WHAT WENT WRONG - The Mummy

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

Sandstorms! Snakes! The strangulation of Brendan Fraser! This week Chris & Lizzie exhume 1999’s The Mummy. Learn how a decade of development hell gave us one of cinema’s sexiest on-screen couples and why open-toe sandals may have been a huge mistake.Go Ad-Free - Join Our Patreon!Check Out Our Merch!Follow Us on Instagram!What Movie's Next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of your favorite podcast, Full Stop. What went wrong? What went wrong? What did go wrong, Chris? I have to imagine kind of a lot. A few things. This movie looks fun, but it also looks insane. Very excited, as you can probably tell from the title of this episode, we are talking about The Mummy, which is so fun and so good.

And I'm very excited to hear what you have to say about it. Christopher over to you. Oh wait, before I go over to you, for those of you on Patreon, of course, you can see us right now. And as Chris, you can point it out, I look like Lydia from Beetlejuice right now. Yes. Lizzie's going very hard into the Tim Burton universe at the moment. She, everything is black except for the pure white of her face. And so please check that out on Patreon, our subscribers. If you have not subscribed to Patreon, and you'd like to please go check it out at patreon.com slash what went wrong. No, it's patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast, I think.

That's right. Because if you don't do that, as Chris has pointed out previously, you get a bunch of help articles about what Canon does go wrong on Patreon. Apparently a lot. Yeah. Also, we've decided to tack on a little treat to entice you. If you listen through the end of this episode, you can hear a clip from our interview with one of the most established, prolific,

incredible Steadicam operators working in Hollywood, Dave Kamites. He's also a director in his own right, an Emmy-winning director. This is part of our below-the-line Patreon bonus content. So if you like what you hear at the end of this episode, sign up and you can hear the full episode on Patreon behind our paywall,

which is how we can afford to get these people and keep David housed. So without any... further ado. Let's dive into this week's episode. This season has been so fun for me, Lizzie, so many movies of the 90s, my favorite decade for film. And of course, we're talking about the one and only perfect movie, The Mummy. It is pretty perfect. Also, I just realized you were doing it right this season. You have truly picked movies that are both fun to watch and fun to talk about. I feel like I've done the opposite. Yeah, no, Lizzie's gone the opposite direction.

Rex on both counts, but I am just going with movies I unabashedly do love, and the mummy is absolutely one of those movies. So the details, before we dive into the disasters, the mummy is an action-adventure film, which was written and directed by Stephen Summers. You could argue it was also a bit of a horror film, it's also a bit of a romance film. It's kind of everything, which is what I like about it. It's a real smorgasbord of genre. It was released in 1999, the greatest year of all time for movies.

I want to do a rip from the headlines about that later, Lizzie. And it is a remake, of course, of a 1932 film of the same name, The Mummy. I didn't know that. Oh, yes. We'll get into it. It stars 90s hymnohunk heartthrob

Brendan Fraser. I think this is the best. He's so good. He's so good, and he's so handsome and he's so good. I think he looks great in this movie. I think he is great. The ultimate librarian fantasy for anyone that's interested, Rachel Weiss. Oh my goodness, she looks great.

Talk about just the hottest cast. And of course, the compulsory drunk British companion, John Hanna, who you may have seen in sliding doors and four weddings in a funeral? Also very, very briefly at the beginning of The Last of Us. He's in the first episode. I think. Oh, right, right. Yes, most recently. And then, of course, Arnold Voslu as the mummy himself. Industrial Light and Magic provided many of the film's groundbreaking effects, and Jerry Goldsmith scored the film. As always, here is the IMD log line for the movie. At an archaeological dig in the ancient city of Hamanoptera, an American serving in the French Foreign Legion, accidentally awakens a mummy who begins to wreak havoc

as he searches for the reincarnation of his lost love. Lizzie, your eyes went up a little bit because that's actually not very accurate to the movie. He is in the French Foreign Legion in the very first scene of the film. Who's paying any attention to what they're saying? They're all speaking French. I didn't even notice that. This movie is very long and it's very complicated.

Now, it makes up for that by being incredibly fun. Yes. But that log line simplifies a number of things and strips out a lot of characters. Yeah, I was going to say completely removes Jonathan and what is Rachel Weiss's name in this? Evelyn. Evelyn, yes. Yes.

So, Lizzie, I'm hoping you saw this as a child. Oh, yeah. I loved this movie. I mean, I was, you know, I don't know what it is with children and ancient Egypt, but, you know, I had like, I had the mummies that you could, they were like ceramic sarcophagi. This is actually really, really a cool toy parents. And you could take them apart. And you could take their organs out and then put them in the little, are they canopic jars? Is that what they're called?

I don't know. I just think this is like a psychopath kit, but it sounds very fun. I loved it. It was great. This was my favorite movie in 1999, and then I saw The Matrix in 2000, and that became my favorite movie for a while. I like this better. It's more fun. This was the first scary, quote unquote, scary movie I saw in theaters.

I was 10 years old. I saw it, I remember four times in theaters, which was a lot of money to spend on tickets, and I absolutely loved it. I can also say that Brennan Fraser and Rachel Weiss's chemistry remains unmatched. Oh, yeah. Hot, hot fire. We sent a message about this movie from one of our wonderful patrons who's remarked on the problematic way in which the relationship begins, where Brendan Fraser obviously kisses her without her consent through the bars of the prison. I will say, given the context and the time period, and he's about,

to be hanged. I feel like we can let it slide in this instance. I actually don't think this was too bad. As far as like action romances from 1999 goes, I was going to say exactly. This stands the test of time pretty well. Romancing the stone is a lot worse if you guys want to look at issues. Now, this movie, the plot is a little convoluted, but what's even more convoluted is the journey that it took to get to your screens. So without further ado, What went wrong? So let's go back to that 1932 movie, The Mummy, that this is based on. And there's some fun, I have some fun family connections to this project that I had no idea existed.

Not as cool as what your face just implied. But for those of you who don't know, The Mummy is based on a 1932 film The Mummy, starring Boris Karloff, as said Mummy. Okay. It was the fourth film in what is now referred to as the Universal Classic Monsters. Franchise. Okay, I do know what this is. Yeah. Right.

So it started with Dracula and Frankenstein. And this franchise spanned 25 years and dozens of films featuring among other famous monsters, Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the mummy, the wolf man, the creature from the Black Lagoon, the Invisible Man, Phantom of the Opera. And then just so many sequels and new versions of, you know what I mean, the bride of Dracula, the bride of Frankenstein, the daughter of whoever. There were She-Wolf. It was the Marvel

cinematic universe of lower-budget monster movies. So they were created at a really turbulent time for Universal and represented a real bright spot for the company. And we've talked about the birth of some of these studios. You guys will

have just heard our episode on Gone with the Wind. So let's do a brief primer on Universal. I didn't know a lot of this. So it was founded in 1912 by Carl Lemley, if you've heard of Lemley, theater. He was a German immigrant, and the studio prospered, primarily making low-budget

movies. They were the cost-conscious studio. They were one of the only ones that didn't vertically integrate, so they didn't build out a theater chain as well. Well, they must have at some point, because Lameley theaters is... They did. Yeah, later on. So this all... Sorry. Go ahead. We...

I won't take a tangent on this, but at some point, I think we should do maybe a bonus episode about the founding of all of these studios, because when I was researching Gone with a Wind, And I didn't realize how many, like, lamely, people had come over from Eastern Europe and Germany, particularly during the pogroms. And that it actually was a place where, like, essentially refugees came and realized that they were able to become these sort of studio heads. It's really interesting. So we will cover that at some point.

