WHAT WENT WRONG - Mommie Dearest

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

Joan Crawford may have haunted the set, but the real terror on 1981’s Mommie Dearest was Faye Dunaway. This week Lizzie & Chris explore how a controversial memoir went from Oscar to instant camp classic. From accidental stabbings to dueling husbands, this production really had it all. As Mommie would say: bring us the axe!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.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them. As always, I'm your less attractive host, Chris Winterbauer, here with your more attractive host, Lizzie Bassett, and your even more attractive producer, David Bowman, is on the call. Wow. But Lizzie, Kim, it's you.

Thank you. Balls and strikes over here. Balls and strikes. David just got a haircut. That's true. He does look great. I should add that that haircut is for our impending nuptials. Yep, locking it down.

Locking it down. Well, before we get into the incredible movie that we're going to be talking about today, I did want to remind all of our listeners and lovely patrons that if you would like to see us, you can watch the video episodes on Patreon. But lest you think that they are exactly the same as the audio episode you're hearing now, they're not. They're extended. Extended.

They're special cuts, like Chris just said. Like the director's cuts of these episodes. So if you want to hear more and also see something that hasn't had as much thought put into it and it just rambles a little longer, but also has some, you know, fun facts cut out of it for time. Check out the video episode. That's right. You can also see how much work David does on these episodes. Really, it's true. It's fun for everyone.

Not embarrassing for us at all. You wanted to look at a tree before somebody turns a sculpture out of it? Then you can go and watch our video episodes. And also I would like to remind folks, you can join our Patreon also for bonus episodes, including a hot goss ripped from the headlines covering two of the biggest names in Hollywood right now, Mr. Kevin Costner and Taylor Sheridan. Yep. Yep.

The creator of Yellowstone. And their ongoing, soon-ending, never-ending feud. I guess we'll see. over Mr. Costner's departure from said show Yellowstone. It's a really interesting, actually, conversation that comes at a really interesting inflection point in our industry, as there are now dual strikes between SAG, WGA, and AMPTPP, the American Motion Picture and Television producers.

And along those lines, also check out our bonus episode on the current dual SAG AFRWA. WGA Labor Strikes that have shut down Hollywood. This is the first time that both have struck since 1960. And we have some interesting, fun history is cyclical times a flat circle tidbits for you in that bonus episode. So check it out. Lizzie, what do you have for us today? No, I'm serious.

Explain what I watched last night. Oh, Chris, I have for you today the biggest month. mother of them all. We are talking about a movie that weirdly, I watched a lot as a child. Wild information. Wild. Mommy dearest. Before we get into this, Chris, you had never seen this.

I had never seen this before. I would like to hear your reaction to watching this for the first time. I had a lot of thoughts as I was going through it. The first one was, oh, it's the 1960s. That's weird. Wait, no, it's 1930s. Wait, no, it's 1950s? Is it 2004?

When are we? I had to continue to look on Wikipedia to try to pinpoint where, when we were in Joan Crawford's life and more specifically in the 20th century. Two, Faye Dunaway is an amazing actress, by the way. Faye Dunaway is at an 11 in every scene in this movie. And it's amazing. And she can't, I mean, this movie's wildly entertaining. I don't want to bury the lead. It is just, I mean, Carmel and I were recoiling in horror and just dying with laughter at the same time because this movie is absolutely incredible.

The daughter saying Jesus Christ, when she's six years old, is one of my favorite points when she just shows. Her mom is filled gunk all over the bathroom. It's like barkeeper's friend. It's like, as a vestist. They're cleaning the bathroom. And she just goes, she leaves. And she's like, you need to clean this up. And this girl's five years old.

And she goes, but how? And Faydanaway just goes, you figure it out. And then she runs away. And then the little brother comes over who's wearing an S&M strapped down suit. That's my other favorite line. Well, one of my two favorite lines is strap yourself back in. She'll kill you. And I was like, are you talking to the audience?

Or are you talking to your brother? And then she just leans back and there's a long close up on her face in this five-year-old, very convincing. And just goes, Jesus Christ. And it's great. She's about nine, by the way. Oh, she's nine. The biggest thing that kept throwing me off, and this is so weird, Every time they said Carol Ann, I looked at the little blonde girl because of poltergeist.

Just every time they said Carol Ann. Carol Ann! And then I was like, well, we're still? No, it's the housekeeper. It's the nanny, whatever it is. Carol Ann is going to play quite an important part in our episode today. It's extremely entertaining. Fade Donaway is so above this.

You know, like, this is so beneath her. I don't really understand, as a performer, I don't really understand why she's in it. Yes. But she brings it in every scene. Oh, yeah. It actually had some scenes I really liked. It's totally insane. It seems like if it's even, I mean, it seems wildly inaccurate, is my guess.

That depends on who you talk to. So let's get into it. It is absolutely that shit bonkers. And honestly, the production of this is crazier than I expected. So it was released September 18th of 1981. It was directed by Frank Perry, written by, and this is never a good sign in our what went wrong experience. Robert Getchel, Tracy Hockner, Frank Yablons, and Frank. Frank Perry and more.

Oh, wow. What in the movie does just like jump, jump, jump, jump, jump. It's just a series of disconnected scenes, basically. It is, it is. It's like a bunch of vignettes about child abuse. Exactly. It is based on the book by Christina Crawford. As Chris said, that is Joan Crawford's first adopted child, starring Faye Dunaway,

Mara Hobel, Diana Scarwood, and Rutania Alda. And Mara Hobel is the young Tina. Diana Scarwood is the adult. Yeah. And Ratania Alda, who we're going to hear from quite a bit, and this is Caroline! Yes. The long-suffering housekeeper. Yes.

Pretty good age-make-up housekeeper. We're going to talk about that. That's part of the time problem. So the synopsis, according to IMDB, is the abusive and traumatic adoptive upbringing of Christina Crawford at the hands of her mother, Screen Queen Joan Crawford, is depicted. So let's start with the book. Now, for anyone who doesn't know, Mommy Dearest is a pretty shocking memoir written by Christina Crawford about her mother, Joan Crawford. I actually saw in a couple of interviews it's considered to be one of the first sort of tell-all memoirs ever written. I don't know if this is true, but in one interview with Christina Crawford, I think she said that they actually coined the term tell-all based on that book, but I don't know if that's accurate.

If you are not familiar with who Joan Crawford was, go back and listen to our episode on whatever happened to Baby Jane, or you must remember this also has an excellent sixth episode arc on Crawford's Life that is really fun, really worth listening to. She is fascinating. She was a major movie star and a big part of the studio system from the 30s all the way up through the 60s. She was incredibly beautiful, very smart, a very savvy businesswoman despite having almost no education. And like, scary. She's scary. I'm, you know, that's that. Yeah. Yeah.

And Faye Dunaway pulls that off. She does. Joan was also even on the board of Pepsi at one point, which they do cover. And by the way, Chris, I asked you to guess my other favorite line from this movie. Do you know what it is? When she says, does she say, don't fuck with me, Soda Boys? Yes. No, she says, don't fuck with me, fellas.

