WHAT WENT WRONG - The Fifth Element

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

An on-set love triangle, a mid-shoot divorce, and costumes even Prince wouldn’t wear. This week producer David Boman takes Chris & Lizzie on a voyage through The Fifth Element: a movie conceived by a 16-year-old only to become the most expensive European film ever made and put the then-unknown Milla Jovovich on the map.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.

Bum bum bum bum bum Do do do do do do do Do you do. Hello and welcome back to what went wrong, your favorite podcast, full step, just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make one, let alone a good one.

And we are back to covering movies this week, dear confused listeners. Our lost coverage has concluded. As always, I am Chris Winterbauer, and I am here today with Lizzie Bassett. Lizzie, how you doing tonight? I'm doing great. And you know what, Chris, I appreciate you showing why we need our guest tonight on this show, because that was a horrible rendition of our theme song. It's true. For those who may be wondering who's joining us tonight, it is our producer, composer, editor, everything that Chris and I don't do, extraordinary David Bowman.

Postmates driver. Yeah. Husband. Hey, David. Welcome, David. Hey, hey, guys. Thanks for the intro, except for the Postmates part. That was pretty rude. Yes, today I am here, and we are talking about a film that nearly didn't get made,

involved a love triangle between three people on the film, which resulted in a mid-shoot divorce, and a film that out-exploaded 007 on James Bond's own turf, the fifth element. I don't know what that last one means. Well, you'll have to stick around to learn. Okay, great. I can't wait. That sentence will make sense later. It will make sense later.

So before we dig in, I do have to say that for the second time in a row, I seem to have managed to pick a film that I loved in my childhood, but has, I learned in doing my research, a number of issues that are difficult to discuss. So I'm going to issue a trigger warning here that if you're someone who can be sensitive to conversations involving sexual misconduct, now would be a good time to tune out. However, we do talk about a lot of things that are not those topics.

So hopefully you can enjoy this episode. I loved this movie when I was a kid. Probably saw it around 13 or 14 years old and couldn't get enough of the crazy guns and the insanity of it. And this was the first time I had watched it probably 15, 20 years. What did you guys think were watching it?

Well, Lizzie, have you seen it before? Yes, but I did not see it as a 13 or 14-year-old boy, which I think may be colored my experience. I saw it, I want to say, in my, like, mid-20s. I think maybe a particularly terrible boyfriend may have made me watch it. Sorry, David. Anyway, thrilled to re-watch something that you both love. Chris?

Well, off of that, ringing endorsement, I saw this movie even, so I probably saw this movie when I was eight or nine with my uncle. So that would have been right when it came out. Yeah, I was right when it came out. out on a laser disc is when I saw it because I saw it on laser disc and it looked crisp. And I also, I loved it. I loved it as a child. I really thought it was one of the best movies I ever made for probably a solid five years.

Still loved it all the way through high school. Haven't watched it since probably late high school, early college. Watching it now, I can see so many things I didn't notice as a child, so many things. So even just simple storytelling things that don't. make a whole lot of sense. Yeah, his mom. His mom is his age. Yes, youngest mom in the world, but they're perhaps younger than Bruce Willis.

I think that was the temp ADR, and they just said, leave it. But, you know, there's some really interesting thing. Bruce Willis is only in the movie for about three minutes in the first half hour, which is very unusual. And so there's a lot of weird stuff. There are elements regarding, I'll say, gender dynamics. And it's a very guy. oriented movie. I still

really enjoyed it even as a full grown man. Listen. Yeah. I totally get why people wouldn't like it and I had a blast rewatching it. I was like, this is so silly. It's so over the top. I love the design elements. It was like a giant music video. It's absurd. And I just had a good time.

Yeah, I will say I was not bored. I should have prefaced this. I did not hate this movie. I don't, it's not a movie I would like voluntarily choose to rewatch. I'll put it that way. Oh really? Because you text to me said I hate this element. Well, I want to make it clear.

I was halfway through and I do think it gets way better in the second half. The first half I was like, I absolutely hate this movie and I don't know how to tell David. It's so bad. I completely disagree. And then the second half was fine. Well, we're going to have to get a divorce. I agree. The first 10 minutes are strong.

Those are fine. And then it's downhill for like 45 minutes. And then it picks back up again when they get to... It feels a little aimless. And then I think, yeah, when they get to floss... The cruise ship. Flostom. Yes. Chris Tucker...

Is something. Needed burst of energy. Yes. Yeah, definitely. I couldn't tell if I really was driven absolutely insane by him or really enjoyed him. It was teetering along the edge the whole way through. Oh, I love him in this. Problematic.

Michael Jackson impression. That's great. Big time. Which he had been doing since high school, you'll learn if you look at his Wikipedia. That's one of the first things that they say was he was known for making his classmates laugh with his Michael Jackson impression. David, I liked the cell phone that you opened this by your source of Wikipedia. Yeah.

Well, I mean, you know, I just had to get some quick background. All right. All right. Let's dive into it. David, lead us into what went wrong on the fifth element. All right. As always, we'll start with the IMDB description for this film. In the colorful future, a cab driver unwittingly becomes the central figure in the search for a legendary cosmic weapon to keep evil in Mr. Zorg at bay.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, sure. It'll do. All right, so we can start by talking. Okay, we can start by talking about writer-director, Luke Besant, who is sometimes described as the most. Hollywood of French filmmakers or the French Steven Spielberg. Hmm. Well, yeah, let's get a reaction to that.

Yeah, let's cut to Steven Spielberg on that. Besant was born in 1959, the son of two club med scuba diving instructors. Now, there's a unique pairing. Truly. He was born in Paris, but spent much of the first 10 years of his life traveling to tourist resorts because of their job in Italy, Yugoslavia, and Greece. So as a child, he wanted to be a marine biologist. And you'll see that he isn't someone who gives up on his goals throughout this episode. So even when he was young, there's every reason to think he was extremely serious about it. But at the age of 17, he had a scuba accident, which made it so that he couldn't keep diving. Tell me more. What is a scuba accident? The bends? I don't know. I did try and look it up. And I saw there were like Reddit threads about it. But he never spent it.

Okay, so no more diving for Luke, but he still loves scuba-like outfits for the women in his movies. Continue, David? After learning that he wasn't going to be able to keep diving, he decided to make a list of the things that he could do now that that was off the table, and at the top of his list, were writing and taking pictures. And he decided that that meant he was destined to be a filmmaker. In an Entertainment Weekly article from 2017, this is what he said on his 16-year-old self, quote, at the time I'm living 60 kilometers from Paris, almost in the middle of a forest, with a stepdad who doesn't want music, TV, nothing. So I'm very isolated.

And basically, you have three solutions. First is you become an alcoholic. The second one is you kill yourself. And the third is you escape with your pen. The fifth element was the perfect escape. So he began writing the script when he was 16 years old. Wow. Lissy's like, it's all making sense.

I mean, yeah, it doesn't not make sense. Yeah. How old is he by the time this comes out? He's born in 59 and this comes out when? 1997 minus 1958. 38. That sounds right. Okay.

