WHAT WENT WRONG - Cleopatra

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

More money, more problems. This week Lizzie walks Chris through a production plagued by crotch-shots, intercontinental chili delivery and stress related hand-bleeding.Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You know, this isn't the most civilized look. It says plainly that you're still pretty basic. I'll do whatever I want. Hello, listeners. You'll probably hear some reverb, some echo on my voice. It's because my wife and I just bought this enormous 940 square foot home that we can't even afford to furnish at 940 square feet, which is just, I am stunned. People buy three, four thousand, five thousand spurt houses.

Yeah, how? What do you put in it? We have been buying used furniture all day. I am in the smallest room in the house, and it sounds like I am in a death cavern. It is a mansion by L.A. standards. I am also, listeners, since I know you care, I am also looking for a house right now with our producer, David. And every time I send my dad, who lives in, like, a beautiful farmhouse in Maine, And every time I send him a house that I like, he just sends back in all caps like, terrible.

Why does the roof look like that? Why is it so small? There is no yard. That doorway looks weird. That might be better, though, than my parents who are so wonderfully supportive, yet I'm, like, on the phone with them as they're talking to me from their 5,000 square foot house. And I'm like, yeah, you know, it's 940. And they're like, that's big. We think that's big.

Your father and I know that that is big. And I'm like, guys, no, it's not. I love you. you're so kind to me and you've helped us so much with this house. But let's just all be honest. It's not a big house. And that's fine. Are we still talking about houses? Are we talking about something? No, we're talking about something that was much bigger than 900 square feet. Oh, my God. This movie is the exact opposite of a house in Los Angeles. I can tell you that. Well, except it's overpriced and riddled with problems. So maybe not. Yes. We are today talking about a movie that I'm pretty sure Chris is mad at me for

making us watch because it is four hours and 15 minutes long. And that's because we were talking about 1963's Cleopatra. Chris? Okay, I'm sorry. I'm going to come out with a hot take at the top. I did not hate this movie. I thought it was going to be really bad based on everything I knew about it. I think it's kind of good. I think the first half is pretty good. I could do without Richard Burton, if I'm being honest, but... The first hour is... I have my own hot take on this movie that we'll get to with the what went right at the end. First hour is the best hour, which is hard when you're watching a four-hour movie.

Yeah, it's down-hill. It's when you peak pretty early, and then you're just waiting for everyone to die. I had never seen this movie before. I have never liked Elizabeth Taylor, and so seeing this much of her was frustrating. No, not a fan. I think she's pretty good. By old movie actress standards, I think she's pretty good. That's fine.

I still just don't really like her very much. It was the first movie I watched in my new house, which was like a bummer to be the christening film. I've watched a lot of Sopranos to cleanse our palate. Like, this is what real descendants of Rome are. Oh, yeah, not a single Italian in this movie. No. No one is ethnically appropriate in this entire film.

It is so loud. I mean, all the sets look enormous, and they look lavish, and the costumes do too. And how did this script get greenlit? That is my biggest, excuse me, that is my biggest question, because this movie, as Lizzie said, is four hours and 11 minutes long. It's officially the longest movie I've ever seen in my entire life. I'm including Lord of the Rings, special editions, in there. Wait until we get to Gone with the Wind, which is 20 minutes longer. Yeah.

Well, I guess I did see Leuk Gone with the Wind when I was little. It's the longest movie I've seen in my adult life, but it's just talking pretty much the entire time. And so, especially having just watched Gladiator for our Gladiator episode, this movie felt so dreadfully slow in comparison to the swashbuckling awesomeness of Gladiator. Also, Russell Crow, believable with a sword and armor. Richard Burton, no. He looks like he has not lifted an arm except to hold up a straw to snort some cocaine. Like, more like to lift up a bottle of whiskey, but yes. Yeah.

Yeah, no, that guy's arms are skinnier than mine. Chris, that's exactly what I thought. When I was watching it, I thought that man's arms are skinnier than Chris's arms. Which is, which dear audience is saying something? Chris's arms were not made for lifting. No, he is pretty scrawny. So we will get into this. Cleopatra was released of 1963.

That's the release date, the UK release date, according to IMDB. It was nominated for nominating. I mean Oscars, winning four for cinematography, art direction, costume design, and visual effects, all of which I would argue. Is this back when they had like a longest movie Oscar? I think it deserves all of those. The art direction. Which ones? So it won cinematography, art direction, costume design, and visual effects.

Visual effects maybe not so much. I don't think it deserves cinematography, but that's a separate issue. Maybe. Okay. It follows, I mean, you all essentially know what this follows and also probably don't. It's three movies in one. It is actually. So the film follows Cleopatra in her adult life.

Basically, all you need to know is, God, this is too hard. So Ptolemy... Yeah, you tried to tee that up. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. Ptolemy has died. Whatever.

Cleopatra is a ruler in Egypt. Her brother is a co-ruler. He's kind of a wuss. Caesar shows up in Egypt to basically try to get them to reconcile and rule together when they won't. Caesar sides with Cleopatra. then of course as we know, Caesar bites the dust at the hand of his own Senate. Mark Antony then kind of rises to power and sort of tries to also side with Cleopatra,

who he also then falls in love with. It's just she falls in love with Caesar. She falls in love with Mark Antony. The whole thing is just Cleopatra's, she's just trying to get a win. She just wants, she just wants Rome and it doesn't work. I view this movie very differently. I view this movie as Cleopatra ruins everything. Everything she touches.

She is the anti-mitis. She touches anything, and it turns to dust. That's kind of accurate. Julius Caesar shows up, and she is very rude. And then she convinces him to give, she says the thirstiest line. He, like, threatens to are her in the first scene. And then she's like, you won't like me this way. And he's like, I'll do whatever I want.

And then she- I found Rex Harrison surprising. Okay, he was great. Okay, so let me get to the cast really quickly. It stars Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, Richard Burton as Mark Antony Rex Harrison, fan favorite as Julius Caesar who by the way is one of the best parts of this movie

Martin Landau as Rufia who I also thought was great and Roddy McDowell as Octavia Roddy McDowell. He's good. He's a highlight. It is directed and essentially written by Joseph Mankowitz who we will... Who's Herman Mankovits is brother?

Younger brother, yes. Who if you watched Mank he's played by the guy who's name I can't remember but who was in Ozark as Laurelina's brother, who is amazing. Joseph Mankowitz called the movie the toughest three pictures I ever made and famously said that it was conceived in a state of emergency, shot in confusion, and wound up in a blind panic. It didn't go great.

It makes sense. Yeah, it kind of adds up, and that it seems like they marshaled all the forces of a major studio, and everyone did a great job, except they just didn't have a story. Certain cast members aside, I'm just saying like, art department showed up for this movie.