This ain't my first time at the rodeo. That's it. That's my favorite line from the entire movie. Now, for one of Joan's most famous roles for which she won the Academy Award was Mildred Pierce, where she played a long-suffering mother who would do anything to make her daughter's life better. They actually remade this on HBO a few years ago with Evan Rachel Wood and Kate Winslow. Pretty good. Joan had adopted four children throughout her life,

and up until this point, Mildred Pierce was probably what most people thought she was like in real life, too. Mommy Dearest, the memoir was published in 1978. just one year after Jones' death at age 69 or 73. No one is really sure how old she was. Right. Yeah, I remember she didn't from whatever happened to baby Jane. Birthday! Oh, birthdays are fluid.

We don't know. She was 40 for a while. We'll leave it at that. Yeah, for sure. It details emotional and physical abuse that Christina allegedly suffered at the hands of the movie star. Also, by the way, Chris, I think there maybe was a fifth child at one point. I can't remember exactly, but I don't think it's... stayed with them. I think it was like a...

She had adopted another... I remember she adopted one child who was reclaimed by their birth family. That is correct. So I may be technically five, but we're going to say four for the purposes of this. The memoir ends with Christina and her brother, Christopher, being completely disinherited for, quote, reasons well known to them. That's what Jones Will really said. Yep. The other two kids inherited about 70,000 each. So yes, there were two other children, two whole other children that do not feature in the film at all, despite the fact that they were very much alive and very much a part of that whole story. They do not support this narrative. Those two children do

not. Christopher, who is Christina's younger brother, who you do see in the movie, does support Christina. Now, the book made a huge splash because Joan Crawford was still a big deal when she died. Like, this was very soon after she died. She was also known as someone who was beloved by fans and the crews that she had worked with, so people were shocked. And my understanding is she did give a lot of money to charities. Yes, she was very supportive of a number of different causes.

And if I'm remembering correctly, even when she died, she didn't have a ton of money when she died. I remember she, you know, despite having such a wonderful career, for whatever reason maybe you'll tell me, She didn't have a lot when she passed away. She'd spent a lot of it. Exactly. But my understanding is that most of what she had left went to various causes and charities.

Yeah. Not even those last two children that she did seem to kind of like. From what they say, they had a great childhood. It's got to be somewhere in the middle. But anyway, an awful lot of people refused to believe Christina or said that it was hyperbole. The contents of the book are hotly debated by people who interacted directly with Joan, including, as I said, her two other children. Crawford's personal secretary, Betty Barker, who Carol Ann is loosely based on in the movie,

also said it never happened. But Betty may not be a reliable source. She's someone that Christina and Christopher specifically said was not good to them. Now, the book does have some pretty bonkers claims in it. If I'm understanding correctly, there is sort of a loose assertion that Joan may have offed her final husband, Al Steele. Because even though he died of a heart attack, he was found at the bottom of the stairs. A scandal.

I don't think she killed her husband. Yeah. But who knows? He was probably drinking himself to death as she was bleeding him dry trying to build her Fifth Avenue apartment. That's, let's be honest. Probably accurate. Yeah. So I'm not going to dive into the book itself too much, but I will say, we do know 110% for sure that Joan was a raging alcoholic.

She admitted this herself in some very candid interview. later in her life, which are really interesting. If you want to go watch anything with her, I recommend you look for interviews where she's older. She's very honest, which is pretty unusual. It does seem likely to me that there is at least some truth to what Christina wrote and that some things Joan did would absolutely qualify as child abuse today. However, they may also have been a lot more common back then,

which is probably the other part of people's reaction to it. One thing we do know for sure is that Joan and Christina both likely deserved better than the legacy they have inherited from the movie we're going to talk about today. So the book is a major hit, first of its kind, and they get to work on developing a film version right away. Now, remember, Joan dies in 1977, the book comes out in 1978, and the movie releases in 1981. So they really do not waste any time. That's one pandemic, guys. One pandemic. The most important thing to know about Mommy Dearest is that from day one, Chris, this is this is This was intended to be a prestige picture.

I was going to say it had to be, right? Yes. This was an Oscar vehicle for everyone involved. That's got to be the pitch to Fay, right? It's like, you're going to play Joan Crawford, who, if I'm remembering correctly, had very nice things to say at some point or kind of nice things about Fay Donaway being a talented actress. and Joan was not generous with her praise. No, she was mean. Yeah, exactly.

Other actresses. So that, right, because I was like, why would you do this? And it's like, it has to be because this was going to be a towering achievement. Sure. Well, and it makes sense. I mean, this was like, this was a major news item about a major star of the Hollywood Golden Age. So pretty much right away, Frank Yablons and Paramount pick up the film, for $300,000.

Paramount, by the way, is the only one of the major studios that Joan Crawford never made a movie with. Yeah, Blond's had been the president of Paramount from 1971 to 1975 and oversaw movies like The Godfather, Parts 1 and 2, Serpico and Paper Moon,

but Hollywood is a fickle bitch, and even despite those hits, he had some flops, and then he was out as president by, I believe, around 1975. But still connected as, like, an independent producer, so involved in projects.

He was also at MGM at some point, in the middle of that, his career is wild when you look at the movies he's produced. Now, according to Christina Crawford herself, she wrote the initial first and second drafts of the script. Even though you will notice, she is not credited. Yeah.

That's because Yablons basically just tossed these. They went in the garbage. Yeah. She's not even really an author. I don't mean that disparagingly. No. She'd just written, it was just a memoir that she wrote. And then... Well, I think there was a specific issue with it.

Which is that based on what she... There's a fidelity issue, right? Yes. But also, based on what Christina said in interviews later, they were very focused on trying to provide a cause and effect for every action. Whereas she had told the story the way that she felt it really happened in a way that, you know, didn't always make sense, especially because she was a child. Right.

One example of this is in the movie, we see Joan chopping down a tree in the Rose Garden because she was fired. But according to Christina, those two events were not connected at all. And there's things like that that happen all throughout the movie. They're just trying to, they're trying to make it make sense. And I think her point was it didn't make sense. Yeah. The memoir is also from a child's point of view. And it stands to reason that Christina's scripts were likely also more focused on the character of Christina.

But again, to your point, this was an Oscar vehicle, and they were a lot more focused on it being about Joan for financial reasons, for clout reasons. even though, to be honest, focusing it on Christina might have been the stronger narrative choice to see these actions through the eyes of a child. That could have been scarier. That could have potentially been a better movie or a different movie. It actually would have helped explain some of the behavior because you're thinking to yourself, oh, maybe this is an unreliable narrator.

Whereas the movie establishes itself from Jones' point of view. and then she is bonkers child abuser. Yeah, from minute one. Pennywise the clown in this movie. And you're just like, oh, and this is her telling the sympathetic version of how Carol Ann had it coming? Like, it doesn't make any sense at all. No. Unfortunately.

I almost would be interested in someone trying to remake that memoir from the perspective of Christina. Don't put it out there. I'm going to put it out there. Don't do it. I'm putting it out there. Somebody try it. David Zazlov's his greenlit that. Yes, good for you, David.

