The Flop House - FH Mini 39 - We Talk to a Super Mario Bros. Screenwriter

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

The Super Mario Bros. live show had a thrilling, good-humored, and completely unexpected special guest in Parker Bennett, one of the film's (many) writers, who showed up in the chat purely to enjoy the show, but was happy to join us for a few minutes to talk about his experience making the movie.Time constraints prevented us from talking to him as long as we'd like, so we decided to have him on a minisode, where he could dish about the behind-the-scenes details at greater length.A NOTE: since we usually release all our podcast episodes on Saturdays, but access to the SMB live show was scheduled to end at midnight this Sunday, we decided to release this mini a little early, AND also extend the live show one more day (till midnight on Monday, 10/4), so that anyone listening who's curious for more Super Mario Bros. shenanigans could still get a chance to see the show. 

Hey everyone and welcome to the flop house. This is a this is Dan McCoy. Sorry, I'll do that first. And I'm sewer Wellington. I'm Elliot Kaylen. Dan, I just I'm glad that you I'm glad you caught yourself there so that the audience the whole time wasn't saying who is addressing me. Who's this mystery voice? What's going on? Where am I? Well, we have a guest tonight that I will introduce in just one second, but first I'll explain that here on the Flop House podcast, on other weeks, every other week, we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it, and on these, not those weeks, the other other weeks, is this easy to follow? We do minis where we talk about whatever we want to talk about. And in this case, we have a great guest

who we want to talk to you for the mini. Parker Bennett is a writer and author, a cartoonist. The reason we have him on tonight, though, is because recently we did our Super Mario Brothers live show, which is a movie that he worked on as a screenwriter, and he was in the audience chatting away. We didn't know about it until Matt was texting us, our tech guy, and no one was answering because we were doing a live show at the time. I think that I was maybe the only one who actually saw it because Stewart was using his

phone as his camera, which is great because otherwise I would have been distracted when mid-show, I got one of those jack-off blackmail emails. Like perfect. No, no, you're saying this is a blackmail email of low quality or it's an email that says we have video of you jacking off and you have to give us money. Like, when you even say jack up blackmail. And Parker, I apologize, we'll get to you very soon.

We have to get to the bottom of this. Yeah, it's sort of open to real can of worms here. We have to address it first. So the premise is that like the guy, it takes a very like friendly tone. It's like, hey, everybody does. I'm like, oh, cool. Thanks, guy. He's like, but you do it way too much and to such weird stuff and I'm like, oh, come on. You don't got to judge me now. And then he's like, if you don't want the people in your life to be embarrassed of you or something, yada yada yada.

And at some point he starts asking for money. I'm like, buddy, you should be paying me. Yeah. I'm like, I'm, yada, yada. And at some point he starts asking for money. I'm like, buddy, you should be paying me. Yeah. Because if you don't find it hot, at least you're going to find it fucking hilarious.

OK. Well, and with that is the introduction. What's your pricing schedule? Wow. We'll do it. We'll go further into this bit. OK. All DMU, we can hang on a little bit.

Well, anyway, these messages were coming mostly just to me. I was focused on the show. Yes, no, well, certainly. But I was keeping an eye out for any information from our tech person. And then Audrey started running in and handing me a post-its about how we could get Parker on the show.

And I was waving her off angrily and then spinning the next like 20 minutes of the show worrying that I had been too brisk with Audrey when she ran in. And I love this. But anyway, the only time of flop. She did throw the engagement ring back into your face. Yeah.

It's the only time of flop as show has ever had a breaking bulletin, which so we're not used to handling this situation. Yeah, there's no, we don't have the infrastructure for breaking news. But anyway, this is all just wind up to welcome Parker Bennett to the show. Hello. Hi guys. It's me, as they say. Oh wow. Showing off your bona fide right away. Yeah, just just a clarify. I was not in the chat room. Blackmailing steward about his jacket.

Thank you. Again, then I would ask you for money. It's, you know, it's all. So you say it's almost, but that, that, if that's not the case, it's almost as if Stewart's tangent to about his, his jack off blackmail email was unnecessary in this episode. And I refuse to believe that. That doesn't fit into God's plan for this show. Because previously, Dan had not wasted a single syllable in his introduction. Yeah.

A long preample. I feel like, I feel like this, whenever we have a guest on this show, it's like when I would invite a friend over for dinner when I was a kid and all the behavior that I thought of as normal, I'd realize is totally, it doesn't make sense to outsiders who have functional homes. Yeah. So we'll get to your actual work in a second, but first, the first question I wanted to ask was, how did you come to be in the audience for our show? This is just, you're pimping me for a plug

because I listen to you guys constantly, all the time, every week. It's very nice. Thank you. And yeah, I would not miss that show. And honestly, I also was very distracted during the show because of the amazing merch. Oh, it was a quality of the merch.

