Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Barry Sonnenfeld

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

Director-producer-raconteur Barry Sonnenfeld returns to the podcast for an entertaining and informative conversation about the timelessness of "Dr. Strangelove,” the genius of Elmore Leonard, the shortcomings of "Wild Wild West," the technical wizardry of "Raising Arizona" and the 30th anniversary (and new 4K release) of 1991's "The Addams Family." Also, Keenan Wynn plays it straight, Will Smith yuks it up, Christopher Lloyd reimagines Uncle Fester and James Caan moves into the Playboy mansion. PLUS: "Touch of Evil"! "Pushing Daisies"! Praising Patrick Warburton! The art of Pablo Ferro! The legend of Phil Gersh! And Barry remembers Dennis Farina, Albert Finney and Raul Julia! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Please enjoy our products responsibly. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. Our guest this week is a producer, author, occasional actor, celebrated cinematographer, Emmy-winning TV director, a gifted raconteur, a widely acclaimed film director. he served as director of photography on some of the most admired and popular movies of the last 40 years, including Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Big, Miller's Crossing, When Harry Met Sally, and Misery. And he'd go on to direct the much-loved 1991 feature The Addams Family, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, as well as Addams Family values Men in Black, Men in Black 2, Men in Black 3, Wild Wild West, Big Trouble, and Get Shorty. He's also produced the films Out of Sight, Enchanted, The Lady Killers, and TV programs such as The Tick, Fantasy Island, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and the boldly original Pushing Daisies,

for which he was awarded an Emmy for Best Directing of a Comedy Series. His current project is the hit Apple TV musical comedy, Schmigadoon, hit Apple TV musical comedy Schmigadoon. And this fascinating, outrageous 2020 memoir is the New York Times editor's choice selection, Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother, Memoirs of a Neurotic Filmmaker. Please welcome to the show an artist of many interests

and abilities and a guy who says he would give it all up if someone would pay him his director's salary to work as a weatherman the always always entertaining Barry Sutton. Hi, Gilbert. Do you have... Did it take a long time for you to find a microphone that could record your voice? I'm just... Did you go through a lot of microphones

where some of the mics just, like, said, uh, delete or can't do it. It's extraordinary. I just love hearing your voice. You mean the microphone just quits and says it's not up to the task? I'm not good at it. This isn't going to work.

I love hearing your voice, Gilbert. It's an honor to be back on your show. Welcome back, Barry. And that's coming from a tech expert, Gilbert. It's the tech editor at Esquire. I should have these mics specially made. Well, hi. Barry, welcome back.

Thanks. It's great to be back. I missed you guys a lot. I really enjoyed doing it last time. We covered such a large area, and I'm happy to be back. You know, since we worked together, I did direct Schmigadoon, which was a lot of fun. I hate musicals, so I was a good balance to all the people on the show that love musicals. If it's possible for a viewer to determine or tell that a director is having fun from watching the show,

one gets the sense that you're having fun when you watch that show. You know, I got hired to do a job, so I did it. But man, I just don't like musicals. But it looked like I was enjoying myself. But I would say the creator is a guy named Cinco Paul, and every day we would do a rehearsal of another song and dance, and I would turn to him and say, do we need this one?

That's funny. And he would go, yes. And I go, yes, of course, I know we need it, but I'm just saying. But anyway, here we are back. You got to work with Kristen again. That's a plus. Yeah, no, Chenoweth is just fantastic. You know, I love, there are certain actors, Chenoweth is one, Patrick Warburton is another.

Oh, yeah. Where you read a script and you go, where's the part for Patrick? Or where's the part for Chenoweth? Someday it will be, where's the part for Gilbert? There you go. You better hurry. Patrick or where's the part for Chenoweth. Someday it will be where's the part for Gilbert. There you go. You better hurry. I better hurry because I know, I hear you're dying, according to you.

But we're all dying, aren't we, Gilbert? In a way. He could play a bug as convincingly as Vince D'Onofrio. A giant insect. I would say convincing, but more annoying than threatening. And that's the big difference. Yeah, and for those who, what Barry's referring to, he asked me how I stayed so thin, and my answer was I'm dying. Right, right.

But you look great. You look great, Gilbert. So in case TMZ is listening. Gilbert is not that. He's not. He's not. On stage occasionally. Frank and I were talking earlier about misery, the making of misery.

And now, okay, years ago, I met James Caan and hung out with him a little bit. And I found him to be a great guy, very friendly, fun. And what was your opinion? Jimmy was so the wrong guy to be in that role. Because Jimmy looks like he's not. Jimmy looks like he's not, but his demeanor, his energy is like a perpetually coked up guy. He's just got way too much energy and he had to spend 86 pages in a bed doing nothing. So he was so, so the wrong guy. He did a great job, but man, he was going crazy just laying in that bed doing nothing. In fact, I had so much disdain for him because he just couldn't sit still that one day we were shooting a shot and Jimmy had to crawl out of bed and crawl towards the camera.

The camera was right on the ground. And Jimmy said, hey, Rob. Rob Reiner directed it. And Jimmy said, hey, Rob, how far do you want me to crawl? So Rob said to me, how far do you want him to crawl, bear? Crawl, bear. And I literally spit on the floor. I went, and I spit on the floor. I went,

and I spit on the floor, and Rob said, crawl to the loogie, Jimmy. He didn't even say, like, Barry, you can't do that. We've got an esteemed actor. Weird thing about Jimmy, Jewish rodeo star.

In fact, You don't get a lot of them. You don't get a lot of Jewish rodeo stars. In fact, you don't get a lot of Jewish rodeo stars. In fact, he would have to get into bed and you would look at his back and his bones were totally misshapen and broken. And from all the rodeo work he had done decades ago, I'll tell you one other story. Jimmy, and I hope this isn't where you met him. Jimmy used to live at the Playboy Mansion. Yes.

When he split up with his wife to deal with the heartbreak, he moved into the Playboy Mansion and fucked Playboy Centerfolds 24 hours a day. Well, he actually had sex, he told me, with 17 straight playmates of the month. So I say to Jimmy, what month rejected you? I didn't ask for a name. I asked for a month.

And Jimmy said, oh, Barrett, that wouldn't be fair. I can't tell you. I said, Jimmy, tell me a month. I'm not even asking for a name or a year. I'm interested in what month. And he wouldn't. He was so moral. He would not tell me the month that wouldn't have sex with him.

And I heard, too, when he was there, sometimes his son stayed with him. And, you know, son was little. And he would say to his son, he'd look out the window and he'd go, you know, go over to that redhead over there and say, yeah, your daddy wants to talk to her. Oh, Jesus. You know what? I'm sure Jimmy did that.

I'm sure that's a true story. But Jimmy was a weird guy. But the funny thing is, is that Misery turned out to be a hit film. All the critics loved it. And James Caan was great on screen. But here's the thing. You know, there's a famous Russian editor named Podovkin. the famous Russian editor named Podovkin.

And what he taught us all is that depending on what the shot before or after a shot, that makes the audience think certain things. So you can cut to a still photograph of a baby. And if the shot before that is a mother smiling, it looks like the baby's happy. If you cut to the same shot of the mother crying and then you cut to the baby doing exactly the same thing, you'll think the baby is sad. My point is, Kathy Bates is so brilliant in that movie that if you cut to a dead person in that bed, you would think, oh, they look scared. They look frightened. So Jimmy had to

do nothing. And Kathy did, pulled all the weight for both of them. But yet Jimmy couldn't do nothing because he had too much fucking energy. Well, what's that story that Rob likes to tell, the early shot of the, with the match. And then you said something to him when the two of you were alone together. True story, true story. First shot, first day. The scene is Jimmy plays an author, you know, and the first shot is Jimmy lighting a match, lighting a cigarette, pouring a glass of champagne, and that's his ritual whenever his character finishes a novel. So all Jimmy has to do is light a match with his nail, and we've got special matches, and we've got a piece of flint glued to his thumb. All right, so at lunch, we still haven't gotten the shot,

because Jimmy can't stand still. He's davening. He's doing this. Everything but just standing. I can't focus the camera fast enough. He's moving around so much. So it's lunch. We haven't gotten a shot. I used to have lunch with Rob in his camper every day with his future wife, Michelle Singer-Reiner. And I go to his camper and I go, hey, Rob, remember Vietnam?

Meaning get out now because it's going to be a really long slog. And he said, no, Barry, it's going to be great. But he left. Rob left so hard when I said, remember Vietnam? Because I felt we got to get out now. Because at some point you're going to say we got 50,000 dead. We can't get out now. And by the way, Jimmy is a lovely guy. He's truly a lovely guy, but just way too much energy. Well, I didn't even realize until researching you this time that Warren Beatty had been attached for so long and involved and even involved in developing the script.

Yeah. When Rob was going to do it, he had Warren very involved. In fact, Warren was very instrumental in some of the ideas in the script. I don't know which ones. Wow. But Warren is hard to get nailed down, as you know, in in my memoir. I talk about. Yes. Great story. Warren wanting to be in Get Shorty. And I knew that wasn't going to happen. And unlike Rob and Jimmy Kahn, I knew get out, cut your losses as soon as possible because he will make this thing go on forever.

So I was very lucky that once once he passed, once Warren passed, I would not re-engage. And that's the secret. Right, right. Gilbert loves that story, by the way, from the book, that he thought, well, I look like Warren Beatty. How is an audience going to buy that I'm a numbers runner? That's right, that's right. A low-level numbers runner. That's right. That's right. Low, low level numbers, numbers runner. And at which point what you say is you're absolutely right. Thanks for your time. Don't don't engage. It's just a downward slope. Get out now. So that's what I did. As soon as he said that, I thought, OK, good, good. This is my way out. It's funny when he said that because i thought i remembered seeing george clooney in that movie the descendants where he's supposed to be kind of a loser of a guy right he's divorced he's lonely everything and the whole movie i'm looking i'm going but he's george clooney i know

i know that can happen happen. I know. I know. But we were lucky, and Travolta was fantastic in the show. So, you know, my wife always says, when you don't get your first choice, it's okay. You'll get someone better. And it turns out to be a blessing. It turns out to be a blessing. And Travolta seems like, I've heard, very easy to work with. Travolta seems like I've heard very easy to work with.

