WHAT WENT WRONG - Popeye (1980)

Episode Date: November 10, 2020

Cocaine-stuffed mannequins, letters from Henry Kissinger, and jaundiced prosthetics - all this and more in Robert Altman’s Popeye! Guest hosted by Alex Logan.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 What Went Wrong. I'm Lizzie Bassett and who am I here with? Chris Winterbauer. That pause means this is going to be a good episode. Yes, it does. Here in body, not in mind. We have the pleasure of having a very special guest with us today. So, as you may have noticed by the episode title, we are covering an absolutely bonkers movie called Popeye. And the reason we are covering this, I had never heard. of it, a gentleman who I have the pleasure of working with at IMDB named Alex Logan brought

it up to me when he heard about this podcast we were doing. And we are joined today by Alex. He, as I said, is a senior producer at IMDB. He's responsible for much of our, may I say, fantastic video content. He's the producer of the IMD brief. He is also a screenwriter. And Chris, he is a fellow graduate of USC. Hey, let's talk about debt. Okay. Yeah. Well, Alex, hello, how are you? And why do you like this movie? This is one from my childhood. I have had a weird fascination with Popeye since I was a young lad. First the cartoons and then at some point when I was kindergarten first grade, somebody said to me, I think it was my grandma. You know, there's a movie version of that with that guy that you like, Robin Williams.

And I had to see it. I think I rented it from my library the first time I saw it. And then I just continued renting it either from Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, or the library as many times as I could. Really, this is the story of two bobs, a Mediterranean island, a bunch of dummies filled with cocaine, and the Spinage Loven Sailor Man, who ruined them both and took down their seemingly indestructible careers. Dear God, what a pitch. All right. I'm excited.

I had no idea that this movie existed. No. I told my wife about it because I was watching it in between meetings today. I was a little behind and she came in and she said, what are you watching? I was like, I'm watching Popeye. And she was like for the cartoon. I was like, no, the movie. And she was blank stare from 1980 starring Robin Williams and Shelley Duval by Robert All,

and just no recognition across the board. I had never, I had no idea that Robin Williams made this movie. I don't know if Robin Williams remembered making this movie by at the end of his life. We'll get into that. I'm pretty sure that most of the people do not have very vivid memories of what happened on this set for a number of reasons. Why don't you set up for us what, if there is one, the plot of this movie is? I kept trying to take notes and just gave up. It's the live action adaptation of E.C. Cigar's comic strip that follows the titular sailor man as he arrives in the

small coastal town of Sweethaven. He's looking for his father, but instead falls for a local heartthrob, olive oil. They also find a baby who he names Sweet Pea. Sweet pee, yes. Yep, for Sweet Haven. And eventually they find Popeye's father, who has the best name of them all, poop deck pappy. All while being chased by the largest Armenian man in the county who is chasing. them all down.

He's mean as they sing in that song over and over again. And he's large. And the whole time it just sounds like he, I was like, what is anyone saying in this movie? In that trademark where Robert Altman, overlapping dialogue and almost inaudible dialogue, but then taking it to the maximum with Robin Williams, just mumbling all of his lines.

Yeah, should any of you out there decide to watch this movie after listening to this podcast, which I will tell you, it is not the worst one we have covered. I wouldn't say don't watch it. Chris is angry that we made him watch this. But don't watch this without subtitles. Turn on the subtitles.

I don't know how you could understand any of this without them. I'll tell you, you can't. I never turned them on. I watched the whole thing. And I was very lost. This is a very interesting movie about taxation, is what I came away with. Yeah.

Yeah, it is in part about the American experience. and being ruled by American imperialism and dealing with an unseen dictator. There's so many weird ideas that they were trying to clash in with just the old style comic strip of Popeye and also then putting on top of that the cartoon, which was a very different Popeye,

different take on it and trying to keep some of that out of it and put some of that in of it. And then adding, making a musical on top of it. Yes. Which felt like, you know what, it's not enough that we're, We're live actioning a cartoon based on a comic strip. Like, we need really lifeless musical numbers to fill out this movie.

All right. Well, I'm sure we're going to hear a lot more about that in the coming minutes. Alex, take us down this spinachy rabbit hole. So it was released on December 6th, 1980. It's coming up on its 40th birthday, directed by Robert Altman, written by Jules Pfeiffer, produced by Robert Evans. That's really where it all begins. It's starring Robin Williams, Shelley DeVall, Ray Walston as Poop Deck Pappy. Paul Dooley plays Jay Wellington Wimby. Got to give him his full name. And much of the San Francisco Mime Troop, the Pickle Family Circus,

I'll be saying their name as much as possible as I can at this podcast because Pickle Family Circus is just a delight. Is that Bill Irwin? Is he part of that? Bill Irwin. Yes, he is. playing ham gravy. So yeah. So this is a weird period in Altman's career. We're looking back now at Altman after a renaissance and a complete critical reevaluation in the 90s and 2000s. As you said, Chris, you didn't even believe that it existed. It's kind of a fever dream movie to say the least.

But even for Altman completis, it's pretty low on the list of favorites or ones to get to. It's kind of that I can't believe Altman made that movie of his whole filmography, and he made a lot of movies. But at the same time, it absolutely devastated his career and everything he built up to that point. It also took the wind out of the film producer Robert Evans' almost indestructible sales. And it came to be known in the trades as Evansgate, which is a little callback to Heaven's Gate and your great episode with Matt Dedish. Kevin's Gate of later years, Waterworld. Oh, right, of course. So let's first get into Robert Altman.

He's an industrious rebel, a groundbreaking iconoclass, and an irascible artist or other A word. Robert or Bob to his family and large circle of friends who usually treated like family. Altman was born February 20th, 1926 in Kansas City, Missouri. He flew bombing missions over Southeast Asia during World War II. Wow. Then he moved to L.A. and almost immediately sold a story to RKO for a B movie.

He asked the studio if he could write the screenplay. They refused. He asked if he could come just watch the movie being made, and again, they refused. He hit a wall in his career, so he retreated home to Kansas City, where he stumbled upon this industrial production company that was hiring. He lied about having all this Hollywood experience and got a job directing. He made 60 educational and industrial shorts like modern football, king basketball, and how to run a filling station. He called this period his film school. Okay. So he got a shot.