You know what I mean? Like everyone really put their all into making this spectacle and they weren't really sure what the movie was about. Yes, I think that's accurate. At the same time, I think the argument could be made

that the script for this, especially given how it was written, is actually not bad. Chris has given me a big, side eye on that, but I just don't, I don't think the dialogue is that bad. No, the dialogue's fine. So the sources for this piece are a fantastic Vanity Fair article from 1998 written by David Camp, which if you have the time, I very much recommend reading. It's called When Liz Met Dick. A great documentary you can watch on YouTube called The Making of Cleopatra and a fun oral

history from The Guardian, among many other little articles and snippets, but those are the main three sources that we're going to be pulling from. A little background before we get into this. Petro is produced by 20th century Fox. Remember that in 1948, which we've discussed before, the Supreme Court essentially deemed the existing studio system. Vertical integration, said that's not legal, and started the process of removing their control over every aspect of both moviemaking and distribution, and particularly of them owning the theaters. So over the course of the 50s, basically the entire studio system was being dismantled. That's really important to remember because the studios are bleeding money throughout this decade. And they're trying to figure

out how are they going to regain the amount of control that they had. The other thing that's happening in the late 50s and early 60s is TV, which is starting to draw an enormous audience and causes more money to be lost from the studios. Also, Fox is in a particularly bad situation because in 1956, Daryl Zanick, one of the founders of the studio, left. He was like, we don't have the same control we had. I'm out. I'm going to start my own production company and go make movies in Europe. And we will hear more from him later. The story of Cleopatra really begins with a man named Walter Wanger. Wanger was an incredibly successful and prolific film producer who had gotten his big break in Hollywood with the silent Rudolph Valentino

film, The Shake. Now, he's kind of been obsessed with Cleopatra for a long time. He actually wants to make it with Elizabeth Taylor as early as 1951. However, he has a rough patch in the early 50s. He'd made some real stinkers of movies, just absolute shitholes, and he also casually shot his wife's lover in the crotch after waiting outside in a parking lot for hours and served casual shooting. Casual crotch shot. And he served four months in jail, not actually a jail, something called an honor farm, which is some sort of like farm prison. Oh my God. Anyway, he's better at movies now.

When he comes back out of prison, the town loves him. And he starts cranking out the hits again. So anyway, now we're at about 1958. Also around this time, now that he's out of prison in 1958, Fox is not doing great either. They, too, had made some real stinkers, including one of the only John Wayne movies ever to not do well at the box office, which was called the barbarian and the geisha. And who boy. I've seen clips of that. You don't need to. Now on September 30th, 1958, wanger's like, I'm out of jail. I'm not going to shoot any more crotches. I'm ready to make Cleopatra.

He meets with Spiros Scoros, who is the man that took over as the president of 20th century fox after Daryl Zanick. Now, Spiros was a Greek immigrant, and he was. To this point, he had been like a very good, he was a very good manager. He was not necessarily a particularly creative person. He's like a line producer more. Like he keeps things in order. He's keeping things fiscally responsible. Sort of.

More or less. Yeah. But the point being, he's not as familiar as he maybe could have been. He's not as familiar as Daryl Zannick was, let's say, with the actual film. making process. He also doesn't necessarily trust the people underneath him as much as Daryl Zanick did, which does end up being a problem. So, Wanger pitches his grand vision for Cleopatra, and Spiros is like, no. There was a 1917 silent movie version of Cleopatra that did pretty okay in the theaters. I'm going to have my secretary just go dig that one out. You just go ahead and rewrite that for me,

and Bing, Bang, Boom, we've got it hit. And Wanger is like, sir, it's a silent movie. There's no dialogue. But anyway, he gets the script, drops it in Wanger's lap, and says, go for it. It turns out that Spiros had actually already had his eye on the project, but he couldn't find a producer who wanted to take it on and couldn't believe his luck when Wanger showed up. Now, Fox, as we said, this is kind of the beginning of them really going down the toilet. A number I want to put in front of you is that in 1962, so four years later than this meeting, they report a $61 million loss.

I remember this, because I think this is the loss they took right before Doolittle happened. The sound of music. It's actually the sound of music. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But just keep that number in mind. We're at the top of the slippery slide that ends with $61 million lost. Now, in June 1959, Wanger is getting Cleopatra off the ground, and Spiro Scorus is trying to keep the budget extremely low. He gives him somewhere, around $2.5 to $2.9 million to cover 64 days of shooting costs. And also is like, please don't cast Elizabeth Taylor. We can't afford her. She's going to be a nightmare. It's not 100% wrong on that one. And says, in fact, in order to keep budgets low, I would like you

to use a contract player. So they did still have contract players at this time. Right. People that were floated included Joanne Woodward and Joan Collins, who you may know from Dynasty fame who actually did a screen test, and I want to play for you a clip so you can see what Wenger is working with, and this is Joan Collins screen test for Cleopatra. Alexandria. Well, that's a noble present. Yes, but I want something greater in exchange. Wrong. And people have said that I am ambitious.

Why? Don't you love me? Don't you want Egypt? Don't you want the world? I, it's like... It's like a silent movie that they made with sound. I'm trying to think of the best way to say this. It's like if Kim Cottrell's character from Bonfire of the Vanities have played Cleopatra.

Yeah, which is not to say that... If you guys want a deep cat. That's accurate. Joan Collins is not bad. She's great at what she does. No, it's just a very different choice. It's very different choice. It's very much not what Wanger had in mind. And also you can tell just from that clip, the script they're working with, it's not great. No, there's a lot of pauses in there that I'm hoping we're actor choices. Don't you want the world? So two months later, and the budget has magically doubled to around $5 million. This is because Wenger held his ground. He did these scripts. test with these actors and he was just like, I'm sorry, but this is not right. He also paid out of his own pocket to hire John DeCure, might be mispronouncing that, as a production designer. This guy was

one of the best in the business. And if you watch the movie, he is the man that ends up being the final production designer. The production design is insane. It's insane. He's amazing. So because of this, having the executives see actually a lot of the designs that John had been working on, they changed their minds and they double the budget. A screenwriter Nigel Balkin is brought on to write the script and names for the lead actress are being thrown around, including Elizabeth Taylor, who we know is Wainter's favorite, Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren. Sofia Loren and Sophia Loren. I would have liked her. I would have liked her. I would have liked her. I would have liked her. I don't care. I want someone else has Cleopatra.

I would have watched that, but for bad reasons. Whatever happened to baby Cleopatra? That sounds like an awesome movie. So despite all of this, Wanger stands his ground again, and in September, he offers Elizabeth Taylor the part over the phone. Now, the way this story goes is that Elizabeth Taylor was with her then husband, Eddie Fisher, which we will get to. Eddie Fisher picks up the phone.