I've never worked with anyone who so loved being a movie star as much as John Travolta. And the great thing about Travolta is I've also never seen anyone do so much great acting with the way they walk. You know, so there's Saturday Night Fever, brilliant walking. Yeah. The last shot in Tarantino's movie, Pulp Fiction, where he and Samuel L. Jackson sort of walk out of the diner is brilliant walking. And there's a scene in Get Shorty where he's just walking in a garage in the airport heading towards the, oh, you know, Sopranos. Oh, Gandolfini. Gandolfini just walking towards him and just lighting a cigarette. And just that walk says everything about his character. He's a brilliant walker.

You know, it's funny because for a guy who picked up an Elmore Leonard book in the airport in a kind of a frantic search for something to read, you wound up becoming as big a supporter of Elmore Leonard's work on film. And not only Get Shorty, but producing Out of Sight, the Karen Sisko series, and Maximum Bob, which I caught up to. You turned out to be his best friend as a filmmaker. I loved Elmore. And, you know, I had heard of him, but never had read any of his books. And then when I read Get Shorty, the fact that I was able to buy the rights or get Danny DeVito to buy the rights in paperback shows that Elmore was dead to the film industry. Yeah, that's amazing. Because although he had written a lot of scripts, especially a lot of Westerns, none of the none of the movies that were based on his books had been a hit until Get Shorty. And no one wanted

to make a movie about inside Hollywood. So it took us six years to get that movie made, Danny and I. But Elmore was a huge movie fan. He knew more about movies than I ever will. He loved going to the movies. He was a huge fan of Miller's Crossing, by the way. Oh, yeah, who isn't? Well, yeah. Now, here, and that brings me on to a sad topic.

And that's that, I mean, years ago, I remember, before the pandemic, thinking that one day people are going to talk and say, you know, they used to have these places. You'd leave your house and you'd watch a movie there. And I think movies are going the way of vaudeville or something. They're disappearing. I think you're right, Gilbert. And in part, a large part of it had to do with the pandemic,

but it goes deeper than that. And here's my two cents. The problem is studios were making fewer and fewer movies. So each movie was incredibly important to the studio, which meant that they didn't want to take a chance on original storytelling. They only wanted to do movies based on an IP or a comic book or a sequel. They didn't want to take a chance on an original movie because they could get fired that next Monday after a bad opening weekend. While if you look at Netflix or Amazon, they are producing so much stuff that they could take chances. They could do interesting things, things that are really well written, because no one will say,

oh, Netflix new TV show they released on Friday is so bad we should fire the studio head because you're releasing so much stuff. Of course. So it's it's a it's not as precious. So I think there are several things. One is the studio stop taking chances and making interesting films. several things. One is the studios stop taking chances and making interesting films. The writing on television is much better than most movies. Two, the theaters started to not do a good job of maintaining the theaters. I mean, that's true, too. I used to go to theaters when we would have a premiere and the subwoofers would be out. And I said, well, why are all the subwoofers out? Oh, well, it's because next door they're playing a romantic comedy. And this theater is usually playing a Michael Bay movie and there's too much subwoofer explosions. So they asked us to turn down the subwoofers in

theater number two or disconnect them. So there are a lot of reasons. And the pandemic was really the last nail in the coffin. And I think that they won't come back the way they would. And for me, it's about comedies. I like comedies in movie theaters because I love hearing the laughter. With an audience, yeah, sure. And it makes the laugh more infectious. Everyone says you need see big uh action movies in theaters i don't know i've got a big television and a good sound system so that i can duplicate that in my home but i can't duplicate the joy of being in a theater with people laughing so that makes me sad i would i would remember like you know saying say, a Charles Bronson movie in a theater.

And, you know, he'd shoot the bad guy and everybody would be cheering. Cheering. And there'd be such like an energy in the air. Yeah. Speaking of comedies, I remember a scene. I remember seeing When Harry Met Sally in a theater and how crazy the theater went when Estelle Reiner delivers that button. I'll have what she's having. Right. A scene you shot.

Right. Yeah. No. Speaking of seeing an audience, talking about seeing a movie with an audience, specifically a comedy. Comedies are great that way. Yeah. And listen, one of my best experiences, I had a premiere of a movie and Will Smith was in the audience and he brought a couple of his friends and no one laughs louder or better than Will. And it was it was just great hearing all the him and his friends laughing hysterically while this premiere was going on. Will Smith brings us to another sad topic. Wild Wild West. What do you mean?

He loves to insult a guest, Barry. This is his interview strategy. I love it. Go for it. Edward R. Murrow, he's not. Go for it, Gilbert. Yeah. Do you have a question?

Yeah, Gil, did you actually prepare a question or you just want to roast? I remember I used to enjoy the TV show, but somehow the movie just didn't do it. I kid. Let me talk about that for a minute because thank you for bringing this up and giving me a chance to talk about Wild Wild West. There are several things that went wrong. First of all, I loved the television series and I loved that it was both sort of cowboys and also science fiction. And a little Bond. And a little Bond.

fiction and a little bond and a little bond. So the first thing is that, um, I think we, we had a bad chemistry between Will Smith and Kevin Kline. Uh, I, in that you only want one funny actor in your comedy. You need a straight man and a funny man. You need Lucille Ball and Ricky Ricardo, you know, Desi Arnaz. You need George Burns and Gracie Allen. You can't have two Gracie Allens and you can't have two George Burns. And Will Smith, thank God, believes in that theory. Only one funny guy in your movie. So it was the funny guy was supposed to be Will Smith and the straight man was supposed to be Kevin Kline. Kevin refused to play it straight and wanted to be funny all the time. So after about a week, I went to Will and I said, hey, Will, guess what? And Will said, yeah, I'm the straight man because Kevin won't be the straight

man. So, A, there was that role reversal. So there was no chemistry at all. And the person who was supposed to do it, who I think would have made a huge difference, was your old friend, Gilbert, was George Clooney. And so Clooney would have been the handsome straight man and Will could have been sort of funnier and bigger. Also, tonally, and I pride myself on tone, but I think that the size of the spider, the mechanical spider, took you out of reality. And the spider should have been a third the size. So it seemed realer. And when that spider came on the screen, I think people really thought, I don't know what this movie is. And third of all, I could not convince John Peters to not have the scene where Will Smith is in drag. And I hated that scene. And I begged him not to force me to shoot it. I went to the studio.

They felt that their relationship was with John and they couldn't convince John not to do it. But it made no sense. It takes you out of the movie. You don't believe it anymore. I always say the hardest kind of movie to make is action-adventure comedy because the comedy kills the reality of the action, and the action kills any chance to have comedy. It's amazing that, you know, Men in Black works as well as it does. Talking about a good movie, Gilbert.

Because an action-adventure comedy is really hard to pull off because it's almost an oxymoron. They, they, they fight against each other. That's, I've never heard that theory. That makes sense. And, and what's interesting too is like when, when they were making Airplane, I heard the studio said, oh, we'll fill it with comedians. And what worked is all these actors were playing it totally straight. Exactly. That's Barry's Bugaboo, right?

No acting like you're in a comedy when you're in a comedy. Right. No one should know that they're in a comedy. No acting like you're in a comedy when you're in a comedy. Right. No one should know that they're in a comedy. The cinematographer, the lab, the costume designer, the actors, everyone plays the reality of the scene. And if the scene is funny, then they'll be funny. And you're right.

In Airplane, what made it work so well is Leslie Nielsen and Robert Stack and all these guys playing it totally real. But the lines are funny, the situation is funny, but no one's trying to be funny in that movie. And when they try, it's a failure. I mean, there was one shot of Bridges, Lloyd Bridges upside down sniffing the glue with his, and for some reason that was the one moment where it took me out of the movie.

I think we had David Zucker here, and I think that he agrees with you. I think Bridges was the toughest guy for them to keep straight, to keep in line and not go for the left. That's really interesting because Bridges was the one guy that I felt, this guy is trying to be funny, and no one else was trying to be funny in that movie. And the funny thing is Leslie Nielsen, because everybody was trying to make the next airplane and naked gun. They all thought they had it figured out. And the ones that could get Leslie Nielsen would hire Leslie Nielsen.

And after a while, you could see Leslie Nielsen sort of said, hey, I'm funny. And he started playing it funny. And then it wasn't funny. Exactly. Because you needed the Zucker brothers to say, don't be funny. You need it. You need. I always, you know,

as I told you guys, when I was doing Men in Black, I had to spend 22 weeks telling Tommy Lee Jones, don't be funny. And that's painful. What did you tell him? We're making the French connection? Yeah, that's Gene Hackman. And luckily Gene knew not to be funny,

but Tommy did. And Tommy was angry at me for 22 weeks. That's fascinating. Because he thought I only wanted Will to be funny. And I said, no, Tommy, the reaction shot always gets a bigger laugh than the action shot. Well, it's kind of like what was so great about Jack Benny. His comedy was reacting to everything around him. Right.

And it's so funny because when I was trying to convince Clooney to be in Wild Wild West, one of his concerns was he felt that Will had more to do than he did. And I, and I, I said to Clooney and he knows this now, but he didn't back then, the reaction shot is always a big laugh. You always, and Will Smith learned it too.

And after Men in Black, Will would give other people his lines of dialogue so he could react because he realized reaction is where the funny is. Yeah. That's fun.

That's fun. Not just Jack Benny, but he was the master. But in the in-laws, Alan Arkin is just reacting to all the crazy stuff Peter Falk does. And that's what's hysterical. He's brilliant. They're both brilliant in that movie, but exactly. You can't have two guys running around being Peter Falk. You need one guy running around with their head cut or chicken with their head cut off.

And then you need Alan Arkin, who seems to do nothing except go no shell or whatever, you know, shell, shell. You know, it's fascinating. You could make the argument that Arkin gets the biggest laughs in that movie and he's the straight man. That's right. And you could also, some people could also say that. You could say that about Tommy in Men in Black.