Great. The idea for the screenplay was inspired by his love for comic books, in particular those of Jean-Claude Mezier's Valerian. Yeah, which he later made. Exactly, which deserves its own episode. But the comic was about two heroes, one male, one female, who traveled the universe through space and time. It's actually pretty wild how similar the Fifth Element script he wrote at 16 was to the final film.

Is it wild? It revolved around, according to him, it revolves around a nobody who wins a ticket to a clubbed resort on the planet Flost in Paradise, where he meets Lulhu, a sand girl, who has the beauty of youth despite being 2,000 years old. Not only had he started writing this project, but it was also around this age that he started penning a film called The Big Blue, which came out at Cannes in 1988, nine years before the Fifth Element hit audiences in 97. And that was his second. He had, I think his first movie was...

Subway. Subway. Yeah, 85. And then Lafem Nikita in 90. Yes. He was, like, I don't know if David, if you're going to talk about this, there was a filmmaking movement called Cinema du Luc.

I will touch on that. Great. Continue. So at the age of 18, Bisson had hoped to attend, La Fémy, the National Film School of France, but during a preliminary school interview, an administrator asked him which directors he most admired. Besant named Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Milos Foreman, before the interviewer cut him off and said, that's enough, I don't think you belong here.

Yeah, yeah. No French directors, very big directors. The French are the ultimate hipsters. Yeah. But as I mentioned, Beissons doesn't take no for an answer, so he immediately started pursuing odd jobs on sets and eventually, became an assistant to well-known French directors like Claude Ferraldo and Patrick Grand Prix, Grand Prix.

After that, he directed his first short films, one of which was called Lavant Darnier, in English the Penn Ultimate, and that came out in 1980. And that film was the first time that he would work with Jean-Renaud and Eric Sarah, who is the composer who he continued to work with throughout his career. Love Jean-Rano. So good, yeah. All right, so he started writing The Fifth Element at 16 and continued working. on the script over the course of the next 13 years. By the time it was first optioned in 1988,

he had a script that was 400 pages long and would have cost 100 million dollars to make. That seems like a deal for a 400-page script. That's pretty amazing. Well, in the late 80s and early 90s, 100 million would have been by far the most expensive European film ever made. I don't know about U.S. film. It would have been one of the most expensive U.S. films ever made, too. Yeah, easily. So the question is, Chris and Lizzie, who would commit to producing a 400-page sci-fi script with a $100 million estimated budget conceived of by a board 16-year-old? No one. The answer is the head of the French studio, Gaumont Studios, Patrice Ladeau. Oh, he loves a challenge.

Okay, good for you, Patrice. He does love a challenge. But the reason that he was backing Besson was because they had worked together on Besson's feature debut, like Chris said, Subway, which had received a Bapton nomination for Best 4.4. foreign language film in 1986. And he followed that up with the Big Blue, the other script that he started writing at 16, and that opened can and got him noticed internationally. So basically... Wait, I have a stupid question.

Yeah, what's up. Is this... This is not his first English language, right? Fifth Element. No, the professional's English language. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that was before.

Okay. Yeah. So LaFemniquita, then professional, then this. Yeah, LaFemniquita's French and then professionals. And then professionals. And then professional's English. Okay. Yeah, 94.

Yeah, exactly. Basically, Lidou had total faith in Bisson, who already was on this big role with his first two features and was making a name for himself. And as Chris mentioned earlier, he was becoming a pivotal figure in something called Cinema DeLuc, which was a style characterized by films that featured style over substance, spectacle over narrative, a slick, gorgeous visual style, and featured young alienated characters. Yeah, so it was a term coined by a French film critic whose name escapes me, but Leo or Lios Kourachs is one of the other ones. He did Holy Motors, if you guys have seen that.

And he did the puppet Annette with Adam Driver, 2021, if anyone's seen that. And then the other director whose name is escaping me, Jean-Jacques Ben-Ure. I'm pronouncing that wrong. And he, I don't know his films as well. Betty Blue in 1986 is the only one I've seen. And so the three of them,

I actually think it's not dissimilar from how David Fincher was described in the 90s, which is all style. It's the music video generation of American directors, Spike Jones, David Fincher, etc. And this is very much the same thing in the 80s in France. And people are saying, oh, my God, these guys have, it's all vapid, nihilistic, visual style. There's nothing to it. And the directors didn't like the label. They kind of rejected it, is my understanding.

That's really interesting. Even with the newfound recognition, Ladoo knew, like Lizzie, you said, no one was actually going to take it on where it was. He was taking it on more in the way of, this is something that I'm determined to get made with you, but obviously a bunch of things need to change for that to happen. There was no way that the movie was going to be made at 400 pages

and $100 million. So Lidu hired a team of writers to work with this song and try to whittle the script down. This was going to be the first time that Luke would work with Robert Mark came in, who had come to acclaim by this point as the writer of The Karate Kid. And he and Besant would go on to co-write a bunch of films like The Transporter and I Have a very particular set of skills. The best airplane movie ever taken.

Yeah, exactly. So that was the beginning of their collaboration. It was also at this point that Beeson met two individuals who would define the look of the fifth element. These were the To Be production designers, the wildly successful comic book authors, Jean-Claude Mazier, and John Giroux. Jean-Claude Mésier was the author of Valerian. So he was like a childhood idol of Luke.

And when they met around 1990, there was a new issue of the Valerian comic called The Circles of Power. And in that comic, there was a cab driver who drives through the congested air of a metropolitan city. Up until that point, the main character of the Fifth Element

had been Corbyn Dallas, a factory worker. But when Bisson saw that, he was like, all right, let's make him a taxi cab driver in New York. They were basically storyboarding off of this comic that had been created for Valerian. Cool. The other comic writer and production designer who I mentioned, Jean-Geroux,

aka Mobius, was very respected in comics, but he had also collaborated on American films as a designer in Tron, designing some costumes and some ships, and in The Abyss, he helped to design the underwater creature. Check out our episode on The Abyss. Okay, so quick question, just so I understand the time, line, where are we right now? We're in the late 80s when this has sort of first been greenlit and he's assembling a team or are we early 90s at this point? So we're in 1991 right now. The film had been

optioned in 1988, not greenlit, but it had taken some time for things to get going. So yeah, by the time he's meeting Jean-Claude Mezier and Jean-Gerrard were in 1991, but we're in France, and that wasn't enough Jeans to have on this project. So Beissant reaches out to none other than, fashion icon, Jean-Paul Gautier. I did see that name in the credits. I don't know anything about fashion, but even I recognize the name, even though I didn't have anything to associate it with because I'm ignorant. Your sister was a fashion.

I know, I know. Even more shame in that. So by 1985, Gaultier had built a $50 million company with his designs, not the least of which wore women's dresses made out of plastic trash bags and skirts for men. he had been featured by L., Marie Claire, Bergdorf Goodman, and a million other brands, and he would go on later in his career to be the creative director behind Hermes from 2003 to 2010. So he's who gave us that iconic Leelieu Bandage costume that we still see on Halloween every year. Yeah, the medical bandit, the famous medical tape costume.

Yes, exactly. I believe also the purveyor of the cone bra, which Madonna famously wore at the courtebrose. Yes. The corset. Big on conical shapes, I think. And nipples. Good angles, yeah, and nipples. Because also the way that he does Chris Tucker, Ruby's dress suit is very good as well with the shoulders.

