The Worst Idea Of All Time - DirCom: Baby Geniuses 2 - Superbabies

Episode Date: April 23, 2018

Originally recorded and released for our Patreon supporters in April 2017.The ghost of director Bob Clark is joined by Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 producer Steven Paul in a vocal booth to lay down the audio commentary for their 2004 sequel to family-friendly hit of the 1999 hit of the summer, Baby Geniuses. Sadly, Mr Clark's untimely departure from the mortal world is worsened by a tequila addiction and the toll on his voice is audible. Marvel in wonder at how a set of film makers manage to cram the delightful duo of Trump supporters (Scott Baio and Jon Voight) against Weird Science's Vanessa Angel set against rotating backdrops of modern day childcare facilities and cold war-era East Germany. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When an evil villain threatens to take control of the world. In just a few hours, I will control the minds of the children through their own television sets. There is only one group we can turn to. Sorry about that. Now, it will take a legendary hero... Why don't you pick on somebody half your size? Corona, my little arch enemy. ...to unite them and create the ultimate team.

We can become our super selves and help Corona. All right, kids. We're both to have company. Nice spot. A little candy cane for my taste, but then I'm an adult. Team, now. Brain Boy. Playtime is over.

Baby Courageous. It's playtime. Bouncing Boy. I like bouncing. Can our brother get some water? Get back to work. And Cupid Girl. Spread the love.

I love you, man. This summer... See ya. We wanna be ya. Adventure... comes in small packages. Is she gone? Superbabies. Baby Geniuses 2

Hello, welcome along, welcome one and all to this special event audio director's commentary for the film Superbabies colon Baby Geniuses 2. My name is Stephen Paul, producer, and I am joined by my good friend, a ghost, who directed this film and sadly no longer walks along this mortal plane any longer. Would you care to introduce yourself or shall I do it for you, ghost? You can call me Bob or the i do it for you ghost uh you can call me bob or the ghost of bob if you so choose i'm bob clark well respected director um and steven it's

a pleasure to be uh back here with you uh from beyond the grave i feel good i feel alive um i don't want to rub it in yeah i'll stop saying i'll stop phrasing it particularly like that I don't want to rub it in. Yeah, I'll stop phrasing it particularly like that. So thanks for joining us for this audio commentary. It's been a little while since we've interfaced with the film. In fact, this particular picture was brought out in 2004, if I'm not much mistaken.

We shot it in 2002. And things were just starting to heat up for me personally in production and really took a tumble in my personal life which I probably shouldn't get into so early on. No, certainly not. But around the release of this film things were not going well for me. Yeah, well I... As you will recall I was there for a lot of that, pretty much all of it. And as you accurately said, I think it would be ill-advised to bring that up at such an early juncture, particularly when we have some very important establishing shots and personalities, dialogue, characters to introduce to our audience.

Well, I'd like to introduce our audience one and all to the babies. to our audience well i'd like to introduce our audience one and all to the babies um so we had some real visionaries working on the first uh super babies film that was just called baby geniuses baby geniuses is what we called it recall yeah working title was um super babies which is why we crammed it into the title of this one and uh we we pioneered a technique which is using computer technology to put talking mouths on little children to aid with the sort of voice sync, lip syncing. And it actually came about, this technique, from an art student in Paris, France, who developed it in the 1990s, working with what went on to become Pixar and it was an art project an exploration into something in psychology called the uncanny valley which is where you get something that's very close to being human but far enough apart that it looks terrifying and we thought you know what the best use of this technology would be? A family-friendly, childish romp featuring prominent supporter,

campaigner for Trump later on in life, John Voight and Scott Baio. At the time, we didn't know that they would go on to show the political persuasions that they did. They were staunch Republican fans, obviously, and we wanted to create quite a positive and Republican-friendly environment on set, and we certainly executed that. Also, just I'd like to quickly address, a lot of people criticised the movie

for featuring toddlers as opposed to babies. To those people, if you are listening to this and watching along with us, go fuck yourselves. Toddlers are babies. Yeah, and that's coming from a ghost, so you can take that to the bank. Now, this is a great action sequence. I probably should have mentioned before, but our stars of the film have already been introduced,

or the ones that are above three feet tall, Scott Baio and Vanessa Angel, who you might remember from Weird Science, the TV series. I do not remember her from Weird Science. I mostly remember her from quite fiery sort of disputes on set throughout the film. Yeah, Vanessa was, in my opinion, a real pro on set, a real pleasure to work with, a real joy. Also a registered Democrat, so don't lie on your cv

because it might make for a pretty difficult two months in the office so we decided we wanted to you've got to start the movie on on where we are you got to give people context so we start at the daycare center if that's what we're calling this facility but then we briefly we wanted to as soon as we've established that this is about babies and it's about where they live and shit and breathe together, we want to get out of there. We want to set it up, throw it away. Yeah.

Look at this. Now, don't look at this anymore. So we've gone straight into a flashback from mid-1960s Germany. People often ask me, you know, when i'm directing a movie and well you develop the story for this so you'd be able to speak to this as well i mean they say how do you how do you jump so quickly from one place to another and the answer is simply you just do it you don't need to give the audience that much connective tissue all you need is a character to say that's right i'm going to tell you a story suddenly you're in the world of the story what a

lot of people don't realize as well is that during the editing process, the rules are yours to determine. So if you want to simply put a shot of 1962 East Germany and a six-year-old boy kicking the arse of some, presumably, Stasi-associated police officers in a family-friendly movie just after you've introduced a film taking place in modern day 2004 uh child's care facility that's fine it's your right as a filmmaker as an artist and i'll be damned if you prime my rights to make the film i want to make

because you think that you've got some fiat authority over me installed by a fake government. Some so-called critics didn't take to this film. They found it convoluted and confusing. No real clear purpose or intended demographic. They say you need to make a movie for someone. I say, why not try and make a movie for everyone? And I think that's something that that you'll look forward to enjoying with us on this um on this audio track we truly we truly did pull that off because i mean

i think the marketing unless you're a registered democrat in which case you'd probably be better off going and walking into the ocean well that's true although i think um the studio much to my behest and my good friend bob the ghost here who directed the picture we tried our hardest to make the best republican friendly film we can and i i just i feel like a little bit of that control got wrestled out of our hands by the studio who thought that cutting out 50 of the movie going audience wasn't a smart move but um to your point bob the ghost who directed this picture you know oh there's your name coming up there directed by bob clark does it give you a little pang in the area that used to be a nostalgia kick has taken hold of me uh and saying that uh i've got to write all of the cast and crew names out that's the font that they used

for the opening credits the font is you handwriting them yeah good fact that's what audio commentaries are all about thank you bob it's my pleasure and also we originally had um john voight sucking a lollipop and uh smoking a cigarette yeah classic studio i said the world's not ready now we've thrown around a lot of names already um let's take you through a brief uh sort of overlook of what we're dealing with here the universe that me and my good friend bob have created in this cinematic franchise of baby geniuses is a world where children who have not yet uh adapted the full ability of speech, the ability to communicate with adults,

they have their own baby language, similar to the Nickelodeon series Rugrats. Some people say heavily influenced by that. Those people are wrong. I say go fuck yourself. Yeah, we haven't seen Rugrats. Don't even know it exists, actually. Haven't even heard of the TV show Rugrats.

Only from those so-called critics who called us out on it. So we take that world, and then we add John Voight to it. And then we add a German accent to John Voight. We do. And then we instruct John Voight, who is the film's antagonist in the sequel to the original. We say, hey, dude, here's the character archetype we're looking for imagine a german nazi who's still around in 1962 and he's running a science facility with hapless lackeys that he gets to order and boss around that's what we're that's the tone that we're looking for in this family romp

and i think the the scariest part about that is john voight um he really took that instruction to heart and he channeled uh during the during the filming he channeled the spirit of well not the spirit per se but certainly the energy of a quite an infamous um nazi doctor and he would only respond to the name of the doctor he wouldn't respond to john he wouldn't respond to voity boy which is of course what we called him during casting oh yeah voity boy voity boy was a naughty boy yeah well he was and it was i mean on one hand i really respected him for fostering quite a hostile and powerful political environment on set but on the other hand it did make for some pretty full-on interactions with some of the other performers.