Absolutely. He gets a ton of laughs. And if you ever watch the orgasm scene from, the fake orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally, forgetting about Estelle Reiner even, you have Meg faking an orgasm and the laughter is like at 100 dBs. And then you cut to Billy doing nothing but staring at Meg. And the laugh goes from 100 to 120. That's a good point. It's all about the reaction shot.

It's never about the setup of the punchline. Let me say some things about Wild Wild West, too, in its defense. Lots of good things in it. Please don't. The production design is a marvel. Bo Welsh. Yeah, and Bronner is terrific. Elmer Bernstein. There's a lot going on there. Yeah, and Bronner is terrific. Elmer Bernstein.

There's a lot going on there. Yes, there is, but that doesn't make for a good movie. But thank you for trying to save Gilbert from his meanness. Barry, I try every week. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast.

But first, a word from our sponsor. On the subject of actors not knowing they're in comedies, too, Gilbert and I were talking before on the phone, and we cite maybe your favorite comedy, Dr. Strangelove, as an example. And I was reading an analysis of it by you, and you were saying there are very few moments where any of the actors let on. Maybe George C. Scott a little bit. George C. Scott, yeah. A little bit.

By the way, he blames Kubrick. He knows he was overacting. I don't know who to blame. I can't imagine Kubrick sort of screwing up that way. But yeah, I mean, again, not only is that a perfect movie because no one's trying to be funny in it. It is. But it's also another important cinematography thing is comedy plays in two shot. You see action and reaction in the same shot. So some of the best moments are Peter Sellers next to Sterling Hayden and in a two shot and Sterling Hayden is explaining

to Peter Sellers about how he wasn't able to have an erection and all this stuff and purity of essence and peace on earth. And Sellers is doing nothing except listening. And it's hilarious. And what's great is you see the insanity of Sterling and the freaked outness of Peter in the same shot. So I'm always convincing studios, don't cut to the close up. The cutting to the close up is like saying, and here's the punchline to the joke. And here's why it's funny. Let the audience find the punchline to the joke by you staying in the two-shot.

Treat the audience like they're smarter. You know, and before when we were talking, Gene Hackman's name came up. And I thought Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Nicholson, none of their movies could make it into a theater nowadays. Because of the political correctness of the. No, I think he means small movies like The Last Detail or Shampoo or Dog Day. Scarecrow.

They're not tent poles. Panic and Needle Park. They're driven by storytelling. The studios wouldn't make those movies. You know who would make them? The streamers. Netflix, Amazon, Apple. Because, again, they don't have to spend uh 50 million in uh marketing and distribution and then have it come out and it not being a

a great movie so streamers are where you're going to find those movies like scarecrow like Scarecrow and, you know, Serpico, all those great movies. Yeah. Yeah, like those movies are not going to bring in a billion dollars. Right. Or Dr. Strangelove, for that matter. Yeah, and that's all that the studios care about. If a movie comes out and costs $30 and does $90, they don't want to make – that's not the business they're in, even if there's money to be made there. Yeah.

I saw that Soderbergh thing that was released to streaming with Don Cheadle a couple of months ago. The title has escaped me. It was very, very good. And I was thinking, well, this would have been a theatrical release even five years ago. Yeah. Yeah. It's gone. Yeah, no stopping progress.

How did you find Kathy Bates for Misery? It's funny. I had seen her. She was friends with Joel and Ethan Cohen, and I had seen her on Broadway in a show called Nightmother. I think she may have won a Tony for it. And I had seen her on Broadway in a show called Night Mother. I think she may have won a Tony for it. And I had met her briefly. And Rob wanted to hire Bette Midler for that role.

And who might have been good, who knows. But I suggested that he meet Kathy. And he met Kathy and then hired Kathy. And Kathy and I became really good friends on that show. In fact, every every day would start with her coming up onto the set and saying, fuck you, Sonnenfeld. And I go, fuck you, Bates. I mean, that's that's how what how much we enjoy working together. And she's an interesting actor in that you would never expect this of her. But Rob would go over to her after a take to give her direction. And Kathy would say, give me a line reading.

Now, most actors don't want to ever have a director give them a line reading because it's like telling them do it this way. But for Kathy, she was so smart because she could hear Rob do the line reading and then she would go, oh, he wants me to be more petulant or he wants me to be more angry. But to hear it described, you might not in that first take get where he wants. But by him doing the line reading, she understood what he was looking for. And she still made it her own anyway. And it just saved so much discussion and time. But for an actor to actually ask for line readings, I think is brilliant. But it takes an actor who has a lot of self-confidence, who isn't worried about, oh, they're just, I'm just a puppet, because that's

not the case. But I love that Kathy would ask for line readings. It's kind of genius. I found it interesting, too, that when you direct, and you learned this, I guess, from films where you were director of photography, no point in just saying to the actor, do another one. Right. You never want to say that. That's a waste of time, because the actor do another one right you never want to say that that's a waste of time because to say do another one you want to if i'm the actor i go okay what do you want different why am i doing another one if you like that like i hate it when i hear anyone saying uh that was great let's do one more what no let's move on to the next shot so the crew can go home and see their kids. I do very few takes. I'll do one master and I'll do maybe three or four takes. If

I'm up into take four or five, it's because of a complicated camera move, but it's really about performance. And when you get in the cutting room, you will be shocked to see how many times you use the first take. Wow. It's probably well over 50% of every shot ends up being the first take. Did I hear you saying that when you're giving a direction in a comedy, it's most often faster? Faster, flatter. Faster, flatter. Faster, flatter?

Yeah. Because you don't want to see acting. I don't want to see acting. And if they talk fast, they can't act. Well, what did you learn from Dee Dee Allen specifically, the late, great Dee Dee Allen, Barry, and for our listeners, you know, the editor of The Hustler and Reds and Dog Day Afternoon and Bonnie and Clyde. She sort of created modern American editing.

And I was lucky enough that after Reds, she could not get a job because it went so over schedule. Of course, it was Warren's fault, not Dee Dee's. But that when I did Adam's family, she was available. She hadn't worked in in probably four or five years. And what I learned from her is the plastic nature of film that we were having problems with the third act on Adam's family. And it turns out the problem wasn't the third act. It was the second act. We didn't touch the third act. It was the second act. We didn't touch the third act.

We changed something in the second act to get to the third act sooner and suddenly the third act worked. So what you learn is that it's not so straight ahead that sometimes the way to fix B is to fix A and leave B well enough alone. So she was fantastic and she cut with such energy. She would always try to mismatch cuts.

And I remember we had another editor named Jim Miller, who was substantially younger than Didi, and Jim cut the scene and showed it to me and Didi, and Didi looked at the scene and said Jim you cut like an old lady get out of the seat and she sat down and just that's great just within the same scene didn't find a different take or anything just trimmed heads and tails of shots and suddenly the same footage had a total different energy. And that was Didi. It was my her version of faster, flatter.

Just get in late and get out early, as they say in the sex business. And when you were talking about not acting, I remember this, that story that Jack Lemon used to tell that uh billy wilder was saying to him less less now do it less now do it and then finally jack lemon uh got angry and he said you don't want me to act at all and he said oh god yes yes yeah yeah exactly exactly i I went to two actors in a scene. We were shooting at a scene and it was a two shot on a series of unfortunate events. And I won't mention the two actors, but I let them do a take. And then I, I called cut. I went up to the car that he was sitting in and I said, that was so bad that it would be insulting for me to give you any direction because surely you know how bad that was. So we're just going to go again and we'll see if you figured out what you

did wrong. It was a terrible thing to say. So they did another take and they were equally bad. And I went up to them and I said, you stop acting. You don't be funny. And then they got it and they said, oh, I could do that. And the next take was perfect. But yeah, no. Yeah. God, don't act. God, don't act.

You need a giant neon don't be funny sign on the set of all your comedies. You know what? I do have a hat that says flatter faster, but I think I will get one that says don't be funny. Don't be funny. I heard there are directors that would make actors play the scene like a hundred times till they're tired out and they don't care anymore so they don't have the energy to act.

Yes, that's true. And I'll give you two examples. Kubrick used to do that. He did that on Eyes Wide Shut. It's why Sidney Pollack got so angry because they would be able to take 110. And the Wachowskis did that on the second and third Matrixes. I don't think that's the case anymore. But they would do at least 100 takes because they read that Kubrick did that. I think you can achieve the same thing by just saying faster. It's the same idea. I just don't want to see the acting. And to go through 100 takes just to wear someone out is really a waste of time.

It's a long way around the bend. It's a long way. It's a long run for a short slide. Yeah. On the subject of Kubrick, by the way, and talking about Strangelove, Gilbert and I were talking that you love Keenan Wynn's performance in that movie. Yeah. There's a guy that never gives, as you said, he never gives an inch. Right.

movie. There's a guy that never gives, as you said, he never gives an inch. Right. You can't say flatter than Kenan Wynn. That guy is like parched. Yeah. Blake Edwards made a comedy called The Great Race that's so with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon that is so over the top from start to finish. And yet Kenan Wynn is a rock. top from start to finish, and yet Keenan Wynn is a rock. In fact, wasn't Keenan Wynn also in the Mad, Mad, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World?

He's not. I don't think he's in that one. I don't think so. I want to see that movie again and see if it holds up or if it, because that's not a dry movie. That is wet and big laughs. Yes. Jimmy Durante kicks the bucket. Literally.

I wonder if that holds up. I also wonder, do you guys ever see a movie called Robin and the Seven Hoods? Oh, yes. It's a musical. Rat Pack. Rat Pack, yeah. Yeah. I wonder, I want to do a remake of that, but no one is

interested. Why is that? Why do you think that – is it that the first one – what did they say? The first one didn't make money? I mean, that's 60 years ago. Well, first of all, you never want to make remakes of movies that are good. You want to do remakes of movies that were a great script, but they hired the wrong guy to be in the lead. Well, Ocean's Eleven is a good example of an original movie that wasn't that good.

