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The Future's toughest cop is Katie Coltrane.
I'm back now.
She's getting a new partner. His name is Teddy.
Its you two saw this case together?
What what.
Partner?
Coltrane?
He's got the style. I'm here for a new look.
Stead right up, push the button. He's a cor You gotta make him look like a real car for my clue.
That thing at the table just clacked at me. He's got horse for you.
It's fair. He's got the charm.
Your mind shut down and your glands have taken over.
And he's got the appetite.
You cannot eat.
Our only suspect.
To come out. Yes, it's odd time. I'm amazing new line Cinema presents.
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A customer, Theodore Repig.
It's a tale you'll never forget.
I love when he does that. Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host. Mike White joined me this week as mister Brad Jones.
Hey, how's it going? Thanks for having me back.
Also back in the booth for the fourth time this month as we take this unusual journey is mister Kevin Lane.
That's Taranosaurus Rex, girly boy, I'm Mike.
We conclude whoop Brewery with the discussion of nineteen ninety five's buddy cop dinosaur movie Theodore Rex. Written and directed by Jonathan Beschel, the film stars Whoopee as Katie Coltrane, a souped up super cop reluctantly paired with a press agent who wants to be a cop in the worst way. The titular Theodore Rex, a snappy dresser who happens to
be a dinosaur. We will be getting into all the dirty behind the scenes drama of this film the way it was dumped onto video, as well as possibly spoiling the film's twists and turns. Sure, so if you don't want anything ruined, go watch the film, or maybe read one of the many novelizations and come back after you've done your homework. We will still be here, so Bran, When was the first time you saw Theodore Rex and what did you think?
The first time I saw it was last week.
And when you send out the list towards the end of the year where you're like, here's the list of all the movies that are coming up that we're going to which one do you want to pick to be on. One of the movies that you had listed is a Jim Carrey movie, which is one of my favorite comedies of all time. But then I saw Theodore Rex there and was like, when am I ever going to watch Theodore Rex? This is an excuse to finally see this movie.
And I have this weird Mandela effect with this film where I thought I remembered for sure that this played in our theaters for like a week, but I guess not like the later seeing it was dumped on video and then all the behind the scenes.
Drama with it.
You know. I kind of like that genre of partnered with a thing that talks things sort of like taquila and benetti with a dinosaur, and that era of ninety stuff where this is a stupid script, but we're given it fantastic set design and costuming and puppetry. So I'm like, yeah, I'll take a Tuesday afternoon and watch it. So I watched it. I watched it last Tuesday, and the biggest surprise was I didn't expect five minutes in to be like I'm lost.
I'm glad you said.
I don't know how you could be lost. But we'll talk about that, Kevin. How about yourself.
The first time I'd seen this was just this week, and I've watched it twice since, and I think I know less about it no having seen it than I did before I even bother to look into this film. It's a trip. And I have to tell you, Mike, when it comes to nineties dinosaur films, this is no prehysteria.
Yeah, this was a new one for me as well. I was telling Brad before we started recording, and I think I told you a little bit too, Kevin. As far as this last film, this last film was a tough one because you know, we talked about Jump a Jack, Flash Burglar, Fatal Beauty, all three films I had seen many times growing up and really enjoyed those, and I
kept thinking, what's the fourth film going to be? Is it going to be The Telephone, which was the next film in that series is going to be the Associate, which I also really liked, or is it going to be something completely different? And I was looking at all the movies and kind of like you, Brad, I had never seen Theodore Rex and I said, oh, hey, maybe. And then when I saw that Jonathan Betchell had wrote and directed it, I said, okay, well, I know, mister Betchell.
We talked about the last Starfighter. He's been on the show before, let me reach out, And as soon as he agreed to an interview, I said, okay, that's the fourth film. So I watched this before I talked with him, and then I watched it again a couple times this week, and yeah, wow, I love that this movie starts off with the old screenwriting trope. And I'm sure you know this very well, Kevin. You tell and you don't show, because we're gonna tell everything in an opening scroll. We're
going to talk about what's happening tomorrow night. We're going to talk about what just happened.
