The Flop House - FH Mini #69 - Gnome Named Gnorm Gnews, with Parker Bennett

Episode Date: December 10, 2022

You remember Flop House superstar, Parker Bennett, right? He co-wrote the legendarily strange Super Mario Bros, and we talked to him about his experiences with that movie in FH Mini 39. Well, he heard us mention A Gnome Named Gnorm in our recent mini with Griffin Newman and dropped us a line to reveal he and his partner did some punch-up on everyone's favorite buddy comedy starring a horrific gnome and Anthony Michael Hall. So he's back to share more tales of his fascinating career!Ever tried Microdosing? Visit Microdose.com and use FLOP for 30% off + Free Shipping.

Hey, thanks so much for joining us. That's right. You have tuned into the Peach Pit. And this is a special Peach Pit. This is the Peach Pit Pocket Edition, where we review a mini episode of the Flop House podcast, one of their Flop House minis. As always, I'm your host, Stuart Wellington. And today we're going to be talking about Flop House mini 67.

We're doing a little special here. We're talking about a subsection of that mini episode where they talked about a little movie, a no named norm and joining me. I have some amazing guests. That's right. I have two of the hosts of the flop house. I guess Dan McCoy, Elliot Kaylen and returning flop house featured guest Parker Bennett. Thanks so much for joining me in the Pooch Pooch. Truly an honor. Yeah. It's always a pleasure to discover that that's what we're doing. Now, should we refresh our listeners memories about Parker, about our previous encounter with Mr. Bennett. Sure.

He was. So, one of the, take us on a ride. Take us on a ride. Every one of the listeners buckle your seat belts. One of the credited screenwriters for Super Mario Brothers starring Bob Hoskins and John like with Samo. The movie, not the Nintendo game. Yeah. Yeah.

And Parker popped up in our live show for Super Mario Brothers in the chat. And we were shocked and a little bit scared that a writer of the movie we were racking on showed up. But he joined us, talked to us a little bit, could not have been nicer, talked to us again on a mini about more Super Mario Brothers tales, but now it turns out- I feel like you slightly misrepresented the way we talked about Super Mario Brothers,

because you said that we ragged on it, but I think we all kind of liked it more than we expected. No, no, no, that's true. It was fortunate that it was a movie that was wild in all the right ways. I don't know if I'd say all the right ways. It was wild in a few ways. No, I don't know if I'd say all the right.

You know, it is. I will say that a gnome named norm makes Super Mario brothers look like citizencane. Wow. Now. So on the box, on the box, makers of No Name Norm, just put dot, dot, dot, look like, looks like it is encased. And it's a Parker Bennett. Now, I know Stuart, I'm sorry, I don't want to take over the reins of the peach pit.

What is this? The peach pit return pocket edition pocket edition pocket edition pocket edition. I don't want to. I don't know. He's just towards referring to the famous fact that peach bits have pockets in the and there's a pocket dimension inside of every peach. Yeah. Now I don't want to steal your your job, but uh, you know, that's part of the joy of the peach bit. Is that anyone, like we're a communal table, everyone can eat, paint quotidian, you know, that kind of thing. You, again, this is directions Parker,

not Stuart, host of Peach Bit Pocket Edition. Thank you. Parker, now you contacted me and let me know that you had a connection to an old name norm. Now, how, what connection is this? What, what part did you play in this? Did you play the part of norm? The titular gnome? I was involved. So I am an uncredited punch up writer on a known name norm. So my writing partner, Terry Runte, and I, right after our first spec script sale of mystery

date, we're looking for our next job. And our agent said, hey, there's a movie that's going into production. Would you guys be interested in doing a punch up, doing a joke punch up? It's being directed by Stan Winston. And we went, yeah, Stan Winston. He's like these amazing. He's the guy who elected all of our special effects. One of the handful of greatest special effects artists in the history of movies. I was going to make the others Rick Baker. Rick Baker. Sure. Got to be their Ray Harry housing. Got a top of that Tom. So many tons of eating. Yeah, Douglas Trumbull, Dennis Murrin.

Rob Poutine. Just a Rob Poutine. Rob Poutine. Rob Poutine. Inventor of Poutine. Bought botan. I don't know. I'd say Stephen Kastanski, director of psychogorbit. Of course, our listener Todd Vaziri has to. And we're barely scratching the service. There's anyway, there's also, I forgot the name of the guy who did the, the special effects for the invisible man in the 30s, although I was just reading about him recently, that's an amazing movie to watch again.

So anyway, Stan wins his directing. You said, this Hollywood legend, he's going to be directing this film. Director of pumpkin head. Yeah. Well, this, this was what exactly when pumpkin head had yet to come out. So we didn't, we weren't forewarned in any way. It's hard. Well, pumpkin head took a while because it's hard to pass a pumpkin head through the birth canal. It's an incredibly large head. It takes a lot of time. That's a C section you're asking for. I gotta say I like pumpkin head. I pumpkin head has qualities. Yeah. One of those qualities is named Lance Henrickson. I knew I knew Stewart was going to point to the to the Henrick.

