The Worst Idea Of All Time - DirCom: Southland Tales

Episode Date: April 16, 2018

Originally recorded and released to our Patreon supporters in March 2017.Director/screen writer/visionary Richard Kelly is joined by producer/associate/offensive character Bo Hyde for this exclusive HD-DVD audio commentary for their 2006 epic Southland Tales. Starring some of the world's biggest stars of the day, this comedy/sci-fi/thriller/apocalypse movie has something for everyone and a hell of a lot of juggling.For audio syncing, please start this HD-DVD track at the conclusion of the trailer.Music credit: Canon in D Major - Composed by Pachelbel, Performed by Kevin MacLeod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Peloton all-access membership separate. Learn more at onepeloton.ca slash running. Hello and welcome along to this director's commentary for Southland Tales written and directed by myself, Richard Kelly. I am joined for this commentary by one of our hard-working producers and a close personal friend of mine, Bo Hyde. Bo, how are you doing? It's great to be here. Really great to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's my pleasure. Thanks for making the time, Bo. So it's been a while since either of us have revisited this film. Of course, I'd say 9-11 years.

Either of us have revisited this film, of course, I'd say 9-11 years. 9-11 years, and what an appropriate way to remember this tragedy of a film. Easy now. I think what people really want from us is an exclusive sort of behind-the-scenes tale of what went into the production and what made the film so unique in tone and execution. so unique in tone and execution. So to start things off, I guess, support the people get a little bit of context about where I was coming from when I wrote this movie. I was coming from a pretty serious drug binge, as it happens.

And Bo, you pulled me out of the spiral. Yeah, and I think it's pretty evident on film what you were going through for this movie. A lot of people kind of misinterpreted the film as being, I heard it described as a comedy, thriller, sci-fi apocalypse movie, which in many ways, if you take it literally, it is. But really, everything's a metaphor in the film. You know, Beau...

Right? Isn't that right well the thing is it is it is all of those things and it is and when i set out to make the movie i did want it to be all of those things i wanted to take all of the genres can i take my shoes off in this yeah yeah of course please i just i feel like this movie is uh very long for yeah yeah i mean we'll both pay the price of your shoes coming off. Now, are we watching the Khan edit, or is this the cinema edit? As you well know, this film debuted at Khan in 2006 and was reviled by critics.

It was probably one of the most upsetting and comprehensive takedowns of a piece of cinema i've ever been around or near it's a long way from donnie darko we took out 14 minutes in the hopes of giving it a successful theatrical release and i gotta say those 14 minutes uh in hindsight i would have put them back in they were the glue that made this movie accessible to people wanting to watch it and it's also just like when you get the end result which is a complete financial failure wouldn't you rather just have had it your way the entire time you just don't know bo and i remember it was actually

you leaning on me pretty hard to take out those 14 minutes so it seemed pretty mean-spirited for you to then uh rub my face in that look let's uh let's get into this movie um there's more than enough time for us to explore our interpersonal machinations uh over the years i'd call it dredging rather than exploring so what we've got here is um it actually looks very much like a dvd menu screen uh and really the purpose of this is twofold number one we needed to get a lot of sponsors logos on the screen at once so you can see to the right we've got panasonic bud light and hustler um present who in some ways were the most important producers of all in this film ensuring that we got a 16 million dollar budget on time they were very very supportive very generous

they were the first people we approached, the only people we approached. They came through for us. They absolutely came through for us. The other reason that we used this sort of DVD menu interface layout is they were all the rage in 2006. We didn't see the technology changing. We wanted to make a movie that was timeless, that would age well. We thought everyone would just get to the DVD age and then kind of stop. well and we thought everyone would just get to the dvd age and then kind of stop i mean when is it going to be enough when will people realize that we don't need a crisper picture you know dvd quality

cinema uh both in terms of as a as an as a director and as an audience member is satisfactory to me i don't need a crisper picture what are you good with where did it get to you where you were like you know what i'm fine i was actually pretty happy with vhs that's right uh and then i eventually after you know it took a lot of persuasion i got talked around to to buying into dvd and then by the time i was finally on board with that blu-ray came along and i was understandably furious oh and you and you and me, both. I mean, there you go. You finally complete your final box set of the James Bond series.

You're up to 23. And then guess what, folks? There's another four. I bought every single movie in HD DVD. Boy, was my face red. Well, the thing is we're still working through that backlog of movies, aren't we? Bo and I made an agreement upon the release of Blu-ray

and other digital forms of release and streaming that we would not watch anything that does not get a DVD release. And it's been really, really hard to keep our finger on the pulse with regards to pop culture. Yeah, it's quite limiting for modern movies. Hey, I think we're doing a disservice by ignoring everything that's happening on screen. This is all non-essential stuff well i i'm i know that you wrote and directed the film richard but

i'm gonna give you a little bit of pushback there because we managed to shoehorn in a almost absurd amount of plot uh in the opening three minutes of this film during the dvd menu screen right and um we just to bring you up to speed roughly, if I remember. No, you're remembering it. World War III. We got a lot of stars in. And what we wanted was a plot for every star. And we signed upwards of 10 stars for this movie.

So there's up to 10 plots operating simultaneously. Do you want to give a little name check and who we've got to look forward to? To look forward to, to grace your screens, obviously Justin Timberlake right now, a fantastic pop star and actor who was, he was a real devil on the set. He was a devil with the ladies.

There's Dwayne the Rock Johnson. He was really at the peak of his powers when we were filming this too, right? 2006 was a big year for JT, that's right, yeah. What's this is down for? We'll never know. I think he's, I haven't seen or listened to anything. He's only done a DVD release or a CD release for a while,

but I understand he's doing pretty well. Dwayne The Rock Johnson, also a huge get for us as he was transitioning from being a wrestling star to a movie star. Now, interesting fact about him, working with him on set, he developed a nervous tick, which we couldn't get him to stop doing while we were rolling, which you will absolutely notice in the film if you see it, whereby he clasps his hands into a Montgomery Burns-esque

tapping motion betwixt his fingers, and it's distracting, it's tonally off for the film, and I'm not sure how's it's in there how to make him stop doing it well and that was one of our challenges on set every time but alas it wasn't to be i just want people to know as we as we walk you through this movie uh if you're struggling to keep up with any elements of the plot or you're feeling a little bit overwhelmed that's fine that's normal don't worry about it everything will be resolved at the end

okay it doesn't matter how many balls we have in the air we catch all the balls at the end of the movie you're in safe hands you are watching

an impressive feat of juggling at Cirque du Soleil folks we are dealing with Richard Kelly thank you thank you this is why I love you

the most skillful juggler there is so let's keep creaming through those stars Sarah Michelle Gellar oh Buffy the Vampire Slayer thank you this is why i love you the most skillful juggler there is so let's keep cramming through those stars um sarah michelle geller oh buffy the vampire slayer herself is in this she does not like it when you call her that on set no she does not i found that out the hard way and she still carries a lot of props from her buffy days with her yeah which i think is probably why it's confusing and frustrating uh she hates being called buffy but but if you call her Buffy, she will use some of her skills

and props from the Buffy set to issue retribution. We also had John Larroquette, the late John Larroquette. I hope I'm saying that correctly. John Lovitz. John Lovitz. Is in this film of Grown Ups 2 fame.

That's right. He has, I understand, gone on to star in a movie called Grown Ups 2 fame that's right he has I understand gone on to star in a movie called Grown Ups 2 one I haven't haven't got to see unfortunately as I've yet to get my hands on a DVD copy of

but I hear truly incredible things Sherry O'Terry who's a close personal friend of mine of Grown Ups 2 fame that's also

yep that's right that's another another Grown Ups 2 star Amy Poehler is in this film. I'm just going to press pause on the roll call, Richard, while we just have a look at what's happening on screen. So basically what you've tried to do is enact your own vision of the NSA, which according to you is a laboratory of computers

and people sitting at computers and they're wearing ponchos to indicate that they're part of the intelligence enterprise. Also, there's another important detail that I feel gets skimmed over uh certainly got skimmed over in reviews of the film they're wearing singlets under the ponchos um so that's that's sleeveless t if you don't know what a single is this is sleeveless t-shirt uh and that was a very important detail that that was very clear in the khan edit yeah but the cinema release in those 14 minutes, that got taken out. Got a bit lost, didn't it?

It did get a bit lost. To continue the cavalcade of stars we have on display for you today, Wallace Shawn, he's got a fantastic voice and a fantastic attitude. He was a very cheery presence on the set, even in some of the down days. We've got Mandy Moore, pop sensation Mandy Moore, a fine actor if ever there was one. Yeah, and a very fine singer.

I actually understand she went on to do some great work in the animated film Tangled, set in the universe of Rapunzel, a movie unfortunately I haven't got to see. No DVD for that. No DVD release of that. Sean William Scott, who didn't break character as Stifler at all when he was off camera, and then when he was shooting would refuse to go back into character as Stifler. Very confusing guy to work with, but certainly brought a lot of energy, a lot of heat. It was an incredible thing to work with because everyone on set was a huge American Pie fan.

Massive. We were dealing with Stifler right up until that slate came down and the word action was called. right up until that slate came down and the word action was called. And then he would just drop into this quite morose, introverted, well, time-travelling cop character. We'll get into that later. Yeah, can I tell you this? I remember, as you will too, auditioning Sean William Scott. And he came and I said, I will see Sean now.

And no one came through. I said to our assistant producer, could we get Sean in the room, please? Can Mr. William Scott, please, come in for us? No one came into the room. And then I said, the guy played Stifler. And upon hearing Stifler, he charged through the room. He said, fuckers, fuckers, fuckers. And he immediately, he sexually assaulted one of the camera assistants

who was in the room, just helping with the audition process. That's disgusting. And as soon as we got that camera rolling though, on the drop of a hat. Absolutely. Just like that. Suddenly this beautiful, touching performance. Very nuanced. And yeah, I mean he was certainly an

interesting guy. Now, what we're seeing on screen at the moment is a gentleman who we sort of get to know a little bit later on in the film, if memory serves. But he's watching TV and he's hearing a character whose name escapes me in the instant that we're watching this right now. But he is, I think, known as the Baron later on. He's not the Baron.

Oh, God. And this frustrated me because you couldn't really get a handle on the characters when we were shooting if you can't do it then i mean how are you going to do it now i feel like i've just seen it as well yeah weird weird feeling it's a familiar feeling for me i love so do you remember what his name was who makes the infinite energy and this is something that i learned on set i mean we were all learning a lot on set is that more characters does not make for more comprehensive closure with regards to plot.

I think when you're juggling, it's good to have balls in the air. And it's tempting to add more balls in the air. And that's going to create a very stressful environment wherein you muddle a lot of the actors' names, you frustrate a lot of people, you step on a lot of the actors' names, you frustrate a lot of people you step on a lot of toes. So we've got kind of your vision of an Elon Musk-esque character

played by the gentleman from Princess Bride Wallace Shawn, absolutely. Wallace Shawn very distinctive voice and he's talking about, he's basically created a perpetual motion machine, hasn't he, which seemingly breaks the laws of physics. Somehow harnessing the power of the ocean's currents,

and he just says the word entanglement in quantum physics a couple of times, and you thought that would probably suffice as an explanation. Look, people don't like to be pandered to. It's show, don't tell. Show them. It's possible the words don't tell them what the words mean and that's something that we a rule that we followed pretty pretty closely throughout this um sarah michelle geller's character in this film is uh sort of an entrepreneurial porn star who's transitioning into becoming a

all-around-the-clock superstar slash kidnapper yes she is somehow involved in this uh this kidnapping plot um of course dwayne the rock johnson's character who's known as i mean we had a lot of fun coming up with different character names. Boxer Santaros. So Boxer and Sarah Michelle Gellar's character, whose name is Krista. Krista now. Yeah. You really took the afternoon off when you thought of that one in the morning, didn't you?

Yes, I did. They've written a film script together in the week since he's been recovered from the desert. I just want to make clear for everyone, what Richard's about to tell you been recovered from the desert. I just want to make clear for everyone, what Richard's about to tell you is 100% the film. Just to hammer home the truth of what he's about to lay on you. Boxer, he's been abducted and gone missing in the desert in Nevada.

He's recovered a week later with amnesia. All of the US intelligence is searching for him. Because his background is that he is a darling of the Democratic Party. No, he's got Republican ties. Come on. Oh, I see. Come on. Okay, I'm sorry. Every time he's got Republican ties,

he's dating the daughter of the presumptive Republican nominee for president. Whose wife is the two I see at the NSA? That is correct. Or US ident? Look, we wanted to create rich, strong, and textured characters, so we gave all of them very important jobs and then decided that they were all connected to each other. Did that work?