You know, speaking of both the merch and Audrey, handing me notes, I'm holding up, tell about merch limited time. Was a note that she gave me right before this. I think I teed you up. Yeah, that's great. So the, when you're hearing this episode, there's still, if you're listening to it the day of release, there's still a chance that you can get in on some of the limited edition merch and the show itself if you haven't watched the show, right? Yes, and we haven't figured it out. We may release this many a little early.

We may extend the show a little longer. One of those two, just because we think that it's so nice that we are able to talk to one of the screenwriters for the show. So if anyone listens to this, I don't, we don't want them to be wanting to see that show and then be disappointed. So we'll figure out a way of getting this out there before that goes away forever. But I'll mention, if there is time, then you can get tickets at theflophouse.simpletics.com to see a recording of that show. And the aforementioned beautiful merch is at bonfire.com slash store slash

flop house tour store. All in word. Okay. I think if you Google bonfire flop house, you'll find it. No, no, no, no. Hopefully an image of us speaks on fire. Yeah, you find all the churches where they're throwing our merch onto piles of lighting. Somebody has stuff down into a bear costume. I don't know. That's not gonna bring back his honey. Yeah, let's get back to our guest.

I wanted to know, so you're one of the three credited writers for Super Mario Brothers. I know that there are many more than that. And that's, for those who don't, who aren't professional screenwriters, crediting on movies is a crazy business that is decided by arbitration by the unions and all sorts of equations and such.

Often there are many more writers who work on something that are listed, but you are credited. You're one of the three credited writers. I think it's co-blame. I think the idea is three credit and writers. I think it's co-blame. I think I think. Yeah, I read it. Credit per se. So yeah, there were there was a way there was at least 10 writers. Wow. When we were brought on. So the project started with Roland Jaffee of the mission and killing fields, right? Fame, yeah, somehow talked Nintendo

into giving him the rights to produce this movie, which, you know, if you meet Roland Jaffee and if you've seen Spalding Grey swimming to Cambodia, he talks about Roland, it's exactly that. It's like Roland is this incredibly intense person and he has a British accent and he's just so, he like, he just draws British accent and he's just so he like he just draws you in and you cannot help yourself and you must do whatever he says and

He talked them into giving him this thing. I don't know what they were thinking but he commissioned a script from Ron Bass who wrote Rainman and They wrote gave him a million dollars in Ron Bass wrote a script about two brothers, one sort of an idiot cavaunt and the other sort of a grumbly guy and they're on a road trip through America. And it was literally, as if he'd taken the script for Rainman and done a search and replace for Mark with Mario and Luigi. Did they ever jump on a turtle or anything? No, no, no, no reference at all to the game and so like the joke around the office they

called the script Drainman like he was a plumber. Yeah, yeah, but it was like a million dollars. So the budget overruns have already started. Then they got what Tom Parker, Jim Genoan and Tom Parker, who worked with a guy named Greg Beeman, to do sort of the draft you would expect, like sort of a fantasy world and there's talking rocks and, you know, big flowers and it's kind of Wizard of Ozzy and it's kind of a kids movie. And it's like really like a excuse really young kids movie. And they got really far into this. They had, you know, they had clay mackets and they had, you know, the production staff, they had come on board to make

creatures and things. And then the movie that Greg Beaman directed called Mom and Dad Save the World came out. And it just completely tanked. And so they said, oh no, no, no. We're going to get rid of the guy who's done this movie that tanked. And we're going to hire Rocky Morton and Anibal Janko who've done one movie. So, but it was, you know, DOA, which. which was you know interesting and and they'd done a lot and it's it's kind of still the way Holly would work So because it's like I like that indie film you made ears Jurassic Park fallen kingdom have added yeah Exactly and so yeah, so they

Rocking weren't able to had a pitch that they liked and they'd done Max Headroom, which is, you know, kind of a big deal, and they had done a lot of music videos, and they were really, I mean, commercial directors too. They're very, very stylish directors, and they also are British. So I don't know if Roland Jaffee was swayed at all by the fellow Brit angle here, but possibly. And so they came in and they needed some writing done. And we got an opportunity to pitch on the project. And I drew, because on a cartoonist, I drew a poster. And I drew sort of a dark looking into the dark pipes coming out and into the darkness.

And in the middle of the darkness, there's these glowing eyes, those sort of reptilian eyes. And you know, just, you know, big logos. Super Mario Brothers coming to save the world this summer. And I think that's what got us the job. I think the movie poster. Now that totally didn't work when we pitched the monsters and had a shot a little video of the head of Herman Munster and panned up and it's a wedding cake with Marilyn Munster and a guy on top. And that was our pitch that didn't work. So anyway, they had a meeting with us.

That's a fantastic pitch for a Munster's movie. Now, I'm a question. I'm still available. I mean, the monsters are a flawed concept to begin with, but that's not your fault. That's, I mean, the genetics don't make any sense that a Frankenstein plus a vampire would make a wolf man. It doesn't, you know, but anyway, that's besides the point.