Okay, so it's going to be AI writing it, and that would be great. It's at this point that Christina pretty much just exits the project completely. She's out. Her husband, however, does not. David Kuntz is assigned an executive producer position, presumably to try and keep an eye on his wife's story. As far as I understand it, he didn't have any. credits. This is not something he had done regularly. He's one of a couple of potentially problematic

husband slash partners in this story. Great. Yeah. Although I think he's the less problematic of the two by far. Now we get a rotating crew of writers working on the script from here on out, including screenwriter Robert Getchell, who would go on to adapt the client and this boy's life. Screenwriter Tracy Hotchner. Sorry if I'm mispronouncing your name, ma'am. You can actually read the draft that she wrote. It is available online. Pulitzer Prize winning author and playwright James Kirkwood apparently had a pass at this. Most famously co-wrote the book for a chorus line amongst many other things. And then one name that popped up on AFI's article about the making of this movie was William Goldman. I believe it. If he can't save this, I don't. No one can. If you don't know who William Goldman is,

He is, of course, the author and screenwriter of the Princess Bride, as well as literally everything else, including Marathon Man, All the President's Men, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Heat, Misery, Chaplain. And maybe Goodwell Hunting. Just kidding. But don't, don't tell that. Ben. We might have to edit that out. But there was a rumor that he had ghostwritten a draft of that movie. I'm more inclined to believe the Mindy Kaling, very funny play that she wrote at Harvard about it. dropped from above. That it dropped from above while they were just stoned in Boston. So according to Britannia Alda, who again plays Carol Ann, David Coons, Christina's husband, even took an early pass on the script. So, like, this is already in a bad place. Like, that's how many people that have touched this?

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven minimum. Yep. Now, there was originally a very different director attached to this film, a much bigger name. I'm not going to make you guess because this one makes no sense. and it would be hard. It is Franco Zaffarelli of Romeo and Juliet fame. Yeah. Who's retroactively in a bit of hot water. For putting naked children on screen? Yep. Indeed. Recently. Yep.

Now obviously the most important person for them to cast is Joan Crawford. Also, pretty tough. Like, that is a tough part to cast. So even though Zaffirelli had recently directed Faye Dunaway in The Champ, there was someone else lined up to play the role of Joan, who would have given a very different performance. And I am. I'm going to make you guess for this one. She was a little older than Fay Dunaway was also an Academy Award winner with a direct connection to Joan Crawford. We actually mentioned her in the whatever happened to Baby Jane episode. Mentioned her and she has a direct connection?

She has a very iconic role in film history from the 60s, which is not what she won the Oscar for. I'm not going to get this. I'm like totally drawing a blank. You have to, I'm, who is this? It's Mrs. Robinson and Bancroft. Ooh. She? Yeah, right?

She would have, I think, it's interesting, Faye Dunaway looks a little, and I think partially it's the makeup in this movie. They're similar in age. She's great. I think she looks a little more like Joan Crawford than Faye Dunaway does. I think so, too.

And a more reserved performance would be I guess as well because she's so good. Maybe scarier because there is something colder about her. She's, yeah. That's why she's so good in the graduate. Wow, that's really interesting. Yeah. That would have been really interesting.

I know. So she was attached pretty much as soon as they sold the rights. Wow. But it sounds from my research like Anne Bancroft and Zaffarelli wanted to make a movie about Joan Crawford. Right. They wanted to explore how troubled she was. It also sounds like they were.

into how glamorous she was, and odds are this would have been a more sympathetic, potentially more balanced film. Right. A better movie? Probably, yes, because, I mean, the reality is, like, something was going on in her life. And you can see parts of that movie still in this movie. You can. The first five minutes of Mommy, Mommy Dearest, I think, are really interesting. They're trying to set it up, I think, from the person, they're trying to show this person does not have time or the ability to take interest in another human enough to have a child. Right. That's what they're trying to do.

But it's actually really interesting from the perspective of this is someone who is forced into these absurd routines in order to try to maintain her position in Hollywood. Right. Because, again, they don't give you the right context. But at that specific point in time, she was in a string of movies that weren't doing well. And she was being slowly labeled box office poison. Right. And then by the end of the 1930s, as we know, she would be let go from her contract with MGM. So anyway, I just think there are still elements of that movie present that are really interesting and that would have been a really different movie.

That is the fight at the center of this story, is the tug between it being a potentially more balanced movie that tried to, as Christina said, provide some cause and effect for what Joan Crawford was doing and have her be the main character or to really base it, word for word in Christina Crawford's memoir, and they just don't go fully in either direction, and it lands somewhere very strange. So as the screenplays went through draft after draft, Bancroft smelled the same problem

that we are talking about, and she dropped out. Other rumors suggest that she also correctly sensed anyone who played Crawford in such an unfavorable light as she was becoming in the scripts would pay a very steep price for it in Hollywood, which was accurate. Zephyrelli seems to have exited the project for similar reasons.

So in comes Frank Perry, around September of 1980. He's an independent film director of movies like Last Summer and Diary of a Mad Housewife, whose sole purpose seem to be to stay as true to Christina Crawford's memoir as possible. That is what he comes in with. He also takes a pass on the script. I think that's where it goes fully in another direction.

So he's kind of hired gun at this point. Yeah. Studio needs this done in a specific. way. Right. All right. You're not an atroar. Here you go. He was. He just had been working on much smaller scale. That's my point. He can get bossed around by the studio more than Zepcarelli could. So with their crew assembled, all that was left was to now find their Joan. Chris, you pointed this out earlier, but when Joan Crawford was nearing her end, she had been very vocal about not approving of the new crop of actresses that were taking over Hollywood except

for one. Quote, of all the actresses to me only Faye Dunaway has the talent and the class and the courage it takes to make a real star. Quite the endorsement. I don't think they would have liked each other. No, but that's also probably maybe what she liked about her. That's true. Yeah. I don't know.

In 1980, Faye Dunaway really wanted a return to Oscar glory. Since winning the Oscar for Network in 1977, she hadn't really done anything huge to follow it up. She'd done a couple of TV movies. She had somehow packed in, I think, four feature films during that time, which on paper looked like they could have maybe been prestige projects, but all of which failed to make the kind of splash she had made in pictures like Bonnie and Clyde, Chinatown, and of course, Network.

Now, some places are like, oh, yeah, she was Oscar hungry, and that's why she went after this. But these films also had intentionally given her more time to focus in another aspect of her life. She was choosing movies that did not require as much of her, and that's because she had been trying for years to have a baby with her then boyfriend and soon-to-be-husband Terry O'Neill to no avail. Life imitates art. Similar to Joan Crawford, yes. She was struggling big time with fertility. Joan Crawford had suffered, I think, many miscarriages by the time she adopted Christina. so very similar place in her life to where Joan is when we meet her in this movie.

In 1980, however, all of that changed because Faye adopted a son named Liam. Now, she refused to acknowledge that he was not her biological son. So the first mention of this, of him being adopted, was actually in 2003, and it was Terry, her then ex-husband at that point, who angrily revealed that Liam was not biologically theirs and she, as far as I know, did not comment and maybe has not commented. I read the section of her memoir about this time in her life. Her memoir, by the way, is titled, Looking for Gatsby. What? Well, she's in the Great Gatsby. But it's like not her most famous role. Anyway, but the way she introses the baby is really weird. It's kind of like, and then one day,

there he was. There he was. And there's like no mention of him being adopted or like how it happened. And you're like, I literally kept turning the page back and forth. Because I was like, wait. Where'd this page go? Where'd this baby come from? Yeah. So when Faye enters the project, she is definitely after Oscar number two. But she also very much intends to even the scales in this movie.