He made a low budget feature about the horrors of teen lawlessness that they called the delinquents. And I really can't think of anything more 50s than that. He shot it in his hometown, and it got the attention of Alfred Hitchcock, who asked him to come direct an episode of Alfred Hitchcock presents. So in 1957, he moved back west and got his start in TV. He had this innate ability to restart and reinvent and kind of bullshit his way into the door. And that would keep him working until his death in 2006. He actually had a team scouting locations for his next feature when he passed away at age 81. Like Eastwood, he just would never stop.

So for the next six years, though, after getting this shot to direct, he direct over 100 episodes of shows like Worley Birds, Bonanza. and to connect back to your two-parter on Twilight Zone the movie, Combat, starring the one and only, Vic Morrow. So then Altman pulls from his own experiences of World War II, and he makes this episode only when the executive goes out of town, because the executive told him, absolutely not, can you make this episode, about Shell Shock, which we now know as PTSD. And it was starring Vic Morrow, and it actually got Altman fired

because he went out on a limb and made this thing. And that was the point at which he decided to quit TV all together, start making his own films and start writing his own ideas because he really felt that most of the scripts he had gotten up to that point and, you know, this is indicative of early TV, were pretty bad and he had better ideas. Yeah. So this would evolve into his opinion that the script was merely an embarkation, preferring to improvise almost everything about his films and really hardly ever directing his actors at all. This is a little taste of Robert Altman talking about his. his career in 1990. He was asked if he felt that he had changed

throughout his career. And I think this kind of just sets up his thinking and his approach to filmmaking. I think I just keep doing the same thing. And occasionally, what I do crosses with the general attitude of the public and it becomes very successful. And then I'm a failure and it has been. And then I cross back again.

But I'm going straight. To me, I'm going in a straight line. Everybody else is just going like this. You might recognize that from a band of horses' song as well. Strangely enough, Dahl Time slash the Moon interpolates that interview. So if it sounded at all familiar, he's this, he was this Akana class. He had a way of doing it. He figured it out in making those 100 episodes of TV, and he just kind of kept doing it.

And one of the times the world really synced up with Altman was MASH. Right. He got offered the script for MASH because really everyone else had said no. It was a $3 million budget. He had the experiences from the war that he could pull from and ended up grossing $81 million, won a best screenplay Oscar. Wow. Even though they had pretty much thrown away the screenplay that was written and improvised so much of it. Right.

So ironic that an Altman movie would win a best screenplay Oscar. Exactly. It also won the Palm Door at Cannes that year. And at that point, Altman was given essentially a decade of rope with which to slowly hang himself by experience. By experimenting time and again and really almost every genre and really to wildly varying degrees of success. It was at this point, too, that he opened his own studio called Lionsgate, not that Lionsgate. He had his own. Yeah, they're both named after the same bridge in Vancouver.

But he had this own studio. It was all of his collaborators. He had this idea of creating this family of collaborators where a filmmaker could walk in the door at Lionsgate with an idea and walk out the other side with a fin of. film. And, you know, for a little while, he actually was able to achieve that dream. Speaking of dreams, it was also during this decade and this character will play in in a weird way. He had this creative liberty and dogged production, and he once actually was able to sell a literal dream that he had the night before to Fox Film president, Alan Ladd Jr. While his cab was waiting outside, meter still running on the way to the airport. He knew that

lad was this guy who would take chances on artists. And he went in there and was like, Like, I got this dream. I don't know. Maybe it'll work out. What do you think, Laddie? And he bought it. And that movie became three women with Shelly DeVall. She won Best Actress at Cannes in 1977.

It's this, like, trippy desert mind fuck movie that I just can't recommend more. Alan Ladd, who also brought Star Wars to life. Bingo. Yes. And another great episode that you guys got to check out about Laddie backing George Lucas. After three women, Altman and Shelley DeVall, who had been working together for some time, had a falling out and weren't talking to each other. So this was already going to be difficult in a couple of years when they come back around and try to make Popeye. But it starts this relationship

with Altman and Fox and Laddie where he's basically allowed to just go try a bunch of different things. Yeah. And he comes out with these four films that each do worse than the next and each come back with more and more just vitriol from the critics. They're really not connecting with audiences. and the critics are kind of turning against them. The same critics that, you know, so roundly praised Altman a few years before. But the breaking point for him was Princess Grace Kelly of Monaco, who still had a hand in with Fox, came and yelled at Laddie. She was so mad at Alan Ladd because her friend, Paul Newman, was allowed to be cast in Altman's movie Quintet.

And when Grace Kelly yelled at Laddie, he basically said, you know what? Forget it. I quit. left Fox and Altman lost his biggest supporter and bankroller. He was really on a down swing. He really had a lot of projects that were lined up and that were now going to go nowhere until a new fan of his would enter the picture with a new picture. And that's Robert Evans, who was once called the Boy King of Hollywood. This is the kid stays in the picture.

And I'm not going to do the whole backstory on Robert Evans because you should just watch that documentary. The kid stays in the picture. It's just, you know, a Hollywood hogwash of sex, drugs and filmmaking. but, you know, the most fun kind. I actually have a little bit of Evans talking about Popeye from the book, if you'd like to play that. As I look back on it, it was my biggest disappointment, only because I thought it would be my greatest picture.

There was Robin Williams coming off television, his first flick. And if you ever have a chance to see it on cable, or pick it up in a video store, do it. He was, as was Shirley DeFoeil personified, and it stood for everything I believe in, the celebration of the individual. As Popeye would say, I am what I am,

that's all what I am. I'm Popeye the Sailor Man. Until this day, I think of popular-rated film that I've ever been involved with. Too bad Popeye ever. He seems very sweet. He sounds like Popeye.

Can't say I agree with him, but I'm glad that he stands by the movie, obviously. And I think that what he mentions here, this idea that the biggest failure is really because he, it's in light of the fact that it was supposed to be his greatest success. We've seen that happen a few times with movies on this podcast,

where it's the biggest swing that ends up being the biggest miss. And obviously, we'll have just covered it with Bonfire of the Vanities, which Peter Goober thought was going to be like his magnum opus. Obviously did not turn out the way it was supposed to. On the note of Popeye, does his character even register for you? I definitely watched it. I remember watching it at my grandma's house. I was definitely familiar with Popeye the Sailor Man and olive oil.

