WHAT WENT WRONG - Practical Magic

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Despite its all-star cast, when ‘Practical Magic’ landed in theaters in 1998 it was a critical and commercial failure. The blow was particularly devastating for director Griffin Dunne who had tried to exorcise some very personal demons via the film. This week, Chris and Lizzie discover how the Owens sisters went from box office poison to home video magic. Find out how Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman got involved, how the film fooled Barbra Streisand, who built those beautiful sets, and why an actual witch tried to burn the whole movie down. Come back on Friday for our subscriber-only review of ‘Practical Magic 2’!  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it is nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone, a series of unfortunate events that could have been avoided had people made more practical decisions with their magical abilities, as always. I am Chris Winterbauer, joined here by a squinty Lizzie Bassett, who does not agree with that assessment whatsoever. Lizzie, what have you conjured up for us this evening?

Do do, do do do do. Do do do. She's been humming that since we got on the Zoom. That's right. That's because, obviously, we have the classic film Practical Magic to talk about today. That's because Practical Magic 2, which looks even magical. That old Hollywood classic. That old charm.

The even magicer practical magic to Electric Bugaloo is hitting theater. So we thought, why not go back and revisit the original. film. And it was a wilder ride than I expected. Chris, you know, I got a little teaser that you didn't love this movie. So I'm very curious, what was your experience with Practical Magic prior to watching it for this podcast and how has it been rewatching it for this episode? So I think for a long time, I thought Practical Magic and Hope Floats were the same movie. They're not, though they are connected. No, they came out the same year and they star the same actress. And I prefer Hope Floats.

Wow. Forest Whitaker would be thrilled. So I saw this in high school. It was on TV on occasion. The image of the upturned apple cart at the beginning of this film is forever burned in my mind. And I think it's a movie that looks really good. It looks very nice. I like the cinematography.

I love the setting and I'm queuing into something or building into something, as Lizzie can already tell. I don't remember thinking much of it when I watched it in high school. I don't remember if I watched it with my sisters. they loved like Halloween Town and, you know, we watched all those movies The Craft, etc. So I rewatched it with Carmela and did not love it, didn't really like it, to be honest,

although I love so many of the elements of this movie. The cast is overqualified at every turn. They're all lovely. The setting is picturesque, cozy, inviting, cottage core invented presumably because of this movie. I think it looks great. I think it has some very good special effects. I think the growing rose.

Bush, for example. I think the ghost effects are very fun. I had a music teacher, who piano teacher, who once asked, if you had to choose between playing the right note or staying in time, what do you choose? And I stupidly said, playing the right note. You said, no, because if you're out of time, every note is wrong. And that's kind of how I felt watching this movie, which is, it's such a structural disaster, candidly, that I never felt settled in the story. It is at turns incredibly quickly paced to the detriment, I think, of the characters, and then at others seemingly glacially slow as we slip into a weird, charming woman returns from, you know, big town life to small town life.

But there's also a dead guy in our backyard we're ignoring for this chunk of the movie. And so the way I feel about it is that its charms are many, really, truly, the best ingredients you could ever find for a witch's brew, and yet it is less than the sum of its parts. However, Lizzie, I'm coming with it, however, because Lizzie got a little short, not short, just she was disappointed in my reaction when we were on a Zoom the other night. No, I just said everything you're saying is technically correct. It just happens that you're wrong. Well, actually, her words were, that is your penis talking. That's exactly what she said. I stand by that. And I looked down and he has not said anything in a long time. So let's just

get that out of the way. But to be fair, I didn't want to be dismissive because when I went online, I saw that this movie remains at top many a listical, many a millennial listical of the best witchy films. And I was surprised because I had such fond memories of, you know, Death Becomes, Sir, the Witches of Eastwick, for example. So I went back, Lizzie. And between our last conversation and now, I watched The Witches of Eastwick, Death Becomeser, and the craft in order. Okay. And I understand why Practical Magic is the one that has endured. Even though I do think structurally, it's actually maybe the most flawed of the three.

Oh, for sure. It's the most timeless in its feet. And it is a movie that I can actually imagine enjoying it more, not watching it from the beginning to the end, and just saying, I'm going to sit down for this 30-minute stretch of this movie. I really like this 30-minute stretch of this movie. I'm not going to concern myself with how it ties into the grander narrative. All to say, I don't love this movie, but I do appreciate why it is enduring and why it, of all of those movies, is the one that is ultimately getting a sequel. I leave it there. That's totally fair.

I have a very different relationship with this movie. I watched this. Obviously, you probably know this. This movie did not do well in theaters. It was a pretty enormous bomb. It got a second life big time, as many movies have that we've covered on this podcast, through home video. And also cable, where you mentioned watching it as well. But I think primarily it was home video. That is where I found it. You know, we rented this. We had this on VHS. I'm sure I had this on DVD later. And I just watched this movie so many times like you. I remember specific images. I remember the apple card. I remember the bicyclists. I remember the house, the kitchen, the midnight margaritas. I do have bone to pick with that. I can't think of anything worse than to be woken up to be fed a margarita.

That's not what I want. Yeah. I will take waterboarding over that at this point in my life. I take margarita boarding. I don't want that. We're too old. So I didn't even really remember the story that well. I did.

Like I know what happens. But I remember snapshots of it. And upon rewerewerewerewerew. watching it for the podcast. You're correct. Structurally, this movie is totally a mess. The problem is, I don't care. It's still totally fun for me to watch. I enjoy every performance in this movie so much, particularly Sandra Bullock and Aden Quinn. I think the two of them are remarkably good in this, although I didn't realize he doesn't show up until halfway through this movie, and he's in it for like 30 minutes. It's over halfway through the movie. That's the end of the first act. I know. You've got a problem.

Again, you can tell it's adapted by a book. There's an easy fix. You're not going to like it. But there actually is an easy fix that would help with the Aidan Quinn storyline quite a bit. You have to get rid of her first husband and the kids. You don't need them. They serve no function in the story. You can jettison them entirely.

Well, you can't do that. I think that's a horrible pitch. But anyway, we will continue. Chris, professional writer, I prefer this movie in the mess that it is. All of which to say, it's not technically a good movie. I'm aware of that. and yet I completely love it. I enjoyed it from beginning to end this time.

I will watch this a million more times. I think what I like about it and maybe why it has endured of all those movies that you mentioned is that this is very much the softening of the witch. This is the Nora F. Ronning of the Witch. It's making it so accessible and beautiful and human in a way that I actually do think was pretty remarkable. It's the same reason why Anne Rice's vampism Empire's appeal to me, I think, is that it is applying a very human, reasonable, empathetic perspective

to witches. And I really like that. I do think there is a version of this movie that I might have liked quite a bit better. But in order to talk about that, we have to get into it. So our main sources for today are a great oral history of the Midnight Margarita waterboarding scene in Rolling Stone, many, many other articles and retrospectives, and also the Friday afternoon club, A Family Memoir by Griffin Dunn, which brings us to the details, as always. This is directed by Griffin Dunn,

written by Robin Swikard, Akiva Goldsman, Adam Brooks, and it is, of course, based on the 1995 Novel Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman. Because, yes, this is a book-to-screen adaptation, and remember, you still have a little bit of time to get in your reading for our box office book club, happening for all of our subscribers right now, Apple, Spotify, and Patreon that will be happening during the month of October. We are covering four book-to-screen adaptations. So go join so you can

hear more discussion just like this. It stars Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Stockard Channing, Diane Weist, Aidan Quinn, Goran Vistnich, Evan Rachel Wood, notably not coming back for Practo Magic 2, Camilla Bell and more. Margo Martindale. Love that. I love Margotne-Martinale, and some of my favorite moments were Margo Martindale in the shop. Yeah. She's always great as a lovely small town firebrand. I remember the shop also having such a bigger part in this movie than it does. It's barely in it. Well, but Gwyneth stole that shop and turned it into Goop. Let's be honest. It's Goop for sure. It's just that Goop doesn't actually have magic or does it.

Now, it cost around $75 million. It was released on October 16th, 1998. It's a good release date for it. It is a good release date. The IMD-B logline, as always, is two. Two witch sisters raised by their eccentric aunts in a small town face close-minded prejudice and a curse which threatens to prevent them ever-finding lasting love. So, Chris, we have to start by talking about Alice Hoffman, the creator of the story. She was born in 1952 in New York City. When she was eight, her parents divorced, her mother, a social worker and teacher, was left

to raise her and her brother alone with some help from Hoffman's Russian grandmother. Now, of her childhood, she told the New York Times, unhappiness was trapped in the house like a bubble. My mother was a teacher and a social worker and my father wasn't there. My brother was the smart one. I wanted to be a veterinarian, but I didn't think a girl could do that. I never thought that somebody like me could grow up to be a writer. I thought I'd cut hair or be a secretary.