So, Mr. both carrying the recessive gene for like, Anthropy, I don't know, I'm not a scientist, but, you know, Stuart, sorry. Wait, so wait, I'm not a scientist, but, you know, Stewart, sorry. Wait, so wait, if you were a scientist, you'd be able to answer questions of like, can't there be? Well, if I was a biologist who specialized in monstrology, sure, yeah. Okay, Stewart, I know you just got distracted, but it really felt like you were interrupting, like not to ask Parker a question,

but to ask that question. I do have a question. So before putting this pitch together, had you were you a fan of Super Mario Brothers? I didn't, I had never played Super Mario Brothers until we got hired. In fact, nobody in the production office was that concerned about referencing the game.

Like nobody had done- Oh, okay. Nobody had done- Oh, okay. Nobody had done- Oh, okay. Nobody had done- Oh, okay. Nobody had done- Oh, okay. Nobody had done- Oh, okay. Nobody had done- Oh, okay. Nobody had done- Oh, okay. Nobody had done- Oh, okay. Nobody had done- Oh, okay. Nobody had done- Oh, okay. Nobody had done- Oh, okay. Nobody had done- Oh, okay. Nobody had done- Oh, okay. Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Oh, okay. Nobody had done- Oh, okay. Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Oh, okay. Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- Nobody had done- to give the fans the video game something that they can hold onto, or if it was just like they're called Marion Luigi, maybe we see a pipe done, we're making the movie. Is that there was just no feeling that it had to, it really had to spring from the game particularly. Well, I think because they had done this, they'd gone pretty far into a movie version of that, like that. Right. So they had tried that and they really knew they didn't want to do that.

It was skew to young. So I think they then were kind of lost like, okay, well now what do we do? Well, it's not going to just be the bright colored video game thing. And you're saying that it wasn't like, when you were writing it, you weren't like, I can't believe I get to actually write a story for Mario and Luigi to my favorite characters.

Well, all right, I was a big donkey con addict. So Mario has a place in my heart and, you know, but Luigi can suck it. Hey, where was he when the ape needed stopping? I don't know, he wasn't helping, yeah. I mean, not to be like, I don't want this to sound like weirdly kind of sending, but like that's what I find

charming about the movie is that it does feel like it's like the first of its kind and people didn't necessarily know what is a video game movie. Like what is that? Like a book was being adapted into a play for the first time and they're like, I don't know, maybe if we put the book on stage, like that could be the play. Does it need like, actors?

We don't know. I love to figure that out. How do we do it? You know, and like, Udo Kier wasn't sitting around. Is that, wait, is it, who am I thinking of? No, that's, who, who, who, who, who, who, who I think? But Udo Kier probably wasn't hanging around to answer video game questions. He was probably doing a cool ass shit.

Yeah. I mean, knowing the little't hear it, yeah, definitely. I mean, it feels a huge gamer, but still. It feels like this whole road not taken for video game movies in a way that I kind of really enjoy watching it. You know, like, yeah. But yeah, sorry, I go on. No, I, well, I'm trying to, to pay attention. That's always very hard.

We can't even do that. I was worried because I got the chance once to pitch on a job I didn't get for a loony tunes project. And I was like, just to be able to write a script where like, I write like bugs, bunny, opens the door or something's like that. We're so exciting. And I, and I'm always wonder when there's IP like this. If, uh, if the writer who's always wonder when there's IP like this, if

the writer who's doing it has that sort of like thrill, just being involved with his characters, or if it's just like, I just got to do this job. But I guess the Mario Brothers games, I mean, they're 40 years old now, but at the time they were 10 years old, you know, or something. It wasn't, it's not like you grew up playing it, you know? Yeah, but they were, they were the most, I mean, it was the most recognizable piece of IP at the time, like more than Mickey Mouse, more than like so Mario had a huge, like whatever they call that, what is it? Q, TV, Q, something. Q rating.

You know, so everybody, like there was a big understanding, okay, this is a popular character, but they, you know, there wasn't a character It's like Mario runs around it jumps Especially back then I don't think fresh turtles like he didn't even have a voice yet back then There wasn't even it's a me Mario. It was or Mario. I'm sorry. It was just like a yeah He really was just a guy in overalls who jumps on turtles Like yeah, and I think I just I think you should Definitely tell everyone as you did on on the on the live broadcast do not jump on turtles.

Yeah, yeah, that's something. Thank you for anyone who hasn't watched the broadcast. It was it's not a good idea. The turtles don't like it. It's not healthy for you. You get some anela from their shells and they don't you know in the Mario games often in the later games, the turtles will slide out of their shells and just get mad at you. That's not what happens. Trust me. Trust from a guy who knows because I learned the wrong way. Do not jump on a turtle. Yeah. I want to go ahead. No, I just wanted to ask like when you came on, was did you have like a pre, like because there had been previous drafts where they're particular marching orders that they're like, we want you for this specific reason, like what you're like, so direction you were pointed in. Yeah, well, we didn't take direction very well.