I was familiar. It does not mean anything to me. Definitely. I don't know why it became such a part of mine, but it was. And we have E.C. Cigar to thank for that. He created the Daily Comic Strip Thimble Theater and added Popeye to that mix in 1929. I'm going to read something from Wikipedia, but it's only because it's written so insanely.

And just kind of shows you. the tone and style of the old Popeye comics and just kind of how weird they were. Popeye first appeared in the strip on January 17th, 1929 as a minor character. He was initially hired by Olive Oil's brother, Castor Oil, and her former beau, Harold Hamgravy, to crew a ship for a voyage to Dice Island. Caster intended to break the bank at the casino using the unbeatable good luck conferred by stroking the hairs on the head of Bernice the Whifflehem. On the trip back, Popeye was shot many times by Jack Snork, but survived by rubbing Bernice's hair on her head.

After the adventure, Popeye left the strip, but due to the reader reaction, they quickly brought him back. Within four years. Oh, sorry, go ahead. No, so clearly he's on, like, Mescalan or something. Like, there's, like, the creator, this is absolutely insane. Well, it's 1929. Like, you know, everybody's riding the wave, right? It's all good times, man, if it's about to not be.

But you've got a fun sailor with overgrown forearms that look like you've stuffed two weasels into bags. Is there any insight as to where the body proportions came from for Popeye? They're horrifying. No, it's mostly the characters from the Thimble Theater all have these strange designs and just really weird looks. I mean, I think they were able to capture a lot of that on the film. They did an amazing job. I mean, Charlie of all just happens to be built like olive oil and like heard of the end with. But they did a very good job.

It was a little creepy, some of it, but it worked. Yeah, horrifying. Absolutely horrifying. Well, when bringing a living cartoon with cartoon proportions to life, you're going to, you know, make a few nightmares. After he debuts in this comic and everybody loves them, they turn him into a cartoon, film short cartoons for before Paramount movies. That starts in 1933. It's Max Fleischer who introduces that.

And he actually introduced some of the tropes or kind of really codified the tropes of eating spinach to become ultra strong. That wasn't as much a part of the comic strip as it was of the comics, which is a little bit the, you know, is really the reason why he doesn't like spinach until the end of the movie. Yeah, I kept wondering about that. I was like, did I remember this incorrectly? The cartoons have a very specific formula for that. Right.

It's like he eats the spinach and then he, you know, fights the bluto. This one, yeah, it's, it's, he wasn't, I don't know that he hated spinach in the comics, but this was just, this was the gimmick that they went with. He really has one hero moment, so he just kind of tease it out until they can get to it. So anyways, let's talk about this film. At first, producer Robert Evans wanted Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin for Popeye and Olive Oil. And he wanted Midnight Cowboy and Marathon Man director, John Schlesinger at the helm. You know, perfect choice. The guy made an X-rated prostitute movie. and now he's going to make a family-friendly musical.

Who would go on to direct Pacific Heights with Melanie Griffith, if anyone's interested in connecting the six degrees to bonfire the vanities. Yeah, really weird choice for this movie. Really weird. Oh, there's more weird choices coming. So in 1977, Robert Evans told the New York Times, he's already plugging this movie. I just love how back in this time period,

people just were slinging news around town as if it's just going to happen. Like, Doolittle was like three years out, and they're like, get ready. Three years from now, it's going to be your Christmas present. And it's just like, it's so wild the announcements the producers would make. Like, he doesn't have a cast or anything. He's just like, get ready, Dustin. Well, luckily, I guess for Hoffman, then, he got into a fight with the playwright that Evans

had hired to write the script, Jules Pfeiffer. And when Evans refused to fire Pfeiffer, Hoffman dropped out. and then so did Lily Tomlin. Evans hired Robin Williams, who was hot off his hit series, Mork and Mindy. He wasn't certain if Williams could carry the movie, but he was sure that he looked like Popeye,

and that was really enough for him. Well, considering you can't understand a word Popeye says, really all you need is for him to look like Popeye, so that's fine. And just be able to go around and close one eye the entire time. Boy, he does a good job. Yeah, I was trying to figure out if they had it closed. I think it was like a prosthetic they put on top of his.

I think it was glued show. Yeah, there was something. Because it looked a little too. like bulbous. But then there were sometimes where it did feel like both eyes were kind of squinting and I thought like maybe they didn't get the makeup on for that shot. Yeah. It looked uncomfortable. Just go out there and do it.

We don't have time. We don't have money. Yeah. So after Schlesinger left, they tried Hal Ashby of Harold Maude and shampoo fame. So that's who I thought directed this for some reason. It makes more sense. Thank God he didn't because that would have been the time he made being there and being there may have never been made, which would have been just devastating.

They tried Mike Nichols, Arthur Penn, and then this is actually, this is Jules Fifer's response during that period where they're going through all these directors. At one point, Jared Lewis wanted to do it, and I said, I'd rather kill myself. Evans brought up Altman, and I knew two things immediately. I knew that he would put the characters on screen in the most imaginative and vital way possible, and I knew I'd be lucky if I got a word of mine from the script on the screen. But I figured if I got 50% I'd be doing very well And we're out of choices anyhow

And I thought we might just get lucky That seems like a fair assessment I thought it was very I thought all the physical comedy stuff Was very imaginative Like absolutely There was one stunt in particular Where he kicks the big dude kicks castor oil And he launches off of the boxing ring

That was very well done I was shocked I was like That looks great for a practical effect So Altman comes on. He immediately insists that they shoot in the Republic of Malta, an island nation in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Sicily. On a set that they'd entirely build themselves from lumber, they'd have to completely import since there was no indigenous wood available to build their city of Sweet Haven. Malta is essentially just a rock in the sea. But they did have a big saltwater tank that the country had built to try to get more films to come shoot there. And they said they could use it for miniatures. I don't think they did any miniatures in this movie. That would have needed that.

