The Flop House - FH Mini 157 - Gremlins: The Rough Cut, with Ian Grant

Episode Date: August 29, 2026

We welcome Ian Grant, who -- in addition to having two Jurassic Park scientist names -- is the owner and proprietor of The Gremlins Museum! We discuss the 3-hour(ish) rough cut he unearthed and cleaned up, gremlin preservation, and all things Gremlins in general. Tickets for FLOP TV SEASON FOUR are now live! Go pick up a pass for individual episodes or the whole dang season! And if you live in the Louisville area and want to see us live NOT through your computer screen, come to our show at Whirling Tiger in September! Subscribe to our NEWSLETTER, “Flop Secrets! It’s the best way to keep up on all things Flop House! And please leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts (or wherever you listen). It helps us keep the podcast healthy! Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinflop

Hey everyone and welcome to another flop house many. Of course, this is the flop house. It's a podcast normally where we talk about a movie that was critically or commercially rejected. But, you know, on our off weeks, on every other week we talk about whatever. We just freeform it, man. What do you want from us? It's content. I guess a lot of attitude.

It turned hostile fast. This is the new Dan. What are you? I'm not taking any shit from you people? What's going on? Yeah, yeah. That is a reference to, so, all right, we're going to delay this a little bit. I texted Elliot and Stewart a picture of this rice pudding restaurant in like, I guess it's like Soho.

Very aggressive signage. A lot of signage that just like, you know, like enjoy the calories, idiot or something like that's like you're already fat, eat at all. You know. And it's just like, wow, this pudding restaurant doesn't care who would offend, I guess. And it's like attitude continues. It's like signs everywhere, given a lot of attitude. Like, it's the rice pudding equivalent of Yosemite Sam telling you to back off. But it includes a sign that's like restaurants, restaurants for customers only idiot.

Yeah. Yeah. So they don't even deserve the humanity of a clean restroom to use. Yeah. But this isn't a podcast about signs I saw. Where we review the signs on rice pudding restaurants. Yeah. Yeah.

Of course, my co-hosts, Elliot Kaelin and Stuart Wellington, they've been talking already. But we have a guest. We have a guest we would like to welcome and stop wasting time with pudding talk. His name is Ian Grant. He's the founder and proprietor of the Grimlins Museum. And he's also been in the news lately for his two-hour, 45-ish-minute cut of Grimlins with a lot of extended and previously unseen footage. And he slowed a bunch of. of scenes down.

A lot of it, the characters are noticeably talking slower, moving slower. Just to meet that runtime, yeah. Bathroom, buddy. Thank you. Great to be here, guys. And Ian, even though Dan said

we're not talking about pudding stuff, if you have pudding opinions, this is the place to put them. We don't want to put limits on what you have to say about rice pudding or the town of Topeka, Kansas. For a while, this was a podcast where people aired their thoughts on

Topeka, Kansas. mostly. Yeah, but thank you so much for joining us. You are by far the premier scholar and collector and, I don't know, torchbearer advocate for gremlins. Dan, you're supposed to be running this thing. I have questions I'd like to ask, but maybe, Dan, you should ask the first question.

Well, yeah, I should say also, you know, as this is an audio medium, a delight, of course, to see all of the gremlins in the background preserved in their little plastic boxes. These are the gremlins puppets and props. They're not live gremlins who are bedevilinging right now. Screaming to get out. Normally well-behaved.

This is how we contain the stench, these things, all the preservatives and stuff to keep them still in shape. It's the only way to kind of do it. I'm amazed that those, that they still exist because I know that like the foam and things that they're made out of deteriorate really quickly, right? Yeah, they weren't designed to, less more than like the production.

And especially in scenes like in Dories in the first movie, you know, they were covered in beer and salt and all sorts of nasty stuff. And so, you know, when I get them, they're usually kind of rotting out and heads off. And, you know, the one on my right here is his face was basically melting off. It's, you know, they're pretty rough shape usually when they arrive. Yeah, I was actually, I was going to get to this later. like the, so the Grimlands Museum is, you can take a virtual tour, but at this point is not open to the public. And part of it is that you do so much preservation work.

And I was reading on your website about the preservation. And really through cold water on my own dreams of like having your Grimlin, whenever there's like an auction somewhere with Grimlins, I'm like, well, this is like several thousand dollars. I can't afford it anyway. But also, like, I guess I can feel better about it now because it seems like, it seems like, like it would be as hard as owning like an actual Maguai and having to follow the rules. There's just three rules, Dan. They're not that hard to follow. There's never been an example.

I have two movies that will say, you're wrong. Because I'm going to say two words, Billy Peltzer. I think he is not the best guy for taking care of model. What do you think about this? What do you think about this, Billy Slander? What do you... I don't know. He did kind of break all the rules

pretty quick, right? Like right away. And I feel like Dan has a lot of... Romming with Billy Peltzer. Dan comes from a small town. Dan is a little bit of a doodler. Just like Billy. That's true.

Dan's best friend is also a young actor, a child actor, just like in the first prevalence. Dan would also get very nervous around Phoebe Cates. I would get extremely nervous around Phoebe Cates. But I'm curious about how these... First, my main question is, how did the museum begin? But also, how do these gremlins fall into your hands? Like, do you just, do they arrive on your doorstep in a basket?

There's a note that just says, please take care of my gremlin. Because what a life. What a life, maybe. Like, a lot of my earliest memories kind of revolve around gremlins. And so, I don't know, I guess it's always kind of just been there. And I never really had any desire to own, like, actual props until I think, I don't know, maybe Gremlins too came out. And then I was like, well, somebody's got to own this.

Like, somebody's got to, you know, there's got to be a way to get this. And it kind of always stuck with me that if I ever had it like any play money that this would be something that I'd probably do. And at some point, right as we were kind of selling a business, this like first movie puppet basically showed up on eBay

and I caught it within maybe like five minutes of it getting posted. And so I messaged the guy. I was like, hey, what do you want for this? Like let's just work something out right now. And the guy was like, $200. And so I was like, send the invoice.

