The Extras - Free Guy Extras

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

“Free Guy” releases October 12th, 2021 on DVD/Blu-ray/4K and we have filmmaker Alan Griswold on the podcast for a fun-filled discussion about the extras he produced for this movie.Alan also provides background on his career in Hollywood, which started as a producer's assistant to comedian and actor Ben Stiller.  That led to working with Warner Home Video on the DVD release of The Ben Stiller Show, then Zoolander, and the rest is history.  Along the way, we’ll discuss our collaboration on the sitcom Two and a Half Men, his anti-career bent in college (it didn’t work out), and stories from his work with Ben Stiller on Tropic Thunder, and Shawn Levy on the Night at the Museum movies.www.monkeyincorporated.comThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and their release on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host. My guest today is a longtime friend and collaborator from my time at Warner Brothers.

We first worked together on the extras for the comedy Two and a Half Men, which led to a partnership on numerous Chuck Lorre comedies, including The Big Bang Theory, Mike and Molly, Mom, and Young Sheldon. We also created some hilarious extras for Children's Hospital and the fan favorite Chuck. I will let him discuss his film projects, but I think you'll agree that he has worked on many of the top comedy releases in the last few decades. So here's my conversation with filmmaker Alan Griswold. Hey, Alan, welcome to The Extras. Good to have you on the show. I am very glad to be here. And thank you for having me. We've talked about you coming on and it just, you've been really busy.

Obviously the part of what we're talking about today is why you were so busy and that's Free Guy. But before we talk about that movie, why don't you take us back a little bit and let us know how you got into the business? Sure. Yeah. First of all, I want to say like, it's actually really nice to have some scheduled time to talk because we're always talking on set in between, waiting for an actor to show up. So this is a much more relaxed format. So I appreciate it. 1997. And ended up, you know, within about a year, year and a half, I ended up working with Ben Stiller at his production company, Red Hour Films. I was there for just under five years.

I started out as his producer's assistant. The guy was Stuart Kornfeld, who was my industry mentor, who actually just passed away last summer, unfortunately. But I started working with him as a producer's assistant, then ended up, both of Ben's assistants called me up one morning and said, Hey, we're, we're, we're leaving the company with no notice. I guess they got another offer or something. So I ended up working for both Ben and Stuart for close to a year, which was exhausting. This was right when we were starting the first Zoolander. It was great. They promoted me to production executive, but it was a pace that I couldn't keep up forever. So I started looking for a replacement for these portions of my job. And the person I ended up finding for working with Stuart, Ben's producing partner,

was Kim Sola, who ended up becoming the co-founder of Monkey Do and my wife as well. Right. Not in that order. But so I, my, my departure from Red Hour was really almost two years long because I, you know, it was about finding the right people and making sure that they were in the right spot. And on my very last day at Red Hour, Ben Sola came into the office to say his goodbyes and said that he'd gotten this call from Warner Home Video, which is what they were called at the time. They wanted to produce a box set of his Emmy award winning sketch comedy show called The Ben Stiller Show. And he's like, I'm, you know, in the middle of prepping this movie. I just, I don't have any time to pay attention to this. This is the kind

of thing that you would deal with while you were here. Would you be interested in producing this for me? And so I ended up having a meeting with Paul Ham Street and, um, and a couple of the folks from, from Warner brothers. And what year was that roughly? This would have been 2002. What year was that, roughly? This would have been 2002, I believe. Yeah. Yeah, one thing led to another. I ended up running that job through New Wave Entertainment.

I was just a producer on it. It was a good experience. And Warner Brothers wanted me to work on a couple other titles. There's a couple other Ben Stiller titles that I did for, you know, catalog titles were big back then. So I did Reality Bites for Universal. And, you know, eventually I had enough business that the editor that I was using at the time, he and I formed a company, which was called Monkey Feeds the Robot. Worked together for a couple of years. It was a good partnership while it lasted. And we are we're still good friends now, but ultimately we were going in two different directions.

So I want to say it was 2006-ish. I'm terrible with dates. Sometime between 2006, 2007, we went our separate ways and Monkey Feeds the Robot became Monkey Do. That sounds about right because when I first started working for Warner Home Video, which is what it was called in 2007, I can recall having your contact information in a transition state. Yeah. It was like it had your old company name and the new one was being brought in. Yeah.

