My Mom's Basement - EPISODE 207 - 'MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS' WRITER MICHAEL WALDRON RETURNS

Episode Date: May 12, 2022

Michael Waldron joins Robbie and Clem in the Basement for a SPOILER-FILLED discussion about ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ and what went into making one of the biggest movies of the year! 3Chi: Use code STOOL5 at checkout to receive 5% off at 3Chi.com Gametime: Download the app and use promo code MMB for $20 off your first purchase! **************************************** Subscribe to My Mom's Basement on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIeZ96PqdsJYQ7DFLRx6MHw My Mom's Basement Merchandise: https://store.barstoolsports.com/collections/my-moms-basement Intro Music: “Basement Noise” by All Time Low Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/basement-noise/1499013757?i=1499013968 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/3Aq9W9BBCjsFOQqcYyO6IA?si=d9d0f74cf54a48deYou can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/mymomsbasement

Hey My Mom's Basement listeners, you can find our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and Prime members can mom's basement, ladies and gentlemen. It is Robbie Fox. It is Clem. And it is one of the listeners' favorite return guests. I would say you're up there with Dana White, our friend Jose Youngs. Everyone's asking for you to come back all the time. It's Michael Waldron coming off the heels of Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The biggest movie in the world right now. Not a big deal. You might've heard of it. Dr. Strange 2. Ever heard of it? This guy. Half a billion dollar

man is in the house. And we're still rocking after weekend one how are we doing we're your hype men we're your hype right we are yeah we're your hype men i should i need it yeah i need an air horn thank you yeah it did it's it's great man i'm just i'm so look it's i'm glad people are seeing the movie obviously i'm glad people are liking it it's like it's getting a big divisive reaction in some cases which which i think we knew it honestly i think we knew it would it's like we do some crazy shit in this movie um and it's cool man this this movie took jesus it was hard to make and we made during COVID. A lot of people worked really hard. So it's cool. Yeah, absolutely. So I want to talk about this movie a lot. And if you haven't seen this movie, you know, maybe see it. We're going to talk a little bit about spoilers in this

interview and stuff. But I want to start here. Where does this story start for you? Because I saw the movie, loved it and was just like, oh, my God, there's so much in it. What's the first thing that comes to mind where you're like, oh want to do this well i guess when i came on i mean really it it was okay it's the multiverse thing which was cool but but by the time i came on it's like i had done rick and morty I'd done Loki. I knew like, you can't, if you're just doing a run through a bunch of multiverses, you're going to end up making a cartoon, which might feel like empty calories to an audience.

And so I was excited to, to figure out a real dramatic way to, to have these characters confront alternate versions themselves you know what is what can that force out of them dramatically and then an idea that that came early on was dreamwalking and that was just super cool because that felt new and the notion that wanda could possess her alternate self in another universe and do bad shit there was like oh that's cool that's like a cool new multiversal idea so i was stoked about that that was awesome so you said how it was uh you filmed during covid and you know all the stuff that went on.

How, like, obviously we know the whiteboard is real. Kevin Feige, I even saw that there was a story that said Kevin Feige had a retreat and he took a board with him. I know that's the whiteboard, Waldron. I know you were kind of being coy with us last time. That whiteboard exists. When you were writing, did you already have the part of the whiteboard that said WandaVision, this is what happens. This is where we are. And you're going to go from there. Or were you kind of going a little bit off your own going into this? And did you have to rewrite it all because of the COVID nonsense?

Yeah. I mean, it's, look, man, even I still haven't seen that whiteboard. Come on. I'm telling you. I'm telling you. I even, even me for me the whiteboard was me sitting so I'm sitting across from Sam Raimi on day one Sam being like okay what is the multiverse I'm gonna draw a bunch of lines and I'm gonna draw a bunch of fucking squiggles coming off of it um and and that was

our that was our whiteboard I you know we knew we were gonna follow WandaVision which I'd read all the scripts and I knew I just knew it was gonna be amazing like I knew I was like all right WandaVision is gonna kick ass um Doctor Strange at this point is the anchor of the mcu so it's okay cool no pressure yeah really your first movie ever you're writing here and it's like yeah all right the fate of the multiverse is in your hands yeah yeah so so it's like let's let's just try to let's try to really land the plane with those two characters and that's that's what we focused on is trying to find a great story for, for Wanda and for Steven. And what COVID did was it, it pushed out our production date six months. And, um, and we got to really kind of start over on the story we'd inherited, which had a lot of great cool ideas in it like but sam and i got to say all right let's