Yeah. I also want to point out that Lelu's weird, like, rubber suspenders that she ends up wearing for most of the second half of the movie are the holes are somehow cut perfectly to be around her nipples. which was very distracting. That's the goal. Mission accomplished, Lizzie. I couldn't stop thinking about how many times they had to measure her nipples in order to get those to sit exactly there

because there's no way that that was not intentional. Of course. Yeah. No, it was like it evokes a Western. They kind of look like holster straps, you know, like underneath a suit for a cop. Yeah, that's the... It looks like a giant rubber jock strap

that they then like strap over her shoulders anyway. Yeah, cone bras. Keep going. All right. So between production design and costume and wardrobe, the creative team created over 8,000 drawings for the film over the following year. So like I said, it's around 1991 when this period that we're talking about. And we still don't have financing in place. But that's not going to stop these guys from casting this sucker. It probably should.

Yeah, I mean, they probably. probably shouldn't be doing any of this because it seems like it's going to be impossible to make, but they're doing it. So for the role of Corbyn Dallas, the first person Bisson reached out to was Mel Gibson. Sure. In a Reddit AMA, he said, I had asked Mel Gibson first because he had an office next to mine at Warner Brothers. He peaked into my office every morning to tell me he was thinking about it. After three months, he passed. But we became friends. Bruce was the only other choice I had in mind. Remind me what year was diehard? 88. Okay. Makes sense. Yeah, Bruce. was big by it. This was like, even by 91, he was big. And by 97, he was almost peaking because

99 is the sixth sense. That's right. I have to say, before we go any further, I was just immeasurably charmed by Bruce Willis in this movie and was reminded why he was such an enormous star at this time. I don't think anybody else could have done this in a way that would have been watchable. I don't even think Mel Gibson really would have been, like, this is hard and weird, and he somehow made it watchable. And anyway, it also made me a little sad thinking about Bruce's days of yours. But go on, David. I think Ryan Gosling could do it now. Yes, certainly. Because he can do anything. That's right. Yes, you can. So there are varying accounts of how Willis got involved in the project, but the most credible ones from Bisson indicate that at this point in the early 90s,

because of what you guys were just talking about and how successful Bruce Willis was, he wasn't even open reaching out to him. He thought the diehard star would simply be too high demand, too expensive, and felt sort of too nervous. And then he saw Bonfire of the Vanities and realized maybe he would say yes. He's probably available. This is your episode on Bonfire of the Vanities. Yeah, so based on the accounts that I chose to trust, they didn't have a Corbyn Dallas at this point. But I will tell you that someone who was very interested in the role, another heavy hitter approached Besson by the name of Sylvester Stallone. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God.

Vue. What I wouldn't give to see the fifth element with Sylvester Stolub. Yeah, I mean, ooh, that would have been fun. That would have been so fun. I love that he wanted to do it. It would have been so bad. He really wanted to do it. But he got shot down by Luke.

Luke was just like, I just can't see it. Sorry, man. Yeah, sorry. Well, he has to be a fast talker. Yeah. And that's just not Stallone's forte. Like, Stallone's great. Yeah, it really would have taken a long time.

The movie would have been too long. It would have been five hours long. Yeah, exactly. We just got the script down from 400 pages. Imagine Ian Holm of Sylvester Stallone. Yeah. For the fifth element itself, or herself, the primary interest was Julia Roberts.

Yeah, that makes sense. Now, I'm not actually sure if she was ever attached, for reasons we'll get into shortly, but I know she was involved enough for Gautier to be designing costumes with her in mind in 1992. At the same time, for the role of Ruby Rod, who would end up being portrayed by Chris Tucker, Bezon had someone very specific in mind.

This person makes very little sense from one perspective, but a ton of sense from another. Bisson had written the part for them and they had tentatively agreed to it, who was it? Give us a hint. The hint is you should be able to tell from looking at him. Eddie Murphy? No.

Prince? Yes. Oh, Prince does make sense. Prince would have been amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I have mixed feelings about it because I feel like Chris Tucker brought the comedian to it, whereas Prince would have brought authenticity to it.

So maybe it wouldn't have been as funny, but it would have been amazing to see Prince performing in that role. Right. Anyway, Gautier sketched out designs of his costumes on Prince's likeness, and he actually got to show Prince the designs in person. According to Gautier, when the singer was giving a series of concerts in Paris, Luke Besson wanted us both to meet with him to show him my sketches. While I was waiting for Luke in his office, I saw this huge bodyguard appear,

with Prince trailing behind him. As Luke hadn't yet arrived, I thought he must have wanted me to meet Prince alone, so we could get to know each other a little bit. So Gautier starts showing Prince some of these pictures. Quote, still not saying anything, Prince gave me this Charlie Chaplin kind of look. I could see that something had just happened, but I didn't know what,

only that he had indicated to his bodyguard that he wanted to leave right then and there. I didn't know what it was, but he wanted to leave immediately. I thought he was going to go and see Luke. Later, Luke told me that Prince had been very surprised and amused by my presentation, but that he found the costumes a bit too effeminate.

Wow. Prince is telling you. What did you show him? Yeah. And the quote continues, and most importantly, he had thought he heard, fuck you,

fuck you, when I was saying in my terrible English accent, foucule, which is fake ass. What? So it must have been that one of the costumes had like a fake butt?

Oh no. That translation didn't clear a lot up for me. No. Or maybe Prince was just looking for an excuse to get out of there. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Wow. So it sounds like ultimately Prince dipped out because of the costumes.

It sounds like he was pretty nice about that if he thought that this man was just telling him, fuck you, fuck you. Yeah, exactly. He was politely like, hmm, no, thank you. I'm just going to, thank you. Yeah. Besson maybe would have tried to get him back, but apparently Prince couldn't have been more of a nightmare to schedule. Like, just wouldn't show up. Yeah.

And just was completely flaky, so they just moved on. I'm sure. He's one of the most famous people on the planet at that time. And yet somehow he did find time to guest star on an incredible episode of New Girl, which still blows my mind that that happened. Much later in his career. Much later. He did request it and showed up.

I like that new girl. He said he did. Yes. So they lost Prince, but it would be a moot point. And to explain why we have to. go from where we are now, which is mid-1992, back to 1990, to discuss what else was going on for Luke Besant during this period of essentially trying to pre-produce the fifth element. Besant is itching to make the fifth element, but because of the unfinished script and huge budget,

it's not happening, and he's also itching to get back behind the camera. Right. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah. So while Lidu is trying to get this thing in place to shoot in 1992, Luke goes on with some other projects. So this is how we're going to also talk about the other stuff he was putting out. In 1990, he releases LaFemniquita, like Chris said earlier, which he wrote and directed. The lead actress, Anne Perre-Oh, who plays Nikita as Beissons' wife at the time. They married in 1986, had a daughter in 1987, and divorce in 1991, the year after LaFemniquita was released.

Uh-oh. Also in 1991, Luke releases an underwater documentary called Atlantis, which harkens back to his love for marine biology when he was a kid. He finishes these projects and again wants to roll in the fifth element, but it won't happen because the writing team doesn't know how to get this thing down. At one point, the 400-page script had become two scripts, so two films each sitting at 300 pages, and the budget had increased to 150 million.