I I had I got to introduce pumpkin head at the Alamo one time and I was like, I really want to talk about how great Lance Henrickson is. But at the same time, like, I'm very nervous to look up any of his modern political beliefs because he is an old man. And he looks like he might be crotchety and have problems. But I did not look up anything. I love him. I'll keep my head in the pumpkin head sand. If you look, it also starts the dog from Grimland's pumpkin head. It's mushrooms to other stars. That's a second. It says just Lance Hunter Xen and mushroom in

bump. Yeah, he's above the tide on the question. Or it says and mushroom as as Benji at the end. Now how do you get into uncredited punch up work? Because that sounds ideal to me. As someone who is also love to do that. Yeah, you can get paid for it, but you don't have to take any of the blame

for a no-name norm. How does one do this? I'll try to give you the advice that I give everyone, which is you just have to get lucky. You know, when you sell your first script and all your friends go, well, how do you do this? How do you get into breaking to Hollywood? It's like, well, if you follow our path,

we stumbled into an agent who was a book agent of one of our bosses in advertising, and he agreed to represent us on some rewrite job of a thing she was pitching, and then he wound up going to triad artists in LA from New York, and we kind of went along in his back pocket. And we wrote a spec script and he and another agent. So this is Todd Harris and Bruce Kaufman managed to sell our spec script, but kind of again, stroke of luck. We had this writer's guild strike that you know,

went on forever. And so there was this huge demand for real. Oh, so this is the big redder skilled strike in the late 80s. The real big one. Yeah, 88, I guess. Okay. Yeah. And so after that happened, they went to work going, you know, here's the new hot advertising, you know, John Hughes. These are the, these are similar to John Hughes.

You know, Harold Raimus, these guys are from Chicago and there's two of them. So two for one, it's a partnership. You can get two for one. That's some salesmanship right there. I like them. Yeah. And they, you know, they wrote, hey, mystery day, they wrote that in like three weeks. So you imagine what they could do for you and their chief right now.

Yeah. Get them, get them while they're cheap. So we'd come out to LA to take a bunch of meetings and this wasn't one of them. So later on, we got a call. Hey, you wanna do this thing? And I had been a huge special effects nerd for the forever like I read famous monsters of film land and then Fancoria and then the big boy's Sinefx.

And so Stan Winston was like a hero. He at that point had done the thing and aliens and he'd done, oh I can't even remember. Lots of amazing stuff. He hadn't done T2 yet. Is the thing the best monster effects of all time? I don't know, it's up there, right?

It's right. You can't follow up. You can't follow up. He's the spider legs. It's so gross. Certainly up there. It's still fucking gross. That's pretty impressive.

Yeah. So we said, we said, yeah, sure. And they said, you know, that'll be, you know, this is great. Two weeks of work, at that time, it was 12 grand, which, you know, was just like, oh my God, I would have paid them to do it. Yeah. And they flew. I'm glad your agent stepped in and stopped you from doing that, I assume.

Yeah, he stopped us from going from taking out a loan to pay them for a job. Stuart, I just want to pause for just half a second and let Stuart know that Winston's first Oscar nomination was for heart beeps. So we're getting the poll straighter movie. Yeah. Again, not a Paul Schrader film. But, oh man, I'll have to zip over to Facebook and see what Paul is. That's the same about this. He's busy talking about why it's wrong to have any movies in the, in the top 10 list of all time that aren't a hundred years old. But the, I, at this point Stewart, I start believing that Paul Schrader made heartbeams.

You said it so many times now. And I'm like, I guess did he go straight from like American jiggle out of working a pre-production on a heartbeeps? I guess he did. Guys, I am a, I am a perfect example of just manifesting your wish, you know. Your wish is that he made heartbeeps, okay? But sorry, I didn't realize that. Have you guys ever gone down the road of like, what if Paul Schrader had made heartbeats, okay? But sorry, I interrupted. Have you guys ever gone down the road of like, what if Paul Schrader had made heartbeats?

No, and that's a very good question. It's a very good question. It sounds like the worst like most specific 80s stand up comic. You ever wonder if Paul Schrader made heartbeats? I think we'd go something like this. We'll go a little something like this. I'm a robot being faced with temptation.

So they offered you this job. It's an amazing amount of money. It was our first thing to work on that would actually be filmed. Because at the point when you make a speck sale, you have no idea. And Mystery Day actually took two and a half years of rewriting before it was turned into

sort of a muddled mess. We'd written Mystery Day, and we forgot to add a mystery. So we'd written this dark comedy, it was basically after hours for teens. And it was just this chaotic, you know, dissent in to nightmare is this guy trying to make his date go well, but he's being mistaken for his Pathocolder brother and

and And so we made this really dark comedy and they Orion wouldn't cop to the fact that they didn't want to make a really dark comedy. So we kept asking, you know Well, is it okay that it's this dark and our producer would keep saying, well, if you can make it work, and we kept believing her. Oh, no, that's code. For about two years, and then we finally gave up and sort of made it all a wacky misunderstanding about the dead body and the trunk because he took the car without permission, et cetera,

et cetera. Ethan Hawk, early Ethanke role. Yes. Recently on a podcast disowned, making a poll shrader. Speaking of poll shrader, who made one movie with Ethan Hawke, the famous duo of Ethan Hawke and poll shrader. Do you think on the set of Moon Knight, Ethan Hawke and Oscar Isaac talked about Paul Schroeder. I bet you they did. I bet you they did. Because what else are they going to talk about on the set of Moon Knight?

Not Moon Knight. That's for sure. Certainly not. I don't think anyone was talking about it on the set. I feel like here's the thing about Oscar Isaac. Then we'll get back to this story, which is more interesting than what I'm going to say. Oscar Isaac has now played two different Marvel characters, and I feel like he is deserving of a better vehicle for him playing a Marvel character.

He was Moon Knight and he was a apocalypse. And both, those are, and both times I feel like he was not super well served by the two. So who should he play? Interesting enough, the meeting where Oscar Isaac convinced Ethan Hawke to do the project over beers was at the Brooklyn Inn and my friend was bartending that day and complain that Ethan Hawke didn't pay for his beer. Burn, I can get away with it. You know, whatever. Yeah, tell me who should Oscar Isaac play in the Marvel universe. I don't want, and don't tell me like more the dead teenage or don't give me the super

zealous characters. Give me, give me a solid character. Let's, let's give the card counter himself. The proper respectators. Wait a minute. What if Marvel introduced a character called the card counter? Yeah. Yeah. So mystery day is taking forever. Stan Winston's going to direct a Gannon named Gannon and you're gonna, and you're gonna be brought into the project to give it that Bennett sparkle. Right. Bennett Rantez sparkle. I think at this point, well I mean, you can take a look at it. He's not here. I've managed to to put off talking about a known name norm. I guess it's probably time. So we showed up in NLA to do this work and pumpkin head was premiering. So we got to meet Stan at the premier of pumpkin head at the Sinoramidome. Oh, man. Think of that red carpet, all the celebs, the sky was dark.

