WHAT WENT WRONG - Howard The Duck

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

The Marvel movie Marvel wants you to forget! This week, Lizzie & Chris dive deep on full-breasted waterfowl, the ethics of using a child actor to perform a duck/human love scene, and why Howard T. Duck may have cost George Lucas seven billion dollars.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.

Hey there, listeners. Before we begin, a quick content warning. During this episode, there is a brief discussion of child sexual assault material as it relates to actor Jeffrey Jones that may be triggering for some individuals. Oh, and welcome back to another episode of your favorite podcast, full stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them. That's right. It's what went wrong. I'm one of your hosts, Chris Winterbauer, here as always with my incredible other host, Lizzie Bassett. Lizzie, how you doing tonight? I'm doing great, Chris. Although right out the gate, I just want to tell everybody, I know you were excited because this episode was supposed to be about Mommy Dearest because that's what I promise. But it turns out it was just a lot of work. That one was a lot more work than I thought. And I got tired.

So Chris has graciously stepped in with maybe one of the worst movies I've ever seen. So that's my punishment. And this week, my punishment is also your punishment. Your punishment, listeners. Howard the Duck, which I can certainly say Dracula only held the mantle for horniest film we've covered for one week. Oh, yeah, no. And then Howard snatched it away with his dirty little beak. This is a very weird movie.

I had never seen it before. Had you seen it, Lizzie? No. No. And this is like, I mean, I'm sure we're going to get into it. But, like, yeah, this is one of the most overly sexualized movies we've ever covered. and there's absolutely no rhyme or reason to why it is. And it's just, like, deeply upsetting.

Every time they show, like, a feathered duck nipple, you're like, God, I just... Yeah. Really love those anthropomorphized human breasts slapped onto duck people. Could have lived my whole life without seeing that. Yep. So, before we begin, a quick thank you to our Patreon patrons for their support and participation in our movie poll that yielded this week's film. That's right. Not only did you have to watch Howard the Duck, but you're paying for it, literally as well as figuratively. If you'd like to have any say in what films we cover in the future,

consider joining our Patreon. Or if you would like to yell at the patrons who voted for Howard the Duck, also considered joining our Patreon. All right. Howard the Duck is a 1986 superhero film. No. Technically. Based on the Marvel Comics characters. of the same name. It is directed by Willard Hike, spelled H-U-Y-C-K. We got a very lovely review from someone who did ask if we could try a little harder to pronounce people's names correctly. So I am going to make a concerted effort. It was a very nice review. So Willard Hike, I looked it up. That's what it said. And Gloria Katz, produced by Gloria Katz and George Lucas, correct pronunciation, in Lukas.

Howard the Duck starred Leah Thompson, Tim Robbins, who I absolutely love in this movie, at least his introduction, and Jeffrey Jones as the Dark Overlord. Howard was brought to life through the combined efforts of Chip Zine, who provided his voice,

five puppeteers, Ed Gale, a little person, actor, and Jordan Prentice, also a little person actor. They acted as the suit performers for the duration of the shoot. Here is the IMDB logline for the film. Oh boy.

A sarcastic humanoid duck is pulled from his homeworld to Earth where he must stop an alien invasion with the help of a nerdy scientist and a struggling female rock singer. And I will say that's like basically the second half of the movie but ignores the first half of the movie where he like goes to, to the Cleveland Unemployment Office

and nearly sexually assaults his caseworker and ends up working at a weird sex spa. So we'll skip all that. I was like, I blocked that out of my head. Lizzie like blacked all of that out. You were saying that. I was like, what? And then I remember that weird like mud bath situation in the, yeah. Yep.

A love spa. I didn't know that was a thing. I looked it up. Was it a real thing? Yeah, apparently. It's also, it's not dissimilar from where from where, oh my God, Malcolm Jurassic Park. Jeff Goldblum? From where Jeff Goldblum works in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

What was happening in the 80s? It's not like all the same diseases weren't also around then. No, he makes a comment about, should I get you a towel or some antibiotics? Like, it's very much, you know, STDs were known. They just had more of like a... height of the AIDS crisis. Like a middle-aged approach to this, where they just don't care?

I guess so. All right. I had never seen this movie. Lizzie, you said you've never seen this movie. And thank God my parents never rented it, because could you imagine white knuckling it through some of these scenes? It would be worse than watching Game of Thrones with your parents, I have to tell you. So despite how strange the final product turned out, and I do think it has its charms.

And I'm not, I actually did not hate this movie. I have. David loved it. Yeah. I think we, we ranged the spectrum internally, which is always great. It had a number of things going for it. So Willard Hike, George Lucas, and Gloria Katz were the creative trio behind American graffiti. Okay.

So that was one of the most profitable films ever made. George Lucas and Coe had made that for $77,000 by the end of its run, including re-releases. It had grossed over $200 million at the box office. And it was through that film that Lucas was able to launch Lucasfilm. That's right. Lucas film was the production company. behind American graffiti. That movie was made with Universal, and that really kick-started his career, and he then went on to obviously do Star Wars. Not only did they have these three, but because it was

George Lucas, they had Industrial Light and Magic, which was a subsidiary of Lucasfilm. Did they? They were trying to push the envelope, I don't think certain things worked. And of course, they had IP. This was technically not the first, but basically the first Marvel comic book movie. What was technically the first? Technically, there was a Captain America set of serial set of films that played during World War II at theaters, like black and white serial films. I think this counts as the first Marvel movie, and Marvel will dispute that until the end of time. But I think it all began with Howard Duck. Was it the Duck or the Egg or the Chicken?

I don't know. I think it was the Duck. So despite having all these great things in the mix, what went wrong? Now, Lizzie, it all began as far too many things these days do when a nerdy young man took a trip to his local comic book store. And that man was George Lucas. The California native was hot off his powerhouse sophomore feature, American graffiti. His first film was THX 1138. If you guys want to learn more about George Lucas, listen to our episode on Star Wars.

I'm not going to rehash his biography here. So Lucas at the time wanted to bring Flash Gordon to the big screen. So he was interested in adapting other properties. If you remember, Star Wars was modeled after Flash Gordon in a lot of ways. Indiana Jones was based on the pulpy, you know, comics, turn of the century comics that he used to read when he was younger. Go ahead, Lucy. Is Flash Gordon Marvel or is that DC?

Or separate? I don't think Flash Gordon. It's separate. Flash Gordon's separate. Yeah. So he was interested in paying homage or adapting other works. So according to an oral history of the film that was compiled by Cassine Gaines in 2016, Howard the Duck took his first quacky little steps toward the silver screen due to pure geographic happenstance.

Yeah, that was a terrible pun. How many puns are coming? That was the old. There's a lot of fun. There's a lot of duck puns in this movie. It was 1976, Lizzie, and George Lucas was in post-production on Star Wars, and he would occasionally meet up with his old friends, Willard, Hike, and Gloria Katz, for lunch at a deli nearby.

And remember, Lucas' experience on Star Wars was bad. So his friends were probably cheering him up at this point in time. And that deli happened to be by a comic book store. And one day, Hike and Cats were running late, and that was the worst late meeting they were ever late to, because that gave Lucas time to go into the comic book store next to the deli. And he rushes in with a comic in hand, and it's called Howard the Duck.

And he goes, guys, this could be a great movie. What part of it? What part of it? We're not going to do a Marvel Deep Dive, but here are the cliff notes. So Howard the Duck, the character, first appears in the Marvel universe in 1973 in an comic book's horror series called Adventure Into Fear. He was created by Steve Gerber. Now, Steve Gerber had a much more irreverent tone than a lot of other comic

comic book writers. He was known for his work on Deer Devil and Guardians of the Galaxy, and so you can see some of that tone in the more recent Guardians' adaptations. Doesn't Howard show up in the guardians? He does, which we'll get to. So Howard was a sarcastic, anthropomorphic duck in a constant existential crisis who was trapped on Earth, a planet of hairless walking apes. He's described as an anti-hero with no superhuman powers. However, he is skilled in the art of quack-foo. That is canon, Lizzie. was not made up for the movie. Well, they didn't quite live up to it because as far as I can tell, he has, like, next to zero fighting skills in this. Okay.