So the most idiot, you have no idea what you have on your hands, yeah. He knew. Like, he said it was, you know, it's a puppet from the movie. Like, it came from Warner Brothers. So it wasn't like I was trying to like rip some guy off or anything. But, you know, it was beheaded. It was in really rough shape. So, I mean, you know, he didn't want to deal with it, essentially.

And it was funny because, you know, I'm just sitting there like, praying this thing arrives. Like, who knows what the, you know, what's going to happen. And at the time, I lived in this house where it was like on a cul-de-sac where like two roads connected there. And out of neighborhood, the exact same house number as me. And so we're constantly like sharing packages because they inevitably, they would never end up in the right place.

And sure enough. The neighbor's like, what the hell is happening? Sure enough, this gremlin arrives on like his door. step, you know, this, you know, as my wife calls him, you know, car priced, you know, foam things. And I went over there, grabbed it. And sure enough, like, that was it. And I think it's probably like the best preserved gremlin that exists.

There's probably less than 20 in the world of these things from their first movie. So it's, you know, finding anything like that is like winning the lottery essentially. That's amazing. Yeah. Well, let's stick with sort of the museum stuff. Like, we're all big Gremlin's fans on this show. Elliot is very vociferous in his admiration of Gremlin's too, specifically. I mean, I love the first one, too.

The first one was the movie I probably watched the most growing up. Yeah, we're all grim heads. I don't have any puppets, but one of the first... Well, you don't have any Gremlins puppets. You have other puppets. You have other puppets. That's true. I am the sort of man who owns puppets.

But also, one of the first and best gifts that my wife got for me is a Polish Grimlins poster. I have a like Grimlins corner not too far away, including a painting I made of a shot from Grimlins. I assume you have sort of an origin story as the, as the foremost Grimlins collector. Grimlinologist. What would you say that is? I think what first got me into it. I remember distinctly seeing the first Gremlins in a drive-through theater as a kid. So I was born in 81.

So, you know, I was like kind of a young end. It was rated PG. Parents, you know, across the country sent their kids to see this horror movie. So I was into it. Learning about Santa Claus. Yeah. Right. And I remember distinctly probably it must have been 85 because,

My dad made the astute decision to go buy a Betamax player. And Gremlins was one of the first tapes. And the guy who sold it to us, he's like, I think you should have this. And it was this very 80s Gremlin's Rubbin play set. And it was those things. They're almost like they come on like, it's like little illustrations. And then you have to kind of scratch them with a nickel. And they transfer to like the background or like this chaos.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I think I had that same set. Yeah, yeah. I had that and I had the like color forms one where you can, yeah. I may have had that too. I definitely had the, they did a set of like, what was the fast food place that did like a set of records that was a hardy. I was really. It was hardies.

Yeah. It was hardies, yeah. Because my mom to this day will quote, I think the opening of the final record where it just goes, Kate and Billy. Those are huge. They're still around all over the place. you know, it's such a weird movie because they rated it at PG, so kids were all over this, and they had commercials where, you know, you buy your gremlin cereal,

buy enough of it, you get your own gizmo, and they had great commercials. Like, I don't know, it's such a weird, like, it doesn't exist anywhere else. That was also, the 80s was the time when kids were allowed to have anything, because, like, the fact that there was a talking Freddie Krueger doll, like, you could get a lunchbox with Freddie Krueger or Jason on it. And it's like, this doesn't make sense. Why does Rambo have his own cartoon show?

You want to keep Freddie away from children. Even on the Gremlin's lunchbox, there's Gremlin smoking on the bottom of it. Like, it's crazy. They would never exist today. No, well, that's everybody smoked back then. This was, this was... I have this lunchbox that has the minions dropping acid.

Yeah. In preparation for this, like, I just got curious and I was like Googling, like, people's, like, thematic takes on Gremlins. And I got to some... terrible medium article by some person who was like, well, you know, like Grimlins is actually good. This movie that everyone thinks is bad. I'm like, what are you talking about?

I can only assume this is a younger person who like is baffled in part by like exactly what we're talking about. Like how was this a thing that was allowed for white audiences? Like it's so mean, but it's also for kids. Yeah, I mean, there's shooting. there's drinking, there's smoking, like it's all the kind of things that you would never see in like a kid's movie nowadays. I mean, people genuinely get hurt, like,

Mrs. Deagle is dead. Like, there's no scene of them pulling her out of the snow and, like, and people get hurt who don't deserve it. Also, there's the guy who's just delivering, just putting his mail into the mailbox and basically gets eaten, and it's like, the, uh, Mr. What is it? Mr. Futterman has some pretty negative attitudes

towards non-Americans. No, non-Americans, yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, there was a, I read once a really good take on the idea of it as a, the way that, that it's talking about kind of like where the American mindset was at the time and the kind of like seesawing back and forth of how people felt in the Reagan era where it was like a pride in America,

but also a feeling that America was kind of like falling behind. And there's a lot of that, I feel like that's the kind of stuff that like, it's such a, it's a good movie. And so there's rich things in it that are where I don't think Joe Dante was like, and Chris Columbus were like, we've got to do something about America and decline. even though it thinks it's doing well, you know. Well, it's hard to define exactly what it's saying, which is kind of

what's good about it in a certain way. Do not feed them after midnight. Do not get them wet. Like, it's pretty clear what the message of the movie is. Because I know that, like, I mean, from what I know about Joe Dante's politics, like, he is not like a xenophobic guy. But I think that the movie is like satirizing xenophobia

to some degree in a way that can be mistaken for like also being xenophobic itself. Once you get into that. sort of like deeper like, well, what does this mean level of things? I don't know. Yeah, that's true. I don't know. So, Ian, you have all these.