So she comes in 100% team Joan. It kind of seems like she does not really believe Christina Crawford maybe at all. She never met her or made any kind of effort to connect with her. Literally has not met the woman. Now, remember that Christina has nothing more to do with the project. And apparently, she even tried to buy back the rights after seeing where the drafts of the script were going. But her husband is still very much involved. So Faye has an enemy on set pretty much right away.

Now, the way some tell it, Faye was courted by Yablons and Perry, the Franks. They sent her scripts and she read. them and was very carefully considering it. However, the rumor Rutanja Alda heard was that apparently they campaigned quite hard for this part. I tend to buy this one. Yeah, the Joan. You could get me that part. And then, yeah. Well, oh, I never thought it could have been me. Yeah. Yeah. She showed up in a vintage limousine, dressed in full Joan drag at Frank Yablond's house and scared the shit out of him. But he, was like, well, I think that's probably Joan.

That's a full Sean Young, as we call it, to the Catwoman suit on national television, going for the role. So either way, it certainly does sound like the Franks promised Faye, a movie that would attempt to expand on Christina's book in a way that would tell more of Jones' whole story versus just portraying her as a monster. So that's a theme. Like, they definitely keep selling that to the people that they are trying to pull into this project.

But at the same time, they brought in a director. who is going to do the more salacious. They did, but I don't know that they explained that to Faye Dunaway. That's my point. I'm saying they're speaking one thing in one direction. Exactly. So Faye begins researching Joan and reading everything she can, and she is convinced that there's more to the story

than what appears in Christina's memoir. She would later say in pretty much every interview that only God knows what happened between Christina and Joan, which is true-ish. I mean, there are other children that did weigh in, but yes, sure. And in Fay's memoir, you can tell that she is quite sympathetic to Joan. Yeah. Maybe a little too much.

Right. But also, why wouldn't she be? She's an actress who's fought hard for her place in Hollywood. She's just adopted a little boy herself after a long period of infertility. Quote, I think most of us come to be parents wanting more for our children. But after she adopted Christina, something went terribly wrong in Crawford's life. Christina was this cool little girl. who wouldn't love her in the way she thought a child would love her,

and she couldn't handle it. I don't think that's wrong. Yeah, I... It's... Okay, keep going. This is tough. It's tough. I mean, there's also some weird sections of her memoir

where she talks about Christina as this cool little Scandinavian girl, and I was like, where's... What's happening? You're going to get weirdly racist against northern Europeans? What's going on here? I don't know. It got weird. But again, I do want to say, like, as an actress approaching this role, I understand the desire to want to figure out what was happening and, like, have a reasonable explanation for it.

Now, I mentioned, well, maybe I didn't mention, but I used two memoirs as my main sources for this. The first is Fay Donaways, which I was just referencing. But the second, and frankly, much more fun and useful one is Rutania Alda's, the Mommy Dearest Diary, Caroline Tells All. That sounds very fun It's very fun Rutania plays Carol Ann in the film But she has a pretty crazy backstory herself Very quickly

She was born in Latvia during World War II Became a refugee Had some truly horrifying experiences as a child Which she said came in handy during Mommy Dearest She was like, this is fine I know She really was one of the few people Who could like soldier through this

She became an actor And had been steadily working for many years but never really got her big break, even despite decent movie roles in films like The Deer Hunter. Oh, wow. She also studied under and even dated Stanislavski, one of the fathers of method acting, which will also come in handy during Mommy Dearest. This is a pretty interesting, fun, quick read. I actually do recommend reading it.

A lot of it is her complaining about her near-do-well, poor drug addict actor husband, also who was in The Godfather, and walking her cat around the Chateau-Marmont pool, but it's also a really fascinating look at what it was like to be a moderately successful actor at that time, which is to say really fucking hard, really hard. Like she had more than moderate success and it just was a slog constantly. All right, let's get to pre-production.

Pretty much right away, Faye is to quote what Roman Polanski said about her, a giant pain in the ass. Oh. Oh, Roman. Oh boy, yeah. He absolutely hated her. Obviously, we know he's not exactly a winner. But anywho, the original costume designer was a woman named Irene Sharoff or Sheriff, a five-time Academy Award winner at that point for movies like, Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf, Cleopatra, The King and I, West Side Story. Wow. Yeah. Bangers. Yes. Except for Cleopatra. But keep going.

Costumes in that were great. What are you talking about? Excuse me. Redacted. That also means that she had costumed Elizabeth Taylor quite a lot, who has famously... And survived it. Yes. Well, it must have liked her because she kept working with her. Yeah.

According to Rutania, she'd even dressed the real Joan Crawford, although I had trouble finding any matching credits for them on IMDB. Oh. Now, Irene and Faye pretty much hate each other right away. Irene even tells Routania that she believes Faye is on drugs, which kinds she is not sure. But she says, something's not right, and that Faye seems driven by...

instant gratification constantly. During test shoots, Frank Perry tells Rutania that they want her to look really plain. They want Caroline to look real plain. Because, you know, if she had looked glamorous, Joan Crawford, she wouldn't have hired her. She didn't like pretty women. But Rutania's immediately like, that's weird because I've seen pictures of her secretary and she's like a very attractive woman who's dressed very well. And like Joan Crawford did surround herself with attractive women. that was not really true at all. Also, might have been a little gay, but we won't get into that here. Allegedly.

So they have the makeup guy and the hair guy redo her look like three times. And every time she comes out, and every time Frank Perry is like not fugly enough, go back, go back. Hit her with the ugly stick. Just do it again. Just do it again. Do it again. Send her back. Also, I mean, Rutania's very cute, so like it must have been hard.

I was going to say, though, kind of a nice ego boost because, like, it would suck if you just go in once and they barely touch you and you come out and they're like, oh my God, I can't even look at you. Disgusting. Three times. And so finally they came out and they were like, okay, listen, if you look too good, Faye will get you fired. You need to ugly it up. For the love of God, don't piss Faye off. Literally. So Rutania's like, no problem.

Ugly me up, I need this job. I don't care. Fay also immediately rejects the wigs that have been made for her, allegedly screaming at hairdresser Vivian Walker, who left one fitting and apparently said, quote, fuck her. Wow. And wigs are expensive. Yes, they are. Vivian had also worked on the real Joan Crawford, but Faye doesn't care.

Instead, Faye wants the lady who did Goldie Hawn's hair in private Benjamin. What? It doesn't make any sense. That movie is set in the 80s, isn't it? Or like late 70s? Yeah. What is happening? Yeah.

Incidentally, they had worked together a decade earlier on Chinatown, so this feels like an extra pointed burn. Vivian immediately flagged that Kathy Blondell, who obviously a great hairdresser, Goldie Hawn looks great in that movie, but she did not have a ton of experience with period hair, and she had no experience with wigs. And wigs are very difficult and very expensive.