Now her dad walked out the door to get a pack of cigarettes and never came back, but he did leave behind a box of books. And so reading fairy tales and myths really became a way for her to escape the instability that she was experiencing. It sounds like she also grew up in a pretty rough area that had a a lot of drugs running through her neighborhood, a very high crime area. And she really felt that reading saved her life. She also said that, quote, the idea of urban or suburban magic was brewing under my skin. So she began writing stories, too, about people who lived in different cities,

had different names, but who felt just as frightened and lost as she did. And despite how much she loved reading and writing, she didn't consider either really a viable career. So she finished high school early, didn't really plan to go to college. She works a series of odd jobs, including one at a book factory that apparently lasted less than the day. And eventually after a few years of jumping from one job to another, she did enroll in night classes at a local college. When she graduated her brother, who was living in San Francisco, suggested she come join him in California. And she's like, sure, but she really had no ambition and the only thing she liked to do was read and write. So she applied for writing fellowships and scholarships. And much to her

surprise, she was awarded a fellowship to study creative writing at your alma mater, Stanford University. University's graduate program under Albert J. Gerard, who she later said was arguably the greatest writing teacher in the country. The courses study list was overwhelmingly filled with dudes and only included work by two female writers, Flannery O'Connor, my personal favorite, and Grace Paley, who was her favorite. She felt that she proved that women could write alongside men and that women's lives were worth writing about. So during the fellowship, one of Hoffman's early short stories was published in a literary magazine, and the story caught the attention of an editor named Ted Solitrov, who asked her if she happened to have a novel in the works. And she said, what does any

writer say when they ask you, do you have a book? In the works? It's already written. Of course. Let me just give it a quick two to six week perusal for typos, and I will get back to you. Just polish it. Also, it might get lost in the mail. Just give me a little time. Yes. Let me just oops, I spilled some coffee on it. She did not have a book. Nope. But she said, I absolutely do. And she started writing it that day. She said on Substack, quote, I had read enough fairy tales to know that such a monumental life-changing chance is offered only once, and at least that's how it went in the stories. If I didn't accept the challenge, it might never come again, and six months later, I had a manuscript. So he passed on it, but he did recommend her to an agent named Elaine Markson who sold the manuscript. And in

1977, at the age of 21, she had published her first novel called Property of, which is about a teenager who falls in love with a charismatic gang leader, and then, of course, struggles to maintain her values. This is a theme that she would really return to throughout her work. It's the importance of women gaining and maintaining their independence. I think we see that in practical magic as well. Now, over the next 18 years, she published 10 more novels, to which Colleen Hoover said, Hold My Beer and published 105. By the early 90s, she was an established author, and she was really waiting for the right idea to come along for her next novel. Now, she liked to write down a list of potential titles, and there was one that she had written down that she all.

always loved, and it was practical magic. But it was just a title. She had no idea what the story was. But in the summer of 1993, Chris, she walked into a shed on a marsh and well-fleet, Massachusetts, where she owned an antique farmhouse, as one does. And she said that Sally, Jillian, Franny, and Jet walked in after her in that shed, ready to tell their story. She says writing practical magic was unusually intuitive. She explained to the Enchanted Living Magazine, I don't know what the book is, but I'm going to write it. I've never had that happen to me before. When I first sat down to write it, I felt like the characters had arrived, and that's really a rare thing. In 1995, it became her 11th novel. Practical Magic was published, and this one was a massive

literary success, bigger than anything she'd written before. So, of course, Hollywood came knocking in the form of producer Denise De Novi. She had just produced Heather's, one of my all-time faves, and a huge run of Tim Burton films, including Edward Cisorhands, Batman Returns. She'd actually run Tim Burton Productions before founding her own production company, De Novi Pictures. Now, when she left her partnership with Burton, she decided that she's going to focus on making female-driven content. And so she signed on to produce practical magic at Turner Pictures and called up Robin Swiker

to adapt the novel for screen. And this makes a lot of sense. Robin had just adapted little women and was either working on or was about to start adapting Matilda. Can you know whose mom she is? Oh, shoot. I did know this at one point. Tell me.

Her husband's Nicholas Kazan. Oh, that's right. It's Zoe Kazan. Her daughter is Zoe Kazan. Yeah. She's relative of Aaliyah Kazan, right? Zoe's Elia's granddaughter, I believe. Yes. Damn. Yeah. Nicholas is one of his sons. Mm-hmm.

Yes. Noted, perhaps not great to work with Aaliyah Kazan. Zoe Kazan seems lovely, and Robin Swigord is a great writer. Yes. Very. Makes a ton of sense for this job. Also, should be noted, that she would be called to adapt other supposedly unadaptable material later, like memoirs of a geisha, the Jane Austen book club. Curious case of Benjamin Button. Yes.

Oscar nominated for that. Yes. So it seems like if anybody is going to pull this off, it's going to be Robin. And it started really well. Like Hoffman at Stanford, Swiker was interested in the idea of women being deeply connected to the life force around them. And her starting point with this adaptation was thinking about how the community needed the Owens, which is the same way the world needed women.

And her plan initially was to stay faithful to the novel. But around page 75, she hit a wall when she realized that, quote, there's just no magic here. Part of the issue was the setting because the thing is, in the book, they don't live on a beautiful small town island. They live in the Boston suburbs. And in her view, Bostonians wouldn't just gossip. We live in Saudi. Saudi. Yeah, Jamaica plane. It doesn't have the same ring. Yeah. In her view, Bostonians wouldn't just gossip and scurry out of their way. They would actively try to drive the women out. That's fair. That's true. Yeah, Dave Portnoy is not having it. Oh, my God, can you imagine the bar stool sports articles on the Owen sisters?

No. Okay, so she figured, fine, we need to move the story. Somewhere stranger, more isolated, somewhere where magic could be a bit more a part of daily life. So she relocated the story. It's now in a charming coastal town, supposed to be in New England. Although, of course, we know that's not where it is, but we'll get there. Somewhere that it was believable that maybe generations of women had lived as witches and the town would kind of just whisper about them,

but maybe not set the house on fire the way they might if they were in the outskirts of Boston. So the problem was, though, once she changed the setting, the rest of the story also had to change because the more she wrote, the further the screenplay moved away

from Hoffman's novel. Now, one big change involved the daughters. Hoffman's novel focused a lot on the daughters who were teenagers in the book and then the dangers the teenage girls experienced. A couple of examples of this. One, in the novel, Jimmy's ghost actually stalks Kylie, who was aged around 13 and Antonia about 16, following them around and hiding in the bushes. There's another scene where Kylie is chased by a group of drunken men one night on the way back from her best friend's house, things that I think more literally express the threat that women, even young women, feel.

And Robin felt that putting those moments on screen risked becoming exploitative. There's a big difference, you know, between reading about a situation and watching it play out on screen, especially if you're talking about a, a 13 and 16 year old girl. I get it. So she cut much of that material. She made both girls younger. Now, the ants were another major challenge because, Chris, Alice Hoffman had written them speaking in unison just because. And in the novel, they weren't particularly defined independent of each other, which is a fun, you know, literary device in terms of the book. Obviously, it's not going to work on screen. Robin went to Alice Hoffman for help and she said, I'd like to know a little bit more about them. They're not twins, right? Is one going to be older than the other?

Can you give me some sense of maybe who the older one might be? And Alice Hoffman basically said, Too bad, so sad, I've never thought about them as different people. And gave her nothing. So she told Robin, you know what I was thinking about when I was writing them? I was thinking about the animated movie about Sleeping Beauty and these three fairies that were floating around.

And then I imagine she just floated out the window and went off onto the marshes. This is a little bit of, not an easy job. And while Robin Swikard wrestled with the adaptation, they just went ahead and started casting. Now, a few years earlier, Sandra Bullock had broken out in what movie? Well, Speed was probably a big breakout. That's right, 1994. But lest you forget, Demolition Man, very fun movie from 1993. Sure. You can forget it. It's fine. Most did, I think. But it is fun. So 20th Century Fox, of course, though, wanted her back for what sequel that we will certainly cover at some point.

The only movie that she was in in 1997, Speed 2, Cruise Control. Can you explain the premise of Speed 2 Cruise Control for anyone who doesn't know? They're on a cruise ship, and if they go slower than six knots, they all die. Although, okay, we make fun of this movie. I didn't see it in theaters. I definitely saw it when I was very young on VHS. It's got Willem depot. Jason Patrick replaces Keanu Reeves, I think, in that one.

Yeah, because Keanu had the ability to say that he could be. I think he had to pay money to get off of that movie. He did. We will cover it. It does have an amazing stunt special effects sequence of the film when the giant cruise ship does eventually spoiler crash into a dock. That is pretty impressive. But aside from that, you probably skip it.

It's pretty bad. And so when they said, hey, Sandy B, come on back for the cruise ship. She said, do I have to? And they said contractually, yes. So she was stuck. But to sweeten the deal, they offered to bankroll her dream. project, which was hope floats. Yeah.

But just as everyone had predicted speed two cruise control, bombed. And after this, she really changed the way that she selected projects, and I would imagine also the way she read contracts. She really wanted to look at the movie as a whole instead of just looking at her part, and she made a promise to herself that she was not going to say yes to anything that came her way. At this point, she could be more selective and only choose projects that she believed in, one of which was Practical Magic.