And all started on the East Coast and then eventually moved west because of the litigious nature of Thomas Addison, who was suing everybody over the moviola technology. And so they went west because they were like, well, he won't be able to. to get us or find us over here because the world is a billion miles apart. So, of course, in a succession-like scenario, Carl Jr., the original Carl's Jr., comes in under his father and decides, Kendall Roy style, dad, we got to modernize this place.

I mean, he's going full go-jo. If you guys have not kept up on succession, I apologize for these references. But he's like, we're going to modernize the studio, We're going to go into sound because it was obviously silent film up until that point. We're going to build theaters and we're going to up the budgets of our movies. And that led to more prestige for the company and they immediately went bankrupt because they tried to do this during the Great Depression, which was not the best time to do this. But he created what would become the most lasting properties of Universal's history with these niche horror films that are now known as Universal Classic Monsters.

So Dracula and Frankenstein were huge hits. And by the way, they're still dipping into this well. Like the original Invisible Man with Claude Raines is great. And they just remade it, of course, right before the pandemic with Elizabeth Moss, which was also great. And I don't want to spoil it, but we're going to get to my personal connection to this as well in just a moment. Yes, this is their original IP. And of course, because time is a flat circle, Hollywood at the time was also dipping into these monsters properties because they were IP.

Dracula was based on a book. Frankenstein was based on a book. So for the mummy, the Lemley's had been inspired by the opening of King Tut's tomb in 1922. And so they decided, hey, we need to recreate the success of Dracula and Frankenstein. Could we do it with something Egyptian themed? And they looked for a book about a mummy, but they couldn't find a book. But because it was Hollywood, they decided that they would have somebody write a book,

and it ended up just becoming a treatment. that they could then base the movie on, again. Why not just write a script? Who knows? They're still doing that today. The point is, here's the story as it was created in 1932. Imhotep, a mummy who was killed for attempting to resurrect his lover. Anoxenamun.

Matches our story today. Anaxonamun. Yes. Is accidentally awakened by a team of archaeologists. He then disguises himself as a modern Egyptian and searches for his love, who he believes has been reincarnated in the model. modern world. So obviously there are a lot of elements of this that end up in the final film. So the mummy was successful, but it wasn't a smash cultural hit like Dracula and Frankenstein.

So they did a spin-off in 1940 called The Mummy's Hand, which actually featured a different mummy named Carus. So it didn't feature Imhotep. And that got three sequels, the Mummy's Tomb, the Mummy's Ghost, which feels like they're stretching it. And then the Mummy's Curse, And then it got an amazing comedy sidepiece. Abbott and Costello meet the mummy. I have seen that. Which is very fun. Which is very fun.

They were like, what's the, we can't do any more sequels. Well, Abbott and Costello could meet this guy. So that's what they went to. So for the next four decades, the mummy lay dormant waiting to be awoken. Now, there's another company called Hammer Films that did their own mummy series. We're not going to talk about that. So in the 1980s, a couple of brave producers. much like the archaeologists who opened King Tut's tomb

decided let's pry the cold dead hands open of this mummified franchise. So James Jacks and Sean Daniel, who would go on to have some, they were pretty junior when they first started trying to revitalize the mummy, but they would go on to have some great producing credits, including Raising Arizona, dazed and confused, tombstone,

and a simple plan, among many others. I love all of those movies. So Universal's expectations, though, at this point were like this dusty old property, sure, do what you want. And they were like, but it has to be cheap. $10 million or less. Because these original horror films were low budget. We want these, if we're going to reboot them, we're going to do them low budget.

So in 1987, 1987, 12 years before this movie came out, they find a horror director to take on the project. So Lizzie, who would you pick in the late 1980s? to direct a movie about an undead mummy terrorizing people in the modern world, and I want you to focus on the word undead. I'm going to guess, my first guest was William Freakin because the Exorcist opening is the same as this. But Sam Ramey, no. No, Sam Ramey would have been so fun.

More serious a little bit. I feel like you almost said his name. Undead. Give me another hint. I'm just going to tell you. It's George Romero. Oh, duh. The director of Night of the Living Dead,

who basically single-handedly spawned the zombie film craze in the United States. He was brought on and he wrote a treatment for the film, which apparently was basically the mummy meets The Terminator. Great. Sounds kind of cool, like relentless killing machine, but it's a mummy. Kind of what we get. Yeah. Yeah.

So according to a 1999 issue of Cinifantastique magazine, This mummy was awoken by scientists in modern age and basically had like no social interaction. He was like a wordless, mindless killing machine. There was a screenwriter Abby Bernstein. She got brought in to write the script. They developed it together for about a year. The plot is insane.

It involves a magical orb, nerve regeneration research, and the mummy ripping organs out of people in real time, shoving them into his body, and then they grow into his body. So it was like a very Romero graphic, like ripping people apart movie. I like it. After a year, Romero left the project. So next up, in 1990, they bring in Clive Barker of Hellraiser. If you don't know, he's obviously an author, a novelist, a director, a screenwriter.

He created Clive Barker's Hellraiser, the franchise, which was recently rebooted for Hulu. If you guys haven't seen it, it has actually been. really good. And then Mick Garris, who is probably most famous for writing a movie that my wife loves, that you might like, Lizzie, called Hocus Pocus. Have you heard of it? I've heard of it. It's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. So Mick Garris, the writer of Hocus Pocus, very different tone than the Romero one one comes in to write. And so the idea was really to sell this as Clive Barker's The Mummy, much like Clive Barker's Hellraiser. And so this one was very much tied into L.A. culture. So it was like set in Beverly Hills, it's the land of tummy tucks and replacing, you know, aging body parts

and whatnot. How does the mummy get there? They create like a museum exhibit and they recreate his tomb and they bring him. It's a little thin. And then at the end, it is revealed that the mummy is an alien that's been on Earth for 3,000 years. And it got really weird and interdimensional. and the studio execs were like, this is really weird, we don't know what to do with this. And so they kindly, Clyde Barker left the project

and was like, yeah, that's not going to work. So then Jackson Daniel, these producers now have been on this for five years. They're like, we're not done yet. So they bring in Alan Ormsby.

He was mostly a screenwriter. I'm guessing you've seen my bodyguard with Matt Dillon back in the day. It's a coming-of-age film from the early 80s. And then did you see Paul Schrader's cat people? Yes. Very weird. He wrote that. Oh. So he got brought in. They didn't tell him that the movie had been developed at all. They didn't tell him the other versions they'd been working on. And the studio was apparently really worried Anne Rice had a mummy book coming out and they were like, okay, we got to get this project going. And so Ormsby came up with a really super original idea that no one had ever had. And he comes in and he goes, okay, it's the mummy meets The Terminator. So they've literally gone in a complete circle. And it's,

ended up five years back to like where they started. This happens so often. Anytime there's a script that is taking forever, they almost always go back to the first idea. Yeah. So it's like great. It's going to be Terminator meets the mummy, but they need a director. So they're like this, we're going to have you write the script.

So Lizzie, we've talked about this director before. He directed one of the segments of the Twilight Zone movie. Oh, Mad Max. Right? No. No. I don't know, Chris. I'm bad at guessing. Gremlin's director Joe Dante was brought in. So if you guys don't know Joe Dante's work, he had been on a tear starting with 1978's Piranha, which he followed up with the howling, gremlins, explorers, inner space, the burbs, and then Grenlins, too, the new batch. That is an amazing, like, 12-year stretch of movies, by the way. It's great. And interspace is great.

with Dennis Quaid and Explorers was a young Ethan Hawk. If you guys haven't seen it, really good. So long story short, Dante was like, I know how to make this movie. We used to bring Rick Baker. He did the werewolf effects and the howling, the very famous transformation. If you listen to our episode on The Thing, you can hear a little more about Rick Baker because Rob Boatine was his prodigy who did his apprentice. And Rob Boatine went on to do the makeup for The Thing.