They were also Vivian's specialty. Faye does not listen. Of course, Vivian was right. Kathy does not know how to do the wigs and ends up ruining many of them in the process, which costs more money. By the end of the film, Faye is also not speaking to her

because, of course, they didn't look right. If you look at some of the wigs in this movie, ayah. There's so much else happening on her face, including her acting, that I just did not notice her wigs. Take a wig pass. There's some crazy ones. When she comes in and she's just got white crap all over her, whatever her face mask is with the wire hanger. The way that they light it, she looks like Hellraiser.

I was just like, this is the most insane movie I've ever seen. So remember that I said that there were two problematic husbands slash partners on set. Yeah, I've been waiting. Who's the other one? Here he comes. Well, while Fay has been kicking up a fuss and costing thousands of dollars on costumes and wigs, it turns out her boyfriend and soon-to-be-husband, Terry O'Neill, had some ambitions of his own. Because just before shooting is about to start, it stops.

Fay essentially holds the entire set hostage and says that she will walk unless her boyfriend, Terry, also gets a producer credit. It can't just be Christina's husband. She wants one too. Isn't Terry O'Neill a photographer? Yeah, maybe. I don't know. He's not a producer.

Yeah, he's a British photographer, I believe. I don't think he's a British. Yeah, he's not a producer. No. Yeah. So she's basically blackmailing the studio because they have already paid for incredibly expensive sets.

She's like, piss me off, guys. I'll light another wig on fire. Literally. They had at least 15 wigs and 53 costume changes that were tailored to her. are thousands of dollars each. Thousands of dollars. The costumes. They were working with bespoke pieces, actual vintage pieces that had been tailored just to fit her.

You would have to throw those out. I mean, that's potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars. So Frank Yablons apparently really wanted to replace her, but the studio said no because of what we're just talking about. There was too much sunk cost at that point. And she is a big name. And like you said, there's hesitant, like, Anne Bancroft drops out for a very specific reason. This project's heading in a direction where I'm going to take a lot of flack if I do this to Jones' legacy.

Yeah. That word's going to get around. You know what I mean? And anybody that reads the script might feel the same, see the same thing. My point is like, if you've landed Faye and you lost her, you get Faye, you lose her. It's going to be tough to refill it. It's going to be tough to redo it again. Also, at the risk of potentially taking Faye's side on this, it is possible that she wanted some backup if she felt like she didn't have it with Christina's husband also being an EP on the side.

Yeah, that's the complicating factor. I think both are wrong. I think Christina's wrong, meaning Christina's husband should not have been a producer, Faye's husband, boyfriend, should not be a producer. No, neither of them should. But I understand why she felt like nobody has my side here. I'm the only one here. I'm the only one here. here, and she probably at some point internalized and realized I'm the only one here is sticking up, taking Jones side on the story. Yes. And so I need Terry here with his camera to go clickety click. That is why.

But it doesn't go well. The husband slash boyfriends are immediately at odds with each other, like screaming at each other on set. So now let's enter a section that I like to call shit, Faye does on set. We started shooting and this is where we get into Fay Dunaway's reputation which is not good she routinely showed up in totally different hair and makeup than what they had run tests for

insisting that the DP should change all of the lighting and the setups even though they had already run through all of them crew members called themselves the clear away club because she would insist that everyone clear out of her eye line including the camera operators So I don't know how that was supposed to work. Well, really quick, on that note, having someone in your eyeline can be extremely distracting. Sure. But there's a very, there's an easy way to deal with it.

And an example I was present for when we were shooting moonshot. One of the camera operators was like, the focus puller was right in Zach Braff's eyeline. And he just very politely went up to him like in between takes and said, hey man, would you mind, you know, moving your right, my eye line on this shot. You can also request that the camera operator be draped in black cloth. Sure. There's ways around it without clearing the set. There are so many ways to work around this without saying you need to get the hell out of here. Exactly. Also, it was a completely closed set for the entire shoot. Anyone visiting the set had to be personally cleared by Faye. She refused to give up screen time even when she's supposed to be unconscious. You might notice in that scene where she's passed out drunk and they pick her up. She is mumbling. And saying lines, those are written by Fay Dunaway.

I do love that. I do. She never failed to get some lines in, even though she had the entire movie. It's like the guy playing a dead body in CSI who's like, what if you just said like one last thing to say? Yes, literally. It seems like so much energy went to managing Faye that they were kind of fucking up everything else.

For example, a whole day of shooting was delayed at one point in the Al Steele's apartment set because somehow they had forgotten to add lights when they were building it. So they had to go back and make space for the lights. Like, how does that, that just screams? That's just two departments not talking to each other because they're busy dealing with other fires. Yeah. It's like the electricians aren't talking, you know, the set construction guys aren't talking to the gaffer and nobody's communicating. Now, in addition to giving herself lines, she also took away lines and scenes from her female co-stars.

Yes. She would force changes that would reduce her fellow actress's coverage and would change lines that would force them out of theirs. Diana Scarwood apparently had a terrible time on set and said she felt that Faye was in constant competition with her, which makes sense considering Diana was young and nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Inside Moves while they were shooting this. Right. Fay also apparently told Diana to get out of the business to go have a nice life somewhere and raise a family, which you could either take as a put-down or as sincere advice from someone

who was deeply unhappy. I think it's the latter, maybe a little bit of both, but Diana didn't love it. I think both could certainly be true where it sounds mean, but if you gave her a lie to checker test, she'd actually be like,

no, I really wish someone would let me do that. She also routinely stole coverage from Rutania. She even had Routania removed from Jones' wedding scene, with Al Steele because that was the one time they didn't ugly her up enough. Rutania looked too good. And so they pulled her out even though Rutania was like, why would Carol Ann not be at her wedding?

It makes no sense. And they were like, we don't care. You're out. And, you know, in terms of like stealing coverage, there's so many different little things that you could do as an actor,

including if you like fuck with the blocking in a master shot. That's what she would do. You can make sure that, like, you dominate the scene. And that if you're moving, it requires a different. additional coverage on your character to make the scene work. Or she would do it so you couldn't see the other person.

Exactly. Block them in a master. You could also demand a close-up and especially as the lead that's very easy to do. She would also take so much time with her close-ups and her coverage that there frequently wasn't any time for the other people. However, Rutanja had a different strategy that seemed to benefit her in the long run. And this might be due to her sort of method acting background. Maybe one of the reasons that more of her scenes weren't cut

was that she decided early on she would treat Faye the way Carol Ann treated Joan. So she would forgive her for everything. She would justify and placate everything that she did, even though she clearly did not like her. She was able to hide it well enough that Faye didn't see her as a threat. Others did not fare so well.

You would never know that there was tension between them when you watched the movie. No, which is a testament to Rutanialda, I think, because that had to be really hard. And Faye, who like treats her like the housekeeper? I mean, I almost like Faye's gnarly, but good performance. She's a crazy person. She's great.

Now remember costume designer Irene Sharaf? Well, about halfway through, she walks off the film. Great. Faye was constantly changing Irene's work without asking her, and she had had it. She said she had never walked off a set in her life, but she was walking off of this one. Who picked the rocky sweatsuit when she goes jogging? because that was my favorite outfit of the whole thing. Well, there were some costume casualties because of this.