So we had it in our brains, we wanted to make ghost busters. So in our head, we wanted Bruno Kirby as Mario. And we love John Legg, was on the, he'd done a live show. And we saw in Chicago and we pitched him pretty early as Luigi. And, but we wanted Mario to be younger

and kind of more Bill Murray-esque. And we wrote it, in our first version of this, we had him hitting on women. And he's trying to fix a dishwasher and he's kind of like, you know, I'm making bad double entendres and- Right, talking about pipes. Probably, yeah. Probably talking about pipes.

Wetness. Anyway, yeah, so we had a more wise cracking, you know cracking ghost bustery tone. And we knew that we had the concept, which was the dinosaurs had not actually gone extinct. They were thrust into a parallel dimension when the meteorite hit or meteor hit and evolved into sort of people, which we thought was genius.

We just thought this is the best idea ever. And finally, somebody had something we can hang on, hang a story on. Later on, I realized they probably had just seen a doctor who episode with the Sarians and rip that. But at the time, I was like super enthralled. So Terry and I were comedy writers and we were trying to make it funny and make it

ghost busters. And the producers, first of all, they wanted to keep the entire first act that Jim Genowen and Tom Parker wrote and just have us go from there. And I was like, no, we can't. You can't set up one movie. Write another movie and go from there. So we didn't do that. And then they wanted us to keep everything in Brooklyn

as long as possible, because they didn't have the budget that they really needed to go do Dino, you know, Dino little Dino hat. And so we kind of extended the story in Brooklyn and added a whole bunch of nonsense, makes no sense now. It's like, well, there's these girls that are kidnapped and that's by these guys who don't

can't recognize humans apart. So they can't get the princess right. And there's like these half dozen girls from Brooklyn that are being kidnapped. One from Queens. Yeah, and people will know. People who watch the show will know, the people who watch Star of Life show will know that like,

that is, those are by far the best characters in the movie, our favorite characters. Are all these Brooklyn ladies? The minute Mario's the one woman who's smoking a cigarette the whole time. But the minute Daniella Mario's girlfriend comes on screen, I'm like, who is this? This is the movie I wanna see, come on.

But it makes sense, like, I love the idea of the version you're talking about, because as much as I love Bob Hoskins as an actor, he is so not creating a character in the model of others movie, and I feel like someone like Bruno Kirby would be like, oh, okay, I know this guy. Like, I can do this, whereas it maybe wasn't the best use of Bob.

If Bob Hoskins, it feels like they were like, he looks like the character, get him in that, get him in overalls, get him out there, you know. Yeah, now they went to everybody who could possibly look like a short squat mustashioed. Yeah. So Danny DeVito, they went to a lot of people. Well, and also Hoskins was in,

who frame Brad Cherebin at this point, right? Like, I feel like that's, there's some studio exec probably saw the parallels in their head. Yeah. There was also a ticking clock and they had to make a deal and, you know, Tom Hanks had turned them down and, et cetera. So, you know, we were in the middle of writing when they've made that deal. And so suddenly our draft made no sense. And so like Bob Hoskins is not going to be, you know, coming on to the lady, looking up her skirt under a... No, it would be threatening.

It would be so... It would be incredibly threatening if he did that. So we got a past, we did a past where we made him more of a fatherly older brother and tried to make that work. I mean, that's... I mean, you know, I don't know, like that's some of the stuff I enjoy. The most is the sort of warmth of just him with the Luigi. And we learned on the live stream that you were responsible for the Mario, Mario scene, which has become Nintendo canon.

So, you know, I would say, it's very fortunate that it seems like all of the best material that I remember at least comes from your draft. Well, no, let's be fair. So really what happened was we did a quick quick draft to try to make it Bob Hoskins and then they pant they got nervous and they said actually a lovely man named Fred Caruso who's one of the producers on the Godfather movies came up and he said just theoretically hypothetically how soon would it take you to get packed up and out of this office? hypothetically, how soon would it take you to get packed up and out of this office? So, would you do it by saying no rush, but tomorrow would be good? This is going to sound like a strange question, where were the offices?

Did they have you on the studio a lot? No, this was in light mode of entertainment, this is Roland's company in West Hollywood, Robertson Boulevard. And so they had a loft, and so it was sort of the idea loft, so we had the Nintendo console, and I logged many serious hours planned. So I became an addict of Super Mario Brothers. And I was actually the one who was kind of the keeper of the game flame. Like I insisted, you know, well, we can't just ignore all of the keeper of the game flame. Like, I insisted, you know, well,

we can't just ignore all of the stuff. Like Nintendo had given us a cheap cheat sheet of like, here's the characters, you know, the babam and the thwumps and the, you know, so we've got to reference these guys somehow. And so I was wherever possible, I'm like, you know, shoe-horning, well, this is toad. Yeah. The guy with the, this is toad. Yeah.