So now you have this amazing collection of the Gremlin's puppets and props. And I'm curious about how, so did you have to teach yourself basically the preservation techniques? Or did you have any past history with art preservation or archiving or anything like that? No, I work with kind of restoration artists. That's like way above my skill set. Oh, okay. actually doing the restoration work. Never mind that because I really imagined you in your garage with like, you know,

Q-tips and things like that. That's my nightmare. YouTube tutorials. Yeah. These guys, you know, I don't want to even like touch them. Like, it's crazy because the restoration guys, they're just like manhandling these things and just, you know, all right, we've got to fix the ear and they just shove it back. You know, and meanwhile, I'm just like, I have my gloves on and, you know,

something needs to get moved. And so, yeah, it's just to, for me, it's. just too nerve-wracking. I'm only really happy when these things are in their collect cases and nobody could touch them. They're holding together. Like, we're good. I'm sure this is the sort of question you've gotten a million times before, but I have to ask, is there like one or two like things in your collection?

Like, this is my prize. This is the best thing. This is my crown jewel. It's kind of like an accumulation of things. Like, I don't know. I see things as sort of like a, it's like a. a set of work. So I'm very like,

I'm very intentional about what I buy at this point. And so I've kind of like worked out like a lot of the kind of filler pieces. But I would say if I had to pick one, it would probably be the, I have a Mohawk Magway that he looks like he just walked off set. Like the detail on him is just so freaking good. And they're just, you know, such intricate hair work. And it's just gorgeous, gorgeous piece of art, I think.

Do you guys have more, like, sort of more general questions before I get into stuff about this cut that you put together? I don't know. I mean, what is, do you have a security system at the location? How do you get around it? Yeah. I kind of have to. They have their own little insurance policy and all that, you know, until the day comes where I get a mysterious benefactor that will let me have my own place to people can visit. You know, that's kind of where it's at.

But, you know, occasionally I do tours for people, like, if they're in town. It was funny. To a Hugh Heffner's kids came over a couple weeks ago. Kind of random, but they're like, we're huge fans. Let's, you know, I want to see this. So, yeah, it's kind of fun, you know, it's not meant to, to, a collection like this isn't meant to be hoarded away. And, you know, I've had people come over. It's, you know, like, Gizmo is like my security, you know,

creature growing up. And so, like, seeing a lot of these pieces in person, like, it can kind of evoke an emotional response out of some people, which is, you know, that's awesome. Like, that's what it's all about. I had a similar moment. I went to the Museum of the Moving Image not that long ago, and they had a large Jim Henson collection on display. And obviously, seeing Big Bird crushed me.

Like, seeing Big Bird in person is so incredible. And then, of course, seeing The Love of My Life. Miss Piggy in wedding dress. It really was like your fantasy came true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you can see photos of these things, but it's like really in person where it's, you know,

you can look around and see all the detail that was put into it. Like some of the best artists in the world were working on these. Yeah. And, you know, these are, you know, for movies you've seen a million times growing up, like actually seeing the characters you loved is really a special thing, I think. There's something so, yeah, there's something incredibly special about it being the real stuff. too. I had the opportunity recently there was a to see the

armature from the inside of the stop motion terror dog from the first Ghostbusters. And it was just amazing to be like, oh well this I mean this looks really cool. It's amazing amazing but this is literally this is what the artists working on the film were handling. Like this was the thing that made it possible

and I always, I still regret there's the that a famous gorilla actor Bob Burns who passed away not too long ago that he had the King Kong Armature and apparently if you just got in touch with him and we're like can I come by and see it? He'd be like, yeah, sure, go ahead. And there's something about like knowing that these things exist as physical objects that are still real that makes the movie that much more real and makes it much more of a,

you know, it can't help but bring you into a little bit of connection with the thing itself and the people who made it. And I just imagine it's worth the fear that they will come alive in the middle of the night and kill you and your family, you know, to have them around you. These are the actors, you know. If you think about gremlins, like, yeah, you got you know, Billy and Kate and stuff. But if you think about, like, you know, Gizmo is the star of both Remblins films. And so, you know, it's kind of like having an actor. You don't really get that with CG.

These are the physical embodiments of, you know, what was on screen. And in some ways, it's even better than an actor because meeting the actor, they were a person, a human being with a full life playing apart as opposed to... Problematic views. Potentially. But, like, like, the person... The prop is so, like, it's so specific, and it's like, I don't know, it's like super intense. And you don't have to, like, when you meet an actor and you're like, oh, I loved you on that movie,

they're like, oh, yeah, great. Anyway, that was an experience I had, and it's, and it's freighted with what my life was like at the time, and I'm not that person. But yeah, if you were engaged with the prop, the prop is not like, yeah, I remember back when I did gremlins. Anyway, I'm getting divorced now. It's like, no, it still is, that's its whole existence. You can be a huge freak when you meet them like I did with Miss Picky. Exactly. Miss Picky can't be like, oh, actually, I'm married to Scott.

He's a, you know, Piggy's as a character I play, you know. It's the worst thing of his biggest impression I've ever done. I've developed a little bit of a relationship with Zach Galligan in the last year. And it's funny talking to him on the phone because it's like you're talking to like freaking Billy. You know, except, you know, he's, everyone's raw throwing an expletive in or, you know. But he's still enunciates the same way Billy would, you know. And so it kind of just like reboots your brain.

You're just like, this is so weird. Let's talk about this recent cut that's been in the news Because I want to start by saying I have to admit, like when I first started seeing these like Articles about like nearly three hour cut of Grimlins discovered And there had been like a rash of these articles out there From modern entertainment writers who were just like, you know, writing clickbait or whatever who don't didn't appear to understand like

there are these things called assembly cuts where you just like put everything into the movie and that doesn't mean that's not the same as a director's cut it doesn't mean that like for all these other movies like this is what they wanted it's like no this is like a step along the way to the movie that they wanted

and no one is gonna want to watch that as their experience of the movie like certainly for the first time nobody was fighting Joe Dante was not like I need a three hour cut he was not fighting with Warner Brothers to get a three hour cut released yeah but then right I read about what you did, and, you know, it is a little different.