All the stars were there. And we were not, we were not knocked out by pumpkin head. We were not big fans come. We were a little perturbed by pumpkin head walking out and kind of wondering, you know, what are we going to say to Stan and Terry's like, you're going to have to lie. Like that, that was not a good movie. And you're going to have to lie a lot better than that. But our agent was with us and he said, no, no, no, you don't have to lie. This is, this is how it works. And in Hollywood, you have to master the 100% non-committal, you know, phrasing after something that you

don't want to comment on. So you walk out and you go, what a movie or something like that. Like, yeah, he gave us a lot of those examples, like, you know, only you. That's like my grandmother's screen. And sure, I'm going to tell you about how she would, if she, yeah, would people showed, if people showed her their babies and she thought the baby was ugly, she would go, it's a baby. She couldn't bring herself to say, oh, what a cute baby. She's really a pure factual statement with no value, judge. But luckily for us, we didn't have to master the non-competal non-complement because Stan was,

you know, he was surrounded by swarms of, of, uh, supplicants and we just waved and, uh, we're not, we're not way. We met with him in his cool North, at this point, it was in Northridge. He had his, his workshop. Uh. I think it was Northridge. That sounds awesome. Yeah, and it's designed to impress. Like you walk in and there's the power loader from aliens, you know, in the giant alien queen hovering over it. And you expect the fog machine to start any minute. Yeah. And there's a big sign that's like, come inside, you bitches. Various predators are, you know, spaced

around and the thing that they had from the thing. And whatever you say, you mean living pre, you mean living big cats. And then we seem like to have to keep his workers on their toes. Like they get this ready and a Jaguar might leave at you at any moment. Or do you mean the predator, the special effects? No, I'm at the special effects from the movie. Yeah, it's a frame copy of the ice cube album predator. Multiple, because he that predators movie that Stan Winston basically saved, because I don't

know if you guys have ever seen the footage before of the early alien costume that they were going to like mat out. And it looks so goofy. It's like a, it's like Big Bird is, is, is taking down the, the, the mercenary is one by one and then they had to reshoot. Now I got a lot better. I got up. Guys, it's worth looking into the history of Jean Claude Van Damme in his one day playing

the predator with this goofy costume on. I got a break in for the traditional, of course, this will be peppered with Stan Winston Winston facts. Oh, that's always in 1983 Winston designed the Mr. Robotter face mask for the American rock group sticks. I forgot he did that for their like, their, their like album movie that they made. Yeah. So look at it for another. Not a design that really, not a design that holds up well. It's kind of a racist caricature. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I just googled original predator costume. And the first image is a sexy Velma costume.

That's the thing. Originally, it was a sexy Velma was taking down the mercenaries. Probably should log out of my account before I do these things. So Stan Winston's workshop, it sounds like it's an amazing wonderland of our favorite film monsters and creatures. So this is, you know, as anybody who's been involved in the entertainment industry, it's sort of a bipolar experience where there's very, there's highs and there's lows and they sort of, you know, whiplash between them. So kind of a high, like we're in this workshop, and there's all these great things and the workers are working and and then Stan wants is so excited to show us the work in progress, the macket of the gnome and he's very, very, very excited because he wants he's going to design something that

is so unhuman like that it's impossible that it could be a guy in a suit. Like, see, he's very excited about this one. It's gonna be this million dollar articulated, animatronic puppet thing, and it's gonna be very convincing, and nobody will, you know, the body's gonna be super skinny, and the head's gonna be kind of long and extended,

and there's no way that anybody could mistake this for a guy, a little guy in a suit. That was his motivation. And then he showed us this thing and it, it looked like a drowned rat. It was, it was this sort of elongated, yeah, ratty face. But, but was there any thought in your mind that it could be a guy in a suit? Yeah.

Check me out. It's because it sounds like the mission was accomplished. Yeah. It had this weird uncanny. I don't want to say valley, but because it was bigger than a valley. It was like a blast radius of uncanniness that was like the eyes were not real, but the teeth looked like they were just dentures that were put in. And it was the big ears. It was not cute. I was a little worried right away that this was not going to be a character that endeared itself to the audience. You're saying Sam Winston was so focused on whether he could do it.

He never asked whether he should do it. I think that's it. And then when you look at the movie, there's plenty of like guys in suits. Like you got like a lot of this close-ups of, you know, of, of, of, of, of, of, of known feet. And it's not clearly some person in a suit walking around. I, I haven't seen a gnome named Norm. I have, I definitely checked out some of the trailer and scenes after we discussed it, on the flop house, and I was struck by how defiantly un-cute it is. Like Stan Winston

really just, like even though this is kind of ostensibly a family film, he's like, okay, but I'm going to make a real creature here. It's just going to be living next to Anthony Michael Hall and it was very disturbing. It's a, it's a, it really seems like he took the gulflings from Dark Crystal and was like, how do we make them scary? Like, how do we make those something that if a kid saw it under their bed, they would die of a heart attack? Well, I think that this has always been the tension, I think, of our dark sensibilities

and our wanting to do something more adult, and the fact that the source material sort of bends itself into kid territory is also present in Super Mario Brothers. So we did this dark, twisted thing that was this parallel world where everything's really violent and reptilian. And here we added a lot of things that shouldn't be in a kids movie. We have like a chase with our hers and a guy, a dead body falls out of the casket. So I'm going to try to give it mouth to mouth. Looking at the cast list on Wikipedia, it does mention that there's an actress who just

plays stripper, which is not usually something you see in a kids movie. Yeah. I mean, it was, you know, I should go back to talk about this. It's also amazing. Wait, I should mention the cast list. There's a character named Zadar, but it's not played by Robert Zadar. Robert Zadar plays a different character. So it seems like a missed opportunity.