It's, he's three feet tall. He could have done better. Just to jump in. He wears a tie and a shirt. And after 1977, he started wearing pants because Disney said he looked too much like Donald Duck. And he is often smoking a cigar. So he was given his own magazine or his own comic in 1976 with Howard the Duck number one. I haven't been able to confirm this, but it seems like this may have been the exact comic that Lucas read and rushed in to hike and cats.

Now, in the comic book, it's very much that Guardians of the Galaxy kind of tone. It's very subversive. It's very edgy. It's very adult. And the whole point is it's insane. He is a duck that is an adult man. And so our world, he comments on the absurdity of our world from his very same. cynical perspective. All joking aside, I can see how this would make a great and very funny comic or

like graphic novel, 100%. Well, the movie that Katz later realized they should have made, and regardless of what you think of this movie, I do think she's right, is Ted. Yes. Where Ted, like, tonally makes sense. Everybody perceives Ted as a teddy bear, but he's actually a drinking, smoking piece of shit guy from Bach. Oh, he's Mark Wahlberg.

I forgot. He's Mark Wahlberg. So that is Ted, and that's not what they did in this instance. But I do think there's a reason why Lucas thought, this could be really fun. This could be really exciting. Sure. Okay, I got a tentative, sure. And this was the same guy that at that time was making multiple EWalk movies.

So, you know, I'm not sure where is how is that. Well, I guess there's an element of like this is so much more quote unquote fun on paper than Star Wars looks. So I can see why this would maybe be appealing of like, oh, I can do something that's, you know, not a complete departure from what I'm now making my name in, but that is going to, in theory, be more fun. The other thing that was exciting about this is early conversations suggest that the intent was entirely to do this as an animated film. I did see this, that that was the, which also makes sense, except, I will say, it's clearly for adults. it sounds like the comic book was also clearly for adults. So I can see why the push may have been to make it live action. Yeah.

And I do think that who framed Roger Rabbit, which comes out later, it pulls off what this movie wants to pull off in a lot of ways. So soon after this initial conversation, Star Wars is released in 1977. This changes Lucas's life and the film industry as a whole. And Lizzie's cat has returned. This is a bonus for anyone watching on video. Crucial to this development is the fact that Universal

Pictures had passed on Star Wars, if you remember from our Star Wars episode, despite having been the home for American graffiti. So Universal produced American, they distributed American graffiti. And then Lucas had a two-picture deal with United Artists. He takes them Star Wars. They say, no. And then he eventually finds a champion in Allen Ladd, Jr., who brings the projects to 20th century Fox. And so Universal had missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime to get Star Wars for. from George Lucas, and they really had first bite at the apple. So after the release of Star Wars, George Lucas took what would end up being, I believe, a 16-year hiatus from directing.

And he focused on building out Lucas film, writing, and producing. So film critic and author Tom Shone in his book, Blockbuster, How Hollywood Stop, Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer, concluded that Lucas was seeking to figure out, like, you said, Lizzie, what his career was going to look like after Star Wars. Right. It was unclear to him what it was going to be. And so Star Wars had been, 1977 is the first Star Wars, 1983 is Return of the Jedi. And Lucas hadn't even finished, finalized a lot of the elements of the story when the first

film was made. And he did not direct those next two, right? He did not. Irvin Kirchner directed the Empire Strikes Back and Richard Marquan directed Return of the Jedi. And Lucas also only did the, he co-wrote Empire Strikes back with uh... Kazden. And so he was trying to farm out a lot of his story ideas.

He wasn't really interested in directing. He wanted to be more of an overseer. He liked to manage the entire process, kind of from a higher vantage point. So in 1984, he stepped down as the president of Lucasfilm, and he decides I'm going to focus exclusively on producing at this point. And this is, I think, really why Howard the Duck resurfaces.

My guess is every project that he has in development, and he's working on so much stuff at this point. People forget he did Labyrinth. He did Willow. He did all the Indiana Jones movies. He did these Star Wars specials. EWox Battle for Endor. So he's very prolific during this time.

And my guess is that around town, people are willing to take a meeting on any project if George Lucas is attached. Oh, of course. So Hike and Cats are like, well, George wants to do this movie with us. We should go pitch it. This is a great opportunity.

So they were able to get, you know, time and FaceTime at every major studio, all of which politely passed on the film, despite Lucas's involvement, with one exception. Universal. Right. So Universal was keen on not making the same mistake that they had made a few years prior with Star Wars. So according to the late Marvin Antonowski, who passed away a few years ago, he was Universal's president of marketing at the time, and he oversaw the release of tons of.

tons of great movies for across his entire career. He said that Sid Scheinberg, who was the, at the time, the head of MCA, which was the technically parent company of Universal, it was Universal MCA, he lobbied internally very hard for Howard the Duck. He believed in George Lucas, and George Lucas apparently swore up and down that he would help us with the script and film, but he never did. So it seems like Sid Scheinberg, who if you remember Steven Spielberg was Sid Scheinberg's like Golden Goose, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg came up together. They had made Indiana Jones together. It makes sense why Scheinberg would think, God, we missed out on Star Wars. I don't care how weird this Duck movie is. I believe in this kid. We got to go work with this kid. Totally. Also, not a bad thing that they are wanting to invest in people.

Like, nothing that you've said so far doesn't make sense. Yeah. So, Universal bought the project because they want to be in the George Lucas business. But the question remains, did they buy an animated film or a live action film? Now, I read online that there was a clause in George Lucas's contract that necessitated the film be live action. But that actually, I think that's just a rumor. I was never able to confirm that. And what seems more likely based on interviews that Gloria Katz gave,

in particular, is that by the time Universal purchased the project and they began working on the script, they wanted a film to release in the summer of 1986, and we were already at this point in late 1984. And Lizzie, if you remember from our Emperor's New Groove episode, that's not enough time to turn a movie around as an animated film. Animated films take four, five years to produce, listen to our episode on the Emperor's New Groove. There's no way they were going to be able to finish an animated film at that time. George Lucas. A little tight for a VFX heavy live action.

Oh, well, and they'll almost went a different direction. So Lucas says, okay, that's fine. We'll do it as live action. However, always wanting to push the technology of the medium forward, Lucas says, let's make Howard an entirely CGI character. In what year is this? 1984? 85.

84, 85 at this point. Is that, I can't remember exactly. Sorry. It's not possible. Okay. You're remembering, Lizzie, what were you going to... I think you were about to say exactly where I'm about to go? Which is that the first fully CGI creature is in a Steven Spielberg, like a short film or like a made-for-TV thing?

It's a Stephen Spielberg produced film directed by Barry Levinson called Young Sherlock Holmes. Yes, yes. And this is 1985. It was a knight made entirely of stained glass window panes. the character appears for a total of 30 seconds on screen, and it took six months to animate. So there was no way that they were going to be able to finish an entirely CGI lead character.

In fact, they did not make an entirely CGI lead character in a feature film until 1995, and that was Casper the Friendly Ghost. Yeah, that makes sense. So it was not until 10 years later that it was even possible. So the production realizes we're going to have to go physical in-camera, practical effects. But before the duck could be built, they needed to write a script.

So Hike and Katz got to work. The first version they came up with, according to a behind-the-scenes retrospective released with the 2009 Howard the Duck DVD, which I now own, centered around Lizzie's face. She's like lighted on fire. First version, Lizzie,

it's centered around Howard being transported to Hawaii because, quote, we thought it would be fun to shoot there. They had the right idea at that time. They did. At least get yourself a vacation out of this, pulling Adam Sandler and bring everybody to Hawaii. Cleveland.

Yeah, exactly. Apparently the film just opened with Howard working as a private eye in Hawaii, and they didn't do an origin story. I think that sounds way better than what they ended up with. Yeah, because what they ended up with doesn't make any sense or like make any attempts to explain what the hell happened. Yeah.

Which it seems like they were being obstinate. because basically the studio said you have to explain how Howard ends up on Earth. So they wrote this scene in where Howard comes home. We know nothing about him. He opens a play duck. Yeah, which is disgusting. And then he says, oh, where are the articles? Obviously a joke about men reading playboy for the articles.