She's one of the first people to sign on. She signed on to play Sally and also came on board as a co-producer alongside Donovi. In November of 1996, Turner Pictures, of course, folded into Warner Brothers after the Turner Time Warner merger. None of this is new. So practical magic was now property of Warner Brothers. And they already had a director in mind, Griffin Dunn, age 42, who was fresh off directing Meg Ryan and addicted to love.

And they were very happy with his work on that. And so they opened their development vault to him and said, hey, Take your pick. What do you want to work on? But as he's going through all the scripts, he got a call from an executive. And they're like, you know what? You don't actually need to read those. We have a project that is perfect for you. Sandra Bullock's already attached to it. She's personally vouched for you. They had met a couple years earlier at Sundance. Chris, why do you think that Hollywood felt Griffin Dunn was the perfect director for practical magic? It has to do with the movie he just directed. I never saw that movie. He's worked with women. That's it. You nailed it. You don't need to have seen the. movie. It's just that he's worked with women. Skip it. Skip it. Oh, it's devilish a man again. Yeah. So following that movie, the industry was like, well, hot diggedy dog, this man can direct

a woman. He knows how to talk to women. In fact, he's spoken to at least one. We need to talk like actual holiday. We're being rude to whoever has those accents because they are better people than these executives. That is true. He said to Metagraph, quote, at the time practical magic was made, the studios were run by men, and I was characterized as a quote-unquote woman's director. I was entrusted because I had a certain sensitivity. So let's talk about Griffin Dunn because I did not know a lot about him before this. And what an interesting man. He's going to come back again later this year. So he was born on June 8, 1955, also in New York City. He was the oldest child of Ellen, Lenny Beatrice. And I am embarrassed to say, I did not know this. Dominic Dunn. Yes. Yeah, the writer. Yeah, Dominic Dunn. And if anybody doesn't know who Dominic Dunn is, we're going to talk a little bit about this. But a little bit of frame of reference, Nathan Lane played Dominic Dunn in the Menendez brothers Ryan Murphy Show that was on Netflix. He's a very famous writer, journalist. We'll talk about him a little bit more. He had two younger siblings, a sister, Dominique, and a brother, Alex. Now, he was also the nephew of the writer's John Gregory Dunn and, do you know this? Joan Didion. Joan Didian.

Joan Didian and John Gregory Dun co-wrote Panic and Needle Park, which was Al Pacino's first lead role, the Jerry Shatsberg film, which I just watched for a dog day afternoon. And I quite liked, if anybody's interested, you should check it out. So in his 2024 family memoir of the Friday afternoon club, he described how surreal it was growing up in this world. Because this is not just, I mean, this is the literary world. These are Hollywood connections to your point. He's always in rooms with movie producers, actors, writers, reporters, reportedly. he once walked in on Judy Garland and his bathroom going through the medicine cabinet when he was a kid. Yes, it does. He once watched Warren Beatty play piano while Ida Lupino ran a game of charades.

And then also there was a time when he was pulled out of the water by Sean Connery. I guess if anybody's going to pull the smack for falling in there in the first place. Thanks, Sean. Also, Elizabeth Montgomery, who would of course later star on Bewitched. Yeah. Yes. We just talked about on your witch's primer. Yeah, that was his babysitter. Wow.

Yeah. Weird. He also met Carrie Fisher as a teenager and they were friends for the rest of her life. But all of this excess and privilege really embarrassed Griffin. He said, quote, I saw the downside first and I saw it relatively young. My father was the first to talk about his superficiality, his social climbing, the importance he placed on getting invited to parties and having celebrities to his house for parties. I found the clinging to celebrity and the name dropping uncomfortable and I found myself

embarrassed for my father, which is a terrible feeling. There was kind of like a, maybe I'm just thinking of the Nathan Lane performance, but like a Capote-esque quality to the way that, like, you know what I mean? He seemed attracted to the scandal and that sort of thing. Yes, I think that is very fair. I think it's completely realistic to draw the comparison between Capote and Dominic Dunn. So as soon as he could, Griffin moved to New York to pursue acting, and he took a job at the popcorn stand at Radio City Music Hall, hanging out with the Rockettes while auditioning for off-Broadway plays. Again, be nice to your ticket takers, your popcorn stand people.

don't know who you're buying popcorn from. And also just be nice. Meanwhile, the Dunn family was falling apart. In the early 1970s, Dominic Dunn had just produced Ash Wednesday, starring Elizabeth Taylor, when very drunk at a dinner party, he made a fat joke about Sue Menger's who's come up quite a bit here. She was one of the most powerful talent agents in Hollywood. And according to Griffin's memoir, his father said something along the lines of, should they ever make a musical of Sue Menger's life, it should be called When the Fat Lady Sings. Yoikes. He was, he was, was too drunk to realize that a Variety reporter who was paid to cover the movie was within earshot. The next morning, Variety ran an article about Dominic's drunken rant. Sue Manger's blackballed

him, no one wanted to touch him, his work dried up, and his drinking and drug habit spiraled out of control. By 1979, he'd hit rock bottom, put himself in self-exile, retreating to a small Oregon town, and that's where he really taught himself how to write. More on Dominic in a little bit. There was also Griffin's younger brother, Alex, who was struggling with crippling mental health issues. His mother, Lenny, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And meanwhile, Griffin was just trying to make a name for himself as an actor. He made his debut with a small role in the other side of the mountain, but really couldn't find steady work. But he did bond with other frustrated actors like Amy Robinson and Mark Metcalf, and together, the three made a pact.

They were not going to wait around to get hired. They were going to make their own opportunities. So they started searching for plays to perform in or be involved with. And Amy had just read Anne Beatty's debut novel, Chili Scenes of Winter. She was convinced it could be a film, and she thought she and her friends could be the ones to produce it. Through a series of pretty remarkable events, they actually got Anne Beatty to agree to give them the option for their novel, even though they had never made a movie before and no one had ever, ever heard of them. Dunn said, our blind luck continued because Hollywood was then going through a period of pretending it wanted to work with women directors,

Though really, the list of acceptable hires was limited to three who were currently in vogue, all coincidentally named Joan, Joan Darling, Joan Tewkesbury, and Joan Mickland Silver. We had the good timing to get to Joan Silver who had directed an independent gem called Hester Street to write and direct their film. Yeah. Didn't Carol Kane get an Oscar nomination for that? I think that's right. Yes, she was nominated for Best Actress. We just talked about her in Dog Jay. I love Carol Kane. They cast John Hurd as the lead in this film.

They renamed it, Head Over Heels. The studio marketed it as a wacky, rom-com, which it was not. The movie itself flopped, but it did establish this trio of Griffin Dunn, Amy Robinson, and Mark Metcalf as ambitious young filmmakers who were making their own opportunities. So Dunn caught John Landis's attention, and two years later, he was cast in an American werewolf in London, something we will be covering at the end of this year. Worried that the fame might overwhelm him, and I imagine probably also thinking about the experience he'd have with his father, he turned down most teen comedy acting offers after American Werewolf and then co-produced Baby It's You alongside Amy.

But at the same time, his sister Dominique had just broken through as an actress with a supporting role in what movie, Chris? Poltergeist. Poltergeist. That's right. She had also just dumped her very toxic boyfriend, John Sweeney, who worked as a chef at the very exclusive L.A. restaurant Ma' Maison. And on the night of October 30, 1982, Dominique was at home practicing lines with actor David

Packer for the miniseries V. when Sweeney showed up demanding to be let in. Dominique decided to step outside to talk to him. She tried to avoid a scene, close the door behind her. And once outside, John attacked her and strangled her. As she was being strangled outside, David Packer, inside the home, locked the front door, hid in the bedroom, called the police,

and then left a message on his roommate's answering machine that said, if I get murdered tonight, John Sweeney did it. When the police arrived, Dominique was lying outside on the ground. She was unconscious and brain dead. she was put on life support, and by November 4th, her family made the horrible decision to take her off of it. She died at 22 years old. The day after the funeral, her mother received a phone call from a woman who said, Mrs. Dunn, I'm afraid you're now a member of a club that no one wants to belong to. On the other end was Doris Tate, mother of Sharon Tate. Before Dominique's trial began, Dominic Dunn met Tina Brown at a dinner party,

and he spoke to her about his daughter's death. Tina Brown was in the running at that point to become the editor of Vanity Fair, She said, keep a daily journal of the trial. If I get the job, I will publish your account. In August 1983, Dominique's trial began, and according to Griffin Dunn, the judge took an immediate dislike to the Dunn family. He barred testimony from Lillian Pierce, Sweeney's former girlfriend, who, of course, he had beaten so badly that she ended up in the hospital. He also prevented the Dunn family from testifying about certain violent behaviors they had witnessed from Sweeney. Sweeney's legal team was funded by the owner of the restaurant that he worked for. We talked about this a bit more in poltergeist, but basically this got characterized as a quote-unquote crime of passion