One hour ago.
Two workers escaped from the New Eden compound and are racing to tell the police about Caine's master plan.
We're gonna give the plans of the bad guy, like that whole Bondian trope where you're like, oh, well, mister Bond, now that you're going to die, I'm going to tell you my whole plan.
At midnight tomorrow, billionaire Elizar Kine will launch his new Eden missile to bring on another ice age. After mankind is extinct, Cain will re make the pairs of all Earth's animals he keeps frozen in his arc.
And create his vision of Paradise.
No, no, right here in the opening scroll. After mankind is extinct, Kin will reanimate the pairs of all the Earth's animals he keeps frozen in his arc and create his vision of paradise. One hour ago, two workers escape from the new Eton compound and are racing to tell the police about Cain's master plan. And we start off, and there we go, and we even have more in that scroll, and it's just fucking crazy. I've never seen a movie start this way, And it's amazing to me
that this was written. The first draft, or one of the first drafts, was written in nineteen ninety two. The movie comes out and I think it's ninety five, but isn't it technically ninety six? When it gets put into video stores, or is it ninety four and then ninety five it gets put into video stores. But this it's post Last Action Hero and Last Action Hero had very few jokes that I enjoyed. But the one I did enjoy was, here's your new partner, a cartoon cat.
Redfless, you're pulling dirty with the animated cat I had.
You're get in the fleaband later let me join me.
You touched me again, Juliet, I can't prove this is a movie. There's cartoon cats.
He's supposed to be back on duty. It was only suspended for a month. Shut up. And that kind of put the nail in the coffin for me. Of like all those pairings that you're talking about, I mean, every time there was a popular person, they said, oh, let's pair them with a dog in a movie. We'll have cane Ie Turner and hooch and what was the one, the Chuck Norris movie Top Dog. Yeah, so it's like we're gonna have that. We're gonna like pair up people
with weird things around there. Alienshion, alien nation. Oh, there's so much alienation to me in this. An alienation was just so much better than this, or like that weird combination of a Hollywood actor and a the hard nosed cop with that.
Oh I love the hard way.
Yeah that's great, but this dinosaur cop mix up, Holy cow, and I think it could have maybe worked, but not in this form, not in this form.
Like this, not like this.
I was writing down like what could have made this work? And a couple of things won the voice. I like George Newbern and it was kind of funny that he was in this because he was Pouchinsky's partner.
And a classic.
Peter Boyle is a tough, ill mannered cop who was run down in Milne of duty. But that's not the end of his story. No, No, he's reincarnated surprise as a street wise bulldog in poo Chinski.
What are you gonna do now?
Well, first I'm going to try licking myself and then I'm going to catch my cot.
The talking dog teams up with this astonished former partner to put the bite on crime.
Yeah.
This time he's the voice of the thing, but his voice paired with how Theodore looks and it feels more like he's playing like a sassy college student than a cop. And the way that they write him like this could make sense. I could go along with this if you had a Samuel Jackson voicing this or something like that, or if it was even believable that he's a cop, because it seems so inconvenient for him to be a cop.
He walks so slow, is always knocking over things with his tail, He has to drive this ice cream truck that probably goes ten miles an hour. He doesn't carry a gun, and even when a bomb is about to go off, he can't run away from it.
They have to inch away from it.
I'm gonna stand up a bit for the premise of this bacure is. I could see this working if it was an animated film, if it was treated in a more exaggerated way. But it's unfortunate that the execution of it is so distracting. And as I said to you guys before we started recording, I was forgetting what was going on in the film as I was watching it, because I was just so completely dumbfounded by the awkward staging and execution of the story. It's so odd of
a film. But yeah, in terms of writing, that's another thing, where not only do they have the plot explained to you before this story begins, which you know, why would you do that. It's like the Netflix model of explaining to you what's about to happen so you don't have to watch the screen. But they also narrated it as well, so if you're not if you're not even reading it, you're being explained it twice. But yeah, classic screenwriting structure, payoff and then set up.