So you want to take not great movies that had a lot of potential to remake, and you never want to remake the good ones. Because I'm going to be really interested to see what's up with West Side Story. That's daring to remake West Side Story, but we'll see. Yeah, that is interesting. Talking about Adam's family and Gilbert and I got a kick out of this too. You love Strange Love so much that you wanted to reproduce the title sequence. And you tracked down Pablo Faro, who was still alive, who had done the, by the way, did some deep research into him. What a career. Yeah. Pablo did the opening hand-drawn titles of Dr. Strangelove. In fact,

if you, Pablo told me this, if you look at the titles again, instead of it saying based on a book by, it says base. He left the D out of based and no one ever caught it. I've never seen it. I've seen the movie 400 times. Yeah. Well, check it out again because he left the letter D out of based. Wow. And it's in the movies. So I got Pablo who did Adam's Family, Adam's Family Values, the three men in blacks he did. And I think he did another movie for me as well, all the same way. I just loved how much energy you get just out of his handwritten titles. I think it's fantastic. It's fun because it's a trademark for you.

It's a recurring motif. I guess. Yeah. And I worked with Christopher Lloyd. Well, we've been in a cartoon called Cyberchase on PBS, and I worked with him in a movie. And tell us about working with Christopher Lloyd. So Chris was also, by the way, years later, he was in the pilot episode of the tick that I did for Foxwood, Patrick Warburton. But Chris was fantastic because he didn't look anything like Fester. Chris is thin, not quite as thin as Gilbert, but Chris is thin and tall and lithe. He feels like he's 6'2 or something. And he didn't look anything like Fester, but I really wanted him for the role. And literally, we decided maybe we should give him prosthetics to give him a big round face.

prosthetics to give him a big round face. And we did a test and we put prosthetics on him and we shot a real scene between him and his fictional mother in the movie. We had a set, we shot a real scene to see how he would look compared to other humans and all that. And it was a disaster. He looked like something out of the Dick Tracy movie that Warren Beatty directed. He looked, which was great, but everyone in that movie had that look. But for Chris to be the only one in prosthetics, it was a disaster. So we looked at the dailies and Scott Rudin and I both realized it wasn't going to work. We were just going to have to have Chris look like Chris. So we called Chris in to show him the footage because Chris really wanted these prosthetics. He loves hiding behind things, you know, finding a way to sort of disappear into a part. And Chris walking to the

theater to look at, to meet Scott Rudin and myself and to look at the footage, walk past Owen Roisman, who was our cinematographer, who was interviewing stand-ins, photo doubles to play Fester, you know, because you light with a stand-in, you don't light with the real actor. So Chris is walking by 30 people who look just like Fester, and he doesn't know why, except he knows he's been called in to screen this footage. So I screened the footage with Chris, and I go, well, what do you think, Chris? And Chris says, I can do better. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, it was just like a test. I wasn't really acting. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, it was just like a test. I wasn't really acting. I said, what are you talking about?

He goes, well, I really want this part. And I said, Chris, you have the part. He goes, then why are you interviewing 30 other actors to play Fester? I said, no, Chris, those are stand-ins. He thought we were trying to replace him. Unbelievable. But literally, Chris, between roll camera and action, he would hunch up his shoulders. His neck would disappear into his body.

He would get fatter around the face. And all that was just acting. And, in fact, there's one shot because we just released the 30th anniversary edition of Adam's Family, and there's one shot where Chris is on the balcony with Gomez and they're hitting golf clubs, golf balls. And it's the only shot in the movie where Chris looks like Chris Lloyd. He forgot to hunch his neck and I didn't notice it, and it drives me crazy. If I was a different director, I would have insisted that we do some post-production VFX on it or something. I'll look for it. Did you see squad actors, or did you just have him in mind from the very beginning?

We met a couple of actors. We met, remember, is it Robbie Coltrane? Is that his name? Sure. A British guy? Sure, Robbie Coltrane. Yeah, Nuns on the Run. Yeah, Nunn's on the run. Yeah, we interviewed him.

We had an unfortunate lunch at Chun-Li West. Remember Chun-Li West? It's a Chinese restaurant on 66th and off of Broadway. It's still here. Yeah, well, it shouldn't be because Robbie got very drunk at lunch with me and Scott Rudin and kept using the word cunt as loud as possible in the restaurant. And we realized that probably Robbie wasn't our guy. Wow. Even though that word has a different impact in the UK.

Yeah, but he was in America. Of course, of course. You know this as well as we do, Barry. They almost never give awards for acting in comedy. Certainly not. No, it's too bad. I mean, well, Kevin Kline won one for Fish Call Wanda, but it's rare. Those performances in Adam's Family, Julia and Chris Lloyd, I mean, everybody's wonderful.

But those are magnificent performances. Raul was a special guy. Raul, I've never met anyone who, maybe DeVito, but I've never met anyone who loves life as much as Raul Julia did. He loved acting. He loved women. He loved life. No matter, he just was a fantastic guy to work with. I adored everything about him. You know, just perfection. Just lovely guy. Just patient. Great.

A big loss. Yeah. That movie, if you believe, as some people do, that casting is half the battle, that movie could not, and kudos to you, could not have been cast better. Oh, I think casting is more than half the movie. Rob Reiner and I always say, if you have a good script and you cast it right, there's very little a director can do to screw it up. They can make it a little better. They can make it a lot worse, but script and casting is everything, and I got to say Raul and Angelica and Danny Hedaya. I don't want to sell her short. Yeah.

Yeah, Danny Hedaya. And Frank and I were talking earlier about a previous guest on the podcast and a brilliant makeup man, Rick Baker. Rick Baker, yeah. Yeah, we've had Rick twice. And Rick Baker. Rick Baker, yeah. Yeah, we've had Rick twice. Specifically, I was talking to Gilbert about what Rick taught you about, I guess it was on Men in Black with the worm characters.

Yeah. But you had already done something. You had already made a decision to use an actor to play Thing. Right, that's true. But back then, CG wasn't what it was now. We really didn't have much of a choice except to make Thing be a real actor that we erased. And, you know, I also had a certain limited budget, so it was an easier thing to do. I see. But Rick convinced me early on to use as little visual effects as possible when creating creatures. I see. And on all three movies, we cast the same puppeteers to play those worm guys, we called them.

And Rick taught me early on, if you can get a real actor to play the role, that's always the best. Because you can have interaction, you can make changes. And a lot of times those VFX guys, they're really good with explosions, but they're not funny. but you're not funny. And Roger Ebert, I always remember, he said that stop action looks phony but feels real, and computerization looks real and feels phony. I totally agree with Roger. And one of the things I do whenever we have visual effects

is I insist, and I learned this from working with a really good visual effects supervisor on the first Men in Black, is he's in focus and San Francisco, he's on the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco is 20 miles away and San Francisco is in focus. That can't happen. There's no lens. And so, and, and you look at every visual effect shot, you know, of an airplane flying over something, both the airplanes in focus and the ground below it's in focus. And you, you, you realize that you're watching video games. You're not watching cinema anymore. And I'm a big believer in that every single shot has to obey the law of physics or the audience knows and they know it's fake. And some people really like that. Like they love all these Marvel movies and it's become a new aesthetic which is to not obey any of the laws of physics i just can't do that i'm old it's like

when i was a kid like all the dinosaur films like all of the ray harryhausen willis o'Brien with King Kong and any of the dinosaurs. I knew how they did it, you know, with stop action. And I knew when you watched The Wolfman, you know, Janie turning to The Wolfman, they would cut and add more makeup. But yet, it's like you feel like you feel it. And nothing could be scarier ever. In fact, it was the reason I never could see another scary movie ever again. Talking about Harry was the skeleton scene in Jason and the Argonauts. Great.

It's the last scary thing I've ever seen. I've never seen The Shining or anything because I was 11 or 9 or 12, and it scared me so much I could never go back to another scary movie again. And that was all stop motion and not real. That's fascinating. And the amount that's going on in that scene, I can't imagine how long it took them to do that. I know.

Yeah. Months. Months and months. Right. Talking about great performances in the Addams Family, too, let's not leave out Chris Hart's performance, which is obviously a different kind of acting performance. But no less impressive. Chris Hart played Thing. And it was my idea.

I thought, let's hire a magician. Because then I could have Thing, like like rolling a coin across its knuckles and I could try, you know, like thing could be doing funny things. But the problem is we auditioned all these magicians and Chris Hart is a magician, but their whole thing is sleight of hand and moving really quickly. And there was no elegance to their performance. Right. And I spent six hours auditioning magicians. And then I said, at the end of the day, I didn't think we had it. And I said, okay, I never thought I would ever say this, but I have no choice. Let's start auditioning mimes. But if any mime comes in and walks against the wind or can't get out of a glass box. Just get him out fast.

I don't want to deal. And three mimes into like 60 that were called in that day. After three, I said, I can't do it. I can't do it. Let's look at the rehearsals of the auditions for the magicians. We looked at Chris Hart's audition tape again. He has beautiful, huge hands. And so we hired Chris, and he was fantastic and patient.

And thank God, not a mime. And he still works as a magician today. Things you never want to hear Barry Sonnenfeld say. Right, right. Let's start auditioning mimes. Now, what is, that brings me to that, another topic, like, what is it about mimes that people hate so much? I think they're, I wish you didn't mention Wild Wild West again. I think, I think that they're

kind of cloying, you know, like, here's the thing. You know when a friend of yours says, you've got to listen to this song, and they put it on, well, I'll say the record player, or they play it on their phone, and then stare at you with a smile, and you have to react, and you're just trying to listen to a song, but they're demanding feedback from you?

Mimes are like that. They're constantly demanding feedback from you. Mimes are like that. They're constantly demanding feedback. And all you want to do is just listen to the song or whatever. So I know, I think there's something very cloying and my mother-like about mimes. This just in, Barry Sonnenfeld compares mimes to his mother. Right. I'm sorry. That's not fair to mimes.