make it our own um and that was that was when we made the decision all right let's make wanda the vision the villain of this movie and and we let that be our our launch pad creatively so you basically were like all right we're just gonna save mephisto for the next guy is that what we're basically saying yeah exactly exactly we're like listen to save Mephisto for the next guy. Is that what we're basically saying? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We're like, listen, we got to leave some meat on the bone. And Mephisto is better. It's like Jaws.

It's better if you don't see it. More scary in the shadows. Exactly. Exactly. Speaking of scary, you guys do some scary shit in this movie. Wanda gets scary at points. I'm sure the stands are all up in arms about it. What is your favorite moment in the movie? If you have one.

I mean, the Illuminati evisceration is. How do you beat I guess like yeah I guess I guess that's my favorite because that it's to to imagine it a couple years ago and now be here and get the audience cheer that I hoped we would get and then hear the groans and the oh my God, wait, what? Like sense in the theater is everybody's stomach drops is just amazing. So that and Dead Strange as well is really cool. It's tough and everything with Lizzie, like that's, you know, everything with wanda is is so good as you described that

reaction in the theater you basically were like kevin mcallister you gave us that cheese pizza and then you were buzz mcallister and ate all the pizza right in front of our face we're just like what the hell and then and then everybody's buzz puking all over the place when now i gotta get black bolt's brain going through his skull that made me puke disgusting now i now i have to go sleep upstairs with fuller did you write the little cartoon jingle the little x-men cartoon jingle was that in the script or did that come later that was i that was the that was richie palmer our producer really who who's there with us on london in london and that was him pushing for that i mean we and and me and

richie and kevin especially were like he's got to be the comic book uh Xavier and and so yellow floaty chair you gave us the yellow floaty chair on the big screen exactly because because it's like Richie's like our age and and he so we grew up with that cartoon so um it's like we got to get Danny Elfman to do to do this jingle and he did it's so cool i can't believe it i can't believe it's real i couldn't believe it was real either and again that was my little moment goosebumps and like nerding out to myself i was fist pumping i was doing a lot of things in a theater who people are probably concerned about the big guy sitting in the corner there um but the other thing you did to professor x is you fucking i i thought you cracked that uh

scarlet witch kind of you know cracks his neck and then someone showed us a slow down version of it and she rips his face in half and my question to you michael is did you write in your script split professor's x's head in half in half sick son of a bitch i want to know down on the paper that sam had them put on the big screen to see my childhood hero just get his literal head ripped in half come on you got to be used to seeing that guy die by now if he didn't die what we really wanted to get in from the from the 90 from from the 90s cartoon was his his scream his like iconic there's like those great ut he had that that he's all these like this really horrible uh yelling sound

that he makes um i don't think so i think i think it was he just got his his neck uh snapped and then that was that was probably our our visual effects team uh just making it even and i i even remember watching the first time that came through the cut i was like wait she ripped his head she ripped his head apart like you're like maybe maybe we went too far i mean that's brutal that is absolutely graphic was there anything in the movie that made it in where you were like i can't believe that made it in because i feel like as far as the mcu goes me and clem were talking about this this might be the most like graphic mcu movie in terms of some violence some death scenes well i mean the the illuminati sequence for sure that that first kill is is insane um like that yeah all that stuff is crazy also wanda's assault on comatose like

those burnt corpses it was so it was so chilling being on set because we were shooting that sequence for weeks it's like just walking around there's just charred dead like like like the most expensive dead body prop right next to me on writing dialogue so it. So it's like, even that stuff, I'm like, this is, this is crazy. Everything in it feels, feels more gnarly than what you're used to seeing in these movies. I agree. This is good about professor X too. Cause again, we consider you a friend in the basement.