And so he's like, we're going to bring on Rick. Baker to do the makeup, and Daniel Day Lewis is going to be the mummy. Is it a hot mummy? So yes. So apparently a lot of, like, the versions that the people were pitching was a sexy mummy. Well, as soon as you said Anne Rice

had a mummy book, I was like, ooh, Anne Rice is hot and up that mummy. There's no way. Yeah, so, like, people really liked the romance angle of, like, after all these years, he's still thinking of his lover, and he, like, wants her to be, you know, to bring her back. and pump some blood into her. But while shoving organs back into his body.

Right, exactly. And again, I think that he was like with a lot of these versions of the movie, the mummy was the main character. Like, that's the kind of consistent theme. Like, yes, the antagonist, but it was really about the mummy. So apparently as they developed it, the budget, of course, spiraled out of control. And the studio decided that they didn't want it to be set in L.A.

They wanted it to be set in Egypt now. they keep going back and forth. So they got close to a green light, but then they pulled the plug. But there's one element from this version of the script that did make it to the final film is that this is where the flesh-eating scarabs originated. Love them.

Wasn't this version in the script. So at this point, the revolving door is moving faster and faster, and they're just like, we'll, fuck it. We brought back the Terminator thing. George Romero, you want to come back in? So Romero comes back in 1994. John Sales comes in to do the screenplay at this point. John Sales is a really good director.

You've seen some of his movies at some point, writer-director. So they turn in another drafts. This is set in modern L.A., because the studio went back to wanting it in L.A. It features a climax in a secret underground pyramid in Death Valley. Again, I don't know how it ends up there. No. If you're going to do the mummy, it needs to be in Egypt. Yeah.

So the studio's like, this isn't scary enough. So George Romero then brings in McGarris back again in 1995. to rewrite the draft, and they apparently were basically greenlit at this point. So 1995, they're greenlit, and then the worst thing that can happen to a project that's in development happens, and that is the studio changes hands.

And so in 1995, Universal, which was technically called MCA at the time, that was the ownership structure, it was owned by Matsushita Electric of Japan, and Matur Sita Electric had bought the company thinking there could be like an opportunity to add, like put the universal movies on their Japanese electronics devices. It had not panned out. And so Seagram, the Canadian Whiskey Company, bought Universal in 19-night Lizzie's face is great. In 1995, yes, the largest owner of alcoholic beverage lines in the world decided that they were going to become a multinational entertainment conglomerate.

And they bought Universal. for like $6 billion. And they also bought a record company. And so, long story short, Sid Scheinberg of Steven Spielberg connection fame, decided that now is the time to get out. And so in 1995, he took the mummy with him to his own production company. He was going to produce it himself. And Scheinberg wanted to, like, make this a real prestige project for whatever reason. So he put out like a bounty, apparently, and he said, I'll give you, I'll give a million dollars to whatever screenwriter can turn this into.

something good. And everyone was like so daunted by the fact that there had been 25 drafts. And everyone, everyone was like, this movie's cursed. So no one took him up on the opportunity. And no one wanted to touch it. He apparently offered the movie to West Craven to direct. And West Craven politely said no and did scream instead. So the project is dead again. So in 1996, it goes back to Universal. They hired another writer, Kevin Jar Jarjari. He had written Glory and Tombstone with Jackson Daniel. He writes another draft, nothing happens. And this is when, Lizzie, you mentioned, the IP train comes into effect.

So Universal was struggling. They'd had a string of kind of like, not super flops, but they hadn't had a big hit, you know, in a minute. And they sent out to a bunch of production companies and creators and directors a list of all of their available IP, all of the properties, scripts, movies that they had done. It was 5,000 titles long. Jeez. And this packet found its way to a young director named Stephen Summers.

Stephen Summers is this Midwest director who had kind of broken into Hollywood directing Disney stuff. Huck Finn, The Jungle Book, Oliver Twist, good director, but he loved, like, pulpy, B-movie, adventure, horror stuff. And Lizzie, have you ever seen 1998's Deep Rising? No, but someone was just talking to me about this. It is so fun. It is so silly. So Deep Rising is a, it's alien on a cruise ship with a squid monster. And it's Treat Williams, who if you don't know him, he's like, this is really, it's really,

he's Dollar Store Harrison Ford. And Fam K. Jensen as the damsel in distress. And Kevin J. O'Connor as the comic who is Benny in this movie as the comic relief. And it was this like just Saturday afternoon. like horror thing. It was supposed to be a prequel to a King Kong reboot apparently. I don't really know how. And so Stephen Summers is like, I just did this monster movie and I've ever wanted to do is remake The Mummy. That's like all he's ever wanted to do since he was like a little kid. He saw the mummy. It scared the hell out of him. So he goes and he writes this 18 page treatment. He works with a

consultant at UCLA on like Egyptian history and he puts together, he's like this movie shouldn't be about the Mummy. That was like his best. insight. And he creates this Indiana Jones like hero, Rick O'Connell that the story focuses on. Right. Rick O'Connell's, that's what the people want. So it's basically like Rick O'Connell accidentally wakes up the mummy and then kind of gets dragged into having to take him out. And it's like the classic, you know, Han Solo reluctant hero sort of story. And Universal's like, all right, great. The focus isn't on the mummy. We don't have to worry. Like the mummy can just be scary. The mummy doesn't have to also be sexy. The mummy, you know what I mean? The mummy can just

be a scary mummy and that's fine. That's better. You don't need a hot mummy. Like, there's nothing, there's no part of this thing's been wrapped in, you know, gauze for millennia and has rotted away. That's like getting me hot. Yeah. Nothing against Arnold Voslu, like, very handsome man, but like you don't need a sexy, sexy mummy. So Universal hires him. They up the budget to of $40 million because they're like, we can set it in Egypt in the 1920s. And so Summers goes, he spends a year on the script, and they need a cast. And so unlike previous iterations where like the mummy was the star, they're looking for like, no, who's the next American action hero?

So, Lizzie, who do you think they first offered the lead role of this movie to? It's 1999. It would have been like, yeah, 97, 98, like 98 or so when they're doing this. I don't know. Tom Cruise? No. Yep. Tom Cruise.

Tommy. Tom Cruise. The man who would take the lead role in the reboot of the Mummy 20 years later was offered the lead in the mummy 20 years ago, 20 years prior. But he turned it down. Good. He would have been so wrong in this. There's a couple people here that I think could have done a pretty good job. Brad Pitt was apparently offered the role as well,

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as well. So I like Brendan Fraser the most. Yes. They turned it down for various reasons, creative or scheduling. So, of course, that brings us to this other hot young actor in Hollywood who had appeared just a few years prior opposite both Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in a movie called School Ties, who happened to share an agent with director Stephen Summers. And he had just had a bona fide smash hit.

with Georgia the Jungle. And that was now Oscar winner, Brendan Fraser. And it's Fraser, not Frazier, is my understanding. So let's get that on the record. So Fraser was not only a great creative fit, Summers compared him to a young Errol Flynn. And by the way, if you've not seen him in Georgia the Jungle, he was absolutely cut.

Yeah. Like, just chiseled out of stone. He was also one of the cheaper leading men in high. Hollywood at the time because he had just broken out, so he was not as expensive as like a Tom Cruise. He was a, he's a Canadian actor. He's actually the first Canadian actor to win best actor as of this year, which I was surprised to learn. And a little connection to my family, he graduated, he lived in Seattle for a little while, and he graduated from the Cornish School of the Arts in Seattle, which is a very small arts college that my grandma went to. Probably, weirdly, almost at the same time,

is him because my grandma went back to get her degree very late. Oh, okay. And studied oil painting. No, my grandma was very young. She's brand and Fraser's hands. I was like, uh. Yeah. So Fraser had really kind of blown up in the 90s. His first lead role was 1992's Encino Man with Polly Shore, which also co-starred Kihoi Kwan of Everything Everywhere all at once. And then they won their Oscars the same year, which is super cool. I mentioned he starred in school ties alongside I had Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Chris O'Donnell, as a Jewish student at a prep school dealing with anti-Semitism. And then in the 90s, he would just, like, oscillate between these really broad comedies and very serious work as well. So he did Airheads with Adam Sandler and Steve Buscemi.