But I want to say, it was funny. But I have to say, I was so confused in the opening of this because everyone is a duck who looks identical to Howard. and there's these posters on his wall of like Indiana Jones, but it's a Howard the Duck, Indiana Jones. And I was like, oh, it's a famous duck. And then it took me literally two-thirds of the movie to realize that he's just a normal duck with no powers. Yeah.

Yeah. So in their logic, their world is just our world with duck puns, which I do think is funny. It's just play duck. the United States of Ducks. It's very... They didn't think too hard. One.

No, yeah. I mean, they committed and it looks great. First idea, best idea. Keep going. Exactly. So my guess is that they said, all right, you want to know how he got here? He was about to jerk off and he got sucked through a time hole.

And then he ended up on Earth. And it kind of feels like enough you to the studio. Now, Hike said that the story for the film is pulled from the Howard the Duck comic. But it actually came from... And this is confusing. Howard the Duck magazine, which I guess was published in the late 1970s without Steve Gerber's involvement and was even a little edgier. What happened?

Is this what happened before they started putting fluoride in the water? This can't be good. I don't know. I don't know. So crucially, Steve Gerber was not involved in this magazine and therefore duck world guys, not canon. Quack-foo, canon. Duck world, not canon.

Just saying. Wait. So he's not from another world? He is from another world. It's just not called Duck World. Okay. Yeah. Steve Gerber was very adamant about this, Lizzie. I really wanted to make it clear on this podcast. So this is what happens when we cover a comic book movie. We just lose our minds.

According to Val Merrick, the original illustrator of Howard and the co-creator of the comic, Gerber really wasn't involved in the making of the film. Gerber later stated that he read the script and offered feedback, but how much of that was incorporated is really unknown. I think hiking cats were like, yeah, we get it. It's a duck. And then they kind of ran with it. That's what comes through. So, now, Hike and Katz send the script into Universal, and then apparently they just wait. According to Katz, quote, we didn't have enough time. You wait for these executives to read the script, and every week that goes by will cost more in the long run.

This is very normal. Everything's rush, rush, rush. You send something in, and then everybody needs to read it. Yeah. And everybody then needs to talk about it. And by the time they say, okay, go make the movie, you're like, we don't have enough time. And they're like, oh, too bad. And you have to go make the movie.

And I can say from experience, this happened to me with Moonshot. I won't get into details to bore you. But I will say I'm going to be the voice of dissent here. Oh, God. Liz is going to be an executive. It's only because from a very different perspective, obviously, I work in the podcast world, not in the movie and TV world. but I am the people that have to send it around for a million people to read it

and let me tell you, it takes some time. So all I'm saying is relax, man, just wait. Hey, all I'm saying is if I send it to you on a Thursday, I want to be greenlit by Monday. Well, it won't be, so. All right, so in the cases of Howard the Duck, they have a summer 1986 release slot locked in, but they didn't get the go to start making the film until May of 1985.

So that's... When does this come out? It comes out in August 1st of 1986. Yeah. So the biggest problem was that they hadn't figured out how to put a three-foot-tall anthropomorphic duck on the screen. So obviously, the attempt at CGI bottomed out, they then tried a puppeteer duck.

This makes a lot of sense to me. It's arguably the golden age. of puppeteering at the time. Jim Henson and Frank Oz had just done the Dark Crystal in 1982. I love that movie. Henson had also helped with the creation and movement of Yoda. I didn't know this. Frank Oz puppeteered. I forgot from our Star Wars episode. Frank Oz puppeteered Yoda. That's amazing. Frank Oz is the best. He's the best. And of course, Henson would go on to work with George Lucas, again, with Henson directing and Lucas producing Labyrinths. One of my favorites, yes. Great movie. Great movie. Defined the sexuality of a generation.

Sure. In a way that Howard the Duck hoped to. Right. Now, I don't know for sure that Lucas, Hyac, and Katz consulted with Oz or Henson for Howard. However, the puppet that they developed didn't work. So based on what I've read and the end result with what they achieved, the issue was likely that a puppet couldn't accomplish the dynamic range of movement that they wanted for the film. I mean, you see Howard walking, running, rolling, performing quack foo in full coverage. She's full body is visible while he's doing these things. You can't do that. If you remember, like, when E.T. was made. E.T. was largely shot either waist up or waist down in order to hide the wires that were coming out of him.

Although, Muppet Christmas Carol does have some full shots. But Muppet Christmas Carol was great. They built a whole set where all of the, there was like, we don't have to get into it. Yeah, they could operate from underneath the set. underneath the ground, basically. Yeah. Now, the solution turned out to be, as it always is, EWox, Lizzie. So Return of the Jedi was released in 1983,

and during that production, George Lucas had employed dozens of little persons to act as the film's polarizing EWX, small anthropomorphic bears that resist the Empire. I personally love the EWX. I think they're hilarious. They're best part of that movie. The Howard team also won that one down. eyes and its friends like poking him, it's just the saddest part of that whole trilogy.

The Howard team decided that they were going to hire a little person actor to wear the Howard the Duck suit. Sure. Then they would mount a mechanically operated head on top of that suit. Oh. The mechanical operators of which there would be five could then use radio remote controls to control Howard's eyes, including separate movements for his eyelids and eyebrows. and eyeballs, his cheeks, and his beak, or lips. So this was an extremely complex technical

achievement that they pulled off. I mean, I guess that makes sense because you can't, because they have to be using their hands, you can't really expect the person that's in the suit to also be operating what's happening on the face. I honestly think Howard, like, works in this movie. It looks pretty good, yeah. I think he looks really good. The movie feels dated for various reasons. from a technical perspective, I just was able to go along with the ride that that's Howard. Sure. Yeah. Howard himself didn't, I mean, didn't bother me at all. I think it's a testament to what this team achieved. And this was pioneering. It was the first time that anyone had created a freestanding mechanized costume or character without any wires attached.

So Yoda obviously puppeteer, ET, full costume could only be shot waist up or waist down. most often, Howard, wirelessly controlled. Now, of course, the issue is that they need a very specific type of little person actor because of some absurd constraints that they've put upon themselves, to be honest. So in the comic book, Howard is specifically three feet tall. And Hike and Katz and Lucas have decided they would like to adhere to getting someone that is three feet tall. So they reach out to the Little People of America, which is a nonprofit organization that provides

support to people short of stature and their families, and they asked them to put out a casting call for this type of actor. So the casting call said they wanted someone who was two foot 10 inches tall to three foot two inches tall. Wow. That was also as proportionate as possible and agile. Now, for reference, according to the Mayo Clinic, the average height of an individual with dwarfism is four feet tall. Yeah. So you're looking for someone who's 25% shorter. That would be the equivalent of not looking for someone that's 510, but looking for someone that's 4 foot 8, right?

Your population is going to shrink drastically. And as Ed Gale, one of the actors who eventually played Howard, puts it, it is often the case that the smaller you get, the more disproportionate you get with dwarfism. So they need someone who is proportionate, athletic, and three feet tall. And they really lucked out in finding Ed Gale. Ed Gale is a Michigan-born little-person actor. He'd arrived in L.A. just a few months before this casting call went out.

He goes in for the audition. It goes wonderfully. He, I mean, when I get to how, like, how he was hitting his marks in this movie, it's going to blow your mind. But he is very athletic. Oh, it had to be. He can do all the moves. Yeah.

But he's three foot two inches tall. And they decided, no, that's still a little too tall for us. What? And he told them, guys, you're never going to find somebody that meets these specifications. I'm your best bet. And he was absolutely right. But they said, what if we cast a child, little person? Yeah, this is where the movie takes a really dark train.

Oh, no. So Jordan Prentice, who's an Ontario-born actor, who would go on to have many screen credits. And I actually recognized from one of the articles, he's the actor in Bruges. Oh. He plays the little person that Colin Farrell interacts with. Yeah, he's great. He's very funny. And there's a lot of drugs. And spoiler, gets his head blown off.