It would have been awkward if I'm just always hanging out with the guy that ripped my hero's head in half. So as long as you can blame it on the guy, you know, someone else, that's all that. That was just a neck crack, a not a neck split it's like you know it's like the mcu go i always think about gamora and black widow it's like it's always when they when they at vormir when they fall i'm always like oh god the pool of blood and like that is really a visceral image that i hate every time it's like you know you were like how do we do that make people hate it even more yeah exactly exactly i want everybody to be as disgusted as i was by that all right let me tell everyone about the best new ticketing app in the game that is game time it makes it easier than ever to score last minute ticket deals

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up one thing that we were prepared to be disgusted about and thankfully we didn't have to worry about this we were so worried about wong dying in this movie and we just want to thank you for not killing off our boy wong because we love long we're the number one wong podcast in the world he's invited to my wedding were you gonna were you close to Wong. We're the number one Wong podcast in the world. He's invited to my wedding. Were you close to killing him and being like, I can't go in the basement if I kill Wong because I know those guys, their stance for the Wong man. Wong was on the chopping block for sure.

Oh, oh my God. Wong was, Wong. You thought about it? Yeah, the Grim Reaper. It was his icy hand it was like he the zodiac saw him and and chose somebody else uh but no he's too he's too great you you know and and there's enough loss and and pain in this movie um when he goes off the side of the mountain we always knew it's like i think a smart audience knows okay wong's not dead because if wong died i think you would you'd

feel that more but it's like it's a no you're like oh shit is i know if i saw that movie when i was a little kid i'd be like he's dead oh yeah he did him right off the cliff as a very dumb person i was holding my breath the entire time until the credits rolled and then the post credits i'm like i still don't know what this waldron has cooking he just ripped professor x's head in half so i was holding my breath that's i mean and honestly that was the point of that illuminati sequence is like i guess in the same way that the red wedding it's just such it feels cliche even to reference that at this point but it it was brilliant and maybe even killing ned stark in game of thrones was a better example where it was just like oh

shit anything can happen and what i'm watching now it's's like Sean Bean's head just got cut off. So now I'm uncomfortable every moment in this show. Hopefully, and this is what Sam always talked about, after that Illuminati sequence, you are truly terrified of Wanda and there's no moment you feel safe the rest of the movie. Great comparison. I love that. And we've been told time and time again

by especially people that read the comics, Wanda's the most powerful. the rest of the movie great comparison i love that and we've been told time and time again by especially people that read the comics wanda's the most powerful oh my god she would decimate all these years if she had the chance she had the chance and she did it like it was actual visual proof like oh no she is not someone you want to mess with another sequence i'd love to bring up it's a sequence that i haven't been able to get out of my head since i saw the movie is the music fight at the end i think that is so unique so creative I said it was almost like when I watched the first strange I came out of that being like what a unique way to defeat Dormammu the guy fucking annoyed him to death this I was like what a unique way to do that fight with the musical

notes coming off the page where did that idea come from not from me really no i i that that was dude like so so much of this stuff i i i there's it's such a team effort and that idea specifically um was doug leffler who is one of our great storyboard artists who has worked with Sam forever. Doug, I believe was the storyboard artist behind the upside down kiss and the original Spider-Man. Wow. He's an absolute legend. Um, and we just knew that we were like, okay, we've got two Dr. Stranges fighting strangers fighting one another we don't want to just be lights blasty blasty um our reference was always the thanos for strange fight in infinity war which was a great magic fight and then we also talked about some of the great fights in rick and

morty um rick versus gunk rick uh rick versus president or it's this escalating series of gags and and we just we really kind of hung on that that music um that music note fight. And yeah, it's just awesome. And so it was obviously our VFX team, Doug's great boards, and then Danny Elfman collaborated really closely with Sam building the music for all that. And I love it because it's ultimately like the killing blow. It sounds like one of Django Fett's

like cool sonic charges and clones. Like the way that one note just hits it. Yeah, and it kind of just explodes like it goes goes silent and then um so yeah i i mean that thing that's awesome i love that sequence yeah no nothing in the movie well a little bit to do with you a little bit you could take a little bit of credit maybe yeah yeah i was like eating nando's on the call yeah that's fine oh i got to try nando's for the first time recently so legit it lived up to the hype the peri peri fries oh i was i mean i was locked down while i was over there so every meal i ate entire five or six months was ordering i like on weekends there was one i did nando's like three times in a day it was dark god oh my god um so some things we heard about moon night recently was that kevin feige personally suggested some of the costume ideas that came along with it like the