And then he did Gods and Monsters with Ian McAllen, where he plays a heterosexual gardener who enters a platonic relationship with his homosexual employer, the reclusive real-life director of Bride of Frankenstein, James Whale. And so the studio loves Brennan Fraser, and they're like, okay, great, we can get him. He's relatively cheap. We know he can open a big movie. This is like a huge win. And I really think he makes this movie work in so many ways because he sets the tone. Like the tone is so goofy and fun because of his performance, I think. And then they wanted an American actress for Evelyn, our Egyptologist, as she's known.

So Rachel Weiss apparently had to audition five times to get this role. That's crazy. Which I was surprised here. She's perfect. She's perfect. I can't imagine anybody else getting this role. And then Kevin J. O'Connor had just done Deep Rising with Summers. He plays Benny, and I think he is absolutely hilarious in this movie.

When he's praying to all the different gods with all of his different jewelry, it's really good. And then John Hanna was picked for the part of Jonathan because his agent called the head of Universal and said, this is the best comedic actor working in town. and John Hanna had never had a comedic role until this movie, and he literally spent the whole movie not knowing what he was doing there. He's great.

So obviously, this brings us to the not so great part of casting this movie, which Lizzie, I'm guessing you thought would be coming. I did look this up. There is, I don't think, a single Egyptian person in this? No, there is not a single Egyptian person in this cast. I don't think there's even an Egyptian person in the extras because of where they filmed. So despite taking place in Egypt,

it features no Egyptians in any of the main or secondary roles. Not even the Egyptian ones. Arnold Voslu, who is a white South African actor, was brought into play Imhotep, our titular mummy. Venezuelan actress Patricia Velasquez, aka Marta from Arrested Development, aka Marta from Arrested Development, snagged the part of Anaksunamun, his dead lover.

Oded Faire, who plays Ardeth, also a beautiful human place. Oh, my goodness. Apparently his face was supposed to have just be covered in tattoos, and Stephen Summers saw how attractive he was in person. I was like, we can only put a little bit on East cheek. We can't cover his face. He's Israeli of European Jewish descent, I learned.

He's the leader of the Majai. And then Omid Jalili, I believe, is his last name as Warden God Hassan. And Omid is a British performer of Iranian descent. He's so funny in this. So funny. And this and in Gladiator, if you guys remember, he deals with Proximo at the street vendor location early in the film. And he has a great quote about Ridley Scott in that movie. Check out our episode on Gladiator. And Omid drew attention to this. Arnold Wosslu did it as well. Arnold Wosslu, in an oral history with Entertainment Weekly published in 2019, said, I wouldn't be cast today. And I understand and accept that. And Omid said, I have an Iranian background. So I was very aware that if I ever did film roles, I had to represent Middle Eastern culture. This was at a time when there were very few Middle Eastern roles at all that weren't terrorists.

So Stephen Summers said to him, we're looking for kind of a Rafiki from Midnight Express type of character. And that's this Turkish warden who's really evil. His character was like very cliche, just like super evil Middle Eastern villain type. And he's apparently Omid was like, look, can I at least, try to make him two-dimensional because he's just one-dimensional right now. So he came up with the humor for the character of like he's a barterer, you know, he's just there for the gold,

he has some comic relief. And his quote was, the only way I can do this and not be lynched by my own people is to make it slightly humorous. So obviously this movie has not aged well in terms of representation. That wouldn't change for a long time. Obviously, what was that film that Ridley Scott did, the Moses movie. I can't remember what it was called. Gods and kings or something. It's all white people as Egyptians. Is that the one where Christian Bale was Moses or something?

Christian Bail was Moses and Edgerton was Ramesses. So not the best. One other casting note, Arnold Voslu apparently was like 15 pounds overweight when he showed up and wardrobe gave him his costume, which is like a priest G-string. And he put it on and just immediately started running. and just didn't drink or eat anything and just ran like two weeks to lose the weight. And the costume department called Stephen Somerson and was like, we have a problem. And he's like, what's going on?

And they're like, our mummy's fat. And so he rarely had to lose a bunch of weight before the shoot. And he looks great. He looks great. So in order to make the budget work, they had to get creative. Instead of filming in the U.S. and building all the sets and shooting out in the desert, they shot in Morocco. They couldn't shoot in Egypt because of the political.

at the time in the country. So they shoot in Morocco, in Marrakesh, specifically. A lot of stuff shoots in Morocco. Yeah. And then they shot in the UK on soundstages. And so Summers had to use a British crew. Apparently they thought they were like, who the fuck is this guy? If you guys want to learn more about British crews and American directors or American crews and British directors, check out our episode on Blade Runner to learn a little bit about how Ridley Scott had to deal with an American crew and some of the culture classes that happened. So they only had six weeks to shoot in Morocco, and it's a ton of action. I mean, the opening scene is like 500 horses rushing 200 men.

Yeah, it's awesome. It's a great scene. It's a giant scene. And they were facing a lot of hurdles beyond just a normal production. So the studio took out kidnapping insurance on the leads in this movie because they were so worried they were going to be kidnapped. Apparently, $1 million policies on Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weiss. And Fraser joked that they may as well put a bounty on their heads.

And then Kevin J. O'Connor, who plays Benny, asked the producers how much his policy was for, and they said $50,000. Oh, no. And that was all they needed for the studio. Beyond the threat of kidnapping, a few other things that maybe you would think they would deal with. Near daily sandstorms that were so powerful, they ripped the paint off of the trailers that they were staying in. Oh, my God. A yellow spotted snake that's bite could lead to amputation. Kevin J. O'Connor was not told about this until he showed up on set,

and he in Wardrobe had already decided that his character would wear open-toed sandals throughout the entire movie. So he regretted that choice instantly. Brendan Fraser said they got almost daily B-12 shots in the ass, and the team's medical, the production's medical team created a special drink, which I'm guessing is an like an electrolyte cocktail of some kind, that they literally had to drink every two hours. And even with that, apparently multiple crewmen

members were airlifted off of this production because they were bitten by either scorpions, poisonous spiders, or poisonous snakes. And that's what they were dealing with. But apparently none of the main cast was ever bit by any of these. So the crew was taken it for the team. No, thank you. Yeah. John Hanna was also dealing with the insecurity of having no idea what his character's point was.

In the oral history with Entertainment Weekly, he said, I don't understand what I'm doing here. Brendan's the hero. Kevin Jay is the comic relief and Steve he would be he said Steve what's my function and apparently Steve said just mess around in the background and if it's funny we'll cover it

and that's how he gets some of the scenes where like he's trying to get his like he's just trying to drink while everybody else is fighting was him just deciding well I guess I'm an alcoholic and so it was a fun in coincident organic way that that developed

on set through a lack of direction he's really funny in this though and also So, like, he, like, I remember him so well from when I was a kid watching this. Oh, and he's big in the Mummy Returns as well. He's really good. He gets more of the comic relief in the Mummy Returns because obviously Benny dies at the end of this movie and he gets that full role. Now, there was, of course, a very infamous, very scary onset incident from this movie. That would unfortunately prove to be the first of many injuries Brendan Fraser would suffer as a leading man.

throughout his career. And that is, of course, during the hanging scene in the prison, early in the film, which was also one of the first scenes that they shot. This was the first set that they shot on for the movie. So in case you don't remember, Fraser's character, Rick O'Connell, has told Rachel Weiss's Evelyn that he can take her and her brother to Hamanoptra, the City of the Dead. Only one problem he's scheduled to be hanged that very day at noon.