And also they condensed so much of the plot into fairly awkward exposition scenes, like you said, so that the rest of it can be padded out with a lot of farting, a lot of belching, a lot of dancing. And then Stephen mcaddy comes in like I've switched over to Highlander to the quickening.
Literally wearing the colors that's his joker wears. At one point he's wearing a purple cloak and a green shirt and I'm just like okay, yeah, and that crazy wig he's got on, which is wild. The opening is black and white, slow motion, super stylized, and he's got that long hair and he's carrying a gun behind his back, which doesn't make any sense. While he's running through this four it's the old graveyard for an amusement park, which really other than seeing the one like statue and I'm like,
is this a miniature golf course. It takes a while before they actually explain where he's at, and apparently all these dinosaurs are connected, but it doesn't really make sense because he wakes up like Theodore Rex with the introduction to him as him, like having that moment when he wakes up.
I thought it was a dream sequence. I thought he woke up from a dream.
Well, especially because the dinosaurs all kind of look alike, you know, not to sound dinosist or anything, but yeah, he looks exactly like Oliver Rex. So yeah, and they all have the same last name too, if you know what I mean, a very close family. So that's some of it is in their family.
You did not learn the lesson from this movie. It's very anti dinosaur there.
So yeah, he wakes up, But then he calls the police station and they're like, oh, yeah, we had this dinoside reported, so they've already had known about it for a while. So I'm like, oh, so he didn't wake up from the guy dying. He just woke up later, I guess. But that happens a few times in this movie where you're like the timeline just doesn't work at all. And I know that's very small potatoes compared to the overall thing that's happening in this movie.
But you know what's tragic about that is if you read the first page of the script, it's so evocative and exciting, and I was in and I thought, wow, this is such a departure from what they actually end up making. Everything about this film was just so random where I was constantly being blindsided by latest sort of developments.
So I thought, hang on a second, have I just not been paying attention of It's like, all of a sudden, the dinosaurs are telepathic, but then also you've got bionic cops, and then you have insects which are like sentient as well, and there's just so many hats on hats on hats added into the story. It's bonkers. It feels like they were just making up as they were going, But when you read the script, it's all in there.
What I mean by you can't look away from the film, it's not that it's riveting, it's that if you look away for a second, you might miss a really important piece of plot. You mentioned the whole bionic cop thing. I must have looked away for five seconds and missed a setup of that. So later when a character is shot and you see all these elector things going around,
I'm like, it's not that I felt lost necessarily. I figured in my head, like I just looked at my phone for like five seconds and missed this important thing about this character.
No, the first mention of it, I think is when she goes to the autopsy of one of the guys who was killed, one of the gang members who was killed, and he says to her, you've had a new upgrade. You're not as angry as it used to be, or something like that. And that was the only setup I could track where I got to the end and I thought, hang on, she's a terminator. But yeah, Joe. The other thing that jumped out at me, it was like I was watching this and it suddenly dawned in me. I thought,
this is Blade Runner. They've just remade Blade Runner.
I can see that.
Yeah, I guess I could see that too.
Because it's a dinosaur meeting is Maker and he's going up against them, and there's racist undertones to it and stuff.
But yeah, it's in the universe of the Super Mario Brothers movie. At least that movie when it's set up with the narration, it was simple enough.
I could go along with it.
That movie, you know, for lack of a better term, did the setup right, like where the gun narrator just came in and was like, yeah, look media landed on the Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs.
But what if they just went to a parallel universe. Boom, there's your movie.