Right. So that's what we like to call not cutting down your script, but instead splitting it in two and then growing them separately. Yes, exactly. Yeah. It's like, you've got 16, sir, don't hit. And he's like, I'll split and hit again. So they know that's going to work for a whole, not going to work for a whole host of reasons. But they're determined to keep working on it. Patrice Ledoux is taking the film out to companies, pitching it, trying to secure funding. People were blown away by the art. The cast was sounding great.

But no one was even close to biting just because of the price point. Also, quick, give a quick interjection. Why are we not calling him the French James Cameron? I was going to say. Gets a lot of divorces. It's a lot of divorces. Great point. And is a maniac trying to make enormous budget movies that... No, one wants. Nobody else seems ready to finance.

Or that, yes. Yeah. Let's see. So, finally, in 1992, development on the Fifth Element is fully halted, and everyone disbands. No one was going to drop $100 million on this movie. I'm sorry, that took so long for them all to give up. Yeah, it's a long time. I mean, it's very friends.

I guess. If this were America, it would have not lasted this long. Two years. No, it was four years. I mean, it got optioned in 88, but they really picked up steam trying to get everything going in 1990 through 92 until they were shut down. So all of this effort seems to have been for nothing. Besson was very disappointed, but he had a few other things going on because it was also in 1992, the year after divorcing with Anna Perrio, aka Nikita, that 32-year-old Luke Besan married 16-year-old, my win, Aurelia, Nema Labesco, aka My Wen. Excuse me? Yeah. What? We're not even to the good...

Rephrase. Whoa. Phrasing. We're not even to the most scandalous part yet. Not good. Definitely not good. Wait. How old is he?

38? 32. 32. Guys, we are... I'm 34. You're 35. I have a question for you. Can you imagine marrying a 16-year-old?

All right, Lizzie, hold that thought. My Wynn was a child actress who played the role of young L. in the successful French film Lette-Mortier in English, one deadly summer. And Beissant had met her when she was 12. Great. They started dating when she was 15, which is the legal age of consent, or at least was in France. I don't know if it still is.

And I'm sure it started right after her 15th birthday. All right, Elvis. And as I said, they were married in 1992 when she was 16. And they had a baby daughter in January of 1993 while she was still 16. That's not good. I did not know this. So Luke had a new wife and child or two new children, depending on how you want to look at it. Yeah.

And the inspiration for his next movie, The Professional. No, wait, no, that makes it so much creepier. She's like a... I knew that Natalie Portman and the Professional, anybody who has not seen that movie, It is an amazing movie. I think I've not seen it in a long time. No, I think it's great. I still think it holds it.

Okay. I remember it being wonderful, but if anybody hasn't seen it, she is, she's very clearly a child. It didn't bother me when I watched it, but I do know that it is like an image of a very beautiful girl child that I think has been potentially criticized as Chris, help me out. Like, it's definitely something that people who are interested in. children would maybe. Right. It's got a certain Lolita-esque. Yes.

Exactly. There's a Lolita quality to it. And then very famously, Natalie Portman later said, coming off of the film, I don't know if it was because of her experience on the film, but actually she received fan mail from adult men saying, we can't wait for you to turn 18. Yes. It was 100% because of the movie. And like, we can't wait for you to do your first nude scene.

And this was a girl who was 14, 15 years old. Topps. I think she might be younger than that in that movie. Yeah. Regardless, it was horrifying the response, you know what I mean, that the movie engendered. Oh, no. Okay. I think Natalie Portman was 11 when she got cast for that. And it was her first film. Yeah. Yeah. His wife, My Wend, starred in the film as an extra and would go on to say in the DVD extras for the

1994 release of Leon that the film is based on her relationship with this song. He doesn't speak about any of the stuff, any of his personal. life to the press. So that would never be confirmed or denied, but you know, you can make up your mind about that. So Leon the Professional makes serious waves, and it helps Bezant rise to the next level. I'm sorry. And everybody at the time totally chill with the fact that the director is married to and has a child with a 16-year-old girl. Well, he was in France. Oh, okay. No, I'm not saying it's okay. I'm just saying that's probably half of it. No, you're right. Yeah. You know. And all Also, if he'd been here and he was in Alabama, it probably would have been okay, too.

But, you know. Or if he's Woody Allen. Anyway, keep going. Yeah, exactly. Now, with the release of the professional in 1994, not only was Luke Besson a bigger name than he was in 92, but he also has been able to continue working on the Fifth Element script while shooting Leon, and it's finally getting to a workable place. Lidu is confident that the budget can now be estimated at $90 million based on the more manageable

script, but they still wouldn't be able to finance it alone. So Patrice Lidu reaches out to none other than the studio that had bought the Big Blue and Leon the professional of Sony's Columbia Pictures. Columbia agrees to pay $25 million for U.S. rights. That left over $60 million to be accounted for by Goemont, which would still make it the most expensive European film at the time, but they decided to go for it. So in 1994, we're back on. So that means they have to do $60 million in foreign sales or raise that money on their own. Yeah. Prince is out. Julia is out if she was ever in. But otherwise, the initial team is all able to come back. Yet, Besant still decides he's not comfortable asking Bruce to come on board. Here's what Besant said of

casting Bruce in his interview with Entertainment Weekly. Everyone in L.A. was saying, oh, if you don't have a big star, you can't make the film. But we didn't even try to go to Bruce Willis because he was too expensive. And then I have lunch with Willis's then wife to me more. And Bruce shows up at dessert and he just says, hey, my man, what about me? And I tell him about the money. He's said this very sweet line, if I like it, we'll make an arrangement. So they did. For less money up front, Bruce's agent negotiated a percentage of the back end, and they moved forward with him as Corbin Dallas. Seems like that could have been done from the beginning. Yeah, I'm glad that we did this work around. Seems like maybe Bruce is not so difficult. Yeah. For the rule of Lilo,

Bisson saw about 300 auditions, but that was nothing among the literally thousands of interviews that took place. He knew that whoever he cast had to be someone that you could really fall in love with, so he was very precious about the role of Lelu. Among the other contenders seriously considered was what went wrong alum, Elizabeth Berkeley, who in 1995 and 96 still wasn't getting any auditions because of showgirls. Oh, yeah. Listen to our episode. Yes, listen to our episode. So Luke's first encounter with Mila Yovovic was in New York. She was 19 at the time and had some decent credits. at that point, like, Return to the Blue Lagoon. She was 15 in that, Ann Dazed and Confused, but she was not a recognizable name.

Okay. Let's be clear, return to the Blue Lagoon is not a decent credit. No. That is considered one of the worst movies ever made. Also, she's like 15. She's 19 in this. Now that you're telling me about his affinity for young girls, I am infinitely more icked out by this movie because the idea that like, oh, she has to be someone you can just fall in love with.

Remember when I said she's like a child bride? It's literally like poor things if poor things were not good. If poor things was called poor children. This is what the movie would mean. She's been the whole movie just like flipping out like a toddler and he's like, God, you're hot. I'm taking it back. This movie's bad. Lizzie's committing.