Hmm. I think the box office numbers speak for themselves. But pretty much they've written this movie, and as you will hear, Justin Timberlake, he was a saviour, by the way. We got him for one extra day at the end of shooting we said justin please just for our sake and maybe the sake of the audience we don't know if we're going to use this could you do a voiceover of the whole movie explaining

anything that might seem confusing or misguided and he was he took it to heart he ended up um recording a director's commentary-esque track, which was just basically him narrating the background of what we intended to show on screen, but maybe it wasn't explicit to the stupid bourgeoisie American audiences who came to this film. As always, you guys, as I've said already in this director's commentary, please don't be worried if you can't keep up with the plot.

Don't be worried if you can't keep up with the plot. Don't be worried if you can't keep up with the characters. This movie is for everyone, mostly intelligent people, also for you. That's why we've got Justin Timberlake's voiceover throughout. Yeah, but if you don't get it, you're a silly moron person who doesn't appreciate art or vision, which, according to the box office numbers, would be most of America and the world.

A lot of people aren't ready. We certainly try to make a lot of money back on the DVD market, and the timing couldn't have been much worse. It was 2007, big transitioning year for DVDs. Huge. PlayStation 3 was just coming out. It had a built-in Blu-ray player. It was not good for us.

We hedged our bets a little bit and put the soundtrack out, composed by Moby, on HD DVD. Unfortunately, that war had already been lost as well. Now, Moby, he's a buzzy little fucker, that guy, isn't he? Isn't he? Isn't he a little ball of energy on set? He would stand on set set just out of frame and do what he told us the score was going to be

just with his mouth whenever we were shooting whenever we were shooting Moby would be there he'd open up his mouth and go I've never seen anything like it it's highly it's how I imagine Leonardo da Vinci worked

whereby he would get an idea and he had to scribble it in backwards in one of his notebooks, if Dan Brown is to be believed. Moby's kind of like that. He's a savant. He's a genius. If he's there and an idea strikes him, he needs to get it out, and all he has is his mouth to do that. It's interesting, isn't it?

Because at the same time, he's so professional, yet so unprofessional. It's professional in that he it? Because at the same time, he's so professional, yet so unprofessional. Professional in that he literally cannot stop creating and working, and unprofessional in that he has no respect for what's happening around him and is a seriously disruptive force on set. The biggest problem I think we had was that he kept live composing with his mouth

while we were shooting scenes, which became very tricky in the post post audio edit to we said try mask is there any way you could do these in a recording booth maybe you could use some instruments or some computer software and he's and that's funny you mentioned leonardo da vinci because exactly what he said he said would you would if you go back in time and watch leonardo da vinci work would you tell him to paint with a rock? And I said, no, Moby, that's not what I'd do. And he said, well, that's what you're telling me to do.

You're telling me to paint with a rock. Just to catch everyone up on where we're at in the film so far, if I may attempt such a bold call to action. We've covered a lot of ground, people. The intro three-minute DVD menu explains that World War III is about to break out. There's a lot of civil unrest. We've got a bunch of pseudo-terrorists who identify as the neo-Marxists, which I'm glad that you put in the movie,

follow the teachings of Karl Marx, just for the fucking plebeian American audience who didn't pick that up on first blush. There's so many different variations of people with the surname Marx who have had a similar cultural impact as Karl Marx. That's true.

I don't want to risk any of those other Marxes whose names I will not list for they are many and well-known. Yeah. I just didn't want to risk that. Maybe five. Maybe we'll just do the top five Marx. The top five Marx that aren't Karlknown. Yeah. I just didn't want to risk that. Maybe five. Maybe we'll just do the top five marks. The top five marks that aren't cow marks?

Yeah. Sean Marks, GM of the Brooklyn Nets, former basketball player for the Miami Heat, the first New Zealand basketball player to make it in the NBA. Different spelling, yes. Same pronunciation. Very popular in America. What was his ideology all about uh he's kind of

about building from the ground up within the team uh he's from the san antonio spurs school of front office management so he's worked with greg popovich he knows how to build a championship contender he knows how to build a winner but um he's having a little bit of trouble right now he's funnily enough actually sean marks and the brooklyn nets are funded by i believe his name is mikhail prokhorov a very prominent russian billionaire i was going to say that is it the most american surname of him uh so it's funny how the world you know comes full circle sometimes but certainly um my heart and best wishes go out to sean marks and the brooklyn Nets during this difficult rebuilding phase. And number four.

The fourth most famous Marks, of course, is Kerry Marks, a UK comedian, very popular on the circuit, very funny guy. Great live show. Great live show. A hard worker too. And one of the sharpest joke writers, I'd say, on the scene at the moment. And one of the sharpest joke writers, I'd say, on the scene at the moment. I ran into him recently in a dive bar in Perth, Western Australia.

Great guy. Always a pleasure to see him. My understanding is that he wants to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a system where we are trading underpants with each other as a form of currency. Yeah, he's got a few pretty zany ideas, and that's probably why he's only the fourth most prominent Marx. And who sits on the shoulders of that giant? So glad you asked, Beau.

It's a real pleasure rifling through the famous Marxists or Marxes with you. I mean, you've got to say the Marx Brothers, really, in two and three, stalwarts and creators of whole genres of comedy, really. Yeah. Pioneers in slapstick. Yeah.

Innovators of comedy on screen. Yes. And really, I think, much more important than Karl Marx. Well, not for us to say, but certainly Karl Marx does sit atop that list. But just to avoid confusion. Hey, just to hit pause on this as well. Did we ever get back to explaining outside of the can edit

why our friend Stifler is looking in a mirror and there's a huge delay for his reflection yeah we did and i'd love to explain that for everyone now because that did seem to cause a lot of confusion with a lot of viewers the reason that happened is the camera was playing up. Oh, no. Yeah. So he just ad-libbed that line where he notices that his reflection is slow. Well, he had to.

And the incredible thing is because he couldn't see the camera footage, his reflection was actually moving in real time at the same time as his body. So he somehow sensed that the camera was glitching and said, my reflection is lagging. Fuck, he's incredible casting him in a as a cop was a bold call i think um well there's a lot of bold calls in this movie really

whenever you're playing around with interdimensional transportation and time warps and uh it's funny the science fiction genre gives and takes What it gives is a lot of scope for experimentation The opportunity to maybe cut corners Take leaps of logic that you're beholden to If you're in a movie that's set in the present day real world And yet what it takes is a steady hand and a clever mind to pull it off and if if you're lacking those what it what it takes away is a sense of coherence closure form purpose uh and a

lot of other things that thankfully i haven't had to experience as a filmmaker because i do have a steady hand and i'm a very controlled filmmaker. For those of you just catching up and not actually hearing the audio of what's happening on screen, you've missed an awful lot of movies so far. Where we're at right now, just to give you a little snapshot, we're in Krista Now, the porn star played by Sir Michelle Gellar's house. Boxer is pitching his movie script, which he has co-written with her,

to Stifler. Yeah, so he is. And Stifler is... He's a cop on the beat, and Boxer is wanting to have a ride-along with him to kind of gain some... Similar to how Simon Pegg did with Hot Fuzz. But the thing is that Stifler isn't actually a cop on the beat.

He's been drugged by the Marxists to impersonate his twin brother, who is a cop on the beat, to take Boxer on a ride-along in the hopes of capturing footage of Boxer in a compromising situation that they can then extort and blackmail the Republican nominee. But are they also not simultaneously trying to set Stifler up to look like a racist cop? Because they brainwash him to say a bunch of racist stuff and then shoot some civilians.

The reason that they need Stifler to be a racist cop is to draw racism and bad decision-making out of Boxer. Oh, I did not pick that up when we were making this film. Such a rich tapestry you've laid bare for us, Richard. Yeah. If you mess up... I have never meant these words more than I mean them right now. How did you come up with this?

Well, as I said, I was on the tail end of a pretty serious drug binge when you came up to me and you said, look, it's been five years since Donnie Darko. And I said, yep. And you said, that's quite a long time. I said, really, it doesn't feel like that long a time. Things are fine. I'm doing a lot of drugs.

I'm writing a lot of stuff down. Yeah. And you said, what kind of stuff? And I said, well, I'll show you. And I showed you a pin board that was roughly 10 by 10 meters. It was full of sort of different ideas, different characters, different pictures of celebrities. I said, this is my masterpiece.

Yeah. There was a lot of string connecting the various pictures and notes that you had written. And you took that string. You said that there was a string short, and you took all that string out. And I feel if you'd kept it on the board, maybe the plot of the movie would be slightly more interconnected

than it is. But pretty much it was when you came in, and you started taking photos and taking the string out, and you said, we're making this movie, that I realized it probably was time to pull my socks up and get back to work. I couldn't get you out of that room no you were just so in the groove of coming up with another character name another plot line an additional government agency that we could add to the film another um pseudo-scientific concept that we could play with you understand the creative

process better than anyone I know, better than anyone I've worked with and when you're alone with your ideas it can be difficult to know when they're finished when to take something out, when to put something in and I guess that's my job as a producer to lay the hammer down at some point and say, do you know what?

Four. Four is enough pseudo-scientific concepts to play with 18 characters is enough especially when you've given half of the cast two names yeah there was a lot of that going on i mean i can understand why this didn't perform well at the box office am i angry about it yes i am because my success financially is directly tied to the success of the film could i see it coming no i'll put my hand on my heart and i thought we had this stitched up by getting moby to financially is directly tied to the success of the film. Could I see it coming? No. I'll put my hand to my heart.

And I thought we had this stitched up by getting Moby to compose the soundtrack. I mean, I just thought that would work, you know? I thought that would probably patch over the little potholes we had in here. Yeah, as it turns out, it would have taken quite a large amount of industrial cement and a huge army of road workers to fill in all the potholes that are strewn throughout the film. But, I mean, they've just dropped the N-word on screen a few times

in an exchange between Stifler and Dwayne The Rock Johnson, which is, I mean, it was ambitious, heady, and I would say ill-advised. I just suddenly had a memory. I believe that these two are separate from this co-star. You're dead right. The Jungle. Welcome to the Jungle.

Welcome to the Jungle. Did you see that? I couldn't get my hands on a DVD, so I unfortunately haven't, but I'd love to know if you have because I'm very curious about how that was. They're both very charismatic performers. Can't say I've seen it. Saw a lot of the posters, though.

They had a great poster campaign. Very prominent. Maybe that's what we did wrong. Not enough posters. Not enough posters out there. Well, I was surprised. People buy DVDs when they see the poster of the film. You called me up and said,

we've got to do this director's commentary for promotional reasons. forgot this movie even existed it really slipped under the radar i had no idea i mean we did make it 10 years ago now but the fact that anyone uh would want this or choose for this product to exist is truly a testament to a deep dive through some interesting corners of the internet and just to give everyone who maybe the TV's gone out on your end or something a visual reference, we're still in the cop car and now we're exploring a confusing, maybe metaphor, Richard, you could clean this up, about a baby not shitting for a few days. for a few days which i think is a conversation which then gets mirrored by terry o'sherry later on when she's talking about whether or not shitting is in the bible and if it's not why does anyone need to shit if god hasn't said that we need to look when i watch it back a lot of the uh religious allegory and what was supposed to be underttones strike me as being pretty like, like over Tony and quite, I'd say quite convoluted and confusing.

God bless Justin Timberlake though, who grabbed a King James Bible and just started reading from Revelations when his audio track got a bit thin. So we cut a few of those out and just shoved them in, didn't we? Yeah, well, what we said to Justin when he agreed to do that day of voiceover to sort of paper over any of the holes in the film,

we said, you're going to go in there and you're going to talk for 24 hours straight. And if you flub a line, if you take a break, if you say um, if you say but, if you take a pause that lasts longer than five seconds, we're going to start the clock again. And so what wound up happening is the first few times he got through to four or five hours, he got through to seven hours on the third try. I think he was getting pretty upset and pretty frustrated then because he'd been in there, as you know, that's 16 hours. It's a long time to not be sleeping. And then eventually he said, can I have a book? And we said, no. And he said,

lucky I brought one. And he pulled out a Bible and he said no and he said lucky i brought one and he pulled out a bible and he pretty much did i'd say seven hours of recapping the plot before diving straight into just constant bits of scripture just reading and rereading the bible and um as you said we were sort of just pulling we treated that uh audio tape like a lucky dip in terms of what wound up in the film we just pulled out different odds and ends and overlaid them with different bits of uh here's here's what um you people might not understand about filmmaking when you've got a festival like khan what's happening is you are editing on the fly up until the day we would we were shooting stuff uh two days before khan opened we were uh showing our film on the first day of the Cannes Film Festival. Ever heard of it?