But really, they needed to accommodate a winter shoot because Rob Williams was shooting TV for the rest of the year. And Malta supposedly had the right climate. So at this point, Robert Egg, Eganweiler, C.O. Doc Erickson and Wolf Kroger, just incredibly named people who were all working with Altman. They supervised 165-person construction crew from June to December 1979. They built 19 structures, and they're all full real structures. They're not just false fronts. It was a hotel, a schoolhouse, a post office, a church, a sawmill, a tavern, a casino,

as well as gangways, boardwalks, sheds, and timber shoots. All of it worked. This is from the cinema of Robert Altman, Hollywood Maverick, by Robert Nimi. Hundreds of logs, thousands of wooden planks were trucked from the Netherlands across Europe to Italy, then shipped to Malta, eight tons of nails, 2,000 gallons of paint were used. They had to build a 250 foot breakwater so Sweet Haven wouldn't be washed out to sea as they were finished out. I just feel like maybe there was an easier way to do this. The set looks great.

I will say it looked great. It looked like a Wes Anderson movie. Absolutely. It felt very tactile. Well, it's because of these buildings are real. They buy real seaworthy vessels, real boats, and then they sink them in the bay for more set dressing. They're just creating this full world for them to. live in. They even had to build a road to get in and out of the location because there was no way

to get there otherwise. Then above the town, and you don't actually see this in any of the shoot, they built an entire production complex, including plaster shop, makeup and carpentry labs, a wardrobe unit, a rehearsal hall, an editing suite, a production office, and a projection room where the whole cast and crew would get together to watch dailies. This is a must for Altman productions. Booze would flow with these screenings and create that family atmosphere with everyone rooting for each other's performances. That sounds fun. Yeah, that was kind of like the party that he loved to make at all these sets.

And if that wasn't enough, they also built state-of-the-art recording studios where they recorded all the music. This is nuts. In Malta. Yeah, why wouldn't you just go back to whatever? Anyway, keep going. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so, you know, it seems full-heartedly at best, right?

But Altman learned early on, maybe from that episode of combat that he made with Vic Morrow while the suit was out of town to show. to shoot your movie far away from the studio execs and babysitters, so they had no chance to meddle with your art. That makes sense. Yeah, and Jules Fifer joke that Altman would have shot it on the moon just to get away from Michael Eisner and the other Paramount suits. And, you know, this is actually something that Altman has done before.

In 1971's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, he built an entire town in the West Vancouver Wilderness that progressed along with the movie's plot. So there's a construction crew building and serving as extras at the same time. They're building the town, and they've just all got these characters that they're, you know, playing in the background as they build this town. Wow.

Popeye actually kind of mirrors McCabe and Mrs. Miller in a lot of ways, except that olive oil doesn't run a brothel. They just instead visit one if you caught that at the racetrack. There is a brothel scene. It's a very weird moment. Yeah. All these women are like touching up Robin Williams' forearms as he's. Yeah.

And this is a Disney co-produced movie. And it's also the first Disney movie where a character yells shit. I know. He says it right way before he dives towards the end. I was like, that was a weird inclusion. Yeah, exactly. It's such a, there's so many weird of those details. And there's also in that brothel scene, there's a quick, um, nod to Julie Christie's opium smoking pose from the cave and Mrs. Miller. You know, really it's like, I guess nobody can be that mad. They hired Altman and they got an Altman movie, right? So this fantastical and yet, you know, drab, seaside village of Sweethaven, juxtaposed with the blue green and the Mediterranean and the pops of reds and blues in the character's costumes, it creates a living cartoon. And it's that costume designer associated. producer, Scott Bushnell deserves the praise for that. I think he really created this living cartoon for all of these people do exist in against that crazy backdrop. They're still trying to

cast the movie. They hadn't settled upon Shelley DeVall yet. They're looking at Gilda Radner. She was the breakout of Saturday Night Live, and they considered her for it at that time. Her manager, Bernie Brillstein, told her that you are not going to Malta with Robert Evans and Robert Altman. They had too bad of reputations for partying too hard, and there was obviously plenty of that going on at S&L. He was just worried for her safety. He told her, do not go. So at that point, it's Altman had to bury whatever acts he had with Shelley DeVall and bring her back into the mix. She's literally like if you asked someone to make olive oil into a human, it would be Shelley Duvall. So I don't know how you can ignore that. Also, this is the same year

as The Shining, right? This is. She actually was coming off of the Shining. to this. Oh, so she needed a party in Malta. Yeah, but, you know, she probably needed some time to just rest in between because I imagine she was experiencing a little bit of PTSD from that. So Shelly DeVall in 1981, she did an interview about taking the role. She said, God, as a child, I was so embarrassed when the kids would call me olive oil because it meant you were as skinny as a rail, you had sparrow legs, and an Adam's apple. I mean, who wants to admit she was born to play olive oil, even if she had reddish. reservations about taking it. Altman had already told everybody she was born to play the role. Thanks, Rob.

She was. So at this point, you know, the movie was budgeted at $13 million, but it was already starting to balloon because Altman was spending all this money on toys in Malta and sending all this stuff there and making it even more difficult to get all the lumber and everything there. He assembles a cast of 50 players. There's numerous character actors mixed in their Dennis Friends, Donald Moffitt, Linda Hunt. his own baby grandson Wesley Ivan Hurt is playing sweepie. Who's being like hung from a crane at the end?

I'm like putting your grandson in harm's way. It's all I'll say. That baby is a store. Yeah. Altman was always, and he's got that little crooked smile and he took one to look at him and was like, oh, that's where the pipe goes. But he would always use some of his family members on different jobs. I mean, they like to be involved.

He married an actress who became one of his biggest support. Carter's Catherine Reid Altman, but he also, his children would work as camera assistance or production assistants. Stephen Altman, his one son, kind of moved up the ranks and was doing a lot of his production design and things through the years. One of his sons, when he was 14 years old, actually wrote the theme song to MASH. He wrote the Suicide as Painless Lyrics. Weirdless enough that a 14-year-old child wrote that. I don't know. It sounds like something a 14-year-old would come up with. A 14-year-old Altman, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. So, Altman gets all these people together on Malta now that he's got the set built.