So in what is a very funny and like kind of moving scene, it's a really good scene, Brendan Fraser is hanged. They drop him through the gallows, only his neck doesn't snap. And while he's choking, Evelyn is negotiating with the warden for his life. And this is all played in a medium shot where you can see Brendan Fraser's face the whole time. So they couldn't use a stunt double, aside from the initial drop, all of the stuff of him hanging there choking, it had to be Fraser. So when they're doing this, they have him in a harness, which is hung up to a rope, a thinner rope behind his back. And then they have a hemp rope, gallows noose, around his neck that's supposed to be a little slack.

And then the idea is that he's actually being supported around his chest. And there's no pressure on his, there's supposed to be no pressure on his neck. And then it's just Fraser acting like he's choking and holding his breath effectively to cause the blood to rush to his head to sell that bit. Fraser, they did a bunch of takes.

And he said that no matter how loose that rope is, you are still getting choked, even when it feels like you shouldn't be. So his point was even in the early takes, you're getting choked. and he's acting his heart out, and he's hanging from his chest, too. So this is not a comfortable position.

This is a physically taxing position. And so Summers asked Fraser for one more take. Fraser was like, I think I'm done. Summer said, I don't believe it. Like, I'm not buying your performance. Let's do one more. And then Summers asked them to tighten the tension on the noose to help sell the shot.

Fraser was reluctant, but agreed. the rope, as I mentioned, was cutting off his circulation even with the harness. They tightened the noose. They rolled. And then, as Fraser put it, this is his quote from the EW oral history. Quote, I remember seeing the camera start to pan around. And then it was like a black iris at the end of a silent film. I regained consciousness on the ground, I should be clear.

And one of the EMTs was saying my name. There was gravel in my ear and shit really hurt. Stephen, he and I disagree, but I think he was trying to go, oh, that wacky Brandon acting up a storm again, and I was like, I'm done for the day. Yikes. And so according, end quote. According to many reports, Fraser nearly died performing the stunt. And that was widely reported at the time that he nearly died performing the stunt. However, it was also kind of played off as like, oh, it was.

I think people's reaction was like, oh, that wacky brand. and, you know, really going for it on set. I think that's been people's reaction to these kind of like almost death things across a lot of movies for a long time. And I really think we should change that. You know, this sort of like this stuff about Kate Winslet and Titanic or like, you know, really anyone working on James Cameron's movies. Helen Hunt and Twister.

Yes, Helen Hunt and Twister. And it's this whole thing of like, oh, my God, this almost happened. Like, look how close they came to Damon. and how exciting this is. It's like it's not exciting. It's their job. They should not have been anywhere near that close to being hurt. So I do hope that people reframe or like Tom Cruise breaking his ankle and Mission Impossible.

Like I don't want Tom Cruise to break his ankle because he's jumping across two buildings. Just stop doing that. Stop covering it. Or I mean, cover it in a way that's more responsible. So I'd like to read the, this is not this. I'm going to read this as if it was a back and forth. This is from the oral history. So they are cutting between two different.

interviews. But Stephen Summers says, quote, he tightens the noose. And then as we're about to take the shot, he's trying to make it look like it's really strangling him. I guess it cut off his carotid artery or whatever and knocked him out. So he's really downplaying it. And then Fraser says, technically, yes, it was my fault that I was following direction from my director to sell it. And that's exactly right. And then Summers's this quote after that is he did it to himself. And again, as Lizzie just said, and Lizzie's face is shocked, it is always the director's ultimate responsibility to keep people safe on set. He did it to himself as not an excuse. No. Yeah. So I had a pretty big problem with that quote, and I felt very bad for Brennan Fraser, who I think handled it as diplomatically as

possible, but what he said is exactly right. Is he's nice? Like, by all accounts, he's very nice. And so my guess is he probably didn't kick up a huge storm about this. No, and I think, to be honest, and I know, I can't imagine the stuff that actresses deal with, and I'm sure it's true with actresses too. There's like a, well, you're a big guy, you're a tough guy. Yeah. You're a trooper. That type of attitude towards people when they're dealing with these injuries.

It's absurd. He's in a workplace situation. That's what I mean. You shouldn't almost get choked out and die in a workplace situation. We'll get back to his injuries at the end. after wrapping in Morocco, the team moved out to the Sahara Desert where they dealt with temperatures in excess of 130 degrees. I didn't know that it got that hot, but it does.

They shot the exterior hominopter scenes at the Garra Medar, which I pronounced wrong, I'm sure, which is a horseshoe-shaped geological phenomena. I think it might have actually been an ancient volcano. That's like where the, it's that kind of formation you see in the distance, Lizzie. Yeah, yeah. Where they hide Hamanoptera, which we should also point out is not a thing in Egyptian mythology. No.

I checked. I was like, ooh. You don't hide cities. Yeah, exactly. The production then moved to the United Kingdom, where the sets were built at the famous Sheperton Studios, including all of the underground passageways for the city of the dead. They took 16 weeks to build, and they were rigged to collapse for the film's final scenes, which I think looked great. I think all those underground sets look really good. Yeah.

The collapsing. That's so claustrophobia-inducing when Benny's climbing back out at the end. I know. The whole giant rock is coming down on him. He does it so slowly, too. Which I would have been skittering through that thing. Oh, yeah. He really...

He did a great. He really sold it. The dockyards at Chatham doubled for the Giza port. So all the Giza stuff was actually shot in the UK. They shot the Nile River. The Thames was the Nile River. That makes sense because that's the only part of the movie That looks fake

It looks computer generated The shores There's a lot there There's some really wonderful special effects in this film Yeah And then the shiploading scene Was actually a 600 foot set Out by the dockyards

And they brought in a real steam engine Multiple cranes, donkeys, horses And 300 extras So this movie had a lot of scope For its budget So on to post-production We've talked a lot about, we've hit the 90s, which is where VFX is really coming into its own.

And so this film has a lot of VFX shots for the time. Specifically, it has at least 245. Lizzie, do you remember we just covered Jurassic Park? How many were in Jurassic Park? I know it was under 100. It's definitely under 100. I feel like it was under 50. Yeah, it was very few, it's the point.

So this movie had a lot more, including an opening shot, the opening shot of the film where the camera pans down across the sphinx, the plaza with the pyramids in the background. and then ends on the chariot coming towards the camera was actually basically three shots. The Sphinx and the plaza and the pyramids were miniatures, four and a half feet tall. That then panned down all of the people in the foreground

were green screen extras that were composited on. And then they ended on the chariot approaching the camera, which was actually a real shot from Morocco. And then the problem was they decided to flip the position of the sun. It was supposed to be early in the day, so they lit it for day, but then they wanted it to actually be sunset. So they had to flip the sun to the back. And so they actually had to have their VFX team come in and paint over the entire scene to reposition the light within the scene.

So they had to like relight it manually basically after the fact because they were so close to finishing. Oh my God. Just leave the sun where it was. I mean, it looks great, though. They did a great job. So obviously, industrial light and magic came in to do the VFX. And they had just done the VFX, which actually look really good for Deep Rising with Stephen Summers. The Squid Monster is really good for the time.

And John Andrew Burton Jr. was the VFX supervisor. And he came in during the development process to do some proof of concept work for Stephen Summers. And so as we mentioned, Summers wanted this lean, mean, fast mummy. They didn't want just a guy in a suit. So they decided to make the first fully CGI photo realistic corpse. for film. And they designed four distinct stages. They have stage one, super decayed.

That's when he first comes out of the tomb. He's all fucked up with his jaw. Stage two, that's when he's got the eyes and like a little more skin. And then stage three is like a lot more skin. And then stage four is just when he's like missing the chunk of his cheek and he's like eating the bug that goes through. I love that. Yeah, it was a super fun bit.