The Nazi doctor, for those of you who are curious, he was sort of channeling, was Dr. Joseph Mengel. And he's on the record as saying that, so it's a true fact. He's a good actor. He's a talented artist and a thespian who isn't afraid to bring a war criminal as his inspiration into a movie aimed at little kids and their parents.

And that's where I respect about 40 Boys. The kids didn't need to know. Vanessa Angel, she did know. And that was probably the, I'd say, that was the first sign that we were on for a fractured set, a fractured filming experience was she, unsurprisingly, and also to her credit, was very uncomfortable with the idea

that John Voight would be in character as a Nazi doctor for the entirety of the film. Well, look, in the original script of this film, we didn't have any female characters whatsoever, and that suited me personally down to a T. Bob, you had some qualms with it, but the studio, they almost blew their fucking top off when we delivered the script to them

for the sequel to the runaway success of Baby Geniuses. Well, that's right. Certainly, at the box office, we made a mint on that one. Again, some so-called critics didn't quite seem to understand what we were going for, and that's their loss, because we had a good time that was a really good time actually we had an entirely different uh cast a lot of them said that they were happy they felt they'd done their time in the baby geniuses universe didn't need to come back um and that's why you you see the the the b team that we've rolled out for you here instead.

Should we introduce our characters, the babies themselves? Yeah, we should. So these four are sort of not necessarily the heroes, but potentially the protagonists in this film. And it's quite difficult to get on board with them just insofar as their acting performance is very much limited by their age. And the whole film, we just let them run free, really. We just put cameras on them for several weeks.

Yeah. We didn't tell the parents. And afterwards... And can I, sorry to stop you there, Ghost of Bob Clark, director of Baby Geniuses 2, Super Babies. But I just can't stress um how important that is in filmmaking to not tell the parents if you're going to film a baby

because what it's going to do is that they're going to through their psychic connection to their child inform the child's performance and you're not going to get the raw unfettered human emotion that you're wanting to capture in Sally Lloyd. Absolutely. And beyond even working in professional film, I think if you want footage of a child, it's often much easier to get it without asking the parents. Well, that's God's honest truth.

Yeah. That's how you make a film. People say, oh, how are we going to convince them that they should entrust us with John Voight, who during the duration of filming appears to have been inspired and constantly in role as a Nazi war criminal who specializes in experimenting on kids.

He couldn't get out of the character. No, he couldn't. And the answer to that is just don't seek permission. I always say seek forgiveness rather than permission. And that's a good rule in industry and in movie making. It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. And we did neither. Oh, God.

Here comes our second female character in the film who's above, you know, talking age. We even had to give her a special mention on the credits as introducing because this is her first time acting. She'd never acted before, and I think that became pretty clear throughout the process. She didn't handle a lot of the improvising scenes or a lot of the offers that I was throwing at her. What do you expect with that tiny female brain?

She was probably just trying to not get pregnant every moment that she was on set. Well, easy. Easy, Stephen. But yes, I couldn't agree more. Absolutely. You know what I am proud of, though? Probably most proud of as a result of this production is bringing together the two minds of Jon Voight and Scott Baio.

And just getting to hear them riff. Getting to hear those guys in a room was a real special treat. Very interesting world views from those two gentlemen um of course this was back in the trump years so they were really at the top of their game everything was going great for them yeah um and it wasn't uh it wasn't until i caught up with voidy boy recently just You're still in touch with... Off and on. We communicate by SMS text message now,

but I did have lunch with him last year when it looked like Hillary Clinton was going to clinch it. Interestingly, he had his own custom-made pistol produced by Smith & Wesson for January 20th for the inauguration because he thought Hillary Clinton was going to become president. And when it sort of transpired that actually she was going to lose, he gave it back to them. He said he didn't need it anymore.

That sounds both true and terrifying. So this is the first good look at Big Kahuna um our film's hero that's right he was actually played by uh three triplets um in a lab coat yeah standing atop each other's shoulders on the first day he was and then what we realized was um that's not going to work at all so instead we just we'd use one at a time and just change them change them out willy-nilly but uh certainly in my experience if you if you can if you can get one actor to perform one role that's going to make life a lot easier than if you get um multiple children playing one role it's very confusing you don't know their names arguably we don't know any of these kids names in a way well if by arguably you mean definitely,

then yeah, absolutely. You couldn't be more right. I didn't learn any of them on principle. I'm an adult, and accordingly, I like to engage with adults. Why would I be involved with a film called Baby Geniuses 2 then? It's a question I ask myself to this day. I think the stress of the job might be what drove me to an early grave. I actually think your visible disdain for uh humans

under the age of three kind of comes across in the film as well if i if i can just mention that and i mean that absolutely complimentary yeah the nicest possible way i know 100 you don't need to qualify your compliments with me we're old friends steven i mean you uh helped secure this job for me you developed the story you were my manager at the time. You said, I got a good one. I actually lost a bet with John Voight. It's how the original coming together of the sole operation went. We were out drinking. Yeah.

Because you managed John as well. That's correct. He's one of my clients. You've got a few great actors on your books. Gene Wilder, he's one of yours. R.I.P. A great man. Great, great man great great man great actor miss him dearly he's not fitting in very well in the afterlife i can tell you that really no he's much better suited to being alive oh well i couldn't agree more we all miss him here i wish i wish that he was here in fact i wish i could swap the two of you around

if i'm being honest ghost of bob but we won't get too much into that. Party problem. We're doing a lot of experimenting in this film with technology. The internet was a brand new thing in 2004. So difficult. People didn't understand how it worked. When technology's moving so quickly and you want a movie to be cutting edge, you have to put as much of it in as possible. And what we didn't realize 13 years ago when we made this movie

is that technology would continue developing faster than we could possibly keep up and it's really date stamped a lot of the stuff and I feel like the reason that a lot of the reviews that the movie got when it came out were negative was because people would anticipate that 10 years from now it would be dated and it's pretty mean spirited.

It's pretty interesting, though, that we did decide to roll with the scene that was in the script of babies essentially Googling the villain, finding out about his history, finding out about his past achievements. And they actually stumble across into what I guess was proto-fake news.

It was a pop-up window with the villain of the film who we don't necessarily know is a villain yet with devil horns asking for money. Money, money, money. Give me money, money, money, money, money. And it says,

where's the effective business leader or a corporate devil? Yeah, question mark. And it's got Jon Voight's face on there as Satan. So the babies have broken into the office. We could just use John Voight's actual website for that.

We didn't even need our art department to mock up a fake one. No, that's right. He engages on his MySpace page in a long-running art project where he reimagines himself through those he respects. So there are a depiction of him

as Satan. There's a depiction of him as Margaretan um there is a depiction of him as margaret thatcher i've seen a version of john voight painted by himself in watercolor of his face on the body of none other than leonardo da vinci wow he's a real hero of john voight davinci fan huge davinci he's actually not a fan of davincici. He's a fan of Dan Brown, who wrote The Da Vinci Code. I see. So it's just a little nod to that great novel. Worked backwards. Yeah, exactly. Now you can see the special effects in this part of the film

are working very hard. Now Big Kahuna, who is a confusing character at this juncture in the film, is a seven-year-old who turns up on the scene early. To our credit, a confusing character throughout. Yeah. It isn't really fleshed fleshed out till much much later even what he's sort of up to but he basically comes in and kicks the ass of a lot of adults just after we've had his origin story recounted from one of the children who's just sort of heard it on the street um which

relates to a story of john voight's character in 1962 or so um encountering big kahuna the the strangest thing is kahuna is the same age seven years old in 62 and in the present time john voight is visibly younger and it doesn't get explained for a very long time we keep people really on the hook of how that is the case. It's always, with filmmaking, it's always an interesting and difficult decision to make in terms of how slowly or quickly do you reveal the information? I mean, at what speed do you sort of give the audience

the vital pieces of info that are going to help them put together the story? You want to be one step ahead or do you want the audience to be one step ahead? Bob, let's talk about you for a second. Let's get into what you're up to these days. Your voice seems slightly strained, if I'm being honest. Not a great day to get you in the booth.