And you should be ashamed of yourself. How dare you, sir. I read about what you did. No, but you put in work to make this watchable as a thing. Again, a thing that is primarily going to be of interest to Grimland's nuts like us, but like a watchable experience. Can you talk about sort of like what you did with the material? Yeah, so I got two VHS tapes from Joe Dante.

And he was nice enough to send him over. This has been sort of like rumored for decades. And Joe's been kind of like pushing it off. Like, oh, it's gone. I think he told me at some point, too, like somebody stole it out of his house. But I was talking with Chris Wales and he was saying, oh, like there's 20, we shot like 20 minutes of,

there's 20 minutes of footage of Dory's alone out there somewhere. And so Joe found these tapes and sent them to me. And what I saw in there was just, it was incredible. Like, just scenes that nobody has ever seen before. And, like, scenes that look normal are now, like, three minutes longer or they're completely alternate takes. So, like you said, it's not a director's cut. This is meant for Gremlin's fans. But what was on the tape, though,

it was pretty rough. Like, it was straight dialogue, basically. Like, no score, no sound effects. And the temp creature sounds could best be equated to, like, like, a moaning woman. So, Dan, this is very close to your fantasy about credit Bremen.

Yeah, I mean, it pulls you right out of the movie. And so, like, when I saw this stuff, I'm like, people need to watch this. This is incredible. And so it seemed pretty obvious to me, like, okay, well, we need to turn this into something that can be screened for fans. And so that's kind of what got the whole project going.

Yeah, and if I understand it from reading previous things, you had sort of what was kind of an assembly cut, and then you had also a tape of deleted scenes, some of which hadn't even made it that far, and you also reinterpreted some of that material in there. It all got put into. So there were some extra scenes that were actually really important, and I thought on this extra tape.

And so they kind of got put into like their correct place in this, in my version. And so, yeah, it actually works out to be like a really watchable movie. And like the first hour is just getting to know basically everybody in Kingston Falls. And it really, the character development's incredible. You really kind of get to know everybody a whole lot better than in the final film. And not to say it's better than the theatrical, But it's just for a fan, it's really interesting.

No, so there is, like, material within this that has been, like, available before in different, like, deleted scenes and stuff. But I found one of the things I found really interesting about what you're saying is there's so much Mrs. Deagle's stuff in there that, like, is, you know, in the theatrical cut, you get a lot of Miss, Miss Deagle's stuff. is like, like Miss Gulch from Wizard of Oz. Like that feels like the maiden touchstone with all that like

I'm gonna get your dog stuff in there. But there's so much extra about how she has, she owns like half the town and wants to like kick people out

at Christmas that isn't in the theatrical cut that really made me think like oh okay well this is a Mr. Potter thing too. Like this is really drawing on its wonderful life. Like, that's one of the main, I don't know, revelations.

I thought, like, is there stuff in there that you particularly are like, wow, like, this is new to me. Like, this is important, you know. Yeah, like the whole scene where, you know, in the theatrical, you see Barney get kind of tied up with the Christmas lights outside, you know, and it's sort of just assumed that the mogwis did this. And I'd seen the storyboards for the first film in, and they'd shown, they'd storyboarded the heck out of that scene. of the Magwai's like coercing Barney down the stairs and outside and tying them up and stuff. And I was like, I can't believe they didn't shoot this. It's like so many pages of storyboards.

And so actually seeing it is incredible. And it's funny too because this came out right before critters. And that's how the Magwais get downstairs. They roll into balls and bounce down the stairs. And so you don't, you don't. you don't see that ever like in the in the final theatrical and you do get like a full body shot of stripe as maguire walking around yeah with you never see like a full frontal just that way strutton it's so adorable i talked with chris wales about that shot and apparently um they had this whole rig for like a wide shot of the the magway walking and they just couldn't really get it all that great.

And in the scene, you can see, like, there's a line on the floor where, you know, like, clearly, you know, what's going on. But it's a really funny scene because, like, you can see Rand Peltzer has, like, his invention hooked up to the bed or something. They're sleeping and then Stripe the Mogwise walking by their door and Rand Farts and it startles stripe. And it's just,

just like it's so crazy. It's just so much going on so quickly in that scene. But it's never been seen before. Also like one thing that particularly stuck out, the science teacher, I don't remember his name. Mr. Hansen. Mr. Hansen. There's like a whole scene where he's studying the, you know, like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the water multiplication thing, uh, only, only works when the environmental temperature is above 40 degrees. Like a line that's clearly in the movie to be like for people who are like, well, why aren't they multiplying

when they're walking through all the snow? And like, rightfully it's been cut out because like, who cares? Like, none of this makes any sense. But it was really interesting to me to see that like they tried to address some of these objections that have bedeviled Grimlins fans for years.

Right. What if you go over a time zone or something and you get something stuck in your teeth? You know, there's a lot of things about the movie. It doesn't make any sense. And so at least they try to dress, you know. They're in snow. Why aren't they multiplying? They're like, Glenn, we need you to make up something on set about why it doesn't make

them multiply. And he's like, I'll think of something. Hold on. It's the temperature, temperature. Sure, sure. Hi, I'm Justin McElroy. And I host Sawbones with my wife, Sydney. I'm here with Max Fun member of the month.