So the first two stages were completely CGI. They used early motion capture technology. So this is like Arnold, no one. knew what this was. So Arnold Voslou's putting on this suit with ping pong balls on it to do motion capture. And he's like, I have no idea what's happening. And all of the actors apparently on set are like, we're never going to work again. Because I'll show you a clip in a second. They didn't, no one knew what any of this was going to look like. There was the scene where Arnold, where the mummy summons the wall of sand to chase them in the plane. And Stephen Summers is like, all right, now you summon the wall of sand.

And Arnold Vasselu, apparently in between takes, turned to Rachel Weiss and goes, we're never working again. And it's just like, no one knew what it was going to look like. You need to trust industrial light and magic a little bit. Come on. It's hard. It wasn't ubiquitous at the time. So if you want to see more about this, I highly recommend that you check out Corridor Crew, their YouTube channels, VFX Artist React video,

where they have ILMVX art director, Alex Laurent, who was the art director on this film to do a breakdown of the VFX of the mummy? That's awesome. So he actually won, when they brought all the ILM artists in, they did a, like, kind of a bakeoff for like what the mummy would look like. And his drawing of the mummy with like the messed up jaw actually is what led to the design of the mummy. And what was really cool is this was early stages of computer modeling. So they actually had a physical model shop.

And they would send the drawings down to the physical model shop. And instead of modeling them in 3D, they would actually have their sculptors make the different. different stages as real busts in physical life that they could then put on their desks and look at while they were animating as like real physical reference. So even though there's a lot of CGI, the folks at ILM were still doing a lot of things practically to make this all work. So my favorite though bit of VFX trivia from this whole movie is there's a great shot Lizzie towards the very end of the film where Rachel Evelyn, Rachel Weiss's character is strapped to the table, the sacrifice table.

And Brennan Fraser has a sword, and like eight or nine of these like shambling priest mummies are attacking him. And he, it's like one shot. And he's jumping over the table, swinging the sword like a baseball bat, kicking him in the head. Like, I mean, it's like a- Muppie in the face. It was- He slaps a mummy in the face.

Incredible. And so that shot, it's like a, I think it's like a 10 or 15-second shot, none of those mummies are there. Those are all fully CGI mummies, which look great. Yeah. But because of the time, they actually couldn't put any stunt doubles in there either. So Brennan Fraser is doing all of those actions by himself with no one else around. That's crazy because that sequence is so fun.

All right. So check this out. It's a brief clip, but you can see you'll be able to see it. Wow. Okay. So what we're watching is we can see Brendan Fraser. doing this completely by himself. That is, that is wild.

Yeah. So, Brendan Fraser literally did all of the skeleton fight movements by himself with nobody else there. Just absolutely incredible this guy's ability. That's crazy because, like, you have to, you can't just be swinging a sword around. You also have to account for, like, the impact if it hits something or, like, you know, the blowback.

on you if someone is touching you. Like, what he's doing there is really incredible. So apparently the way that they did this, and I'll get nerdy for a brief second, so it was inspired by a very famous scene in this old movie called Jason and the Argonauts, where he fights the skeletons. This is also in Jurassic Park.

There was, they used that. Yeah, Harry Houser, Ray Harry Houser, I think, is the name of the animator that created the stop motion technique where they would rear project So the way that they would do these scenes is they would film the actors fighting nothing, and then they would project, rear project that, and then they would stop animate frame by frame the skeletons in the foreground fighting them.

And that's how they created these scenes. So they're effectively doing the same thing here just with CG characters, where Brennan Fraser's acting the scene by himself. And apparently the reason this was doable is that Brennan Fraser learned the choreography so effectively that he could repeat the same actions over and over again at almost the exact right timing and location, and that allowed them to pull this off in a way that, you know, you couldn't kind of at the time.

And that shot looks so good. It's so fun. That shot to this day looks great. That shot, most of those mummies don't look like CG to me. No. Which for 1999, that's crazy. That is crazy. That's crazy for today.

Man, they should have given them an Oscar for this. I agree. A few other fun facts. To create the sandstorms, ILM used the same particle systems that they had developed for their work on Twister. Okay. So check out our episode of Twister. The hordes of flesh-eating scarabs used the mass asset generating programs that had been developed for the battle scenes in Star Wars, The Phantom Menace, which would open the same year. Just, you know, show how you, like, reuse the technology across different things.

There's also a lot of great practical effects work in the film. This included the Pharaoh's Garrow. at the end. The Pharaoh's guards actually are mostly practical, and this was, these were created by Nick Dudman. He was the makeup supervisor for the film, makeup effects supervisor, and he did all the makeup, prosthetics, animatronic effects for the film. And then as we mentioned, Jerry Goldsmith was brought in to do the film's score later in his career. He'd done Deep Rising, and I mean, he had just done Air Force One and Star Trek. So we get through post-production, and the studio has a lot riding on this movie. What had begun as a low-budget monster movie reboot, and the $10 million range had

ballooned to a reported $80 million blockbuster. Stephen Summers said it was $62 million. I read 80, so put it somewhere between this. I don't trust Stephen Summers after he blamed Brendan Fraser, so let's call it 80. We'll call it 80. So they start testing the movie, and it apparently tests really badly. I'm not sure if the movie was actually testing poorly with audiences, or it was that it was tracking poorly. What's clear is that nobody was excited about the idea of a mummy movie, meaning like Cobweb, shambling, mummy, and the title was really hurting them. So the studio actually considered changing the name of the movie. And very close to the release date, they were like, do we need to call this something else? And so it was a really hard movie to market. It's a PG-13

horror film that's not really scary based on a 67-year-old movie that people have only vague memories of. And so the studio does actually this really unusual move. Instead of backing away from it, they did a Hail Mary. And they cut together a 30-second teaser of all the best action moments, and they spent $1.6 million on a Super Bowl ad for the movie. And I remember seeing this ad for this movie, because it's what made me want to go see it. And you guys can see it on YouTube, if you'd like, it's awesome. And it's just like, you're like, it's got machine guns and Brendan Fraser

and hot Rachel Weiss and mummies. And like, it looks so fun. Like, it just looks like a great time at the movies. And apparently on Monday, they were like, holy shit, this movie's going to do $20 million. It's opening weekend. And before they thought it would do less than 10. And then by Tuesday, they're like,

this movie could do $45 million in its opening weekend. we're going to have like a bona fide hit on our hands. And that teaser to show the tone totally flipped everything on its head for the studio. So it just shows marketing very important. Yes. As Zachary Levi has been saying right now about Shazam 2, but that'll be a separate ripped from the headlines episode that we can do later. Is that out?

Apparently. So the mummy was released on May 7th, 1998. It was pulled in from May 21st to. So it wouldn't compete with Star Wars, the Phantom Menace. Wait, 1999. Excuse me, 1999. Chris, you're fired. I'm fired. I was fired. I've been fired a number of times.

It keeps coming back. Keep showing. Well, I can't find anyone willing to replace me. So it was released May 7th, 1999. It was pulled in from May 21st. They didn't want to compete with the Phantom Menace, which, despite being a hot mess of a movie, that Phantom Menace made a lot of mind. Oh, sure.

So it was the number one movie in North America. It's opening weekend. It grossed $43 million, which was the biggest non-holiday, meaning non-memorial day, opening of all time. It was the ninth biggest opening of all time. It grossed $155 million eventually, domestically, $261 million abroad for a total gross of $416 million worldwide, which even against its $80 million budget. is certainly a very successful film. Yes. It did receive somewhat mixed reviews,

which I am still very upset about. It's about 60% on Rotten Tomatoes right now, and it just continues to prove my theory that Rotten Tomatoes is the stupidest thing ever created. Very frustrating. Basically, everyone loved the action and the effects, and they liked the performances, but there was some criticism of the script.