How much partying is going on in the afterlife for you? Who are you hanging out with? Who are you mixing with? Relentless, and I am exhausted. You look beat. Yeah. You look white as a sheet well that is uh on account of my ghostly facade so it doesn't matter whether i've been partying or working out i'm i'm

always going to look white as a sheet okay you're familiar with ghosts you've seen ghosts before uh yeah yeah so i don't know why you'd be surprised by this this is what i look like now gotcha thank you uh it's called a ghostly apparition term not a not a yeah i read you loud and clear yeah okay buddy 10-4 on that and i apologize for calling you uh the wrong name there steven i don't know where that came from uh secondly i have been pretty much on the terps since 2007 when i was tragically shuffled off this mortal coil a little early anyone who rolls through, I work at the

welcome gate into the afterlife oh really, right alongside St Peter it's my job, well no I don't really meddle with heaven and hell so before you can access either heaven or hell you have to pass through a portal to the afterlife

and that's where i just park up with a bottle of jose cuervo right so welcome along you're sort of in limbo before yeah the final knock one of these back take a load off so have you just been hanging out in limbo the whole time yep wow yeah gene wilder is uh he's also been trapped in limbo right that's why he hasn't been fitting in very well because he has yet to make it. Right. And is it vastly sort of populated? Is there a lot of people there in limbo? Just me and Gene.

That's it? And anyone who's coming through, obviously. And there's a lot of guests. There's a lot of house guests. I mean, it's relentless. Have you got a house band there in limbo? No, no band as such. I do have a saxophone, which I died holding,

so I've been trying to learn how to blow. Hey, well, let's just hope that Bill Clinton's not too far away, eh? Because, I mean, if anyone can blow a sax, it's him. I'm sure that he and Gene would get on famously as well. Very interesting. It depends sort of the form you're in when you die, how you remain in the afterlife. Oh, that's...

I was going to ask about that. That's very depressing to hear. You can acquire sort of different precious stones that you can trade for a more youthful facade in the afterlife. So that's quite good. How does one obtain the stones? You've got to know the caves to go to,

and you've got to have crampons and a pickaxe. Interesting. It almost sounds like some sort of Super Nintendo RPG is what Limbo's been based on, rolling around finding mystical stones to exchange for a more youthful appearance in the afterlife. I certainly didn't build Limbo, so if you are trying to maybe direct some thinly veiled

criticism at me i would say whatsoever just an observation bob and uh i know that you're a little bit sensitive and cranky at the moment on on account of all the jose cueva you've been consuming there but i just ask you to step the fuck off for a second okay we're in this together started this line of conversation with me so i understand why suddenly I'm being the one who's hostile when it's you who's telling me to step the fuck off. When I'm just responding to a question that you asked me. We made a decision at this point in the film to introduce a few black panel vans.

Without any explanation or tie-in to other plot points. No, I just thought it was important that while we had babies rocking around, you want to remind everyone that there's a real element of danger in modern day America and only a few people are going to be able to rescue us from this democratic hellhole

that we've been living in. That's right. The other thing... I mean, I was referring to the Clinton years when I was writing the film. Not a lot of people know that because I did it under a pen name. God, Kahuna, such a...

Such a bold character choice, wasn't it? We've got him clad in leather, little seven-year-old. He drinks a formula which he developed himself which interacts with his unique physiology which, similar to Popeye instantly makes him strong. Popeye is who he based. Jesus you are

not holding up well. That transformation I'm holding up just fine thank you. Bob you're yawning into the microphone mid thought. I'm just going to have a little nip of some Jose Cuervo and I'll be right as rain. Okay you do that. Oh that's the good stuff.

Now this one, I mean, this moment was really for the kids. This is Kahuna taking on the adults who are all in cleaner's uniforms. We never quite explained why that was the case in the text of the film. We just didn't have time. We were on a very tight turnaround. We filmed the movie in less than two weeks.

And as you can see, we had a wide array of extras, a wide array of sets, a wide array of ideas to get in. And so once we took a scene once, we said, perfect, that's it, let's move on. And I'm going to be honest with you right now, Stephen. I was so proud of what we achieved and accomplished that I haven't watched an edit or the finished version of this film since we did it.

Good God. Now, I never quite understood that insert. Why is that in there? Kahuna has the unique ability to talk baby but also communicate to the adults. He's sort of a Rosetta Stone of sorts betwixt the two sets of people who can communicate in the film. Babies can communicate to babies but not to adults. He's sort of a Rosetta Stone of sorts betwixt the two sets of people who can communicate in the film. Babies can communicate to

babies but not to adults. Same with adults. But Big Kahuna can communicate to both. And then randomly for one brief moment he speaks in an indecipherable language which doesn't appear to be a real human language at all and is subtitled. Yeah. Don't send a

man to do a boy's job or something there's a good reason for that get people talking i mean even now can you imagine 13 years later that was such a bold directorial decision that even now people are confused by it they're talking about it they're getting the word out there this is how marketing works you know what i love the fact that this film affected people so much um i will add not en masse because we did lose a tremendous amount of money making the thing when we put it out but this affected people so much that they voted in their droves for us to get back into this booth both alive and dead and record an audio commentary for the blu-ray special edition that That is madness to me as well, isn't it? That they would insist upon me

crossing over the mortal plane to revisit Earth as an almost fully realised sentient being and revisit my 2004 masterpiece. Now we're in the lair of John Voight. Kane is his character's name, if memory serves. A lot of stained glass windows and that was um under my direction to the art department to try and have shades of rasputin about the character

a lot of references to uh russia and east germany in this film which i thought was important in a family uh kitsch movie because it's important to remind people that things are happening out there the world's a complicated and dangerous place and we need strong leaders to bring us back from the brink and show other countries what we're made of that's right uh intimidation is the best form of defense and i think um to try and seed that idea, I mean, there's almost a delicious irony, isn't there, in that through the film, we were trying to seed that idea

that we are brave, we're a brave country not to be trifled with, but the way of doing that within the film was, I mean, the message of the film is contrarian in that we've got john voight's character trying to do the same thing trying to mind control people and intimidate them oh yeah sorry did we not mention that before our villain in this movie is trying to for some reason mind control all the children of the world we don't want to get too far into why that's the case because we didn't in the film it's not

really filled in but he's going to do it by starting a children's show television network and then transmitting a subconscious message alongside the main programming which will infect the brains of the babies watching sounds like a good plan to me sounds like a good plot to me even hearing it back i get as excited by that today as i did the day you told me uh and i remember you saying i've got an idea it's i've got to do a bit of work and i don't know if it's quite ready uh generally speaking in the past when i've approached your office and said i've got an idea it's made you very nervous but i think with this one uh you were wrong you were wrong to be apprehensive well i was excited why were you screaming because that's how excitement registers

for me i was so excited you said i've got to put a little more time and i've got to get this thing finished i don't know if it's quite ready it's still in the gestation period i said gestation smith station you did say that get off my PlayStation. You were standing on it at the time. I was furious. I just spent what remaining savings I had on it. It was a PS2 as well. Yeah. And those were retailing for about $699 back then.

It's huge. Very chunky price. Very chunky console, actually. I mean, I see what the kids are playing now, and I'm so jealous. You die, and the only gaming console you're allowed to play in limbo is the console that you most recently owned which for you it was a ps2 and upsettingly

a broken ps2 i mean we lost so much money on this movie and they've got it fixed never bought a new console broken in what way like is it inoperable uh no what happens is you can often get a game up so i like to play sports games can often get a game up. So I like to play sports games. You can get a game of Madden up, for instance, and you play through the first quarter, and then halfway through the second quarter, you just get a shot of the stadium,

and the field's empty. Doesn't load. And you can't push, you can't start, you can't get to the menu, you can't exit the game. You got a Tony Hawk's disc there? No, I've just got Madden. Just just got madden it's a real shame now um at this point in the movie look we're throwing caution to the wind and we're introducing um scandally written characters by which i mean um we don't know what the fuck's going on anymore you know what i I mean, Bob? I mean, look, we can try and sugarcoat this

and you may hear some hesitation with us doing this audio commentary and there's a very good reason for it. We didn't know what this movie was when it got written. I didn't know what it was when I saw the final cut. I certainly didn't know what we were making at the time. And I've got to tell you something, I don't know what I'm watching now on this monitor screen. I've got a very quiet version of the sound of it playing in my ear.