I am. Here, let me give you a question from a listener, Barry, and this is about the Addams family. From Jason Marsden, I'm obsessed with the cuckoo clock in the beginning of the Addams family. Who made it, designed it, where is it, more importantly? I think about this monthly. I'll tell you the truth. I just, as I mentioned, I've been, we just released a new version, which is 4K. We put back in the entire Mamushka, this amazing song that Raoul does. And I hadn't seen the movie in 25 years. And I was looking at it because I was color timing it to make it look better. And I saw that clock and I

said, where is that clock? It was designed in part by Alan Munro, who is our visual effects supervisor, in part by the production designer, in part by me. And it's all real. There's no siege. Again, now it would be a piece of blue, and we would have created that clock in post-production, and it wouldn't look nearly as good. Interesting. Very interesting. It's like usually I was fascinated when I'd hear from old filmmakers about how they achieved certain shots and effects.

And nowadays it's like, okay, well, we press this button and that's rain. And this button, it makes it darker. Right. Now, it's a different kind of world and there's less and less finesse to it. It's sort of broad stroke electronic. Everything feels inhuman now. It's made me quite sad. I just hate every explosion looks like so fake and you don't, I'd rather have it off camera and hear the explosion than see

these bad, you know, like transparent flames. And it's just, it's. You must be a fun guy to watch a movie with, Barry. You know what? That's why I don't watch movies. Mike, Mike Herman says, were there any, speaking of Raul, were there any plans for a third Adams film before Raul Julia passed, unfortunately? Thereul, were there any plans for a third Adams film before Raul Julia passed, unfortunately? There were no plans for a third one as far as I knew. We didn't even have plans for the second one after it came out. It was a last-minute decision by Paramount. And they made that decision about four weeks after they destroyed all the sets that they had been saving for two years, they decided

to get rid of the sets. And then after they got rid of it, decided to make a sequel. In fact, if you see the second movie, the Addams Family interiors are totally different. It's a totally different interior. We had Ken Adam, who was a production designer on Strange Love, do the second one. And he was much closer to the Charles Adams drawings in that it was much more austere. And Richard McDonald, who was the production designer on the first one, created a much more romantic interior with curved staircases and with that beautiful ballroom where they dance the mamushka. So totally different interiors. I don't think anyone notices, but totally different interiors.

And what's strange to me is when I look at the cartoons, the Charles Adams cartoons. He, Gomez, always looks like Peter Lorre. Yeah, he's short and squat and sort of, yeah. That may have been intentional. It probably was intentional. But to me, those Charles Adams drawings were perfection. They're so great. They had layers of information, you know. And again, they let the audience, he let the audience figure out where the joke was.

He would never, you know, do a close, an effective close up, you know, and we stole several of his images. You know, me riding around in the train in Gomez's train set. Great cameo. That was a famous cartoon that Charles Adams had drawn. The opening shot of the Adams family pouring hot tar on the carolers was another Charles Adams drawing. So as much as possible, I stole those images to try to make sure people knew I was reverential, not to the TV show, but to the original Charles Adams drawings in the New Yorker magazine. They're also timeless.

They hold up so well, even today. Yeah, they're very dark. You know, he was a special artist. By the way, when you finally became a director, the talent, you certainly, I mean, I think part of your gift was surrounding yourself with the best of the best. I mean, Owen Roisman and D.D. Allen and Michael Bauhaus and Elmer Bernstein and Ken Adam, you did not skimp on your hiring. It's quite simple. Mark Shaman. Mark Shaman. At the end of the day, I'm going to get all the credit as a director.

So hire people better than you. I'm going to get the credit anyway. There are so many directors that are so insecure. They don't want any feedback. They don't want people to disagree with them. So they hire yes people. I want to hire only people better than me so that they'll make me look good. Bo designs as if he's a filmmaker, not as a production designer. He'll never say, isn't this a great idea?

He'll say, I designed the entrance to Men in Black and the elevator and the testing room in the first Men in Black in a row so you can do a continuous shot of Will Smith going in, getting in the elevator. The other side of the elevator opens up and you see the testing in progress. Pure Bo Welsh and brilliantly designed to make me look good. And let's also, yeah, let's also shout out Paul Rudnick too. That brings back. For having something to do with the success of those films. It brings back another thing Jack Benny said. Some interviewer asked him, how do you feel about Rochester and Don Wilson and Dennis Day and Mel Blanc stealing the show from you every week? And he said, I want them to steal the show for me because the next day everyone's saying how funny the Jack Benny show show is.

Exactly. Absolutely. He's right about that. And that's what made Will Smith realize. I just want to be in the scene. I don't need the punch line. If the scene is funny and I'm in it, they're going to say, how funny is Will Smith? So give some of the lines to other actors and let let you be the reactor. I mean, Jack Benny is the most perfect reactor there's ever been. And everyone thinks Jack is so funny. So get funnier people than you. Absolutely. It takes a certain security, though, in a performer.

In your case, it takes a security in the director to surround himself with that kind of A-list talent. I'm secure. I'm not good looking. I'm adorable. Speaking of Rudnick, Jer Morant says, can Barry share any memories of filming the fantastic Thanksgiving play sequence in the sequel in Adam's Family Values? Is he proud of the fact that it's become so iconic as a Thanksgiving moment in pop culture history? Because it has. I love that Adam's Family is for Halloween and Adam's Family Values is Thanksgiving. Yes.

Well said. Paul Rudnick and Mark Shaman wrote those songs. Happy, happy Turkey Day. Hunger pains will go away. They're both brilliant. As we're stealing Cape Cod Bay. It's happy Turkey Day. Hunger pains will go away. As we're stealing Cape Cod Bay. It's happy Turkey Day. Shaman and Rudnick wrote great songs.

And Rudnick wrote a brilliant speech for Wednesday Addams about white people drinking martinis and using their stick shift. And, of course, Christina did a brilliant job performing it. By the way, we haven't mentioned Christina and how brilliant she is. Let's not sell her short, yes. So Rudnick was extraordinary and I loved working with him. He wrote two great scripts and Rudnick is my backup for, for my reality check. When people don't believe me, when I say things like I used to build a fort and crawl into the fort, whenever Scott

Rudin yelled at me, uh, uh, out of the couch, I would take all the pillows off. I would crawl into the couch. I'd put the pillows back on top and Rudnick would be sitting there just laughing and Scott Rudin, because I realized if you out juvenile Scott, you will win. It's hard, but you can pull it off. And literally there's Scott screaming at me, get out of the fort. He would never say there is no fort. He would never pick up a pillow and say, Sonnenfeld, what are you doing? Because he was as juvenile as I was, so he obeyed the sanctity of the fort, because that was the game we were playing. And I'd go, I can't hear you. The fort's walls are too thick. And he would scream, get out of the fork. And Rudnick would say, you know, Scott, those walls do look pretty thick. I bet he

can't hear you. And eventually, Rudnick would say, okay, I'm sorry. And then I would pick up the pillows and we would continue with our discussion. So I love that Rudnick was there to share those moments with me. He's an eyewitness. He's an eyewitness. For sure. For sure. Great talent. In and Out, by the way. Another terrific script. And by the way, a brilliant moment is Joan Cusack at the end of that scene. At the end of the scene where she realizes that she's not going to get married. She says, was there any other time? You could have told me.

She finds the right word to put the syntax on. Was there any other time that you could have told me? Now, was there any other time you could have told me? The fact that she chose that word, it's brilliant. I laughed. I barked. I sounded like Jeff Bezos. I barked a laugh out loud. Another great performer.

Tell us working with Penny Marshall. Well, I write about it in my memoir a lot because I was a cinematographer on Big and Penny really knew comedy and she, but she didn't know how to direct. She, I mean, she was great at figuring out comedy. You know, it was her idea to have the caviar, which Hanks eats at the party. And it was her idea to have the little baby corn that Hanks eats as if it's a little corn on the cob. She just was incapable of making decisions. And all directing is, I tell you, this is the truth. Here's my definition of a director. A director's job is to figure out tone and stay consistent to that tone. And the only way you

stay consistent to the tone is by answering thousands of questions a week. Thousands. And they're all equally important. When the prop guy says you want the green folder or the red folder, he doesn't want you to say, oh, I don't care. It doesn't make a difference. You have to arbitrarily, even if you don't care, you say the green folder. And then of course, on the day you realize that you had said to the wardrobe person, the green dress. Now you can't see the folder because you said green folder. She's in the green dress. So you go to the prop guy and you go, hey, remember when he goes, yeah, yeah, I saved the red folder. It's in the truck. I'll go get it. So they always save your ass anyway. But you have to answer the question.

answer the question. And Penny never, ever, ever, ever wanted to answer a question. And so literally the first day of shooting Big, and this is in my book, was a night shoot, which is already hard because it was the summer. So you don't have a lot of hours at night. We had to shoot every, that entire scene, every single shot with Elizabeth Perkins was shot with her as a redhead and the blonde and because it would take an hour to switch her over we had to shoot the entire scene master shots over the shoulder close-ups with her as a redhead and then we put little marks on the ground okay 2k over there with a double net, 10K over there. And then after lunch, we then had to reshoot the entire scene except for Tom Hanks' close-up because she wasn't in that shot. Had to reshoot everything else again with her as a blonde. Now, Penny had 12 weeks to

make that decision, blonde or redhead. We shot two tests with her as a blonde and a redhead, but she couldn't make up her mind. And in fact, the day of the shoot, Bobby Greenhut, the producer said to Penny, Penn, we're shooting tonight, redhead or blonde. And Penny said, Barry did a bad job shooting the tests. So I can't decide. So we'll have to shoot it both ways. Unreal.