I kept thinking of I robot through this whole thing, especially with the scientist creator guy. But I don't remember if Cochrane, Sorry Cochrane, No, no, the guy who played the main scientist, I don't know what. Sorry, yeah, I was calling them cochrane as and zephyrm Cochrane. Sorry, I don't know. I don't remember if Cromwell is. I think he's not evil. He just gets ganked and there's other evil stuff going on. But it's like, oh, these robots
are going to turn evil. I kept waiting for Arman muller Stall, grandfatherly wonderful Arman muler Stall to do something where it's like, all these dinosaurs are going to turn on the humans, but don't worry, there are barely any dinosaurs. I think we see like maybe a dozen, and we just keep seeing the same dinosaurs over and over and over again. They show up at parties, they show up
at funerals, they show up celebrations at the end, gay bars. Yeah, oh boy, Cata, the gay dinosaur thing was really getting me. I was like, Wow, that might be a bridge too far. In nineteen ninety five, I'm not sure.
I was wondering what the Jim Henson Company thought of this film, because I thought for the longest time that it was the same crowd that worked on the same dinosaurs that did this, because the intellectual property, the creation of these things are almost identical to that TV show. It was like, did they just use the same puppets, But no, it's a totally different special effects company that made this.
Annie I'm Home.
Yeah, I thought that they were the same dinosaurs because they looked so freaking similar. I was like, oh, well, they just took all the dinosaurs from the TV show. They were in mothballs and they broke them out and they said, Okay, well here's this new thing. And I don't know the timeline when Dinosaurs the TV show was, It was.
A couple of years before this sort of ended.
I think so and I remember that one had like a crazy ending, right, like they actually get walked out.
Yeah, but what if they all became cops in Brooklyn?
And you're right as far as the ever changing narrative and just the introduction of all these different characters, there's like there's the woman that's with Teddy at the crime scene, and then there's a different woman who I think is wearing a similar headset when she's oh god, the outfit scene, the outfit montage with the yeah oh boy, when she does.
A sexually undressing scene and he's like unable to contain himself.
No, I was talking about, which is a good scene. I was talking about the scene where they say you need to look like a cop, so they put him in that machine that makes him look like a Mariachi singer.
Okay, Hella, dress me up, now, make me look nice.
Okay.
I've got this very picky partner, besides being loud, not just very pushy. She's enjoyed to work with.
Can put Ella. This is not undercover. Push the button, Ella, undercover, please undercover now, Mahala.
He's a you gotta make him look like a real car.
Ellen, I'm getting a wee bit of breeze in my Lowlands lassie with me will you?
I think this will do fine, and then puts them in an outfit which, for the life of me, looks exactly the same as the outfit he was wearing. I really didn't see a difference.
He just had better jogging shoes so he could tiptoe a little faster when he moves away from an explosion.
This big three toad converse he was wearing, And Yeah, Kevin, this would work so much better than as a cartoon, especially because bud Court is playing a cartoon character he is.
He feels like like a character from like James Bond Junior or something, or the Captain Planet cartoon. It's really exaggerated. Well have you put? There were so many unscenary characters that kept being introduced where I thought something's gonna happen with them, Like her partner at the beginning.
Yeah, I thought for sure he was going to die. I was like, oh, yeah, this guy's dead. Me No, he just goes away.
Which would have been an improvement that would have motivated her character a bit more. There are moments in the script where it just feels like did they not bother to write it or did they not just want to shoot it? But when she gets teamed up with him the first time, she says five times, he's a dinosaur. He's a dinosaur. He's a dinosaur.
I'm like Teddy Rex meet Katie Coltrane. Hi, you two solve this case together? Whoa whoa? Whoa?
What?
What that is in public relations? But I'm feel promoting him temporarily.
Is a dinosaur?
Come on, Coltrane, he graduated from the academy just like You's a dinosaur.
You know a SPECIs dore.
You give me results by prime time tomorrow and I'll double your regular commissions.
It's a dinosaur.
Come on, a Coltrane, straighten up and fly right.
It's your chance for a comeback.
Don't blow It's a look up.
As long as we're partners, why don't we make the best of it?
Huh A dinosaur?