I did a little preemptive watch of the movie to bring me back up to speed just the other day and getting up to speed with coming into here to lay this track down. I don't know what the fuck we were thinking. I don't know how this thing got out into the world. And it's no surprise to me whatsoever that it lost a lot of money. I mean, where are we? We're in some poor man's version of willy wonka's chocolate factory right now but it looks like it was done with set dresses who brought 200 to kmart and tried to replicate it as best they can we're in some terrible plastic boat that's on very shallow water that's got half

a dozen small children on it i mean if any feeling supposed to be elicited by this shot, it's just concern for the welfare of these young professional actors. Where are the adults? Where are the people looking after these kids? When you try and make a film for everyone, you have to take some risks. And one of the risks we took is, as opposed to presenting a cohesive whole that everyone could enjoy, we tried to capture moments or snippets within the film

that one person would enjoy at one time. And so that's why it's a slightly fractured film. That's why it's a challenge for, as you say, people to sort of follow along with the plot or enjoy it in its entirety. I mean, what are we doing now? We're in the hidden bunker of Kahuna, a seven-year-old who's both mysterious and heavily violent, who keeps drinking this incandescent formula that makes him strong and give him the ability to beat the shit out of fully grown adults,

which is kind of a creepy concept to wreck him with anyway. And his pad is just filled with holograms interacting with these toddlers that have come in yeah what are we all doing here you know just padding for time really uh movies need to run at for a studio release over 70 minutes and what we had in terms of plot was good for about 10. You may have heard the turn of phrase, trying to fit 50 pounds of shit in a five-ounce bag. This was the opposite problem. It was a bag capable of holding 50 pounds of shit and in actual fact we needed to convince the studio

that's what was in the bag and we only had five pounds of shit. It's tricky because you've got to water down the shit. And no one wants to water down their own shit it's embarrassing and it's disgusting it makes it tricky to deal with it's very easy to clean up shit that's not wet but the wetter it gets the harder it gets to remove you know well you've got to sort of soak it up at that point don't you so here we didn't actually want to incorporate these uh characters and characterizations of the toddlers or babies this was mattel uh but they wanted a merchandise range they wanted to try and figure out some sort of way to make up uh the money that they knew we were already losing and also um they thought it would make it for a good trailer if we put these

kids in into into costumes. And so we sort of just went with the first ideas we have for them. So just explain what's happened. We've got the four hero babies. Stupid girl. No, hold on for a second. They're in a kind of transformation machine that Kahuna's made because he's a master inventor

in addition to being a master of the martial arts. And they all go into this machine which is supposed to i believe the original concept behind it is it sort of maximizes their inner potential it reveals your true self your truest self and uh these four lead characters they all have four very distinct and unique personality traits that are revealed to them. We've got a brainy baby. We've got Captain Courageous. We've got Cupid Girl. And then we've got Bouncy Boy.

I feel like bounciness is less a personality or character trait and more just something visually fun. Fun to watch on film. And there's nothing wrong with that. So at this point we thought we'd done something for the kids, we'd done something for people who wanted generic character traits. What do we need? We need something for the teens. We need something that's going to get those 13-year-old chubs up.

We're going to need something that's going to give pretty much anyone between the 11 and 16-year-old age range a nice hearty boner. And to do that we introduced the fact that this teenager who's been playing the role of babysitter also is in the throes of a sexual awakening now who is the conduit or the physical manifestation of the boner it's a young man named zach who we found just wandering around on the fringes of the set he was wearing a rugby jersey he was actually wearing exactly what you see him in now. And this is five minutes after we met the kid.

We didn't tell him we were filming. We told him that we wanted to set him up on a date with a girl. And so all of the romantic interactions, all the personal interactions between these two, for him, they are real. For, I believe her name was Skylar, who we were introducing, she's just acting.

She's improvising a scene with a real person who doesn't realise he's acting. The unfortunate consequence of this is they went on to have a one-sided marriage and bring up some kids together. Skylar thought she was still contracted by the studio to maintain the role. And, of course, our man in the rugby shirt, he was none the wiser. He didn't realise that it was all a make-believe world and a facade so as far as I know they are still married

she's still cashing checks from the studio payroll hasn't quite picked up yet that the film should have wrapped him really that account should be closed now but you know that's part of the reason why we lost so much money that is the reason this lost so much money. It was actually very successful at the cinema.

Terrible accountants. To this day, I have no idea who this band is and why we thought it would be cool or culturally relevant to get them involved. From memory, I don't think it's a real band, is it? We tried to assemble a bunch of dudes who sort of resembled NSYNC, but we put them on screen for too long, so you're able to

figure out that it really isn't NSYNC at all, it's just a bunch of dudes. Well, I will say this, and this is something I've always said in Stand Behind, if you can get five dudes in a room one of whom has dreadlocks, the other one a bandana you're going to get a teenage

boner, and we were really chasing that market with this part of the film, these moments. In fact, I remember the kid in the rugby jersey, Zach, he chubbed up something chronic when they were shooting this scene. It seems crazy to me that in a movie about babies, you were paying so much attention to getting everyone chubbed up. It's a movie about babies, but it's also a movie for

everyone i don't know how many times i have to tell you this and you know you're trying to hit the four quadrants not everyone's a baby it's true now now we were chasing that sweet sweet uh lapd nypd money so we just threw some cops in the film yeah we did we wanted to get the blue dollar coming in to see the film um blue tickets matter and they came in their drives the police unions across the country encouraged all of their members to come and see this film which was um fantastic scott bay was intimately involved in getting the word out with them um mainly because he's been arrested so many times for different things that uh he knows a lot of the different police and they do not respect him in the way he seems to think they do the guy arrested so many times for different things that he knows a lot of the different police unions across the country. And they do not respect him in the way he seems to think they do.

The guy is deluded. They keep putting him into a jail cell and mocking him, calling him Chachi and Charles. Not so in charge now, are you, Charles? Now I'm in charge. And they jangle the jail keys at him. But he always gets out eventually because his dad's a judge.

Truly? Yeah. Yeah, if memory serves. Oh, God. He's an interesting figure, isn't he, that Scott Baio? He sure is. In what prescience,

who else saw Trump's victory coming as clearly and as early as scott bayer who's laughing now because it sure ain't me bob and it sure ain't you living in limbo watching us all from how does that work you sort of above us or below us or do you sort of exist i'm adjacent mostly adjacent right so across the. Have you heard of the flat Earth theory? Yeah, I've heard of it. This is the theory that scientists and so-called experts have been lying to us for millennia and that we actually exist on a flat plane rather than a spherical planet. That's not a theory.

Oh. That's the way it is. And limbo exists at the end of one part of the earth why is that so yeah it's just a little sort of bubble or room and that's where you pass through uh on your way to either heaven or hell so it's sort of i'm on the same plane as you insofar as physically the the the plane the gradient the uh the altitude is all the same. But you're just over there. Yeah. Amazing.

Now, we did run out of money for special effects at this point, so we've got Jon Voight and his lackey going down a slide, and what we thought we'd do is just get them to stand up in a Perspex tube and shine lights on them and sort of jiggle the lights around and get them to scream and put their arms up so it looked like they were going down a slide. And I'll tell you what,

pat on the back to us, through that methodology of filmmaking we saved ourselves at least a couple of grand. And I think until you mentioned it just then in this very special release director's commentary, no one would have known that we cut a corner there. No, you would never know. You'd never be able to tell.