But from Rutania's diary, this is what she said, Irene said. Quote, I have never in my whole career been treated as badly by anyone as by this drug addict. You have to throw a piece of meat into her dressing room before you go in there. Whoa. They had a different level of burns back then. Yeah, clearly. If that went viral now. Yeah.

Narnally. Yikes. Now this, as you pointed out, leads to some interesting fashion choices. One Primo one is the Waccadu outfit she has on when she's cutting down the tree. Yes. Which is like a ball gown skirt and then like an 80 shoulder padded sequined top. Also, why I can't tell what one of the, listen, I'm no fashionista, but one of the reasons I struggled to figure out the time period of the movie. It makes no sense. The costumes are all over the place. All over the place. Very hard to track anything. that's probably because Irene was getting fucked with the whole time.

Now, speaking of the tree scene, this is not Faye Dunaway chopping down the tree. If you watch and look very closely, you might notice all of the inserts are a man's hands. The director of Frank Perry chopped it down because Faye couldn't do it. Now, you might imagine this was not a great environment for a child to be in. And you would be correct. Yep. Nine-year-old Mara Hobel, or Hobel, I'm not sure, who played young Christina, appeared to be up to the task. She'd already had a role for 33 episodes on daytime soap The Doctors.

And here is what Rutanja had to say about her. Mara playing young Christina seems like an adult in miniature. A bleached blonde, 45-year-old dwarf. Who's your agent? What else have you done? She kept grilling me to list more of my credits. It's frustrating to be challenged to a pissing contest by anyone, but especially by a nine-year-old. Whoa, this is fun. Yikes! I know.

And that was the nice actor on set? That's the nice actor on set is what she's saying about this kid. So at one point, David Kuntz called Rutanja and her husband, Richard Bright, into his office and asked if they thought she was coming off as a brat and allegedly also called her a little snot. She's nine. She does a good job. She beat the whole movie. Nothing else happens. This movie is just a series of escalating forms of sadism.

executed against a small child. So one of the most upsetting scenes in the film features Joan cutting off Christina's hair. Yep. They only had three wigs to use, which means they only had three takes to get this right. So Faye must have really been feeling the pressure because after the first take, she grabbed Mara so hard that bruises and red marks were forming on her arms. They had to have a makeup artist come in and cover them up ahead of the second take. Jesus.

After this one, even more marks start showing up on her arms, so they covered them again. And after the third and final take, according to Rutanja Alda's diary, Mara suddenly got up and ran off set screaming, she stabbed me, she stabbed me. No. Yes. Faye Dunaway had accidentally stabbed nine-year-old Mara with the scissors. Where? It wasn't super deep. It was just like on her arm or something.

They patched it up and continued on. But, I mean, she broke the skin. Oh, my God. Yeah. She has to get a tennis shot. Yeah. Faye sent her some gifts, though. So that made it better.

They should not allow children to work in movies. Not this one, that's for sure. By the way, in Faye's memoir, this plays out more like, oh, it was an emotional scene for us both, and Mara was a trooper. So I sent her a watch as a thank you. You're missing some key details. And then Liam showed up. And there he was. So in the fight scene between adult Christina and Joan,

They shot this first with stunt doubles for both Diana Scarwood and Fay Donaway. However, when it came time to shoot the close-ups, Faye decides on completely different choreography that doesn't match what the stunt doubles had done. I was going to say, because this looked like it was them in a wide shot. Just was Faye choking out Diana Scarwood. It was crazy. Yeah, because they had to just show what she was doing because everything they had captured before. She went WWE on her. Yes.

She again makes up her own lines in that scene as well. Now, Chris, you pointed out the makeup is a bit strange and that the timeline through the movie is a bit confusing. Somehow, Carol Ann in particular, is aging at a frightening rate while Joe Crawford looks exactly the same. Until the last scene before she dies. Yes. Any guesses why that might be the case? I'm guessing Faye Dunaway didn't want to age. Ding, ding, ding, ding. So they had to again, ugly up Carol Ann and Faye did not want it.

There were times towards the end of shooting when she was supposed to. to have the makeup and came to set without any on. So they just went ahead and shot the scene anyway because they were running out of time. They were over budget. And they just couldn't fix it. The worst example of this is the scene where she and Joan are watching Christina perform on the soap opera. If you go back and look at Carol Ann's makeup.

But she looks like the cryptkeeper. And Thay Dunaway looks exactly the same. Hey, Dunaway looks better, if anything, by that point in the movie. She's on this. That scene where she steps in for Christina, Carvalich just lost it. She turned to me. She's like, that can't possibly have really happened. It did.

I was like, I'm pretty sure that really happened. It did. Well, she didn't do as long a run, and I think it was less her trying to appear as a young 20-something and more like clearly it was Joan Crawford. Exactly. I think it wasn't as weird. Yeah, because. But it is weird in this.

It is so weird. It's so funny in this. I was like, Diana better not get a boyfriend. because Joan's going to bang him. Oh, 100%. Yeah, it was a very funny scene. Now, I have obviously spent most of this episode talking about what a pain in the ass Faye Dunaway was on set,

and that is generally what you hear when you talk about the making of this movie, but there are always two sides to every story, which is why I do want to talk a little bit about what she was going through at the time. The reality is she was not in a good place during this shoot, which she admits. Her personal makeup artist also revealed to Rutanja, allegedly, that part of the reason she was refusing old age makeup was that her skin was pretty messed up from losing and gaining weight.

Apparently throughout her career, she would fluctuate up to 20 or more pounds over the course of two weeks and then would have to be shipped off to a fat farm to lose it again. So one also wonders if perhaps the drugs that Irene was alluding to were related to weight loss, right? Which would be just amphetamines at that point.

Also, like, again, there is unrelenting pressure to remain super-stens. thin, particularly in this time in Hollywood. And Joan Crawford was very thin. Rail thin, yes. Yep. Now, also her boyfriend, Terry, who she fought to get a producer credit, which made her

look bad. Apparently, he's also garbage. Allegedly, Faye's makeup artist also told Rutania that she was really down during the whole shoot because he was just telling her that she can't act the whole time and she was no good. What are we doing, Terry? Why are we here?

You're not helping. He alluded to the fact that Terry was using her to get ahead and that Faye might finally be catching on. The film also took a very physical toll on her. She had to have cortisone shots and her hip due to extremely painful flare-ups after physical scenes like the swimming and the Rose Garden. At the end of this movie, they were rushing to finish because they were afraid she was physically not going to be able to shoot. It is a physical performance. Yes. Like when she, even just some of the scenes where the choreography isn't anything too complicated, the intent,

of her performance. As I said at the very beginning of this episode, she is at an 11, the entire movie. In fact, it is so, the early scenes with her and I'm guessing is a composite character, her initial love interest, the lawyer. I can't remember that guy's name. Yeah. Savitt, something said, Greg Savitt, I think, is his name. I looked up that name. I don't think he really exists. But he is so flat compared to her. And he might be a fine actor, but he is in a different movie entirely. Everyone is in a different movie. It is like watching a tiny, like a dog on cocaine jump around a solid rock that never moves. It is so...