Wanger says, I wanted to play Cleopatra. Elizabeth Taylor's, like, tanked on the couch, and she's like, who is it? And Eddie Fisher is like, they want you to play Cleopatra and she's like, fuck, no, tell them I'll do it for a million dollars being like they're never going to give me that. To her surprise and everyone's surprise, wanger goes, okay. And she's like, uh, oh my God, a million dollars. So this is the most that any actress had ever been paid for a part. And I mean, like, to her credit, you can't turn this.

You can't turn that down. That was insane money back then. It was a big deal as a woman to make that much money. I'd play Cleopatra for a million dollars today. A hundred percent. I'll tell you I'm the Nile. Like, just tell me where to go. Much to everyone's surprise,

she gets the giant $1 million check that Fox makes her sign in front of the press. They make a big publicity stunned out of it. This is Spiro Scorus being like, fine. If we're paying her a million dollars. I love the idea that he like gave her a giant check. They literally made her sign like a fake check. like a video of it. Oh my God. Yeah, because they were like, if we're paying this much, it's going to be news that we're paying this much. So let's talk about Elizabeth Taylor.

For anyone who doesn't know, Elizabeth Taylor was famous for her violet eyes. They're not actually violet. They are a very deep blue, which I have a phone to pick with the makeup artists on this movie. Why you would put blue eye shadow on her for the entire time and completely wash out her eyes? I don't know. But anyway, she was a major star at this point. She had been in giant starring Rock Hudson and James Dean, which if you've never seen as a great movie. She had been in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She had been in suddenly last summer. She was huge, which is why she got paid a million dollars. Now, I don't love the Elizabeth Taylor's trouble angle of this story, but I will say it's not 100% inaccurate. It does seem that trouble had a way of finding Elizabeth

Taylor for sure. Now, she's famous for having had many husbands. She had lost her beloved third husband, in 1958, a man named Mike Todd when she was 26 years old. 26 years old. She has had three husbands. She's popped out a couple of kids already. Already had three kids. Now, this was really sad. He died in a plane crash very unexpectedly. And actually, by a lot of accounts, he was, he was potentially the great love of her life. Many think it's Richard Burton. A lot of people say it was Mike Todd and it was just cut short. despite this enormous loss, she actually still finishes cat on a hot tin roof and fulfills her other commitments. So she's not like, she's not a total flake.

Yeah, she's not like using it as an excuse or something. Not at all. She does her job and she does it well. However, she starts going out with Eddie Fisher. And Eddie Fisher is Mike Todd's best friend. Now, he also was married to Debbie Reynolds at the time that they started going out. And yes, Eddie Fisher is Carrie Fisher's father. With Debbie Reynolds.

Yes. Needless to say, the press did not treat Taylor well for this. She was painted as a homewrecker, you know, poor sweet, Debbie Reynolds. Look what Elizabeth Taylor did to her. Almost no mention of the grown man who is cheating on his wife. And again, keep in mind that Elizabeth Taylor had lost. The widower of his best friend. She'd lost the love of her life.

There were a lot of people who said they felt that she was. really trying to get close to Mike Todd again, and the closest thing was Eddie Fisher. So, Fox brings on veteran director Robert Mamulian to helm the film. There's just a couple problems with this guy. One being that he hasn't made a movie in about 17 years. He also has a reputation for being detail-oriented to a fault. He just wants tests for everything and is notorious for taking forever to get a movie off the ground. Doesn't seem like an excellent choice for a massive sweeping epic. So he's like if David Fincher and a sloth

had a baby. Basically. He just doesn't actually want to make the movie. He wants to like get ready for the movie. Yeah. Now Chris, where would you choose to film a grand sand-swept Roman and Egyptian epic remembering that most of this movie happens outside in sunny, dry Rome, and Egypt? Somewhere near the equator, anywhere?

How do you feel about England? Oh. Oh, good. Oh, fun. Yes, we are back at Pinewood Studios. It turns out that there were immense tax breaks at the time for shooting in England with an English crew and remember that Fox is bleeding money, so they are trying to cut corners wherever they can. Off to marry Old England, we go. This ends up being a problem almost right away, by the way, because Elizabeth Taylor wanted her hairdresser flown in to do her hair, and because they had hired English crews, there was a strike within like the first day of filming of the hairdressers. union because they were like, um, we're supposed to be doing her hair. Why is there an American in here doing it? So already, it's not going well. They also choose to shoot the film not in Cinemascope, but in Todd A.O., a different and newer widescreen process that also so happens to be developed by Mike Todd, Elizabeth Taylor's aforementioned dead husband. So she got a cut of the profits for using this tech as well. Gotta love Elizabeth Taylor. Really thought it was just named

after a guy named Todd, which would have been... Technically, Mike Todd. Slightly more excited. I've never heard of Todd A.O. Yeah, well, you don't think it really stuck around. Now, the initial cast. Peter Finch is set to play Caesar. Stephen Boyd would play Antony and, of course, Elizabeth Taylor, as Cleopatra.

Not really going to go into the backgrounds of those actors. We have so much to get through. They seem wonderful. They don't make the final cut. The initial set built on a back lot at Pinewood Studios, which is where they're recreating basically the library at Alexandria. cost $600,000. This is it.

This is not adjusted to inflation. This is in 1960 money. And included palm trees flown in from Los Angeles and four 52-foot-high sphinxes. I was wondering, because those were incredible in the movie. Those aren't even the ones that these are. Those are bigger. Now, the art director, as we mentioned, is John Dequeer, one of the best in Hollywood. And here is Keith Baxter, who originally played Octavian, talking about how much money was

being spent on this initial production. The money that was being shelled out was absolutely unbelievable. And I had a very grand rope for when I became Imperial Caesar at the end. And it was embroidered with oak leaves and laurels. And it was embroidered by the women that had the seamstresses who had been brought the Queen's Coronation Ground. And they had made four of them. Also, this is not the final actor that plays Octavian and Rodney McDowell.

although he looks a lot like Rod of McDowell. Not at all. Yeah, they were making, you know, four, five versions of these incredibly opulent costumes. It was just bananas. They start shooting September 28th, 1960, and there is trouble from the start. The rain proves a huge problem.

Who would have guessed in England? And makes it pretty much impossible to shoot. It is melting the paper mache props and sets, as well as also you can't shoot. you can't shoot Egypt in the rain. Also, Elizabeth Taylor calls in sick three days into the shoot. Now, unlike some other actresses we've talked about in the past, who may have been faking some illnesses to get out of work,

she is legitimately not a healthy person. She had had health problems in the past. She was really and truly sick. In addition to that, Eddie Fisher is also bored and maybe regretting having signed on to this bandwagon and having to go be a little bit. Taylor's handler on this gloomy movie set in England. He'd also allegedly been getting some visits from JFK's Dr. Feel Good and was potentially,

let's say, slightly addicted to meth at this time. Now, Elizabeth Taylor. How did this movie even get finished? Oh, we're not even to the bad parts yet. Elizabeth Taylor is pissed because, A, it sounds like Eddie was not quite as much fun as she had expected. B, this movie is super disorganized already. C, she's stuck in England with a cold that won't go away. Now, the cold maybe also won't go away because according to an unpublished interview from 1991, Eddie Fisher claimed that she, quote, could take an enormous amount of drugs.