All right, David. Let's keep going with the casting process. So she came in for her audition in New York, sang a song, they talked for a bit, but Luke decided it wasn't the right vibe. She wasn't 12. All right, Lizzie. Saying a song, they talked for a bit,

but Luke decided it wasn't right. She had shown up with a ton of makeup and was very nervous, and he just wasn't getting a good vibe. According to Mila... She looked old. The makeup, just saying. According to Mila,

she actually thought that the audition went really well. Quote, I thought I did great. I was really happy with the way the audition went, but, you know, I had on like green eye shadow, white patent leather platforms by a little mini dress. I was just 18 and thought I was the coolest thing in the world. And I was so excited to meet Luke because I was such a huge fan. But she never got that callback. However, a few months later, this song was at the Chateau-Mormant in L.A. by the pool. And she was there, too. And he saw her in jeans and a white t-shirt and no shoes or makeup. in her ponytail, and he liked her look and told her to come up to his room for another taping.

God, this does not get better. According to Jovovich, at the second taping, he had her do a bunch of crazy stuff like dancing with no rhythm and speaking gibberish. She didn't understand what he was doing or what any of it was about, but he loved it and she was officially cast as the fifth element. All right. Next up is the prince-sized hole of Ruby Rod. Nissan had two people in mind for the role, Chris Tucker and Jamie Fawkes. He saw both actors the same day and loved them both, but decided to go with Tucker because he was scrawny and he thought it would be funnier to have Ruby be a shrimp compared to Willis. He's not, by the way. He's taller than Bruce Willis, isn't he?

Yeah, I guess I mean like in terms of overall stature and physique, yeah. Tucker was pretty unknown at this point, although he had frequented HBO's deaf comedy jam and had gained some recognition on Friday playing alongside NWA. Now we know Prince had an issue with the costumes being too effeminate. Tucker also had a take on it. Here's a clip. John Paul Cartier was like, this is beautiful, sir. I knew you would love this.

I was like, no, I do. It's not like that. But I start wearing the stuff, and I start getting into the character, and it helped the costume helped me create that character a lot. So I thank John Paul Cartier for that. Sounds like they held a gun to his head

during this special music recording. Okay. On to Jean-Baptiste, Emmanuel Zorg. Besson and Gary Oldman had worked together only on the professional and become really good friends. Luke saw him as one of the best actors in the world. They had a great time together on set. After that experience, Bissan had gone on to help Gary Oldman finance Nill by Mouth, which was the first film that Oldman would produce and direct himself.

So Oldman felt indebted to Bissan. They loved each other. They were a good match on set. And purportedly, Oldman agreed to be in the Fifth Element, without even reading the script. Listen to our episode on Dracula for more background on Gary Oldman. I couldn't find anything on casting Ian Holm, so I don't have anything to say about that other than he was Ashen alien

and would be Bilbo Baggins a few years later, so why not cast him? He's the best. So construction of sets began in October of 1995. It was primarily filmed at Pinewood Studios near London on seven different sound stages, including the 007 soundstage where they built the main hall area of the Plost in Paradise Resort.

The opera scenes were filmed at the Royal Opera House in London, and the desert scenes were filmed in Mauritania. Filming with the actors began in late January of 1996. Luke Besant is known as being a very hands-on director. David, you got to stop setting these up. Yeah, that was inevitable. You're just teeing us up left and right. Yeah.

The camera operates himself, gets in the actor's faces, moves them around, and talks to them during the tape. often he doesn't cut between takes in order to keep momentum going. Apparently, except for Oldman who had worked with him before, it was a bit off-putting for Bruce Willis and Ian Holm, among others. But eventually, they got used to it. I think this would also be more normal during digital filmmaking, but when you're shooting film to just keep running and then run in,

you know, that's definitely more unusual because, yeah, film is precious and you're going to get it all developed and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. He also does a lot of takes. Here's a quote from Mila. Quote, Luke wanted to get to a place where people were doing stuff they weren't supposed to do

and surprising him. This one poor girl, she did, I think, something like 87 takes, and she was just one of the stewardesses. Oh, my God. So he's doing a fincher. He's finching it.

He's finching it. In preparation for the role, Yoavovich trained three hours a day, every day for months in ballet, karate, aerobics, movement, fight choreography. She would go to the zoo and look at animals in the cave,

observing the mannerisms of lions and birds and wolves and other animals that she could imbue into the character of Lelieu. Besant and Jovovich created a 500 word language that they would talk in and email in, just for practice. And while shooting, her brown hair was so damaged by the dye used to maintain that orange hair color that they had to switch her to a wig mid-shoot for fear that her hair would literally start falling out. Yeah, you can just burn it off.

Yeah. Yeah, and I think you can spot the wig in one. or two spots because her hair, it gets like a little thicker, it feels like. Well, you can also tell because the hairline, I noticed this. For part of it, the hairline is still very blonde because they've bleached her whole head, and then it goes into orange, and then by the end, that sort of, like, little layer of blonde is gone. Also, she's great in this movie.

She is a real. I think she's a great actress. She's amazing. It's crazy that this was really her first big role. Yeah, exactly. She's really good. Mila and Chris Tucker, both West Coasters, became very good friends on set. Sounds like Bruce Willis generally kept to himself, but Demi would come and visit,

and when she did, Mila would babysit their kids, and Mila said that she loved doing that. Bruce didn't want to see them. Okay, so now we have to talk about the opera scene because it's quite a set piece. Early in pre-production, Bisson had asked his wife, My Wen, to play diva Plava Laguna, and she had initially said no and expressed concern that working together would affect their relationship. He respected that, went on to cast a German model to play the diva. But two days before, this German model was set to be fitted, she went totally AWOL. They couldn't get a hold of her.

She was non-responsive, and she didn't show up. So now they're desperately in need of someone, because this costume is going to take a long time to make, so Mawen offered to play the role. Wait, so Mawen plays the opera singer. Yeah. Wow. The like seven foot tall, blue tentacle alien. Yeah, exactly. She was 21 at the time. It's the same age as Mila Yoavich, basically.

I think Mila would have been 19 at this point. Wow. So, Myon spent three months learning the lines, practicing the choreography so that she could perform this thing. The costume used 14-inch stilts. She was wearing a skin-tight foam in latex dress that had to be one single piece so there were no seams, and she was donning a heavy head piece that was glued to the top of her head. Yeah, it's a crazy costume. It's enormous. Insane costume, and it's really cool.

The actual voice of the diva belonged to Inva Mula, an Albanian opera singer. As for the music, the first part is an arrangement of the Aria Ildolce Suno from Donizetti's opera, Lucia de Lammermoor. It then goes into an original piece of the composer wrote when it goes to the crazy hip-hop stuff and is sort of cutting between the fight scene and the opera. Now, we know Bison likes his spontaneous takes. What he did with the diva scene is he didn't allow any of the cast to see her in costume until the actual show. And when it came time for that,

he presented it as an actual concert. So he announced it from backstage after everyone was blocked and seated and they pulled the curtains. And so the reactions you're seeing on screen are genuinely the cast seeing her crazy costume for the first time. So now is a good time to mention

that our love triangle that I hinted at earlier has begun. Mila and Luke have fallen in love Really? And this led to him divorcing my win during filming, presumably after she shot her scene, although I don't know that for sure. Oh.