The guy with the harmonica is toad, and this is, you know, we had, we couldn't do Bowser, because that was just too weird. So we made him coop, and we couldn't do peep. So why was Bowser too weird? Mm-hmm. I think you know. I guess. I think you can't help but think of the Sean Anaga. Yeah. Yeah. It's just especially that running. Not threatening. He's also

yeah. He's also one of the least threatening members of Sean Anaga. Not to mention already it's a non threatening band. Yeah. So. Yeah. Is he though? All right. He does, he does, you know, flex his muscles a lot. That's true. But what would have been the whole joke is that he's not that strong, but his muscles aren't that big. Many ways to your thing. I wonder, is it scarier to have like a dinosaur,

dragon man, dragon turtle man, or Dennis Hopper? And I think Dennis Hopper's scarier. Yeah. With that haircut at least. Yes, and in real life, even scarier. Yeah. Well, I wanted to ask about that too. It seems like it was a tense production

and I don't know how close you were to it, whether you wouldn't tell me. So what happened was Ed Solomon and oh God, I forgot the other guy's name. I'm sorry, other guy. Ed Solomon and a partner were brought in after us. Well, actually, no, they brought George Stone in who had worked with them on Max Headroom and I think, oh no, and then Dick Clement and Enla Franay, there was a bunch of a couple of really seasoned British sitcom writers. They did a draft, there was sort of a kind of a die hard draft, so there was a lot of work done on

this script, and honestly the their draft was what got like Fiona Shaw interested, like they created that character and gave her a bunch of stuff to do. And then Ed Solomon came and sort of undiddle. So she's in the movie now, and kind of wondering what happened. So lots and lots of right. It's a very curious character part now. Yeah, her character, you're like, why is this in the movie? That makes sense that it's left over from an earlier draft.

Yeah. Well, and I think it was in the movie because Rocky and Annabelle were really kind of interested in making this more and more adult. They didn't want it to be a kid thing at all. They wanted it to be like, you know, hyper aggressive characters and kind of a punk rock feel. And I can see some of that on the screen.

Yeah, and the police officers all wearing fetish gear with bedazzled police on their backs, you know, that's good. They loved that. They had all over the office, they had the like spiky rubber suits everywhere. And I can't, I can only surmise. But yeah, so they, so there are no more straps. Ed Salman's, I think, wrote the final shooting

draft in a week of all nighters. And that's what they were shooting. And we were kind of friendly with one of the guys in the office, one of the production people, Lenny Young. And we were keeping tabs on what was going on and kind of wondering, you know, we'd worked on it. And we liked the project and we were, you know, we were motivated to stay involved.

And he suggested we might want to come out to the set. And so Terry and I said, all right, well, and we got in a car and we drove to North Carolina from Chicago. And we showed up on the set and Rocky comes running over and says, oh, good you're here. I was just saying, I need a couple of pencils. And that was his term for the people who would listen to him and write down what he said. And then the producers went, oh, good, you're here. We need a couple of people to cut 25 pages out of everything that we haven't shot yet,

because we're $25 million over budget. Yikes. And so... Did you do this? So we played with the margins and you were cutting stage directions and things like that to make it short. Yeah, you know that dialogue extended where that one extra word, you know, gets that up on the page.

Perfect. Yeah. It feels so good when you get rid of a line and it's like, and you're like, I didn't change anything about how this, how much time this will take, but it certainly looks like it's shorter. Oh, feels so good. Hey, kid. Oh, feels so good. Hey kid, your dad tell you about the time he broke Stephen Dwarf's nose at the kid's choice awards.

In Dead Pilots Society, scripts that were developed by studios and networks, but were never produced, are given the table reads they deserve. When I was a kid, I had to spend my Christmas break filming a PSA about Angel Dust, so yeah, being a kid sucks sometimes. Presented by Andrew Reich and Ben Blacker, Dead Pilots Society, twice a month on MaximumFun.org. You know, the show you like, Thaig Hoba with a scarf who lives in a magic dumpster? LAUGHTER

Doctor Who? Yeah! I'm going first. It's me, Jackie K. K. Shud. Man, she's always this bossy. I'm Laura Kilhart. We're a bunch of stand-up comics and we've been doing comedy

like 60 years total and you told them us, but we look amazing. And we're running out. We drop every Monday on Max Fun, and it's called the Jackie Laurie Show, and you could listen to it and learn about comedy and learn about anchor management and all the things.

And Jackie is married, but childless, and I'm unmarried, but child full. So together, one complete woman. Is that just what that one's gonna say? Yeah, yeah. And we try to make Kyle laugh just like that and say, oh my god, every episode. It's a good job.

Jackie and Laurie show, Monday's only on maximum fun. This podcast is sponsored in part by BetterHelp Online Therapy. We get our cars tuned up to prevent bigger issues down the road. We get annual checkups and go to the gym to maintain physical wellness and prevent injury and disease. Well, going to therapy is like all of the above. Its routine maintenance for your mental and emotional wellness to prevent bigger issues down the road.