And this is coming from a meth head. So just keep that in mind. People just live different. I mean, listen to our episode on Gladiator and listen to how Oliver Reed died. Yeah, seriously. It'll blow your mind. Ah, the swinging 60s. Now, Elizabeth keeps having medical problems, including an abscessed tooth and something called Malta fever, which is a bacterial infection you can get from spoiled milk. That sounds awful.

By November 18th, Robert Mamulian throws up his hands and stops production because you can't shoot without Cleopatra. They've shot everything that they can, basically, and she's just, she can't do it. So, Robert Mulan goes back into prep. Literally. His favorite thing. He plans to restart in January when Elizabeth has recovered from her 85 exotic diseases. Meanwhile, Spiro sends Joseph L. Mankowitz a copy of the screenplay for his feedback, and let's just say that Mankey doesn't love it.

In fact, he hates it. Mank just said, my brother wrote Citizen Kane. I will slap you with this. So we should talk about Joseph Mankowitz because I think many people right now are probably thinking, about Herman Mankowitz when they hear that name, who as Chris just mentioned, wrote at least parts, if not all, of Citizen Kane. I'm going to go ahead and argue that Joseph Mankowitz was the better writer by kind of a lot. He had actually won four Oscars in two years. He's one of the only people ever to do this for both writing and directing for a letter to three wives and for one of my

all-time favorite movies, which is all about Eve. He wrote and directed both of those. However, he's very good at these sort of small contained dramas that were closer to plays than they were to movies. Well, you can tell because this feels a lot more like a play than it does. That is true. And it works very well in those contained spaces. That being said, he's also kind of known as a bit of a diva wrangler at this time

because he was so successfully able to, you know, quote unquote, able to get a performance out of Betty Davis. She was an amazing actress, so who knows, you know, how much of that was him. But he was beloved. I think he's kind of an amazing writer. I think what he did on this movie, given what he had,

is incredible. So at this point, he's just been sent the script. He hates it. Now, in January, when they're supposed to restart production, oops, Mamulian just goes ahead

and sends his resignation to score us, having turned in 10 minutes of footage, none of which featured Elizabeth Taylor, and he had lost the studio $7 million already. Oh! Yeah. Yeah. Seven million dollars. Now, some accounts suggest that Taylor was behind his resignation and essentially, you know, pulled rank and said, like, get rid of this guy. He doesn't know what he's doing, which wouldn't be the first time it happened on this podcast. It sounds like this was a mess. The script was not good. And one thing I saw basically said that, you know, she was like, if this movie tanks, they're not going to blame the director. They're not going to blame the writer or the production designer. They're going to blame the actress that cost a million dollars. Like, they did. this big stunt. So I don't blame her for this if that's what happened. Now, Spiros is freaking out

because he needs a director, but oopsies, courtesy of her bonkers contract, Liz has director approval as well, and she will only approve one of two directors that she has previously worked with. One is George Stevens, and he was unavailable. The other is the man who had just told Spiros how much he hates the script, and that is Joseph Mankowitz. Stevens was busy, so Spiris had to figure out how to get Joe on board. Now, he calls up Mankowitz and basically begs him to step in and direct the movie. And Mankowitz said, quote, Spiros, why would I want to make Cleopatra? I wouldn't even go see Cleopatra.

Oh, God. However, Fox, similar to what they did with Elizabeth Taylor, makes him an offer he can't refuse. They put him on salary and they essentially... Say wanger, it will shoot you. Literally. Don't you go standing in any parking lots. Yeah, exactly. They also offer to essentially buy his production company off of him for the exorbitant price of $3 million.

Right. Remember that this man has been a product of the studio system his entire life, which means that he has not seen much money for these incredible movies that he's made. He didn't see a penny for All About Eve. This is a big deal. This is something I don't think you can turn down. No. He brings on two new writers to kind of help punch up the script.

One is Lawrence Durrell, a novelist. The other is Sidney Buckman or Buchman, who wrote Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, which is also one of my other favorite movies. Now, there's another problem pretty much right away, which is that naturally Elizabeth Taylor has another exotic disease. It is an Asian flu that's as specific as they get about that. evidently she caught it when she was headed back to England to care for Eddie Fisher who had quote unquote appendicitis this is all a little murky something basically Eddie Fisher had he had mess. Well no some accounts are saying that like he had faked appendicitis to kind of get away

from her because she was being sort of a drag and then she like shows back up to be like my love and he's like oh man I feel a bit bad for him as well like he's just he's he's not in a good position, but he's also just a bit of a wet rag. She develops double pneumonia, which is not even a thing I knew you could get. I think that's just when you have in both lives. Well, she has it everywhere. And she actually falls into a coma on March 4th. This is 1961 now, I believe. Yeah, she fell into a coma. She almost died. Oh, God. She fell into a coma. She was only like 31 years old. She's like 29 years old. She's 29 or 30 at this point. Oh, God.

She is rushed to the hospital where she receives an emergency tracheotomy. Now, for anybody that doesn't know, a tracheotomy is when they actually slice into your throat in order to clear the air passage and allow air to come in and out through your throat. Yeah, they stab a straw into your windpipe. Indeed. It's not ideal. Especially not during the non-silent era of movies. Yeah. It can, if done incorrectly, screw up your vocal cords. It could have, yes.

Luckily, it didn't. Although it did leave a rather large scar, which despite their best efforts in plastic surgery, you actually can see. You can see it. I saw it at one point. It's this light, light spot. And I was like, and I thought it was like, oh, is that a weird highlight or something? Interesting. No, they tried as best as they could.

And she was very self-conscious about it. But yeah, that was, that's a tracheotomy scar. Wild. However, Elizabeth's time in the hospital actually has some beneficial repercussions for both her and the production. One aspect of it is that she's now back in public favor. She almost died. She really, really almost died. She even gets a get-well soon note from Debbie Reynolds, who, let's be honest, is maybe a little grateful to be rid of Eddie Fisher at this point.

Elizabeth said, I had the chance to read my own obituaries. They were the best reviews I ever got. There were a lot of reporters saying she was dead. Like, people really thought she'd died. Wow. Meanwhile, it also gives Mankowitz quite a bit of time to scrap everybody from the project, except for Elizabeth Taylor and the production designer, and also to start rewriting the script from scratch.