So when I first met you, you had done what I thought was quite a bit of comedy, obviously working with Ben. But going even back to the beginning, when you moved out here to L.A., was that something that you were looking to get into? Was the comedy side of things or were you just trying to break into the business any way you could? Interestingly enough, my major in college was actually sculpture and I got another degree in English literature. So I was actually very anti-career. I didn't really have a plan. You know, this was, this was also back in the day when like you went to college to learn stuff and, you know, have a good time and not to get a job necessarily. And with the

two majors that I chose, I mean, I was hell bent on never getting a job. So I followed a woman out here that I was seeing. I mean, I wasn't stalking her. We moved out together. And that relationship didn't last. It felt like it didn't last 10 minutes once we got here. But so I ended up just I sent out a ton of resumes. And Stuart Kornfeld, the producer that I ended up working with at Red Hour, was the only person to respond to any of those resumes. And he was a producer. It turns out he was a producer on European Vacation. Okay. So the Griswolds. Right. His dad's first name is Alan.

And I'm pretty sure that's the only reason I got the call is my first name was his dad's first name and he wanted to meet a real Griswold. And to answer your question, I've always loved comedy. I'm a relatively serious person, but I love comedy because I think it's the ultimate expression of the combination of wit and emotion in a positive way. And working with Ben and with Stuart, we were exposed to just the very best. I mean, the people like Brett Forrester, who was a writer on The Simpsons for years and has been on dozens and dozens of shows. Patton Oswalt was somebody that we worked with very closely. Ben Stiller himself, Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn. These were all, this was like early in,

relatively early in their careers. And these were the people that I was meeting with or sitting in meetings with, I should say, and, and watching them work. And it was, it was an incredible education. I've been exposed to, I've been so spoiled with the comedians that I've been exposed to. And, and it really did set, I think it set a standard that was important for me and for this company to always live up to. You know, you see a lot of efforts that, you know, studios or, you know, vendors will do that are fun ideas for sure. And sometimes they're cute, they're clever. Sometimes they're cute, they're clever. But in my opinion, if they are not of the same caliber of comedy, of the same caliber of writing, of the same caliber of production, you're not giving it its due the way it should be. So in that way, I think coming from Red Hour took something that I always loved, comedy, airplane, top secret.

These were some of my favorite movies growing up and helped to sort of educate me on how that stuff was built, you know, sort of from the ground up. So back in 2007, when we first started working together, you were working on the first two seasons of Two and a Half Men, which they had not been released when the seasons were done because TV on DVD was kind of just getting going at that point. And you had some really creative, fun ideas. I remember one, I think it was the writer's room one. Do you remember that? Yes. I watched that. I'm like, this is an extra. This is going to be fun. I'm going to love working with Alan and his team because it was bonkers. It really was for what normally you would think of as an extra. Right. Yeah. That one was a lot of fun. I mean, we didn't get too much access to the writers on the Chuck Lorre shows in general, mostly because after Two and a Half Men,

to be honest, like they were all on so many shows. There was too much work. But we had this wonderful day where they just, they played, you know, and to give these people who are so funny behind the scenes, I mean, they're coming up with these jokes and they think so fast. It's phenomenal. And to see like I want to say like they were they were bouncing like dinner rolls off of Eddie Gordetsky's head. Like it was it was hilarious. Jim Patterson. Yeah. Jim Patterson and Don.

And it was an Eddie. they were just goofy. They were around the writer's table in the writer's room, and it was a great piece. And they say something that we never got access to the writer's room again after that. That's true. Maybe we did that. Well, that started off a great collaboration with you for the next 15 years

here going on, I think. But during that time, when we were working on Two and a Half Men, and then that transitioned into Big Bang Theory and then so many other shows, you had a lot of film projects going on, continuing to do a lot of stuff with Ben Stiller. All right. Yeah, that's correct. And one of the big ones that we had done was, was Tropic Thunder, which again, was just an amazing team. I mean, this was this was Robert Downey Jr. just the summer before Iron Man came out. And, you know, we had Jack Black, Steve Coogan, Ben. What a lineup on that show.