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a person who is happier in your own skin, in your interactions with people who could communicate better, all of these are things that they're beginning to help. Even just someone who feels like they have a place that they can put the feelings or the thoughts or the worries they don't have a place for. There's almost nobody I can think of in the entire world who would not benefit from just having at the very least the outlet that therapy provides, if not the help for the things that Dan talks about, which are things that almost everybody needs help with, with the possible exception of like, I don't

know, Patrick Stewart maybe. You see, you know, he seems really happy, you know, but I bet that's probably a result of therapy. I might be starting a room, but it shouldn't be a room because everyone should get therapy. Yeah, but he and it's possible. It's possible to call him around. Yeah, they seem very well adjusted. That'll be fun.

And but if you're not them, which you maybe, if you are them, please get in touch. We'd love to have you on the flop house, Ian McAllen or Patrick Stewart or both at the same time. But if you're not them, then it's worth looking into therapy just to get you to that Patrick Stewart Ian McAllen level of just feeling comfortable in your own skin, you know. Yeah. Well, this podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. And the Flop House listeners get 10% off their first month

at betterhelp.com slash flop. That's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P. .com slash flop. So yeah, the set was a disaster. It was shooting in this abandoned cement factory in North Carolina. They shot the crow there. And so there already been a horrific incident. It's got a really good track record for smooth shoots. And it's 110 degrees and they can't run any air conditioning because of the sound.

And then they can't use any air conditioning because of the sound. And then they can't use any of the sound anyway. Oh, God. It's horrible. And everyone is miserable and nobody has, none of the directors, sorry, none of the actors are, you know, getting any direction, really. And so they're all sort of a float and Richard Edson and Fisher Stevens. You know, they're basically making up everything.

They're just improvising everything that they're doing. Yeah, that was a question I had as how much of that was on the page and how much was them just trying to do a riff on... I think they were just trying to, you know, and they wanted as much screen time as they could. So they would go, keep riffing. And they were great. Fisher Stevens is actually in the first movie that Terry and I got made called Mystery Date.

So he plays a psychotic flower delivery person who's chasing after Ethan Hawke on a date that's gone awry. So lots of misery on the set, but also, I, we had a great time. Like everybody else is miserable, we show up. And it's like, oh my God, look at this set of Dino Hatton and look at these props and look at the Goombas, and you know, this genius production design

of the creatures and the Goombas. It's a guy named Patrick Toppillus who did all of the creature design. Yeah, I think he's done, he was on that show, Face Off, I think. Oh wow. I think he was one of the, I don't know if he was a regular judge, but I definitely feel like I've seen him on there. And yeah, he's very well known.

Now he does all of the Zact Snyder stuff. And I think he did some underworld stuff too, maybe. Possibly, he was a genius. And so a lot of incredibly talented people, and it's fun to see the effects, and what are they called it? Articulated puppet that was Yoshi. So there's these sticks that are coming out, that are blue screened out, and they're walking this thing,

and there's all these wires coming, and there's puppeteers doing all of this blinking and stuff and it just it looked It looks real on the set And so that was amazing But no the actors were just miserable Samantha Mathis a part Of course Samantha Mathis. She was shooting another movie at the same time So she was coming from the set of at the same time. So she was coming from the set of the thing called love and I think she and River Phoenix were an item at the time. And so if you freeze frame the movie, you can see like she

hasn't slept. But think of the stories she gets to take to that set from the Super Mario. she gets to take to that set from the Super Mario. Yeah, that must be. Wait, what tonal whiplash between those two movies? She starts calling River Phoenix Yoshi on the set of the other one. And you're like, what? Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were a dinosaur for a second. I apologize.

What set am I on? It must be the scene that said it looks, yeah, it looks like it must have been amazing just to walk around in it, you know, just to get to it looks, yeah, it looks like it must have been amazing just to like walk around in it, you know, just to get to see it. Yeah, it really was. And, and you know, you miss, you miss a lot when it's on film, you know, they, every corner is crammed with stuff. Yeah.

That, you know, the, that's, I think that's the great joy of being the screenwriters, just knowing that some poor, uh, prop person had to stay up late and make the, you know, the meat donuts that you wrote into the thing. So yeah, and we hung out mostly, so Fiona Shaw was trying to get us to write more stuff for her because she thought we were dick, Clement Ian Loverferne. It's great. And yeah, so we hung out with Richard Edson and Mojo Nixon when we could and mostly we hung out in the editorial department and I became really good friends

with Mark Goldblatt, who's stayed an amazing close friend for years. In fact, I thought of you guys because he, or much, well, a long time ago now, through Mark Goldblatt, I met Stuart Gordon and got to, you know, got invited to the private casting crew screening of Castle Freak. Oh, wow. Oh, man. Oh, man. Castle Freak is like Kevin Bacon. You're never more than six degrees away from it at any given time, you know.