Something else important happens. Elizabeth Taylor wins an Oscar for her role in Butterfield 8. And due to her health problems, absolutely no one will insure her now. So she's an Oscar winner, so she holds even more clout, and she's an unbelievably big liability. So for those of you who don't know or if you haven't heard us talk about it on this podcast, productions are required to get insurance because these are enormous outlays financially.

For smaller films, it's called a bond, and for larger films, it's insurance. and when you have an actor who's viewed as enough of a liability, nobody will underwrite the project. And so oftentimes actors who fall out of favor due to risky behavior, it's because they can't get movies insured if that actor's attached. And that's what happened to Robert Downey Jr. for a stretch. And really, he, getting Iron Man was, he fought for that role and, had to screen test multiple times,

and it was largely an insurance issue because it was going to be a $150 million project. You know, it wasn't just an indie that if it went belly up, you lose a few million bucks. Anyway, so also like Lindsay Lohan, other examples of people who've had a hard time. Johnny Depp probably should be uninsurable. He is now at this point, yeah, with large movies.

Yeah. So, Mank now needs to install, Mank now needs to install an entirely new cast. He wants Marlon Brando for Mark Antony, which, by the way, he had just... Could have been great. He is great. You can see him play Mark Antony

in the adaptation of Julius Caesar starring James Mason, which Mank had directed. If you have five minutes, go on YouTube and watch Marlon Brando do the Friends Romans Countryman speech. It is excellent. However, I would say unfortunately, Marlin is busy.

Because I'm not going to lie, I thought Richard Burton was one of the weakest parts of this movie. Yeah. Zero stars for Richard Burtt. Yeah, not good. All I've ever heard is what an amazing actor Richard Burton is. And, you know, he was well known as a stage actor. He had had a couple of big roles at this time.

And he actually becomes Mankowitz's first choice for Mark Antony. Not a fan. I don't get it. I really don't get it. He yells. He just yells a lot. He's incredibly unappealing. Doesn't look great in that little mini skirt they have him in the entire time.

He's the least physically impressive person on the screen. Yeah, and he's next to Rex Harrison for parts of this. I know. Rex Harrison looks like he could beat the crap out of him. Rex Harrison looks like a beef cake. Exactly. Shocking. And Mank also sets his sights on Rex Harrison for Caesar, which, as we've said before,

I actually think that was a great choice. I thought he was excellent. I found him highly watchable in this movie. He's great. And I did not like Dr. Doolittle. No, it's very bad. But I liked him a lot in this movie. Now, Rex, as we know, is a bit of a pain in the ass on sets.

So everyone kind of thought that he was going to be the potential problem that they were bringing in. And not Richard Burton, who was known as like, oh, he's like he's fun. He's big, he's big, he's boisterous. He's this big boisterous Welsh, you know, theater actor. What a good time he is. Now, he was known as an amazing stage actor, as we said. He was also known as an amazing philanderer. He cheated on his wife constantly.

It was publicly. There were jokes that he had slept with every leading lady he had ever been in a show or play with. In fact, Elizabeth Taylor had actually met him years earlier at a party. She took one look at him and she was like, absolutely not. I'm not going to be another notch on this asshole's belt. and that was his reputation. Despite the fact that Mankowitz is still not quite ready to start shooting, due to the fact that he does not have a script, a full script,

Spiros is full steam ahead and wants them to start production in Italy this time, ASAP. So remember that $600,000 set that they built at Pinewood Studios, it literally gets torn down and thrown away. Now, Spiros also personally not doing great. In addition to Fox bleeding money out of every hole, He was also getting older and losing his marbles. He actually took Elizabeth Taylor, Eddie Fisher, and Mankowitz to dinner. And he kept calling Elizabeth Taylor Cleopatra.

He'd be like, Cleopatra will have the rab, blah, blah, blah. And she was just like, you don't know what my name is. And he was like, I know what your name is. You're Cleopatra. And she was like, no, I don't think you know what my name is. And to mess with him, she was like, listen, I'll give you half of my salary back. If you can tell me my name. And he's like, you are Cleopatra.

She's just like, so he's not doing great. Elizabeth Taylor hasn't been drunk enough to forget her own name. No. Elizabeth Taylor is doing great. Elizabeth Taylor, first of all, could outdrink any of us and be fine. I'm pretty sure they wrote that scene in Raiders of the Lost Dark where Karen Allen just like drinks that random Russian guy under the table when we first meet her after Elizabeth Taylor, like dealing with men in Hollywood.

I'm sorry, but I still love Elizabeth Taylor. I'm liking her more and more. I think you will like her by the end of this. The Sputus and his commitment to the Cleopatra bit is good. But you are Cleopatra. Okay. So they decide to do most of the filming in Rome, first of all, because it finally makes some sense. And second of all, because they're hoping that the weather and the conditions will be

slightly better for Elizabeth Taylor's health. They build the exteriors for Alexandria on a private hunting estate belonging to a prince, remember that. We'll come back to that. And then they film some of the battle sequences in the Egyptian desert. That's the plan. So we are now about a year past the whoopsie daisy in London, and we are just starting over from scratch. As much as I like Elizabeth Taylor, she does in fact live up to her reputation of being a bit of a pain in the butt. She has chili flown in from Chasen's restaurant in Hollywood. And also... Wait, sorry.

Yeah. Chili is in the stew? as in the soup. That is. It's great because it's like, she's trying to like have a large bowel on the sand. Why does she want chili?

Listen, she wants what she wants. The heart wants what the heart wants. That's really the moral of Cleopatra, as we will see. And what would the lady like? Chilie or chaser. Flown in. Well, wait until you get to this next one. You're going to love this.

This is my favorite thing I learned in the entire. research. She, she reportedly refused to allow them to film her when she was on her period. Which is when she ate all the chili. Let's be honest. So, they are literally, listen, to be fair, having never experienced a period, I don't want people to film me on a normal day, but I can imagine I would not want anyone to film me if I was dealing with that. Her point was that she's supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the entire world. And despite the fact that that was not necessarily historically accurate to the actual Cleopatra, and she didn't want to be puffy and bloated and not fitting into her, you know, normal genes. So that means that they are now structuring their shooting schedule around

her menstrual cycle. And they can really only film the scenes in Rome that don't involve her when she's on her period. By the way, they've all started shooting with less than half of the script in place, which as we know is a huge mistake. Basically, they have the Caesar and Cleopatra half, which as we've mentioned is the significantly better half. Mostly because of Rex Harrison. Well, the writing is better, though. Sure.

I'm just saying, like, he's appealing. She's appealing. It kind of works. The story is good, too. Richard Burton is just, yeah. Well, the problem is it's the same movie two times. Yes. So, like, you're just hitting the same story again with Mark Anthony in the second half.