So this is another great special effect. We just put some nylon string on a cushion and we got... You might want to explain to people who maybe their TVs have broken or something while they're watching this. So pretty much we've got the big kahuna. Sort of to show his prescience and just the fact that he operates on a slightly different plane of existence. We've got him levitating on a plush purple acrylic cushion. And to create that effect, we just put some nylon string on the cushion and hooked it up to the roof.

And we were cutting corners on the string as well. We didn't originally use enough to support the cushion. It dropped down, and we did lose one of our big cojones. Thankfully, and this was one of the few times it came to the fore, having two identical triplers or twins at this point, it made a world of difference. We got away with it completely. I mean, the parents found out, but the cinema going public,

that's a secret to them. None the wiser. Can't recommend that enough. Make sure that you've got spears for each of your actors. Unfortunately, we didn't have any spear John Voights. And there were a couple of days where he just went missing, where he was due on set. When he came back, he had the strangest scars on his face.

But our makeup department worked very hard to get rid of those. A couple of the PAs asked him about it and where he had been. He was very cagey about it, but people did notice that he was holding his passport at the time. So a little bit of international travel. He is a real globetrotter. We know this about John Voight. Yeah.

And we're back now with our teenage boners, Zach, playing with a little mini basketball there while explaining the origin story of how Kahuna came to be. This was a very special day um we didn't originally explain whatsoever in the script of this film how a seven-year-old boy was endowed with all of these powers and had an ability to gather children around him like a moses kind of a character and lead them to freedom um possessing incredible strength seemingly from a divine intervention uh having these fabulous contraptions that he had invented constructing his own underground lair traveling around the world having relationships with uh

whippy goldberg a band that sort of looks like in sync so we were never going to explain that we were going to leave it up to the viewer to project their own backstory on him. But then the studio said, you boys, it's a mite too confusing, I think, for a cinema-going public. The cops don't want to be doing their detective work while they're off the beat. That's what they do during their daytimes.

We're going to need to fill in a few more of the blanks for them. So that explains this lengthy sequence of the film. We, I think, I don't know if we overestimated the intelligence and sort of ability to put the pieces together of our audience, but certainly the studio have very little respect for anyone who buys a ticket to a movie. And so they have to handhold and make sure that everyone's along for the journey the whole way.

We still tried to scatter everyone's brains occasionally throughout the film, and I like to think we have certainly executed that in parts. But I mean, can I just say in re-watching this, I remembered it completely differently. How do you recall the origin story happening before we get into the real version? Not the origin story, the whole film. Oh, I see. happening before we get into the real version uh not the origin story the whole film oh i see when i think back on this film what i remembered directing was uh a movie about a man named andy defrain who was wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit uh-huh uh he befriended sort of a senior figure within the prison,

someone who commanded a bit of respect, knew the lay of the land, and he used his accounting know-how to form a relationship with the prison warden. And they sort of built a connection. It wasn't a healthy relationship, but certainly it helped ease some of the pressure of adapting to the new hostile environment that prison was to be. And eventually, I mean, I don't know if it's a spoiler because this is not the movie I remember making, but Andy Dufresne digs a hole. He digs a hole out of prison, climbs through a sewer, and he runs away to a beach.

And I'm just wondering at what point in the film these elements are going to come into play, because what I'm seeing so far could not be more different. As we're taking through the version of the origin story that made it to cinema release, it's revealed that Kahuna is um spoiler alert actually the youngest sibling of john voight's character kane uh they were both brought up under the stewardship of their father who was a scientist developing a serum to unlock the human potential in all babies he locked it away in his safe uh at some point john voight's character the older brother got very curious he took it out some confusing um geolocation elements to this they're being brought up in East Germany I believe in the

50s and 60s but the dad is American Kahuna has an American accent when we see him John Voight's character has retained his heritage through his particular dialect. So anyway, his father's dying. He's a scientist. His brother gets a hold of the formula, but a window smashes just at the moment where he's going to drink it for himself, and he throws it up in the air.

It crashes onto a laboratory table, and Kahuna has a few of those tasty radioactive green drops, and it changes him forever, trapping him in the body of a seven-year-old while his powers continue to grow and his consciousness grows he has the mentality of someone much older than seven which uh would make for very interesting sort of frozen adulthood we did pitch a couple of sequels to this film which explored the interpersonal relationships of what it's like for a 70 year old man to attempt to find love inside of a retirement home when he's trapped inside the body of an eight-year-old yeah and a lot of those conversations were looking pretty promising until we got the numbers back on this one. And, yeah.

Scuttled is the verb I would use. Or shelved, more accurately, because we could grab them back up off that shelf. One idea which I was particularly fond of explored the notion of Kahuna going back to Hawaii where he got his name from and becoming a surf champion for an under 15 grade competition and then it's subsequently being found out through his birth certificate that he was in fact 85 years old and uh the goofs really just write themselves

they they picture they sure do you can see it can't you a seven-year-old on a surfboard being told that he can't compete because he's actually 85 that's funny stuff i'm not sure if you can tell in my tone of voice but that's very funny stuff that is that is funny stuff and can i just say apropos of nothing to you steven that i guess some birds ain't meant to be caged quite an odd thing to throw at me so we're finally out of the sequence explaining um kahuna and john voight characters backstories and um we're back to the teenage boners briefly and guess what everyone i forgot for a second but we are inside the hills of holly, just underneath the sign. It turns out that Kahuna's lair has been hiding in plain sight

from the authorities. And now we introduce a karate element because in 2004, martial arts were very popular. The Matrix had come out five years prior. Everyone was hugely enamored with the infusion of martial arts into the American cinema landscape once again. We had the original wave of that. We had your Bruce Lee films. We had your...

Bruce Lee. Yeah? Yes. I love that dude. Yeah. Yes. You're a Jackie Chan fan? Do you like the tuxedo i worked on that film i produced that

i love jackie chan do you ever see the tuxedo no no very good film what it was bob was a film where jackie chan was just an average schmo a nobody i don't believe it for a second jackie chan is one of our finest actors and no no this was the character he was okay portraying because he's so talented and then he got this so in the movie you had to convince jackie chan to act like a normal person in spite of the fact that he's jackie chan yeah that must have been a hell of a challenge he's a hell of an actor you've seen him work he's amazing kid can anything. So what did you say to him on the first day of set? I said, Jackie Chan, you're nothing. You're a fucking disgusting dog. You're nothing to me.

Gee whiz, how did he respond to that? Took direction like an absolute champion. I can't say enough good things about Jackie Chan. Not at the time, obviously. I was trying to denigrate his ego to the point where he would act in sort of a hunched, downtrodden fashion so that he was really embodying the character. But he gets this tuxedo, you see, which is a high-tech suit, which allows him to fight like a martial arts master. Quite a genius storyline, I thought. But Jackie Chan doesn't need that suit.

No, but this is what I'm saying the film was about. Jackie Chan going't need that suit. No, but this is what I'm saying the film was about. Jackie Chan going suit shopping. I mean, it wasn't about Jackie Chan. Jackie Chan was in the film as an actor portraying a role. Jackie Chan was playing the role of an actor in the film who was going shopping for a suit. Jackie Chan was playing a role in real life of actor, Shopping for a suit.

Jackie Chan was playing a role in real life of actor, which we put in the film atop a layer which was average man, every man. If you see what I'm saying. I think that's where I'm getting lost, is that Jackie Chan is not your average person. So we've got Jackie Chan, and he's a talented actor. And a martial arts superstar. Real physical flat plane that we all dwell on called earth okay we take that he is also an actor so he's executing those skills on a film set to embody the character you with me so far now you look lost bob you look

like that's the point where i've lost you so you got him on set we've got him on scene and you told him not to do any much and his faculties as an actor we said the character you are embodying at the start of this film is a is a nobody what is the point of getting jackie chan on set if you're not going to use his fantastic ability to perform martial arts because the suit wasn't real bob is what i'm trying to explain to you. He doesn't need a suit. No, you don't need a suit. I mean, what you're bringing up is more the problem that we solved by virtue of the production rather than the plot of the film that we made, if you can see the distinction between the two. I'm finding all of this deeply confusing and if we could i'd quite like to get back to discussing i just i i

i'm i'm actually going to stop you there because i wouldn't be comfortable moving on until we get to the bottom of this jackie chan talented at martial arts talented at acting we hire him we hire him for the film. Congratulations. Great get. We instruct him to use his acting skills to pretend to be an everybody type character for his role. This is the mistake for me. Jackie Chan, have you seen Rush Hour? What do you think acting is? In your own words.