wraps and the stitching that went down mr knight's. Do you recall anything from this movie that Feige put his little touch on? Kevin's touch is on everything. I mean, he's so, not in an overbearing way, but he's a producer in the weeds with you, just acting as a great collaborator. He's just another filmmaker there with you. I mean, I think that he was very instrumental in the ultimate illuminati lineup i think you know and and it's like the feeling of like no we could go get this person um in terms of like actual costumes i mean look it was I think it was him advocating for that yellow hover chair.

Oh, wow. That makes, that just makes us love him even more. I mean. My heart is growing by the minute. It's fluttering. My heart, I might be having a heart attack, but it also might be fluttering. I don't know which one. It's one of the two, right?

I'm like. Yeah. If that had just been the writer and producer in their thirties being like, no, no, no, the hover chair is cool. Everybody would have been like yeah fuck off but when Kevin was like no it's awesome like he he really was all about the nod to the cartoon um and so I I give him all the credit for making that real I'm trying to figure out a way to ask this without getting you in trouble or you know the aggregators going crazy with it was there anyone you wanted for the illuminati or was there any like was there any other guys in the mix there

or was this pretty much a set i don't know enough about the comics to know if this is like one of the go-to illuminati you know uh cast listings or whatever but was there anyone there that you wanted or was close to getting on i love love the aggregators going cry. Now I've, I've just, I, every sentence I say, I'm like, Oh gee, this is going to be a headline on like a laser pointer on you. Like the Marvel snipers. Comic book deep cuts. Of.

I always think of the J and like's like moviepoopshoot.com Yeah. Just so you know, I've already taken your Mephisto line and I'm using that Mephisto confirmed for future release. That's fine. That's good. I know what I'm doing there. That's

deliberate. By the way, moviepoopshoot is very prescient like that movie saw the future like like it reached out and like uh gave us a vision of culture or 10 years in the future in a very uh haunting way um honestly like the the lineup we got was so even beyond the pie in the sky version. Like every single person on the council is somebody that like at one point was circled and it's like, well, if we can just get them, then it feels worth it. And then suddenly you get everybody.

Um, and so we were really stoked when people are pointing out like uh well is this hayley atwell in the background of loki are you just thinking like in your mind like oh you just wait motherfuckers she's coming in i was so excited to to get her to to work with she she was so um to see her in that suit you know in in the captain carter suit she was so badass her and lashana lynch as captain marvel they they were actually able to be there on set together because a lot of that stuff we had to shoot out of sequence um and so to see them there together and doing those fight scenes and everything and, you know, to, to get to collaborate with them on, look, we're bringing these characters in the world for the first time. How, you know, let's make sure we're doing them justice, uh, was an honor and also just super super cool and then kind of going off the other guys in the suit you have john krasinski which i would love to know if john if you knew putting that pen to paper if that was kind of the pie in the sky we're gonna get john krasinski and then you're also

seeing the aggregators or all the idiots on reddit like me who are like tom cruise's iron man and you're like all right guys we got some good news i got some bad news for you guys here um yeah i mean look and i'm i'm remembering i i don't even know if i'm allowed to go into detail on these guys right now you're gonna actually see the laser this is this wall is gonna get painted red with my blood um but what mouth and your mouth just disappears they have like literally scarlet witches is behind the camera exactly yeah what aggregators uh but no i mean i knew it was cool to know we were delivering on something so big so anticipated with with reed and um and then yeah with the tom cruise of it all i was like i'm i love tom cruise yeah if he wants to come in the movie yeah i was like i was like that that'd be awesome i hope i hope nobody's going to the movie just because they want to see tom cruise if if they are

uh you know i'm bummed out. Go see Maverick. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but in two weeks, I got news for you. There's something really good coming out. All right, before we get you out of here, we just got to ask, how's that Star Wars script coming along? It's good, man. It's coming along. And you know, just for future reference, you see these arms.