At the end of the film. Big spoiler, but it's 2008. So he was living in Ontario. and he received via a friend of his a copy of the Little Person of America newsletter and it says, Howard the Duck, looking for little people,

and he's 12 years old. And even though he would eventually be, I believe, over four feet tall, at the time, he was right in that sweet spot of about three feet tall. He convinces his parents,

they drive him the two hours to Toronto, they meet with one of the producers and a casting director. He rolls around, jumps on a bed, shows them how he can demonstrate his mobility. Again, they say, I think he's just a little, once you put the costume on him, he's just a little

too tall. So before we get into what the producers attempted next, it's important to understand exactly what they're asking the Howard performer to accomplish. The suit that they end up putting on is extremely heavy. It features a great deal of latex and silicon. It is stifling and extremely hot. There is no ventilation. The mechanical head that goes on top of the actor's head

is also heavy, hot, and filled with electrical equipment, motors, and sensors. It does not have eye holes. The actor inside is basically blind, except for when Howard's mouth is open, at which point they were able to see what's visible through his beak. What? They couldn't give them eye holes?

He had eyes. He had like plastic mechanical eyes with motors behind them because they were moving his plastic eyes around. So his vision, their vision was blocked. And you're going to put a 12-year-old child in this? No, Lizzie, of course they're not going to put a 12-year-old child in this. That's insane.

No, not an 8-year-old child, three 8-year-old children. No! Stop! So they, according to Jordan Prentice, hired three eight-year-old little persons to play Howard. Now, why hire three? Because labor laws dictate that children working in film can only work restricted hours based on their age. Having three allows them to basically do a rotation throughout the day. Yeah, is there now an addendum that says that children are also not allowed to play Howard the Duck for an entire feature film?

Yeah, no love scenes with Leah Thompson. Seriously. Apparently this really didn't go well. I don't know if this was just a test shoot phase, but the children were terrified of the costume. They couldn't perform the desired actions. They're supposed to be doing the mannerisms of an adult man. They're supposed to be lighting a cigar and acting sassy.

So this is insane to think an eight-year-old can do this. And then apparently one of them even peed his pants out of fear while in a suit. Yeah, they're eight. Again, Jordan, I could only find that view. a Jordan Prentice in the oral history that he provided. I believe him. If it's true, it's pretty reprehensible. Finally, the producers land on what they consider a compromise.

They hired the 12-year-old. They hired Jordan Prentice to be the primary Howard the Duck. They're still like, we're going to use kids. Those kids were a little too young, but we're still using kids. And they hire Ed Gale to be his understudy and stunt double. So they're having the 22-year-old. So Jordan is the main one. at 12 years old.

Wow. In terms of what you see on screen, I'll get to a breakdown toward the end. But going into production, Jordan is to be the main performer. Ed Gale will perform the stunts and serve as understudy. Aside from physical safety stuff, this is an extremely sexual movie. Yes, one of the most sexual movies we've covered, and it's a duck. And I'm not passing judgment on the film, but it seems, wildly inappropriate for some of the following scenes to be performed by a 12-year-old,

including Howard settling in for the night to look at the newest centerfold in Playduck magazine, complete with human breasts that you see. Howard is then sucked out of his apartment. And of course, we haven't seen enough breasts in the first four minutes. So he flies through some poor duck mallards ladies bathroom. And her breasts are out. They don't even do the thing where like the bubbles go just above her chest. No, no. They zoom in on her avian ariolas so you can really get an eyefall.

Avian ariola syndrome. Oh, man. Then one on earth, Howard seems weirdly ready to launch his face directly into the butthole of the government employee attempting to help him find employment. She turns around and he's like, hub, and like shubs his beak into her butt. He's going to commit sexual assault in a government agency to the woman trying to help him find a job. He then works at a love spa, as we discussed. where multiple people are having sex. And he even falls into a hot tub

where two humans are having sex. He then nearly gets it on with Leah Thompson. There's like a lot of upskirt shots, like a lot of shots of her panties. And she finds an unwrapped, an unwrapped condom in his wallet, which is disgusting. Why is it unwrapped?

That's what I said. Why is it unwrapped? And David said he just wants to be ready. I just want that to be on the record. The list goes on and on. So the Howard Duck comics were very adult. However, I hope you can see the concerns one might have in putting a 12-year-old through some of these scenes.

Yes. All right. So Jordan Prentice and Ed Gale are brought in. The design team does full body molds and full head molds of both of them so they can build individual suits for each of them, matching suits. The feathers on their hands and feet are real feathers that have to be glute. glued down and manicured throughout the shooting day. Oh, no.

They wore fake legs in the shape of duck feet. Then a bib went over their chests, and they wore a plastic skull cap that held the servo connections for the Howard mechanical head inside. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry. The feathers are glued, like, onto their arms?

On to their hands. To maintain hand dexterity, yeah, they were glued onto their hands. Okay. Yeah. So Tim Rose was the lead animatronics puppeteer for the film. He's an extremely accomplished puppeteer and technician. So he had worked with George Lucas on Return of the Jedi most recently. He not only built many of the creatures, but he had

performed Admiral Akbar in that film. And according to Hike, this team should have been able to pull this off seamlessly, but they ran into a number of unexpected problems that we'll get into. in a minute. But I want to wrap up casting to be in with. So they cast a very wide net to find Beverly Switzerland, Howard's pseudo love interest. Now, she is in the comics, although I don't think she's a musician. She's just a former model. Cindy Lopper even auditioned for this part. Wait, I do want to see that movie. Yeah. They wanted someone who could really sing and dance. And all of the music is original to the film. And I do think music's actually really good. And I think all the performers did a very good job bringing us together. Lizzie, come on. The last song felt a little lazy.

The rest of them were pretty good, but the last one was literally just her singing Howard the Duck over and over again. Howard the Duck. Yeah. So Leah Thompson, she's a Minnesota native. She's got a good voice and some natural rhythm. Is that her singing? That's her singing. Oh, damn. Yeah, she's great. She's great. She did like months of training and rehearsals for all of that. Everyone in the band. Everyone in the band. That's their playing. So she had just broken big with the release of Back to the Future. Mm-hmm. 1985 just came out. She plays, of course, Marty McFly's mother,

George Lucas, and everybody loved Back to the Future. And apparently her audition was spectacular. She showed up, kind of dressed very much as the character would finally end up on screen. She said it was halfway between Madonna and, ironically, Cindy Lopper, who had auditioned for the part. And so she was cast as Beverly Switzerland and had a very game attitude about the whole movie. She's great in it. She's very cute. She's very funny. She has a great sense of humor. She clearly appreciated the humor of the comics. She thought the fact that she was going to do a love scene with

this duck was hilarious. She's like, I just did a love scene with my son. I guess I'm going to do one with a duck now. I was going to say two very sexually confusing roles that she's taken so far. Yes. And she is taking it in stride. This is a quote from an interview she did with the Hollywood reporter that was published a few years back. Quote, I loved how insane it was. I loved that I was a girl in love with the duck. I thought that was hilarious. Everything about subversive humor and puns. I was hopeful because it was George Lucas

and such a great part for me. I even got to do the singing, end quote. And I think she sells it. She goes for it in this movie. Even that damn love scene, she, I believe it somehow from her. I know. And honestly, bless her.

Because if she'd held back at all, it would have been so much harder to watch. So good for her. She carries so much of this movie. So Tim Robbins was a really. relative unknown when he was cast as Phil Bloomberg, I believe. The hapless lab assistant turned band rowdy at the end of the film, as I believe his new job. I really like his energy in this movie. Lizzie made a face earlier, but I loved the zaniness. I thought it was like a great slapstick

injection that helped just tell me like, this is silly. Talk about a duck out of water. I don't know. I liked it. I loved Tim Robbins. This did not do it for me. I'm all for it. I'm fine with it. And then, of course, character actor Jeffrey Jones, who's great, played The Dark Overlord slash Dr. Jennings. What now, Lizzie? He is great in this movie and in other things as well, but maybe not great in real life, but that's okay. Oh, well, let's leave that aside because I don't know what you're talking about. He's a pedophile. No. So I want to stop you before you're saying how great he is.

Oh, my God, I've got to delete some sentences. Wait, I didn't know that. Wait, wait, I'll double check. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he's, uh, I think he, uh, did a, did a big whoopsies. Yeah, he's a big bed of file, Chris. Everybody, that's, no. This is a, I didn't, I didn't, I, did I miss this?

And I watched it. I don't know. This is a big one. I feel like everybody knew Jeffrey Jones's. He was like acting around these kids in this movie. Oh, yeah. Guys, leave this in. Leave this in the podcast.