Wow. I hate this movie. I take it back. I'm back on it. I hate it. Are you? That's wild, though. To put your wife in the movie,

wrap her out, then divorce her, and then marry the lead in like a six-month spread. That's why. wild. Yeah, pretty wild. Wow. So let's talk about VFX. The fifth element had 188 special effects shots, which nowadays is nothing, but back then was a lot. Many of them were during the car chase scenes in New York City. You can also see them when the Mangalore's heads transform from human to Mangalore, for example. The miniature of New York City had 25 skyscrapers that sat at 20 feet tall. That's

124th scale in the miniature of the Flosthen Paradise Resort weighed 500 pounds. It took 80 workers five months to make all the models. And they said that the most time-consuming parts were building the windows of the buildings. Wow. And also building the tiny little furniture and like paintings on the walls that went behind the windows. The explosion of Flosden Paradise was the biggest indoor explosion ever done at the time. It was done on the 007 stage at Pinewood Studios. And, And afterward, the building had to be evacuated because of the smoke. And it took them 26 minutes to put the fire out. At the time, they were shooting this film, Silicon Gel was like a new technology.

So the Mangalores, which are those monsters that are kind of Zorg's minions, those masks were like at the cutting edge. They look great. Yeah, they look great. And the robotics of it are really, really cool and convincing. What they found was that when they put the costumes on, they look great, but putting the makeup around the eyes took forever. So you start seeing them wearing goggles midway through, and that was just to fix the amount of time that was being spent trying to make the eyes convincing.

Okay, I was fine with it. The Mondo Shiwan costumes, there's the giant robot guys from at the beginning who show up throughout the movie. I love them. Yeah, I love them. Very protas. They were massive, and people inside couldn't see out at all. So each costume was outfitted with a camera on the front in headphones, and it

TV screen inside for the actors to get instructions from the crew on how many steps to take because the TV monitors were tiny and just weren't cutting it sometimes. So these guys were just taking instructions on how to walk, much like, what was it, Howard the Duck. Yes. Those costumes took about three hours to put on. Costume designer Jean-Paul Gautier was insanely detail-oriented. He would check everyone's costumes individually. In the larger scenes, that's 500 people's costumes being inspected one by one.

he would make small adjustments to each of them. Even the people in the back of the opera hall got looked at one-on-one by Gautier. Wow. Speaking of things that you don't see, one of the biggest critiques of this film is that there is no boss fight. If you notice, not only do Corbin and Zorg

never face each other, but they never speak through the whole movie. They only share, like, a couple of frames when Corbin is leaving Plast in Paradise and Zorgia is coming back. It is a little, it's a little anticlimactic the end of this. Yeah, it's totally anticlimactic.

Because they never even face the true big bad. No. Like, it's a ritual is done. You know what I mean? And it's just interesting the way the movie's structured. True. I mean, you get plenty of fighting and plenty of exciting action, like at the end of the second act.

Sure. Yeah, but it's not really opposite the main. Yeah, exactly. It's not against Zorg. And in fact, Old Men didn't even really come on to shoot until Bruce was essentially done. After the film wrapped, soft-spoken Bruce through a big cast party and performed jazz music. Space jazz?

Well, not space jazz, but just normal jazz. Apparently Bruce was a big-time jazz guy. The Fifth Element premiered at Cannes Film Festival on May 7, 1997. Guess we're given a Fifth Element swatch. You guys remember those? Those watches? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Swatches. Those were their ticket of entry. The event included a futuristic ballet, a fashion. show by Gautier and Fireworks. Goemont spent between one and three million dollars on it. It was the most expensive event like that at the time. The film opened number one in both the U.S. and in France. In France, it grossed $10 million the opening week and state number one in the box

office for seven weeks. In the U.S., it grossed $17 million the opening weekend and state number one the following weekend. It was a box office success grossing $263 million, nearly three times its budget of $90 million, as we know before marketing. So that's not fully reflective of the profit. It probably broke even if you factor in its marketing budget, you know. Yeah. The film received very mixed responses from critics. The LA Times said it was a, quote, elaborate, even campy sci-fi extravaganza, which is nearly as hard to follow as last year's

mission impossible. Yep. Whereas Variety wrote, quote, a largely misfired European attempt to make an American-style sci-fi spectacular. The fifth element consists of a hodgepodge of elements that don't comfortably coalesce. Yeah. Chris Tucker, who I think is incredible in this movie, got a lot of negative press for his depiction of Ruby Rod. British Film Magazine Total Film went so far as to rank at number 20 on their 50 roles that ruined movies in 2011.

Later, in a now infamous Playboy interview from 2014, Gary Oldman would say, oh no, I can't bear it, speaking of himself in the role of Zorg. This was picked up and received a lot of attention from fans due to the fact that it was the same interview in which he would go on to defend Alec Baldwin for yelling homophobic slurs and Mel Gibson for his anti-Semitic tirade that Lizzie spoke about when she covered Mad Max Fury Road. Look, you got to pick your battles. Gary Oldman does not. Well, no, he did, and he decided not to pick the fifth element, and he went instead with defending those two men. So, yeah. After the film's release, production designer and comic great Jean-Groix, aka Mobius, who, as a reminder,

was the comic writer slash production designer who had collaborated on Tron and The Abyss. He and his collaborator, Alejandro Yoderowski, actually sued the production, the fifth element on the grounds of plagiarism of their comic, The Incal. Which had been developed off of the dune that Yoderowski never made. Whoa, I didn't know that. That's how Yodorowski connected with Jura. I'm so confused, though. They worked on the production design of this movie, right?

Juro did. Oh, not Yodorowski. Not Yoderowski. Yoderowski's a Chalayan director. Right. So they demanded $13.1 million euros for unfair competition, $9 million in damages and interest, and 2 to 5% of the net operating revenues of the film.

But the case was dismissed in 2004, on the grounds that only tiny fragments of the comic had been used and Jereau had been hired by Bisson to work on the film before the allegations were made. Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. Well, they tried. I think Yoderowski... Was pissed.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And Jero just threw Bisson under the bus. That's the only thing that makes sense there. Because they hired him. Yeah, Yoderowski connected with Mobius when he was trying to get his version of Dune off the ground in the 70s. You guys can see this in the documentary Yoderowski's Dune, which is great.

Or you can listen to our episode on Dune, and we talked about it a little bit. Yoderowski's, the legacy of Yoderowski's Dune is that it's the kind of most magnificent movie never made, and it also led to all of these other creative outputs. Specifically, we talk about how, in so many ways, it led to Alien, it led to Blade Runner, it led to the Fifth Element.

So I think Yoderowski sees the success of all these giant sci-fi epics, and he's like, what the hell? They were all birthed from the pre-production I did. Right. So, yeah. He might have felt a little sore, especially seeing the flying car, you know, that specific element, flying taxi cabs, etc.

Well, that was Mazier's comic. No, I understand, but I'm saying that's the type of world that he wanted to build. You know what I'm saying? Right. In his movies. So back to Besant. He and Yovovovic divorced in 1999. That was two years after they were married.