I like the script. It's very convoluted, but I think it's super fun. It's fun. It's fun all the way through. You're never bored. Like, I don't need it to make sense. I don't care. No.

He's just trying to wake up. Anaxuna moon. Anaksana moon. Marta. The language. The language of the slaves when he's speaking in Hebrew. All I could think, I have to say, when I realized it was Marta, it did kind of ruin the rest of the movie for me. Because all I could hear was Job going, I've made a huge mistake.

I've made a huge mistake. Like imagine waking up an oxen the moon from the dead and then realizing you don't. Or Job going, who's this Hermano guy? As he's talking about the mummy. All right, there's a deep cut for you guys. I will say even at the time it was criticized by some outlets for the poor depiction and representation of Egyptians and their culture. So I think fair criticism there. The mummy was nominated for one Academy Award.

Best sound. Not the one I think it has great sound, but I wouldn't have necessarily expected it. won a Saturn Award for Best Makeup, and it was not nominated for a Visual Effects Oscar, though I think it would not have beaten the... Yeah, I don't think it would... The Matrix won. Oh, oh, okay.

The Matrix, obviously, was going to win. Yeah. But I thought it was interesting that it wasn't nominated. In many ways, the mummy kind of heralded the end of the action-adventure period of Hollywood. By the mid-2000s, we would move on to superhero films in their first iteration with X-Men and Spider-Man. Spider-Man.

But for a moment, yeah, Toby McGuire, so good. The mummy held our hearts in attention more than anything else. And as we mentioned, 1999 was the single greatest year for movies. I'm going to prove it to you guys later in a bonus episode for Patreon. So wait for it. And of course, Lizzie, that success could only spawn more mummy movies. More mums. More mums.

So the mums came back for the mummy returns in 2001, which made, $435 million at the box office, although it was more expensive, so it technically wasn't as successful. And of course, that featured Dwayne the Rock Johnson in his first on-screen role. He's in that one? I thought he was in The Scorpion King. Is that he's in both? They did a spin-off with him. Yeah, he's featured as the Scorpion King. Okay. He's largely CGI in the Mummy Returns in the most infamous CGI shot maybe in history, which is him in the third act showing up as a half-scorpion, half man, and it doesn't look great. Definitely worth pulling up on YouTube if you'd like a look.

And then in 2008, seven years later, the Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor was released. I've never seen this one. Rachel Weiss declined to return to the project. Stephen Summers also did not direct. Brennan Fraser, however, did return. The movie co-starred Maria Bello, replacing Rachel Weiss and Jet Lee as the villain.

It was financially successful. It did around $400 million as well against the budget of $150 million, but it was critically panned, and it didn't seem like there was much gas in the tank, and it marked the end of the Fraser-led Mummy reboot. Of course, Tom Cruise attempted to resurrect the property in 2017. That film grossed $400 million, but was against a much larger budget. How did that make $400 million?

Yeah, it did pretty well internationally. And so when that underperformed, Universal scrapped their plans for a Universal Monsters universe. And then instead, they moved back to their original roots. And they have had a lot of success, creating smaller budget universal Monsters movies. As Lizzie mentioned, The Invisible Man with Elizabeth Moss was a wonderful movie, made a crap ton of money, and was very inexpensive. And that brings me to my connection to this project. I am actually writing a Universal Monsters movie.

movie. So I have been hired to write a remake of the mole people, which was a 1956, not great, very fun, mystery science theater 3,000 spoofed it at one point, Universal Monsters Property. And I went in and pitched on it over the summer. I can talk about it now because it's been released on deadline. And Robert Kirkman's Skybound, he's the creator of The Walking Dead is producing. So I'm very excited, and that's what I've been working on in over the last few weeks. And, well, I should say months, really, but I've been officially commenced to script over the last few weeks. That's amazing.

Yeah, so I have a connection to the Universal Monsters Universe. And it is not an $80 million movie. I can tell you that right now. How many mole people? How many do we get? There's a lot of moles. I'm hoping I can just be one mole person in the background of this movie. If you want to learn more about that, you can Google.

my name along with the mole people and you'll get a synopsis of what the film will be about. Such a talented man. Such a talented mole write-up. Well, you know, I went in and I was like, hey, guys, I got a lot of moles. So this makes sense. I do have a lot of moles. I knew you were working on that. I didn't realize it was a Universal Monster movie thing. It is, yeah, it's the Universal Monsters project. So I'm really excited. It's a great team over at Universal. and yeah, I'm very hopeful that at some point you'll be able to go to a theater near you and see the mole people. Hell yeah. So for many involved, I will say, I think the mummy kind of was the pinnacle of their careers.

And I say that it's a good thing, not, you know, as a bad thing. I think this movie has held such a place in our pop culture history. Certainly that was the case for Stephen Summers. He continued to work in the monster space. He wrote The Scorpion King. That's the spinoff for Dwayne the Rock Johnson. He directed the Van Helsing reboot with Hugh Jackman in 2004, which didn't really quite work.

Then he's mostly gone on to produce in recent years as Hollywood has moved away from kind of the pulpy, swashbuckling B movies that he was so good at making. Rachel Weiss obviously proved to be an exception to this. She's only grown in stature. She won an Oscar in 2005 for Best Supporting Actress for the Compto Constant Gardner. And she's just been a bright spot in so many wonderful films over the last 20 years.

Some of my favorites, the Brothers Bloom, kind of an underseen Ryan Johnson film, the lobster disobedience, the favorite. She's in a remake of Dead Ringers, which is a really crazy Jeremy Irons movie where she plays Identical Twins. Yeah, Cronenberg. She plays identical twin sisters in this new one, and it looks really freaky. It's about fertility and stuff. It looks really cool.

Brendan Fraser coming off of The Mummy had proven himself again to be a bankable star but unfortunately he had a series of flops kind of between the successes of the Mummy and the Mummy returns including Dudley Dewright, Monkey Bone, blast from the past, which is great but it didn't do well commercially and bedazzled. Oh yeah.

In 2018, Brendan Fraser said that he had been sexually assaulted by Philip Burke, the then president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, at a luncheon in 2003. He went through divorce shortly after that, and then his mother died shortly after that. He went into a very understandable depression, which was exacerbated by a bunch of health problems

that kind of seemed to stem from his onset injuries. So he's had multiple spinal surgeries, including having one of his vertebrae removed in order to relieve pressure on his spine. You have to imagine a choking incident on set didn't help that. He had a knee replacement. He was in and out of the hospital with back problems for a period of seven years in the mid-2000s,

and he stated that while filming Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, he was literally held together by ice and tape at that point in his career. However, there are happy endings. He famously has had a career renaissance in recent years. This culminated with his Oscar win this very year for his work in Darren Aronofsky's The Whale. Not culminating, Chris. I believe this is the beginning of the Brendan. Fraser Renaissance because of... Sure, the Fraser Sons.

The next big... I'm most excited about the next big project that now has a release date. Which one's that? Killers of the Flower Moon. Oh, right. Killers of... Yeah, the Scorsese film with Leo.

I happen to have worked with an assistant director who worked with Mr. Fraser on the HBO Max show Doom Patrol, and he said he is an absolutely lovely person and a true pleasure to work with, and apparently loves his horses extremely dearly, which I love, because if you remember, one of the best scenes in Georgia the jungle is when all of the women at this event are watching Hoddy Brendan Fraser run with the horses outside of this like equestrian center,

and they're all thirsting after him so hard. And then these two rich douchebags, you cut to these two rich juicebags in the back, and they go, what's it with chicks and horses? And then you cut back and you realized they're just all thirsting for Brendan Fraser. And he's like running with these beautiful stallions. And as I mentioned, he became the first Canadian and maybe the nicest man to win best actor. So that brings us to the conclusion of the mummy. I'm really thrilled that we now have kind of happy, not endings, but happy moments for so many of the people involved with this film.