I know. This is a real street. You got to hear from David, uh, pay, everyone. this is why you pay. Patreon because you can watch Chris's face. This is the way you pay for this amateur hour that I didn't even know that he was, oh, God. Oh, I feel awful. Wow, maybe we do have to cut that out.

No, no, no, no. That was good. Chris, you learned something. The more you know. Hey, listeners, Chris here. I was embarrassed not to know the details of Jeffrey Jones's arrest and I want to interject briefly to give you the quick overview. In 2002, Jeffrey Jones was arrested and charged with solicitation of a minor and possession

of child pornography or what's now called child sexual abuse. material. He had been accused by a 17-year-old boy that when the boy had been 14, Jeffrey Jones had paid him to pose for a nude photo shoot. Jeffrey Jones maintained his innocence until July of 2003 when he pled no contest to the solicitation charge, in exchange the misdemeanor charge of possession was dropped. A no-contest plea, in case you were unaware, is not the same as a guilty plea. Jones was accepting the conviction without technically admitting guilt. Excluding Deadwood, Mr. Jones has only four screen credits to date following his conviction. Throughout the rest of this episode, you'll notice that I make a number of jokes about my lack of knowledge on this subject.

Please don't take it as anything but that. Mr. Jones' crimes are serious and I don't mean to downplay them or make light of the trauma suffered by his victim. Okay, sorry for the interruption. Back to the show. Character actor Jeffrey Jones was brought in to play Dark Overlord slash Dr. Jenning. Don't know how I didn't know that. Jesus. Now, there's one cast member we have not yet discussed, and that's, of course, the voice of Howard the Duck.

A pretty important component of this production, one might think. Now, unfortunately, they didn't cast Howard's voice prior to the start of production. So they tried to have Ed Gale and Jordan Prentice do the dialogue from inside of the suit at first, but it was so muffled that no one could hear them. And they also had so many other things to focus on. So then they gave a microphone to Tim Rose, the head of the puppeteering team,

and they put an amplifier, they put a speaker on his waistband. And so while he was operating the duck's mouth, he would say the dialogue. My guess is that this was done for financial reasons. They wanted to bring in a heavy hitter initially to do Howard's voice. We'll get into that specifically. that makes sense. However, avoiding that cost of having that actor on set every day, while that makes financial sense, it causes two really big problems, one on set and one post-production. So first of all, it strips all of the humor from Howard the Duck's character. Tim Rose,

incredible puppeteer, amazing technician, would probably be the first to admit, not a comedian, not a performer. So as Leah Thompson told the Hollywood reporter, quote, all the jokes were falling flat. Comedy is a souffle. We had amazing puppeteers, but they were the ones doing the jokes. I was like, it would be great if you could have an actor doing the lines to keep the ball in the air. The technical side of making the movie was so difficult and fraught.

I kept saying to them, the duck doesn't work. So just on set, there was no rhythm. There was nothing, no dynamism between the two because that comes through. Yeah, she wasn't performing across from another performer. So not only did the comedy not work on set, it then locked them into whatever cadence Tim Rose puppeteered into Howard's mouth during the shoot. Oh, man. Yeah.

So however Howard's lips moved while they filmed, that's how the voice actor eventually had to perform the dialogue in post. Which, by the way, there are a couple of times when you can tell it they couldn't quite match it because... And it's like a little out of sync. Yes. and that does happen enough times where it was noticeable. Yeah, if you're watching it kind of half paying attention, it's okay, but if you really focus, you can pick it up.

I was giving it the smallest amount of tension I possibly could because I was horrified by it and even I noticed it. Now, none of this is to discredit the remarkable work that Ed Gail, Jordan Prentice, and the puppeteers did on this movie with all the constraints that they had, I really think it's an amazing achievement. Now, the biggest thing I think they accomplished was the fact that all of these movements that they did,

they did effectively blind. That is nuts. Lighting a cigar at the bar, blind. Striking a match off his own bill. And I don't care if they've hid a little bit of a match strip on the other side of his bill. He did that blind. He has to find the rail and walk up the stairs.

Blind. Climb into a chair. Blind. Open his mail. Blind. performing clak foo, blind. That's crazy. Like, this is not... Riding on an ultralight airplane.

Blind. I don't understand. This is an extremely physical performance. Like, I truly don't understand how they did that. Well, so what Ed Gale basically said is that he discovered while filming that his superpower was that he could memorize the exact physical movements that he needed to do during rehearsal. So he and Leah Thompson would rehearse the scene. And then he would actually perform them backwards to get to his...

starting mark. And then he would repeat the motion forwards in order to accomplish it and land exactly where he needed to land on set. He also could only tell who he was talking to by looking down through the duck's mouth at their shoes. And that's how he knew if he was talking to Leah Thompson, Tim Robbins, or noted pedophile Jeffrey Jones based on the shoes that they were wearing. So one other quick note, it's just a fun fact. Tom Berman was brought got into head the special effects makeup. He did Dark Overlord's makeup in particular on the film. He was the makeup artist on Heaven's Gate, which we also covered.

So he's been on a couple of these. But he also did Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is amazing. Halloween 3, the Goonies and Teen Wolf. Quick fun fact, the only reason he took the movie is because he, like Universal, had passed on Star Wars. Oh, no. So he was, yeah, he was offered Star Wars. And he said, that sounds like some Buck Rogers nonsense.

I don't want anything to do with it. So when George Lucas came calling again, he jumped at the opportunity immediately. It looks good also. Yeah, no, no, no, the makeup, they did a great job. So production begins in the fall of 1985. And due to the short prep time they had to begin filming, it seems like they kind of started with Howard operating still somewhat as a puppet because the mechanized version wasn't 100% ready yet.

And part of that was the servo motors weren't operating correctly. So on the first day of the shoot, they're going to do a close-up of Howard talking, and they turn his mouth on. and his mouth goes like quack quack quack quack quack quack quack quack and then his throat peels open and all of the like mechanized like terminator style like skeleton metal just just going like this inside of his throat and it's just terrible everyone are like shut the duct down oh my god so they start falling apart they start falling behind immediately and things got so bad that they would just load whenever they missed a close-up of howard they would take that wall of the set and they would

throw it in this giant truck that became like the close-up truck. And then whenever they had a chance at their next location, they would bring that wall of the set out and they would just try to capture that close-up that they'd missed of Howard. So they're shooting everything way out of sequence, way even more than normal, reshooting things as they go. And then the other issue with remote control animatronics, especially at the time, was that the signal would get crossed to the suit constantly.

So Leah Thompson said that sometimes they'd be shooting a scene. And then all of a sudden, Howard's beak would start flapping uncontrollably. they'd have to cut, and it's because, like, a garage door opener nearby or a remote control car or a plane would go overhead. So shooting with Jordan Princesses Howard obviously caused a number of entirely predictable problems. He really struggled in the suit. Any one of us would, especially at age 12. It got so hot inside of it that they would stick in a hair dryer on fan mode into Howard's mouth and blast it into his face. Yeah. Aside from the restricted working hours, the shoot required a large number of overnight shooting days. A lot of this film takes place at night and

like outdoor Cleveland at night. You can't. You can't work a kid depending on their age, definitely not past midnight and oftentimes not past 10 p.m. So Ed Gale would then step in, but this caused problems with editorial because not only are their heights noticeably different, they also have just very different body movements and mannerisms. Ed Gale walked like an adult and Jordan Prentice walked like a child and you have a very different gate at those different ages. Leah Thompson was also understandably uncomfortable acting as if she were in love with an actor who was 12 years old. Yeah. Princess's onset guardian was also very, very against him filming that love scene.

Was that him? It sounds like that was Ed Gale that performed the love scene. There was also actually a third performer in the duck suit who is largely uncredited, but that was actress Margarita Farrell or Farrell. She was then known as Margarita Fernandez. I think that was her maiden name. She actually did apparently the majority of the really big stunts in the movie. So Howard getting launched off the back of the bike and holding on to the hanging hook, for example. She had worked as an EWalk on Return of the Jedi with George Lucas.