Robert Zadar plays Reggie. Sorry, but you're saying, so okay, this. What was I saying? Well, I wanted to mention this. So we didn't write this script. This is a script. Well, I was curious about that. How much of the script was written when it got to you and what shape was it in and that kind of thing?

Yeah, what were the things? Yeah, so this was ready to go. They were filming. They were building sets and designing knowns. And they had yet to cast it at this point when we came in. But they were like, they had a start date. So I think they might have had Jerry Orbok already cast. And I think he might have been excited to be like, he places first, possibly his first villain. I don't know. But he's like, you know, he's the standard cop. He's character of villainous character in the original off Broadway run of the fantastics,

I guess, he's sort of a con man. So I don't know because it's an out and out villain. You know, there's something kind of whimsical about him. And in the end, he does help bring the lovers together. But I get you're right. Yeah, this is more of a more of a villainous role than that one. The credit writers have credits on Robin Hood Prince of thieves as a screenwriter. Well, they went on to write and produce Robin Hood Prince of thieves. Yeah. Yeah. I think that draft was maybe they were involved with that. Oh, yeah. And now I'm looking at this now. I've, I've, Jerry were back his character names, Captain Stan Walton. I wonder if that was

confusing on the set to have a Stan Winston and a Stan Walton in the same place. And as the Dar and to Zadar, there is so many. So many to be about all the miss the goofy mixups on the set of a known name norm. I can already imagine it. I'm going to look at the goofs. You know, imagine if Robert Zadar showed up to Zadar's trailer, like imagine opening the door and Robert Zadar's there, that's wild.

Yeah, and he's bringing Zabars with him. Well, that's just because he was so thoughtful, you know, he had a heart as big as his face. So, so I think it's hard to remember because I didn't want to dig into the box that's, you know, it's Fort Layers do you didn't want to dig into the box that's, you know, it's for layers, do you know, an addict somewhere to find a script? Yeah. We appreciate that for this episode of the Peach Pit pocket edition. You didn't go into your archives.

Yeah. I think that would have been too much. But I have a feeling that vaguely in the back of my mind, because it was 30 years ago, I think pen denture had written sort of a serious mind did, you know, like it was, he took it very seriously. Penn Densham was, and John Watson are both British, and Penn is a little bit Elvin. He's got a sort of, he's got a sort of that, that L fish quality to him. And I think he related a little more seriously

to creating the backstory of this knowns world, and they needed to get the lumen to bring it to the surface, to gather the sunlight, to bring down to the world. So we were brought into basically undo all of that and make it joky. And probably for the better, given that the gnome was not very convincing. Yeah. So you're, so your first, like when you first approached a screenplay, you were, you

were brought into punch it up. Was it like joke free or were the jokes just not working? What's going on? It was, as I recall, it was pretty joke-free. It was like joke light at any rate. So the first thing we do with at that, you know, in that era, the first thing you do is you turn your lead character into Bill Murray. So we did that. That makes it like the way the way now pretty much every lead character becomes Chris Pratt at a certain point in the process. Yeah. Yeah. That makes it exactly. Again, the Super Mario connection.

Well, this is just natural casting. Yeah. All roads lead back to Bowser's castle. We built them. It makes sense. It's true. Yeah. So we wrote it sort of like, you know, like a wise, wise acre, wise cracking, you know, laid back kind of smooth talking, detective, young detective. And uh, about a, I guess maybe three or four days into our process, they'd cast Anthony Michael Hall as the lead. And we were hopeful, but dubious. Yeah. Um, we had actually met Anthony, Michael Hall. We were trying to get jobs at Saturday night live a few years, like maybe five years before and had visited the set. And it was the year that

it imploded essentially. Like they, this was this was the year they wanted to firing everybody in the cat. So it was good we didn't get the job. Because, and Alfrang install some of our stuff. It was not a good experience. Whoa. Install some of your material or store things like your stuff. No, like a lot of our car. It was, it was, I don't know, maybe that's too broad a word, but we had come up with

a sketch idea called that black girl that we wanted Dini Trevance to do because she was a fellow Chicago and a fellow, as someone from Second City that we knew. Uh-huh. And we pitched this idea to her and like maybe three weeks later, it was on the air. The cheat now, Frank, decided that that was a good idea. That's because I was, he was a guest on the Daily Show once when I was a production assistant and I made a remark backstage that then he used a variant of in the interview and I was like, wait a minute.

Really? Yeah. Wow. He's, and he went on, he went on to a political career with no issues, right? He is now a very successful, he continues to, he continues to, he's, he's, he's, he's, wow, and he went on, he went on to a political career with no issues, right? He is now a very successful, continues to remain in the Senate, no issues at all with boundaries that has that he had to deal with. By the way, I mean, there are no goofs for a known, named norm or this is a perfect movie. Goofs, but there is no canoes. But there's trivia.

Filmed in 1988, received a limited release in 1990, pulled from circulation and re-released in 1992. I assume like the Manchurian candidate, that was because of the Kennedy assassination. But there was that. Yeah, they remembered the Kennedy assassination. They wanted to re-release it on the 29th anniversary. Yeah. the Kennedy assassination, then they wanted to re-release it on the 29th anniversary. You probably already have a favorite animal.