Yeah. So basically what we had was a, we shot this all on hi-8 tapes. So we were just in a small van cutting together this analog footage, bits of JT's audio of him reading from the Bible, hoping for the best. And the feedback that it was a little flabby, that we could lose 14 minutes, I'll put my hand up and say that's absolutely fine. That's what Khan is for. Khan is about showing your best attempt at a work in progress

of what you've got so far. Well, it's funny. Bring it to the directors. Bring it to the people. Get some feedback. Because that was the same year that Sophia Coppola took Marie Antoinette and Richard Linkl link later he took uh i believe it was fast food nation i remember talking to them about khan and their sort of

process and getting ready for it and how they felt about where their films were at and both of them i would say unprofessionally but certainly in a change of tech seemed to come along with what they described as finished products yeah but it comes back to the Leonardo da Vinci sort of allegory, doesn't it? What is finished? Is art ever finished? I just, I guess... I mean, our art was not finished. I can't stress that enough.

We hadn't mixed any of the audio. There were scenes missing. No, Moby actually scored the film live during the screening. That was incredible. He was a resilient little guy because there was a lot of a lot of different stuff thrown a lot of cheeses at can moby of course a staunch vegan um he didn't mind the cheese hitting him if it was from the neck down if it hit his face

he'd get pretty upset and he'd start pointing fingers and i guess when he broke from doing the soundtrack and started berating the panel of judges and critics, maybe that was when the world of the film was broken for them. I think it's very difficult to focus on staying in the realm of the film and suspending your disbelief. When Moby's in the theatre yelling at you about how no one understands real art and how he is a modern-day Leonardo da Vinci. Just how cows, you know, cow's milk is for cows.

Human milk is for humans. He's said that a lot. Moby's got a fantastic little range of artisanal human dairy cheese products that he peddled on the streets of Cannes in between screenings of different films. Now, let's, just if we may, head back into the world of the film. Must we?

Proposition 69. Do you remember what that piece of legislation was that you had invented within the universe of this film? Yes, vividly. The Supreme Court were trying to pass a proposition that blocked uh dual oral sex happening at any one time it's sometimes have you heard of a theory called occam's razor yeah the simple explanation is is the explanation proposition 69 was it started as a as a joke um

a joke proposition before we were going to write in the actual proposition. And I guess time got away from us. We never really got around to changing it. So whenever you see it referred to in this film, that is the government trying to create legislation to prevent 69s from happening. You do play with the number 69 a lot in this. play with the number 69 a lot in this not in a I would describe clever way

but more in a child schoolyard fashion if you're going to build a movie as a comedy you've got to have some funny content now this is where I've got to put my foot down again because we talked about this at the time Richard sci-fi comedy thriller

are not often a Venn diagram in the world of cinema that ends up well when you live in the interstate. I wanted to be that way. I want a lot of switches, a lot of fades. A lot of transitions.

That's what's crushing it nowadays. Big heavy drops. Yeah. We are just joining two comedy superstars of the silver screen, the most blinding being Sherry O'Terry of Grown Ups 2 fame. I believe Terri O'Sherry is her preferred name. She likes spoonerism, so do I.

She's very unconfident on the skates, and I just wish that we had told her before the shoot day that she was going to be uh skating i'm all for uh not method acting but certainly naturalism and cinema which sort of comes against odds with the uh grandiose science fiction film i've created but what i want within the world of that is very honest acting performances if a person can't roller skate i want to see that on the screen but what if their character is supposed to be able to roller skate which i'll just pick an example i'll just pick an example this movie that we're gonna go on that journey with the character so

yes the character can roller skate competently but the actor cannot, and therefore the character also cannot. I think I'm getting it. Amy Poehler's in this movie. She's just been on screen saying some things. Yeah. I told her if this movie didn't do well at the box office, that it'd be the end of her career. And as we all know, you were dead right.

That's right. I have not seen a single thing she's been involved with since uh people assure me that she has been performing but you know what i say if i ain't on dvd i got the dvd it ain't happening now what we are exploring at the moment is some themes of the police state which again uh look in the wrong hands would have just been an absolute nightmare on the screen but luckily we were in the capable hands of Richard Kelly. The NSA-esque US IDENT

agency has a network of intelligence which now I want to stress in 2006 we didn't have the Snowden revelations we didn't know exactly how the NSA was operating but I think someone could have guessed that it wasn't just a whole lot of microphones being put in jackets of random people well but

that's the decision you chose to make for this movie that the police state was just a whole lot of microphones I think jackets and one person at a government agency listening certainly was and is one of the more challenging elements of making an honest science fiction film is on the one hand you have a lot of these quite highfalutin high concept uh ideas happening and then on the other hand human souls do they exist on the other hand you want to keep it simple occasionally so you want you know you want different access points back into the movie if someone's dropped off or tuned out, they can't keep up with the plot or the number of characters or sort of any of the other various aspects

that pretty much make up and comprise basic filmmaking, you need to give them another entry point. And reducing the work of the NSA and intelligence agencies to just microphones being put on different jackets, that's my way of doing that there's actually a pretty good answer to that um it's a good thing you're here richard to explain yourself well any questions uh please you know keep them coming because it's both uh exciting sort of cathartic and you know just a a touch harrowinging to stroll down memory lane with you right now.

You're having a play with animation in this scene. There's sort of a rotoscope element to it. Stifler is about to jump out of a window because the cops are coming into the room to find him. He's been drugged in a stationary position. I still haven't quite... And it's weird. I did work on the film.

Still haven't quite wrapped my head around the fact that he's in this room drugged up yet he's also the cop rolling around there are two brothers and they're both played by Stifler and one of the brothers is a

cop and the other one is a vet yeah, a vet of Iraq who's been drugged by the Marxists. Yes, right. And so the cop has been bound, and the drugged Marxist has been given the mission to go and get the rock to say and do bad things. Here's why I'm still confused. Ten years after we've put the film out keep the

questions coming now i know that i'm skipping ahead but in the final bits of this film we have the two stiflers join hands in sort of an interdimensional portal opening fashion why would that occur if it was two brothers because they talk a lot about time travel when they're on the mega zeppelin and i just i think you're getting well at this sorry that was sorry explosive with spoilers but like i'm just saying my understanding was that one of the are there two stifler brothers and one of them is also a time traveler so there's three i think uh you've already put more thought into this than i have and that's probably where you're getting confused because if you're thinking about things i haven't

thought about then naturally that's going to be confusing for you because i've made the movie um great work here by the rock he's not doing the finger thing in this scene and i think it's probably the only one uh that we managed to get out him. No, he's doing it right now. I've spoken too early. Doesn't he look youthful, though? Look at that gorgeous tan face. And that beautiful head of hair. Little did I know The Rock would go on to be the highest grossing box office actor in American cinema.

I certainly wish he'd brought a little bit more of that attitude and professionalism to set during our shoot days because um he's got a different version of that actually i was talking to him recently and his take is more that he is a stratospheric star that had a lump of iron tied around his feet which was this script director dop, DOP, best boy, grip, sound assist, lighting person, makeup artist, catering, transport, assistant to Mr. Johnson, first AD, second AD, myself. He put you into the lump of iron? Sorry? He cast you in the lump of iron with everyone else

Who was dragging him down during this filming Yeah, he did Did you ask him any questions about his insistence On using that hand gesture throughout time on set? Because I notice, I haven't seen it But from the reports I've heard He hasn't used that same technique Look, actors make decisions

As far as I'm concerned It's up to the director to tell them if they're good or not so that might be a ball landing squarely in your forecourt well one of the decisions i did enjoy was uh this character's decision to constantly be smoking a cigarette if not because it uh not the rock i'll stress just if something's happened to your screen and you're not watching sorry that is that is That is, of course, the fantastic Bai Ling as Serpentine, who is the girlfriend of the Baron character, who's the Elon Musk-esque character played by Wallace Shawn. You told me that wasn't Baron earlier.

No, Wallace Shawn is the Baron. You were asking if that big bald pimp who stays with Sarah Michelle Gellar was called Baron. Oh. And he is not. Okay. I don't think I did, but we're all on the same page. I think we are now.

Yeah. So now we're in a library, because why not? We thought it would be great to hammer over the head that these people read books, and they have managed to obtain the screenplay that Boxer has written. Boxer, a.k.a. Dwayne The Rock Johnson. We never get into the weeds on how they obtained the script. Don't think it's too important. We also don't get too much into the weeds on who these people are.

No, no, these are all unnecessary questions. The main purpose of this scene is to show the audience books, to reassure them they're in safe hands they're in the hands of someone who has read and written many many books um and i feel it really does that i did get frustrated with our dop for insisting on getting so much of the different characters in frame when what i really wanted was just several beautiful sort of dolly shots down the aisles of the uh the library the bookstore, just showing all sorts of different books. Well, he wasn't about to tell you how to do your job, and I think the reverse should have been true.

It wasn't. Because the DOP has actually moved the camera far too early, shifting off the frame of the person speaking while she has still got dialogue and resting on the next person along in the line who is silent for a long while before her line is delivered. Can I tell you? I just want to ask the question, could we not have had a better take to put in the final cut of this movie? That's for two reasons, of which I will give you both.

Number one, Moby was on set that day, really belting out a tune, which was highly distracting. And then combine that with the fact I was yelling over him to say, less people, more books. I feel like, really, given the circumstance in which they were working, the DOP got the best shot they could on the day. Those hi-8 tapes aren't cheap either, so you've got to be a little frugal with them. Now, we're in the offices of

USIDENT, once again, the NSA-esque agency full of people wearing raincoats and a disproportionately high number of little people, which was an interesting decision you made. Reminded me a lot of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. chocolate factory yeah look there's no greater reason for um well there's no like broader you know reason that serves the plot of why exactly there are that many little people

working at our nsa equivalent agency it was pretty much because because they weren't unionised at the time. I see. And so they were very cheap to have on set. We did manage to get away with a $15 million budget, which considering the cavalcade of stars we have in this film, we used a lot of blackmail to get people involved in this project.

The good thing about Hollywood is once you blackmail a couple of big stars, the rest will just fall into line because they're very excited to hear That Stifler's going to be in a movie And they'll love to play alongside him That's exactly right, and the thing is When you think about it You can see a lot of the elements of my life

And where I was During pre And, yeah, sorry Pre-production and during production In terms of, we've got a movie within a movie. We've got a lot of blackmail happening. It's really art imitating life. Yeah.

Imitating art. Now, this scene was a lot of fun to shoot. What we actually did... Amy Poehler and her co-conspirator in the Neo-Marxists with facial prosthetics on. Their characters in this film, and correct me if I'm wrong, Richard,

you did write the screenplay. They are pseudo-famous pop cultural icons who are secretly part of the neo-Marxists. They've dressed themselves up as a newly married couple having a fight and then called the police to come in to fake a shooting while Boxer is filming. He has done the ride-along under the guise of developing the screenplay that he's written.

So he's got a camera with him riding with Stifler the cop. Their intention is to go in. They've got pre-planted squibs that will look like a shooting by the cop, which will trigger civil unrest. What actually happens? I'll tell you what actually happens. John fucking Lovitz shows up.

Yeah, and John Lovitz loves to improvise. That's what we know about John. He showed up on set. He was not paid at all. I mean, if we had to pay him as well, we would have gone well over budget. He's got an astronomical fee. He literally was driving around.

He'd had his hair bleached blonde. He had on a cop's uniform. He was in a cop car. He showed up and just started talking like he was on set. The Rock and Stifler, both huge Lovitz fans, they're just playing along. And then suddenly we're literally incorporating one of John lovett's famous benders into our film and they sort of began not the unraveling but certainly a changing of the plot and the way the movie plays out from here forth because he goes along with them on what he didn't know both in terms of uh the actual experience of making the movie and the plot within the movie,

is a pivotal scene and completely changed. Based on... Sorry to just interject there, Richard. Based on his performance that we see on screen in this film, I would say ketamine is probably the main suspect for this particular bender. He's got a real introverted, intense, sort of inward-facing vibe.

Moby really tried his best to rescue this scene, didn't he? Truly incredible work from Moby. Listen closely and just remember that Moby is making all of these noises at one time using nothing but his mouth. While on set. I mean, you know, and that's why you tolerate all of the eccentricities

because he really, when he brings the goods, he brings them in real time. And I mean that quite literally. He does do all of this performance live on set. So here we see John Lovett still improvising with Amy Poehler, who's, of course, one of the founding members of the UCB, also a fantastic improviser. Sherry Oteri, as good as they come. And this was actually a pretty smart power play by John Lovitz

because what happens is once he shoots these two characters in the film, he is now integral to the plot. We were shooting on that high eight stuff. We really didn't have time to take the scene again. And so suddenly what you wind up with is, I don't want to say a director and a producer operating at the whim of John Lovitz, but a position where John Lovitz has a lot more sway

and a lot more say over where the movie goes than anyone in production had accounted for. They're dead now, folks. John Lovitz's character in the improv, in production had accounted for. They're dead now, folks. John Lovett's character in the improv, which is a strong offer to throw at a scene, has shot dead two of the characters from the film. Stifler's trying his best to keep his wits about him. The Rock is starstruck completely.