He's got, you know, 50 people in the cast, Dennis Franz, Donald Moffitt, Linda Hunt, his own baby grandson, a bunch of European acrobats and Italian stuntmen to do all these stunts. He's got that one actor hired who's playing Bear the Hermit. If you noticed him, he's in the background of almost every shot in the movie. He doesn't have any lines. He's not referred to ever. He's just the Hermit character. And if you look, he's like peeking in a window. or he's like 200 feet back in the back of the shot,

just to add to the weirdness. He's also got Frederico Fellini's trusted cinematographer, Giuseppe Rotano, shooting this thing for him, which is why it looks so beautiful. And also the pickle family circus is in the mix there. As you said, Bill Irwin is probably the biggest name of them. He played ham gravy, the guy who Pluto squishes down like an accordion. But he was big on Law & Order SVU and as Mr. Noodle from Sesame Street. and Elmo's World, if you have ever had to watch that with kids.

Also, the dad and Rachel getting married. He's a great actor. Yeah. Yeah, he is. He is. And a really talented mime and, yeah, contortionist, I guess, from the squishing scene. So he's got all of his cast assembled. Now it's time to put together the music.

He considered Randy Newman, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Leonard Cohen, who he'd actually used music from for McCabe and Mrs. Miller. But then at Robin Williams' urging, he brought on Harry Nillard. Which is the weirdest choice. Such a weird choice. It's why everything sounds like a downbeat folk song in this movie. I loved it. As soon as I saw Harry Nilsson, I was like, what's happening?

And then when you get into the songs and it's just her being like, large, large, he needs me. It was great. It is weird, weird, weird. It was an ambient hit every time the song came on in this movie. I love Harry Nils. My dad was a big Harry Nilsen fan, and I was shocked when I saw that name. I was like, what is he lending his name to this for? And it's not just lending.

He was there. He was there on set the whole time. He was mid-recording an album. He dropped everything and ran to join Altman's family slash party. He was playing nightly concerts when everyone was assembled to watch dailies. And then they also brought along frequent Beach Boys and Brian Wilson and collaborator, who co-wrote a lot of smile, Van Dyke Parks. He arranged all the music and he played Hogi the piano player in a couple scenes in the Ruff House.

Foodery of the Everything is Food House. I thought you were going to say Charles Manson. Oh, no, gosh. I was ready. Frequent Beach Boys collaborator. He was ready for Charles Manson to be behind the scenes on Popeye. That added up for me. Yeah, no, perfect.

I guess he was in jail by this point. But anyway. Right, right. But if they had let him out on, you know, on a little bit of good behavior. just to hang out on the Pope, I said. It wouldn't have been that surprising. The studio exactly goes where like, maybe this will make Altman work faster. Yeah. You got to get these people off this island, Bob.

So many talented people all just hanging out. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the biggest point of contention with people is whether they either love the Harry Nelson music, kind of understand the Harry Nelson music, or just can't stand it. For those of you at home, almost the entirety of the lyrics of the first song are Shelley Duvall talking about the fact that he is large. That's it. That's the entire gist of the song for five minutes. Read into large however you want.

I don't want to because that man upset me to begin with. So this price tag on this movie was ballooning. They were already shooting past their $13 million when they had finished the sets. And Paramount CEO and Personal Hero slash Fascination of Mine, Michael Eisner, brought on Disney to co-produce the movie, giving Buena Vista their subsidiary international distribution. And this Paramount and Disney partnership is what would later lead to Disneyland becoming updated because Eisner wanted to impress his teenage son, Brack. And so I don't know, Chris, even if you hate this movie, it caused Disneyland to be a little bit better.

And I guess that's one reason to like it. So you clearly, we don't know each other. You hate Disneyland. I hate Disneyland. I also kind of hate Disneyland. I think theme parks are like humanity at our worst. Continue. Well, you will hate.

than this next fact because the set still stands. I love the set. I stand by the set. The set is great. It's still there and it is now an amusement park. Okay, I hate it now. You can, it's Popeye Village Malta. You can go visit it.

It's a bunch of little museums. You can vacation there. You can even get married there. You can get married by a woman, a very beautiful Maltese woman dressed as all. olive oil. And then for dinner, you can have a heart-shaped burger at Wimpeas. Alex, I can't believe you didn't have your own wedding there. I didn't know it existed when this. I had no idea that this was so far off my radar. Renewal of the vows. I'm already trying. So yeah, let's talk about this actual shoot.

Now that he's got everybody there. It's 147 days on Malta. Everybody's basically locked on this compound. They can't leave. And as soon as they start, it begins to pour. The weather was supposed to be good at this time of year. That was the main pitch for the location besides, you know, trying to get away from Michael Eisner and the executives. But Robert Evans claimed it rained every single day. Oh, God. No matter what they had to shoot around the rain. And then as they're trying to shoot the first scene, they get a look at the arms that they had done by some prop masters and they're awful. Robin Williams says that the initial makeup guy made the arms and they looked kind of like two hazmat gloves filled with putty. They wrinkled all over. It was like I was wearing two long gloves that you used to clean a toilet.

Flesh colored, but still awful. Then they brought in this Italian makeup crew that was amazing. I remember there was a little old lady punching hair into the arms, kind of like doing it the old fashion way. But they made almost the Vinci-style models with arms with the muscles underneath and then they put the rubber over the top and it worked much better. Eventually got somewhere with it But yeah, they still are pretty disturbing And by the end of the movie I don't know if it's the saltwater or the sun

But they kind of turn like jaundice yellow Even more yellow than Bluto turns In the very last scene So the weather at arms have set them back This is where it goes really crazy Robert Evans heads to Malta And his steamer trunks That are filled with personal items

And kilos of illicit drugs go missing He goes to the Maltese Prime Minister To try to help him find the missing trunks And says, you know, don't look inside And the prime minister, the prime minister's like, I have much better things to do, forget about it.

So Evans lies and tells him that inside my trunk, there is a very special letter addressed to you, prime minister, from my good friend and the former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. What? So, yeah, if you read Evans's autobiography,

Henry Kissinger is like his unwilling sidekick throughout all of his life and autobiography. They're always hanging out. out, there's this great story where he pulls Kissinger away from peace talks between Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong to attend the Godfather premiere. He's always like making him do these insane things for him, including writing a backdated letter to the Maltese Prime Minister because that letter didn't exist when he was telling him that if you find my luggage, you'll get this amazing letter

from Henry Kissinger. Kissinger didn't want to write it because the Maltese Prime Minister had badmouthed the U.S. and cited with Libya's dictator Gaddafi. So he didn't want any association with him, but Evans claimed it was the only way to save my movie. But to be clear, it was the only way to save his drugs that were in these suitcases. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yes.