rather than a premeditated murder, and the Duns were especially horrified when Sweeney's lawyer quoted Khalil Gibran's The Prophet, quote, love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. Throughout his sister's trial, Griffin kept working. He took a role in Amy Heckerling's Donnie Dangerously, which we talked about before. It, of course, did not do very well. And it was on the set of that movie that he learned the jury had reached a verdict. He said that Michael Keaton could immediately sense that something was wrong. And that's because the jury, having never been shown the full picture, acquitted John Sweetie of second-degree murder and convicted him only a voluntary manslaughter. He got a sentence of six and a half years and he served two and a half. And in March of 1984,

though, Tina Brown did stay true to her word and she published Dominic Dunn's account, Justice, a father's account at the trial of his daughter's killer. This was also, I think, a watershed moment in the way that crime was covered in America. Maybe not the same level as in cold blood, but in some ways close to it. He was offered a position at Vanity Fair, became a star reporter. Meanwhile, Griffin Dunn starred in Scorsese's After Hours, which she co-produced, and it didn't do as well as he'd hoped. That was an Amy Robinson connection, because she produced that, and she, like, one of her only

acting roles was Mean Streets. That's right. Which I had rewatched recently, and she's really good in. I was surprised that she decided she didn't want to act, and she just produced. Well, he seemed to be reaching a pretty new level of stardom, but as his agent put it, he also began making pretty self-destructive choices. He starred in Who's That Girl, alongside Madonna in 87, which was a box office total disaster. And during this period, he said he felt as if my luck had run dry and I had only misfortune awaiting me. He's also constantly worrying about

his brother's mental health, his mother's physical health, but of course, meanwhile, his father is on the rise. In 1989, Dunn starred in Me and Him, which he called a career-killing movie in a near fatal blow. However, he met his wife, Carrie Lull, and together they welcomed his only child, Hannah Dunn. Then he took a hiatus from acting. In 95, he made his directorial debut with Duke of the Groove, a short that earned him an Oscar nomination, and following that, we are now caught back up. He directed Meg Ryan and addicted to love. So it's around 1997, and he'd just read the practical magic script. And on paper, seems like a great opportunity. Best-selling novel, major producer, Sandra Bullock attached to star. But there was a problem. He had no interest in any. He had no interest in

of it. Magic, witches, nothing. He told Rolling Stone, quote, I had to deal with my lack of real passion or even interest with magic and witches. It just wasn't an interest for my wheelhouse. So I almost turned it down. But he didn't want to walk away. So I started to think about what part of this story, what element of this story could he find himself interested in? What do you think it was that stood out about practical magic that may have been personally impactful for Griffin Dunn? It's what Tarantino did with Once Upon Time in Hollywood. It's a chance that revisionist history in a sense. There's an abusive boyfriend who's nearly going to strangle Nicole Kidman's character, but in this instance, there's a sibling there to intervene and then

they kill inadvertently, you know, in the movie, Jimmy. So there's a bit of a, it actually, weirdly, it falls almost into the rape revenge fantasy category of films to a certain extent. Yeah, I mean, in a lot of ways, Inglorious Bastards is the same thing. It's, sure. I was thinking about the tape murder, you know, being avoided. But yes, absolutely. The just, What if we just gunned Hitler down? And, like, I said, fuck it. Yeah. And you know what?

Good call. Yeah. He said, quote, I thought about the women in my family. I thought about my grandmother, who was from Mexico, a very tough, shrewd woman who had been through a lot. And her daughter, my mother, who was also a terribly strong woman who had sickness, she had multiple sclerosis. And then I thought of my daughter.

I thought of the three generations of women in my life and their strengths and their humor. And then I understood the script. He also said, my grandmother was a cattle rancher. And my mother grew up on a cattle ranch. She was obviously sick, but incredibly strong in spirit, passed that spirit of strength onto my sister. So with that in mind, he signed on. But he did find himself clashing with screenwriter Robin Swikard over how dark he wanted to take the movie. Robin told the rap, quote, he had some personal

experiences in his life, a loss that really colored the film for him, and I think that he was ready to express some of that creatively. Of course, you hit the nail on the head. He wanted to explore the domestic violence element of this storyline. Dunn kept telling Robin that he wanted it to be the exorcist. He's like, watch the exorcist. I want it to feel exactly like that. To which she would reply, you know, this is a story about two gentle witches with romantic problems who help their neighbors. Yeah. And so you can feel the Robin Swycor Discord at the end of the day with some of the tonal inconsistencies from sequence to sequence. Yes. It became too much and Robin did eventually leave the project. She actually apparently has never even watched it because she,

hated this so much. I don't blame her. I think if you look at the tone, not that she couldn't do his version, she's obviously talented enough, but I think if you look at little women and then you look at Matilda, which is kind of a witch movie. I know it's not explicitly stated, but it is. Yeah. It's sort of gateway violence to an extent, right, with Ms. Trenchable and whatnot. And there's a gentleness to the awakening of magical powers that is at odds with the level of violence that is eventually portrayed in practical magic. Yeah, I will say, you know, I hadn't watched this as a full-blown adult, I don't think, like, not all the way through, at least. I was pretty surprised by how dark this movie gets with all of the domestic violence elements of it.

Now, that being said, I like that part of this movie. I think it's important. I think it's interesting. I think it differentiates it from a lot of other films. I don't disagree. I don't ultimately think the two gel quite well enough at the end of the day, but I don't mind. those plot elements? No. And he really wanted to push it as far as he could in this direction. And with Robin off the project, of course, you get Akiva Goldsman, Adam Brooks, and they seemed more willing to, the men were more willing to go in that direction. So he also started thinking about what actress has some dark energy, someone who could go toe to toe with Sandy B, and that of course landed him on Nicole Kidman. According to Sandra, Nicole was the perfect person for the gig because, quote,

our energies are so opposite that we needed what the other person had. I agree. I really love these two together. And also, this is before Nicole Kidman, like, tried to start seeming nice with the roles she was taking, which I wish she would stop doing. I'm sure she is a very nice person, but she plays a cold, hard, psycho so well. Go watch Malice. Malice, yes. Go watch To Die For.

That's one of my favorites. I love to die for. Yes. Also, that should be the sister film of Drop Dead Gorgeous. Oh, yeah. Because also Kidman wants to be a world famous broadcaster in that movie. Yeah, but she's just straight up evil. Well, she's Denise Richards.

Yes. That's like what, you know, is so fun about it. Yeah. But yeah. And even something like Portrait of a Lady or The Peacemaker. Yeah. She's not soft, you know, she's hard in these roles. Yeah, Portrait of a Lady, that's the Jane Campion one.

I think a lot of people have not seen that. That is such a beautiful movie. I really love it. Great Martin Donovan performance on that as well. So yes, of course, at this time, to your point, She'd just done dead calm malice to die for. Oh, dead calm. Mm-hmm.

She was in the middle of what movie, which was dragging on forever and had taken her away from a bunch of other projects. Yeah, eyes wide shut. Eyes wide shut. She'd be shooting for 700 million years. That's right. Yeah. Almost as long as the contract for the Seorg. It's not her fault.

Turns out her husband can't act. Hey. Just teasing. He just can't walk through a door. Yes. Do it again, Tom. He disagrees. He disagrees.

So she agreed to do practical magic. I mean, part of it was because she'd been on eyes wide shut so long that she didn't have that many more offers coming in. She's also, you have to remember, more of a new star than Sandra Bullock is. And she had worked way less. If you look at how many films they did, so I went through both of their filmographies from like 90 to 99. And Kidman, even though she's got some great roles in there, had been working at about half the clip of Bullock. Bullock did six or seven films in 1994. While you were sleeping, right? Speed.

Yeah. While you were sleeping, speed, a time to kill. Speed two, Hope Floats, Practical Magic. I mean, there are a bunch of other movies in there that I didn't even remember. Yeah. But those are the hits. Well, and I mean, part of it also is that the movies that Sandra Bullock was taking were big box office blockbusters. Yeah.

Nicole Kidman was not doing that. Aside from Batman. Batman forever. That's true. But yeah. Soccered Channing was cast as Aunt Francis, Diane Weist as Aunt Jeanne Weist as Aunt Jet. These are obviously both seasoned actresses at the time. Weist was also a two-time Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actress for Hannah and her sisters and Bullets Over Broadway.

Stocker Channing was about to go on to the West Wing after this. That's right. A little fun fact about this is that Stocker Channing actually lied about speaking French in order to secure a free trip to Paris to dub the movie for its release in France. And in hindsight, she admitted it was one of the stupidest things I've ever done in my entire life. That's a young person choice. So good for you. For making it when you're not that young. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I love that she's like, I am an idiot. Mert. She said, I'm sure the minute I left, they hired someone else to do it right, but I made a real horse's ass of myself. Oh, God, I just would love the French ADR, like, recordist. I would love their smoking the cigarette. Oh, God, do we have to roll on her again? Mon die. So Aiden Quinn, of course, was cast as invest in.

skater Gary Hallett. Griffin done a picture to Gary Cooper kind of guy for the part, someone who had a vibration of being good, honest, and decent. So I think Aden Quinn, he fit the bill right away. Yeah. But as for Jimmy, the original script had written him as a country western shit kicker, a redneck kind of guy from Texas. Brad Pitt, Delma and Louise. That's right. He's available. Yes. He would have been, I think, more in line with how this is written in the book, or even Matthew McConaughey in Texas Chainsaw Masker, one of the sequels. I can't remember which one he was in. Yes. I mean, or even Christopher McDonald, who we just talked about on Thelma and Louise. Like, he's a little weasley, but like that kind of just shitty, shitty energy.