He's gone back to that hand thing. He's referred back to the Monty Burns uh finger tapping it's just kind of a bizarre place to go by default you know and he does it so often in the film but so often once again what i just want to say to anyone watching along with us and maybe struggling to keep up with exactly what's happening in terms of plot uh character development who's important to the plot who's sort of a secondary or third string character you you decide don't worry about it exactly make your own mind up um i wouldn't call this a choose your own adventure movie but i was certainly reading a lot of choose your own

adventure books during the script development during the time we were shooting uh a lot of goosebumps yeah look a lot of goosebumps pick a path uh and i remember you incorporating that onto the wall of yarn as i called it because there's so much string involved and i said you can't shoot a linear movie in a fashion where people can pick their own the technology doesn't exist look richard i kept telling you, you steadfastly stayed to your guns. God bless you for doing it. Ultimately, I just keep coming back to that box office result

as vindication that I might have been on to something. I know it's your job as producer to keep an eye on the box office, but if I could just get you to look past that

and remember, we were on the cusp of greatness. We could have been on the forefront of a new wave of cinema. Hey, Richard, who's not on the cusp of greatness. We could have been on the forefront of a new wave of cinema. Hey, Richard, who's not on the cusp of greatness? Anyone who's still making movies and not releasing them on DVD

would say that 99% of cinema in Hollywood right now is made by washed-up sellouts. Blu-ray sellouts, we callouts. Blu-ray sellouts. Blu-ray sellouts, cinema release sellouts. Netflix is destroying this industry from the inside out. It's like Borah. It's rotting the tree from the inside out. It might look like a healthy tree.

You take an axe to that, get into the middle of it, it's all dry, bad stuff uh the pixies making a special musical appearance in here and the rock uh really going for it with the improv skills a phone's ringing so he takes off his three layers of tops not often where a phone is but he decided to explore that for his character now i just want to take a moment to dig into what we are seeing in this bit. We've got a character who works for U.S. Ident. She has obtained the screenplay, which is leaked online somehow, or she's obtained it through her web of the multiple figures of the police state.

She has been eating chips the entire film. Her decision, not ours. And she is now obsessed with this nonsense screenplay penned by Boxer. She has sort of become part of the script. She's put herself into it. Now this, can I just, can we just, as a quick sidebar here,

this is hands down my favorite scene in the entire film. Please describe for the visually impaired what we're saying. So this is just an advert we inserted inside the world of the film, whereby I remember saying to you, wouldn't it be hilarious if one animated SUV A cop car. Fucked another animated SUV. Yeah. And you said, absolutely, can we do that and i said i will take

what we have remaining of the budget i care not what happens to the rest of the plot in this film but if we can see an exhaust pipe turn into an erect penis and then another exhaust pipe turn into a i have to use the word pulsating because that's what we're saying. Vagina. The big black cop looking SUV is literally fucking another SUV. It was a bold call and it doesn't actually, I guess it colors the universe that you're creating. And I get that, but it's an ad. It's a fictional ad for a fictional car that you just inserted into the film.

What were you trying to say with this? I originally approached Jeep with an opportunity to put some money into the film in response for a lot of product placement. What an opportunity. Excuse me, CEO of Jeep. I have an opportunity for you to give me a lot of money. Yeah. What an opportunity. What an opportunity indeed.

And it'll surprise you to hear this, but I got laughed out of the boardroom and that was deeply obscene to me. So what I did is I created an entire car company. Yeah. And within that car company, I created ads for the sorts of cars I'd like to see. The intention, of course,

being to seed those ads throughout the film and then launch the car company with all of the box office profits once the movie broke even and then broke into a different stratosphere of earnings well sure once you get that dvd sell through market i mean you're printing money at that point so my producers told me alas those plans remain on the floor um and i'm sorry i distracted you. You were in the... Oh, yeah, describing where exactly the plot was taking us. So this woman who we've got working in US Ident has become obsessed with Boxer and his screenplay.

We're actually back with this scene now. She's just been on the phone to him, giving him instructions on where to go to meet her because she's in love with Boxer now. Slightly strange that she... i'm just thinking about this now actually just kind of processing this in real time 10 years after we've finished the film she's been quite subordinate because she's working for an agency that's been trying to track down boxer she's sitting on him in a visual sense she's been watching him very closely for a long time

reading his screenplays she's now ringing him on the telephone and speaking she's not telling her bosses that she's found him the other thing to remember is she is speaking to boxer as though he's the character from the screenplays written so she doesn't even call him boxer santara she calls him jericho kane and again your insistence on giving the dozens of characters we already had in this movie multiple names. I just... I just... I can't help but think it was a bad idea in retrospect. I'm sorry, I've said it. Well, this is all feedback that I wouldn't have minded

taking on board during the production process. All but I told you. All but I did. Well, I think you could have been maybe a little bit more persistent and hard-nosed in your efforts to communicate this to me because... I spray-painted over the yarn wall less names, more cohesion. Well, as you well know, once you took the yarn out of the room,

I couldn't go back in there for fear of being upset. And that's on me. I should have known that. But I'm just saying we have a shared responsibility on this. Well, isn't it funny as we put the pieces of this filmmaking process back together you can sort of see where there were maybe uh communication breakdowns or opportunities for for balls to be dropped not to worry we do pick up those balls and throw them back in the air uh i mean that's what juggling is god some of the dialogue in this is truly dicey is how i would describe it. Oh, and that's right.

Sarah Michelle Gell is in this movie, everybody. I know that we told you about that earlier and then we all forgot about it, but no, she's... Still here. Certainly here. Krista Now, the entrepreneurial porn star. We just focused on her briefly. We're back to Boxer Now, who is doing the finger thing again.

It's kind of like the more you see it, the more jarring it becomes. Normally, you normalize stuff like this. It becomes a more normalized visual for you to see, something that you, on first blush, think is very out of place. You get desensitized to it. The finger thing, on the other hand,

becomes increasingly uncomfortable the more you see Dwayne, the Rock Johnson, do it in the movie. No doubt. And he responds to it. The finger thing, on the other hand, becomes increasingly uncomfortable the more you see Dwayne the Rock Johnson do it in the movie. No doubt. And he responds to everything. We're adding more names to the same characters again. Importantly. We're back with USID. Like, at this point in the movie,

we have 57 and a half minutes in. I produced the thing. If you're getting confused thing I'm going to put my hand up and say I'm a little lost you don't need to worry about it because as I've constantly been reassuring you I mean I feel like we're back on set with the amount

of reassuring I have to do for you everything will become clear and I remember you saying to me look we're at the hour mark in the movie we're going to run out of time and I said we're going to run out of hi-hat tapes you don't need to worry about that we've got another hour mark in the movie. We're going to run out of time. We're going to run out of hi-hat tapes. You don't need to worry about that. We've got another hour and a half to fix this thing up.

And before we fix this thing up, what I would like to do, get some more balls, throw them in the air. Introduce several more characters and plot threads to really muddy the waters, throw some people off the scent. I do not want this to be a predictable movie. I want people to be guessing along. Picking their own path. With me, picking their own path,

choosing which characters they want to follow, which characters they want to cut. Oh, that guy in the back's called Bing. I've just picked that up because we're watching with the subtitles this time. Yeah. Didn't know that. Didn't know that the first couple of times I watched this.

He was another one who didn't naturally take the skates. And the scene you're about to see here, Bing also insisted on carrying around a Dyson Airblade with him at all times, which was a pretty futuristic piece of technology back in 2005, 2006. You've got to remember that. I figured that was just the set dressers doing a cool job with his backpack. No, no, no, no. Bing was a real eccentric.

So he was carrying a Dyson Airblade while learning to roller skate and this scene was not a stunt. That is a Dyson Airblade, isn't it? That is the exact same shape. That backpack that he's got is the identical makeup structurally to a Dyson Airblade. Now, we got

quite a lot of money from an anti-rollerblading lobby to put this in. The moment happens in three, two, one, and action. He's just been taken out. Bing has been crushed by a car, a speeding cop car, which then backs over his probably already dead body, collecting him under the vehicle and mangling his corpse.

Look, is that something you stand by now that the money's kind of all dried up and up your nose? Do you think it adds to the film? I think I regret the way we dealt with telling his grieving family. But you can't... Afford special effects all the time, I know.

You keep saying this on the set. And you can't beat yourself up about mistakes that were made in the past. I know. You keep saying this on the set. And you can't beat yourself up about mistakes that were made in the past. You've got to look ahead. Let's move swiftly on. Stifler's in a dumpster where he has been lying for upwards of 12 hours.

Shuri Oteri, to her credit, was really insistent on learning how to rollerblade. And often when we were shooting other takes, we'd just be working on a rollerblade back and forth. Between that and Moby, it was difficult to get a clean take really was now so just to let you know stifler escaped from the police who were coming up he he jumped off the roof of the building landed in a dumpster he's been lying there for about 12 hours and now he's glowing from the hands yeah and decides to make a run for it you say this like this is news to you richard no no i was saying yeah as in yeah obviously what else oh i see sorry like i'm the idiot

yeah you and anyone who can't keep up um we've introduced a new character now uh he is a weapons an arms dealer working out of an ice cream truck there's a nice interplay there good bit of juxtaposition yeah uh because ice cream is the weapon of mass destruction of the food industry is that what you were getting at with that yeah people you guys we need to cut i'm not saying get sugar out of your diet completely but just certainly regulate your intake be aware of what you're putting into your body very nice so the two takeaways from this film in terms of a public health safety message would be maybe just watch your calorie intake and never ever roll a blade those were the two lobbies that gave me the most money to champion their message so yes a thousand times yes absolutely

look oh that's interesting so happening in the background of this film and again some of these things I'm learning for the first time with the subtitles being up whoever did those subtitles bang up job too there's news reports happening in the background

that's Justin Timberlake I see he did that as well did he well yeah after he got out of the voiceover booth when he finally got that 24 hour clean take we said Justin you're not going to like this but we're going to need someone to Well, yeah, after he got out of the voiceover booth, when he finally got that 24-hour clean take, we said, Justin, you're not going to like this,

but we're going to need someone to caption this film in its entirety. And he said, don't you surely have some leftover budget? You can get someone else to do that. And I said, get in that room, same rules apply, 24 hours straight. You make a mistake, you go back to the beginning. So happening sort of in the backdrop of this film, you were playing with a lot of political concepts that were hot at the time um there's a code red terror alert so everyone's been i think locked down there's no immigration happening inwards or outwards for the united states and in some ways an incredibly prescient

vision of this post-trump america that we're living in now. Yeah. Did Trump win, did he? So until that footage is released on DVD, it's sort of been quite difficult for me to engage politically with what's happening in the world. I see. So you're not even sort of interfacing with news or anything unless that news gets released on a DVD? I have not received a single piece of new information since the year 2007. Okay. Unless that news gets released on a DVD.

I have not received a single piece of new information since the year 2007. Very good. And so Boxer has now, through his chatting... Oh, by the way, Mandy Moore, ladies and gentlemen, a big round of applause, please. God, isn't she good? Don't we love her? Absolute national treasure. gentlemen a big round of applause please is she good don't we love her absolute national treasure um boxer has been found by the republicans when he's been fucking around on that beach where he went to because the woman from us ident told him to go there to meet him wait have we had

that oh shit okay don't worry well they've they've picked him up. The net has closed in on him, and he has been returned to his old wife, Mandy Moore, who we didn't know up until now was sort of in the picture, and his old Republican comrades. They're all happy to see him. A lot of hugs going around, and I don't think there's any greater dream for an actor in Hollywood than being able to hug Dwayne The Rock Johnson.

That's true. We're introducing a new thread here between the Grown Ups 2 co-stars, Shiri Oteri and Jonathan Lovett. These guys got caught in a riff and wound up improvising a lot of stuff that we weren't planning on using. They improvised more balls and you said bring them on. For lack of other options and a desire to insert more characters, character development and plot into the film, I said yes and to quite literally every offer these two made. So every scene between those two, that's all the tape we had,

it went straight in the film. Also, I'd just like to issue a correction. I mistakenly said the late john larroquette uh he's very much alive well i was just calling him out for when he's supposed to join us in the booth yeah he is late yeah uh and i just it only just now occurred to me uh it could have been a misinterpretation by yeah just that more of a clarification, less an apology. Yeah. Very much alive.

Very much incapable of sticking to dates, arrangements made with friends, former colleagues. For DVD commentaries. I get it. Ah, boy. So we're covering a little bit of ground now with the dialogue. Just papering over some of that rough terrain. We are explaining back to what the neo-Marxists are up to,

their sort of plot for civil unrest. Mandy Moore and Boxer and the Republicans have now been joined by Krista Now, or Sarah Michelle Gellar, the porn star who's entered the picture. She just brought in with her a sex tape to blackmail Boxer? So during the

week where Boxer had amnesia and was staying and writing. After he'd been in the desert and passed out. With Sarah Michelle Gellar, or as you rightfully call her, Krista now. They had a lot of sex.