And so she came in and she was able to do a lot of stunt work as well. So I want to make sure she's credited. All of this is to say casting Jordan Prentice made zero sense. He also said that the servo motors inside the helmet would get so hot that they would burn his face. They had to sew him into the costume. So if he needed to go to the bathroom, they had to cut him out of the suit

and then sew it back up, which would take 90 minutes to do. So if you're like a kid not wanting to slow down the production, what do you think happens? You pee your pants. Holding it in constantly or peeing your pants. So the low point of all of this in terms of onset safety,

which is extremely important, listen to our onset safety episode from last week, if you haven't yet, is during the final showdown between Howard the Duck and the Dark Overlord. Jordan Prentice was driving that weird golf cart laser gun that looks like it's out of Dr. No. Yeah, it's like an Austin Powers gun situation. It is a Austin Powers cart. And he's driving it through a series of timed explosives. And this, Lizzie is very reminiscent of the Twilight Zone movie in the wrong ways.

Listen to our episode on that. So according to Prentice, quote, quote, I drove through a series of timed explosives and I could hear my guardian scream, feathers, feathers. The feathers on my head had caught fire from one of the explosives. Under the feathers was polyurethane, which melts like candle wax, but faster. All of a sudden, I felt someone beating me in the back of my head. I was thinking, has it come to this?

Did I not get it right? And they're actually hitting me. Oh, my God. It turned out to be my hairdresser beating the flames out with his bare hands. and in the end, Hyken Katz estimate that what we see on screen is 75% Ed Gale, 25% Jordan Prentice. A hand puppet was used for some close-ups.

I want to emphasize. There is a behind-the-scenes retrospective that was released with the 2009 DVD of this movie. Jordan Prentice's name is not mentioned. Ed Gale is featured. He is interviewed. Well, I mean, they're trying to cover. Like, that's...

They are. Hike and cats say like, oh, we had a boy. He had a hard time in the suit. They just call him the boy. That's all. But according to Jordan Prentice, he was there the entire time doing a number of unsafe things and doesn't sound like he was treated very well. And there were also a lot of people had really wonderful things to say about Ed Gale in particular.

But there were a number of people that said some pretty nasty things, even in this retrospective about the little. person actors that were in the suit, saying that they were demanding and slowing things down when obviously, in reading this and watching interviews with these folks, that was not the case. I definitely think there was some lingering, and I'm not going to name any names because it's, you know, just one-off quotes, but a little bit of lingering little person, you know, prejudice slash animosity here. It's not demanding when you're putting someone blind into an incredibly heavy, hot,

hot suit, gluing feathers to them and then expecting, like, this is an unbelievably hard job. What are they asking for, like a glass of water every now and then to be cut out of their suit to go to the bathroom? Yeah. That's, to be clear, not true of like Leah Thompson, for example. Sure. And Tim Robb, the main cast, some of the more supporting folks. And noted pedophile Jeffrey Jones.

Noted petapile Jeffrey Jones. I knew that. The production fell further and further behind. Um, Jesus. Apparently, Hike and Katz started firing portions of the crew, not because they were doing a bad job, but just so they could tell the studio like, oh, that's why we were falling behind, but don't worry, we're firing them. So now this will get ahead.

Uh, it got so bad that George Lucas told them to tell the crew and the studio that they had actually wrapped principal photography and they were just doing second unit photography when they had not wrapped principal photography at that point. Uh, they ended up. adding a third camera team. So they had three shooting units, which is a common George Lucas thing. That happened on Star Wars.

It's not that unusual, but it is expensive. Other issues included Leah Thompson's hair, which took two hours to crimp, burn, and blow out. That's right. That's her real hair in the movie. I can't believe she has any hair left. I was going to say it's a miracle. She asked for a wig and they said that would be too expensive.

I don't understand that at all. Wigs are expensive. They are, but like every day, two hours to do that? To be fair to them. even though they shouldn't have made her do that to a real hair, it's probably longer to actually get a wig on appropriately. Yeah, it's fair. Yeah, and to make it look good.

The ultralight sequence, that's the plane that Howard and Phil Steele at the end, that opens the third act, that is filmed in Petaluma, where George Lucas shot American graffiti, great little wine country town. And that sequence used a real ultralight plane. That's why it looks so good. So that is a real ultralight plane being flown by stunt doubles.

And then in the close-ups, they have it like hanging off the back of a truck. And that's really Ed Gale. And that's really Tim Robbins strapped into it. And it was directed by, that sequence was designed and directed by an ILM employee at the time. You might not know by name, but you know his later movies. Joe Johnston. He directed after this film, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, The Rocketeer, Jumanji, and Jurassic Park 3. Wow.

Yeah. So at the time, he worked for ILM. Actually, at the same time, David Fincher also worked for ILM, but I don't think he worked on this movie. So the final showdown with the Dark Overlord, noted by the file of Jeffrey Jones, was shot in an abandoned naval facility. I believe it's on Mayor, Mayor Island, which is just north of San Francisco.

It's near where my wife grew up. They built the astronomy lab inside of it, and it was freezing. And, of course, that's the sequence where Leah Thompson, is in a miniskirt, a ripped shirt, and lying on a cold metal table. So she came down with a cold, and they would have to throw blankets over her in between takes. Now, of course, what went wrong? Favorite, Phil Tippett, Lizzie, was brought in.

Phil, always coming through. He was to create the Dark Lords, the Dark Overlord's final form. Tippett had broken in, obviously, via Star Wars. Listen to our episode. He created the stop motion chess scene on the Millennium Falcon. For that film, he'd gone on to work on the rest of the Star Wars. trilogy, the ATATs, the Tontons. And it was, he was the premier stop motion artist

working in Hollywood at the time. I'm not going to lie, I love this thing. It's like a giant lobster with like two sets of teeth and like a base on the back of its head. I loved it. It's great. It actually reminds me a lot of the rancor in Return of the Jedi. You know, the monster, Luke gets dropped into the pit

under Jabba the Hut, under Jabba. Yes. Look it up. It's similar in at least its feel. Everybody's going to be so mad at me that I don't know what this thing is. Yeah. I mean, whatever. I didn't know that someone was a pedophile, so I guess it's fine.

That's right. So filming wrap, oh, just to wind that up, that design by Phil Tippett was brought to life entirely a stop motion. And it was filmed as a miniature and then obviously composited into the final frame. I actually think that looks really good and holds up very well. Yeah. So filming wrapped at the end of March, 1986. Remember, they're releasing August 1st, 1986. And they need Howard's voice.

So the casting process was apparently lengthy and thorough, but they ended with a somewhat obvious choice. Robin Williams. Sure. So they bring Robin Williams in. And according to Chip Zine, he left the project after a week because he couldn't stand having to sink his voice to the existing footage.

To be fair, this is the exact opposite way that normal voiceover for animation, for example, works. And what Robin Williams would go on to do for Aladdin, for example. The performances are captured first with the actors and then the animators match the visuals to the vocals. And he's famously also known for improvising and right. Yeah, you can't restrict him in that way. No.

guy drinks 30 bottles of water during his comedy shows on stage and like stomps around like a maniac. You cannot restrict him that way. Exactly. Legend has it that Williams stormed out after proclaiming, quote, I can't do this. It is insane. I can't get the rhyme of this. I am being confined. I am being handcuffed in order to match the fucking flapping ducks bill. And then that was the end of Robin Williams on how hard to duck.

Also, a notoriously nice person to work with. So this must have been a nightmare. I think it was very frustrating. So Chip, Zine, or Zine, I think it's Zine, was an established Broadway actor, and he had been referred to the project by a casting director who had told him, hey, your voice sounds like a little bit like a duck. You should go out for this duck movie, and he was very offended by that, but then he realized it was a George Lucas movie, so he got really excited,

and he was given the job after Robin Williams left. Lucas later said that he preferred hiring a less-known actor because he wanted Howard to be the real star of the film. So Zine shows up. He's at first a bit disheartened by the footage being like, this duck looks kind of weird. But to his credit, he says he quickly fell in love with the film. And I think he does a good job. He does a great job.

I think he lends a lot of personality to a character that's pretty flat. And he has to do it without straying from the cadence that's already been established. Quick note on music, Thomas Dolby, English musician, wrote the film's music. It's all original. Leah Thompson and the other members of Cherrybaum really performed it. John Barry was brought in to score of the film. Sylvester LeVeigh provided some additional score. It's all I'm going to do on music.