Danny McBride, how old is he? Let's get about it. He looked 45 when he was 18. He would have been fine. But Don just didn't feel that the character as written was dangerous enough. And he also felt that it was far too stereotypical. He's like, we have seen this before. Again, Thelma and Louise, we did just see it. But Eastern European. That's exactly right. I've never seen that. Well, now, will Liam Neeson have a special set of skills he'll use to destroy every man in the Balkans eventually? Yes. Yeah.

But that's fine. But not yet. So he saw Croatian actor Goran Viznich in Welcome to Sarajevo, which came out in 1997. And it got done thinking, you know, Eastern Europe. It's the home of Dracula. Yeah. Magic. Yeah.

Magic. So he called up Goran to come in for a read. He's a good villain. Oh, I actually think he. He's fucking awesome in this movie. I love his performance. His performance in this is one of the highlights of this movie for me, and it's one of the most memorable in the whole thing.

Yeah. But Chris, when he showed up to read for this movie, it became immediately clear he did not speak English. Hey, you can teach him. He learned his lines phonetically. Yeah. It didn't matter. It didn't matter.

I think Audit Armis did that for her first, like, three American movies. Something like that. Good on you. Yeah. You don't need to be able to speak it, as long as you can. it and he could. It's true. Apparently, even with the fact that he was speaking in very broken English and had clearly just learned his lines phonetically, he was so menacing that it all worked.

He's also, he's a big guy. I think he's like six foot four. I mean, you can tell he's towering over Aiden Quinn. He must be because Kidman's... She's almost six feet. Yeah, exactly. And he dwarves her in this movie. Makes her look small. Yeah. So Dunn rewrote the character of Jimmy to be sort of ambiguously Eastern European. I think in this, they say that the last name is Bulgarian. Here is the only issue I find with this casting choice. They make illusions.

They call him basically vampiric at a couple of points. They use that word. Because we were in a world in which witches exist, I actually thought he was like the Witches of Eastwick, right? Like Nicholson's character is the devil in that movie. I actually assumed for a moment, I thought, oh, have I forgotten this? And he's actually a vampire in this movie?

that's actually how I felt. No. I think I made the same assumption and he's actually not. And that's the only thing that, again, in a movie where the rules of the world are never really explicitly explored in a way that I think can be a little destabilizing, I'm not sure what the respective powers of people are. It was another layer of ambiguity that I ultimately found more confusing than helpful. You know what I think they're doing? I think in the movie they are kind of trying to walk the line of suggesting that perhaps he is a vampire because there are so many lines about that cowboy vampire dracula free like there's you know he's from transylvania there is all

this stuff that i wonder if they were trying to push that as far as they could without altering the actual lore from the book and i agree with you it muddies the waters quite a bit because i maybe because i watched this when i was young i assumed that that was the case that he was something supernatural and that's how he's able to operate in the spirit world the way that he does. But who knows? I don't know. Also, because his eyes open before they stab them with the needles during the spell. Again, we're playing fast and loose here with the Wicca and so I didn't know what the rules were. When I stab a dead man in the eyeballs when I'm trying to bring him back to life, typically the eyes don't open until I've jab jabbed them with the needles, just saying.

A little jabberwocky. A little jabberwocky. So with the cast locked in, Griffin Dunn was like, I should probably do a little bit of research about witches. So he hired a witch consultant, Chris, recommended by a friend of the friend, to show him some of the tricks of the trade, and they hid it off. She was, by Griffin's account, enormously helpful. She educated him on the training, skills, artifacts, literature, anything he needed to understand about white magic, which, of course, supernatural turned towards the good, which is why what happened next was surprising.

As Dunn learned more, Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman also became very curious. about the magic. They kept asking him, what, what is the consultant said about this? What about this? What about that? So he had an idea. He's like, you know what? Why don't we fly the witch consultant out to Los Angeles? We'll put her up in a nice hotel, invite her to come watch some rehearsals, introduce her to Sandra and Nicole. They're dying to meet her. They can ask her questions in person. What could possibly go wrong? So many things. Yeah. I don't want this person's input anywhere near my set. Turns out, Chris, you don't want this person anywhere near my set. Turns out, Chris, you don't want this person anywhere near your set. So Griffin had his producer, book a nice hotel, and call the witch to set it up. If you give a witch a nice hotel. Turns out, if you give a witch a nice hotel, you go and get cursed. Here's what happened next. Dunn told Vulture, quote, I have my producer maker reservation and caller, and the witch goes, you're not going to buy me off with a hotel room. I want a percentage of the movie. That's right. I'm going to have my own practical magic cookbook. It's practically magic how good these recipes are.

Yes. And he said she was paid quite well. Of course. And apparently she said, I want an additional $250,000. The producer told her, that's just not possible. And she goes crazy and scares the shit out of the producer. This is a quote. She says, I'm going to put a curse on you. I'm putting a curse on this movie.

I'm putting a curse on Griffin. So the producer comes back to my rehearsal, White is a Ghost, and she tells me, that call did not go well. She's really, really angry. I had no idea what happened, so I get back to my office on the Warner Brothers lot, and I listen to my voicemail.

And I will try to do my best, how he described this, as a very low growl. How dare you sick that shrew on me? You think you can buy me off. Well, let me tell you something. There is a land of curses. And that was the voicemail.

You know, Lizzie, again, if you want to get your way in life, you have to go full Denzel. at the end of Training Day. And that means I'm putting cases. Turn them all in. Turn them all in. On all you bitches.

Yes. And that's what she's doing. But instead of cases... Curses. It's curses. What if Training Day had a magical element? I'm just going out there. Look, if anyone could do it, it's Denzel.

Absolutely. I believe it. 100%. I've ever seen Fallon. Yeah. Fallon's great. He's in a demon movie. It's pretty good.

I like that movie a lot. Yeah. I'm sorry. It actually wasn't the end of the voicemail. She then started speaking in tongues. And he was like, he hung up. He was like, fuck this. I'm not doing this.

And within minutes, turns out she wasn't lying because Warner Brothers had been served. The witch was suing the studio. Within minutes. He gave the voicemail to the studio's legal department and even they were too freaked out to listen to it all the way through. So they were just like, fuck it. And they paid her off. They paid her an undisclosed sum to make her go away. But the whole experience haunted Griffin so much so that later on in production, he actually

couldn't help wondering if perhaps the witch had been telling the truth. But he was determined not to believe in all that, Chris, and he actually added the line, curses only have power when you believe them to the movie as a way to try and convince himself that this witch was not cursing him personally. Which by adding the line, he proves that he believes in the curse. Oh, buddy, poor Griffin. He's had a rough time. But which curses aside, production of course had to keep moving. and Swikers rewrite had left them with a pretty big location problem because remember, she moved this from a Boston area suburb from Bean Town, Witch Town, to a coastal town or island.

They needed somewhere that had a New England aesthetic. Of course, you have to tie this to the Salem Witch Trial somehow, but it also had to be sunny enough for an early spring shoot, which actual Massachusetts was not at all. California would have been ideal except it was reeling from what weather pattern that came in 1997, 1998, that's coming back. this year, baby. El, Niño, El, Nino. L. Nino. Yeah, we're scared of it. Do you like having sweat between your Guchin'Boss?

And you will love El Nino. Here it comes. El Nino. It was bad. It flooded everything, particularly the coastal communities in California. But producer Mary McClaglan suggested Washington State. Hell yeah. Of course, not exactly famous for sunshine.

But she specifically said, the San Juan Islands, more specifically, San Juan Island itself, and the protected inland waters of Puget Sound. And when the team arrived, they were like, this is it, this is the right location. But what they had not found was the Owens House, which makes sense, because there's like five houses on these islands. You do not have a lot to choose from. San Juan's a little more populated than the other islands, yeah. But still, not a lot. Friday Harbor is a big harbor. I know. So Dunn brought in Robin Standifer and Stephen and alish of the studio Roman and Williams for the job.

Their first decision regarding the home was to really reject the sort of witchy cliches that they felt Hoffman had written in her novel. And in Hoffman's book, the omens were described as having, you know, a black rod iron fence that circled the yard like a snake. Inside the house, there's no locks, no mirrors, three locks on each and every door.

It's dark in every room, even at noon, cool all through the heat of July. There's green-tinted window glass. You can see why Donovi went after it too, though, because it's got Burton-esque qualities to the way it's described in the book. Absolutely. It's very much giving Edward Cisorhands dark vibes.