Because with a lot of these projects, that's not the case. But we do with this one. So, Lizzie, why don't you take it away with our final segment? What went right? Well, and there's a lot to choose from. There is a lot to choose from. But the first thing that I'll say that went right is everybody on Patreon who voted for the mummy. Thank you.

Oh, they did. This was an absolute delight. I don't know that I would have sought this out to watch it on my own without you having picked this one. I mean, I remembered enjoying it, but I had no idea how fun it was. So sincerely, thank you. much for choosing this. It had been suggested many times by a lot of people, and I think I just learned that I need to listen to you all more because this was great. In terms of what went right, obviously Brendan Fraser, but I'm going to go with Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weiss. The two of them

and their chemistry, not something I picked up on as a 10-year-old in the same way that you do as a 33-year-old. They're great. And they just seem like they genuinely like each other. Not in like a gross. There's like, there's nothing gross about it. There's nothing like overly lascivious or it's like good like platonic onset crush like energy.

Just like great, great vibes. Just fun. Just like really fun. So I would say that the dynamic between the two of them is absolutely what went right. I loved it. And Odead Fair, his face went right, really hot. He's so. good. He's really good. And he's, he has, he has a much bigger role in the mummy returns. So if you

like him, check out the mummy returns. He's great in it. Oh, man, he's so, I forgot how handsome he was. Because I, like, you see him in the beginning. He's like, whoa. He's pretty funny, too. Like the, he's very funny. He's really funny in the mummy returns. He has, like, a lot of good lines in that one. You can tell he's a good sense of humor. He's also in the Resident Evil franchise, if anybody's interested. Great. Put it on my list. Yeah, he's a smoke show for sure. Uh, I, I, I agree with those What Went Rights. I would say for me, the tone, I don't think they make movies with quite this tone anymore.

I love the tone of this movie. It's so fun. It's so cheeky. It's not Edgar Wright, but it feels a little Sean of the Deady to me in a nice way. And then I will say, I just have to give a mention to the character that I forgot about but loves so much,

which is Winston, the Royal Air Force Death Wish character, who just wants to die. He's just drunk. the whole backup in the movie. And he's just like, some poor fellow spilled his drink as he walks through a fountain

and all he wants to do is die. I just love that character. He comes into the movie for five minutes and he totally steals it. So I would give him a shout at as well. He was wonderful. And what a funny twist in the movie when at the very end they approach him

and they're like, this is not a good mission like, and you know, it's going to be really rough and he's like, will I die? And they're like, he probably, yes. And he's like, excellent. Yeah, great. Let's do it. I love it.

Like, Stephen Summer's like, who would want to do this? And he just creates this character that wants to die. And it's great. So funny. Speaking of patrons and polls, guys, we have another poll up right now. Patron poll par d. And we only have 41 votes. And we have a lot more patrons than that.

So please, if you have not yet voted, go ahead and vote. Vote for Dune. I'd rather do it than Super Mario Bros. between us, which is currently winning Super Mario Bros. It has a slight edge over Dune at 1984. Why are more people voting for Starship Troopers? I love that movie. Anyway, check out our poll on Patreon.

And, of course, stick around to the end of this episode for a little clip from our most recent below-the-line interview with Dave Kamitey's Stadicam extraordinaire. And of course, Lizzie, can you give a shout out to our full style? supporters? I certainly can. Thank you to our full stop supporters, Tom Kristen and Soman Chenani. You guys, that was off the top of my head. That's how much I love you. I know your names by heart. And I knew them, but I threw it to Lizzie just to test her. That's a lie.

Thank you guys so much for listening to what went wrong. We deeply appreciate it. And as always, we'll be back in two weeks with another big time flopper. Yeah, it's a good one. Well, it's not a good one. It's a lot of ones. We'll see. You also, you mentioned that your rig weighs, you said what, like 40, 45 pounds? It depends on the camera and other things, yeah. What is that, I mean, as someone who just sits glued to a computer with no weight on them all day,

I can't imagine what that does to your body. Oh, it's horrible. What is the actual physical toll of doing your job? I mean, that seems crazy. I hold my cat sometimes. He weighs 12 pounds. Well, I don't know how big your cat is. maybe you're can. But the physical toll on me has actually been significant because I've been doing this for 33 years or 32 years or something like that. And now I look at the steady cam and I'm like, oh, that's painful. But the reason I say that is because when I got into it, things were not

at people like, ergonomic wasn't a word. People are like, here, put this on and run around with it. And it's just like, should it hurt? Yeah, it should hurt because it makes you strong. Eat your witties. So, yeah, I've got a herniated disc that I've worked through, and my shoulder has been screwed up and this and that and the other. So this business takes its toll on you. And there are times I know for a fact that I show up on set and people are like, that's the Steadicam operator. And then they'll do this like, you know, this like, we're going to do this huge, huge Steadicam shot down three things. And I'm like, or we could put a wide angle in the corner and just let the whole thing play. Because that would be organic.

So you get really good at talking people out of shots. Organic is a really good word to use the directors like. I might need to use that at my job. Yeah. But no, I will say when I was younger, the big thing was recovery. It takes me a lot longer to recover from a big day than it used to be. But I still get through it. And I mean, I do a lot more stretching than I used to, that's for sure.

But it does take its toll. There's no question. I'll also say that like when I get massages from like someone I haven't before, they usually get to my lower back and there's kind of like a poke and then they stop and then they're sort of like, what exactly do you do for a thing? Yeah. I have sort of muscle groups there that most people don't have. Interesting.

Yeah. I have a question that I think Lizzie follows up well on that one, which is we've obviously transitioned to digital capture for most projects at this point. film is expensive, hard drives, actually economics are debatable when you really go into them. Oh, completely. I have a question, yeah. So in terms of the cost that might be borne by your crew,

digital allows a lot of takes. And it allows a lot of takes when maybe you should take more time to figure out a better way to do the shot, for example. I don't want to speak for you, Dave, but I'm curious if you have felt that that getting, more takes is overall an advantage, you know, for you, or is this just going to enable potentially bad, like sort of a, let's just keep beating the dead horse behavior when it comes to capturing shots? I totally think. I think digital, digital has largely has destroyed a large part of this

industry. I hate to be that blunt. But the thing is, it used to be that you rehearsed because you had to get it right because you were expending something. Like there was like, you know, I mean, you can always get more film, but it's like, we only have. 2,000 feet of film for the day or, you know, whatever. And so you rehearsed it and you did it right. And now the thing is like, let's shoot the rehearsal. Maybe magic will happen. That's always my favorite term, though.

Maybe magic will happen. We've not even tried it. I know. But the thing that I always want to go is like, first of all, magic doesn't happen. We're good at our jobs. That's what we're talking about. So let's call it what it is. But secondly, then you'll shoot the rehearsal and they'll be like, well, that didn't work.

And it's like, yeah, that's because we never rehearsed it. You know, and it's just like, and the other thing is that's weird is, you know, the study cam has like a post going through it with the camera on top. And when we went to digital, it took me a little bit to get this through my head because what I realized was when I could feel the film vibrating through the rig, I knew it was go time. Like, I knew something was happening. And it used to be that when we rolled film, like something, it's a, I don't want to put too big a thing on it, but like sort of something, something big was happening. You know, something was happening. And now it's like, whatever, we'll cut and we'll go again. Go to patreon.com slash what went wrong podcast to support what went wrong

and gain access to bonus episodes, video content, and more. What Went Wrong is a sad boom podcast presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Editing and music by David Bowman with cover art from Euthonai UOS.