You got to, maybe you got to see our friend, our new friend Barbara Krampton who still puts little hearts on our Instagram stories sometimes. She's amazing. She's the best. She's so sweet. Yeah, so yeah, we hung out in the editorial

and it was pretty clear from looking at the editorial that this was not working. Yeah. You know, they tried real hard and they kept, I think as you guys noted, they just kept cutting it faster and faster. Yeah. Oh, wait. I was trying to take notes while I was watching it and a long time flop, listeners will know that I usually, the only time I get to watch these movies usually as well, I'm doing the dishes or notes while I was watching it and a long time flop, how listeners will know that I usually, the only time I get to watch these movies, usually as well I'm doing the dishes

or now while I'm eating lunch. And I had, it meant that like, the dishes were taking me so long because I was like, hold on, wait, I gotta write more notes, hold on, hold on a second. Like usually I can let a scene go by in a movie and then write down, you know, in the line what happened in the scene.

But with this it was like, wait, okay, then this thing happened, this, okay. so they get brought to the interrogation room and Koopa's there and he's pretending to be a lawyer. But then he immediately drops that act and starts just telling him that they're Koopa. They's Koopa and then they get to take it away to be devolved. And they see another guy get devolved and so Mojo Nixon gets turned into a Koopa and they give him his harmonica.

And then they're about to devolve the Mario brothers that they pushed Koopa in, but just a little bit. And so he doesn't get devolved all the way and they escape. Like it's, oh, the that they push Cooper in, but just a little bit. So he doesn't get devolved all the way and they escape. Like, the movie is like, yeah, I feel like if you close your eyes for too long while watching the movie then you're like, what happened? Where are they?

What's going on? Which in retrospect is super fun. Like it makes the movie more fun in some ways that it's like the movie as soon as the title screen comes up, Super Mario Bros. It's like the movie is checking to make sure you have your seat built on and then it's like, okay, let's go like 100 miles per hour, let's keep moving. Yes. Well anyway, we're on the set trying to cut lines and scenes and we get this horrible call from a PA that we need to come immediately, that the directors and the producers need us immediately because Dennis Hopper is very unhappy.

And so basically, the producers and the directors have thrown us under the bus because we cut like four lines out of some speeches and he you know he'd already committed what few brain cells you know we're working to like memorizing the one that he memorized and he hollered at us for at least half an hour like like it would you if you timed it like he kept screaming he made me look up the word act in the dictionary and read it out loud. It was, it was, Wait, did you have a dictionary on set? Yeah, that's, yeah.

Yeah. That's somebody, like somebody, some poor PA had to go get it as dictionary so I could read the definition of the word act. And yeah, and it's like, basically whatever week, whatever time we saved by cutting the four logs, was eaten up in the production by, I think we lost the whole day for Dennis that day. And yeah, everybody, nobody escaped, unscathed, eventually we left and we were done with our little, you know, we cut what we could and we,

and we, you know, did the best we, there was no ending because the ending we had written was supposed to be on top of the Brooklyn Bridge and was this giant climactic battle on top of the Brooklyn Bridge. And that had gotten scrapped long ago. And so we pitched this kind of goofy like, we'll just make it as goofy as possible. There'll be a babam, it'll be tiny. Coupa will go into a bucket and then a giant, you know, tyrannosaurus head will come out. And that's what they wound up shooting. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And in some ways ways it was pretty good Did Dennis up river apologize? I'm guessing not but I'm willing to be proven wrong. No, okay I wish I was wrong on that that he likes that you nobody nobody apology nobody apologizes in Hollywood Yeah, so we left and we here's the thing, okay. Anybody who does anything in Hollywood knows this. You are deluded all the time that this could work. Yeah.

Like you hope springs eternal. It's like this treadmill of hope where you're like thinking, you know, it's not a good movie, but there are worse movies that have made a good $g dollars on Memorial Day. Maybe this, you know, who knows what we don't know. But they had a test screening and it did not go well. And a lot of people in the audience were confused, essentially, like they didn't understand the premise. And so they brought Terry and I back to write ADR dialogue.

And the post-production supervisor said it was the most ADR dialogue she had ever seen in a movie. Because the sound they'd captured on set all had to be looped. And then we came in and whenever a character is in the long shot or turning their head away, we're saying, media right, earth, parallel dimensions. Nobody got it. And then they forced us to write an intro to set up the premise. And we're like, we're dragging our heels. Nobody wants to do this intro. And because they have no budget left. And who's the guy who does your animation?

Tony Oker is the guy who does the intros for the live show and then John Holt, our friend did the interstitials in this streaming thing this last time. I think we got somebody's like second cousins, nephews, girlfriend. I don't know, wherever they got this person, Our thought was, okay, we'll do an animated intro in the style of the video game. Right? Like that will tie it all together. We'll

do a, you know, it'll look like the video game and we had Dan Kesselon at a reading the voiceover and I'd known him from Chicago. And we had, yeah, so we wrote this thing like Brooklyn 65 million years ago and then Brooklyn now, of course, no, you know, meteor ever hit Brooklyn. Okay. Yeah, it wouldn't have the guts. It wouldn't have the balls to come at you learn something every day. That shit elsewhere, meteorite. You'll learn something every day. Take that shit elsewhere, me, you right.

