh, we love Picardo, by the way, speaking of the Joe Dante stock company. Oh, yes. You know, Bob is wonderful. And, you know, his agent, he once called me and said, you know, my agent says i can't work for you anymore because you keep asking me to work for scale because you know when you you do these movies and and tv shows

and they're always they get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and it's like well you know let's and and they give the stars more and more money So there's less and less money for the supporting people. And so you – well, call your friends. Have them come in and help you. And it's sort of like, oh, geez, how often can you do that? What about – we won't keep you, but just as we start to wrap this up, what about Brother Theodore? Brother Theodore. We loved him.

Brother Theodore I had been seeing in ads in The Village Voice when I was going to college about his one-man show. And I actually attended one of them in New York. At the 13th Street Theater? Exactly. He was there forever. I know. And he was unique, to say the least. And when it came time to cast this Klopek character in The Burbs, we saw a lot of really interesting people.

We saw Timothy Carey, who is notoriously known to have tied up Otto Preminger in a room to try to get a part. And Tim Carey was great, and he actually pursued me for a while. He would show up because he was looking for a part. And Tim Carey was great. And he actually, he pursued me for a while. He would like show up because he was looking for this part of me. But there was nobody like Brother Theater. I mean, he was more than a little deaf. And so you would have to, I remember Carrie Fisher, I remember Carrie Fisher doing her lines at 87 decibels just to get in his queue. But he was one of a kind. He was just amazing.

And he was such a sweet guy. And because he was elderly, there was a young guy who was assigned to be his sort of minder and make sure he had everything he wanted. And, uh, so I didn't really get to talk to him as much as I would have liked to, but, uh, and, and, and as, as in most movies, there were reshoots, you know, there's always reshoots on movies. At one movie, I refused to shoot the ending because I told them, I know you're going to redo it. So why don't we just not do the ending and we'll just preview it and then we'll go shoot the real ending. And in this case, he came back to do some real endings. And Corey Feldman had an interesting dynamic. But I just – I really loved working with this guy and I was very sorry to hear of his passing.

Yeah, I had the pleasure of meeting him at the 13th Street Theater a couple of times. Did you ever meet him, Gil? No. Brother Theodore? pleasure of meeting him at the 13th street theater a couple of times you ever meet him gil it's a documentary uh that i i participated in which i don't know if it was ever finished about him his stage show was terrifying he would just he put a flash flashlight under his chin and and under light himself and just scream at the audience and it was so funny because he was in person he was such a quiet sweet guy guy. He was. He was gentle.

And you do a website series called Trailers from Hell. A wonderful series. Well, Trailers from Hell came from the fact that I started making trailers for Corman, and I was a big trailer fan, and I collected 35-millimeter trailers. And I had this huge warehouse of trailers trailers and I thought nobody's seeing them. In the old days in LA, when I first came out in the seventies, there were theaters where you could just, film buffs could bring reels of trailers and at midnight they would open it up for free and everybody would sit and watch three hours of trailers and get stoned. And it was great, but those days were long gone. And it was sort of like, well, how are like well how are people gonna see these so i thought well maybe i could put them up on the internet

and then i thought well but anybody can do that what don't why don't i do a couple of commentaries so i picked some trailers and for some horror movies and i did some commentaries for them and i put them up on the internet and to no particular interest on the part of anybody except some friends of mine who said well i have a couple of pictures I'd like to talk about. And so it gradually grew people like, you know, John Landis and Edgar Wright and Guillermo del Toro and all these people who are friends of mine said, well, you know, I have these movies I'd like to talk about. And it's now grown over seven years to over a thousand trailers with commentaries by all these different filmmakers. And we basically tried to limit it to people who are actually filmmakers and not academics and not critics,

people who actually work in the business. And so we've got writers and makeup people and all sorts of people. And the great thing about the site is that we, and we have three different trailers every week. And the great thing about the site is when people come up to me and say, I saw this movie talked about on your site and I went and I rented it and I really liked it. And I know I like this director or I like this actor or writer or whatever. And I want to see more movies by them. And it makes me feel sort of like I'm giving back because there's so much to see these days. There's so many ways for people to spend their time as opposed to when I was a kid where there was like literally radio, television, movies and sports. You know, and that was it.