It was amazing. And we were shooting the home entertainment stuff on the island of Kauai. Ben was directing. On the island of Kauai, Ben was directing. Ben is a very methodical director, which also like when you're dealing with, you know, methodical directors on a location like in Hawaii, where you also have like weather issues and all sorts of stuff. You you have extra time in between takes and, you know, everybody's locked on an island. had the amazing opportunity to, to shoot something called a reign of madness, which was the very first mock you prequel, um, where we did a behind the scenes making of, of the behind the scenes of the fake movie they were shooting in the movie, Tropic Thunder. Um, and we worked with, you know, Justin Theroux, uh, on that. on that. It was it was a phenomenal experience.

And it really helped to show like with the right resources, what you could do. And it was it was certainly lightning in a bottle. You don't get that opportunity very much. Yeah, I remember when you you told me about it, the concept I I could not understand the concept. And fortunately, you send me a link to it and I watched it and I it blew my mind it blew my mind on a number of levels number one was just the humor but it also blew my mind working at the studio and and knowing just how hard it is to get access to people and to pitch creative ideas and get them accepted and it blew my mind that you were able to achieve it and maybe someday we can

talk about it more in depth but but that was a great one. And then you also worked with Ben on the Night at the Museum. Yes. And the Night at the Museum movies, I mean, I was a museum kid. I still am. I spend as much time at natural museums as I can. And when I found out that Ben was doing this, fortunately, Ben's been sort of our patron saint over the years and has often encouraged studios to bring us on. And it was such a great match. You know, it was a subject I loved. It was a cast that we were, you know, familiar with. And just it was a great experience. It was one of those experiences that you don't see a whole lot of anymore, which is like big studio movie,

big sets, big cast. It really reminds you of the old Hollywood days. And it was great to do behind the scenes on that. And that's actually where we first encountered our other sort of patron saint of Monkey, which is Sean Levy, who was directing that film. We've worked with him on just about every film he's done since then. we've worked with him on just about every film he's done since then. He was, you know, in a, in a film that again, with a big comedic cast and a lot going on, I was blown away with how much energy he had and how much positive energy he had. I mean, he, he loves what he's doing.

And that was something that I kind of pinged on right away. And I even remember telling the studio, like, you know, we're going to have a hard time getting, you know, some of the talent to do some of these concepts to do the, you know, the walkthroughs of the set. But this director, Sean Levy, and, you know, they, of course, worked with him before. I was like, he is I think he's our way in. And he ended up sort of hosting some of the pieces we did for that film. And that really became a great collaboration between Sean and monkey do stay with us. We'll be right back.

Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of the extras podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner archive and Warner brothers catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. Yeah, and he obviously is the director of Free Guy, which we're going to get into the extras in a little bit.

But was it the night of the museum where you kind of established a way to work with him to create these extras where he's really up front and center and he's your guide or your host in a way for some of the pieces. Yeah, he is. I mean, the Night at the Museum experience with Sean was one where, you know, it was the first time we had worked together. And again, I recognize that he's just he's got a really positive energy. He's incredibly smart. There is nobody on set who knows as much about everything going on on set as he does. And that that is on movies of that scale.

It is almost unheard of. His first AD and executive producer, Josh McLaglin, is another one of those people who just has everything in their mind. one of those people who just has everything in their mind. But Sean is also, because he loves film so much, he really values what we do, you know, the extras. He is someone who wants to share the experience of making a film with people because he recognizes, I mean, even to this day, I mean, he's super successful. He's done a ton of films, both directing and producing. I mean, even to this day, I mean, he's super successful. He's done a ton of films, both directing and producing. I mean, he's directing Stranger Things now as well. He still, you know, Chaucer who wrote the Canterbury tales always said like, you've got to entertain to educate and you've got to educate to entertain. And that was, uh, that's also sort of a, an unspoken tenant of monkey do is like, we want to both entertain and educate people. And Sean has this amazing way of, you know, sort of breaking down what's going on on set for someone who's never been on set and shows how fun it is, but also shows how challenging it is.