Yes'm technically like you could write something else here to express why she doesn't want to work with him. She just keeps saying he's a dinosaur. He's a dinosaurs, Like, at least try a little bit.
I liked moments like that because she is on such not give a crap mode and not to the point to where she's overacting. Quite the opposite, the kind of not give a crap where you are just getting the.
Lines out and that's it.
Like sure, later it talks about her being like this bionic cop or whatever, but that's not why she's monotone in this movie. It's because she wants to be anywhere else but this film. So when there were parts like the one you said where she's like, he's a dinosaur, He's a dinosaur, or those parts I could get kind of an ironic lap out of because there were moments like that that just felt like Whoopy Goldberg piecing into
her head exactly what she's in. Like also that another part I was thinking of what that was when they were in the Star Wars CANTEENA but for dinosaurs, where she just cracks and just starts laughing.
Laugh where the big grill dinosaurs like smiling at her and she's like, you're not getting any tonight. It's an awful lot of people walking into cavernous sets and just standing there stock still and exchanging dialogue and according to the next scene, oh yeah, they're just walking from set to set, really low energy, really disinterested, And I couldn't follow along what was going on or why it was happening.
I was looking in the background and thinking, oh my god, that's a nice sliding set up there in the background, and not paying attention.
The sets are gorgeous. I really like these. I mean that kind of open air bar where the little kid is working. It's like Neon is everywhere and he's got that little thing, and I guess you're right, this is
kind of like the uh Blade Runner thing. Yeah, yeah, bullfish that's what my ex wife used to call me, Like yeah, and he's got even like the whole thing of their showing, like, oh, Kin is going to bring back raccoons next, and it's like, oh, okay, I guess all of these animals this is how we find out all these animals are extinct, Like bringing those back are just as well as like Tyrrell making a robot version of a replicant version of a raccoon. I suppose do you like our all? It's artificial?
Of course, it is.
Must be expensive.
Very it's Blade Runner of mom accidentally rented Pluto Nash.
We have Blade Runner at home.
This was reminding me of stuff like that, where it is that era. It's a funny era where it was like Pluto Nash or Super Mario Brothers, where there is a lot spent on making the sets look good, making the lighting look good, making the costuming be fairly impressive for.
A movie where it's like we need to pad this out.
Let's have him fart on somebody's face for a while while he's strapped down, like they're simultaneously also a weird fetish film.
There's two things that boys love playing as a kid, cops and robbers and dinosaurs. You team them up, it's like that's a no brainer. But then you introduce a dinosaur that doesn't eat anybody. He's not even a meat eater's regisaurs and only does this keep knocking people over with his tail. It's like you're not even doing the cool thing with a dinosa. You've got a t rex
in this. Let amaul somebody or at least be intense in some of these action scenes, but no, he's He's like a clone that's just bobbling a boot the place Barreently, the dinosaur is more intimidating.
It's so strange that this world has dinosaurs, but they don't seem to change anything. It's just our world with brighter colors.
Same with the robots.
Yeah, and I guess they call the robots guns because they say at one point the guns got us, and that was in the script. The script, I have to say way better, not great, but way better, and really has this whole thing of like, okay, we're we have these special cops and really like there's a twist at the end with these very specialized cops that are kind of bio enhanced and they've got you know, like they
can download thing. It's very matrix, you know, like at one point she even says like download vehicles or download this, and she's gaining all the knowledge, you know. It's kind of like Trinity when she's like, oh, can I learn how to you know, fly this helicopter. There's a part in the in the script towards the end where they finally reveal why Coltrane, who's a white male in the script and we'll talk about the differences with you know, Gosh,
we've talked about this so much, Kevin. This whole idea of it was written for this type of person, but will Be Goldenberg ended up playing it. But the cop basically died. The company came in it's a very robo cop. The company came in replaced all of his parts with these robot parts, and he has to work for them
and always work for them. Had to give up his entire family, so like, his family's aware that he's alive and his family is around, but he cannot have anything to do with them otherwise the company will repossess the parts and basically leave him to die. So I'm like, oh wow, that's really fucking dark. And that's the whole
thing about that script. Is it so much darker and so much more adult and somewhere in there, even though it's about a cop and a dinosaur, but somewhere in there they lost all of that and it became this living cartoon that we see.