And your family didn't get a television until late. We didn't get a television until the late early 50s. I used to have to go to other people's houses to watch Disneyland, you know. But now everything is available. But somebody's got to say, well, here's something you should see. Here's something that I should call your attention to. And that's the that's the great thing about the show i mean we don't make any money i don't know obviously but but it's it's

just makes me feel like you know it's something that's worthwhile well we can't endorse it enough we want to tell our our listeners that you've got to check out trailers from hell it's you john landis john sales uh your old buddy alan arkish rick, Larry Karaszewski, who we had on the show. They're not only commentaries for, you know, B-movies, fun B-movies like Robot Monster and Brooklyn Gorilla, which we talked about, but also good films like Wells the Stranger and The Innocents. And also new movies. We do new movies. Brian Churchill Smith tries to do lots of new movies. He did Mad Max.

I mean, you know, the new mad max movie uh we we try to you know be wide ranging but it's basically you know the the people choose their own movies to tell you'll find a trailer for it great if we can't find a trailer then they can't do it i remember watching disney's world World of Color in black and white. And you'd see all these lines and explosions. And I'd watch it and go, I don't understand what's so impressive about this. It was to get you to buy a color TV. And Joe, you have a nice story about that, about not being able to see Disney. Well, we didn't get a TV.

I had polio when I was a kid, and we didn't have a TV. But the Disneyland show was on, and I was a huge Disney freak. I mean, like most people in my generation, he was like God. And so I remember being carried in a blanket across the street to see the Disneyland TV show at my friend Randy Crawford's house because they had a TV. Wow. Just knock on the door. Are you actually like weeping? Say it again, Joe.

I'm sorry. It's such a poignant story. I can't believe you're not weeping. No. This is such a poignant story. I can't believe you're not weeping. No. I stopped saying the word fuck for three seconds.

That's the virtue of a podcast. You can say whatever you want. Yes. I have to say, we were watching Trailers from Hell before we called you, and I dare say, this is how educational the site is, I think Gilbert saw a Bela Lugosi george zucco movie that he wasn't familiar with yes and that's saying something must be scared to death scared to death oh yes yes it's it's it was one of bella's few color movies i i saw i remember with scared to death i just remember seeing photos of him with a midget.

The scenes with him in the midget are great. And by the way, we don't call them midgets anymore. You're not the first guest to correct him on midgets. And you did one on Bride of the Gorilla. Yes, yes. Bride of the Gorilla, which is, and John Landis did Bride of the Gorilla. Yes. Yes. Bride of the Gorilla, which is, and John Landis did Bride of the Beast,

which was written by Ed Wood, in which the heroine wears an Angora sweater through the entire picture. Oh, yes. There's some good Chaney pictures on your page. Oh, yeah.

No, I try to get to the movies we really care about. Other people do the Oscar winners. It's a great site so i just want to tell uh our fans uh trailers from hell i mean you will lose days i lost hours and hours on that site joe that's what it's for trailers from hell.com it yeah it's wonderful and and youtube and one of my favorite better when you watch it on our site one of my favorite movies you talked about on there the tingler oh yeah oh well who

can i mean have you ever seen the tingler actually with the seat buzzers no in percepto yes yeah well the great thing about the seat buzzers and we did this at matinee what was that um they weren't in every seat they were like in every third or fourth seat so that when you were sitting in the in the in the row all of a sudden the guy one one person over was like freaking out and you didn't know why i mean it was really clever and also saved money and that's the one where uh the tingler gets loose in a movie theater and the whole movie goes black. And Vincent Price is screaming, scream, scream for your lives. Exactly.

He did that for Victoria Price, Joe. And there's a similar scene in Gremlins 2 where the film breaks and the Gremlins take over. Oh, yes. We're going to have to get William Castle's daughter on the show, too. You should. She's really nice. Yeah. And very, very smart and articulate. And Victoria

also is a person to be great to have. We had Victoria. Oh, did you? And we had Ron Chaney. Oh, good. And we had Sarah Karloff. I mean, this is... Those are all the Hollywood Horror Museum people. We had Janet Ann Gallo, who was the... God, is she still alive?