And so we started with the first night of the museum. It was a couple it was more like production design walkthroughs and stuff like that. The second night at the museum and just about every other film we've done with him, we started producing these pieces, sort of these directing 101 pieces where we would take the, you know, much to his chagrin sometimes once we're in production. But we take one of the most complex or, you know, certainly interesting sequences, challenging sequences that that they were going to attempt and, you know, follow them around either for the day or for, in some cases, an entire week as they shoot the thing. And he would take us through each of the different departments and elements and walk us through how they conceptualized it, how each department contributes to it, all the things that they planned for, all the things they didn't plan for. And we end up with these pieces that are really fun to watch, I think, because it does break everything down. And they're hosted by someone with this enthusiasm that you don't tend to see as much.

And he takes the time to do that, too, which is another amazing thing. I mean, it really is. I mean, his job, what he's doing, keeping that film running on a daily basis for him to do what you just said, to take, take the time out, to put it into a schedule. That's exactly what you're hoping for. But you can totally understand when a director says, no, I just can't do that. I just don't have the time. I don't have that space. I don't have, even if they have somebody on their team who's handling a lot of the logistics, it's just a matter of carving it out of their day.

And they're being asked by every department every day, every moment. What do you think about this? Did you see this? Oh, do you have a minute to see the previs? Look at these storyboards. Look at this guy. I mean, it's just an amazing thing that he carves that time out of his schedule to do that. But what I think it does is it makes for amazingly great extras that are fresh and new

for every piece, every movie. And that is, um, it's really fun. Well, why don't we get into a talk about free guy? Sure. The, uh, let me read just a little background for those who maybe don't know much about the movie. It was released in August of 2021. And the premise of the movie is a bank teller played by Ryan Reynolds discovers he is actually a background player in an open world video game and decides to become the hero of his own story. Now in a world where there are no limits, he's determined to be the guy who saves his world his way before it's too late. It sounds pretty interesting, but it doesn't sound like when I read it, doesn't sound like I got to run out and see this.

But when I saw the trailer, I thought this looks really interesting. This is really unique the way it had gaming, which is so popular these days. And it was very different from Ready Player One, which is another gaming movie, which is just fabulous. Let's talk a little bit about when you first were brought on to the project and when you first got involved. Yeah. So this would have been, we probably were approached, good Lord, it might've been very early in 2019 or even the end of 2018. You know, we'd probably get a script, you know, from this call from the studio, a script and sort of a call for sort of the pie in the sky. What would you do with this? You know, from a home entertainment standpoint. Just to clarify, the studio in this case was was 20th Century Fox at the time which was an interesting twist for this uh for this project as well um because over the course of it which was a bit longer than than

anybody anticipated over the course of the the project you know fox was purchased by disney um and became 20th century but still under the under the disney banner so we started um you know after we get the you know the the script and start doing some concepts we start looking, you know, after we get the script and start doing some concepts, we start looking at, you know, schedules and whatnot. And that's where you try to break down. OK, so this is a movie where, again, it's a world within a world. You know, there's a sort of AI enhanced open world video game world where the main character resides. And then you've got the quote unquote real world around it. And so, like you said, like until you see the trailer and start to really get into it until, you know, in some cases until we were on set, a lot of it

is, okay, well, how are they going to make this look different from that? And, you know, some preliminary conversations with, you know, with Sean and his team about, you know, some of the techniques that they were using. So we probably, we started shooting, you know, in May of 2019 and wrapped at the, you know, sort of early August. And this was actually the last film that I personally produced behind the scenes on before the pandemic, pandemic hit. We had a couple of jobs, you know, in the in the fall um and you know some of my other producers here were working on some other projects but yeah this was the last time i was on set with a bunch of people not wearing masks you know standing shoulder to shoulder and so in some ways it's like it's a it will always you know have that kind of resonance with me you know sort of the

that moment before the before the fall uh and it shot in, we shot in Boston, in and around Boston for the most part with, with a couple of days, you know, out here in California later. So it feels like Sean, this world within a world that was also the case at night at the museum, that was kind of that world of the museum within the greater context of the broader world. So he, I thought had kind of stepped back or was going to step back from directing. But this project interests him and he came back on board. Is that right?