And shortly after they completed working on the messenger, the story of Joan of Arc, which also deserves its own episode. Yeah. Five years later, in 2000. Bissom married film producer Virginie Sia. Sorry about pronunciation. And how old is she? Yeah, I was going to say, I was waiting for Lizzie's father question. I actually don't know.

I looked it up. I think she was a normal 30-something. Ancient by Luke Basel standards. He cried that cryptopen and said, hello, mummy. I do want to unmentioned thing, David. I don't know if you guys have seen a photo of Luke Besant from this time period. But, well, first of all, he looks a little bit like Guy Fierry. But Corbin Dallas is very much modeled to look like Luke Bezon.

Actually, it was the opposite. Beisson decided to die his hair blonde right before the shoot. And Bruce decided to take from his idea and die his hair blonde. And Beeson was totally on board with it. Okay, got it. At first I thought it was Beeson being like, this is me. Like, I am the hero of this movie. That's fair.

I just looked at a picture. He looks like Guy Fierry and Lance Bass had a child. So in 2018, Dutch actress Sand Van Roy, who appeared in Valerian, accused Bisson of rape, which his lawyers categorically denied. Prosecutors dropped the case against him in 2019, citing lack of evidence. And then a second investigation was brought, which was then dismissed by a judge in 2021. The public prosecutor's office in Paris stated that, quote, the investigations clearly established that the criminal facts of rape were not committed, that the absence of consent of the civil party is not established, and the existence of a constraint, threat, violence is not characterized, end quote. San Van Roy continued trying to further the charges by then filing a complaint against the magistrate in charge of the case,

but in June of 2023, Besson was definitively cleared of all charges following a ruling by the highest judicial court in France. This ruling disabled Van Roy from suing him again on the same charges in France or anywhere in Europe. All that being said, a number of other women, including assistants, students, and employees of Besson, did come forward anonymously describing sexually interoperable. behavior from the filmmaker, but they had no evidence. Now, on March 7, 2023, French filmmaker, actress, former alien diva, and ex-wife of Lucrecent, My Wen, was accused of assaulting journalist Edouille by grabbing his hair and spitting on him in a public restaurant in France. This happened almost exactly two months before she debuted her

film Jean de Berri, featuring a recently exonerated Johnny Depp at Cannes last year. Less than a month after the alleged assault, Mywin said, on French TV, quote, do I confirm that I assaulted him? Yes, I'll speak about it when I'm ready, end quote. Plinnell, the assaulted, is editor-in-chief and founder of Media Part, a French investigative online newspaper. He said Media Part had been doing additional investigations into the accusations against Lucason that began in 2018. After granting them an off-the-record interview, Maywin explicitly requested that Media Part not publish any of her testimony, without giving her notice, presumably so that she could talk to their shared child first or prevent them from seeing the article. Media Part promised to give her that notice, but then went on

to release parts of her interview without giving her a heads up. Plinnell said, quote, we published what Mywin told police as a part of the investigation into Bisson. When she talked to the police, she discussed complicated aspects of her relationship with Luke Bisson, notably during their separation. But once we published our piece, we never received. any protest of any kind. That was about five years ago. That would mean for all this time, Maywin wanted to take her revenge. For her part, Maiwin said, she, quote, didn't blame Media Part for their investigations. She blamed them for what they did to her. She said she felt a moral rape, referring to the fact that Media Part published her testimony about her relationship

with Beissant while he was being investigated. Quote, I don't apologize and I don't regret. No gesture could have compensated what I experienced, end quote. On January 16th of 2024, Variety and Deadline both published articles announcing a ruling that my when was fined $435 for actions. She was ordered to pay a symbolic one euro to Plinnell in moral prejudice and 1500 euros in moral prejudice to media part, according to France info. Sorry, so just to make sure I understand what happened here, she gave an interview as part of the investigation into Besant when there were other women coming from.

forward from earlier in his career, essentially confirming he had been sexually inappropriate at different times. She gave an interview, which certainly sounds like what you're saying, corroborated a lot of that. But the deal was that she would be able to see it prior to publication. Well, a couple of things. First, the women who came forward alleged that they had experienced sexual misconduct at the hands of this on, but they did concede that they didn't have evidence. So, well, I tend to believe the victims. We don't know for sure. Also, I couldn't find the article, so I don't know exactly what my one testified to in what was released in the article that made her have that reaction. But the reason she was pissed was that media part had promised to give her a heads up when they were planning to release her testimony and the investigation results.

And they did not do that. Right. Right. So they don't give her a heads up. And then she harbors that rage for five years and then spits on this guy and assault him. When she sees him just randomly at a public restaurant in Paris. Yikes. Wow. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's a lot. This is why being like a very famous person or a public figure has no appeal for me. The idea of that stuff being publicized and your child seeing it is horrifying. Yeah. So that's a slightly unfortunate epilogue to conclude an episode talking about the making of the fifth element, but it felt necessary to include. Like I said earlier, it's a film that I see. still love watching. I loved it when I was a kid. Couldn't be beat. It was interesting to learn more

about it. Yikes. You buried the lead on this one, David. Well, you know, I wanted to cover the movie itself and not just focus on that because there's a lot of interesting stuff that did happen during production and the pre-production process was kind of insane. But yeah, it's also interesting to me that Besson never, I mean, he steered clear. seems of this being sort of public by just remaining totally silent. Like you guys hadn't heard of this. And for how big of a directory is, it's kind of interesting. I knew he had been accused.

I knew about what had happened around 2019, but I did not know the depths of how far it went. I did not know that he had relationships with underage women. I did not know any of that. Yeah. It's, I mean, I don't think there's any way to not look at this movie through that lens. And I know we get a lot of comments about, like, you know, I know it's me, too. Like, you know, oh, you're being too woke, this and that. This is not a woke thing.

I'm genuinely kind of creeped out by the way that Mila Yoavovich's character in this is portrayed. And then the final moment being them, like, they're in love, quote unquote. They've literally never had a conversation. She's just been a baby in a lady's body with rock hard nips for the whole movie. and I Chris Don't disagree Not a good look

Luke Beisson No creepy creepy Adult manchild But I think Lizzie you're right I think the issue is that Candidly It seems like somebody who Well obviously

Never grew up And continue to fetishize People of a specific age A certain innocence right But in a obviously Kind of disturbing way And I agree, but I also agree with David. I still enjoy watching the movie.

Sure. I don't know if I then went back now and watched it how I'd feel. But I did know that he married Mila Yovovic off of this movie. I knew she was much younger than him. I didn't know that he also had a much, much, much younger wife before that, which is next level, creepy. But again, and I think, you know, David, when you mentioned we didn't know about it, it's true, I didn't know about his first relationship.

but it also, again, it falls in this category. And there are so many directors like this. Obviously, think of Roman Polansky, for example. Even Jerry Seinfeld. Oh, no. He dated that girl right out of high school. I don't want to know. In like the early 90s.

Yeah, nobody talks about it. You know, I don't care if they're an old soul. It is... They're not an old soul. They're 16. Exactly. Yeah. Well, in a weird way,

Based on it's creating a mythology where it's like she is an old soul. Exactly. Logistically. Exactly. And that's what makes it even kind of creepier in this instance because he's saying, well, no, she's actually 2000. Listen, I understand that she looks, sounds, and talks like a baby. However, she's actually 2,000 years old.