Maybe it's a powerful apex predator like the tiger or a cute and cuddly panda. And those are great, but have you considered something a little more unconventional? Could I perhaps interest you in the Greenland Shark, which can live for nearly 400 years, or maybe the jewel wasp who performs brain surgery on cockroaches to control their minds? On just the zoo of us, we review animals by giving them ratings out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics. Listen with friends and family of all ages to find your new favorite animal with just the zoo of us on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get podcasts.

Hello, I'm a stuffy Dowager Countess. Travis? I'm judging everybody's manners. Oh no, Schwanners isn't, Judgy. It's about teaching you to be your best self and be a little more confident when you enter social situations that you don't understand and maybe also teach a little bit about history you didn't know or give you interesting things to talk about at parties. Yeah, like the secret life of Emily Post.

Or like why wristwatches are the way that they are. We can talk about table manners from the Victorian era. Sure, or what it's like to attend a Regency Ball. Yeah. from the Victorian era? Sure, or what it's like to attend a Regency Ball. Yeah, you can find all that and more. If you live in the shmanners on Maximum Fun, or wherever your podcasts come from, I guess. Manor shmanners, get it. So you've probably heard about micro dosing

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And when you're ready to launch, use offer code Flop to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So I did want to mention, Dan, that I envy you that you have not seen. No, no, I tried to watch it again and really couldn't make it through it. It's not a good thing. I mean, I'll tell you, out of the three of us, I'm the one most likely to go out and seek it out. So I haven't escaped yet, but that's my own fault. That's my own friend.

I urge you and all of the listeners to just know it had a time. This is a bad, bad movie. Okay. And this and not just. No amount of convincing people is going to work. Elliot has done a presentation on the movie Newke, like 40 times. And every time I seem to do this fucking thing, people come up to him afterwards and they're like, okay, I'm going to watch it. And the whole point, the

whole point is don't watch that movie is that it's a, it's the second worst movie I've ever seen. And but I used it when I used to every time every time people are like, yeah, yeah, that's going to be hilarious. I'm like, that's the good stuff. That's the pure stuff. I used to I used to host a screening series in New York in a movie theater there. And I would be like, this is a great movie. You've never seen it. It's really fantastic. You're going to love it. And I'd get minimal audiences. But if I was like, this movie is trash. It is the worst thing I would sell out. And it was just like, there's a certain type of

person who's going to join. Yeah, I'll lie around the block, yeah. Food fight. Food fight, yep. If we could, I bet we could sell out a screening of food fight. Oh, of course we could. I mean, we routinely sell out shows that we do. So I think I hopefully becoming more for us. Yeah, you added food fight to the mix. Yeah, yeah, we got

stoppable. Yeah, Madison Square Garden. We're selling that. Finally. So, no name, no, they had put us up. We were in a, we asked to be put up near the ocean because we're from Chicago. And they put us in the shotty holiday in in Santa Monica So did they were like technically you're near the ocean and did you see it? Did you look at it? And you went that's the biggest lake I ever seen and then and then the bellhop had to be like no No, it's not a lake. It's actually an ocean. You want wow Well, I don't know if you have experienced this, but coming from Chicago, the first time you hit LA, it's like, it's prehistoric.

Like there's these huge palm trees and spiky plants, and it's very alien looking coming from the Midwest where you have here. I feel like even coming from the East Coast, yet I've lived in LA for five years now, and when I'm driving, it'll suddenly hit me that these enormous mountains are everywhere around me. And it just strike, and I'm suddenly I'm like, what is this? Am I in the Bronx?

Is there gonna be a rumble? But like that, but it's just the fact that I'm surrounded, you're surrounded by this topography that is constantly reminding you how small you are, which really helps the studios when they're dealing with us as writers. That the very geography is reminding us that we're nothing. We're less than nothing. But yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. It just feels like a different world when you come into it. Yeah. And also if you're from the East Coast or Chicago, it's like there's architecture there.

And things that were built before 1950. So it's a very, it was very alien place. It actually took us a long time to consider moving out here. And Terry never got the chance, but I did. And did it too late. For all of you listening who want a career in Hollywood, come to Hollywood. Don't try to do it from Chicago. Only we were convinced like, oh, well, you know, there's Harold Raymus and John Hughes and Tim Kazzarenski. There's people doing it from Chicago.

And we thought we could do it, but turns out not. Anyway, we're still your, still your chance. Maybe. Yeah. We started in on Bill Maureen up the character and putting a little romance in and between between him and the gnome, right? Between him and the gnome. I think there's more to some implied, you know, tension. Yeah. It was pulled from circulation because the sex scene was deemed too graphic. That's it. That's why it was pulled from 1990 to 1992. They hit to wait for, they were like, it's not technically the 90s yet. People aren't ready for it. Yeah.

And then the culture, culture hasn't caught up. Yeah. So we wrote a bunch of things in there. We're just supposed to be in succions and in succions and have a, the character would come in like when he's introduced, he would come in sort of, you know, breeze in. He's, every way he's late and he's going to miss this mess up this big gig and they're going to hand it over to his rival Kaminsky. And he like shows up at the very last minute and sort of walks by Kaminsky and Kaminsky grabbed a candy bar out of the Venny machine and he's supposed to pluck it out of his pocket with, you know,

flair and say, oh good, my Zagnut bar. And so first of all, Stan, Stan wanted us to change it because he'd never heard of a Zagnut bar. So we weren't aware that this was a Midwest thing and not a West Coast thing. And so he was like, you know, I've never heard of this thing and we don't even know where to get them. And you should change this to a Snickers. And Terry and I were like, no, no, no, no, no, let us teach you about comedy.

Snickers. Despite being actually a word that means laughter is not a funny word. Even though it has the hard K sound, it sounds like proper placement. But Zagnut. That's a goofy candy bar. So we called the, he said, nah, nah, we, Terry called the leaf candy company in Chicago and told them what we were trying to do. And they sent two cases of Zagrebos to us. Yeah.