But that's not what they wanted to do. They wanted the Owens women to have a sophisticated taste. They said, these are the kinds of witches who read House Beautiful and live in homes like the ones in Giant or the Magnificent Ambersons. It was inspired by East Coast Lighthouses and Victorian homes. They said it had to be clean and white, not fading, and cobwebbed.

And this was really important to Griffin's, done because he wanted a very noticeable contrast between dark and light, and as we already know, he was trying to focus far more heavily on the dark than we get in the end result. Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman told Collider that his earliest cut was more of a 50-50 between Sandy and Nicole. And this haunting of Nicole was the counterpoint to this emergence of Sandy. It was more of a ghost story. It was really beautiful. So keep that in mind. That's what they're shooting. The designers couldn't find any houses on San Juan Island that would match what they had in mind. So they'd said, we're just going to build it.

They found a plot of land on a cliff close enough to Coopville, which is where the little town is that you see in the film. Sorry, Goochville. Was that what that was, Lizzie? Goochville, yes. Otherwise known as Goochville. Sorry to Coopville. However, the plot of land that they found was actually native land. So there were a bunch of restrictions.

You could not dig into the ground. They're going to turn this into poltergeist all of a sudden if they're not careful. Yeah. You've got a witch. You've got native lands. you better be careful. They had to build essentially the shell of a home up on a platform without digging into the soil at all.

They also had to agree to take it down immediately as soon as filming ended, which they did. It took them about six months to build the exterior of the home and the gardens. Wow. The interiors, of course, those are separate on a soundstage. The production design of this movie. It's great. It is so beautiful. It is truly like the crowning achievement of this movie.

And I think is maybe the biggest influence on. sort of cottage core, you know, witchy decor today. It's that in the location. The location they scouted is perfect. It's wonderful that it's on the cliffs. It's great they chose San Juan Island. You know what it reminds me of from a build perspective is the Bates Motel? Yes, very much. Which we just talked about because that also... It's that very Victorian design with the Widows Walk at the top. Yeah. Exactly. I love it. And that was a build as well. You know, that was on the universal lot, obviously, so not on location, but still. That's a good point. I wonder if there was a bit of that here in terms of inverting the sort of... I'd

of a spooky house because the Victorian house, it is thought of as being very haunted and spooky, and then they make it on top of that, this very bright, white, cherry design. It was very smart. Also, they made almost everything that you see in this movie. The tincture jars, the pressed flowers. Apparently Stephen actually did etchings of plants. Like, those are done by hand by the production designer that are all over the house. They also sourced tons of antiques all over the country. It is a remarkable job. A couple of additional facts just about the production. design because it really was so good. Griffin Dunn actually received so much praise about it that he didn't love it because he was like, did you like the movie or did you just like the production design?

I liked the production design. I think a lot of people did. He said, quote, it would be like if you saw Lawrence of Arabia and then said to Dave and Lean, who is that brown camel in the movie? I love the color of that camel. Wow. It's not exactly true. It's like if you saw it and said, I liked your trains quite a bit in that movie, sir. And the way they blew up. I like that sand with no little plants in it. Also, Ben Stiller and his wife, Christine Taylor, were so impressed with the practical magic home that they asked Robin to remodel their home. And according to Dunn, this movie was the reason why Robin and Stephen's work moved from production design to interior design. It was because Ben Stiller and his wife hired them.

Christine Taylor, victim of a witch in the craft. That's true. It's all connected. So production got to work making over the town of Goochville, a. aka Coopville. False fronts went up. New signs appeared. Coopville liquor became the speckled hen grocery. It's so funny because you can totally tell that all of the signs are obviously put up for this movie. They paint everything super duper white. It's all like fake little signs. Every day is a farmer's market. Yeah, no, it's aspirational.

Yes. But meanwhile, Dunn couldn't stop thinking about that witch and her threat to curse the film. So just in case, he actually went and got himself an exorcism. There we go. I was waiting for the exorcism to come back. You wanted it to be like the exorcist, Griffin. You got it. You got it. He said it was simple, new agey, mostly chance and smoke.

And about as silly as the idea that someone would curse you over the phone. He spent about $100 on it and he figured not going to hurt anything. By April of 1998, the house was ready. Filming was about to begin. But, of course, news of the witch cursing the set, had leaked all the way back to Sandy and Nicole, who couldn't stop talking about it. And he was determined to keep a lid on it because the last thing he needed was a distraction on set. But it didn't help that just a few days before filming, the father of a crew member died of a heart attack.

And immediately, people on set were like, oh my God, oh my God, the witch killed him, the witch killed him. He was very old, but perhaps the wish killed him. Yeah, it was probably the bacon or something, not the wind. No, it was the season of the Vevich. In early April, 98, the cast arrived in Washington State to begin one month of shooting across Whidbey Island and San Juan Island. They started in Coopville, spent about a week shooting the small town scenes. Sandra Bullock is in most of those, so they were expecting her to be there. Nicole Kidman really is only in like one scene there, so they didn't think she was going to be around.

But much to their surprise, both Nicole and Tom Cruise spent the whole time walking around town. Really? Yes. Oh, that's so cool. That's so interesting. Yeah, they hung out. Tom's walking around just wondering if Stanley liked his performance in Eyeswashed Shut. He's walking through doors all over Coopville.

He's just ruminating. Can I have done that better, sir, if I came into your shop a little differently this time? It seemed fine, Tom. Local kids were actually hired to be the chanting children, so those are local Coopville children. And a local biking group is the one that bikes through the scene and accidentally almost kills her husband. That's impressive. That's a real stunt. I know.

That they did. Those bicycles seem to go quite close. that poor fella. Very fast. Residents were paid $40 a day to be extras, and retailers were paid $30 a day for the disruption, which the community was not very happy with, because that's not very much. Also, as we pointed out, everything was painted white. Locals apparently would say don't stand in one place too long. Anything that doesn't move gets painted white. And on set, Dunn did learn that coming from a family of women didn't automatically make directing a whole cast of them easy. He told Vulture in 2017, the women in the movie became such a strong group that they

They actually all had their periods at the same time. I remember during a full moon. And they were joking, okay, Griffin, it's going to be a little rough the next couple days. This coven might be turning on you. None of it felt terribly unfamiliar to me. Hasn't that been totally debunked that that is a thing in terms of period sinking? Was he? Chris, my period expert?

You're asking the wrong guy. Ask your penis real quick. What does he have to say about it? I could ask my sisters. No, it's totally a myth. It's a myth. I'm like 99% sure this is not true. Yeah.

I think it's more just like there aren't that many days in the month that at some point they're going to start overlapping. Well, it reminds me of these, like you have a classroom of a certain amount of size. Right. It becomes like almost a statistical certainty that two people will share the same birthday, even though it's far fewer people than 365 or something like that. Exactly. I don't know. Okay. Be quiet.

And now to Chris for women's sexual wellness. For the most part, though, this shoot went really pretty quickly. The only exception was there was some friction between the locals in the studio over parking space. And for that final scene, production did invite the residents to actually turn out in costume as the townspeople. So those are locals, yeah. Oh, that's fun. And just as they promised, the day after shooting, the house was torn down. Much to the dismay of Barbara Streisand, do you know about this?

I don't know about this. She tried to buy the house. she called the production and was like, I'll have that house, please. And they were like, it's not real. Barbara, it's popsicle sticks. You can't live here. I'll take it. What do you want for it?

Yes, she was crushed to find out that it was never real. And then she built it in her basement. You know about her basement mall of baby dolls, right? Yeah. Oh, Barbara. So after Washington, they moved to L.A. to film the interior scenes. This includes Midnight Margaritas, anything inside. the house. He chose Harry Nilsson's song, Coconut. He said, quote, I remember vividly the first time I

heard the song was in a discotheque in the Hamptons when I was an apprentice one summer for a stock company. I must have been about 16 years old because I just got my driver's license. I was too young to actually be allowed to go in the thing, but whatever. And the song came on and I became possessed. It's the perfect song for this scene. It is such a good one. It's a great needle drop for the scene. Also, doesn't Paul Thomas Anderson use Harry Nilsons one as the beginning of Magnolia? Isn't that the needle drop after the intro? Yes. Yeah.

So Harry Nelson getting a lot of play in 9899 with needle drops here. That's right. Yeah. Now, Nicole Kidman, this is how you know she's more fun than Tom Cruise, she brought along tequila for this scene. So in case you watched it and wondered, hey, was everybody shit face drunk during this? The answer is yes. They indeed were.

They got very drunk as they danced around for hours on end while Griffin Dunn filmed on a setty cam. The next scene, though, was the hardest to shoot by far. It was the exorcism. It took three days to film. It was very difficult for Nicole Kibben, who was determined to make it as real as possible to the point where she actually burst a few blood vessels in her face because she was slamming her head into the ground so hard over and over again. You can see it. Her eyes look quite red. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kibman really bonded on set. They remained close friends and still are today.