Yeah, well, he had been, God, I want to say he had done like 10 movies, directed 10 movies in a row up until the last, the third and final Night at the Museum movie, which we shot with him, you know, in London and Vancouver. And he did take, he took a step back to, you know, sort of focus on producing and build up his company 21 Laps. They've exploded over the past, you know, several years, I think with Stranger Things really gained him a huge foothold in the television world, but also he's producing

other films as well. So yeah, this was the, uh, this was the first film that Sean had directed since the last night of the museum movie that we filmed with him. We'd seen him a couple of times on some of his TV projects and, um, on some various things, but it was actually really nice to be back on set with him and his crew. And a lot of his crew, you know, goes from one movie to another. So it's a, there's a real family there. Uh, aside from some of the humidity in, in Boston, it was a really fun sort of reunion with the, with the Sean Levy crew and, and making films like this. So let's, let's go back. You, you know, Fox reaches out to you, you read the script, take, take the fans here a little bit through the process there on a film

like this. What do you do? Do you write some proposals or how do you go about pitching to Sean and the studio executives over there, your ideas? Yeah. Well, one of the nice things we're working with people, you know, as much as we have with Sean is we have a pretty decent sense of what he'd go for. We're not going to pitch something that we know he would say no to, but he's also really supportive of, you know, if you've got a good idea and this isn't just us, it's anybody on set. If you've got a good idea, he wants to hear it. And if he also thinks it's a good idea, you know, he's, they'll throw his weight behind it and all of that. But the first, the first hurdle is of course, getting through the proposal stage with the studio, even the

pre-budget proposal stage, which is where you're really swinging at the fences. Like these are all the things we think are interesting. These are sort of break it down by like, these are the themes of the film. This is the tone of the film. These are the sequences in the film that, uh, you know, seem fresh and new or interesting in a way that you haven't seen before. So you really want to highlight, especially at this point in home entertainment, you got to highlight the stuff that is different, that is fresh because to some degree, everybody knows more or less how a film is made, you know, now.

So now it's more about what's interesting about this specific film or this specific sequence that, that we can focus on. And the creative team at well, 20th century Fox, where this started. And then they fortunately moved over to, to Disney was Mike Mulvihill and Christine Takashita. And we'd worked with we'd been working with with them, honestly, since since Mike was at New Line Entertainment, pre Warner Brothers, you know, before they brought him in.

So we had done Tenacious D and a couple other films with with Mike. And he's always been very supportive of these kind of special features as well. I mean, he made his name with the Lord of the Rings stuff, which is, you know, which is one of those sort of hallowed grounds that, you know, behind the scenes producers, you know, have to acknowledge the immensity of that. The holy grail of projects. Yeah. So on the one hand, there's like there's a familiarity with the team, which is great. On the other hand, the bar is high. So we ended up pitching a bunch of ideas, some of which invariably fall by the wayside because of either scheduling or practicality, budget.

Or in some cases, it turns out they're just not shooting it that way. It looks this way, but they're not shooting it that way. So once that's refined, it goes to Sean for his input. And then we sort of have a blueprint of what we're trying to accomplish over the course of the film. And that, of course, evolves over the film too. You may notice something that we need to do something. In this case, we noticed very early on, we need to do something in this case we we noticed very early on we need to do something special with taika because he it's not a small role but it's not a front and center role for most of the action his scenes are the way they film them are fairly separate from the other things but he was so funny we needed to really focus on that and that was not something that was originally in the in

the proposal. Let's talk about some of the featurettes specifically, just so we can get into a little bit of that. The one you're referencing is It's Taika's World, which is an eight-minute featurette. Tell us a little bit about that and what the concept was there. Well, quite simply, when you watch Taika Waititi work on set, I mean, he jokes in this piece that, you know, he doesn't do a lot of work to prepare for a role. He just kind of likes to show up and play. I don't know how true that is. He is an incredibly talented, incredibly smart performer, director, comedian. And so when he says he doesn't do a whole lot of work on the character,

the work is there, you know, he's done, whether it's background of his mind work or studying a script, he is so prepared with who his character is that everything that comes out of his mouth is coming out of the mouth of the character. And that's, that is the true essence, I think, of, of improvisation. And when watching him, you know, and Sean's always loved, you know, working with improvisational actors, you know, that he and he and Stiller and, and most of the actors that, that Sean's worked with over the years are, you know, there's always room built into the schedule for, for that. And the stuff that we were seeing, the alternate takes, the hardest thing to do, I think, is pick the take that's going to be in the film. And so this was, I think, we were shooting Tyke at the very beginning of the film. It was like the first couple of days we were on set. And it was a conversation where Sean said, Tyke is amazing. Like he is like, bar none, one of the most talented improvisational actors ever. We have to, we have to do something. He's like, I don't know exactly what it's going to be, but it has to showcase like all the stuff that I can't put in the movie because it's too good to not share. Right. And so that was ultimately that's, that's what that piece is.