That's not important. Have you seen Rush Hour? Fantastic movie. think acting is? In your own words. That's not important. Have you seen Rush Hour? Fantastic movie. Jackie Chan is doing martial arts pretty much through the entire film. For sure. It's why it was so popular. But do you know what he does as well? He does comedy in some bits. He's a multifaceted performer. Yeah, he's a funny guy. Yeah, absolutely.

He's also very good at acting. So what we told him to do is act as if he was someone who couldn't do martial arts. He's sort of on board now. Well, that would be a huge challenge for Jackie Chan. It absolutely was, but he's a good enough actor that he could pull it off. So he was acting like he couldn't do them, even though in the back of his head the whole time he knew he could do. We all knew.

He knew. Everyone on set knew. Everybody knew who Jackie Chan was. And you were all acting like he couldn't do it even though the very reason you were all on set was because he was so good at that thing well that's right because that got revealed later in the production when he put on the suit which was the tuxedo which in the world of the film yeah yeah it gave him the ability to do martial arts but it didn't actually make a difference because he could have done them the whole time anyway

well that's not that movie that we were making. He's done a lot of movies where that's the movie. We made a different movie where it was the suit that allowed him to fight like that. I can't imagine it did very well. Well, you're right there, actually. Something of a flop, both critically and commercially. But we did get to see a little bit more of Jennifer Love Hewitt on a big screen, and that's always a good day for me.

Wasn't she a treat? Wonder what she's doing now. She's probably wandering the flat earth. So this is purportedly the climax of the film, and probably the funniest... Now, why have you got to throw the adjective purportedly in there? Well, because you'd get the feeling because of the way the pacing works and the storytelling works that we are looking at wrapping up but we are yet to make it two-thirds of the way through the runtime of this uh experience and this was my favorite gag

on set um instead of counting down from 10 or 5 or even 3, as you often would before the launch of a product... Which in this case is Jon Voight's character's children's show network, which is going to broadcast in the TV homes of everyone. It's going to be able to mind control future generations and pretty much run planet Earth. He counts down from 60. And we see a lot of it in the film. We left it in.

It was a strong joke. We thought, leave it all in. Just a little bit more filler for us. We need to pad out to get to that 70-minute mark anyway, see a lot of it in the film we left it in it was a strong joke we thought leave it all in just a little bit more filler for us we need to pad out to get to that 70 minute mark anyway so why not why not put a bit more voidy boy in there and so we did uh this was uh unfortunately where we lost the second of the triplets playing kahuna um so ambitious on our behalf absolutely i i won't shy away from that accusation it was ambitious for us to put a child under 10 in control of a craft we built ourselves which resembles a small helicopter he's flying above this outdoor shot there was a lot of rigging

involved a lot of power lines for him to avoid and on the whole the kid did a great job but unfortunately it only takes you being wrong once when you're eight years old and in control of a helicopter um to uh unfortunately prematurely end your life we tried to get him lessons to ensure that he would be more confident and comfortable flying the chopper, but they said, we cannot teach anyone under the age of 18 how to fly one of these things. And we said, well, I feel like that's going to create more problems than it will solve because we're going to get this kid up in the sky either way. And they said, we would really recommend not doing that. And we said, well, give him some lessons then and we could sidestep this whole problem.

But we came to a real impasse at that point, didn't we? Because they wouldn't accept the responsibility of teaching an eight-year-old. We wouldn't... Accept the notion. We're not going to cheat any aspect of this film. We're not going to change our artistic vision because of some child labour laws

or aeronautics legislation. It's the goddamn FCC is what it is. It's bureaucracy, isn't it? It's all of them. And that's one of the few things I enjoy about my life in limbo, is the lack of paperwork. Got a few more cops in this particular sequence.

Chasing that sweet, sweet blue dollar. Love that blue dollar. that blue dollar the blue green back they call it call it the blue back a little bit more scott baio as well who um really the more of him that you can get in a film the worse off you're going to be someone graphed this out for me recently whereby they got scott baio's uh film career and they've plotted on the X axis how much money the film's made, and upon the Y axis, how much time Scott Bayo is visible on screen for, and there is an inverse relationship to his screen time and the profitability of the film. Wow.

To put it another way, the more Scott Bayo you put in your film, the less money your movie's going to make. You insisted we needed Baio. I did. You said it's Baio or broke. And I think in terms of the political conversations and dynamic on set, that was a great decision. To be fair to me, though, as well,

I got slightly mistaken because I thought, after watching American Psycho, that that was Scott Baio, whereas it was Christian Baleale yeah and christian bale of course uh we couldn't get him anyway because he went to prison after that film uh for a long time uh he committed several gruesome murders working on screen and it just it pains me that we have to keep doing this dance of explaining after the courts wrongly convicted the guy for something that happened in a movie it's really i mean it's

not a million miles away from the jackie chan thing it's just it's a misunderstanding that really got blown out of hand he didn't actually kill anyone um it was a film that we made which was make-believe it was made up it was a piece of art why would i watch something that's made up well why create something that was made up i mean we worked extensively on this film for the three weeks it was in production for bob well you came to me and you said i've got a i've got a great story this thing happened the other day and i said well fantastic let's make a movie you know i forget that every now and then the autobiographical nature of baby geniuses two super babies um because that's how good the marketing team were in convincing me that this was actually a uh a penned family romp by some

people who weren't myself i also think the hatchet job that the uh the studio did on the edit means that a lot of the more true to life elements of the story have been lost yeah let me give you seven examples of things i would love that happened in the real version of events which was my life and didn't make it into the film rosetta who's uh the child that becomes cupid girl um in the original version of this your life yes that's right that's correct in real life um she lived on the border in texas okay and her family ran a very successful um but small franchise of restaurants and they had a secret ingredient uh and it's crazy that this didn't make the film because it was it's quite a it's quite compelling when i found out about it the secret ingredient that they were

putting into their meals which um kept people coming back and raving about it, in actual fact was wild feral dogs. And what they were doing is rounding them up because no one was missing them and they were at no cost, killing them, draining them of their blood, dehydrating them, crushing their bones into a powder, and then inserting that into a special type of mayonnaise that they created and they started putting the mayonnaise on on everything things that wouldn't

even normally have mayonnaise you know prawn tacos would you naturally put mayonnaise on that no you wouldn't mayonnaise special uh the name of the restaurants was dead dog and everyone thought that it was just sort of a you know a nice little logo and a bit of alliteration yeah exactly and just sort of like a bit of a dangerous mayonnaise is traditionally an egg based sort of condiment yeah that's right so you put the the um powdered dog stuffs into that like a flavor you're losing a lot of good meat if you crush it down to a powder mate i didn't make the restaurants i didn't invent the special ingredient i didn't create the mayo the second thing that didn't quite make it from

my life onto onto the um the film version was um john voight who actually enacted all of the things we see on screen in real life and my version of events as well. Had an uncontrollable sneezing episode for one week of his life and blew his nose clean off one day. It was the sickest thing I've ever seen in my life. It was quite gruesome. Yeah. Loosened it up over several days and then pulled out a tissue, went to wipe his nose and his whole nose came off.

He's been wearing a prosthetic ever since. Could have fooled me. Can I say that? I wish you would. Well he could have he has fooled me. The third thing is that there was actually five of the triplets, quintuplets

not three. Oh wow, that is sad. Remember everyone at this point in the film that there was just one left and we were very nervous I mean because there's some pretty risky high wire stunts still to come and we were like if this

kid doesn't execute his job we can't execute ours. We're out of spares. There's no spare tyres in the boot now. That's right and that's why we'd call them on set and to their parents. We'd say, have you got any more spares? We've got quite a risky day coming up.