Well, that's part of the fun of the story in the book. She never thought you were any good at your job. Right. Or Hank's, by the way, so you're in pretty good company. When I was done and I showed her the final timing, color timing of the final cut movie. And it was all done. She said to me, you know, I never thought you would. She said, I never thought you were a good cameraman, but you picked a nice film stock. And the night that the show came out, I was visiting Tom Hanks on the set of Burbs, which

at Universal. And I was in Hanks's camper. Tom Hanks on the set of Burbs, which at Universal, and I was in Hanks's camper. And Penny was quoted in the L.A. Times the day Big came out saying, I never thought Tom was a good actor. So I surrounded him with other good actors to make him look better. Sort of like what we did with Jimmy Conn. So I see. So so there was a knock on the door and someone said, Tom, we're ready on his camper door.

And Tom said, are there really good actors out there? I'm not coming out unless I'm being surrounded by good actors. So that was Penny. That was just Penny. I like your line in the book, though. You said she directed in the end. She directed a pretty good film for a not so a bad cinematographer. Right.

She was she was using a bad cinematographer and a not-so-great actor. And a bad actor, but somehow she pulled it off. Yeah. Yep, yep, yep. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast after this. This is fascinating to me, too,

because you said that one of the things you learned about becoming a director was how much you loved and appreciated actors. Right. So let's ask just quickly, with the time that we have left, about some of these wonderful people. And I know you love character actors, as we do. We just want to—and Gilbert and I were talking on the phone before about somebody you worked with a couple of times, the late Dennis Farina. Farina was perfection.

Just perfection. In fact, I, you know, he would spend the summers in Scottsdale, Arizona, because he was a big golf fan. And sorry, he would spend the winters in Scottsdale and the summers in Chicago, where he was a cop and a detective for 20 years. In fact, he was a consultant for Michael Mann's cop movie. That's how he got into the film business. And a cop TV show. I can't remember the name of it. Oh, yeah. What was the name of that show? Crime Story. Crime Story. So I said to Dennis one day, I said, so when you go back to Chicago in the summer, do you hang out with all your cop friends? And Dennis said,

you know, most of my friends were on the other side. That's great. I just love that. Love that. He was both in big trouble and in- Yeah, funny in big trouble. Really funny in big trouble. I'll tell you a great story from Get Shorty. There's a scene where Dennis Farina's character comes to Gene Hackman's office. Hackman has spent the night sleeping and wakes up and Dennis Farina is in his office. And Hackman tries to pull the John Travolta line on him and says, look at me, Ray. Gene Hackman's name is Ray Bones, his character. And Ray Bones says, look at me, take a look at this. And he throws a desk in Farina's face. He grabs, Farina grabs, throws a desk in Hackman's face. He grabs Hackman. He throws him into the Venetian blinds.

He throws him across the room. A bookcase falls down on Hackman. So we have this guy who's been Hackman's longtime stunt double, right? I think his name is Whitey. I think he was a professional baseball player, in fact, but not Whitey Ford. So anyway, we do a few takes, and Farina is really, you know, shoving Gene Hackman's stunt double around and all that. And Gene Hackman comes onto the set to watch a take. And Hackman says, you know, I think I can do that. And I said, no, you know, Gene, no need because, oh no, his name was Doc, not Whitey. I said, Doc is doing a great job and he's really hiding his face and he looks just

like you. And Gene says, I think I should do it. And I say, you know, Gene, I think it's better this way because I think that if Dennis is doing it with you, he won't put as much into it because he won't want to hurt you. So let's leave Doc do it. It's great. I'm not making any compromises by having Doc do it. And Gene says, why don't you fucking ask Dennis if he wants me to do it? And I said, okay, Gene. And I go to Dennis and I go, listen, Dennis, Gene wants to know if you want him to do a take. And Dennis panics and Dennis says, And Dennis panics. And Dennis says, no, no, I don't know.

Don't let him do that because I might hurt him. And he's a big guy and he'll come after me and he'll take a swing at me and he could hurt me. And then the only way I can stop him is to shoot him. And I don't want to be the guy who knows the guy that fucking killed Gene Hackman. Don't let him do it. So I love that Gene was so intimidating that Dennis was afraid of Hackman. True story. That's a great story. Dennis Farina, he was a very convincing scumbag in any movie.

But a charming one. Yes. But a great guy. The greatest, nicest, nicest guy. And by the way, talk about flat. You don't see any acting there. He's just being Dennis, you know? And he's brilliant.

I love that man. And he died way too early. Way too early. Very, very sad. Some of these other names, and let me just throw some of them out, and if any stories or memories jump out at you, because you've directed a wonderful lineup of character actors. Rip Torn, Dan Hedaya, Robert Loggia, Carol Kane we had here. Right. Ann Ramsey.

Carol Kane we had here. Right. Ann Ramsey. Well, Ann, Danny, you know, Ann died after we did Throw Mama from the Train. She played Danny DeVito's mother in Throw Mama from the Train. And Danny was at her memorial. And there were a lot of people there. And Danny said, and I know that if Ann is looking down on us right now, I know what she would say. Ann, looking down right now, would say, there goes your fucking sequel, motherfucker.

Which is not what you would expect at a memorial. And then the other thing is Rip Torn. Rip had such a thick Texas accent that there was this one line of dialogue in the First Men in Black, which was he says to Rip says to Tommy Lee Jones, whose name is K. to Tommy Lee Jones, whose name is Kay. He says, Kay, give the kid some, as written, it said, give the kid some fire power, right? That's the line. Okay, action.

Hey, Kay, give the kid some fire power. Wait, cut. Wait, what? Wait, Rip, fire power. Got it. Give the kid some fire power. So this is going on take after take, and I'm talking to Rip, and Tommy turns to Will Smith off to the side and says,

will someone tell that guy to say, give the kid a big gun? So luckily, I had the same idea. So I said, you know what? Why don't you just say, give the kid a gun and we'll be done with it. But it took 15 takes. It's probably the most takes I've done of trying to get ripped to say fire power. It did not go well. That's very funny. Speaking of screen legends, you also rebooted Fantasy Island in 1998. We had the great Malcolm McDowell here about 10 months ago. Malcolm was amazing and a lovely guy, and I failed him. I failed him. It was early in my television career, and I produced it but didn't direct the pilot. The pilot was really well directed, but I never went to Hawaii. I never stayed on top of it the way I now know to do with other television shows like The Tick or, you know, a series of unfortunate events or Schmigadoon. I stick around.

And I didn't on that. And I failed Malcolm because I wasn't around enough to help him. And if Malcolm has listened to this, I really apologize. It's my fault, Malcolm. And there were two other extremely talented people on Fantasy Island. That was Fivish Finkel and Sylvia Sidney. The great Sylvia Sidney. She worked with Bogart.

Yeah, well, I don't know her that well. I do know Fivish. He was in a movie of mine, and he had prostate issues, so he was always going to the bathroom after every take was, do I have time to run to the bathroom? But he was fantastic. It was a movie with Michael J. Fox called For Lover Money. Came out in about 92, maybe 90.

And five is played the oldest bellhop alive. And he was fantastic. And it just hilarious. Old Yiddish theater performer. Brilliant. Yeah. It was fantastic, and just hilarious. Old Yiddish theater performer, brilliant. Yeah. Speaking of, this is something Gilbert and I were talking about, too. By the way, before I get off the subject of Barry Sonnenfeld television shows, and I did, I went back and watched the two episodes of Pushing Daisies.

I was a fan of that show to begin with, but I watched the two episodes you directed. Brian Fuller, first of all, terrific writer. What a great show. And I'm looking at your shows. I'm What a great show. And I'm looking at your shows. I'm looking at Karen Sisko. I'm looking at Maximum Bob. And I want to go back to what you said before. If those shows had been made in the streaming era and not have to have been force-fed into the network box, maybe they have a different life. Yeah, definitely. They're certainly well directed. Definitely, that would be the case with Pushing Daisies. There was also a writer's strike. So we got shut down

for a while and it never got the audience it deserved. And it didn't stick around long enough to have the audience it deserved. And Maximum Bob had a tonal issue. It didn't know what it wanted to be in terms of comedy versus serious. And if I went back and did it again, I would err on the side of making it a little less funny. But I thought the pilot was great. Liz Vassie was great. Bo Bridges was great. We had an alligator wrangler who looked exactly like every drawing and painting of jesus christ and whenever the alligator started to i mean hair down or tarzan i don't the white tarzan whenever

the um alligator started to get feisty because we shot that in florida um he would just we had a swimming pool he just picked the alligator up and throw it into the pool, which cooled the alligator off and that would make him get sluggish again. But alligators look totally not real. We also had an animatronic alligator from Disney. And I remember one time going up to the alligator wrangler and saying, do you think we're far enough away from the actor we can use the real alligator and not this animatronic alligator?

And of course the answer was, this is a real alligator. So- Wow. So that's either, that's how fake alligators look or that's how good Disney animation looks because animatronics look, because they look just because they look identical. Let me say to our listeners to find Pushing Daisies, which is on HBO Max. Some of these shows,

Maximum Bob's hard to find unless you're seeing some, but it's not streaming. The pilot, which you directed, is a lot of fun, but people should find these shows. Certainly find Pushing Daisies. Pushing Daisies was a perfection for me. I loved Brian's work. I loved his writing. I love the cast. Love the cast. Yeah. Swoozie Kurtz and Ellen Green and all these wonderful people. I think Gilbert was fascinated by this, weren't you, Gil? We were talking about your agent at one point in your career, the legendary Phil Gersh. You had Phil Gersh? No, no, no. Gilbert and I were talking about him.

I wish. I think Phil passed away before we started doing this, but there's that great section in the book where you're fired from Tango and Cash. Right, well. And this is a guy who was the agent of Bogart and James Mason and Zero Mostel during the Blacklist. Here's the great thing about Phil.

I had shot Blood Simple, and Blood Simple was the first thing that Joel, Ethan, and I had ever done. None of us had agents or anything like that. And David Gersh, one of the Phil Gersh sons who represented cinematographers, saw Blood Simple, called me up, said, do you have an agent? No. Well, come out to LA. We want to sign you. So I fly out to LA, and I meet David, his brother Bob, and Phil. And David and Bob are telling me everything that's going to happen to my career. They're going to get me bigger jobs, better jobs, better paying jobs. Eventually, they're going to move me into directing because they get all this stuff that they say, right?