Kidman said of Bullock, she's very down to earth, has a great sense of humor. We just managed to click. It wasn't anything that had to be forced or anything like that. I'm a very tactile person, so I always touch people and hug and everything. and she was really open to that. Nicole, I don't know that we would get along. Things not to be if you're a man on a movie set. Yes.

John Lasseter. I'm a really tactile person. Please leave, sir. You are not Nicole Kimman. Please get out of here. Practical Magic was edited by Elizabeth Kling. And initially, Dunn had hired Michael Nyman who did The Piano and Gattaca to write the orchestral score.

And according to Nyman, he delivered one that was lyrical, ironic, sexy, funny, sleazy in some places, scary and others. and very art house. He actually said that it was, quote, the best score I think I've ever written for a film that engaged me, not at all, meaning he did not love the film itself. Kind of like saying your girlfriend lives in Canada. Like, best score I ever wrote, you can't hear, sorry, but, you know. Well, you can hear bits and pieces of it floating around online, but you sure can't hear it in the movie. And that's because they did an early test screening with the score, and it was a disaster. Well, I'm guessing because I didn't see his name in the credits.

That's correct. Warner Brothers decided they hated the whole movie and one of the first things that got axed was Nyman's score. Nyman said, quote, not realizing I had six weeks to work on the score and they had two years to work on the film. So I was the whipping boy. And to be fair, I had nine. By the way, his score may have been wonderful. I'm just teasing. But this is the classic composer last person in first person out. A great roundtable story that I can very quickly say. A composer says he's with the director and the director keeps saying make the music faster, make the music faster. And what he realizes the director is trying to tell the actor to run faster and they no longer can.

And the only mechanism through which they can make the scene feel faster is the music at this point. Exactly. So, of course, it was Alan Silvestri who was brought in to compose an entirely new score that sounded a lot more commercial. Sylvesteri who had done Death Becomes Her. That's right. I love Death Becomes Her. I didn't see it until like maybe a year or two ago. It's so good.

It's very tonally different. Yes, big time. It's very funny. Of course, the film does include two. Stevie Nix tracks, that can't have been cheap. If you ever did believe, written in the 70s, and then Crystal, first recorded with Lindsay Buckingham singing the lead, and for practical magic, Stevie Nix, of course, sings the lead for the first time. This was worth whatever they paid for it. Having Stevie Nix show up at the end of this movie is pitch perfect. But as practical magic

moved through post-production, Dunn's original cut, which we discussed, Akiva Goldsman, described it as being much darker, I think pushing farther in a ghostly direction and also focusing more on Nicole Kidman, it became caught up in a broader marketing dispute at Morner Brothers who did not know how to sell this film. And so any problems that he had managed to avoid during filming were, of course, waiting for him in post-production, which happens all the time. And the biggest concern was the darkness at the center of his film. Now to Dunn, the whole point was, quote, really the family and the idea of how a curse can be passed down through a family, the way we inherit the dysfunctions and afflictions and beauty and trauma of previous generations. I understood the terror of domestic violence.

It had touched my own family. I found that the more real I made it, the stronger, the more mystical moments became like Gorin's resurrection. So I think the better movie maybe would have been one that pushed in the direction that he was trying to go. I think the problem, to your point, is that they were dealing with existing source material, and it didn't actually make sense with the existing source material. Like, I think he could have made an amazing movie that was entirely separate, but it is so sort of incongruous with the rest of what was present in the screenplay. My guess is that whatever his version was, was not working, at least to the level that the studio felt confident in or, you know, comfortable releasing. And if it's not working, their strategy became our best bet is to

lean into a tone that will be as accessible as possible to as broad an audience as possible. And time has kind of proven that that may have been the right decision based on the enduring power of this film despite a lackluster initial response. So again, but that's just speculation. Yeah. For Griffin Dunn, the sort of glaring differences in the tone of this movie didn't bother him. An example he gave is the Midnight Margaritas scene. You know, it's reminiscent of the way that boozy nights can go where things are really fun and really silly and then all of a sudden they get very heavy and scary. And of course, that also makes sense, given his life experiences and watching his father go through everything that he went through. I agree with him. I think that that sequence is one of the

most successful ones in this movie. I do wonder if his cut may have been better than what we wound up with. Who knows? It would just be guesswork to say, I will say, I again find the end of that sequence confusing when they start digging at each other because we're in a world where the magic is so ill-explained to the audience. I wonder, are we under the influence of something here? Is there? Oh, definitely you are. I think that's clear. Right. But I'm saying like to what extent, like, soccer channing and Diane Wies like eventually admit that they cast a spell on Sandra Bullock to make her fall in love with this man. They effectively took away her consent, which then led to this horrible tragedy. And it's swept under the rug in two sentences. I don't think it's that the two can't coexist. It's that they alternate with such rapidity that unlike something like, you know, an American Warwolf in London, which I do think has that tonal juxtaposition, we're not allowed to kind of like settle into one for any particularly.

decent period of time. And that's why I feel a little more jumbled when I watch this movie. Yeah, I think that's fair. It also sounds like he pushed some of the scarier moments in like very scary directions, like the sequence where they put the needles into Jimmy's eyes. That was supposedly like really scary. I like all that stuff a lot. I do too, but it's cut way down in the final result. It was apparently quite a bit scarier. More graphic, yeah. Yeah. They also had a huge problem with his original ending. He actually had a longer, very music heavy sequence. where the Owens women leap from the roof and then float around, and then Warner Brothers was like,

absolutely not, what the fuck am I looking at? Just have them jump off and have their feet hit the ground. The end. When it was time to preview Practical Magic, Griffin Dunn was seated behind Warner Brothers CEO Bob Daly. After the scene where Gillian and Sandy dig up Jimmy's body from a rosebrush, Daly turned to the guy sitting next to him and muttered, I wish the kid would just pick a tone.

Practical Magic was released on October 16th, 1998, alongside bride of Chucky and beloved. It did lead the weekend, making around $13 million, but it ended up grossing about $68 million worldwide on a budget of about $75 million. Now, as we know, that does not include the marketing. So this was a certified big-time flopper. And the reviews were quite harsh. Roger Ebert called it too scary for children and too childish for adults before asking, Who was it made for?

Time Out called it a film with neither heart nor mind. New York Times, Janet Maslin, wrote, despite a transcendently silly storyline and a lot more frou-frou touches than the traffic will bear, it's liable to work as escapism for anyone who thinks little women has too much grit. Janet's mean. Miss Maselan, if you're nasty. I do like a lot of her reviews, but they are scathing. One of the biggest critiques was, unsurprisingly, the tone.

But looking back, both Dinovi and Dunn argued the problem was less about the tone and more about who was watching it and when. Of course, you don't agree with this, but Denise Dinovie told people, quote, it was the days where female characters were usually the wife or girlfriend, and it was very tough to get a movie made with one female lead, let alone all of them. So we had kind of a tough reception. It was also a time when 98% of critics were men who didn't really click with the movie, so it did not get great reviews. Now, I don't think that's fair necessarily.

As we've discussed, there are very valid critiques being made there about the tone and the issues with this movie. But I will say, I do think it was made for women. Like, this is primarily enjoyed by women, I believe. and, you know, it's hard to put your finger on what we love about this so much, but I did love it as a little girl. I still love it now. Yeah, no, and I think, you know, that was kind of what I was trying to express was I see a lot of flaws when I see this movie,

but I also see a lot of really lovely elements. And so even though for me, the flaws tend to outweigh those elements, I can see how somebody else would have a different balance, you know what I mean, when they come to this movie completely. I don't know if it's entirely fair just to chalk it up to sexism. I was looking at the reviews for the craft, for example, Death Becomes Her, The Witches of Eastwick. These were all movies ultimately led by women.

Yeah. I do think Practical Magic has more of a sisterhood vibe that is, again, gentler. There's even like a coming out, you know, sort of verbally stated she's coming out, sort of allegory, queer allegory to this movie. So I don't want to fully equate them. However, interestingly, those movies were all, even though they all received mixed reviews, they were somewhat better received than Practical Magic at the time. And those were even before Practical Magic.

I agree with you. I think the thing that is coming out of this is that this must have been a very disorienting experience for Griffin Dunn. And I understand why it would be and why he would feel this way about it. You know, he poured so much of himself and his own personal experiences, obviously, with his sister into making this. And I really admire what he did and what he was trying to do. But to do that and then have all the reviews come back, basically just saying, like, Pick a Wayne, bud, would be very hard, especially when he started something like an American and Werewolf in London, which to your point, very much mixed jokes with horror in a way that I don't

think had really been done prior to that. And so it totally makes sense that this would just be a really jarring experience for him. Yeah, but I do think one of the things that it speaks to is, at least at the time, I think it was more disorienting to see kind of Tweed mixed with horror as opposed to jokes mixed with horror, maybe. Yeah. Although to that end, you could look at Burton a little bit. Edward Cisorhands is kind of you could see it as, you know, in sort of like a similar space, you know, tonally, to something like this. I don't know. I see some of the criticism is unfair. I think the degree, the harshness of the criticism, that's how I would describe it. It seems excessively harsh. Yeah, I agree. Along that axis, even though I would tend to

fall on that axis myself. Also, I think the thing about Everett's Sizerhands and Burton's work that maybe made it more palatable early on is that it's also heightened. Yes. This feels much more grounded. Yeah, that is very hard to do, which, you know, credit to number one enemy of the podcast, John Landis, he is actually very good at. Yeah, American Werewolf in London is much more heightened, too, especially the ridiculousness of the dream sequences, like the Nazi werewolves and all that stuff. Yeah, you feel like you're in a kind of insane world in that movie in some ways. Yeah. So following the release of Practical Magic, which Dunn really was not happy with the way this had gone, he didn't feel very proud. He perceived it as an enormous failure.