Basically, just a weenier version. Correct. Smaller arms. Spiros would not let them slow down, however, because of Elizabeth Taylor's crazy-ass contract, which stated that she would get paid a ton more for every week that they ran over. So, poor Joseph Mankowitz starts shooting during the day and writing the script at night. He literally doesn't sleep for, like, months. He actually... Eddie Fisher is sending him so much math to help him get through this.

Well, he does get, I mean, he doesn't do math, but he develops a stress-related skin condition on his hands that causes them to crack open and bleed and leaves to him wearing gloves. He also required daily B-12 shots by the time the movie was done, one of which accidentally hit his sciatic nerve and made it so he almost couldn't walk. This also meant that they were shooting the scenes in the order they were written, which, as we know, is unusual because it is costly and difficult. Mm-hmm. Now, they're just calling actors and telling them to come to Rome. They're like, uh, and by the way, this movie has seven trillion actors. So many. Seven trillion parts and they're all Sagittarius is Juanagis, Slamonicus.

Like, I don't, I didn't know who anyone was by any, when Martin Landau finally died, I was like, oh, he's back. Oh, I thought he was good. No, he is good. But my point is, so many other people are coming in and out. It's just, there's a lot. Stunning. Roddy McDowell, Martin Landau, when they get there, there's actually nothing written for them. This happened with Richard Burton as well.

They showed up and sat there for months before they shot anything. Yeah, because they're pretty much just in the second half. Well, yeah, exactly. They had nothing. It wasn't even like, here are your lines to study. It was like, just go sit over there and get drunk for the next three months. We got nothing. Keep getting them checks.

That's what I like to say. That's what they did. Now, remember that hunting villa? we were recreating Alexandria. Well, it turns out that the beach was covered with actual fucking landmines from World War II, and they had to spend $22,000 to have it demined. I thought you're going to say 22, like, lives, but I'm glad it was just $22,000. No, as far as I can tell, only, like, one person died on this production, and I wasn't even going to mention it, but I think the production manager did have a heart attack due to stress.

Oh, my God. Also, they accidentally built the set next to a NATO firing range and had to schedule their shoots around when the cannons were going off. Weirdly also happened on the man who killed Don Quixote. Anyway, I think something similar happens on Ishtar as well. The moral of the story is really checked to make sure that there aren't any massive artillery ranges near where you're shooting. Now, they also

actually built the Roman Forum set so large that it caused a national steel shortage in Italy and was two to three times larger than the actual Roman Forum, which was down the street. Also, some of the locals working on the set realized that straight up no one was keeping track of the budget.

So they started adding a little something extra for themselves. Elizabeth Taylor said, later I got to see the studio's breakdown on the money waste. They had $3 million for miscellaneous and $100,000 for paper cups. They said I ate 12 chickens and 40 pounds of bacon every day for breakfast. What? Well, you know, I'm glad the local economy got something. The Italians had a ball with this.

They also start to realize that due to further weather delays, this thing is going to keep shooting until the spring of 1962. So Scoros at one point actually just casually asks Richard Burton if he would particularly mind if they just kind of ended the movie when Caesar died. Before they filmed Richard Burton's scenes? No, he has like seven minutes in the first half of the movie. And Richard Burton was like, yeah, I'm going to mind. I will sue you.

So Spiros is like, okay, okay, no problem. We'll go ahead and finish the movie. Oh, Joseph, right, Richard's the pages. Please. No. Do Papa Scudos a solid. Remember the insane scene where she enters Rome for anybody that hasn't seen this? It's 20 minutes long and even even hitting 10 second fast forward on Amazon Prime as many times as possible, that scene takes so long to get through.

Why would you hit fast forward? First of all, there's pasties. I was shocked by the pasties. There's, I don't, you know. In like a 19603 movie, I didn't know they did pasties. I didn't know they did pasties in ancient Egypt either. I don't think they did. It's great. Also, it should be said about the production design of this movie and the costumes that it's very much like ancient Egypt by way of 1960s Palm Springs.

Like, it is not historically accurate, but I loved it. Allegedly that scene was supposed to include more elephants, but they were fired for being disruptive, at which point one of the elephants' handlers then tried to sue the story. studio for slander against his elephant. Jesus Christ. He said his elephant was a very good boy, and that was not accurate. I love to see like an Italian court taking this case, like very seriously. This thing is such a mess. I also just want to say that despite her bouts of illness and hysteria, by all accounts, Elizabeth Taylor was very nice to her co-stars and extras.

She was not what you would expect from a typical diva. Now, the same cannot be said for either Richard Burton, who was generally unpleasant by most accounts, or Rex Harrison, who was known... Giant asshole. He was actually known as, quote, the cunt. And not in the friendly British way. Evidently, at one point, the guy who played Caesar's nonverbal assistant, who I thought did a great job, stepped on Rex's toga. And instead of just continuing the scene, Rex Harrison ruins the take by turn.

turning around and ripping this man a new asshole, at which point Joseph Mankowitz pops out from behind the camera and goes, George, stay off his fucking skirt. Oh, God. All right. Now we're going to get to the part that everybody showed up for, which is Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, which, to be honest, is the most boring part of this whole thing to me because it's just a trash fire. Eddie Fisher is still around.

He's just being the wettest rag. However, it is said that pretty much the... first scene that Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton shoot with each other, it is very clear to everyone on set that they are just head over heels. I don't get it. Elizabeth Taylor is so beautiful. And whatever, anyway, allegedly Richard Burton once walked into the makeup room and announced that he just fucked Elizabeth Taylor in the back of his Cadillac. What a charmer. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. That, all that's to say that they did not bother hiding it really at all. Um, Here is Martin Landau, who played Rufio, talking about their romance on set.

Elizabeth was shocked to discover another side to the actor. The first day on the set, Burton arrived absolutely brutally hungover, so hungover that he had the shakes. And Elizabeth had to help him raise a cup of coffee to his lips. and she described him as all giggly and boyish and childlike and helpless and needy and it brought out the mother in her she found it her word was enduring that here was this titanic actor intellectual a needy child now it seems pretty clear that Richard Burton thought this would be just another on set quickie, as we have discussed. He slept with pretty much every

leading lady he had ever met. However, he was wrong. This was Elizabeth Taylor. Like this, this was massive worldwide news. Now, to Elizabeth's credit, when Eddie Fisher got wind of the affair and asked her about it, she didn't lie. She said it was all true and made it pretty clear that she felt that their marriage was over. Richard Burton, on the other hand, handled it a little differently. Now, he had had so many affairs, but he always came back to his wife. And that clearly is what he was planning on doing here again. Now, when Eddie Fisher stopped by their villa to have a chat with Burton's wife, Sybil, who was basically like, oh, he does this, but he'll come home. Burton threatened to kill Eddie Fisher and then broke up with Elizabeth Taylor. This leads to

her first accidental overdose of secondol. And again, shooting is held up. Things get really sad here. This then causes Richard Burton to come running back to her along with Eddie Fisher. Apparently Richard Burton was just generally kind of awful to Eddie Fisher. He was frequently showing up at his and Elizabeth's villa to yell at him about how he, quote, didn't know how to use her and asked Elizabeth to reveal who she really loved. by March 26th, 1962,

Eddie Fisher is just like, fuck this, and he leaves. Honestly, he stood by Elizabeth Taylor for an awfully long time, given this mess, and I think did love her and really tried, but it just, you know, there was no point. Burton also releases a kind of boneheaded memo to the press that basically just said he would never leave his wife, but doesn't ever fully deny the affair. Right. It's so bad that Fox is like, you need to retract that memo immediately, but the damage is already done. This memo was also supposedly released the same day that Elizabeth had to film the scene where she finds out that Mark Antony had married Octavian's sister.