Nice. Now he's got no excuse. I was hoping they called this Reese's piece of money. They did see the ET thing go down. Yeah. Sorry. I was hoping you were going to say that that he called the Supreme Court and and and just as they're a good Marshall was like, no, Sagnaut is funnier. I took it. I will. But so we did. So did it get it? Did the bars get in now that they have the cases there? Well, we got the cases and then we we went around because we were pranksters at that time being young. We put them in various spots where Stan would like stumble over them for days.

So they were in his desk drawer and in his coat pocket and in his script binder and in the bookshelves. And so he would literally, for days, be running into Zagnut bars. And they've got a bright orange wrapper or a big Zagnut thing on it. And he finally relented. And yes, not only did it make it. Not only did it make it. Naturally occurring candy bar. It's everywhere. Not only did our beloved Zagnut bar make it into the movie, it's actually the last shot of the movie,

which today would have been a mid credit sequence, but it's the rival character with like a pile of Zagnut Bar wrappers at his feet, and the cleaning lady is like annoyed picking them up and he's stuffing another one in his mouth. So yes, Zagnut bars. Yeah, and of course they got that huge bump from a nominant norm. The Zagnut bar became the biggest. Inspired a bit in Beetlejuice, I believe. That's true. When we were all done,

there was still like an entire case of Zagnut bars and we had driven. So we, so this is the other thing when you're a young screenwriter is they, we had worked into the deal. We get unlimited, you know, we get an unrestricted first class plane ticket out to LA. And so we immediately cashed those in and then drove from Chicago to LA in Terry's 1957 Dodge Cornette. And so we were driving back with this case of Zagnut bars and we were literally Johnny's Zagnut bar. Every truck stop, every bar, every restaurant, every place we went, we just like handed out this coconut crusted goodness.

Wow. People were very confused. So you did, you did a real public service. I was worried that you were going to say you cashed in the plane tickets and then spent it all on Zagnut bars. You'd have something to eat on the drive. And then you get to LA and suddenly you're overwhelmed with Zagnut bars. Oh, you could have saved that money.

And this is why there are so many Zagnut bar trees between LA and Chicago. Because of the propagation. But it has to be said that Stan, he learned and then he turned around and he taught us some stuff too. So we were young screenwriters and he had some experience in the business. So he helped us understand a little bit about like how to write a car chase that he could film. Like we'd written a really funny car chase

with a hearse and a bunch of jokes about the line of cars that were following the hearse being turned into a police chase because Anthony Michael Hall jumps into the hearse, commenteers, the hearse, and then all of the mourners that are following have to go super fast on the streets of LA following this Hearst. But we'd written in such a way that it wouldn't cut together.

Like we wanted the, I think we wanted the coffin to fall out on a bridge and then tip, teeter over the bridge and then tip over. And it was stuff that he basically sat us down and showed us, like, well, I hear this wouldn't cut with this. That sounds great. So it was kind of, you know, kind of a good little learning lesson.

We were in our 20s. We needed to know stuff. Yeah. Yeah, the, the, the known was not convincing. We weren't on set. So we didn't see it be not convincing. We were in the, the, the horrid holiday. And, uh, but they asked us to stick around for another week. And so our, we said, well, we'll stick around for another week. They wanted us to do it for no money,

which I was all for in our agents. We're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no money. No with a G, because probably just like, no money, no money. Yeah, no money. That's, that's, it's, it's amazing how it, that's still how Hollywood still continues to want people to do things for no money. They're like, Hey, we, we want to do a little bit of extra work for us. But guess what? Here's the fun part. You're doing it for free. You're going to enjoy this. There's a little twist on it. Well, the, uh, uh, film, because filming studios are charitable organizations. No, it's right. According to their logistics. No, that's it's all. Oh, who was it? Who wrote men and black and, uh, and every year tweets about his.

And black Ed Salman, who said, who did it? Oh, men and black. Yeah. Ed Salman. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Ed Sal. Yeah. Yeah. Go right. Super Mario brothers. Oh, right, right, right. That's right. And every year he tweets about a how men in black, according to the reports sent in by the studio still has yet to make a profit. Yeah. That's right. I forgot. He was also that's right. You're telling us at the time. You were telling us what we tell Mr. Mare Brothers about how he about the stuff that he had, he

had done on that. Anyway, it all roads lead back to Super Mario Brothers. This is really amazing. It's really the central cultural moment of the 20th century. I think it's clear. It's a nexus. Sure. Yeah.

So we were, we were moved. We, our agent negotiated a little more money for us and we got moved to the hotel Shangri-La, which is actually right on the beach, which was nice. Although our room, of course, did not face the beach. It was facing inward. And yeah, so there might be a nice machine of it. The, well, the windows actually opened onto a hallway. Inside the hotel. They were just posters of windows. I keep imagining like a like a groucho in a night at the opera where everybody else has these big suites and he goes to his room and it's like, there's a cot and there's pipes

that going through the walls and things like that. So they they put you up with the Shangrila fine. The Shangrila on the first night there Terry goes to the bar and he picks up some dancer, professional dancer, and has sex with her on the rooftop while I'm writing gnome jokes. Oh, the life of a comedy writer, right guys. Yeah. So, yeah, so Terry's sort of like this, this Stuart Wellington of our group, more of a combination of Elliott and Dan. Yeah. Yeah, so we stayed another week. The office assistant we'd be friended, Kilani, lovely, and we hung out with her, sort of Polynesian, Hawaiian born, office assistant. She had a adorable daughter

and we'd hang out at her apartment. And then she wanted to show us her screenplay. So we just learned right away, like let's go back to Chicago where not everyone is working on the show. Everyone's working on a meat sandwich of some kind. And they're always like, yeah, yeah, now we're friends. Let me show you this meat sandwich I'm working on. Give me your notes on this. You think you show this to the right people? And honestly, that meat sandwich

is probably more exciting than most screenplays. Yeah. That's good point. Good point. That was a good book notes on a meat sandwich. It's much better than that movie hands on a meat sandwich, where whoever holds their hand on the sandwich, the longest gets it. But by that point, do you really want that sandwich? Just sitting out for a long time. Yeah. Hands on a hard meat sandwich, because it's stale. So then the only other, I think big contribution I made to the lore of a gnome named Norm was, I wrote the joke that the G in gnome is not silent. You did.