Come on, forget about it. So we added all this dialogue, looping, and we added the intro, and it's still, we had the premiere screening, and my own mother came up to me at the premiere screening and said it was the worst movie she'd ever seen in her life. Well, I can introduce your mother to some other movies from the flop house's back catalog that I assure her our worst. You're supposed to lie.

You're my mother. Oh, yes. Parents, I think they get a thrill out of out of those moments. There's a number of things I've worked. There was something I won an award for writing and my dad was like, and I said I won an award for him. He goes, well, I've worked. There was something I won an award for writing. And my dad was like, and I said, I won an award for him, he goes, oh, I thought it was pretty poor. I thought that one was pretty poor. I was like, wow. Wow.

Appreciate it. Not your best effort. So I have a two part question. The first is, did you have a hand in the end of the movie where they, that is very blatantly setting up the next adventure. I have to admit that that was entirely me. Okay.

So that's what I was hoping you were going to say, what was the plan for the next adventure? Yeah. So, all right, so what was supposed to happen? Oh yeah. Is when they merged the dimensions, we envisioned there being like sort of, how there's a multiverse, it's very popular now.

That we would see all of these incredible other dimensions. And like including the video game, like you'd see the characters in a video game dimension, and you'd see like the evolved from chipmunks. You'd see a bunch of different things that were, it wasn't just the dinosaurs. So idea for the sequel was, the dimensions are collapsing

and there's a whole bunch of other dimensions and we've gotta somehow stabilize the meteor and. That's a great idea, etc. And they had already tacked. They tacked on the- And when we was coming out, it's the new Spider-Man movie. And also the last Spider-Man cartoon movie.

And kind of all of Rick and Morty. Yeah. We were ahead of our time, what can I say? Well, it was amazing to have you appear. If you want to see him appear and two-thirds of the flop house look panicked all the sudden, like they've been caught doing something they shouldn't be. You can watch the live show for a little bit more probably now.

But before you go, we wanted to ask whether there was anything you wanted to plug, anything you wanted to say to the listeners, any message you want to get out in the world. Something to the young generation for the future. The younger, yeah. Well so for one thing, one of the things that is sad to me is that my writing partner, Terry Runte, really did not want to be remembered as, you know, primarily is the guy who wrote Super Mario Brothers. And he died quite a while ago and I realized, oh, you know what? There's a whole bunch of his stuff

that's really brilliant that I could put on the internet. And so I'm launching a website, the sort of attribute to hand called terri runtay.com. His birthday is coming up on October 8th and the site will launch then. And I'm doing a little zoom reading of a story about Super Mario Brothers. People want to, I don't know when this is coming out, but if it's coming up before October 8th, you can go to terrieruntay.com and sign up and get the zoom link for that. I should note, there's a couple of guys, Ryan Haas and Steven Applebaum, who are absolute maniacs about Super Mario Brothers. And they've created a whole archive

of everything about the movie at smbmovie.com. And so if you're interested in how this movie, the genesis of this movie and the disastrous production of it and everything else, all of that is there at SMBmovie.com. I will say that there are movies that I, I mean, as much as I enjoy the Super Mario Brothers movie, there are other movies that I that I dearly love that I find the making of them not half, not even 10th is interesting as I do the making of this movie.

So now it's like, like there's nothing I don't want to know about the making of this movie. I just want to know everything I can. So I'm gonna be spending a lot of time on that site, for sure. Yes. Well, I think you guys can take some credit here because apparently today there was a news article about how Super Mario Brothers is trending and is number six in the charts on Amazon

and people are buying. I am assuming it's all because of the live show Oh, yeah, yeah, it's the flop house bump. We call it yeah Only if only we had that much I don't think it's that Chris Pratt news or anything like that No, they I mean they want to get that news out of there before our live show anyway because they want Yeah, yeah, yeah, I change the conversation wave. Yeah because they want to, yeah, they want to catch the wave. Yeah.

Yeah. That's the way. It was the way it was. It tasted the right, but no one's going to be interested in Super Mario Brothers after the Flop House show. It's only the huge lead up to the Flop House show. So you better release this Chris Pratt information now. Well, thank you, Parker, for being a listener

and also for not hating us for talking about the movie, which we all, I think, really enjoyed. So perhaps there's no reason to... Thank you. Yeah. No, it was a big question for me whether it was a good, bad, worst movie my mother had ever seen in her life or a bad bad worse movie my mother had ever seen in her life. Well, there's no better place to stop than there.

Thank you to Alex, our outsmith, our producer. Go for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought why not do both of them. He got two, he got two in the mail, use both. Go for the maximumfund.org, go over to maxelfund.org. Check out the other podcasts. Thank you again to our guest, Parker Bennett,

but for the flop house, I've been Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Lily Kaelin and our guest has been Parker Bennett. And don't forget, if you get, if you're listening to this on day of release, to go check out our limited edition merch, and you might be able to still catch that live show. Bye!

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