And why wouldn't they? They're both very good looking people, consenting adults, by all means. Well, he's married. That's one. Well, that's a pretty big reason not to, but remember he's got serious amnesia

and no idea that he's doing anything. That's true. Wrong. So they fucked a lot and they filmed a lot's doing anything wrong. So they fucked a lot, and they filmed a lot of it, and pretty much that seems to be the main motivation, the main objective for Kristen now. Yeah, so now now is extorting all of them, really.

Everyone else in the room. Remember, he's a political player. He's very influential with regard. He's got ties to the Republican Party. And so she's pretty much trying to trade on that cashier to get some cash money for herself. But also to swing the vote on Proposition 69, which I still have to admit I'm not 100% on. Well, understandably, she works in the porn industry,

and if you were to remove 69ing from the legal list of options... I've got a funny feeling that your initial script intention with what Prop 69 was going to be got changed by someone along the way, and you may not have been part of that rewrite session. That certainly sounds very unlikely to me. I'd just like to say, beyond all of the important plot and character development that we've crammed into the scene the the main reason i put it together was uh i had a bet with my 13 year old cousin that i could get mandy more and sarah michelle galler in one room at one time and he said there's no fucking way you can do that and

i said uh you bet your sweet 13 year old boner i can and I just want to say in your face Corey you still owe me 100 bucks dude honour your bets you're a Kelly so yeah all of this sort of plot all this dialogue I forgot to mention Barons in the Room our version of Elon Musk

he's been working in cahoots with the Republicans I guess he's also, I'm sorry that this sort of, I didn't dig into this earlier little bit of plot that I might have missed, he has constructed a floating energy

machine which I alluded to before that is wirelessly distributing energy to state devices, it appears. Ships, cars, state-run machinery. Similar to how Tesla originally intended for the world to be connected with an invisible wireless energy system. And beyond that, he's also unwilling to discuss the details

of where they're sourcing the energy. Well, I mean, there's lot of uh half-baked concepts being thrown around that i think you never quite finished i like that you started getting into them there was talk of the energy being created by waves which suggests to me it's a simple hydroelectric machine with juggling is you've got say your favorite ball and you throw it in the air and as soon as that ball's in the air suddenly you think to yourself where did my favorite ball go well i guess i'll just get a new ball and you get a new ball and you throw that in the air and then as soon as that is in the air you think i could have sworn i just had a ball where's that ball

gone and so you get another ball and you you look at it, and you go, I will love you forever. I'll never forget you, ball. And you throw that in the air. At which point, often, the first ball, your original favorite ball, will come back into your life, and you'll say, I thought you left me. Never leave me again. And you throw it back in the air.

There's a very small window of opportunity where you don't have, recently you had up to three balls, now you've got no balls. So you find another, a fourth ball, and you look at that and you say, this surely is the ball for me. You throw that in the air. The second ball then lands in your hand and you say, I remember you. Get out of here. You left me.

And you throw it in the air. And then you find a fifth ball, which you're just so certain would never leave you. And before you know it, you've you, you throw it in the air, and before you know it, you've got upwards of ten balls in the air, and no, you know, there's sort of, there's a tether between you, there's some sort of emotional

connection and memory between the two of you, but If you had spent half as much time on finishing this script as you did at clown school, I think we'd have a better, more sellable product. Okay, I've said it.

I have not always been the best at taking criticism on board from you both, from other members of the production, and that hasn't really changed in the last 10 years. So to hear you say that to me right now, I consider very disrespectful and very antagonist. Fuck your mother. I sunk so much of my own money into this project. You assured me that this would be Donnie Darko 2.0,

a critical and proud darling. Well, that's what the original... And this flaming turd of juggling balls... This movie is Donnie Darko 2.0. There, I said it. But the studio apparently didn't think that it correlated to what happened in the first movie. They said it was difficult to keep up...

Wait a minute. Wait. Hold on. You're saying this is literally a sequel to Donnie Darko? Yes. I thought you meant that in like a spiritual success. No, this is the second Donnie Darko. Well, this, I have to admit, kind of changes everything.

The studio meddled with me. They got in. They got their fingers in all over the marketing, the branding. What the fuck is this guy's deal as well? Riddle me that. He's developing a new web series. So as far as I can tell, Richard, you've introduced another character into the film,

Freakman Virtue, who is almost a Julian Assange type character who's running a WikiLeaks kind of anti-US ident website that's outside of the reach of the US government. Am I close? Is that kind of what he is supposed to be in this? Yeah. Oh boy, you know what's coming up now?

We see JT and he's at an arcade. There's an important bit of filmmaking and anyone who's read a little bible of storytelling called Save the Cat will know about a section of the film called Fun and Games. That's when we all take a breather from the various balls we've thrown in the air, from having to deal with the plot or sexual psychological relationships between John Lovitz and Sherry Oteri they're introducing via improv. And we go, you know what would be fun instead? If we just did a music video

well middle of the film that's right fun and games traditionally uh come about after you've established the core objective or the call to action for your protagonist and they set out in their journey they've accepted this call to action and uh before they sort of get down to the nitty gritty of solving and resolving what's happening you know you get to have a little bit of fun with them you get to see them learning about themselves and about their journey put a montage um i've always found that to be quite a restrictive way of going about fun and games why do you have to establish these things up front when you can just start having fun and games when and wherever you please you did right and i we've actually jumped the gun slightly i got a little excited i saw j JT in the arcade on the screen.

This, to me, is still part of the fun and games of the movie-making process. Just to, once again, let you know, for the visually impaired who are watching along at home, we are now in a boardroom with the Japanese Prime Minister. That's right. The Baron is here as well with some of the Republican cohorts. And the lady whose name escapes me in this film. Serpentine. Serpentine. Serpentine, who's the smoking lady.

Played by Bailing. Very suggestive dress. Now, the deal was, I can't remember what the Japanese Prime Minister was getting in exchange, but they were going to cut his finger off, which is part of the voter ID fraud. He was getting a new car.

That's all it was? The Japanese Prime Minister was going to get a new car and sacrifice a finger for that. As I remember it, yeah, that's how I wrote it in the original draft. The Japanese Prime Minister wanted a new car. I feel like we punched that up later, maybe without you. But anyway, what's happened now is Barron, in a gotcha moment, has got Serpentine to cut the entire handoff from the Japanese prime minister

and then revealed to him that there was a clause in the contract they had signed whereby there was a margin of error of up to six inches with regard to the cut of the finger. Now, I don't want to get too much in the weeds of this with you right now, but I have a couple of questions. Okay, yeah, no, let's do it then. Can we? Yeah, yeah. Just briefly, Richard.

By all means. You've introduced a subplot in this movie about voter fraud involving the trading, the trafficking of fingers. Dismembered fingers off of people. The neo-Marxists are collecting random people's fingers to try and bring about voter fraud somehow in the upcoming election, which again, is in the film in the background, isn't quite heavy hand, maybe not clearly enough explained. We won't get into that.

I just don't know the mechanic by which the fingers equal votes i would understand if it was a system where fingerprints were served as id but then if the japanese prime minister's hand is involved he's not going to be a registered voter it just doesn't okay i don't quite all good questions uh all valid questions but you're coming from a different school of cinema and this is somewhere where I have butted heads numerous times with the establishment. You don't need everything to link up. I'm so tired of watching these neat movies where everything serves something else in the story. Everything's moving the one plot forward. Why can't you have a film where there's just several different storylines at play or balls in the air, if you will, and entertain all of those?

And look, I don't really want to get into discussing the critical theory and my process of filmmaking when we're about to enjoy. Some fun and games. Like the most fun game in the whole movie, which was I was listening to a lot of the killers during this time. Yeah. And I remember saying to Justin Timberlakelake i said what do you think about the killers he said the killers i don't like them i find brandon flowers to be pretty weird you know he's a mormon i said i did not know he's a mormon he said well to answer your question richard i'm not a fan i said well you're not gonna like what i'm about to tell you. Behind that door, there is a music video studio. You're going to shut yourself in there for 24 hours until we get a clean take of you singing all these things

that I've done by the killers. I've got 24 dancers. They've got a perfectly choreographed piece. You're going to figure out how to ensue yourself in that. The other thing, you have to drink a can of Budweiser due to sponsorship obligations every minute you're in that room work it in work it in jt you're a professional we haven't quite entered the sequence yet but what's happened is um there's a young man whose whose name escapes me at the moment who comes back later in the film who's coming in

some sort of a drug deal now again let's glide over this but just to let the audience know uh fluid karma is both the name of the wireless perpetual motion energy dispersal system and also a drug that people can inject into themselves and there is a correlation between those two things i didn't figure out exactly what it is, but somehow the drug traffic is fueling this Elon Musk-esque character. It's as if you went, you know how I've given all these characters two names? I'm going to give two things the same name to try and stitch this back up together.

That's exactly right. And here we go into the music video. The take that we got of Justin singing The Killers. Look, it took him until the 24th hour to get it right, by which time he drank roughly 1,432 Budweises. Did you get this song wrong before as well? No, this is all these things I've done. Oh, is that the name of this track?

Absolutely. I see. Sorry for not knowing my brand of flowers. Huge Killers fan. No worries. Not everyone knows the back catalog. Discog. But yeah. So if you can imagine what it would feel like to be a highly tuned athlete who's just spent upwards of 60 hours in a sound booth and then a typing booth to be told you need to shoot a music video after having drunk 1,332 beers.

I think just a moment to give Justin Timberlake his dues here and say, the guy really showed up. I mean, I've got to give you a little bit of pushback there, Richard, because we've seen this style of thing executed in movies before. The big Lebowski comes to mind where you have a big flashy sequence put to a great track and you have a dreamlike sequence. That a great track and you have a dreamlike sequence that's not what i'm really seeing here i'm seeing a man in an arcade with dancers it's just a straight music video there doesn't seem to be that heightened sense of reality to give

a dreamlike quality at all fun and games. I heard at one point that Brandon Flowers wrote this song to kind of get away from the church a bit because in the Church of Latter-day Saints or Mormonism, they call themselves soldiers. And the lyric, I've got soul but I'm not a soldier,

is sort of him. That is an interesting piece of trivia. I don't know if it's true. It might not be. You hear a lot of things on set. I work on a lot of movie sets. You hear things. It's basically my version of Wikipedia.

Most of the things that I know, similar to how you obtain information through DVDs alone, I generally hear things on set. Yeah. Sort of my education. I guess you just can't always trust the the traditional channels of information fake news surrounds us all

and thus concludes the music video the fun and games we've been in it the whole time just so you're aware in fact we're still in it now the dancers are still dancing just before Justin passed out from exhaustion

but what we did is we propped him up and taped, actually glued, sorry, one of the guns from Time Crisis 2 to his hand and said, until you kill all of these terrorists, you're contractually obligated to stay in this warehouse. Stifler's name is Abilene in this? Yeah. He's in so much of the movie that i made and i did not know that that's amazing i'm sort of in going through this director's commentary with you but starting to

learn about maybe why this movie didn't deliver on everything that it promised and that would be because i had a producer who struggled to pay attention to the most rudimentary details of filmmaking yeah that's fair how do you expect the audience to keep up with everything i'm throwing at them if my producer who's making the movie with me can't it's fair critique i don't have a good answer for you um what i do have is a description of what's happening on screen which is we're back at usENT and everyone's doing stretches. While JT is explaining. Okay, so what he's doing is setting up something that's coming up in the future.

He's basically explaining how human beings are linked to their environment, but in a very specific way that we have evolved to. You look, Richard, you look disinterested. You look sleepy you look angry that we're still in the booth

I'm not angry at all I just in seeing this cinematic triumph once more I'm just

growing increasingly irate that this didn't get the reception or the

fanfare it deserved when you pour your heart and soul into something and people don't necessarily like that thing, it breaks your heart. I mean, we're at the hour 20 mark

and you've thrown another pretty big ball in the air and then cut away from it, which is the mega Zeppelin. We've flashed that. We've introduced it just ever so briefly, but now're back with uh sarah michelle gala so don't worry about that too much with a very tiny hour and 10 minutes to wrap up all of the respective threads we've got a lot of balls and you haven't even added all the balls yet well the thing is when you're juggling you sometimes you start throwing the balls up so high you

forget you've got any in the air somehow you just put more up you start a new juggling session from scratch um oh my god this bit always irked me to be honest i just thought it was a bit too clean that uh krista now comes into the den of iniqu, which is the neo-Marxist hideout where Terry O'Sherry or Sherry O'Terry? Oh, it doesn't. Who knows what she was calling herself on this day of production? She comes into the den. Sarah Michelle Gellar finds the sex tape

that was very useful for her to have just sitting on a chair with the name Boxer written on it in big letters. She always irked me that for all the incredibly intricate and subtle weaving you put into this film, that was one thing that you really bashed us over the head with.

Yeah, look, if you're going to take the long way home, Take the odd shortcut. Yeah, exactly. You've always said. And often those shortcuts don't turn out to be shortcuts at all because you don't know the neighbourhood you're in.