And I see Phil getting more and more agitated. Phil probably is like 80 at this point, right? And he's just sitting in his chair. And finally, he makes like a Jewish old man grunting sound and sort of uses his hands on his thighs to stand up and leans over in front of me and says you can listen to my boys bullshit all you want you're gonna get as fucked over as anyone else gets fucked over in this stupid fucking business. I'm going to lunch. And he leaves.

And David and Phil are like white. And I'm saying, I said to them, where do I sign? Because there's a guy who's speaking truth. I love that guy. That's what you want. You don't want the guy. How long did you stay with him? I mean, what a legendary character.

I stayed at the agency for many years until I became a director, and it was a mistake to leave. I should have stayed with David because David did very well by me, and I feel bad that I left to go to a different agency as a director. What a story he must have had to tell. I was telling you, he repped Zero Mostel during his Blacklist era. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. He was an art collector. Oh, huge art collector.

He was a multi-million dollar art collector. Oh, at least. I mean, I remember being in his garden with him hosing down his Henry Moore, just saying, fucking birds, fucking birds, trying to hose the bird shit off of his Henry Moore. And go figure an agent who's not full of shit. Yeah, no, I know. I love that.

I love that. Did he ever tell you a bogey story? I didn't ask. Yeah. Because he would have yelled at me. Tell us this, too. And we didn't get into the Coens a lot this time. But, you know, you're always welcome back, Barry.

We could do hours and hours and hours. Explain to Gilbert, I love this, it's in the book, what is the Lawrence, the Larry Kasdan panty shot? Larry Kasdan pants insert. The panty insert. Excuse me. I misspoke. On Blood Simple, Joel and Ethan and I would get bored, so we'd go see movies. And we went to the movies and saw Body Heat, which Larry Kasdan directed.

Kasdan directed and there's an, what's his name, breaks through the glass door and grabs Kathleen Turner, throws her to the ground. And then there's an insert of a carpet and you see a hand come in and drop Kathleen Turner's panties on the floor. And it was such a weird insert. It was a way to move the action ahead. You, you needed to cut away so that you could cut back and then they wouldn't have their clothes on or something like that. But the angle, it was such a closeup of this and the angle was raw. And Joel and Ethan and I all felt that the angle was wrong, that the camera should have been scraping the ground and the panties should have fallen in from the top of the frame. But instead, the angle was very high looking down. So as the panties fell into frame, they were heading away from the camera, which was less dynamic. So you cut to years later, 15 years later, I become really good friends with Larry Kasdan. And I say, you know,

Larry, I don't know if I should tell you this, but Joel and Ethan and I always felt you use the wrong camera angle on your Larry Kasdan panty insert. And he said, I know. He said, I know. We should have been right on the ground. But Richard Klein, who is a cinematographer, didn't want to take the time to light that. It was so much faster to shoot it looking straight down at the carpet. But Larry admitted it was the wrong angle for the Larry Kazan panty insert. So there's that. I love that. When you watch those films, when you watch Raising Arizona, when you watch Blood Simple and Miller's Crossing, your presence, obviously, your presence is very much felt.

You know, there's the shaky cam. What was it? The spinny cam, the blanky cam in Raising Arizona. Yeah. Here's the thing. They're technical marvels, those films. I am an only child of Jewish persuasion, which means I need a lot of attention. And the thing is, I could never be an actor, but I found a way as a cameraman to make the audience know I am the guy.

I'm telling the audience where to look in every single shot. I design the guy. I'm telling the audience where to look in every single shot. I design every shot with the Coens. I co-designed it with them, but all the other directors are pretty much my shot list and all that. And I think the camera can be an actor, a character in your movie. So many comedies are shot badly. So many comedies are shot without any visual style. And what I brought to the table is that I felt that comedies can be shot with the same visual style as any other kind of movie. I mean, Strange Love was probably the first comedy that had such amazing visual style but but it was a comedy so my what i brought to the table and i'm really proud of this to this day is that i use the camera as a character in the movie and if and and the secret for comedies is wide angle lenses because the audience unconsciously knows the camera is near the actors. You look at the

Scott Brothers movies or Michael Mann movies, they're beautifully shot, but they're emotionally very distant. And they use telephoto lenses and they're 30 feet, 40 feet back. I remember Will Smith had come off Enemy of the State with one of the Scott brothers, I think Tony. Tony, I think. And he said, you know, on Enemy of the State, I never knew where the camera was. They were so far away. And there, your camera is like 18 inches from my nose. And I think that audiences understand in an unconscious way on my movies that the camera is near the actors, and that makes them much more accessible and emotionally much more present than those telephoto camera movies. I could be wrong, but I think it's true.

Oh, it's interesting. Not since Greg Toland have you been so aware of a cinematographer while watching a movie. To your credit, if only there was a making of Raising Arizona, we could see you guys, you know, running with that shot up the ladder into Mrs. Arizona's mouth. Yeah, shot backwards, shot mouth. Shot backwards. Shot upside down and backwards. Was that Sam Raimi's idea? Sam Raimi sort of invented the shaky cam on Evil Dead. And we used it. You know, I always tell people we could reshoot Blood Simple or Raising Arizona for 10 times the budget,

and it wouldn't look nearly as good. Because now we'd be using techno cranes and all these other high, very high expensive technological advances. But then a shaky cam was a camera mounted on a 2x12 with a 9.8 millimeter lens with Joel Cohen on one end and me on the other end, racing towards the fountain, the car, over the car, up the ladder, through the window into Florence, Arizona's mouth. Right.

And now we would do it in one very expensive shot and it wouldn't be as good. Wow. Before we go, go ahead, Gil. Yeah, no, it's like back then. It's that thing again where you actually had to use your hands and create something. That's right. I agree. I agree.

And I think the world was, I don't want to sound like an old white male, but I think the world was, but I am an old white male. The world was, the film business was a better place in terms of not having all those tools. You know, it's it's amazing. I mean, you look at that first shot in Touch of Evil, you know, where Obama is put in a trunk and the camera booms up and goes across it. It took six days to shoot that shot. And in fact, the story is that the first day they didn't shoot anything because they were designing the shot and lighting it. So they're a day behind schedule.

The second day, they're two days behind the third day. They're three days behind. And then on the fourth day, they shot it and became three days ahead of schedule because they had six days scheduled for all the pieces. But because Orson Welles did it in one shot, it took a long time to design, but then they pulled it off in one continuous take. There was a silent version of Frankenstein where what they did was they built a Frankenstein, paper mache Frankenstein monster, set fire to it,

filmed it, set fire to it, you know, filmed it, set fire to it, burned it to the ground. And then they showed it backwards. So I look like he was created out of the fire. Right. And that sounds great. Yeah.

Where people had to think and had to be, use their imagination. Yeah, no, it's, it's it's it's you know what i always say this about film school because when we were in film school there were no video cameras so everything was 16 millimeter and the cost of a roll of film and developing the film and then coding the film was so expensive that you really had to design every shot. We never shot master shots. We would know when we were going to be in the close-up and only shoot close-ups for that section. We would shoot master shots for the beginning and end of a scene because you knew when would I ever cut to the master shot in the middle of the scene? I wouldn't. So let's not waste the cost of the film.

And everything I've done professionally is because at film school, I had to design every shot and know when that shot was going to be used and mentally edit the scene before I ever shot it. the scene before I ever shot it. So if you look at the movies I've directed and shot, there is a flow to the cover, to the camera coverage. That's because I went to film school and couldn't afford the film stock. So I only shot, same with Joel, same with Ethan. We only shot what we absolutely needed and designed everything. Because the other thing is the worst place to make any decision is on a film set. The best place is in pre-production because it's free and you're just sitting around and there's no grips or electrics thinking you don't know what you're

doing. So if you design everything ahead of time, then the shooting is just like something you do, but you don't do any figuring out on a movie set. Do it in pre-production. None of us will ever know that feeling. Well, a few of us. By the way, that's the way the episodes of this show are prepared, Barry. Yeah, sure, I can tell. Weeks and weeks in advance.

Earlier today, Gilbert and I were talking. Yeah. No, I'm talking. Yeah. No, I'm just—yeah. When you've storyboarded something like Raising Arizona within an inch of its life— Right. And then you make the film, and you sit back, and you compare the two things, and you get to see how everything worked, how it leapt off the page. And what is that feeling like?

It must have been— Yeah. Especially for you guys. You were all young. It must have been, especially for you guys, you were all young. It must have been euphoric. It was, yeah. But, you know, there's no room for euphoria in the film business. You know that.

I thought there was no reason to be happy. No crying in baseball. Yeah, no reason to be happy about anything you say. Well, I do say no upside to optimism. Optimism. And Gilbert, I hope I can get you into my way of thinking on that. Well, you were talking about the Addams family.

You said you wish you'd enjoyed it more, but as a good Jew, that's not possible. No, it really isn't. You know, you really, if you start, if you ever say out loud, how great is this? God hears you and says, really? Watch this, Sonnenfeld. Bring in the thunderstorm and the broken leg right now.

Stat. Well, the plane crash in your case. Right, right. Quickly, two things. Your choice. Did you stay in touch with the great Robert Benton? What a filmmaker.

Yeah. By the way. No, Bob and I lost contact, but not just from me moving to the other side of the world and all that, but great, great man. He's someone we'd love to have here.

And tell us one thing before we go about Albert Finney. I know he made a speech at your wedding. Albert, you know, here's the thing. Ten days before we were starting to shoot Miller's Crossing, my wife and I were in a car behind Joel and Ethan. They were leading the way in their car. We were going out to Lake Ponsitrine. They were leading the way in their car.

We were going out to Lake Ponsitrine. And, of course, I'm the only one with a cell phone because they're too cheap to own a cell phone back in 1990. And I get a call that Trey Wilson has had a major brain hemorrhage, and he's not going to make it. So I flash my brights. Joel and Ethan stop. I hand the phone to Joel and he's hearing for the first time that the person who they wrote the movie for, they wrote it for Trey Wilson. He played Nathan Arizona. Nathan Arizona, yeah, just to give our audience context, yeah. Arizona, just to give our audience context.