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maximum fun.org slash join. Hi everybody. It's Ellen Weatherford. And Christian Weatherford. People say not to judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. But we can judge a snake by its ability to fly or a spider by its ability to dive. Or a dung beetle by its ability to navigate with the starlight of the Milky Way galaxy. On just the zoo of us, we rate our favorite animals out of 10 in the categories of physical effectiveness, behavioral ingenuity, and of course, aesthetics. Guest experts like biologists, ecologists, musicians, comedians, and more join us to share their unique insights into the animal kingdom. Listen with the whole family on maximum fun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. We here at the Flop House have some things we want to tell you about,

and I'm going to take a moment to tell you about them. We are, of course, performing live, September 18th in Louisville, Kentucky at Whirling Tiger. It's going to be our first live show in a while. We're super excited about it. If you've never been to a Flop House live show, then you need to know that what you hear when we release the audio is only part of the show. You also get our pre-episode stuff. We each do presentations. We do a lot of messing around on stage.

It's really fun. It's really funny. We hope you can join us. We're going to be talking about the movie Glitter, starring Mariah Carey, and we're going to be joined in the show by our own Alex Smith, aka Howell Dottie, Louisville's own. So we're very excited to be with him on stage and to be doing that show. So that's in Louisville, Kentucky, whirling tiger, September 18th, go to Flophousepodcast.com slash events for tickets and more information. If you can't make it to Louisville, well, I'm disappointed. But you can still see us perform because Flop TV is coming back.

That's right. Season 4 of Flop TV starts September 5th at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific. It's the first Saturday of every month, September through February, and the theme this year is the best of the worst, or rather the worst of the best. It's Best Picture Winners, and we're going to look at a bunch of ones that are probably not very good, and one in particular that is a fine movie, but Stewart just doesn't like it. Go to theflophouse.com, and you will find a list of all the movies, and you'll be able to buy tickets there. You can either buy a ticket for an individual episode

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and more heartfelt in many ways. And now, back to the rest of the show. I have some more quick. But do you all have questions? I was going to say, was there a specific scene that you remember, like, finding on the tape and being like, oh, my God. Like, I can't believe we actually have this now.

I actually put together, like, a little Facebook chat group when I first got the digitized tapes back. And so it was kind of like the biggest grumbly. fans that I know. And so I was kind of like going through the footage and stuff, you know. So we all got to kind of experience it at the same time. And it was definitely the rand farting scene. I was just like, you're never going to believe this.

Because it's so absurd. Because you, like, that's something that's something dads do when they're sleeping. You know. But if you think about gremlins one and two. You never, you're always seeing gremlins from the waist up for the most part. All the hero puppets are basically like, half-body puppets. Somebody has their hand in there and is holding them up.

It's so rare that you see a full-body puppet because it would have to be like a marionette or some sort of like special rig. And so in this one, there's a few scenes where you see full wide shots. And so like in that ran scene, it's wild. I mean, we all just kind of like, it blew our mind. Like one of my friends is like, I'm taking the rest of the day off. This is a lot of the process. I got to lay down.

Got to examine my life. Yep. Well, we've been sort of taunting our audience with all this stuff that they can't see. Is there any way that in the future it will be seeable or is, is, are people going to have to rely on the Word picture we've painted for them? Well, since about like April, I've been working with the British Film Institute over in London to try to do like a screening. When Word got out that I had this, I got easily like 50 requests to screen this at various theaters or festivals or whatever. And BFI seemed like kind of the best way to do it. And so they were working and using sort of their connections at Warner Brothers to try to get this happening and do it in like a legit way.

Because I've been saying from the start that like I don't own this, I can't just freely distributed or show it or anything. And so they finally got through to Warner the other day by means of Warner legal. And so I'm having to relinquish basically everything that I have to them, which is a whole joy. But, you know, I'm still trying to get like screenings happening. They seem like, you know, if I was playing along with them that we could get, you know, we could work out some sort of way to potentially make that a thing. So that ultimately is the goal. Like, I'm not trying to make money from this.

I'm trying to just get this out to the fans. So, you know, they can see it. I hope that that is, I, you know, like, I have not been, like, bragging around. Like, oh, you know, we're talking to this guy. But, like, I have gotten questions from my few, like, very close Grimlins fans that I've, like, mentioned, like, oh, you know, we're going to do this. episode, like, they're all like, but how do I see this cut? And I'm like, I don't think there's a way right now. I'm sorry. I'll let you know if I hear anything. They have this idea that I'm

trying to like keep it away from them. I'm like, no, I'm just trying to not get sued. You know, that's really what it comes down to. You know, I want to share this with fans. That's really the end goal that's always been the end goal. And so if Warner Brothers wants to play along, fantastic. And I've been trying to, you know, give them the merits of like, hey, gremlins three comes out, you're inevitably going to make a three-diss set, why not throw it on there? You know, how do you get people to buy Gremlins for the end of time? Well, include the rough cut.

Done. Mm-hmm. The, uh, the, I think there's also such a, like, clearly so much work goes into making, as you've said, something like that, fully watchable like it's a movie. Like you're saying, adding the score, adding that, the sound effects, like putting the scenes together. And it's the kind of thing that only happens because someone loves the majority. and wants to make that material viewable.

And so clearly, like this is obviously such a passion project. And like you're saying, you're like, I'm not trying to make money off this. If there was a way to make a lot of money off of it, Warner Brothers would have done it already. You'd think. And so I think... I don't seem to like to release movies. No, they would have done it. And then buried in stuff that they could get the tax right off.

Yeah. But I think the... But I think it's a... I mean, I applaud you for the labor of love that it is to take those elements and make them into a viewable thing so that people can have this larger view of something that they love and something that meant so much to all that. Like I think about, gremlins is one of those things where like, if you ask me, you're like,

how do you feel about gremlins? I'd be like, oh, yeah, I love gremlins. And then the more I think about it, the more I'm like, well, yeah, and it was like the movie I watched the most. And I went as gizmo for Halloween because my mom made me a gizmo costume for like three straight years. And I think about all time and seeing Gremlins too was like a major piece of my, like, development as a creative person. And it's like, oh, yeah, well, this is, and so it's a...