Can you pop out a few more spares and send them our way? The fourth thing that happened in my life which didn't make it to film is I live in a particular part of the country that doesn't have any cops, so that wasn't true to form. I live in a particular part of the country that doesn't have any cops, so that wasn't true to form. I grew up in a part of Detroit which cops didn't visit when I was growing up. So we added those in just to try and attract that blue-green back.

Those dollars from the cops coming in. And at number five, ladies and gentlemen, of events that happened in my real life true events, which this film is based on that didn't make it into the movie version, I've got three words for you. Giant robotic spiders. They were everywhere. We only included one in the finished cut of the film. On screen right now.

One you can see now, which is imprisoning the final spare tire we've got left kahuna but in the real life events that was the bigger enemy than john voight truth be told was these giant robotic truly yes wow you've met a giant robotic spider no if you ever do the way to confuse them is riddles they cannot handle them they've got eight eyes, eight legs, but a tiny brain. Somehow smart enough to understand the problem solving nature of a riddle, but not smart enough to solve any of the problems. That's half correct.

What half of it was wrong? You see what I've done there? I've given you a riddle to test if you're a robotic spider. I'm visibly not. Of course, you haven't blown up. A white apparition, I'm a ghost. You don't have steam coming out of your ears, Bob. No, we've worked together multiple times before.

So asked and answered. I've always... The sixth piece of the puzzle that didn't quite make it onto the dining room table. Vanessa Angel, in my real-life story, true events version of what happened, was trapped inside of the role that she sort of first enacted in Weird Science,

whereby she was created by two teenage boys hopped up on Mountain Dew and their own hormones who accidentally created a computerized genie in real life. And she was still living in that role. She is an actress. This is like the Jackie Chan thing. I don't know if you're going to be able to follow it. But in her own head, she was still a computer generated genie.

I haven't seen Weird Science. Once the teenage boys, because I love nothing more than just, you know, some sort of media which will help teenage boys chub up. Once they got their robot off the ground of the perfect woman. What's a genie? The genie off the ground. I mean, were they hoping to engage with the genie sexually or was the genie more enabling them to live their best life?

The former, without question. Did they ever get to bones the genie more enabling them to live their best life the former without question did they ever get to bones the genie from memory no sounds like a shit show not wrong the seventh and final piece which didn't make it what about the movie

I believe there may have been a suggestion before the end credits started to roll that one of them maybe was going to get to perform physical intimacy with the digital representation of the perfect woman. That sounds very, very confusing to me. Well, it raises a lot of questions

if you think about it too hard and that's why we ask audiences not to do that um so really the the only other piece um that didn't make it into the film is scott bayo's dad the judge uh played an incredible role in the real life events of what was happening there was a lot of law happening at the time um people were suing me there were no cops so we didn't quite have a law enforcement arm but we did have a judiciary where people would just strong arm people and throw them into a court in front of judge bayo and ask him to perform his duties to be honest it was a bloody nightmare because these vigilante groups were just rounding up people they didn't like throwing them into a big court building and uh presenting them to the presiding judge judge

baio boom boom boom put in front of judge baio baio and he didn't really i mean he didn't know what laws he was supposed to be weighing them against um what potential infractions had happened, and the whole thing just became a bit much. Sorry, I think I'm getting a call there. Do you want to just pick? Just see who that is. I'll take that, gladly. You take that. Hello, Bob speaking. Good, thank you. Just taking a little call that's come through to the voice booth, which is always confusing. I am okay. I don't need my room service today, thank you. No, no room service in the booth.

Thank you. So strange. Second time they've asked today. I really think I threw them last night by asking for some additional bedding to accommodate a friend to... You're sleeping in the studio? I'm sleeping in the booth. Not only that, but I'm inviting people to come and sleep in the booth as well.

You could end it all and come join me in limbo. I absolutely won't be doing that. I just... You know that saying, you never want to meet your heroes? I mean, I've loved Gene Wilder since forever, so it would just be a bit much for me. You worked with Gene Wilder. I know.

And it was a lot then, and I don't think i could take another second of being in his presence but let me tell you about this receptionist at the building that we're in in the uh for the voice booth i went down there last night when i was um with my house guest who was going to crash here in the booth for the night because he's been sleeping rough um when i approached the front desk uh the gentleman at reception because it's a 24-hour staff facility here at voices rs he was facing the computer back to me and making the most bizarre animalistic noises really scary stuff and so i sort of gave it to alert him to my presence and he was shocked that someone was there just after

midnight uh started talking to me and then really struggled to grapple with the concept of what i was asking with a very thick soviet accent what were you asking i was simply asking for the availability of sheets that was it that was literally it i was just trying to fight and not even necessarily demanding sheets but just how difficult would it be uh for myself to obtain sheets right now and he couldn't quite get the idea that i didn't want sheets tomorrow but in fact required some sheets at that moment and it was back and forth for several minutes trying to get how did it resolve itself um i left confused as to where we had got to in the conversation and then 15 minutes later when i had gone to bed and my

house guests we had sort of improvised the solution a knock at the door uh answered by myself and he he had some sheets the same guy yeah i didn't know what was going to happen he was terrifying so we're building quite nicely now uh towards the resolution of all the problems we've introduced in the movie um if you want to call them problems which i think and if you want john voight has found the hidden layer of kahuna his brother who looks like a seven-year-old. I'll just remind you of where we're up to. Now, what's happened in the background while we've, sorry, we got a little bit sidetracked talking about

Jackie Chan and Scott Baio's father for a moment there. Judge Baio. Baio. Two black panel vans came into the scene, freaked out the female teenager who's in the film tracy or whatever she she had the the the you know she was in control of the babies at the time in a big quad stroller got freaked out went into the woods kahuna took all of them under his wing and they all buggered off to his lair of course the parents of those babies got a bit freaked out so they rang back home and impersonated a police officer and said that they'd accidentally gotten on a bus

and sent them to san francisco but buying them some time overnight to concoct a plan to take down john voight's character before he can reinitiate um his wounded network of the real triumph of the plot of this film is i'm simultaneously bored and confused i'm so sure i remember a dramatic tale of friendship set within a prison underneath the hostile watch of a purportedly christian warden i mean this is just so different from the film i remember directing who do you remember being in this tim robbins yeah okay i think i know what's happened here have you heard of a film called Shawshank Redemption? No

Right Alright well I'm back to square one I'm not quite sure What's that movie? Sorry it's very similar to the one you're describing Is it a Jackie Chan film? He's not in that picture no That's a shame

I love Jackie Chan Who doesn't really? If you don't have Jackie Chan you don't have a heart And If you don't have Jackie Chan, you don't have a heart, and if you don't like Jon Voight, you don't have a brain, as I've always said about cinemaphiles. So we're bringing all of the constituent parts, all the different characters, all the different groups, we're bringing them into one location now

so that we can get to our all is lost moment, we can really ramp up the stakes on everything. Everyone has discovered Kahuna's lair the parents have come on board the villains have entered into the hollywood hills hidden bunker the children have got themselves into that machine and enacted their best selves they are all chasing their bliss and transform momentarily but just enough time into superhero versions of themselves so that we can get away with getting that sweet sweet merchandise deal with metall off the ground this is a free-for-all there's a lot of violence there's a lot of punches being thrown um there's a dvd sailing through the air for three minutes continuously while the villains

now that has dated the film something chronic yeah it wasn't our finest moment that and we should have seen the writing on the wall it was 2004 you know it was already physical media you could tell was um going to be on the way out from memory we weren't constructing a film that needed to stand the test of time slightly more disposable piece of cinema is what I was trying to create. I'm not sure how you felt about it, Bob, at the time. It was hard to say, really. I mean, I'm still just shell-shocked by what I'm watching. Do you... I thought we were going to win an Academy Award.