And also to save, you know, if they did find the suitcase looking into it and shutting down the whole production because they weren't really supposed to be there with, you know, God knows what was even in that case. The suitcases did arrive a day later, but they burned through the stash pretty quickly. And they tasked the unit coordinator David Levy with reupping. as he says, just because we were in Malta, nearly halfway around the world, life should still go on, and so arrangements were made. This, at the time, fell on my shoulders

to make sure the people over there on these shores got something together and put it, meaning drugs, inside these items that we really did need for the film. We put it inside people-sized dummies. So they are packing these big dummies that they're using throughout, filling them up with cocaine,

and then shipping them over. This is more from David Levy. We were so ensconced on that island and the authorities were so okay with us that Steve Altman, Robert's son, could basically go behind the counter at customs and just sling these things over his shoulder and take them away, a very, very different world. So they're stuffing mannequins full of cocaine in order to get them to their set of the live action Popeye where they all need to be incredibly high on cocaine. To sing and dance. Okay, true. If spinach does it in the cartoon world, cocaine does it in the real world. world.

Yes. And also stops your heart. So Robin Williams, this is a quote from the time. When we were on Malta, we were on everything but skates. And then they sent the skates in and it got interesting. The open bar at Daly's, I think anything, everything was going on. People smoking a joint or whatever. And then later on when the magic dust appeared in the radios,

Daillies got more interesting too. But I think if you're going to watch two hours of a boat rowing, you have to have a little help. Yeah. That's a sure. This is adding up, but oh my God. So then on the, you know, not as crazy drug-addled side of things, Stephen Altman and Catherine Reid Altman were interviewed for Robert Altman's The Oral Biography. This is them talking about working on the set and just kind of the hardships of it.

What was the scene like on Popeye? It was nuts. I considered it at the time and probably still today as the hardest, roughest time. Nine months on the rock, you know? Gates closed and you're stuck there. It was really bad. everybody went through changes everybody had huge changes of life

and people got divorced and married and very few people were left sane on that island everybody was very loaded a lot of tantrums and fights and tantrums a lot of drinking Bob he went right with it he created it we had one or two kids born

a couple of divorces a lot of wife cheating Jesus all right sign me up for Popeye Island cocaine's a hell of a drug And you can still have all of that at Popeye Village Malta. Really, it seemed like Jules Fifer, the writer, was having the worst time of anybody. He just hated that Altman was allowing Robin Williams to improvise his lines and he thought it was turning into his stand-up routine. And he said that, you know, while he was sitting at these dailies, he was watching everybody laughing and having the best time and, you know, saying everybody's jokes were perfect, which, you know, is kind of that atmosphere that you're going to get into.

And he was just recoiled in horror looking at what it was becoming. and he got into a fight with Altman about it, and Altman told him, I don't direct my actors. I don't believe in directing them. They started yelling at each other. Fyfer decided that he was going to leave after a night wandering around the empty set, just feeling lost. But then Altman came to him when he sobered up and said that, you're the only man who's not afraid to tell me what's really going on. And the pair sort of working together, and they actually kind of cut down some of Robin Williams's

weird, just off-the-cuff ad-living and tried to get it back to where it was. Jules Pfeiffer, God love him. I don't know if this man had a very specific vision of what this movie should be. And it seemed like everybody else was kind of just like along for the party. Yeah. Making this kind of just, you know, ad hoc cartoon nightmare. Yeah, so far, this just sounds like an excuse for them all to do cocaine on Malta. Like, okay, great.

And listen to Harry Nilsen concerts, right? I'll say it again. Sign me up. I'd like, I would love to go to Malta and listen to Harry Nilsen. Yeah. So they had kind of burned through a lot of the budget in their, needing to shoot the end of the movie because Disney and Paramount had told them, like, you're cut off, shoot what you can and get back to California.

We need to start putting this thing together. They, of course, set a December date that- It's always the Christmas release that they got to hit. They're already worried about not getting there or not being able to put it all together. And they had this giant set piece for the ending planned where Popeye and Bluto rip apart pieces of the ship to joust each other. They would tear down the mass and duel with them. And then the ship would slowly sink around them as they were battling. but they didn't have any money, so they were trying to figure out what to do.

Robin Williams said that he remembers a meeting with Robert Evans, and this is Robin Williams' quote, I think he was sitting there a bit tweaked, and I said, how are we going to end this? I don't know, how. And then I said, I could walk on water like, Jesus, I was joking. That's great, let's do it. It was like, wait a minute, no, Bob, no, no, no. I mean, the cartoon, Pope, no, no, no. I mean, we didn't have any special effects.

In the cartoons, his feet would turn into a propeller and go flying through the water. but we had three Maltese guys and me on a wench under water being pulled very quickly. And they left Shelley in the water with an octopus that couldn't be run. And it was a very still octopus at the end of the movie. And Robin Williams calls it an Ed Wood moment where she's just going, oh, hell. Yes. But we just had to keep going. And Bob said, just shoot it.

We got it. Go. And so they're just trying to, you know, get this thing to the end. And then they get back and they realize that almost all of Robin Williams' dialogue is completely. Yes. Not understood. I told Lizzie, I told David, every one of his lines sounds like it was 80 yard in this movie. Because, like, you can't hear anything.

It was. It was 100% 80 yard because he was, that cornucb pipe was making a mumble. He was, you know, just ad-libbing all this stuff. And I'm sure he probably didn't even remember what he said when they went back to it. A coked up Robin Williams, ad-living in a movie that's going to be distributed by Disney, sounds like letting your child play with a pipe bomb. Like, that's just a... recipe for a disaster. And just for anyone who doesn't know, ADR is automated dialogue replacement,

and it's when you bring your actor back and you play back a scene for them and they repeat the dialogue over and over again. It's called looping. And you replace their on-screen, you know, on-set dialogue, on-location dialogue with studio recorded dialogue. But since it sounds a lot cleaner, you can oftentimes pick out when there's ADR if it's not mixed in really well, which is very hard to do. So that's why a lot of his lines, like, don't quite sync with his mouth movements, this movie. And sometimes they're changing lines. And especially when you see a movie that went through changes in post. And, you know, if that wasn't enough, they also recorded the songs live on set with the actors. Sounds like it. Which is a nightmare for an editor always,

every time that that comes up. It's usually brought up as like, well, Lalo Land, they recorded it on set. And it's like, you know, you've got to give them, you've got to give them props for it, but you also have to give them somewhat of a pass for doing it. Because it's, Never sounds good. Like every time they say that, they're like, it's like what, Le Miz, they did it live on set? Did they do cat? I can't remember if they did Cats live on set or not. But I know Tom Hooper was a big fan of doing Le Miz and that was the whole thing was,

oh my God, they're doing it live. Well, it sounds like, it doesn't sound good. I'm sorry. I know they can all sing, but like it's not, just do it in the studio. You don't have to do it live. So they finally are rounding out, finishing up this shoot, right? And Robert Evans got called back to Paramount because there was a fire that he needed to put out on Urban Cowboy, the other movie he was producing at the time.