Elliot, I just want to say, like, I had a very similar experience, like, in the run-up to doing the show where I'm like, well, you know, like, neither of the Grimlins movies, like, I don't have them in my, like, top four on letterbox or whatever. But then I was, like, thinking about, like, they're the thing that I certainly have the most memorabilia of around my apartment. I'm like, are these my favorite movies? I don't know. And even I, saying all that, it's all to build up, like,

it turns out I have such a it's such a deep part of me but even I would not have the patience or the or the or the the the the so much love to like really get in there and and unearth the things that are available of it and bring these new um aspects to light so I really applaud you and for for doing it and I'm so thankful that that you're engaged in this sacred work um and I hope Warner brothers can get their get their act together you know so that this is something that um that gets the the wider view that it deserves you know Yeah, it's kind of the search is really honestly the best part of all this is just like, it's amazing that, you know, 40-something years later, there's still things to be unearthed. And the fact that Joe Dante is kind of playing along with all this and playing along with my weirdness.

And I think, I don't think he quite knew what he was getting into when he passed those tapes over. He was like, this will open up a little bit of space in my closet. I think that's what he was thinking, yeah. But it was like, you know, it was kind of the right. person for it because, you know, anyone else could have just been like watched it and then threw it in the closet and that was it. And so it was kind of like, you know, getting to know the film about as well as anyone can know it, you know, when you're in there and having to retime the score because, you know, the scene is three minutes longer. And or, you know, I have a new appreciation

for Howie Mandel doing Gizmo because, you know, thankfully now you can isolate. you know, voice. And so I was able to isolate all the Magway sounds and creature sounds and everything. And, like, just hearing isolated Gizmo is like, it was freaking awesome. It was really good. Like, you know, it's sort of background noise a lot, you know, for the movie. Like, it's, it's there, you know, but when you hear it just isolated, you're like, wow, this is, he's like really riffing off of what Billy's saying or Pete or whatever. Like, it's really good. So he's, I mean, it's, I mean, it doesn't surprise me that he, they probably were like, okay, you're the character. Like, What is he doing?

We need stuff. And it's the opposite of the, when they isolate David Lee Roth's voice tracks. And it just sounds like a, like a guy's going, Bavidab, do do, do, do it. The thing is that cocaine makes you crazy. That's true.

I guess that's true. The, yeah, I mean, I can't stress enough. I mean, I think we all had, it was a foundational memory for all of us to go through DVDs and go through deleted scenes. And I feel like I can also speak for all of us in that most of those, lead scenes were kind of a disappointment because

they are separated from the film and also they often lack some of those additional polishes, whether it's score, sound effects, etc. So it's like the fact that you were able to do this and it makes it like a very I mean it's a very watchable cut of the movie

it's obviously a little bit long and not not the director's vision but like it works as a movie and that's incredible. Yeah, it's a while It's been a wild ride. And I'm glad it kind of worked out in the end. And Joe's been very sportive. Zach's been supportive.

Zach said if a lot of these extra scenes were in there, maybe his career would go a different track. I thought that was pretty funny. But yeah, no, it's been a lot of fun. It's a cool ride. I essentially, I mean, you guys are obviously free to toss in any extra stuff you have. I essentially just had one last written question that I had,

which was like, has this experience encouraged you? Are you like, has it inspired you or perhaps D-inspired you toward any like other big Grimlins project in the future? Dan is like Loki asking, when's the five-hour Gremlins tube cut? I've been asking Joe about that for a while now. and he's doing his normal kind of dismissive, oh, there's nothing in there.

I was like, look at the trading cards. There's more stuff. My one interaction with Joe Dante, he seemed like somebody who was not eager to like dig into old stuff. It was kind of like, yeah, very dismissive of password. He's been surprisingly supportive. And, you know, as a former editor, like getting editorial notes from Joe is like, it was kind of awesome.

you know, because originally in the assembly, they had cut out the Kate Santa speech. And I thought it was really funny. Like on the tape, it just says scene missing. Seen missing, parentheses, you know the one. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's kind of a quick blip, but, you know, nevertheless.

And then it was kind of this moment in time where Joe was sort of battling Warner. And essentially, he was. wanted the more violent Mr. Hansen death, you know, the teacher. And the compromise was removing the Santa speech. But Joe was like, no, Santa speech stays. And so that's why we got the kind of like less violent,

you know, the one needle instead of the 20 needles in the face. Instead of a gremlin digging his eyeballs out of his pockets. So, no, but Joe's been like super supportive about as much as I could imagine. And it's, It's been a lot of fun, just finding a lot of his old treasures and working on projects

and doing kind of articles and stuff about it. Because it just, I don't know. I think at a certain point with the puppets, there's only so much you can do unless you're, you know, a billionaire and just have endless money and just buy everything. But the article. Like Daniel Klam. Like Daniel Klan. Yeah. So just doing these articles and doing the rough cut to me is actually kind of a bit more fulfilling.

in the end. It shows you, I think, one of the things that makes Gremlin's so great, in addition to the fact that it looks amazing, the Gremlin's characters and Gizmo are such fully realized living creatures, is that tradeoff you're talking about where it's like, you can either have the more violent death or you can have the Santa Claus speech, the Phoebe K speech, that it's like, oh, well, then I want the Santa Claus speech. Like, the human characters feel really richly observed too. And that's exciting about the longer cut, like you're saying that you get to see. these characters so much more developed.