If you need a protocol droid in the background i could fit into one of those tiny suits i know i've told you before but i'll stay in shape for the movie i'll be a hut i'll stay out of shape for the movie i'll be hot he could be a protocol we're gonna be good you know i was actually at disneyland yesterday i went for the first time and i went to i went to galaxy's edge and i was in the droid store just because 3po is probably my favorite character and and they had a 3po like doll and it was like a fat 3po i was like i was like look i said i was like look at this dumpy 3po like what is he what's what's going on here and he was like you know what

i'm gonna start eating yeah let myself go that's he really he really let it go so um i was was it sick i haven't been it hasn't been either it is amazing it's it is it is like i was like this it's just so so big and real um it's really cool and they got you know they got kylo ren walking around with some stormtroopers doing bits behind him it's like it it felt like it was really fun it was it was actually to see and also to see star wars through like a bunch of kids eyes and it's like how do they curate it for kids like like how much it really is about the wonder and the fun. It's, it's just good. I don't know man that's Star Wars people love it. Of course, they are the industry leader in Delta 8 THC products. They now have Delta 9 THC, HHC, THC-V. They've got so many products.

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listeners. You must be 21 or older to purchase, and go check out their wide variety of edibles, vapes, drink enhancers, tinctures, and more now. I have one question about Star Wars for you, Michael. Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Jar Jar the Gungan? Have you ever heard of Darth Jar Jar, the Darth Jar Jar theory? I have, but I want to hear you tell it. Tell it? Well, according to Reddit and the internet aggregators and a bunch of weird people on the internet, the original Phantom Menace was supposed to be Jar Jar Binks, as we would learn in episode two. And then due to the absolutely horrid reception to Jar Jar Binks in episode one, they had to kind of pivot.

That's why Count Dooku comes in and it kind of feels half-baked as a villain. And the actor who played Jar Jar has, you know, confirmed that he was supposed to be the villain. I did a whole blog on it on Barstool. I completely subscribed to it. I realized this is the Star Wars version of QAnon. However, I am too far down this rabbit hole to turn around now.

And I just want to say, like, if in this movie you want to make a reference about a Gungan that might have been a Sith Lord, that something happened along the way, I will fully support. fully support well clem what if it's just the long long longest game he's you know it's it's a generation spanning uh long play the jar jar saga this goes beyond the skywalker show have you have you guys seen i think it's a tony millionaire like comic or something it's it's jar jar's dad you guys seen that kind of george r banks it's it's it's a canonized thing look it up it's jar jar and it's the story of jar Jar as a child is with his mom and his dad and they're shipwrecked on a desert

island and his dad in a moment he's so hopeless that they're never going to survive his dad tries to take his own life oh my goodness he puts a gun to his head and tried to look it up like look at George Arvin you're seeing it right now that's the look yeah he's reading it and his wife is like george and he's on the ground but he missed because he's and he's not even shoot himself in the head it's anyways that's the kind of star wars content that i'm drawing on uh we have officially like you said he would have a spoiler for all the star wars fans charger would have outlisted and a spoiler for all the star wars fans jar jar would have outlisted and lasted i lived all the sky workers at that point right based on how it's gone episodes one through nine yeah now i'm excited i wasn't excited beforehand about my

favorite writer making a star now i'm definitely it's the loose the loose change of jar jar bags and throw in a little holiday special reference from my guy, Bob, Boba Fett running a dinosaur or something, and he'll be thrilled. All right, Waldron. Thank you again for the time. Congrats on all the success. We can't wait to hear about this Star Wars movie. Fellas, it's great to see y'all.

Let's get to a billion. Let's get to a billion. Let's get to a billion. See you guys. Hey, Clem, good to see you. Nice little meth season you got going, right? I was going to say something about the Bravos and congratulations, right? You're are you a Bravo? Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say it. I don't quite mean it, but Ronald Acuna is the coolest goddamn superstar of all time.

He just looks he's like Ken Griffey Jr. He's the modern Ken Griffey Jr. So I will say you're like a Braves fan. I like, so congratulations to you. You know, many years in the making. Yeah, we both had to really hold our noses to get that exchange of respect. But yeah, man, I appreciate it. I hope we don't do an interview in October, you know, down the road.

And then we're just like, oh, so nice to see you, Michael. It's game three tonight. All right, guys, I'll see y'all.