It's gnome. Yeah, that was me. And then there was some confusion about the name and then it was, no, it's gnome. And Anthony Michael Holland sist to silent and the gnome says, no, it's gonna not. And that was me. And it's an echo of a joke I would write later that Mario's last name is, of course,

Mario because it's the Mario brothers, which became canon. Yeah. Yeah. No small contribution. That's pretty amazing. I like that you are directly responsible for people tweeting at Elliot to correct him that the gnome in a gnome is pronounced gnome and gnome. So Dan likes to sick his legion of followers. I sick anyone. I'm just I just I just love I'm sick anyone. I'm just I just I just love

Imagining that unwittingly Parker set in motion many years later people tweet it. I'll get to tell him that he's mispronouncing the things in a movie that he's never seen that Mispronouncing the movie so there was no possible way. Yeah, like Ellie Ellie was probably having having a hard day, maybe he was dealing with some family stuff, some work stuff. He's like, look, I'm going to relax a little. I'm going to turn to my review. Yeah. Twitter. Yeah. Oh, I have some notifications perhaps I should look at these looks at them. Or should I call them good notifications for no reason in particular? Yeah. Not since a sound of thunder has, has a small incident in the past. Reap such horrifying consequences in the future.

Oh, that's lovely. So takeaways, takeaways from this experience. I forgot your hosting episode of the beach fits. If we come back to talking about this episode, when I come back to talk about the thief and the cobbler, are we gonna talk about this episode and it'll be the Peach Pitch pocket pocket? This isn't the question section of the podcast. All right.

I'm very curious about your work on the thief and the cop. I saw you worked on that. That's like, I feel like for years, I grew up hearing about that. It's like, you know, the legendary, you know, the legendary missing work, basically, you know. Yeah. I feel like I'm cursed in some way. I was about to say you're like the zealot of ill-fated projects. It seems like

I'm the like almost the mascot of the flop house screenwriter potentially. Yeah, so, you know, the thief in the collar is another whole story, but basically it was, it's a tragic story. I'm a huge Richard Williams fan, Jake Eberts, who produced Super Mario Brothers, or one of the producers of Super Mario Brothers, asked us kind of begged us. The movie had gone into, it was taken away from Richard Williams. He kind of gone nuts and wasn't finishing it. So the completion bond company took it over and they were redoing a Canadian animator. It was going to sort of finish it up so they could release something.

But Disney, you know, Disney had come in. We should say for everyone. It's not familiar with it. We should say that Thief and the Covlar is an animated film that is, the animation it is astounding, like it's gorgeous to look at. And but did he try to do it all by himself? Or was it that it was just too too ambitious the way they were trying? I don't know. I don't think he, well, he had a very, you know, at the time there was more experimentation going on in animation. And I think he had a sort of,

you know, yellow submarine idea where it was going to be really super trippy and his idea was there would be no dialogue. And the character was named, but the cobbler had a tack in his mouth and he would just sort of the tack would sort of move up and down. And I don't know if he was going to do like peanuts trombones or I don't know what his thought was. but he wanted to have basically this rich visual tapestry experience and it would fold in on itself and these crazy, you know, would use all of the Arabian artwork kind of sensibilities and he designed these amazing tank-, constructions that were like sort of, um, steampunk before steampunk. And, um, so he did all of this amazing work, but it just was like half done or three quarters done. And he just kind of, I don't know, he couldn't, he couldn't get it finished in the completion

bond company took it away. We didn't know any of this. So again, we're like sort of the, our hapless heroes, Jake, who we liked, we loved. He was very kind gentleman. He said, I really need somebody. We're gonna add dialogue. We've hired the guys from Disney to write the songs at Howard Ashman and whoever he was partnered with.

I think it was somebody different on this one. But anyway, we need to have some dialogue and can you help us out? Of course, we were going to help our friend and we didn't realize we were ruining this vision of this visionary animator. So now I don't need to come back. This is great. If people don't, no, we can figure out another reason. If people don't know Richard Williams, so, uh, like, most famously, he was the animation director for who frame Roger Rabbit, but he was sort of a legendary, uh, animator. But I didn't realize this. He, it says that on the trivia, and I am to be that it holds the record for the longest production schedule of a completed feature movie 28 years. So at a certain point it's at a certain point I guess it makes sense they took away that's too bad. Well, Hollywood you've heard it.

We've got it. We've got to get this man on a movie that wins a lot of Oscars so you can come back and talk to us about that. a lot of Oscars, so you can come back and talk to us about that. Um, yeah. I think when I take away from a nom name norm is that, well, it was definitely a worthwhile experience for a young screenwriter to have some experience, like to work with Stan Winston, to work on an actual production, to experience, you know, sort of that pressure and the shoddy holiday in. And it was a time that I kind of miss when the effects were required more suspension of disbelief. Like you couldn't, like now today,

you could literally just put anything on the screen and computers can make it happen. And now AI will probably take it from here. And so at the time, it was like you had to be ingenious and Stan was ingenious. You know, so he had, he failed in this particular instance to translate his genius to the to translate his genius to the known puppet. I think the character design let him down. I don't know if that was him or someone else, but if you look at the credits, there's like a team of 30 or 40 puppeteers