Yeah, in the actual movie, it feels like she's a bionic cop only so she can survive getting shot, right, you know you know what I mean?
Or not change costumes. She was the same close for the entire film.
Again though in the in the script, the plot is so like why are you doing this? Why do you want to create this new ice age? Like we never really get like why he wants to do this, Like there's more motivation for Vera Farmiga's character and that horrible Godzilla king in the Monstrous movie where she wants to like raise up all the Titans, all the Kaiju. Again, that makes no sense, But this makes even less sense.
New Eden by bringing about another ice age.
Humans have been the dominant species for thousands of years, and look what's happened overpopulation.
Pollution or the.
Mass extinction we feared has already begun, and we are the cause.
We are the infection.
I can kind of see, you know, where they're coming from. Where it's like the future of humanity with synthetic life for androids in the past, with dinosaurs and us coalescing in the middle. But it's too many ideas for one film, especially a kids film, to handle. Sometimes you can blame development for that stuff, but I feel like they started off on the wrong foot here and they needed to pair it back. But it need to be about just one thing, which is dinosaurs and cops working together.
Have it have that.
Dark edge like you were talking about, Because going back to something like Tequila and Benetti for a second, not that that's the most perfect show ever made, but what it seems like Theodore's apartment is Benetti's apartment from that show, Like I had to look. I'm like, they look exactly the same. I was wondering if it was even the same set. But that show you had like it was a cop Jack Scalia and he's partnered with a dog that talks, but the other people can't hear him talk.
You're just kind of hearing his thoughts in his head. But that you had Jack Scalia playing that role as if he's on Hill Street Blues, as if this is a serious, gritty cop show, and even the cases on the show were is seriously dark, Like you would have an episode about like a serial rapist, you'd have one where there's just a naked body hanging from the ceiling and then it pans down and Tequila sees it and is just like, oh boy, Like at least that you
can get one. You have the mixture of the other actors are treating it pretty dark and serious, but the total inconsistencies of it also like make it pretty entertaining, even if that's not maybe not the intent for it to be that, but still it makes it a fascinating watch, whereas here you mostly have a lot of them acting like they are in a wacky comedy. Either that or again will be Goldberg wanting to be anywhere else in this She's not acting like she's in a really dark movie where.
She happens to be partnered with a dinosaur.
So it was just a struggle to see it through because the world made less sense.
The bore you watched it.
You couldn't really even get a lot of unintentional laughs out of it. A mixture of the lead performance is not really bringing it or being miscast, and again just scratching my head, which I didn't think would happen in Theodore Rest.
I had to look up what you were talking about though, Tequila and bunetti that did not travel.
I wasn't aware of that show either, so I was glad to explain what it was because I'm like, what is he talking about?
Oh, you guys would love it.
Oh, early nineties, like very very post Turner and Huge. Bellisario, the creator of Quantum Lea. Basically the network were like, we want our own Turner and Huge, so he did this.
It only lasted half a season.
That was the kind of thing where its flaws made it a very very entertaining set and it even had some dramatic stuff that like it would work every now and then, whereas this, whatever you're feeling it is five minutes in is going to be your feeling through the entire thing.
I was struggling even to find quotes, you know, any one liners to use. At the beginning of this episode, there was only a couple of lines which I thought, oh, that's kind of funny. Were Burt caught the hot end the guy says to him, you get a shot at redemption, and he says again, like another shot at redemption. That's kind of amusing. And the other one was when Teddy Rex goes, I better call my mom. I don't have
a mom. What this is so strange, like the implications of that, like why would he even think to say that he doesn't have a motor tragic?