And that's, it's like, um, even though those scenes were, were either cut or, or, um, or cut down, it's like, uh, you know, a rich reduced sauce, you know, like all, you know, it's, it's got, it's thicker, but it's got more in there. And it just shows you what, what, what, one of the things that makes it such a great movie is that, this town, when it's being attacked by the monsters, doesn't feel like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, people, whatever, get to the monsters, get to the monsters, you know, and I, that's so, it feels like so much the right choice to include that speech, which is so memorable over

another kill scene, basically. Well, also, I mean, was it Spielberg as producer or Dante? Like, someone said, like, that's the movie in miniature. Like, it's, like, it's funny. And that's what the producers were like, yeah, that's why we don't like it. Upsetting. Like, you know, like some of the more violent stuff that

is in this longer cut, like, there's stuff in the Peltzer's kitchen that's like grosser. And, uh, I mean, I think that, like, including the Santa's speech and not the meaner death is the right call because like you know I'm a horror fan I like seeing the meaner stuff but it is such a delicate tone that is struck and I think that the like the meaner version of Grimlins doesn't quite work as well like we got the right mix in the theatrical cut it's certainly it's certainly harder to laugh at it when it's that much

when it gets too mean for sure um there I know that like in the was it in the original script that Chris Columbus wrote like Billy's mom dies like her like her comes home and her like head rolls down the stairs and it's like yeah it'd be hard to it'd be hard to laugh too much after that she's such a nice lady you know what works so well with this is you know I mean the problem with so many modern movies is like do you actually care about any of these characters yeah and I feel like in Gremlins like you care about like a lot of these people like it's it's I don't know I mean how many people in this do you actually like really get to know it's it's pretty wild I feel like when I watch it, I am as invested in Phoebe Cates's life, basically, in it.

Like, that she is, that she seems to have no real future at the moment and you hope that she's going to get out and have one. As much, as invested in that as in, can they keep this mogway dry, you know? And do you love the peltsers, even though arguably they have destroyed this town through their foolishness? Yeah, that's true. Well, there's such a, there's a, and this is the kind of thing that I feel like you don't, you would, now if you, if they made this movie now, Billy's dad would have these inventions and they never quite work, or either, or they're rich, they're a rich family that has great inventions. And then at the end, the inventions would save the day or something, like all the inventions they set up, would be like, now the one that cracks the eggs open, we can use it to kill the gremlin's this way. And now the bathroom buddy, oh, we're going to use that to like, to do this. And the fact that they do not really play a part at all.

It's just character texture. It was just this guy is a dreamer. That was the original intention though. Was I imagine, yeah. So I have a copy of the actual shooting script. And they were, they actually came up with a chainsaw scene at the end, like on the fly. That was like an homage to like Texas chainsaw. And originally, Rand was going to come in and spray stripe with the bathroom buddy.

Oh, that would have. It's good. They didn't. It would have sucked. Yeah. It was so bad. And I love, because one of the things that's so great at that scene, too, is it's like it really feels like they're just pulling the stuff from the sporting goods store.

Like, they're just handling what's around them. And the only question I've had ever since I was a kid was, why do they have such a small chainsaw? Like, why are they selling a chainsaw that is small enough for Stripe to use? But is that a child's chainsaw? Like, what's going on? But it's... I put together a whole, like, article on the chainsaw scene.

And I talked to Zach about it specifically. I was like, you know, how did you feel like having this bat, like, between you and an actual chainsaw? It's like they would never do that nowadays. Like there's no way they're just their lead actor. Like, even if it didn't cut through the bat, it could have easily got a freaking wood stuck in his eye or something. Well, that's the most, that's one of the reasons.

That's one of the most terrifying scenes to me because he has his bloody wounds on his, scalper on his face for it. And the wood chips are just flying out of it. And I would just as a kid imagine like, oh, you're getting, your cuts are getting full of wood chips. Like, this is terrible. Like, it's such a, that's so much better than his dad coming in going, we set this up in act one.

Now we're going to use it in Act 3, you know, which is, I have to imagine Spielberg was like, you got to use all that stuff later on in the movie. Well, I love that the only payoff is like the old man comes in at the end and he's like, oh, smokeless ashtray, yes, the man tried to sell me one. Another, like, making fun of this guy being a shitty inventor. It's funny because I've seen this movie so many freaking times now just editing each scene and going to such depth. And the only scene that I feel like pulls you out of it now is that last

part because it's sort of like when he pulls out the Spokos Ash Jay at the very end you're like, no, we're going outside and this is the end and he's walking I feel like the ashtay just like kills the momentum so much. I had a thing like that with something I'm working on now where I was writing a script and they were like, we need this character

to come in at the end and be part of the climax. And I was like, oh, really, it really just restarts the, like it feels like the problem is over and then a guy comes in and has to restart. And I just cut that out and was like, I hope that I hope the executives don't notice. And they didn't.

And I was like, oh, if they didn't notice, it really doesn't need to be in there. Yeah. But the, it's a, I don't know, my admiration for what you're doing with the groundland's material is only tempered by my envy and my wish that I had thought of it first

and had the skills for it, but I don't. Is there anything, I feel like that was, that really surprised you about, your relationship to the material as you were, as you were working on that rough cut or as you're kind of caring for the props?

Is there anything that like, you know, that you kind of didn't think about in terms of how you relate to the movies that you've come to understand or anything like, not to get too personal? If you're like, yeah, really help me come to terms with this tragedy, I'd be like, that's too much.

Don't tell them. I've always been a Gremlin's 2 fan. That's always been my favorite movie. And after doing this rough cut, project. I don't know. I've kind of come around to the first one. I think that's kind of my biggest takeaway because it's sort of like a running joke with my friends is like, you know, oh, you're doing all this Gremlin's One stuff now and, you know, you watch that's going to be your favorite. And I don't know, like I've a much deeper

relationship now with the first movie than I think I ever did. Grumblows, too, I think is like the greatest sequel of all time. It's so amazing. It's incredible. I've talked about it on the podcast before about when I saw that in the theaters as a kid, I was like, I can't, I don't know. I'm not. I don't know, you could do this in a movie. It felt like it just opened my head up and threw a bomb in there. Change the game, you know.