Right. It's a lot of fun just seeing Taika at work and the way you guys were able to weave in his interview and then just his ad-libbing with Sean and their back and forth. Really a lot of fun to see. And it's a great way to kind of get a peek into comedy in action. Right. You know, them putting it together. And that's something you and I over the years, we always tried to do on the projects we worked on, which is, you know, breaking down a scene or a joke or breaking down the humor so that people could understand how do you create comedy? And I think that piece really does a kind of a nice subtle way of letting the fans into seeing some of that process at work. Yeah. Yeah. And it really does. Comedy is comedy's hard work. It looks when it's done right. It looks like, oh, this is just a funny person, right? This is a funny person. Every time they open

their mouth, it's it's funny. And there are people who certainly have that. But that's a certain kind of intelligence, you know, that that you don't see certainly to that degree. Let's talk about Welcome to Free City. This is kind of your broad piece, I think, about the making of the film and what the film's about. And it kind of covers a lot of of what you would normally do on a home entertainment release to use for promotion and for the fans. This is kind of the piece you have to have. Yeah. And, you know, to be honest, like with a lot of the a lot of the films we've done in the past several years, we wouldn't have a piece like this necessarily. This is probably our most traditional piece on in the lineup.

It is, like you said, it's the most broad sort of the making of the film. This is sort of the creation of the world of the film. And what warranted this kind of piece we felt on this movie was the fact that it was a world creation. And to really break down the elements that went into that and the really talented department heads from costumes to the set design to the visual effects like these were so seamlessly integrated into not just one world but two worlds it really did feel like that this was a movie that could use your i don't want to say standard making of because i think it does go beyond that but a more traditional approach to really kind of highlight how complex it is, once again, to make a film like this. With some of the other films we've done, some of the smaller

films, you know, these are smaller, you know, shorter, more targeted pieces about specific subjects. This one, you know, we wanted to really kind of embrace the entire world of it. I agree. Because of the world creation in this one, this one, I really enjoyed watching because I had so many questions. You know, you watch a movie and you enjoy it. And then you think for a minute, what or why did I enjoy that so much? And a special feature extra like this helps kind of put it all together. The puzzle pieces that maybe you're sitting in the back of your mind of, Oh, so they had to do this and they film this, this way with green screen. And then they filmed these scenes, you know, knowing that they were going to be adding in

the, um, you know, the, the visual effects later. So it's a really good piece. And I think that 15 minute piece is a really good one. You have to kind of see that to get all those questions answered because the other pieces that we're going to talk about, you get very specific. Right. So tell us a little bit about creating Molotov Girl and the creative that went into that. Creating Molotov Girl was a piece that we felt was really important on a number of levels. One, Jodie Comer, who's just super talented you know playing villanelle in killing eve i was actually pretty intimidated to like when she walked on set there was just like she was so good in killing eve i felt like oh she might just murder me you know um but uh it turns

out she's actually doesn't seem murderous at all she's wonderful she does not trust yeah but uh she uh she plays these two roles. One is Millie, who's one of the creators of the AI engine behind the game in which Ryan Reynolds character guy exists. But then she also plays her avatar character, which is Molotov Girl. So that in and of itself, I thought was interesting because you get to sort of deconstruct the two sides of her. sort of deconstruct the two sides of her. You know, there's the idealized game persona where we're not constrained by, you know, physics or how we actually look and all, you know, laws, whatever. And then you've got this more sensitive, very human, caring character on the other side of the sort of wall between these two worlds. But also this was a, this was a really