You don't know the roads you're turning down. And what you think is a shortcut on the long way home is actually an even longer way home. And I feel like that analogy really holds true here. Also, I'd just like to say that the tape that says Boxer that she's picked up, due to the double crossing that we've written into the film and has been improvised by Terry O'Shea and John john lovett that tape is in fact not the sex tape

she thinks it is rather it is the tape that we mentioned earlier whereby the rock is involved in a double homicide that's right because john lovett's decided to go off book and he didn't even have a book some some murder okay now look this is a okay now look We gotta talk about this moment Because this is a great moment Stifler is in his cop uniform Walking the beat of Venice Beach California Comes across a man with a gun to his head In his car

He's about to blow his brains out It's quite a tragedy Stifler asks him to give him the gun The man is very compliant No problems there Stifler then follows that up with asking the man, immediately, with nothing in between, I need your help.

Yeah. I need you to help me find my brother. The man, again, instantly compliant. Suicidal seconds ago. Yeah. And he's just like, yep, that sounds like a cool idea. How does this... I never really got

your opinion on it because it is certainly a stylistic departure from other bits of plot development i put into the film how did that scene feel for you on the day and now with 10 years between us shooting it and watching it back what i will say is i feel exactly the same now as I did when we shot it. We are off to watch some other balls descend back into our skillful director, Richard. Kelly. Kelly's hands. We've got a political operative or politician. Who knows?

But I'm pretty sure that guy was in a very long running he was um sitcom that is he's meant to be i'll tell you what it better be running right now because that motherfucker's meant to be in the studio with us right now that's john larroquette maybe best known as the father from richie rich no No, not best known. He was in The West Wing. Not what I remember. The John Larroquette Show. No. Boston Legal.

Oh, I probably remember him from that, actually. That was a great show. That was your brother, wasn't it? David E. Kelly. Mm. Who penned that, of Ally McBeal fame. And that other thing, The Practice. Bloody great shows.

I didn't come here to hear you talk about how great my brother's doing. Well, I know it's a sore point for you because, look, we don't have to get into that. I made Donnie Darko when I was 26. Yeah, but can I draw your attention to the bit of dialogue that you wrote and we shot just then? She's blackmailing this guy for a million dollars he's wondering what she's going to do with the money and i think i'm speaking verbatim her answer is i'm going to go to the middle east and buy those women some more civil liberties i mean

sorry that's not how it works richard uh what being a feminist i'm pretty sure that's exactly how it works well-drawn female characters with the best of intentions uh skillfully executing your global vision of politics and how this society would exist do you know what my plans were with the box office take from this movie first of all all, I was going to start a competing car line to Jeep. I was going to make my money back, make them regret crossing me. The next thing, I was going to buy a lot of women a lot more civil liberties. And I'm not just talking the Middle East. I'm talking everywhere.

Yeah, and what happened, Richard? The movie lost, and I'll remind people of the budget 18 million dollars and it lost 15 million dollars that might be right and it lost 17 it lost 16 and a half million of those dollars well lost them they're in the couch somewhere 16 16 million 600 000 if you want to be specific about it. But who's counting? I mean, you've just corrected me upwards of my figure, which doesn't really help your case. But it is more accurate.

I appreciate your honesty. Good God. Where are we? We're on Venice. The Rock's here. He's wearing sunglasses now. He's not doing... Oh, now he's drinking the Buds.

He's holding a six-pack. One of the cans is open. He holds the whole six pack above his head and pours some beer down. It's a great look for the man. It's also a very exciting scene coming up. The good thing, here's what I like what you did with that. You went, you know this finger thing? I think I've got a way around it.

If we put a big heavy object in one hand, he can't link and nervously tap his fingers against each other and you did it and it fucking works don't you love it when a plan comes together richard yeah i i really do and i guess that's what i love about this now we're transitioning into the third act of the film is you're about to see one of the most complex displays of juggling uh be executed you know it's a big ask to get uh audiences to sit through this entire film and try and keep pace um you know on set the mantra was It's a marathon and a sprint And I think

It's a marathon and a sprint That really sums up this movie Doesn't it? It is a marathon But also it is a sprint At all times It is a marathon comprised of sprinting One of the things that always confuses me

Is who delivered those newspapers to Justin Timberlake's character? That's a marathon comprised of sprinting One of the things that always confuses me is Who delivered those newspapers to Justin Timberlake's character? That's a fucking good question Justin Timberlake's character An ex-Iraq vet Who had an accident That's alluded to in Fallujah That gave him facial scarring Is sitting on a crow's nest with a sniper rifle

And a laptop Somewhere around Venice Beach he's there all day he's just sitting there all the civilians seem to be fine with the fact that he's constantly training a pretty large sniper eye gun like yeah on them while they sunbathe and those snipers are kind of everywhere i kind of like that that you introduced this dystopian police state where people had normalized all these snipers. Oh my God, we've got to dig into this. Yeah, this is a great scene.

One of my favorites, certainly. The main motivation behind writing this was I thought it would be hilarious if there was a scene where someone threatened to kill themselves and the only way by which they wouldn't kill themselves is if they got to suck Dwayne The Rock Johnson's dick. Now, it sounds like that's something we're making up in the booth. I can assure you this is the finished movie we're

talking about that went out to cinemas and DVDs. Our favourite character from US Ident has come out of the office and suited herself into the real world. She's been communicating with Boxer on the phone and negotiated a rendezvous

during the middle of the day at Venice Beach. She has brought a firearm with her. She is in love with Boxer. She mistakenly thinks he is a character from his screenplay, which she's become obsessed with. So she keeps calling him the wrong name. And she is about to threaten her own life

and the only out clause is for her to suck Dwayne the Rock Johnson's dick he has reverted back to his natural acting state of the nervous fingers to keep holding the Bud Lightens through this scene

but he just wouldn't do it and Justin Timberlake is also in this scene this is a really magic bit of the movie isn't it he's got his crosshair on the situation he's assessing what's happening Dwayne is acting his little heart out and

he's about to come through in a clinch now he's going back to what I call this is wwe vintage rock this is where he switches from nervous fragile character to showman that's right and so he lays on the charm he gets that smooth voice we're all used to very charismatic persona and he's like you know what you want to suck my dick let's do it let's get a hotel room

together but uh all is lost for his great plan to disarm the situation um tragically goes awry when jt shoots the woman who is armed with the high-powered sniper rifle and i am still upset with justin timberlake for that I wanted to see that scene through from the start to the end was that an improv as well? you didn't write that one? I absolutely didn't write that in Justin Timberlake literally killed a person on set

and that's kind of why we managed to convince him to do all those extra bits of work on the tail end of production is because I said literally JT if you don't do this stuff for me I'm going to lick wood that you're a stone cold killer and I'm actually breaking I said, literally, JT, if you don't do this stuff for me, I'm going to lick wood that you're a stone cold killer.

And I'm actually breaking a non-disclosure agreement I signed with him right now by saying this on the record. Oh, boy. But I'm calling you out, JT. We're like only just after the halfway mark with this thing. Are you serious? I am deadly serious. I mean. I've never been more serious. Are you serious? I am deadly serious. I mean... I've never been more serious.

I am hot. I am bothered. I am confused. I feel like I'm in a goddamn fever dream watching back a movie I made a decade ago. This thing was a mistake. This movie? Yep.

No, I don't think that's right. I think mistakes were made within the movie. I think this movie is a triumph. We got to call a bar poop deck. Yeah, we did. Well, that bar already existed. You just filmed in it, and I don't think you got permission. Where we are now, folks, is Sarah Michelle Gellar's character,

the entrepreneurial porn star Kristen now, is filming a reality show with some of her friends. I don't even really get how this weaves into the fabric of what's happening, but she's used this as an opportunity to duck into the loose, into the ladies, to drop off the blackmail tape into one of the neo-Marxists' various drop points that they've established around the city so that the character who is sort of the the analogous archetype of uh of uh what's his name the guy Julian Assange can grab it and put it online for mass distribution I just hope that you're following along with me folks I hope you're still on on the tracks with. I don't think you need to be too worried about whether you are or whether you aren't following along, because as I've assured you throughout the director's commentary

and as I assured the 64 cinemas of people who actually went along to see the film, everything's going to be okay. I'm going to catch all these balls. You're going to be super impressed. And I just feel like i guess part of the reason i wanted to make this movie the way i did was i wanted to challenge the idea of what going to a movie is i wanted to challenge the idea of what you can and can't

get away with in watching a movie and most of all i wanted to give uh the american and international cinema going public public a chance to i don't know see how the europeans do it yeah and just take it take a take a few hours off yeah to go in there follow along when they so choose not follow along when they so choose and know that no matter what choice they make, it will not make one shred of difference. And I feel like I executed that. For better and or worse, my vision was realized with this film. It's a pretty avant-garde way to telling a story.

As the storyteller, be bold-faced enough to say, if you're on board or not, it actually is the same. I would say that... It's a very post-modern way of... It's a singular vision towards filmmaking. And it's that sort of devil-may-care attitude that I try to carry with me to this day. I mean, what the fuck is this...

Fortuna, is that his name? Yeah, Fortuna. What about him? You got a problem? You got a fucking problem with my character, guy? How does Fortuna fit into the tapestry of this quilt? about him you got a problem you got a fucking problem with my character how does fortuna fit into the tapestry of this quilt he's got a great name he's got a great look and sometimes when you're making a quilt you gotta sew patches on top of patches that's why quilts are heavier in some places than others we open with him yeah he doesn't seem that important to the DNA of the film. Where are we now?

We're in the SID. We've got the head of the pseudo-NSA agency. The 2IC. She's in her office and she's just watching MTV videos. Dwayne The Rock Johnson's back on screen doing the finger thing again. There's guns, there's action, there's Fortuna. What is his place in this? What is his role?

Look, pretty much we just wanted to get a bunch of confused looking shirtless dudes together, make an afternoon of it, you know? And that you did. Dwayne The Rock Johnson grabbing a beer from a bystander, downing it. Fortunio, that's his name he was on the baron's payroll all along jt has announced that funny thing is this has taken such a steep change he's he was about to fight someone and then it's like jt's narration has informed him of what's actually happening with the plot, and he changes on it. Oh, he's like, oh,

fuck, that's what's going on. Yeah. Well, our editors did the best they could with the footage we gave them, but sometimes it turned out that... Those hi-hat tapes do not cut themselves together. When you're taking the long road home, you do have to take shortcuts, and that was a shortcut that worked out for the best. Now, something I've always been

interested in... is whether or not this path movie passed the best l test yes the answer is yes this uh very much firmly squares with my feminist vision for the future a future i haven't got to experience yet because i do not engage with any news media but But I like to imagine that... I mean, here's what I'm thinking. Would it maybe be helpful if I burned a couple of DVDs of CNN, BBC? I just feel so much time has passed between when I was last up to date with the news. There's a bit of catch-up to be done.

Yeah. Okay. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but George W. Bush is currently the sitting president of the United States of America. Do you know what? In this booth? Yeah. Absolutely.

Now we've got a news report returning us to the revelation before that a mega Zeppelin exists and is somehow pertinent to the world. I mean, we've got the car fucking the other car briefly again honestly um i'll be honest can i be honest please even i am confused at this point and i know i've been reassuring everyone that it's okay to be confused but at this juncture i would like to say not even i am comfortable with how confused i feel okay what i like to do when i'm confused comfortable with how confused I feel. Okay. What I like to do when I'm confused is take a step back and just describe what's happening. So just to give you a little insight, it's a montage. We're getting flashes of news cuts.

LA is on fire. It's rioting. The mega Zeppelin is launching. The car is fucking another car. I think more than that, though the the overwhelming and broader feeling that i suppose i did want to take out of this montage and want the audience to if they so chose take uh out of this montage is that we're building to a conclusion um we're building to a sort of a grand final moment whereby all of the loose threads or balls uh will be caught

and tied up and i don't want you to get overexcited like it is going to take a while for us to get that conclusion well according to my math it's going to take at least another 40 minutes but rome wasn't built in a day and Southland Tales was not finished on time. Quickly. This scene here I originally intended to just be. Maybe we should just take a

second. Just a moment okay. You and I? Yeah. Just a second. I don't know that we should. I just want to communicate to everyone that this was meant to be a very sexy romp between Dwayne The Rock Johnson and Mandy Moore. I'm going to take a second. I'm just going to sit back in my chair for one minute and try and regain my composure.