Changed it. Perfect to me in different ways. Like, the first one is, like, sort of the peak of, like, amblin style. Like, you know, like, this is going to have, like, some thrills and chills. Nothing too scary, but it's just going to be, like, a fun, like, blockbuster filmmaking. And it's going to have jokes and it's going to be a little weird. But it's, it's... And then the second one is, like, let's just read it.

all that up. I was just watching, so my younger son, we watched Gremlins on Halloween last year. He's eight now, but he was seven of the time. And then we watched Gremlins 2 like three days later. And he was so excited by Gremlins 2 that he was spinning in place.

Like he could not stop it through his body. And we just rewatched it the other day, rewatch Gremlins 2, and he goes, the only part I don't like is when they kill the guy who's talking about the first Gremlin's movie. And I'm like, you're objectively wrong. You're objectively wrong, son. Like this, that's one of the other.

the most brilliant moments in any movie ever when Leonard Martin's giving a bad review to the first movie, his actual bad review to the first movie, and they kill him for it. Yeah, it's crazy. Like, my, I have a little five-year-old, and when he first saw Gremlin's two, he really liked Daffy a lot.

And I was like, look, he's right there because I have a bunch of puppets up in my, like, my movie room. And I have the close-up Daffy, the one where he's eating the, you know, chicken wings and cord and all that. And so I'm like, look, that's the puppet right there. like, sure, dad, whatever.

All right. It just goes to show you that children are never impressed by their parents, no matter what. But if he went to a friend's house and they had it, he'd be like, can you believe they have this, dad? But it has your stink on it. So, yeah, he's not impressed. My older kid is 14. And whenever friends come over, the first place they go is they hightail it to my office. They're like, let's look at the gregulins.

They don't go upstairs and hide in the room. They're like, you know, let's go check out all the gremlins first. All right. And first you're like, okay, we need to decontaminate you guys before you go in. No touch of nothing. And don't get them wet. My kids think that everyone's parents have kind of weird collections like this. I'm like, eh, maybe.

They go to their friends. Don't get a puppet because your dad collect. Yeah. Dan has a nice collection. I could show you they're in his bedroom. and they're stuffed under the bed. Variety of body parts. And textures, yeah.

Okay. And those you are made to get wet. I can't think of a... I don't know how we've somehow gotten back so many times to the Dan as a purve well in this episode about Gremlins and the Gremlin's Museum. But all right, okay.

Because I think at heart we're kind of like Gremlins. I guess so. Chaos agents. I think it shows you what the, I mean, my kids, they love, they love the minions characters, right? And I feel like the minions, they're a softer version, but they're the closest thing that kids entertainment has now to the Gremlins, where it's just like, yeah, they go out and they do all the crazy stuff kids wish they could do. Like they go, they go out and they break stuff, they kill people. And they accidentally kill people. Like, I was, you know, I hadn't seen any of these things, but minions and monsters had gotten such, like, surprisingly good reviews.

of the minions movies. I checked it out. Like, a Cthulhu's in it, right? Well, a Cthulhu-like character is in it. Yeah. It's very enjoyable, but I was sort of like surprised in a delighted way by

like all the people they accidentally kill in the course of that movie. And the only thing they don't do is drink and smoke. And like that, that's because, you know, we live in more prudish times in some ways. In more prudish, much more racist times, which is an interesting combination. I don't know.

The minions kind of strike me as like just blue-collar dudes with their little overalls. They should be drinking and smoking a lot. It should be drinking smoking a lot. That's true. But it's, the thing that the most exciting thing to me, I have to admit about the rough cut, is the longer stuff at the bar.

Because like the, after I watched Gremlins with my younger son, he goes, you know what the best part is? And I'm like, when they're at the bar? And he goes, yeah. And like the, I could watch that, that was my, as a child, that was just my dream. Like, can I go and hang out with the Gremlins at that bar and just watch them being gross and, like, causing trouble?

And I don't know. That's the most gremlins two part of the movie, too, because it's like up until that point, it's sort of like a normal monster movie. They're little monsters, but there it's like, oh, yeah, they're putting on hats. Like, they're role-playing as different characters. That's where they got a lot of the Gremlin's juice material

where, like, they figured out that, like, gremlin's dressing up as humans, like, really worked. So, like, we need more of that. And, I mean, it's your first appearance of a female-coded gremlin, because there's that one wearing the like fur stole and the makeup and everything and it's to say yeah that's it's amazing that must have felt like such a

it must have felt like such an exciting discovery to be like if we put hats and clothes on these gremlins and they do human stuff it takes it to another level it's way funnier yeah it's good stuff well as promised

I said we'd only keep you for around 45 minutes to an hour and we're about halfway in between those two marks. So I feel like we should wrap up. We should say thank you for coming on. Elliot, I see that you're just raring to say one last thing about the Gremlin. No, no. What I'm ready to do is as my doorbell just rang.

So this is an excellent time for us in the episode. Excellent time to answer it. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on and talking to us about all this. Obviously, we're cut from the same cloth. So it was a treat. Contribuating polyurethane foam cloth. Is there anything you want to plug before we say goodbye?

Just look up Gremlin's Museum online, and if you want to go on the deepest dive possible Gremlin's material, you can read all about the puppets and various articles about very, very specific things. And, you know, hopefully people that share the love of Gremlins can enjoy it too. Yeah, I just started following Gremens Museum on Instagram. I recommend that highly. Yeah, thank you to Ian Grant for being here. This has been the Flop House.

We're part of the MaxFun Network. Go to MaximumFund.org. Check out the other great shows. Check out Howled Doughty online. Alex Smith, that's his real name. But he does a bunch of stuff by the name of Howl Doughty. It's all worth checking out. But for the Flop House, I've been Dan McCoy.

I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Ellie Kaelin. And we've been joined by Ian Grant. Bye. Why about? That wasn't particularly grandmeline. I was trying to go for a Grambling thing, but didn't work. Maximum Fun.

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