good role for, I think, for a woman to play. You know, it was important for us to really highlight the elements that went into creating this character, who is, again, a strong female role, an incredible actress. You've got the costuming elements to it. Then the physicality of the role, too, plays into this. elements to it, then the physicality of the role too plays into this. So we were able to touch on a lot of different elements from making of the film through the lens of this Molotov girl character. It's a great piece. I really enjoyed it. And I think Marlene Stewart, who's the costume designer really adds a lot to that piece because she did have to, I mean, everybody on that film crew had to do the two worlds, but she really had to visually make it, you know, here's Millie, here's Molotov girl,

and just kind of immediately kind of go from one world to the next. And she did a terrific job in the movie and it's fun to hear her talking about and explaining it. And then, you know, Jodi also gives background that it's, it's a really fun piece. I really enjoyed that one. Yeah. Working with Marlene, I'm, she's, we've worked with her several times and this was one of the few days on the film where I wasn't able to do the, the interviews either. Jorge, my other producer, Jorge Carrion did the interviews with her, but you know, she comes from a very strong, like fashion background background. She's the real deal. So the level of detail and care that she puts into, you know, it's not just the clothes that these people are wearing. These all come from the writing and the character and the actor. And it is really a key in helping that actor become that character, too.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a fun one. The last one I wanted to talk about was dude versus guy in this one, Sean is front and center. Is this the kind of the piece where you were talking about? Sean takes you through a very complex element of the movie. Exactly. Um, it was, it was pretty clear from reading the script that, well, what wasn't clear is how they were going to do this. But what was clear is that it was going to be a fun, involved sequence that was comprised of

a lot of action, some undoubtedly crazy visual effects, good comedy. And so we pitched doing Dude vs. Guy to Sean. I'm sure there was an element of, Oh boy, you know, is this really, you know, this is, this is the sequence that I'm going to have a crew follow me around for days on end. Um, but you know, Sean is a, is incredibly confident and even the stuff that they weren't sure that they were, how they were going to do it at the time, you know, I'm sure he knew that they were going to figure it out. And he was very gracious to take us along for that. And we shot that over the course of, I want to say it was, it was at least four days. It might've stretched into five, just the, uh, just the onset stuff was four or five days. Um, it was a lot of bits and pieces because you're, you're

dealing with this giant actor, Aaron, um, who's playing the, yeah me just jump in here, Alan, and explain for the listener that dude versus guy, who's dude and who's guy, maybe you could explain that for us. And then what was the kind of the unique element of this piece that you were going for? Sure. So in the movie, Guy, played by Ryan Reynolds, is threatening the sort of master plan of Taika's character. And in order to thwart this NPC that that Ryan Reynolds is playing, Taika introduces another character into the game called Dude, which is the sort of jacked up super version of Guy. Right. But he's unfinished. He's unfinished, which provides humor throughout that movie. So this is a giant body that is sort of matched with Ryan's face, who doesn't have all of

his lines programmed into him. So he'll end, you know, a sentence with catchphrase as opposed to actually having a catchphrase. So, yeah, there's the comedy built in. There's also the comedy, you know, sort of the visual comedy

of just seeing this giant version of Ryan and the normal version of Ryan, which is also not small and puny. It's, you know, it's a giant version of Ryan. So that was what was, I think. It's, you know, it's a giant or version of Ryan. So that was what was, I think, really exciting about like, okay, how are we going to, and we didn't know when we pitched this, like, how are we going to see Ryan having this extensive battle scene with himself? And that's, you know, that was the impetus for getting into it.

And I think Sven Gilbert, the visual effects supervisor, you know, really talks about the fact that what we're talking about here is an actor played by Aaron Reed, who is six, seven, 315 pounds, huge bodybuilder. And then you've got Ryan Reynolds, who is, you know, six, two, he's a tall guy as well, but we need to put Ryan's face on Aaron's body, dude. And that coming in that had not necessarily been done very well. So they had a big task in front of them. Yeah. And that's one of the things that's been fun on, uh, a lot of Sean's films, like, is that they come up with the idea and then his team, the incredibly talented people he surrounds himself with solve those problems. Okay. I want