I have a bone to pick with the music really quickly, and then we can move on. Please. Did you notice that the main theme is directly ripping that, like, shaker him? And then I couldn't get out of my head for, like, three days. Do you know what I'm talking about? No. I did not notice that. You can't unhear it, and it was... Can you sing it?

It drove me nuts. Sure. The part that it rips is the, tis a gift to be simple. Tis a gift to be free. But it rips the first... Yeah, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Yeah. Yeah, I get it.

I get it. Literally, the first phrase, it just does it over and over again. And I was like, I didn't want this in my head for three days. And now it's there. And now I'm walking around thinking I should be like Harrison Ford and witness and join the Amish communities. And Vigo Mortensen, one of his first screen for it. And yes, I know Shakers are not the same thing as the Amish, so don't come at me.

They can't. They don't listen to podcasts. Being a studio film, the movie was screened with test audiences. Hike says that the screenings went fine, but Gloria Katz later admitted that she was in charge of the audience response cards and that before handing them back to the studio, she ripped the negative ones up. Gloria! So that they would get a 90% score or higher and the studio would back off. On the one hand, I admire the hutspah, on the other, just another unethical step on

Howard's journey to the big screen. Yeah. Now, as they often do when they've got a stinker on their hands, the studio limited advanced press screenings for the film. They did hold a premiere where they went all. all out. It apparently featured Willard Hikes at 100 live ducks. I don't know if that's

right, but they had trained dozens of live ducks to walk the red carpet at the premiere. And while they brought in live ducks, they didn't invite Chip Zine who had voiced the character or Ed Gale

or Jordan Prentice to the premiere. Why? The logic that the producers gave was that they wanted Howard the Duck to be the star, and they wanted him to be mysterious, and that if they had a little person at the premiere, the audience would think,

oh, it's not Howard the Duck, it's just a little person in the suit. And so they didn't invite the actors. Yeah. Edgill was surprisingly gracious about this in a later interview. I get the sense that Jordan Prentice does not have a fond recollection of the film. Can you imagine you're 12 years old? It's terrible. Yeah. After going through...

And you get to act in this big movie and you go through all this. And they're like, yeah, kid, thanks. Don't come to the premiere. They light your head on fire. They don't credit you. And then they don't even invite you to the premiere. And also the reason is it's because you're small. Yes. That is it at the end of the day. You can say, well, no, it's because then they'd know it's because you're short. It's because you're small. Yeah, of course you know. Like, you know that that there's a person in it. That's ridiculous. Yeah.

No, oh my God. Where'd they get that duck? It's very stupid. Why are its boobs so realistic? Jesus. This movie is bad. Howard the Duck opened on August 1st, 1986. It finished third in its first weekend, making just $5 million.

It was a sitting duck for the critics to hear. So I just want to read the one review that did make me laugh. The headline for the New York Times review was, Ishtar is Arabic for Howard the Duck, which... Wow, not fair to Ishtar. Not fair to Ishtar. I like Ishtar. All told, the price tag for the studio was at least $45 million.

It concluded its theatrical run, making $37.9 million worldwide. That's at least a $20 million. $5 million, $30 million loss for the studio at minimum. Audiences were deeply confused by the tone of the film. Was it for kids? Was it for the adults? The filmmakers didn't really have an answer. It doesn't seem like they really considered that question when making the movie.

And even in later interviews, they're like, it's just for people who like fun things. Not an answer. In trying to appease the studio, this is a generous reading. It seems that they... kiddied it up a little bit, smoothed off the edges, but then they still tried to honor the source material. And so what plays, it just feels like a lewd kid's film. It doesn't feel subversive.

Yeah. It feels, yeah, it feels crass. And it does feel creepy. Again, Katz admits that what they should have done is make the movie more like Ted. Obviously, the problem is Ted didn't exist yet. And Ted was a massive hit. Highest grossing R-rated comedy at the time of its release.

I don't know if it still is. I think it's been top since then, but yes. But yeah, like the fact that she's right, that's exactly what this should have been. But it truly does make it much more uncomfortable and harder to watch because you can tell that they are gearing this towards children in a lot of it. But at the same time, they're doing these weird jokes that kids wouldn't even get. Like there's there's just stuff. A kid is not going to know what the unwrapped condom coming out of the wallet is. Like they literally aren't even going to know.

I honestly wouldn't know what most of this movie. Even the beginning commercial, it's an ad for jock itch cream. I'm like, no, yeah. Who's that for? Is that even for adult? Like, that's pretty specific. I don't know. The film was such a bomb that Sid Scheinberg denied having had anything to do with it,

claiming that he had never read the script. Now, at the time, Scheinberg was in a bit of a friendly rival. emphasis on rivalry with the president of Universal Pictures, Frank Price, who had come in a few years earlier and brought out of Africa with him and kind of been competing with Sid Scheinberg internally. And it seems like Frank Price ended up somehow eating Crow on this and taking the fall for Howard the Duck, even though it sounds like Sid Seid Seinfeld and Lou Wasserman,

who ran the overall company, were all pushing. for this movie, but they needed a fall guy. And there is a funny story that Chip Zine told the Hollywood reporter. He said, quote, I had a friend who was a screenwriter, and he had a meeting with Frank Price, again, the president of Universal Pictures, to talk about the project. So he was in Frank's office, and the massive billboard for Howard the Duck was still outside his window. So this is shortly after the film's release. And my friend said he saw Frank walk to the window, look out at the billboard, sigh and shudder. And Frank said, that movie is going to get me fired. end quote, and it did.

Oh, no. So Frank Price resigned from his position in September, just one month after Howard the Duck was released. And by resigned, I mean, he was pushed out. Tim Robbins looks back on the movie fondly. He says it was a great paycheck. He ended up getting paid over two times as much as he expected because of how far over-scheduled the shoot went.

Oh, great. And for all the whole, so he was getting paid by, you know, a day rate. And so they just kept adding more money. And he was like, that's great. He had a great time. Ed Gale has similarly fond memories. I discussed Jordan Prentice. Leah Thompson also wears the film like a badge of honor.

She states that she was never ashamed of the film or her performance in it. And this is true. I couldn't find anything of her bashing the movie. Despite her thick armor, she admits that the whiplash of going from back to the future, perhaps the most beloved movie of 1985 to Howard the Duck, which was called. by Siskel and Ebert, the worst movie of 1986, was quite the blow to her confidence.

I really appreciate, however, that she did not pull a Rebel Wilson and James Corden stepping out and just shitting all over cats is the reference I'm making there. The actors that still stand by the movie even when they know it's not good or it was bombed, it bombed. Like, I have a lot of, I have a lot of,

I have a lot of respect for those actors. No, and she stands by the movie in a lot of these interviews, she really expresses how proud she is of her performance as she should be, how she really makes those scenes with a mechanical duck work, which she does, and how she sang. And she sounds really good. Yeah. And she pulled it off entirely herself.

So I think she did a great job. Now, it did have an effect on her career. I think if you look, you can kind of, kind of, you would have expected more of a spectacular trajectory following back to the future than what she ultimately had. And she ultimately had a great career. Don't get me wrong. But I definitely think this movie pumped the brakes in an unfair way for her. And it even affected the way she chose projects. So she had prior to the release of the film turned down a role in John Hughes's some kind of wonderful. She didn't want to do a John Hughes teen movie. She, you know, wanted to

graduate beyond those. However, a week after Howard the Duck's release, she's feeling like, oh, my God, I have a flop. So she goes back to them and says, can I take the role now? And they say, now there is a silver lining. Some kind of wonderful was directed by Howard Deutsch, the man who she would fall in love with and Mary. And of course, their daughter is Zoe Deutsch. is the wonderful actress Zoe Deutsch, who can be seen in The Excellent Set It Up on Netflix. I really like that movie, amongst many others. She's also great in Zambi Land, too. I don't like that movie.

She's very funny in it. She's very good. Now, Willard Hike and Gloria Katz, their careers cooled off following Howard, perhaps more aggressively than anyone else's. They co-wrote the 1994 film The Radio Land Murders, which was based on a story by George Lucas, Again, he produced it. It seems like he was the only one that was going to work with them after Howard the Duck.