On top of all of this, Richard Burton also has a second affair with a dancer during this time and would trot her out in front of Elizabeth Taylor on set. Great. Now, the press is obviously having a massive field day with all of this. Richard Burton was receiving piles of scripts. He apparently even joked should I give Elizabeth Taylor 10% because he was getting so many offers for work. Elizabeth Taylor was receiving open letters from the Vatican, essentially calling her a home wrecking slut, suggesting she should not be allowed back in the United States, that she was, you know, a moral scourge on the American dream. Got to love it.

Meanwhile, Richard Burton, I'm sure, is just a total slut and nobody cares. And has been for years publicly. Yep. Now, at this point, Elizabeth's health again begins to decline due to the stress. According to Jackie Chan, that is spelled J-A-Q-U-I, who played the Handmaiden, who tried to poison her, said that Elizabeth Taylor frequently had an IV drip hooked up under her dress to keep her from passing out. She was so... Oh, my God.

I mean, just imagine the emotional stress of this situation, and you know that they're, like, fighting and breaking up every freaking day. It's a nightmare. Things got so bad on a weekend trip that Richard and Elizabeth took together that Taylor supposedly returned from the trip with a black eye and broken nose. She upholds that it was due to sleeping in the back of the car on the drive back and bopping her nose on the ashtray. But pretty much nobody buys this, especially not the paparazzi who had gotten pictures of the two of them arguing on their vacation. Oh, Elizabeth, you could do so much better. Shooting just keeps dragging on with reshoots and more shenanigans

in order to keep the studio barely afloat. Fox actually cancels most of their other productions. They're like, we can't afford it. They actually just put all of their eggs in the Cleopatra basket. One of the productions that they cancel is what would have been Marilyn Monroe's final film. Oh, no. And her biographer, at least partially blamed her suicide

in part on that movie being canned as sort of one of the final nails in her coffin. Something else the studio offloaded was a large portion of their lot near Beverly Hills, which resulted in Century City. Century City. Yeah.

Great Apple Store. Excellent mall. Then, all behind the scenes, Daryl Zanick, who had left before Spiros took over and has been making movies on his own on the side, has watched the studio that he built just completely fall apart and he has had it. Daryl's like enough. He shows up at a board meeting for

Fox and just rips everyone a new asshole and he gets Spiros fired and says, I'm coming back. Spiros is out. Zanick is back in. This is actually not great news for Joseph Mankowitz who had a relatively tense relationship with Daryl Zanick. He only had a couple of months at this point to finish anything they needed to finish on Cleopatra. He was trying to get the movie done because he knew that Zannick was just going to cut anything that he possibly could. Now, they finish filming and Mancoitz screens an around five hour and 20 minute long version for Zanick.

The reason he screens a version this long is that Mancoitz really wanted to release it in two parts. As first Caesar and Cleopatra and then Antony. and Cleopatra, you know, a couple months later. Great. Yes. I am so supportive of this decision. Because by all accounts, as you said, the second half is the weaker half. By all accounts, it was significantly better when it was allowed to be a bit longer and have some more development in there, particularly from Mark Antony's character, who, as it stands

in the final cut, is very unlikable. Doesn't make a ton of sense. It's also the weaker half because it's a four hour plus movie and you get tired after two hours. If you broke that up into two movies and had made it different enough, Like, if this were a mini-series, 100% I would have watched this. Yeah, I still wouldn't have liked it very much, but I would have liked it more than this version. It would have been better than the undoing. Oh, disagree. Loved it. Hey, terrible, garbage, hot trash.

You are wrong. I love Hugh Grant and Nicole Kidman's wigs. Now, for all they're complaining about the Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton storyline at this point, Fox is also well aware that that is. the big draw. That's what people are paying attention for and they're like... So they have to release that now. They're like, nobody cares. Nobody wants to watch Elizabeth Taylor smooching on Rex Harrison. That's fair. They'd want to watch her and Richard Parton, even though that's the worst movie. I think Rex Harrison or Elizabeth Taylor wanted to watch

her smooching on him. There was no sexual chemistry there whatsoever. But there isn't really supposed to be anyway. No, she's, her whole pitch is, I make babies. Like, that's literally the whole sex team. This sounds good. Yeah. Ooh, yes. So Mank asks Zanick for some feedback after screening this for him. And after weeks of just dead silence, which is a nightmare, he gets it in the form of a nine-page letter, just ripping the work that Mankowitz had done to shreds and also firing him from

the project in October of 1962. Oh, wow. And Zannick was a little bit famous for these letters. He wrote one to his son. Dick who was producing Dr. Doolittle, and you can listen to our Dr. Doolittle episode about that. But he wrote these were not, these were blunt. No, it was rough. Letters.

He also releases a public and extra bitchy statement to the press that said, in exchange for top compensation and a considerable expense account, Mr. Joseph Mankowitz has for two years spent his time, talent, and $35 million of 20th century Fox shareholders' money to direct and complete the first cut of the film Cleopatra. he has earned a well-deserved rest. Wow. However, that being said,

Zanick starts to look at what he actually has available to him and realizes that he's made a whoopsie and that he still needs Mankowitz to finish the film despite the fact that he has fired him. He also concedes that some of the cuts that Spiros had forced them to make mostly battle sequences that were kind of missed shot were mistakes. And so despite the fact that, that he has publicly fired Mankowitz.

He sends him back out to do more reshoots and brings him back to cut the movie. He had worked so hard on. I mean, this is the equivalent of telling the prisoner to dig their own breath. Literally. Like at this one. He's like, you don't have this job anymore, but you're going to do it for me anyway.

And he forces Mancoitz to cut it down to its final 243 minute runtime. He always upheld that it should have been two movies. I agree. He was really upset about this, but he did what he could. Now, the movie was released to extremely mixed reviews. Some said it was a spectacle.