For this? Or are you more in your head got the picture of the prison film that you thought you were making at the time yeah that might be well yeah certainly there's a huge chasm between the film i thought i made in the film it turns out that we made together. And that's okay. That's fine. I mean, I've made my peace with it. I'm happy in limbo. And it's been a joy to revisit elements of this.

I do feel the storytelling style is muddled, the tone, confused. You know, a film I watched recently, oh, what was it called? Shoot, about post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. I think you've seen it recently as well. Southland Tales is a movie that I saw recently. And I tell you what, I was pretty baffled in that,

and I'm not quite sure if we've got to those heights in the film that we created ourselves but it's not far off and it's more in Southland Tales what I was struggling with as I was watching that just purely as a viewer was kind of following the plot

trying to get to grips with the world we were living in in the film that we have created in the cold hard light of watching it over a decade later, had enough distance from it, had a bit of oxygen, it's more of a tonal confusion. Why do we keep referencing a very dark part of recent history, East Germany, the Stasi?

Why did we insist on John Voight to embody the role of a Nazi scientist? Questions, questions, questions. Why were we doing that encased in a very colourful and bright family film while simultaneously trying to service teenage boners for kids all across America?

Something for everyone. You keep saying it as if that solves the problems we're talking about I mean I'm I just can't help but feel that in this cinema gumbo We've created we're not serving anyone You know what I mean

You can't put mayo on absolutely everything And believe it or not you can't put ground up Dehydrated dead dogs on everything either There are some dishes that won't be served by it And I feel like this is This is us putting mayo on an ice cream some people like that we took 10 people's favorite ingredients and put them in one pot we weren't to know that that's not how you make a five-star meal it's not how you make anything Well... No, I guess not.

And that's news to me, and it's upsetting to me. And it also helps potentially explain why my time as a chef... Is this in limbo, or was this while you were... This was during university, yeah. Right. Short-lived, or did you sort of give it a good proper... I gave it a pretty good knock. Yeah?

But yeah, I mean, the restaurant I was running was closed down pretty quickly. Did you ever meet Gordon Ramsay? Yeah, I spent a lot of time with Gordon. Did you train under Gordon or sort of come up alongside him? You guys are best friends, right? More adjacent. Sure. Sort of next to.

I see. Did he know you were there? Not a lot of the time. Okay. At what part of his career were you sort of around him? When he was, I think we would have been

both been about 18, 19. So it was the part of his career where he was just chubbed up and I couldn't have been happier. So what part of him were you sort of watching most closely while you were... His chub. I used it to stir a minestrone once.

Burned the end off. Got in a lot of trouble. Wasn't allowed to cook again. You burned the end off of beloved chef and professional swearer Gordon Ramsay. His chub. You burned his chub off just a bit of just the tip an inch just out of curiosity and i shouldn't ask he wasn't swearing much before then how many inches are left after he lost the one like i wouldn't want to i wouldn't want to put a number

on it but nine wow the man has got a monster cock because I burned the end off and then it just went flat you mean at the end so I burned the end of his chub off yeah

he's got a flat top now a flat top penis yeah and he got a tattoo of a monster's face on the flat top amazing see now if that's not getting lemons and making lemonade i don't know what is couldn't happen to a nicer man isn't that

the truth oh sweet relief i feel like we're finally arriving uh near the conclusion of this film now actually um i you know would be remiss if we didn't mention that we fought tooth and nail to retain this ending of the movie. We wanted to insert a moral about kids getting outside and not watching television or movies anymore. And the studio were, understandably, somewhat furious about this. Because they said, it's not in our best interest as a company to tell people to stop buying our product using the medium of the product itself if you see what i'm saying you shouldn't tell in a kids movie kids to stop seeing kids movies and we said no we think we know what we're doing here who got john voight on board in a kid's film to be a Nazi scientist?

Was it you or was it us? It was us, that's right. Thank you for reminding me. I think we've got it from here. The other thing we said is this isn't a kid's movie. This is a movie for everyone. I'm familiar with pleasing a lot of people at one time. Been to a lot of orgies.

I've cooked a lot of meals. Ever heard of the chef Gordon Ramsay? I'm lucky enough to consider him a close personal restraining order and yeah look i mean i'm still just shell-shocked that this is i could have sworn i could have absolutely do you think it's the presence of police officers that's made you think... I just thought Bob Gunton was in this movie. Right.

Who else did you think was in this movie? Baby Geniuses 2 Superbabies. William Sadler. Can I also ask a question of you, Bob? Clancy Brown. Bob, how did we arrive... Gil Bellows. How did we arrive on the format of the title for this film,

which is first the title Superbabies and then the subtitle is Baby Geniuses 2? In my experience as a filmmaker, you generally want to lead with the franchise name and then tell them what number that you're up to in the franchise and then go with the subtitle after that. For example, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Secret of the Ooze. You see what i'm saying the director of baby geniuses who was me bob clark would not sign off on this uh being part of the frank would not sign off on this being canon right in spite of him making both films and him being you yeah well i just thought that they were two different of movies i mean one you know about baby geniuses yeah uh you know baby's ability to communicate

and talk and some scientists trying to figuring out you know what to do with that information yep and then this a movie about a man wrongfully imprisoned and his quest for freedom uh they are quite different artistic visions to try and um wrap into a single franchise and with that in mind it makes a lot more sense as to how we've landed on the titling format that we've we've got doesn't it just we're really putting a bow on it now folks uh john vo Voight's been defeated. The Kids Show Network, while we couldn't take down the satellites or the broadcast that was going to go out to brainwash kids, the moral that we decided to go with was, do you know how you allow people to have more freedom and free will and democracy?

You force it down their fucking throat using a television widecast, okay? Some people are going to quibble with that they're going to say that's not really how free will works, they're not going to assume that that's the nature of freedom, that you don't force freedom you have to allow freedom to happen no, not when you're dealing

with Scotty Baio and Naughty Voight yeah, Naughty Voight we've got our own ideas about how we insert freedom into the minds of our citizenry, and that is force it down their fucking throat using high-tech distribution methods.

And in spite of all the confusion along the way, also, for those of you who are still watching the film as you listen to our director's commentary, this scene. Oh, this won't make any sense without a little context. No, exactly. So Zach, the guy we found and secretly cast in the film, was genuinely an orphan who was separated from his mother at birth. We hired an actor to pretend to be his mother for how long it took to shoot this scene which is about one

minute and we then took her away from him and can't tell you how much i regret that decision that you made entirely and i had nothing to do with i even i was wrought with guilt how do you feel right now uh after making the decision to do that well Well, I wouldn't say I feel regretful because I actually sort of feel vindicated in seeing it. Bold. A bold assessment of the choices that you've made as an artist. Well, it was a bold film from woe to go, wasn't it? It sure was.

And more upsettingly still, as soon as we took the camera off that, I shouted out, that's a wrap at roughly this point, and a third of our kahunas immediately flew into some treetops. Oh, God. So we've got our final kahuna, the last spare tyre left, going off into the sunset in his helicopter craft, and he bit the dust, unfortunately, didn't he?

Yeah, and so he he hit a treetop fell down and I had to yell out that's a wrap twice so the this screening of

Baby Geniuses 2 is dedicated to the memory of Jerry Leo and Miles Fitzgerald RIP and your own

might I add Bob you did a great job and I'm sorry that you're gone it's okay it's taken before your time if it's all right with you I'm gonna leave O-Town was the name of that band immediately

just so we're all on the same page Bob I'm sure you've got places to be I'm sure you want to get back to hanging out with huge backlog of comic talent and limbo I've got my future projects to

work on good luck do you just I'll let you know the next one's actually going to be part of this franchise as well marvelous what's it called uh it's called baby geniuses 3 colon wrath of kahuna and it's a sitcom come sci-fi action comedy family coming of age Hong Kong martial arts avant-garde foreign film

sounds like a lot of genres it sounds like a bit of me I cannot wait to see it thanks for joining us everyone for this audio commentary of Superbabies Baby Geniuses 2 my name is joining us everyone for this audio commentary of super babies baby geniuses too

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