Yeah, by all means. Have fun finding your composure, you pussy. So, as you can see, they really started off pretty steamy. And I was getting very excited uh behind the cameras was moby who was making all sorts of unearthly guttural noises that actually wound up putting both of these actors off and these are two of the most professional actors i've worked with uh and the scene devolved into just more plot development i mean at some point in this movie i just wanted to insert two people

fucking just as a breather a palate cleanser a refresher it's like eating an apple after you've had something and you want to try something else it didn't work out uh my producer has very kindly uh opened a crack in the door so that the room we're in at least has some form of fresh air circulating. There's a lot of CO2 in the room. Yeah, what are those situations? I think it's affecting the movie-watching experience,

to be honest. We only realise after the fact how much of a difference fresh air can make. Yeah. Okay, all right. The oxygen's starting to filter back into the brain that blood's feeling a little bit healthier in my body and we're back i guess the question this is bohide rejoining you on this dvd commentary for you bo is southland tales um you told me that this might be an opportunity for us to ramp up DVD sales To create a second wave of interest

Maybe elevate this film From critical And box office dud Into something of a cult favourite Who exactly Is the audience for this director's commentary Who in their right fucking mind would demand Of anyone including

The director and producer of this film to revisit it my original vision for the audience of this particular audio commentary which we are releasing on hd dvd was going to be an american audience aged 18 to 25 males who are interested in mescaline. Ah. It is a derivative of cactus, I believe. Yeah, it is. It's a hallucinogenic.

Yeah. And it is quite a powerful, sort of almost a psychotropic substance. Mind-altering. And this audio commentary, and actually my vision for the film as well to a greater extent, was an accompaniment similar to a cheese and wine pairing. You've got your main course of mescaline.

This film and this audio commentary on HD DVD was supposed to be what you pair it with. That is marvellous. We're on the Mega Zeppelin now, folks. Which is great news. Certainly, as the Zeppelin takes off, the film comes into land. And we got Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

to play the grand opening of the Mega Zeppelin. They weren't aware they were on a film set at all. These guys thought they were actually playing the opening of a mega zeppelin and they became pretty irate when we told them that we wouldn't be taking off because no mega zeppelin had been constructed um yeah a lot of upset a lot of upset musicians on set that day not to mention moby who was furious that there was anyone else on set uh and if you listen very closely you can hear Moby trying to drown out Blackwell Motorcycle Club luckily we were able to salvage that in post Mandy Moore uh an absolute vision accompanying Dwayne The Rock Johnson who is there

a better looking man in a suit I would like to put forward our main leading man uh is the potential next james bond i agree wholeheartedly i mean i do think pierce brosnan is taking the franchise in a very bold and exciting new direction but i do think that yeah you've almost you've almost worn that dvd of golden eye out this point, haven't you? Certainly. There are a few skips and a few scratches, but I can't fault the DVD technology for that. I guess I've just been mishandling the disc. Now, what did you think of Die Another Day?

I thought Madonna did a bang-up job on the soundtrack. That's certainly been playing on repeat on my Sony minidisc. And it's a great song to run to sony minidisc uh and it's a great song you say yeah sony do the best minidisc players they sure do um and contrary to us taking a lot of money from panasonic who were a competing manufacturer uh sorry are a competing manufacturer of that technology i can't betray my heart and say that they make a better product it's it's sony or bust a hundred percent this uh serpentine you're really being quite heavy-handed by putting a large snake tattoo on her back well it was mostly for me to remember because often i get confused who is this beautiful woman who's smoking and walking around the set? And I see the snake on her back.

I'm like, oh, it's the character Serpentine that I wrote. Now, we've put finger foods. I mean, you did write this in the script, but I physically put these people in the mega Zeppelin set. That was a goof. See that lady carrying the hors d'oeuvres? Yeah. She was actually working unit. Oh, okay.

And all these snacks were intended for me the director of the film i see and they wound up getting eaten by the i was fucking pig dog extras i was just going to draw attention to the fact that we um and what i would describe as a desperate plea for help in search of an end point to the movie have put all of the characters in one place which is the mega zeppelin which has now taken off. Not a real Mega Zeppelin, if Black Rule Motorcycle Club are listening to this. Wasn't on the day, still isn't now,

and I just want to be super clear about that. BRMC, you know we're huge fans, always will be, but just, well, we're sorry about that. Yeah. So, oh yeah, there's discussion of a handshake now between Mandy Moore and Dwayne The Rock Johnson's character, Boxer. She reveals that she's had a dream last night. There's an interdimensional element to what's about to play out for the last breath of the film, the final stretch of the sprint marathon. And similar to a real sprint marathon at this point,

you're dehydrated, you're hallucinating, you've lost your bearings. All you need to know is the finish line is in sight. Now, is the finish line an actual finish line to the race or is it your body giving out and you expiring midway through? This is the question. Choose your own path.

That's right. It does not matter because both of them are forms of finishing. There is no shame in pushing your body and mind to its physical and mental limits and finding out where those limits are. We've skipped over a few things that have happened in the film,

and I apologize for that as we were digging into some of the funny details. What would you say is at play here, Beau? What are the stakes? I just want to maybe catch people up on the fact that the perpetual energy machine created by Baron that's in the ocean using an unknown, though kind of mentioned technology that may involve quantum mechanics and hydroelectricity don't interrupt this has which is also connected to a street drug that is smuggled out of the facility that makes the energy and distributes it wirelessly

which shares the name with the electricity product itself which which is fluid karma, has also created an interdimensional rift in the fourth dimension, which is time-space, in the surrounding bit of the ocean where the large structure is. Why has that happened? Well, as far as this producer of the film can discern, it's something to do with upsetting the ocean tides and has created some sort of interdimensional portal whereby Sean William Scott's character Stifler,

who's playing a cop, who's also got a brother who's a Vietnam, sorry, an Iraq vet, has travelled through, come back the other side? Can I just say this? Yeah. The only new piece of media I have engaged with since I was cut off in 2007

has been a podcast called The Worst Idea of All Time. Yep. And this movie is quite literally what would happen if the two hosts of the worst idea of all time got to make a movie themselves. I actually am a fan of that podcast myself and I couldn't agree more. It has got all the constituent elements. Blockbuster superstar celebrities of yesteryear?

Check. Pseudoscientific concepts not fully fleshed out but added ad nauseum throughout the plot of the film? Check. Pseudoscientific concepts not fully fleshed out, but added ad nauseum throughout the plot of the film. Check. Threats of suicidal blowjobs. Check, mate. It is the makings of, obviously it wasn't a successful film in our hands, but I think if you got all the same elements and gave it to, not better, but just different hands, you may have had a different result at the box office,

which I cannot stress enough was not a good result. Another thread here whereby the two I see at the... USI Dent. USI Dent and wife of Republican presidential nominee is also fucking one of the dudes in singlets in a poncho because how could you not? I actually had a lot of sex with those actors and extras. Did you?

Nothing gets me rock hard quite like seeing a yellow singlet underneath a transparent plastic poncho. It's such an interesting costume choice, isn't it? It's as if we ran out of money and the costume department was given $68.25 and said how futuristic can you make 200 extras look

with this amount of money please and they came back with white singlets and ponchos which was pretty much their way of saying not very This is about as good as it gets The project was called Serpentine Dream Theory very this is about as good as it gets now what we have serpentine dream theory more uh characters more actors explaining more plot uh what i actually told them to do before i go oh my god i forgot about this element i'm sorry can i. Okay. We've introduced another ball, everybody.

This is important. I think this is shared both in the screenplay that Boxer has written down and is now being enacted in the real life of the film in a real life imitating art sort of style. Just going to close that door. We've got a lot of wildlife flying in here that's going to be biting us very soon. Just flying around the room to add some jeopardy to our HD DVD audio recorder. Let me just shut that window.

I'm really okay with the window. What I was going to say, just before you get too deep into this plot development, is I gave pretty explicit instructions to the characters and actors in this scene to start closing up some of those threads that we've opened. And what they wound up doing was opening up. And I feel like I couldn't have been much clearer in my direction to, please, can we start catching some of these balls, closing up some plows?

They literally just started opening up more, throwing more in the air. Well, this is where the idea came from, that some of the effects from the interdimensional portal that's been opened by the perpetual motion machine, which is wirelessly distributing energy to the police state, is that it has slowed down the rate of rotation of the Earth by a very small but perceivable amount, which has made people go crazy because humans have evolved to have a certain... This is... You wrote this, okay? Don't give me that look.

People have evolved through the millennia that man has been on Earth to match their chemical composition in their brain to the rotation of the Earth for some reason. Now, when we have upset in the world of this film the speed at which the Earth is rotating, that has caused people to go insane and start rioting chaotically burning buildings down

lashing out this is a plot point we have introduced in the last breath of the film and one that i would introduce 10 times out of 10 if given the opportunity again i might not have wanted the actors to do this but i'm so glad they did because i do feel like while my focus was on closing everything up and trying to at least give some semblance of closure that's not what a choose your own adventure movie both in production or uh an execution is about it's not just for the audience to pick their own path oh back to the fingers thing with the rock i'm sorry just every time i see it on the monitor it's yeah for some reason there's a lot of talk of suicide at this point, which is weird because what Boxer has been introduced to is for reasons

not fully fleshed out in the world of the movie, a movie celebrity, which is Boxer, has been selected as the first person to throw through the interdimensional rift. They've experimented with monkeys, now they're like, but monkeys don't work

because monkeys' souls can't survive passing through the interdimensional rift. That's what you put in the script? Yes, exactly what I put in the script. That's great. So they put Dwayne The Rock Johnson in for the sole reason that he's a celebrity, which one of the members...

Same reason I put him in the movie, to be completely honest. Describes as an irresistible reason I put him in the movie, to be completely honest. Describes as... It's an irresistible reason to throw him through the portal. So I think the boxer that we have seen through the whole movie is the one that travelled back through the portal and he's being introduced to a dead corpse of himself, which is really freaking him out.

And they're telling him that he killed himself so he's responsible. They don't actually say that. They say they say nothing they just say here's the past version of your body after it went through the portal but not the new version of you. And then he said

I would never commit suicide. But no one's offered that as a potential thing that's happened. He just says it and then they all kind of run with it. It's fucking weird. Yeah. Can you please... I thought I could survive this, but can you please stop nitpicking my film?

As a producer, I just feel it's part of my role. I know we did complete it 10 years ago. No, it's okay. And this critique probably would have been more apt during production. You've been carrying some of that energy with you. Again, there's not a lot of point to what we're about to introduce to the story, but we just thought it would be visually interesting and give both of these guys something to do

while we actually wrapped up the real end of the movie on a different set. Yeah, so we're no longer in the Zeppelin. Now we're on the ground. Sean William Scott is the cop, not his brother, who's the Iraq vet. He's joined forces with the guy who was about to commit suicide in Venice Beach. He's trying to find his brother,

but they've made a detour to an ATM. Well, they're going to Mexico. Yeah. Because they're just trying to get away from the actual production of the movie. Pretty much anything to do with it. So, Hombre, who is trying to kill himself previously, who just calls everyone dog too much,

tries to get money out. The ATM denies him. Sean William Scott comes up with the brilliant idea that they'll just steal the entire cash machine. And they do. They do do they don't serve the plot no it doesn't what becomes of that stolen atm nothing nothing absolutely not you don't even see the cash from within it no time to dig too much into that because what's this a shiny new ball yes my dear friend richard kelly has decided to put a bold dystopian version of the American National Anthem Star Spangled Banner, which I would describe in this version as a star spangled banger, into the film.

It is dark. It is haunting. It's a little bit bluegrass as a result of the violins and fiddles you've put in there. And there is a woman with absurdly large breasts out on display wearing a corset, taking us home with this big number. All vital. I mean, we had Mandy Moore. Why didn't we get her to sing it? Because why would the presidential nominee's daughter

be singing the national anthem at an event like this you've got me there good point richard callie screenwriter and director of this fine film southland tales thanks a lot i tell you i did find pretty stressful is obviously we didn't have a mega zeppelin there but just the idea of fireworks going off very close to and around the staples center uh A mega zeppelin. Oh, just the concept freaked you out, even though we added the mega zeppelin in post. Yeah.

Okay, that's kind of weird that you got freaked out by the idea of it. That was the most real the zeppelin felt to me, is when I saw fireworks exploding around it. Look, at this point... Will you join me in the final line? The land Of the free

And the home Of the Range Oh, I'm the of the range. I think the main reason I inserted that national anthem was so that we could have a piece of action to cut against the breaking free of this ATM machine. And there was actually a statement I was making about how we are shackled to our bank accounts and by our bank accounts.

We are limited by the resources we have or don't have. And I dream of a world where you can extract monetary value from singing the American national anthem in a mega zeppelin. You sound like you are running out of steam, good sir. Are you okay? Never. Would you like a little sip of water? Would that help? I've got so much water over here, I'm going to drink all of it.

Very good. Richard, you've got to stay hydrated in this film. You've got to stay. Sprint marathons, the secret to them. You've got to stay hydrated. So, we are now on the ground of downtown los angeles while a mega zeppelin flies above our head civil unrest has gripped the city there is looting there is rioting there are shots fired in the streets an atm is creating an absurd number of sparks

we cut to the interior of the mega zeppelin where dwayne the rock johnson is doing the longest take of the finger tapping motion we have seen yet in the film. Well, I'll tell you why we kept that in. And that is because at this point we realized, you know what, he's probably going to keep this up right to the end. And we owe it to him, ourselves, as filmmakers who chose to work with him and our audience to put in the best and longest take of this action that we can. So help me God.