making this norm puppet happen. And at times it's pretty convincing. And at other times it's just, oh my God, what is that? Get it away. My eyes. Let me look not at the screen for a minute. I mean, even that, even that could be seen as a being too successful, maybe with his, like you're saying, with the design, like his original intention of, I want this to be impossible for anyone to think it was ever a human. And maybe that was too far in the in the wrong direction. Since it seems like you could probably get away with a known that was just like a person with longer years. No, I think, I mean, I think what I'm taking from what you're

saying is that there was, there was a time where special effects required a lot more like workarounds and some clever fixing. And it seems like it required a certain art in order to be able to sell the idea of something. And I think there's a lot of directors and special effects teams who are doing some really interesting work now, but there's also, there's a lot of people working in big films who are just like, okay, yeah, we'll just let computers figure it all out and it shows. Because yeah, and well, because also they, I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of producers and directors who are like, yeah, yeah, the computers will handle that and don't realize that it means a team of human beings working very long hours up to the last minute

to get it done. Whereas when you can see a physical thing, I'm sure a producer could be like, Stan, we need this done by this date and he could point to a puppet and be like, well, we got to finish making this work and they'd be like, yeah, okay, I can see that it's a real actual object. Like, let's, that human hands are building, whereas now it's easy to forget that it's still people doing the work, at least, yeah, until the AI steps in

and they can finally make everything look super smooth and kind of lit as if it's not quite dark and not quite light and people have pores anymore. Yeah. Also, I mean also perfect world. The thing with I mean, like the fact that computers can literally do anything given, you know, enough time and ingenuity. Like you say computers can do literally.

I mean, get a computer build a rock that was too heavy even for a computer. Okay. Not not that actually really good question. It can render a rock that can be because computers can render whatever. I do think that a lot of people are just like, okay, because they can do whatever, then that's the answer to everything rather than being like a bunch of different techniques maybe are the way to get like not like I don't want the image. I aforementioned Todd Viserie to come out of the computer and slap me. It's too late.

He's already mad at us. Yeah, he's already lawn mowered man into our podcast and he's slapping it. I'm just saying that like clearly like grab bag of techniques sometimes is the answer. And when directors think that there's a magic wand, then they can like get into trouble because they don't understand what might look best, you know. Well, I would say that often the creative constraints help out a creative project. Like if you are restrained by a budget

or you were strained by it has to be a practical effects, you get clever, you get more creative with it. In the case of a nominate norm, not, but, uh, but it's possible. It's possible for someone to react in a clever way. Yeah. Like what? I would move you. How would the movie have turned out if the puppet hadn't worked like in jaws and they had to just not show no Gnorm. Well, we put off showing norm as long as possible in the script like we kind of you know, that's a that's a standard Way to approach you know, your character. You want to have that Indiana Jones reveal? So we he was you know, we don't see him in the,

yeah, it is ironic that we're arguing in favor of, of practical effects on the, no name, norm episode. It's a slender read. It's a slender read to hold this argument. Yeah. Are you going to get. Well, the special edition, the, the, yeah, the legacy facts will come in, come and save this movie with post production digital facts. You handed to George Lucas, and it's the same movie, but there's little robots flying around in the foreground and background. And he's like, there, our fixture movie. I noticed you didn't put on a little robot.

We're stormtroopers in the back. I noticed there was a scene where a character was doing something really cool. So I had a ronto walk in front of it in the middle of the scene. Uh, hey, I'm noticing what time it is. So we should probably, uh, let me see. It's norm time. That's right. That would be incredible.

Parker, I, I, I interrupted you. It was, there's something last thing you want to say and also is there a Pludge I was I was stumbling toward a conclusion and I didn't reach it. So let's let's just let's just leave it I think guys thanks so much. There's been an amazing episode of the peach pit pocket edition Focusing on a flop house mini where we talked at length about a gnome named norm, a movie that at the time we had not watched. And it's so exciting that I had two of them hosted the flop house and Parker Bennett. You've been such a treat tonight.

Yeah, I tried to ask for plugs. Does he have plugs of any kind? Well, I will mention, like I did last time, my screenwriting partner who died, Terry Runte, there's a site up that I tell the story of a known name norm, a little bit more detail about Super Mario Brothers and some of our other adventures in 90s Hollywood land at terrirunte.com, t-e-r-r-y-r-u-n-t-e.com. So over there and yes, learn about Terry. Please check it out. Stewart, continue wrapping us up. So this, uh, this podcast is, uh, is temporarily on the max fun network. Um, what's

and what do you know? I'm talking about the peach pit is, is a one time thing. Normally the flop, us is on here all the time. I forgot. I forgot that. you about the peach bit is a one time thing normally the flop. This is on here. Oh, I forgot. I forgot that. Yeah, the peach bit got purchased by Gimlett, right? Yeah. Did we lose the fun from maximum? Yep.

It's just maximum. It's so we, uh, I want to say it's actually now called maximum Bob based on novel by James Elroy. I'm just sorry. By Elroy Leonard. Sorry. Elmore James Elroy. I'm just sorry, by by by by a I'm sorry. Elmore Elmore. Oh, yeah. Look, it's late for me too. I apologize. I was thinking of Elroy Leonard was the son on the Jetsons. And of course, James Elroy, it all, you know, James Patterson. So I also would like to thank our producer.

Cause he's your favorite author. Well, I like this. I like the school of James Patterson. When you buy, when you buy a book by Ham and it says, attributed to the school of James Patterson, because they don't know which of his apprentices wrote it. Yeah. So, I would like to thank our producer, Alexander Smith, also known as Howell Dottie. Don't forget to say, there is a hot contest going on to make a video out of our little music song.

I've been Stewart Wellington. I've been Dan McCloy. I've been Elroy Kalen and joining us has been... Parker Bennett. We did it. Array! Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned.

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