It's weird. It's like watching a sloth act across a hummingbird. It's so unusual in those early scenes. I think the only person who successfully matches her, like seems like they are in the same movie as her, is Carol Ann. Yeah, Ritania. Yeah. She exists. She does.

because her more demur performance makes sense as a coping mechanism against, you know, she's actually reacting in a reasonable way. Sort of. She's internalizing it, is at least, you know, my point. So the most famous scene in the film was also one of the most unpleasant for Fay to film. After many takes of the grueling wirehanger scene, Faye collapsed onto the floor, sobbing uncontrollably to the point where Terry O'Neill had to step in and literally scream, no more wirehanger.

He said it had gone too far. They needed to give her a break. They could not keep making her shoot this. If you guys haven't seen the film really quickly, this scene, it's the middle of the night. Joan, Faye, shows up in her daughter's bedroom. She seems like she's actually in a good mood at the beginning of the scene.

She's just perusing her daughter's closet at two in the morning, looking at all the beautiful gowns. She's bought her. It's reminiscent of the beginning of the movie when she's looking at her own clothing. And it's like, look at what the sense you get is she's thinking, look at what I've provided for my daughter. And she's got, you know,

moisturize her face mask on. She has her hair pulled back so tight. Yeah, she looks horrifying. Her skin's going to rip off her face. And she discovers a wire hanger. Mm-hmm. And then she goes, Christina, what a wire hangar's doing in this closet? But she does, like, the note is basically, Joan, you see a wire hanger and you go from

proud to nuclear in seven seconds. Mm-hmm. Good luck. So you can understand why that might take some. something out of somebody. And she sells the performance. She totally pulls off that turnaround, that 180 degree turnaround. Yes. And to have to do that multiple times. And then she beats her daughter with the hanger. She has a little kid. Like this was, I think, a very traumatic experience for her. She did not enjoy it. She did damage to her voice during this scene to the point

where she couldn't speak. And she had to call up an old pal and ask for his vocal coach. And that was Frank Sinatra, who apparently also drove out from Palm Springs to come help her because he was so concerned. Even the way she held her face for the role was painful and involved contorting the muscles around her mouth to create a sort of Joan mask. Like if you look at her face, normally, the way that she is in this movie, she is holding her face differently. It is kind of crazy.

Earlier, I mentioned that she was a pain in the butt about the makeup, but she was also putting in a ton of work to get Joan's face right. And when she figured out the sort of final piece being actually changing the way she held her mouth, she came out of her trailer and people were stunned. She did look like Joan Crawford. It's like her lips like kind of turn up. Yeah, it's her mouth. She does something weird with her mouth.

You can see it in the video if you look at me. Yeah. Chris is just sort of jamming all his fingers into his mouth. Yeah, she has these kind of severe cheekbones. It's a really good uncanny impersonation. In her memoir, face as of the wire hanger scene, quote, no one had stopped it or shaped it or done anything to modulate the scene. It was camp that had gone way over the edge from the white face to the screaming rage of Crawford to the child that I must hit with wire hangers.

Everything about this production was out of kilter off center and somehow I could never find my way back to some sort of middle ground. It does sound like, I mean, listen, I think there's two parts to this. One is that she is extremely overbearing. She's very demanding, and she considers herself a perfectionist, which can be very hard to work with, which also makes people afraid to try and give any kind of direction. But the other side of it is it doesn't sound like she was really getting a lot of direction. I was just say it doesn't sound like there was any authority over her at the end of the day, meaning what a director does.

And also what the director wants is obviously at odds with what she's wanting to give. Exactly. She wants modulation. The director's probably like, great, push it to 11. We want to see Mommy Monster. Right. So her boyfriend and Christina's husband were constantly at odds, having screaming matches in the Franks offices. This just sounds absolutely miserable. But was it also cursed or haunted? Let's discuss. Faye mentioned feeling the presence of Joan with her for most of the shoot and not in a the character has become real sort of way, more of an I'm haunting you kind of way. Quote, at night I would go home to the house we had rented in Beverly Hills and feel Crawford in the room with me, this tragic haunted soul just hanging around. Crawford's was a chilly presence, a coming in and sitting in on the window ledge kind of thing. Ooh. No, thank you.

Apparently scripts would go missing, things would move around on set, and a whole reel of film went to the developer and also came back completely blank. All things that happen on every film set. On haunted movie sets. Exactly. I know. In a very sad turn of events, Frank Perry's ex-wife died of cancer towards the end of the shoot, and he just had to push on through because they were so behind and they could not afford to take a break. Jesus.

At the end of filming, they were at least a million dollars over budget, and they were rushing to finish without incurring more costs. Now, Faye said everyone was so miserable. They didn't even have a rap. party. That's not true. So. So how. You sit an invite her? Yes.

So how Ratania recalls it, apparently it was the press party that was canceled because Faye didn't want models wearing her costumes. But it kind of sounds like they did have a rap party and they didn't tell Faye. What do you guys do is saying? Oh, nothing.

Nothing. Just all leaving at the same time, not going to the same place. Not going to stage 19. Bye. So it's the episode of The Office where Jim's trying to not invite Michael to his housewarming party. Got it. Yep.

Now, despite how awful this shoot had been, remember that everyone involved, even at the end of this, was very much banking on this being an Oscar contender. They still thought this was best picture. Paramount, which had spent at least 10 million on the film, also overestimated the public's knowledge of Joan Crawford in their ad campaigns. Now, remember, the last really big movie Joan had been in was whatever happened to Baby Jane, and that was the early 60s. I was going to say. But Christina's book had been a massive bestseller. It was only, you know, four years earlier that had come out.

So they had initially planned on recreating a series of famous Joan Crawford portraits with Fay Dunaway, even using the same photographer to recreate the portraits. This is one of my favorite facts that I dug up over the course of this entire research. when the photos were tested for the cover of Life magazine, people reported saying that they were more interested in reading the article about dry water holes. So the pictures were scrapped. I got to be honest, that sounds interesting. What is a dry water hole? Well, I'll tell you, the cover story that ran instead was,

are we running out of water? The answer is yes. The answer is yes. Still are. Still are. So instead, they tried to go a more generic direction focusing on the golden age of Hollywood. I think they also tried to go in a mother-daughter direction. Is that when this movie takes place?

It's unclear. Towards the end of it, but not totally because she's aging pretty quickly. So the film premieres in theaters on September 18, 1981, and something unexpected happens from Rutanja's diary. Not only had many of the intimate moments been cut, leaving the story disjointed and impersonal, but no one could stop laughing. The audience enjoyed the film on a whole other,

level than a memoir of child abuse could ever intend. That's such a good way. I'm so glad you mentioned that clearly stuff had been cut. This movie is hacks on together. Like a scene of her saying she wants a baby, the next scene is the baby shows up. The next scene is she's locking the baby. It's like a piece. It's amazing.

She locks the baby in a closet. Then she's like, then we got to hit the baby. Then we got like lose one moment of abuse for a moment of tenderness. And this movie would improve exponential. But they don't. People are just howling, laughing. They're screaming, no wire hangers, talking back to Jones lines. And also, they were showing up in droves.