Unfortunately, that movie was an even bigger bomb than Howard was in terms of relative financial impact, and it's their last film screen credit. So Howard was their second to last film. Ed Gale went on to play Chucky in 1988's Childs Play.

He continued the role in Childs Play 2 and the bride of Chuckie. He was also Dink in Space Balls, Famously, Mel Brooks said anyone who is in Howard the Duck can be in my movie. Mel Brooks was a Howard the Duck believer. And he had a role in a movie we've gotten many recommendations to cover, and we're going to cover it. Tiptoes. Oh, no.

The absolutely insane, wildly offensive pseudo-dramatic rom-com movie in which Gary Oldman plays a little person from 2003, co-starring Matthew McConaughey, Patricia Arquette, and Kate Beckinsale. I had never heard of this. And David sent me a reel about this the other day. It's unhinged. I was losing my mind. It's, I mean, Gary Oldman, I think, will kill us if we cover it. Yeah.

We need to lock our doors. But we need to, yeah, we need to cover it. Of course, Howard the Duck lives on. As we mentioned at the top of this episode, the film has become a cult favorite. Many of the actors say today that they enjoy a bit of notoriety from it. They receive a lot of fan mail from it. Ed Gale says that people come and try to talk to him. him about Howard the Duck more than even child's play, for example.

Leah Thompson has enjoyed a lot of this. She was even written into a new Howard the Duck comic in recent years. I believe she was attempting to spearhead an update or a reboot of the movie herself. She was trying to direct one, I think. Yeah, trying to direct one that didn't find traction. Of course, Howard has now shown up in the Marvel Universe, specifically via Guardians of the Galaxy, and he is voiced by Seth Green now. In many ways, though, the person who paid most for the sins of Howard the Duck was George Lucas.

So George Lucas had attracted some of the best talent in the world at ILM. Not only were Joe Johnston and David Fincher both working there, he had Scott Ross on as his general manager. Scott Ross would go on to co-found digital domain with James Cameron, which would have of course, do the effects for Titanic, among other films. Lucas had perhaps more importantly brought in John Lassiter and Ed Catmill as part of the graphics group, a subdivision of ILM that was trying to crack fully 3D animation in feature films. Now, they hadn't been able to make Howard, but they had bigger plans.

they wanted to create the first ever entirely computer animated feature film. The only problem was that computers weren't sophisticated yet to make this happen, so they needed to buy time. Now, George Lucas was in trouble financially. He had gotten a divorce in 1983 that was contentious, and despite the success of Star Wars, a lot of the movies that he produced, like Howard the Duck, had bombed at this point. So the graphics group decided, let's spin our division off into its own organization.

In that instance, if George Lucas sells us, all the employees will all go together to wherever George Lucas sells us. So they spin into their own organization. And of course, Lucas not really caring about this group in light of his financial troubles, starts taking offers for this company. He eventually relents to a low-ball offer from Steve Jobs. That company is now known as Pixar. Oh, no. George Lucas sold Pixar to Steve Jobs in 1986 for $5 million. Oh, no.

Pixar was acquired by Disney in 2005 for $7.4 billion. Yeah. nearly $3 billion more than what Disney would eventually pay for Lucasfilm in 2012. Oopsies. Howard the Duck may have cost George Lucas, along with a few other movies, and his divorce. $7.4 billion. Well, who needs it? He's fine.

Lucas paid the most. He's fine. He's still got like $3 billion probably at this point. And that's what went wrong on Howard the Duck. I did have to skip a few things just to try to keep this one not too crazy long. Yeah, my brain's going to explode. I had to skip the Jeffrey Jones legal saga that I know a lot about. But Lizzie, I don't know if you have any parting thoughts before we can.

I don't even know if you can come up with the what went right. You seem to hate this movie so much. No, it's not. After hearing about the process, does it make you appreciate any elements of it more? No. I mean, yes. Yes. I, you know, it definitely makes me appreciate the achievement of the suit and, of course, makes me appreciate the performances both of Jordan Prentice and Ed Gale inside the suit and also of Leah Thompson opposite them. I also think it makes sense why Tim Robbins's performance read to me as so stiff because for the majority of the movie, he's acting opposite, you know, the lines that are being read by an animator, that would be really, really hard.

So I will, I take it back. I take it back to him. But yeah, in terms of what went right, Leah Thompson, I will, I'll give it to her. She's great. She's great. Like, she, there is no, there's no clue that she is ashamed of what she's doing. There's no, like, you can tell that she's in it. She's like, this is my job.

I'm going to do it. and she does a great job. So, yeah, I would say Leah Thompson. She's great. And for mine, I will go with Ed Gale slash Jordan Princess. When I read that they were effectively doing this blind, I went back and rewatched some of the sequences. You can actually kind of tell.

So, for example, there's a scene where Howard is following Beverly into her weird loft apartment building, and they're walking to the stairs. and he reaches out for the handrail too early. I know what you're talking about. And it's exactly the way you would in your own home, like a dark room. You know the walls there, but you're going to put your hand out just to make sure that your hand hits it before your body does.

And so you can tell a few times, but it's very seamless. And especially the way that he correctly positions his head, the way that he gestures with his hands. Again, the lighting of the cigar. Yeah. He gets it into his mouth, strikes the match on his beak, doing it all blind in that hot suit all day. Horrible. And he just sounds like a really lovely guy.

Definitely is my what went right for this film. Yeah. Listen, as there always is, there are things to love in this movie. Do I recommend that you spend money on it? No. You don't have to. It's streaming for free. Yes.

Streaming for free. Perfect. Yeah. I enjoyed this movie. I think you did not enjoy it. I was a little more neutral toward it, and I think David enjoyed it. And I think that's a good spectrum for us to finish with. That's fine.

And yeah, I think the script was its biggest flaw, unfortunately, and you can't ultimately overcome that no matter how fun your performances are and how charming Leah Thompson is. This is not the worst movie we've ever covered by any stretch of the imagination. You texted our group. This is possibly the worst. movie. It's not. It was in the first five minutes when he was looking at Play Duck when I was like very upset

about that. Yeah. No, there's a lot to be upset about and it was sort of an assault on the senses. But let's be honest, battlefield earth. That's still, that still has this beat. As always, we have to thank our full stop supporters, Soman Shaynani and Tom Kristin. Thank you so much. And thank you to everyone who voted, I guess. Because I watched Howard the Duck, which I never would have. So I... Yeah, Howard the Duck narrowly beating out Lord of the Rings, which would have been really fun to rewatch.

Okay, now I'm mad again. The fun fact about me for all of you out there is that I saw the first Lord of the Rings 13 times in theaters. A couple of quick housekeeping notes. On scheduling, we are pushing Mommy Dearest, as we said, but we are pushing it another episode out. And next time we will be covering Lizzie.

The Breakfast Club. Featuring a special guest. Special guest. It's David. It's David. David is joining to do an episode on the Breakfast Club. A great movie that explains so much about the outsider that David always has perceived himself to be.

And I'm very excited for it. And we hope you guys are too. Again, the Breakfast Club will be next. And then Mommy Dearest, after that. Join our patron if you would like to vote on any of these films or see our ugly mugs via Zoom. Lizzie's beautiful mug, my ugly mug via Zoom. You're welcome. And your cat's great mug and butt sometimes.

A lot of the time. Yeah. We appreciate your ratings and reviews very much. Not the guy that gave us one star and said we were a bunch of nut cases, but that one was funny. Yeah, that one really threw Chris down a bit of a spiral. But I wanted to also say thank you to everyone who's been sharing this podcast on Reddit. I noticed we've been getting some bumps recently and that it's, I think a lot of it is due to us being shared on our slash podcast, people recommending this. So thank you very, very much.

That is literally our only marketing is word of mouth. So we really appreciate it. You guys are the best. Send us your film recommendations. Hit us up at what went wrong pod via. Instagram or What Went Wrong Pod at Gmail.com. Lizzie, anything else? No, let's never talk about Howard the Duck again.

Okay, bye. Go to patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast to support What Went Wrong and gain access to bonus episodes, video content, and more. What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom podcast, presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing music by David Bowman with cover art from Euthonio.