He was handed a lot of chick flick scripts. After this, every project he tried to develop, really struggled to get off the ground, so much so that he actually gave up on directing major studio films. But by the mid-2000s, Practical Magic, was developing a coven following, if you will. He first realized this through his teenage daughter, whose friends would quote the film all the time, and freak out when they learned who directed it. By 2023, he proudly told the story of Paul Rudd, his Hudson Valley neighbor, walking up to his restaurant table because Rudd's son's girlfriend was obsessed with practical magic

and had to meet him. I can't believe Paul Rudd is 100 million years old because he looks 12. I just love the idea of Paul Rudd. Hey man, my son's girlfriend loves your mom. Loves practical magic. And I thought the production design was great. Yes, Griffin Duns. No. He really pivoted back into acting, starring in TV shows like Jill Soloway's I Love Dick and This Is Us. He did direct the documentary Joan Diddy in The Center Will Not Hold. Also, he's a great actor. I really love Griffin Dunn as a performer. Griffin Dunn's lovely.

I also, again, the sequences themselves, I think, are quite well directed in this movie. I still love this movie. I understand why. And again, I agree. I understand why it indoors beyond those other ones we've talked about. Watching it now and also knowing this, it does feel so chopped up. I really do wonder what a slightly longer cut would have been, what it might have given us. Yeah, I think this movie should have been honestly probably two hours and ten minutes,

like 25 minutes longer probably. Yeah, and I think his cut, I don't know this for sure. I suspect his cut was longer, and I just wonder what else was in there. Like two hours, probably. Yeah. I don't think they did us any favors by cutting it out. I'll put it that way. Now, over the years, there were, of course, a bunch of attempts to revive practical magic in 2010,

Warner Brothers and ABC Family tried to develop a prequel series. That never happened. And in 2019, HBO Max tried to develop a series based on Hoffman's prequel novel, The Rules of Magic, that also never came to fruition. Dunn was, of course, never approached about any of the potential projects, but he said that he would be interested in returning to the material if asked. But it seems he was not asked, because in early 2025, a practical magic sequel was officially announced to be directed by Suzanne Beer. Evan Rachel Wood also did not return. I think we'll save this discussion for the review episode that we will do on Practical Magic 2 because there is some interesting conversation, particularly around her not returning for the film.

So, Chris, that wraps up our coverage of Practical Magic ahead of Practical Magic 2. What went right? Many things went right in this movie. I would like to give mine to 90s movie star Sandra Bullock. She's so great. who is, I think, oddly underrated as an actress. I think she ended up on some unfairly, she ended up on some sort of snarky shitless

when she won her Oscar for the Blind Side, which I think she's given better performances than that. I think she would agree. I think she would say, if I could have won for a role, it probably wouldn't have been that one. But my point is, she is ridiculously attractive.

She's incredibly charming. She's super funny. Yeah. She has a remarkable ability to be self-deprecating, but also very, strong in her roles. She can make fun of herself and then come off extremely competent and confident in the same breath. And I think that's really hard to do. She does it in speed. She does it in this. Missingeniality, I don't think works with anybody else besides her. She is so good in that movie.

She's so good. And I got to say when she was running into town, I was like, damn, Sandy. I know. I know. You're so hot. She's so hot. She and Nicole Kidman are like, are like, as hot as I think anybody could ever get. Mostly Sandra, wow. No offense. I just, but she has to do so much.

In 10 minutes, she falls in love, has two children, her husband gets hit by a car, she moves in with her aunt. You know, it is a nutso roller coaster. I know,

and she nails all the emotional beats. You really feel it. She does a great job. I understand why they chose to focus this movie around her, character, and her. Yeah.

And I think that a lot of that is a testament to Bullock as an actress, And so I'll give it to earn. I have to give this to the production designers. I think that it's just incredible. I mean, it really inspired its own aesthetic. And I think that aesthetic has been revived, you know, in the age of Instagram.

And especially as we're all now discovering that perhaps we need our own homesteads in order to survive. I don't know where we're all going. But I guess make yourself an Owens sister's garden just in case, you know? You never know when you might need some potions. So you can die alone. Yeah. Absolutely. You don't know what beetles are in your house. El Niño can flood you in your car. So Barbara Streisand can try to buy your popsicle sticks. No, it's beautiful. They did an incredible job. Just the detail of it. It looks so lived in. It is amazing. If Barbara wants to buy your house, you've done a great job. So congratulations to them, this movie. The look of this movie has endured and will continue to. And also, good on you, Griffin Dunn. You took a big swing, even if it wasn't 100% a home run. So many people love this movie, including.

me. So that wraps up our coverage of practical magic. And as we said, please come back. If you're not already a subscriber, you can subscribe on Apple or Spotify or Patreon for $5 a month. And you can listen to our review episodes and we will be talking about practical magic too. The trailer is a trailer. I can't wait to see it. When we were watching the first one, Carmela said, wait, did little girls in the sequel too? She thought that the one sister was Joey King in practical magic one. It does look a bit like her. Yeah. And so I thought, no, but Joey King's great casting. I love Joey King. I'm excited to see the new one. My biggest disappointment, and actually, this would be another one, right? I love the way this movie shot. I love the way that movies in the

90s. They had moved away from some of the overlit movies of the 90s, like even something like the craft, arguably even scream a little bit or certainly, you know, go back to death becomes her. And I think this movie was kind of like we'd peaked on our ability to, you know, light film in a big Hollywood way and it felt so great and romantic. And we moved into digital and look, I'll withhold judgment until I sit down a big screen. But when I watched the trailer, the biggest thing that I missed was the look of the first film I felt was maybe a little bit missing. But let's put a pin in that. We'll see.

All right. All right. If you folks would like a curse placed upon your house for $50 a month on Patreon, you can get Lizzie as the witch consultant cursing our most supportive fans. That's right. A plague on both your houses. It's also Stripe from Gremlins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have one voice.

So, yeah, here we go. Here we go. Thrice, the brindled cat hath mewed. Thrice. And once the hedge pig whined. Harpier cries, tis time, tis time. Adrian Benkeria, Alex Barrett, Angeline Renee Cook, Anthony Thomas Ben Shindleman,

Blaze Ambrose, Brian Donna, Donna, Hugh, Brittany Morris, Brooke, Cameron Smith. Round about the cauldron go in the poison, then trails throw, Toad that under cold stone days and nights has 31. Swelltered venom, sleeping god, Will thou first in the charmed pot? See Grace B, Chris Leal, Datum three,

David Friskillante, Derrin Dale Conkling, Middum Sodia, Evan Downey, Felicia Giff, film it yours, self. Perkinsine, Galen and Miguel the broken glass kids, double, double toil and trouble fire, burn and cauldron bubble. Flay of a fanny snake in the cauldron boil and bake, I have new to a frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog. Adder's fork and blindworm sting, lizard's leg, and owlet's wing, for a charm of powerful trouble. Like a hell brass boy, and bubble.

The cast and crew of Winner Trip to Browntown, Halfray hound James McAvoy, Jason Frankl, JJ Rapido, Johann Gaiwork Gunnarson, John D. Wilshire, Jory Hillpiper, Karina Kanaba, Amy Berksherslaugger McCoy, Lena L.J. Missy Bassett is pretty damn fabulous, too.

Lousy Susan, Lydia Howes Double, double, toil and trouble fire burn and Cauldron bubble Mandy Rarlison Mark Bertha Matthew Jacobson

Michael McGrath Mike and Clemmy Burbridge Nate full stop Ashley Nate the knife Peterie Peterson Rosemary Southwood Rurger

Sadie Gersady Jassie Salman Chainani Steve Winterbauer Suzanne Johnson The Provost family They all sound like, oh, pricking of my thumbs. Something wicked.

Fantastic. Thank you, Lizzie. Remember, curses are only real, if you believe in them. Yes, right. And can you tell the fine folks at home what we have coming next week? We got a little taste of Resident Evil coming at you next week. This is another double header where we're doing the oldie and the newie. Yeah, and I'm not going to try to tell you it's great when we go into it.

But it is a lot of fun, and it's a very interesting story. Great. I'm very excited to talk about Resident Evil. All right. We'll talk to you guys in a week. Bye. What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman.

This episode was researched and written by Laura Woods and edited by Karen Krepsaw.