I don't care what happens around it. I just want it to be in the film. I want evidence of what we were working with and against. And I quest to finish this on time and deliver a salvageable product. I had a bet with you. I had a bet with you. When you sent me the script to this, I said, I bet you, you cannot make the script to this i said i bet you you cannot

make duane the rock johnson say on camera who did the baron hire to kidnap me and who drove me through the time rift and you know what i lost that bet because that just happened that's right in this movie we made together well and as sure as my name is Bo Hyde, I've got to put my hand up and say I was wrong. Yeah, Bo, and I've got to tell you, you keep taking, I understand, from other people who work in cinema, these sorts of bets with scriptwriters and directors whereby you say...

I'll bet you they won't say that. Yeah, and it's a line that's often been written down in the script and is, you know, almost definitely going to be delivered by the actor i mean beyond investing a lot of your personal finances into this film which was i'm willing to acknowledge not a box office success if you insist on making bets against certainties every film you work on it's no wonder you wind up in a little financial strife oh no wonder you wind up in a little financial strife oh we're who's terry

has i mean okay i'm gonna put something to you rigid that moment we just experienced with someone on the phone saying terry you've gone too far did she forget that we gave terry o'sheri a character name of this film and she's reverted to her actors her real given name? Well no, because Terry O'Shea has improvised her own death and so that phone call was from earlier to be like, you've gone too far, we need

you for the rest of the movie. Oh, Terry's a different person. Okay. Very good. Serpentine and Dwayne the Rock Johnson are now locked in a very intense sexual conversation and are about to make out she's called him a pimp yeah and announced that don't commit suicide that's another thing that has been in this movie from the start to finish and it's one that watching it back i don't even know where my head was at when I wrote it in, but I had this idea that pimps don't commit suicide,

and it seemed important. Yeah, I mean, it's in it three times. We've got it in the picture set by multiple different characters as if it's some sort of catchphrase for the movie. Oh, for fuck's sake, the Sean William Scots haven't even started holding hands yet. And it seems tonally very disparate from the rest of the sci-fi you know how long they're holding hands for it's pretty much the rest of the movie that's a good point serpentine's asking the rock if he shook hands with his corpse

the rock has announced that the fourth dimension will collapse upon itself if he does they're kissing in the mega zeppelin he pushes her away i've just reverted to just yeah i mean sometimes you can see this stuff happening for yourself if you're watching along sometimes the best way of explaining just how real something is is by painting a literal vision of what's in front of my eyes because it's it's it's hard for me to believe it's just just incredible i uh i couldn't i couldn't actually tell you and it's a credit to the professionalism of the crew and all the actors on set what i was trying to achieve at this point and the fact that everyone showed up to work went through the

paces of saying their lines performing against each other committing it to camera committing it to microphones is a real testament to their desire to both finish the project and get their paychecks because honestly i i cannot imagine what they were thinking they were doing at this point i can tell you because unlike you i was not on a drug binge at the time and morale was at an all-time low uh like all films that everyone shoots in hollywood this was done chronologically of course we were getting to the final days no other way and everyone just kept saying there is so much to wrap up there are so many questions to answer. How is it that Richard Kelly

continues to ask questions and confound audiences? And not complete any of these questions that have been previously asked. We've got two Sean William Scotts now. Count it, two Stiflers. It's like being back at the MTV

Awards where they did that Matrix parody, which I'm not sure if Yeah you will be familiar with that Yeah I've seen that From Reloaded Which came out in 04 On DVD My good friends

The Wachowski sisters Yeah Yeah I got them in as advisors on this script Did you really? They advised me not to make the film How did you find out that they're both now women? Did that come to you on some sort of DVD?

No, I'm very close friends with them. They told me. Oh, I see. They told me that. Have they not informed you of any elections, sat-nang, or news? We try to keep politics out of it. Does the name Barack Obama mean a thing to you?

Is that another language? Oh, we don't need to get into that. Sean William Scott is in a dumpster. Another Sean William Scott has just found him. He's glowing from the hand. He's been shot. He's dying. They're in an ice cream truck.

And now they're shaking hands. The fourth dimension is about to collapse upon itself. But this sequence is a lot longer than you would think it should be. Oh, yeah. If anyone is watching along with the director's commentary and has a remote that controls their DVD player, I could recommend maybe fast-forwarding or at least watching the rest of this movie

in one and a half or two times speed because pretty much what we're waiting for is that guy from before who loves saying the word dog to fire a missile into the mega zeppelin and then that's god spoil the picture for me why don't you it solves all of our problems because spoiler alert all of the characters you've introduced dead you no longer have to address any of the the plots pertaining to those characters i mean you decided in all your wisdom to take this opportunity as we're just approaching the final bit to almost make another music video

i said it before and i'll say it again this film is like if someone hit baz luerman in the head with a heavy shovel and then made him direct immediately after suffering the contusion yeah um that is funnily enough what i was trying to channel and so to do that uh a lot of the time on set i had you will know from strictly boring special dvd release and moulin rouge i had baz lerman i had him in a trailer and i'd go in, and I'd whack him across the head with a shovel. Then I'd show him the next page of script, and I'd say, Baz, what should I do? And I would follow his instructions to the letter.

You are panicking. I'm sorry. Everything we have just been watching for the last two hours. I'll remind you, two hours and eight minutes is as a result of Baz Luhrmann's direction via proxy? It was my directorial decision to concuss and use Baz as an advisor. So it is still my directorial decision-making that is on display right now. But in essence, yes.

There was a certain element of collaboration between myself and Baz. Oh, fucking hell. I mean, at this point, we're not even trying to wrap up. Here's what gets me about this bit of the film that you and I have made. An unspeakable number of balls in the air that we've been trying to juggle.

And this is the point where we should be grabbing as many of them as we can and safely placing them on the ground for our audience in some sort of cohesive, organized way. And yet what we're doing is throwing all of the balls in the air and walking away and having a slow dance where there is no plot being resolved. For good reason.

There is no resolution being executed. There are no questions being answered. We've just walked away from the balls and the balls are then going to fall onto the ground and break everything. I could not stop thinking about cruel intentions when we were shooting this scene. And so if anything slipped through the cracks.

What they did at the end of Cruel Intentions, Richard, if I may remind you, is did they have a song? a song yes they did yeah they also wrapped up what was happening with a voiceover and they showed you through montage what was happening to those look i could no longer see uh kristen now or sarah michelle gala all i could see was katherine myrtle uh the sort of who was Catherine Myrtle, the sort of sultry villain of Cruel Intentions. Is she an antagonist? An anti-hero, perhaps?

I wouldn't call her an anti-hero. She's not good enough. I'd call her an antagonist. She is good enough. But let's not quibble. I thought it was weird that the idea she was on cocaine was meant to sully her reputation at the end of that film. Look, let's not get into that dieting territory. No cocaine.

Ah. Whatever. This scene also, I was hoping that they'd have sex, but they didn't. I was pissed off. Can I just commend you on so gracefully segwaying out of a conversation about drug abuse? With whatever. It wasn conversation about drug abuse with whatever it wasn't about drug

abuse it was about the characterization of katherine and cruel intentions that's what it was about and the fact that you don't want to engage with me in this conversation now nor did you 10 years ago and we're shooting this climactic final scene it kind of goes some way to tell me why parts of this movie don't feel like we were pulling together. I am so glad I took my shoes off at the beginning of this HD DVD audio commentary. Can I just say, I'm very glad I decided to record this director's commentary in active wear because I am hot and steaming. I am sweating bullets in this booth. Oh, boy.

And now... That's... Oh, boy. oh boy and now that's uh oh boy okay oh boy okay all right here's what's happening now we're in the mega zeppelin the musical sequence with dancing with sir michelle gala has concluded because dwayne the rock johnson's character boxer has pulled out a gun threatened everyone because he has had a vision of the future he has directed everyone to move into the front of the zeppelin which isn't going to save them anyway but let's not pay too much attention to that baron is trying to quell the discontent and unrest in the room by saying don't worry everything's fine everyone stay partying stay where

you are we've cut to the two sean william Scotts arguing with each other in front of what is obviously just a big flat screen TV with a screensaver on it, which is supposed to depict the interdimensional rift while they're on a flipped over ice cream truck being suspended in the air, seemingly by the power of their own handshake. On top of the floating ice cream truck, which was also a front for an arms dealer earlier,

homeboy who keeps saying dog all the time. Paid for by the anti-sugar lobby. He's obtained a bazooka, which was in the car before, and he's on top of the vehicle, fixing the sights squarely upon the mega Zeppelin laden with all of our characters in the film. Have you seen the trailer for this film? Not in your life.

I feel like we should definitely watch that after this director's commentary. That seems like a fun idea to see what the editors did with that. How can you communicate what is in this movie in a minute and a half to two minutes and a half? You couldn't even scratch the surface of the tone, in this movie in a minute and a half to two minutes and a half. You couldn't even scratch the surface of the tone, of the tonal subtleties that we've put forward

in this cinematic masterpiece. When you watch this in the Zeppelin, it's literally like everyone in the Zeppelin is also waiting for the movie to end. They're all just standing there with nothing to do, no idea how to resolve any of the conflict that's been introduced. Quite rightly, one of the Stiflers has a gun to his head the entire sequence,

as if to say, if you don't end this, I will. And now, sweet relief. He is homeboy with the bazooka. He's getting ready. He's lining up the shot. So, are the fireworks for the election? Is that what's just happened?

Because the general election's sort of been permeating the timeline There's two events on There's the launch of the Mega Zeppelin And some sort of charity concert at the Staples Center Which are happening side by side What? Nothing's happening at the Staples Center That's the launch of the Mega Zeppelin No, no, there's an event next to the launch of the Mega Zeppelin

So there's a riot and a charity event and the Mega Zeppelin and a general election all happening on the same night. Welcome to Los Angeles. I'm sorry if you can't handle the amount of cultural activities that are happening at any one time. Our announcer, who is no longer JT, but we've just inserted a voice of god character has announced in the concluding moments of the film no one sucks a dick like krista now

dwayne the rock johnson we're seeing from behind wearing a crisp white shirt has a blood stain of jesus appear on his back like some sort of stigmata spontaneously occurring as the bazooka shot is fired homeboy throws his rocket launcher into the streets below. Before wiping his fingerprints off it. Well, he's about to kill himself. Yeah. But his legacy will forever be tarnished

by the fact he fired a rocket into a... Can you imagine trying to explain as an alibi? They're like, hey, we're pretty sure... There's a great scene with Janine Garofalo here at the end. She was in the car and got cut out entirely from the film except for one shot. That is the only conceivable way I can see that we got away with putting her name on the poster

and having her in for, I'm not kidding, about 50 frames of the movie. That's almost definitely exactly what happened. Homeboy's just killed himself. I was going to say before, though, can you imagine trying to use this as an alibi? It wasn't me that shot the Zeppelin. I was hanging out in a floating ice cream truck

while an interdimensional portal was being opened up by two Sean William Scotts. Yeah. I feel like at that point the conversation's much bigger than you know the crime that's

been committed but it's also like don't touch the equipment this has been falling off for the last hour and ten minutes oh that's good I've been holding it up

with my left hand well I wonder what that's going to sound like probably not good oh really? maybe I've been holding it pretty steady these soundbirds they're sweaty they're hot and they're a mystery that's going to sound like. Probably not good. Oh, really? Maybe. I've been holding it pretty steady. These soundbirds,

they're sweaty, they're hot, and they're a mystery, just like this film. And then we sort of decided... We're back to the religious references, aren't we? Yeah, take some of JT's sort of religious audio and just put that over the end

to try and create a false sense of closure or finality. audio and just put that over the end to try and create a false sense of closure or finality um but the final line of the film is something that i would like to not paraphrase i want to give it to you verbatim he is a pimp and pimps don't commit suicide that is jt's audio track that he's put is the final words uttered in the film while JT opens the interdimensional portal. And that's our movie, folks. Oh, my God.

That is Southland Tales. I am so grateful to those of you who are still with us for revisiting what was a very creatively challenging and rewarding time in my life. Not financially, that's for sure. No, no, no, but with a little bit of distance between making the movie and seeing it back now, I feel like I'm sort of finally willing to understand some of the criticism that was leveled at me

for the scope of ambition. My name's bo hyde i've been the producer and your co-pilot on this hd dvd audio commentary journey my name is robert kelly um and yeah look thank you thank you so much for joining us i am so exhausted it's been sprinting for two and a half hours i'm not surprised we'll see all of you in the next part of our audio installments. And in the meantime, just look after yourselves out there, stay hydrated and don't go shaking hands with yourself.

If your other self has fallen through a time rift.