So so sad I wrote down apart the line that made me laugh, and it was when a character said, I ain't cleaning this up. And here's the thing about this movie. I wrote that down because it was a line that made me laugh. But even that is forgettable because I'm looking at this going I wish I wrote down the context of this line, but I know that that line made me laugh. But it just like everything else, who went in one ear and out the other.
They didn't have the clone character because, as I read in that opening scroll, two people escaped New Eden and were coming to warn the police, and it took me forever to figure out who the other one was. It was it was Oliver Rex, and it was this Adam guy who's a clone. And it's kind of like Jurassic Worlds or wherever they like introduced like, oh, yeah, and we can clone humans too. It's like, what, Oh, that's
a surprise. Well that opens up a whole new can of worms as far as the implications of this stuff, so all right, like the little clone girl in the last movie, I don't think they really knew what the hell to do with her, and I don't think it made any sense to make her a clone in the first place. But in this it's like, oh, so he can clone humans, all right, Well, that seems very interesting.
And there is god I kind of a mention of that in the screenplay which doesn't translate to this movie, which is all of those guys with the crazy masks that are just like giggling and running around all the bud courts, the jows yeah, the jawas yeah, which are called zapheads. I think those are all clones apparently in the script, but that doesn't translate to here at all because they never take off their masks.
I had to google that and to give you an idea of the footprint of this film. There was no information online that could help me figure out what it was not getting from the film, So it just said zapids were gang Like, oh okay, because they look like robots to be or some sort of like cybernetic being what. Yeah, so not just clones, just people clones.
Well with the name, you would think that they are on some sort of drug or that they power themselves on energy or something like that. And yeah, they've got that the masks that they wear and everything, but yeahs across that they're clones at all. Yeah, they're very cool. But I wonder how much of this movie was made in adr because they could have been menacing except that they're.
Just like who.
All the time. There's so many lines that they just add in where I'm like, oh wow, or sound effects like sound effects like crazy. I mean, of course we've talked about the farting already, but just and the bad breath is also there. But there are so many weird little things where it's just like ooing for like no reason, well boing noise.
That's the going bananas motto of Like this joke might not land, but we put a spring sound in there, so we're going to get some asses and seats or on the couch.
We're putting this direct to video.
We need a machine that shoots Macadamian cookies at this guy's mouth. Let's do it.
He sort of wanted to make his apartment like Pee Wee's from Pee Wee's Big Adventure, but just spent too spent all of his budget on the cookie machine and stopped there.
When she finds a dog on the street, which I guess is supposed to show us that she has humanity and brings it to the little guy, the little kid, he looks the dog looks exactly the same as Theodorex's dog. In my mind anyway, I'm like, you couldn't find a different type of dog because these two things look the same to me.
Yeah, I wrote down to save the dog rather than save the cat. A moment to show that she's likable, I guess, But she's really not likable, you know. WHOOPI Goldberg her super power is that she's so charming and charismatic, and in this she's just a sullen and nasty and she doesn't really redeem herself. It's a really sluggish performance.
The scene when she and Juliet Landau are going back and forth and she's like, oh yes, insteads doing the voice, I'm like, I'm very uncomfortable right now.
We're here to see Kane and you are culturing grid Police and you are.
Doctor Shade, Kane's personal physician.
Come tid it follow.
Nothing's motivating it. It's just sort of like being dismissive and rude. But yeah, I was hoping that I would find it funny to see somebody struggle through to this film and try and give it the roll, and it would be unintentionally funny. But it was just kind of like a chure or real chure.
Some actors can do that in a movie and they go so over the top that they make something of it. Like you know, if this movie had had a Nick Cage in it or something like that, where like he might be in something where he knows what it is.
It's a pay he doesn't maybe doesn't necessarily want to be there, but we'll use that to go pretty over the top and still make something entertaining out of it, or going back to Highlander two, Sean Connery in that film where he's almost winking at the camera that he knows exactly the kind of movie he's in.
Then there's other actors that don't really do that.