It was 10 days after he left Malta to go back to California to check in on the editing of Urban Cowboy. And his brother, Charles, tried to buy $19,000 worth of cocaine for himself, Robert, and a friend to split from a federal agent. $19,000? Yeah, and that's in 1980 money as well. Oh, my God. Yeah, I didn't do the...

$1 million. today. Is it? I mean, no. Oh, okay. It's like $100,000. Probably at least $50,000, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So that is in May, 1980. They finished the movie in June. And while they're in the edit rooms, in October, Evans has his day in court, and the judge sentenced him to make a movie about how drugs are bad called Get High on Yourself. What?

Yeah. Honestly, that sounds worse than any other thing, including jail time. Not if you're doing a lot of cocaine while you're making it. Oh, there's, and all the celebrities. Don't do the Coke. Give it to me to me. Send me all your Coke.

Don't do it. You should watch it. It's a bunch of celebrities all talking about, you know, how to get high on yourself. And it is just probably bonkers. Of course, celebrities. You just have to love yourself as much as I love myself. Like, it's so absurd. I remember Magic Johnson is in there,

and I'm trying to think who else is a part of it. And Robert Evans himself, of course. course. So this is all building up to the release of the film. To make matters worse for all of this, after the May bust in the October court appearance, Robert Evans was now being called Cocaine Evans in all of the trades. And at a New York restaurant, Evans and Altman were eating. And Altman suddenly stood up, walked over, poured a carafe of wine on the head of the New York Daily News's entertainment columnist, whipping at her, Cocaine Evans is my partner. Next time, Column. Bob. So it's, you know, he's sticking up for his friend, but probably not the best time to

pour a caraff of wine on the person who's going to review your movie. And really, this leads to a morning after review from Jean Shalett that I want to share. It is equal parts, scathing, and just ridiculous. What could go wrong? Well, just about everything. And the disappointing news this morning is that Popeye is a debacle with the characters left in ruins. First of all, Fyfer fails. His script as shot is undistinguished and it is without humor. But above all, the culprit is Robert Altman, whose direction and editing are ponderous, hesitant, and almost incoherent. The members of this cast, who seem born to play these roles, have been subverted by their director. Paul Dooley, who plays the hamburger-loving wimpy with such

relish, is given nothing to do. I mean nothing. Zilts, zero, gornish. It's not a zip. Robin Williams has the cartoon character down, but much of his dialogue is unintelligible, and much of what is intelligible is incomprehensible. The songs by Harry Nielsen are calamity. His music is tuneless, and his lyrics are moronic. Shelley Duval is just wonderful.

Thank goodness for Shelley Duval. Just think of this. For years and years, Popeye has been chugging spinach, and when he finally gets something to go with the spinach, it turns out to be a turkey. Great zinger ended on. Fair review, in my opinion. Yeah, I would say accurate across all.

Yeah. But on the flip side, Siskel and Ebert gave the movie two thumbs up. They were actually big supporters of the movie. They still loved Altman. And, you know, audiences ended up liking it too. Even though this, you know, it's a tent pole movie for Paramount. Budgeted at $13 million, ended up ballooning to just over 20. It made $60 million worldwide.

What? Wow. Yeah. It did well. You know, some of that money ended up going to Disney because of the deal. They had the international distribution. But I think everybody pretty much walked away with their shirts intact. But because they had done so much to alienate the community and, you know, turn the critics against them and also just piss off the producers at Paramount and at Disney, they decided they hated it.

And they decided it was a failure. So they just kept projecting this idea that it was a failure. Jules Pfeiffer said he didn't find out for 10 years that the movie made me money. This is really a point in Bob Evans and Bob Altman's careers where they're just down completely. I mean, Robert Evans couldn't get another movie together for three years. And when he finally did, it was Francis Ford Coppola's notorious troubled production of Cotton Club in late-time. Oh, no. Yes.

Lizzie, this is the one I was telling you about before. this has got a whole true crime angle that you'll love. You know, he had that resurgence with the autobiography and the documentary. He also had a big hit producing How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, oddly enough, in 2003. That was, yeah, 2002, 2003 really brought Evans back into the mainstream. As for Altman, he was going broke. He'd put some of his own money into this maltachute and had put a lot of money into Lionsgate. And he had to actually sell it off piece by piece.

Friends and collaborators described that depressing period as seeing what appeared to be a totally dissociating Altman, kind of laughing to himself as moving teams arrived to haul off film equipment, props, and office furniture to the highest bidder. He'd end up closing up shop, packing up his family and leaving Hollywood behind him again. He taught film school at University of Michigan. He began directing plays and operas, adapting a string of stage productions for ultra-low-budget movies and burgeoning cable channels. Then in 1992, though, he would spew all the hair. and frustration for the studios into the satirical Hollywood masterpiece, the player. And at that point in his career, he had this new life and he got this warm welcome back into Tenciltown for the last

14 years of his life. It was the city that spurned him a couple times and really kicked him out of town for trying to make this faithful and fanciful adaptation of a comic strip and, you know, maybe trying to have a good time while doing it. I want to end on this line from Altman. It's his feeling about endings. death is the only ending that I know about. People will say, oh, does this have a happy ending? I say, well, no, but we can make a happy stopping place. Yeah, see, it's interesting how Brian De Palma said something similar,

where stories always have a defined beginning, and he never knows how to end his movies because he doesn't believe in the idea of an ending. It's just where are you going to leave your audience? It's just, I do think that's probably the hardest thing for a filmmaker to do is figure out how does the story end? What's the point where the information stops? And for Altman, who's such a slice of life, you know what I mean, kind of director, like catching all the action, the excitement. It's like, yeah, when does the party stop? Yeah.