Ryan to be fighting a giant version of himself. Obviously we're going to need to do, you know, there's the split screen version of this, you know dates back forever right um where you have the you know the twins yeah um or you've got what has been fairly rudimentary face replacement stuff where you know it's fine and the the suspension of disbelief usually overcomes the uh yeah the kind of creep out factor and then you've got the you know the, the, the one that's honestly, I don't think I've seen it done perfectly yet, which is the completely CG version of the, the doppelganger, the duplicate. They wanted to do a real actor with real action and put Ryan's face on that and make it seamless. And that's where, that's where Sven's team just did an amazing job. And the last day we shot on that was actually at Lola here in Los Angeles, where we see is a great kind of narrator or host in the piece and he breaks it down. But then Sven kind of sets up the complexity and then Chris O'Hara, because you guys picked a scene that's a stunt. Yeah. No, he's, he's throwing that bike and he's throwing a guy,

Ryan's character. And so they had to mix in the visual effects, the stunts, do the face replacement. I mean, it was a perfect choice to say, what is the hardest scene or segment in the movie where we're going to have to do this face replacement? And let's talk about that one. I mean, that was very bold and it's really entertaining. It's a 16 minute piece, which is, I think it's kind of the, you know, almost the longest, if not the longest on there. Yeah. But I could have listened to more of that one. It was really interesting. And then of course, when you came back to LA and you had that whole segment in there where they're filming the closeups of Ryan to get his facial expression,

so they can match it to exactly the action that was shot in Boston. That to me, this is a great example of an extra that really takes you behind the scenes. And you might expect something like this on a sci-fi movie, but this is a comedy. You wouldn't necessarily expect to get that kind of level of depth and breakthrough technology and all this kind of creativity that goes into it. So it's a lot of fun that it's on this, on this release. Yeah. And I do think it's, it really helps to have a piece like this to remind people that like, this isn't easy. This is not only hard work, but like, there's a lot of innovation that goes on, you know, with these things. There's a lot of creative people who are doing things for the very first time. And that's why these movies are,

are as sort of polished as they are. Well, one thing I've always enjoyed working with you, not only your sensibility and comedic timing and your ability to get the best out of people, but you're always pitching ideas that push the envelope, try to find something unique about the project. And I think that Dude vs. Guy is the one that really popped out to me as being exceptional in this list of extras. So I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the movie as well. I'm a big Sean Levy fan, all of his movies, you know, in our family, I have a daughter. If you have a family, you have kids, his movies are, you know, they're great popcorn watching at home or at the theater. And he just, um, he just brings a lot of joy to his movies. And I think for fans, we really enjoy. Well, yeah, that's the thing. It's like

somehow you can tell that the person who made these movies enjoyed making the movie. Yeah. And then you watch the extras and you see his energy, you see him at work and wow. You just, you just think that would be fun to work with Sean on a movie. I wish I had a fraction of the energy he has. Yeah. The guy has an amazing amount of energy and to hear that he has four daughters is a, is great to hear since I have a daughter, you have two daughters. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. We don't do movie reviews on this show, but I do recommend this movie for everybody. But if you're thinking, should I just, you know, just watch the movie, stream it or rent it? Or should I buy it?

I would encourage you to buy it so that you can get all these extras. They're a lot of fun and they really create that value of a movie that I think you're going to want to own, especially if you have a family, because you can watch this kind of a movie over and over again. Thanks so much, Alan, for coming on the show today, telling us about your background, talking about this great movie, Free Guy, and the extras that are on that release. Well, thanks so much for having me, Tim.

This has been a pleasure. I want to thank filmmaker Alan Griswold of Monkey Dew for joining the podcast today. We didn't have time to talk about some of his independent film projects, but I will have links to his website so that you can see some of the award-winning short films he has produced. I also hope to have Alan back soon to talk about the work he has done with Lucasfilms on Our Star Wars Stories, which is a series of online films profiling fans who have a unique connection to or impact from the Star Wars franchise. For those of you interested in learning more about what we discussed in the show today, there will be detailed information on the website at www.theextras.tv. at www.theextras.tv. Also, follow the show on Facebook or Twitter at TheExtrasTV or Instagram at TheExtras.tv to stay up to date on the latest episodes

and for exclusive images and behind-the-scenes information about the episodes and upcoming guests. And if you're enjoying the show, please subscribe and leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast provider. Until next time, you've been listening to The Extras with Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed.

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