You're not going to stump him. He knows who it is. Just as he was starting to explain who it was, I said, Nope, Joe's going to know who that is. You're like the only person who I say that name to who doesn't say who. If she was five or six in 1942, she would be what? She's not that old. She's in her 70s.

Wow. An alert. She's actually only a little older than I am, I'm sad to say. She was thrilled to hear from us, Joe. I'll bet. And she said how she, as a little girl, would play hide-and-go-seek with Lon Chaney and Beto Lugosi. Oh, there you go. How many people can say that?

And I think Lon Chaney wanted to adopt her. I heard that. I was so taken with it. But did she not have parents? She had. Her father was still alive. And he said, no, I'm her father. I'm not surprised.

But I think she kind of felt bad that she wasn't adopted by Cheney because she liked him. Yeah. Joe, you have no idea how excited and thrilled he is that you knew who Janet Angalo was without an explanation. Well, this is a pretty esoteric show. Yeah. The one we try to do every week. I can see. Well, we thank you.

It was a thrill. And you're like one of those people we could have spent another five hours talking to. Well, thank God you didn't. But we're going to make you come back sometime if you're ever in New York, and we'll talk about Lionel Atwill's sex scandal and the hideous sun demon. I don't have any firsthand information about it. No, that's okay. We didn't get to talk about shock theater or all this other cool stuff.

Do you have any other things you want to plug before we wrap up? Do I want to plug anything else? You want to tell us about the Hollywood Horror Museum? Well, you know, a bunch of us who are in the genre have gotten together, including some of the offspring of the stars. And it's a genre that doesn't really get a lot of respect. And since the passing of Forrest J. Ackerman, who had a lot of stuff in his house, and Bob Burns, who was the current holder of a bunch of props, I think there's a feeling that there needs to be some permanent

place for this stuff to be exhibited. And I think the people behind this idea want to take it on the road initially and get some more publicity for it, and then apparently ensconce it as part of either the current Academy plans for a museum or maybe something on its own. I think all that's kind of up in the air. But it's definitely something that's in the air and I think worth the effort because this stuff doesn't last forever. Yeah, it's important to do it. This stuff doesn't last forever. Yeah, it's important to do it. I mean, we're doing this show, you know, in our small way to try to make people aware of Bert Gordon and Janet Angelo. One thing you said, and it's funny because I've experienced it, is people going, I had no idea who you were interviewing.

I had no idea who you were talking about, but I've been looking up all the names now and looking up these films. Well, that's sort of what the whole thing's about. I mean, who are we except our past? I mean, our past has made us who we are. And there's so many people, I think, who I meet who become interested in things that they didn't know existed. Well, it's fun. Of course, you know the actor James Caron. Sure.

And we got – James is an old friend of Gilbert's and we talked to him. And we just got mail from people saying, I knew the face. I didn't know his name. I'm so thankful to you guys for introducing me. It makes us feel good too. Exactly. To introduce these people. And the important thing is to appreciate

these people while they're still with us. That's what we're trying to do. And it's funny because I remember when they used to have shows like Fantasy Island and Murder, She Wrote. Love Boat. Love Boat. Yeah. And you'd see these people who you thought were

dead popping up and you'd go, wow, they're as good as they ever were but they're forgotten about that's true it's true and then but you know the one silver lining might be that there's so much stuff being made now there's so many tv shows maybe too many some people some have said that there may be more opportunities for people to be able to be employed than there were. Well, OK, I'm going to start wrapping up now. Let this man get on with his life. Yes. But there is so many more things we could talk about with you, Joe. It was fun. OK, well, just invite me back. We will. I'm Gilbert Gottfried.

This has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. Thank you, Joe Dante. Thank you, Joe. We're going to send you a monkey. Thanks. Thank you, Joe. Thank you.

Bye.