It was great. Some were like it was a hot trash fire. When all was said and done, the movie had cost Fox somewhere between $31 million on the low end and a probably more accurate $44 million on the high end. Oh my God. For reference, that means it is close to $350 million in today's money. Despite it being the top grossing film of that year, It actually did well.

You just, it was, you would, it was literally impossible at that time. You couldn't. You couldn't. To earn that much money at the box office. Yeah, it's not possible. It took more than another full year in some, some reports a couple of years for Cleopatra to even break even. And the final thing that it took was Fox selling the TV rights. All that being said, the movie was an enormous cultural moment, particularly for style.

If you watch this movie, you'll see a lot of it and think, oh, this is so nice. But the reality is a lot of the 1960s was actually influenced by Cleopatra, the blunt haircuts with the bangs, the eye shadow, a lot of the dresses. And I want to actually play for you. Feels very Megan Hilty and Madman. Yeah. That was very much dictated by this movie and the incredible work that the costume makeup and production design team did.

I want to play for you a Revlon commercial for a new color of their, I believe, lipstick called Sphinx Pink. just so you can see how much this movie really entered the cultural zeitgeist. This spring, Revlon, brings you the new Cleopatra look, brilliantly translated into the most exciting and wearable look today. Today's Cleopatra wears a combination of sphinx pink, a vividly light pink for lips and fingertips, and sphinx eyes, a new idea in eye makeup.

Together, the most exciting look in 2,000 springs. You know, this isn't the most civilized look. It says plainly that you're still pretty basic. Like this pink. Sphinx pink makes all other pink look positively pallid. This may seem not very civilized and a little basic, but here's my sphinx pink. I love it. Have you ever watched your cat walk away from you and thought, goodness, that's the perfect shade of pink?

Honestly, that is the color of lipstick that they use on Elizabeth Taylor for most of this movie. And boy, is it a mistake. It does not do her any favor. She's such a beautiful woman. And it doesn't look that great. Fox actually keeps cutting the movie down more and more to three-ish hours and then two-ish hours to the point where it makes almost no sense. And many people who went to see it in theaters never even saw Manx final cut, which I think is partially why we've heard so many reviews that it's. so bad and makes no sense is that people saw this really, really choppy version.

Yeah. Now, because even in the four hour version, there are some time jumps where you have to fill in the gaps. Yeah, totally. So chunks of the original footage of this film have been lost, which is sad because whatever you say about it, it is beautiful to look at. But there are many people who are actually trying to put Joseph Mankowitz's original vision back together.

They're trying to reassemble the five-hour and 20-minute long. cut. Elizabeth Taylor, the first time that she actually saw the movie as it was released in theaters was so upset by what they had done to Mancoitz's vision that she threw up. She said it was so much worse than what she had expected. Now, Elizabeth Taylor would continue on and off until 1964 with Richard Burton when they both got divorced from their significant others and married each other. They would stay married until 1974 when they got divorced and then married again in 1975, only to divorce again in 1976. And at some point during that run, they went on a vacation with Rex Harrison and his wife,

and it sounds like the stuff of legend. And I highly recommend our Dr. Doolittle episode if you'd like to hear some anecdotes from that hellscape of a vacation. All right. Well, that's Cleopatra. I'm sorry, it was a million hours long, but to be fair, the movie is also a million hours long. I was going to say, that was actually surprisingly condensed. I'm impressed because the movie goes on forever.

I just didn't hate it. Maybe it's because I have a soft spot for Julius Caesar, the Shakespeare play, which I do really love. Like, it's a story that I am interested in. It's a story that I feel, particularly from Cleopatra's perspective, has not been done justice. My biggest problem, I felt like the story was not told from her perspective. It was called Cleopatra. It should have been called Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. because the movie I felt was told from their perspectives.

And so I like, it is for the most part, which like I think is is a byproduct of the time. And as some of you may know, I was wondering if it's a byproduct of having limited time to shoot with Cleopatra so they had to write more scenes that didn't involve her. I don't think so. I think they were writing as they went. And I think the sort of prevailing narrative at the time was that Cleopatra,

as you said, kind of like everything she touched, she ruined. which historically not accurate. She was actually a pretty incredible ruler. What she was able to accomplish in the time that she was alive was very impressive. And I just think we haven't gotten to see that yet. Also, it should be noted that Cleopatra was Macedonian of Macedonian descent. Descended from Ptolemy and Alexander the Great. So she looked nothing like Elizabeth Taylor.

There's so many white people in this movie that shouldn't have been there. We didn't even get to that, but that should just be expected from a 1960s movie about Egypt. It's rough. But anyway, that wraps this up. For those of you who don't know, Galgadote is set to star. That's what I'm saying? Yes. In a new Cleopatra movie, there was a huge uproar about her playing Cleopatra.

I'm not even going to get into that. I am. Isn't Patty Jenkins? She is. I'm excited. I'm going to say that. I have some hope that they may be able to actually do some justice. to Cleopatra's story, and I'm interested to see it. Again, she was Macedonian, so yes,

there are some issues with Galgado being cast as that, but, you know, better than Elizabeth Taylor, I would say. All right, Lizzie, thank you for that wonderful, just always sad with the 1960s films. I know. Trip town memory lane on Cleopatra. What went right, Chris? So for me, there's a lot of obvious ones, the production design, et cetera. I'm just because I was so stunned that I liked him. I got to say Rex Harrison is Julius Caesar. I was, honestly, the minute he showed up, I was like, oh, I forgot he was in this. I really didn't like him and Dr. Julia Little.

I'm just like so excited to really crap on him on this. You know, I thought he was wonderfully charming. I really like saw the appeal for the first time. And especially compared to Richard Burton, I was just like, oh, yeah, Rex Harrison was great. So I really enjoyed Rex Harrison in this movie. That was also my What Went Right. I agree. I thought that the half with Rex Harrison was genuinely good and worth watching and that he is a very interesting and compelling Caesar.

Yes. Since you took that one, I'll go ahead and just say that the historically accurate nipple pasties are my other what went right for this one. They really run right up to the camera. Just jiggle them right in front of the camera. I loved it. I loved it. It is a spectacle. Listen, we're all trapped at home with our families.

If you want to get away from your family, because they won't watch this for four hours and 15 minutes. Put on Cleopatra. What a great way to clear a room. And you won't be that bored, honestly. Cleopatra, clear a room faster than a warm part. That's Lizzie's endorsement. I liked it.

Oh, man. All right. Thank you guys so much for listening. I really enjoy these movies, these older movies. Please let us know if you do, because not everybody has my same taste in movies. There's a bunch more that I would like to cover. And if I shouldn't, let me know. I don't promise that I'm going to listen to you because I love this crap.

Bye. Bye. What went wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing in music by David Bowman with cover art from Euthonah Uos. This week's outro music by SPG and the Bices. Jenny!