This was not a box office bomb. Instead, it was something very unusual. It was an immediate camp classic. Now, Paramount realized very quickly what they had on their hands, and they did something, I don't know if I've ever seen before or since. They changed the marketing accordingly. Instead of serious Oscar for your consideration ads, the ads now featured a big wire hanger with no wire hangers

and the words, the biggest mother of them all. And Fay Donaway must be losing her mind. Bay Donaway was losing her mind, but Frank Yablons was truly losing his mind. He was so pissed about the ads that he sued Paramount for $10 million. Whoa. His case was dismissed. Yeah.

And the damage was done. The film grossed just over $19 million, domestic, and around $25 million internationally on a $10 million budget. This was not a failure. Approached break-even. I think by what I have read about this, this at least broke even. Maybe after Viet like ancillary markets and whatnot. Sure, but I think that... Not domestically.

Not domestically. Not theatrically, though. Like even if they did it, if they made it for 10, let's say they spent just... three or four on marketing, then they would need to make between 26 and 28 just to break even. Sure. But the bottom line was this ended up actually not being a bad thing for Paramount. Not a flop. Because that means then going into then licensing, television, VHS, all of that becomes profitable. Yeah, it's continued to make money. And that is, I think, really due to their pivot in the ad campaign. Yeah. Which on one hand was smart, whoever did that.

on the other hand, had to be really upsetting for the people that worked on this movie. Well, it's got to be brutal. So there's always the tense moment of seeing what the movie, I'm sure, as an actor, turns out to be. What takes do they use? Blah, blah, blah. The rude realization that all the scenes that you thought tempered your character have been removed. Yeah. Basically, they're giving you the greatest hits of all the worst moments.

And then they market it not as the Oscar movie that you think you signed up for, but basically saying... A joke. It's a giant joke. Christina Crawford, whose memoir had now turned into, to your point, a camp laughingstock

was also furious, understandably. That's a memoir about her child abuse. And instead of the Oscars it had sought, Mommy Dearest picked up nine Razzie nominations. Fay won for worst actress. It also won worst picture,

worst supporting actor, and actress, and worst screenplay. It actually had such an enduring legacy that in 1990 it won worst picture of the decade. Don't agree with that. It's very fun to watch. Howard the Duck came out in the 80s.

Yeah, come on now. Also, sorry, the Razies are dumb too, because Fay Dunaway... It's amazing in this. That's the thing. It's actually an incredible performance. It's a terrible script. Yeah, I think everybody in the movie does a good job. Dunaway has never really embraced the film in the way that people like Rutania Alda have.

She says, quote, I never compromised my acting and playing Joan, but I did compromise my career. That is accurate. never really recovers from this. However, I'm going to let Carol Ann have the last word on this. Quote, earlier in my career, I witnessed Barbara Streisand abused people on her movie sets. Now, she too claims in interviews that she was disliked because she was a perfectionist. No Barbara, no Faye, you were disliked because you were abusers. A perfectionist ought to be someone who sees perfection and finds perfection around them. It's the imperfectionists like Faye and Barbara, who keep looking for the imperfection until they find them.

it for what we focus on we will find. That's a good quote. As Rutanja's diary was about to be published, someone on her team got a call from Faye Dunaway's people, who she had not heard from in many, many years. Faye was writing a memoir of her own, it turned out, and wanted Routania to fly out to L.A. on her own dime and help her write it.

Her payment was that she would be acknowledged. Carol Ann said, No thanks, bitch. Did not return that call. Yeah. But she was like, I got one more chapter to add to my book. Yeah, seriously. That wraps up Mommy Dearest.

Ugh. Yeah. No one remake this movie. Let it die. Someone remake this movie. Don't do it. Don't do it. It is trauma porn this movie.

It is just trauma porn. And it's obviously so over the top. But I can't. Actually, I don't remake this movie because I don't want a kid to have to go through any of what was being filmed. And it's so much of it to, like you said, there's no way to know how much, if any, or if all, of this actually happened. We have no idea. And there's no reason to speculate. No, I mean, I think some of it probably did.

Like I... Sure, maybe. I don't know. I don't know if I do or I don't. I haven't read the book. But it is, regardless, it's clear that Joan Crawford was a very troubled pain. person, which is extremely sad. Faye Danoe was an extremely troubled,

pained person. I hope she's found peace now later in life. And Christina Crawford was an extremely troubled and pained, you know, person. And I don't really see the need for us to go back to that well. Okay, fine. Well, Chris, what went right? Well, what, I mean, listen. Everything.

I mean, 10 out of 10. Faye Danoe is great in this movie. She is, it's a, it's a, so, I mean, this movie's, it's not good by any traditional metric. It's not good, but it is great. It's very, it's wildly entertaining, but Faye Dunaway, she does these things that are insane in the movie. They are the only way that you, like, I think medically or psychologically could justify it is if you were to say, you know, there's some sort of psychological disorder that this person is suffering from, maybe some sort of, schizophrenia or something like that. But she manages, as a performer, to convey all of the proper turns for the audience so we can actually track what's happening with her character, which is mind-boggling

because she has to justify for her character that a wirehanger is going to lead to a child getting beat, that her daughter quitting on doing another race with her mom in the pool is going to lead to a child getting locked into a closet, that her daughter not finishing her raw meat, is going to lead to this weird hunger strike that she's going to allow her daughter to go on for days, yeah. Go on for days. And she really pulls it off with her performance throughout the movie. I think she sells all of those moments.

And with no reservations, you know, and again, a good director would modulate it and rein her in. Right. Frank Perry clearly didn't and had no interest in doing that, but she gave them everything they could possibly want and more as a performer. And again, like if you watch a movie like Network, like she's so powerful on that movie as well. It really goes to show you.

She is such a powerhouse actress. She's an amazing actress, but at what cost seems to be sort of the... Sure, absolutely, of course. It is a general consensus of almost everyone who had come... had spoken about working with her. It was not super positive. But I do have a lot of sympathy for her because of the time that she was working, the pressure she was working under what it would have been like.

You know, to a certain extent, I get it. and I get wanting to have so much control over your own performance that you don't actually allow people to help you, which is, I think, what was happening here. In terms of what I think went right, I mean... You can pick the same thing. I kind of think Carol Ann's great. Yes, Fay Dunaway's performance is amazing. I'll give some props to Rutania Alda for holding her own and making some of the scenes

make sense in a way that they didn't. I also think Diana Scarwood's pretty good. She doesn't have a lot to do. No, because all of her lines and scenes got. Not cut. Exactly. She kept getting boxed out. Yeah. But yeah, you know what? Sure. I'll go with Faye as well from my What Went Right. I do think her performance is iconic for a reason. If you haven't seen this movie, you just, you should watch it. Like this is a, you have to have seen this. It is wild. It is not boring. But trigger warning, like severe scenes of child abuse in this movie. Yeah, it's terrible.

Like it, shocking. Watching it with David, we. were like, this isn't as funny as I thought it's going to see. That's the thing. There were some scenes that made me laugh, but they weren't the child abuse scene. They were the in-between scenes when they tried to strike some balance of normality, but especially having a child, a little girl, asleep in the room next to us while we were watching it. Yeah. It's a tough watch. It was not. I wasn't expecting that. I was expecting something broader and not that. Well, you want to round us out with a shout out to our... Let's do it, guys.

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What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett. and Chris Winterbauer. Editing and music by David Bowman with cover art from Uthano Youos.