We'll be dead by tomorrow. So they got a script to Albert Fenney, who agreed to do it a week before we started to shoot. And Albert knew every line of dialogue. He would go out drinking with the grips and electrics until New Orleans closed, which is like 4 a.m. for New Orleans, right? Would come in at 6 after drinking all night, totally sober, knew every line of dialogue, was perfection in that movie. And if you watch the movie again, there's a scene near the end, it was actually the last shot we ever did, actually the last shot we ever did where uh gabriel burn goes into a women's uh washroom at the club and there are all these women in there and he storms in albert is in that scene as a woman he's dressed as the matron oh yes that's right uh black and white with you last

time yeah so if you ever see that movie again he's actually in that scene for about 36 frames. And he just didn't want to leave. He said, I want to be in another scene. And Joel and Ethan said, well, the last scene we're shooting is tomorrow, and it's in a women's bathroom. And Albert said, I can do that. He got into drag just to stay in the movie. Just to stay in the movie. What an actor.

What a get, too, for the Coens at that stage of their career. They'd only had two smaller films under their belt. Yeah. And it always got me like nowadays there'll be a big scandalous thing about, oh, this actor is an alcoholic. And back then they were all major league alcohol. Well, you know what? I don't know if he was an alcoholic and just liked to drink to excess. Barry, the actual anniversary of Adam's family is this coming Monday, the 22nd.

We'll get this one up and out as soon as we can. But just tell us about the 4K release, quick. Yeah. As you said, you went back and restored Mamushka. I had an opportunity that when Paramount called me and said they want to release a 4K version for the 30th anniversary of Adam's Family, I said, I'd love to see if you could find the original footage of the longer version of the Mamushka, which is this wonderful song and dance that Raul Julia and Chris Lloyd do. They found the work print. They found the negative. They retimed it and we put it in.

It's the only time I will ever change a version of a movie I direct. My theory is there should be one version of a movie. There's not six Guernicas. There's not six of, you know, anything else. There shouldn't be the director's version. That's a good point. But in this case, I realized early on I had made a huge mistake cutting it short. We cut away, and then we cut back and it's in progress because the movie felt a little long at that point. But I regretted it as

soon as we did it. And I had this opportunity to put it back in there. So it's beautiful. It's recolor timed and the entire mamushka is in there. And Raul Julia is perfection in that scene. The entire mamushka is in there, and Raul Julia is perfection in that scene. Can't wait to see it. 4K. When you watch a movie, do you look at it and go, oh, that shot's totally wrong? I do something similar. My wife sits to my right, and she keeps her hand on my arm so I can't do the international waving go faster thing. For me, it's not about the camera angles. It's that no one is talking

fast enough. Listen, I loved, I loved, loved Breaking Bad, but I could have shot those five seasons in two seasons without losing a single word of dialogue. I just, there's something that drives me crazy about, and I love Breaking Bad, but I hate the indulgence of long movies. No movie should be longer than an hour 40 tops. I just watched Big Trouble again, and it's remarkable to see how quickly you got in and out. I love that movie.

It came out. Look, Duck Soup is 82 minutes, right? Yeah. 81 minutes. Yeah. I always, when I watch movies, I always think this movie could be done in a minute. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Well, that's extreme. I admit that. But but, you know, I think that everything movies are too long.

They're just too long. And no one talks fast enough and no one's talking over a reaction shot. Don't cut to a reaction shot without the off-camera person continuing to talk. I don't want to see a reaction shot in silence. It drives me crazy. Your poor wife. You're from the His Girl Friday school. Keep it moving. Keep it moving. Hudsucker proxy. Yeah, keep it moving. There's one with people talking fast. And Schmigadoon, what's happening? First season is finished. First season is finished. I think Apple is talking about a second season. I'm not sure I want to go back there again, but I had a great time. But as I said, I'm not a big fan of musicals. So I'm not sure I could spend another 43 days on another musical again. But we'll see.

But I loved all those actors. They were fantastic. You know, Chenoweth and Cecily. Did you enjoy Marty Short? Marty Short was there for one shot. Oh, okay. And he was in L.A. But that shot, by the way, is shot with a super wide-angle lens.

There's no visual effects in there. It looks like we shrunk him down or something, but we used a 5.7-millimeter lens about eight inches from his head. So his body shrinks really quickly, and he's kneeling on his shoes. Because he's playing a leprechaun, we should point out. Because he's playing a leprechaun. Because he's playing a leprechaun. So, yeah, right. So he looks really small. But Cecily Strong was great.

Keegan-Michael Key. Chenoweth. Alan Cumming was hilarious. Oh, Alan Cumming's great. Yeah. So it was a pleasure to work on, but I'm not sure I want to go back there again. Okay. So we'll see.

Let's plug the book, because the last time you were here, our listeners loved the book. In fact, we had one guy, Ward Whipple, wrote in and he said, can you get Barry to work the word loamy into conversation? Loamy is a good word as it relates to Florida. Loamy, moist. But my new, here are my two new favorite words. Detritus is a good word. Detritus, yes. And verisimilitude. I'm a big fan of verisimilitude

it's a wonderful word yeah but yeah a bitch to spell though yeah you don't want to spell you can barely say it but uh my book is out in paperback now so with a different title with different cover different cover barry sonnenfeld call your mother is there did you read the audio you must have read the audio version, too. I did. It's like listening to Gilbert for 11 hours. And, of course, I mean no offense. None. Should we talk more about Wild Wild West, Gilbert?

Listen, we had Erwin Winkler here. Do you know Erwin Winkler? Yeah, sure. Okay, so the man has Rocky on his credits and Goodfellas and Raging Bull. Listen, we had Erwin Winkler here. Do you know Erwin Winkler? Yeah, sure. Okay, so the man has Rocky on his credits and Goodfellas and Raging Bull. Gilbert wants to bring up every flop that the man made. He started with they shoot horses, don't they? And he worked right through the CV. So I feel blessed that Gilbert only went Wild Wild West on me.

That's kind of great. Thank you, Gilbert. You're a lovely host. He's a humanitarian at heart. Barry, so much fun again. Pleasure. Anything else that you can plug that you got? By the way, I love the tick.

So since we barely shouted out Patrick Warburton, let's shout him out again because he's a comedy genius. Warburton is a comedy genius who is going to officiate at my daughter's wedding this March. Oh, wonderful. And here's the bad news. And I know he's kidding, but he said that he's gotten his speech down to 93 minutes. there are three, there are three, Warburton is extraordinary, but there are three actors, Patrick Warburton, John Hamm, and, and Will Arnett that all have these incredibly deep voices, are incredibly handsome, and all know that the joke is never play the joke. know that the joke is never play the joke. And they're all so great because they know where the joke is, but they don't go there, you know? And I just recently saw Ham and I had a great evening

with him. I recently was talking to Will Arnett. And so those three guys, I mean, handsome and funny is hard to find. I had the pleasure of working with Bill Arnett. He's also a lovely guy. Lovely guy, Canadian. He's a pro's pro. Fun to be around. Yeah, lovely guy. We love the tick.

We'll tell our listeners, find Patrick Warburton and Barry's version of the tick. There were several versions of it. Right. Pushing daisies is just great. And get the book. it. Pushing daisies is just great. And get the book. I think a lot of our listeners bought the book last time, but we like to sell books.

Yeah, get it again in paperback because it's a surreal cover. Because the cover has me sitting on a bench reading the hard cover. Yeah, I saw that. I think I like the new cover. Yeah, well, it it's surreal so check it out how did you feel about reading the book uh for the recording you know what gilbert i i i did not

enjoy the experience because uh i hate the sound of my voice, as you should. No, and I don't mean to hate the sound of my voice, Gilbert. I mean to hate the sound of your own voice. But so, and I had arranged for Max Greenfield to read it, a handsome Jewish man. But the Audible really wanted, they said that especially with memoirs, the listeners really want to hear the author read their memoir. And I will say, I learned how to do certain things like putting words in quotes is hard to do when it's just a vocal quote. But I was able to do that. It's hard to do when it's just a vocal quote, but I was able to do that. And then I had to make decisions.

Do I try to sound like Penny Marshall or do I just read it straight? So it was really hard to do. And I was not an enjoyable experience, but in retrospect, I guess I'm glad I did it. But it was not easy for me. Way to sell it to our listeners, Barry. But I hear it's good. Larry Kasson listened to it and said that he loved my performance. Gilbert, I'm out of cards. Okay.

Barry, this was a kick. Okay. Go ahead. No, I was going to. Okay. Go ahead. No, I was going to ask Barry. Go ahead, Barry. No, I was just going to thank you guys for doing this again. And please tell your people, listeners, to buy my book. I'm really proud of it.

We absolutely will. I'll send you some feedback that we got on social media from the last time. They definitely got the book because they were actually writing passages from the book oh excellent i'd love to see that thanks yeah for for sure and okay gilly yeah this has been gilbert godfrey's amazing colossal podcast with my co-host frank santo padre and we've been interviewing the man who did the movie version of wild wild west And we've been interviewing the man who did the movie version of Wild Wild West. The always entertaining, our friend, Barry Sutton. It's a pleasure.

I wish you could see the sincerity. Our listeners could see the sincerity on Barry's face thank you Gilbert has a God complex you said if you get too up or too happy or too confident about anything God will smite you but Gilbert fills that role

I'm keeping you humble you know it's so weird Gilbert because just to see you being successful makes me think anyone could be. So it's quite the opposite. You brought me joy where I felt pain. Just knowing that you make a living makes me think, okay, anything's possible. So I thank you for that, Gilbert. So you did end up on an optimistic note.

Thank you, Barry Thank you Thank you Mamushka! Mamushka! He comes with Mamushka! Hey, hey, hey, hey! Hey, hey, hey, hey! Wait! I swear by Mommy and Dad and... This detestable Fester's the Echt! Fester Adams!

So hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, let's dance the dance of brotherly love! Mamushka!