So it's totally fine. Everything you're seeing is totally kosher because she's an ageless fifth element. all right, I didn't know this was going to go here. And I'm supremely icked out. Yeah, I had no idea. I just chose this movie because I loved it when I was a kid. And then I learned all this stuff. So it caught me off guard.

And I was, I can't remember Chris what we were talking about. Maybe it was when you were doing the Lost episode. And you were finding stuff that you didn't expect to find it. It was just kind of like, oh, well, you know, your guys' job is to research the episodes, present the information. That was my job for this particular episode. and with this movie, the director's background happened to tie in in such a way that he was going through a divorce with one cast member while he was falling in love and going to get married to another one.

And so it's not like I set out to drag him, but the facts are the facts. Yeah. Not an easy way to put a button on it. I do think it, you know, again, goes to the importance of having safety measures on set for everybody involved so that no. can abuse their power. And we don't know what happened on that set at the time. But the point is, no one should ever feel that they are unsafe or uncomfortable with anybody in a position of power on a movie set. Obviously, the role of a producer is to protect everybody on set, the role of an intimacy

coordinator in some of these films, et cetera. I'm not saying if she would have been used in this movie. This is very different. This one is different because I think what's like what's almost making this harder for me to sort of wrap my head around. is that it doesn't sound necessarily like, you know, other than him having an affair with Milioovich, which sounds like it was consensual and everything on set, it doesn't sound like there was, you know, something that happened that was like particularly untowards. It's, it's not that. That's, that's bothering me.

It's like, it's like Woody Allen making Manhattan where he's dating a 16-year-old in it. There is something about this that is so, when you know this background, that is so brazen, in terms of the way it is presented, that I'm just like, how did I not see this? And I guess I don't know what to make of this. Yeah, but I guess my point is, like, less on that. I also just think it's important to remember that a film set is a workplace.

Where you actually shouldn't be leaving your wife and starting a relationship with your star. Exactly. You should not start a romantic relationship with your employee while you're married with your wife on set, just in any circumstance, but then stack it up. Yeah, I agree. I will say that in doing the research,

what Lizzie alluded to, I agree with both of you, what Lizzie alluded to about it doesn't seem like she was uncomfortable on set. She actually seems to have defended Lupis-on, even to a certain extent, to this day. She being Mila? No, I'm sorry, she being my win.

Oh, okay. that it seems like part of the reason she, I almost don't want to say this because I didn't, I don't have the facts for this exactly, but I did see various things alluding to the idea that she would talk about how amazing who was to work with and the fact that, you know, that they were so in love and all of that. But you can't deny that there's a power dynamic between a 32-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl, which was their dynamic when they got married. Yeah. Now I'm bummed out because I feel like I can't watch the professional in the same way either. Well, I think that about wraps up the fifth element.

Thank you, David. We got to do what went right. We can't drop it for this episode. Oh, I'm sorry. We got to do it. Right. Can I start? Sure.

I'm going to, you know, I'm going to choose a hopefully pure and safe option of what went right, which is Bruce Willis. I said it earlier in the episode, but I, you know, knowing what's going on with him currently, it really did tug at my heartstring. to see him in this because he is so charming, so adept at carrying action sequences, very funny. I think he doesn't get enough credit for how good an actor he is. And he really does carry this in a lot of ways. So I would say Bruce Willis. Chris? Well, there is a lot, I think. I think the design elements of the movie are amazing. I think the visual effects are amazing. The music's very different and I like it. Chris Tucker's great. Bruce Willis is great. I'm going to go with Milo Jovovich because she's great in this movie. And I think she's kind of the queen of the B movie in modern days. If you think about her in

Resident Evil, for example, that whole series exists because of her and her now husband, Paul W.S. Anderson, that director. But I don't know. I think she's, she has an incredible screen presence. I think she's really great in this movie. I think this role could have been such an kind of annoying character, if done wrong. Like, it's so silly and over the top, and yet she makes her, she, here's what I will say. Not for maybe the reasons based on intended, she does make you fall in love with her character. Not as like an object of sexuality. Actually, it's because she seems so pure and hopeful, you know what I mean, compared to Bruce

Willis' jaded characters. And I think that's her performance. I think she's just really, really charming and compelling. And so, and I don't know, I just think if you did her career over 25 times, is there a different version where she kind of broke through to a different level? And she's been extremely successful. That's not a knock. But when I watched this, I was just struck by, wow, I really think she has really good comedic timing.

She's so funny. I mean, never forget. She's so funny. Inka, Katinka, Inga, Bovuk, nah, nah, nah, from Zoolander. She's amazing. Yeah, she's really good. So my what went right goes to Miliovich. And the physicality obviously has continued to serve her well.

Yes. As she does, you know, great fight scenes and crazy stunts in all of the movies that she's done since this. And I enjoy the Resident Evil movies. They're great. They're total hokom and they're really fun. And they will always have a place in my heart. So Miloievich, you went right. Great.

Nice. I will go with, I think that all of the visual elements in this movie are incredible, but I will choose Jean-Paul Gautier because I think that no one else could have done something this unique and created such a crazy melting pot that integrates different cultures and stuff we've never thought of before and goes forwards and backwards in time. It's just crazy and anachronistic and weird and just insanely creative. And he was such a mega-talent for the them to get that I feel like he has to be my well-win, right? Nice. Also, if you want to listen to Bruce Willis's jazz, you can check out his debut album, The Return of Bruno, released in 1987, and it is a blues, rhythm, and blues, and soul music album sung by Bruce Willis. So check it out. I don't know if I love him that much, but thank you for that, Chris.

I'm welcome. All right. Thank you so much, David. That was a wild ride full of plot twists I was not expecting and didn't want, but I appreciate it. You are welcome. And next episode, we are covering the poll winner from our first poll of this year, and that is John Singleton's Boys in the Hood. I'm excited. And I'm really excited.

It's a great movie. It's a fascinating story. and one of the, I would argue, one of the greatest first films ever made. Yeah, that's his first movie? Yeah, it's his first film. Wow. All right. So we'll get into all of that in two weeks, guys. We are very excited. And of course, we have to thank our full stop supporters on Patreon. I guess I'll do it because I know you guys like hearing it from me. Here we go. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts to Jewish Samant,

Lachlan Morrow, Scott Gurwin, Sadie, Just Sadie, Chris Leal, Matthew Peltin, Steve Winterbauer, no relation,

Don Schuyle, Rosemary Southward, by marriage, Tom Kristen, Hannah, Just Hannah, Nathan Orloff, Somon Chianani,

Michael McGrath, you guys, keep this thing afloat. We appreciate you. Everybody else out there, if you would like to vote in a poll, please join our Patreon. You can vote for just $1. Check that out. You can also just be a free user or for $5 you can get access to our ad-free RSS feed.

Quick warning, if you've signed up for the ad-free RSS feed and canceled immediately, the feed does change. So we send out updated versions of it. So just be aware it'll only last you the month. Guys, thanks so much for listening. if you would like merch, head to our website, What Went WrongPod.com. You can check out the merch there. It's pretty cool.

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What went wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing and music by David Bowman.