And that's what's so strange about him as the choice to direct Popeye is that, like, of all the directors, he, like Chris just said, he's a slice of life director. He's somebody that just captures these very sort of natural moments. And Popeye is the farthest thing from natural. I mean, it's already a weird, distorted, overblown cartoon. It's really strange to apply that. And a musical on top of it. Yeah. Which is completely an unnatural style of its own.

I mean, it doesn't make any sense that somebody suddenly singing at you or singing at each other. And, you know, the ways he used music. in all of his movies like Nashville, it was making the actors write their songs as a part of their character and really leaning into that slice of life. I mean, this is so manufactured, built, and just a cartoon. And yeah, he is a weird choice, but he was anuteur, and he kept that vision and style consistent within the studio machine. You know, it's kind of like Tim Burton's Batman or Tycho Itti on Thor Ragnarock. I mean, it's these guys who, like, have a very specific style and then they don't break it to make their movies. Obviously, those two choices are much more

beloved and maybe more successful. But I still think it's a pretty impressive feat for him to have pulled that off. Chris Hayden. Yeah, absolutely. I still, yeah, I didn't love it. I think perhaps the difference is that yes, Tycho Waititi got to do Thor Ragnarok and yes, Tim Burton did Batman. But I do know for a fact that in the case of Taika Waititi, there was a lot of oversight in terms of not only proximity he's shooting that at, you know, with Marvel Studios. But to make sure that that lines up within the mega meta world that they've created, yes, he was allowed to give it his sense of humor, but he did have to play within certain bumpers. I think what's interesting with Popeye is that there are no guardrails that Alton, you know, needs to follow, which like you said, there are some inspired moments. my frustration with the movie when I watched it was that it felt formless,

that it didn't feel like there was a story. And so that's where I do join the frustrations of the writer where I'm like, you're trying to give me a slice of life about a world that I know doesn't exist. And that's a hard thing to sell. I think it's like, can Robert Altman tell a fantasy story? Sure. It's just that there's a reason fantasy stories end up being plot heavy.

You know what I mean? And it's because we need that engine so we don't stop and look around and think, well, this isn't real, you know, as we're going through it. Right. And we can follow that story. And that's our, you know, we're taking that adventure along with that person. And so often the fantasy protagonist is somebody who's outside of that world brought into it.

These people all play by their own rules, live in their own world. I mean, Allman kept talking about how much of the world he wanted to build and how it was such a foreign land, not even a different nation, but like on a different planet that these people, you know, all, all, ascribe to this idea. There's no outsider. So it is, there is nobody to root in, to root yourself in and to understand of like, oh, what are the rules of this place? I think it's a movie, you know, I don't know if you're going to ever end up liking it, but I think it does get better as you watch it just because you start to understand that this formless nonsense world, it just kind of washes over you and you start to start to just accept it for what it is, I guess. Is this like the pitch to join nexium? Like what is the heck? Alex, we're never watching this again.

All right. Well, I will. Let it wash over you. And I'll listen to my beautiful LP of it as well. Aw. Well, we've reached that time when we figure out what went right. And it sounds like this is going to be easier for you, too, than it is for me. But let's kick it off to our guest to start with. Alex, of all the things you love in this movie, what went most right?

I think it is one of the earliest visions of bringing a, beloved comic book character to life and staying as true to the original source material as possible. I mean, I think all the times that we're citing Sin City or 300 or any of the Marvel movies are able to mimic their source material and recreate these panels, I mean, they deserve at least a tip of the cap to Robert Altman in bringing this cartoon to life and doing it his way. This is not necessarily the right way to make a movie, but it definitely sounds like one of the most fun ways to make a movie and to try to create an atmosphere of just overflowing art and community and family. And, you know, when you mix drugs in that, it goes off the rails a little bit. But it at

least was in the spirit of art. And I think that's pretty special, especially when you're trying to work within a studio system where, you know, you have these suits breathing down your neck that really don't want you to make art, they want you to make money for them. And Altman stayed true to his guns any way he could. And, you know, it basically ruined him. Lizzie, let's kick it to you. I will say that I like the time period in movie making and I would like to see it come back again where like a popular artist does all of the music for a movie. I mean, we saw it with the graduate when Simon and Garfunkel. We see it throughout the 70s to a certain degree and definitely with Harold and Maud and Kat Stevens. I like that Harry Nilsson did all the music for this. It's really

weird. It doesn't make any sense. It's tough to call it music, but it is a through line. And I love Harry Nielsen. So yeah, I like that. I would like more of that. I want to see like Sufion Stevens score an entire movie and make it weird and sad. Chris says no. I think you're wrong. I love. I love Sufion Stevens. I don't want a movie based on Sufion and Stevens. Not based on it. He just does the music for it. Like Harold and Ma's not based on Cat's Steve. Anyway, whatever. I'm for it. It just might take him, you know, 10 years to do it since he's still got all those states to write songs about. Michigan scored by Sufion Stevens. For my what went right, I think the production design team absolutely killed it. The set

feels incredible. It looks real. I was stunned. The boats were so much. much fun at the end that they ride into that Maltese pirate cove and it makes it so you do feel like you believe the world it you feel grounded in that reality and I think that stems from the production design so kudos to them a 20 million dollars well spent and I'm actually very happy that it still stands today that's cool that it wasn't just built and destroyed and they you know dumped all the leftover oil from the oil family into the into the bay but yeah I was very impressed that. And overall, I thought the costume design, you know, then the character design and stuff was very well done as well. Well, thank you so much, Alex. This was absolutely riveting, much more

entertaining, I think, than watching the movie itself. Alex, anything we can plug for you? Check out the IMD Brief on IMD. I'm working on that most days. Please do you guys. It does not have to do with underwear. Thank you again, Alex, for being a part of this. And as always, join us next week for whatever it is that we're going to cover next week. And please, as always, leave us a rating and review. Five stars. Five stars. We will talk to you guys next week. 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 Euthonai Uos.