It's kind of just there boring at it if they're sleepwalking through it. Bruce Willis, Yeah, or Eddie in Pluto Nash where they're really just kind of on autopilot, the bad form of autopilot, where it is I'm not going to emote, I'm not gonna make this character or anything more than it is on the page. I'm here nine, you got me from nine to five and I'm going home.
You mentioned there at the beginning, Brad that the voice acting was at landing few, and I have to say I thought that all the voice acting was pretty unpleasant. And Carol Kane, for me, is one of the most enjoyable actresses, and even her character of Molly Rex, oh, like, this is awful. This is really rotten, And to see Molly and Teddy flirting with each other so uncomfortable, it just did not work.
Well, especially that her husband just died. And in the script they go very far to say, listen, we hadn't been together and forever. There was no love going on there. There was a whole thing of like Oliver really bought into the company line and she didn't. There was tension between them. None of that is here, and said, You're just like, who is this floozy who's suddenly just going after Teddy big time basically on the night of her
husband's funeral. And I'm like, well, she's a fom fatale then you know, she's a torch singer at a bar. She has to be some sort of fum fatale who's going to turn on him and trying to manipulate him in some way. No, and said, she's just like that little kid, their kidnap bait and that's all they are
is kidnap bait. And I'm like, really, that's what we're doing here, Like now we have to kidnap the little kid for Whoopy's character Coltrane to be involved in, and now we have to kidnap Molly for Teddy's character to be involved in. And same thing with I think the Adam character was like, oh, well, Teddy's going to be interested in this dinocide, the first dinoside, and it really makes me wonder what the hell's going on in this world that this is the first dinocide. And then Whoopee
is going after the human clone. So I'm like, okay, we have these parallel stories. When are they going to collide? Well, they collide really darn quick. Same thing with our bad guys. Within the first few minutes, we're like, oh, Macattie knows Budcourt. They know this guy at the big museum thing. And then he knows Arma Mula Stalls. So they're all in on it. And you know that by eighteen minutes into this film, there's no third act reveal of oh Arman
Mula Stalls behind this whole thing. Yeah, we know that, and we've known that in the fucking crawl.
Yeah, in the opening crawl, you know what they should have done. They should have kidnapped the dogs and then you have these two evolved people trying to save these lower life forms. It would have been a little bit more, I guess thematic, but yeah, it was just going through to motion. Everything felt like it was just plodding through plot.
It was reading on some of the reactions that the producers had when they were seeing cuts of the film, and one of the guys, Stefano, one of the producer's exact producer, went to see Dragonhart, the Sean Connery film, and he walked out of it and said to the director, we are so fucked because that was obviously breaking ground with CG and they had these these I don't know what you'd call them, muppets to try and win the hearts of kids across America, but yeah, ugly scenes behind the scene.
Should have taken them another premiere of Prehysteria instead.
Coming this summer, attention plates the world premiere. I see nothing of an action filled family adventure.
Behold, I did you pre start line.
It's a story of two.
Kids, one huge discovery, and a lovable bunch of re historic pats the.
Biggest terrestrial carivory that ever lives.
I guess we got the lungs of the leader who you were mentioning things that actually made you laugh. There's one thing that made me laugh pretty well, which was when they're talking about, Oh, Teddy, we've got your new partner here, and they're out in front of the museum and this guy, for whatever reason, he reminds me of William Zabka, but like an older williams Zabka, Like now's well not now it's williams Zabka. But anyway, this guy walks up and he's got a two bandoliers across his
chest of shotgun shelves. He's carrying a gun across his shoulder, just this big musty guy and he's got black headband and stuff, and you're just like, oh, wow, okay, this is his partner. And then Woopy kind of comes up and pushes him out of the way, and I was like, oh, well, that was kind of funny. But again they called her and said come over to the museum, well before they just made the agreement that he's going to be her partners,
Like what the fuck? Man, Like, get your fucking timeline straight.
That joke doesn't work. It doesn't. That only works if you haven't introduced will Be yet. But it's like we even though her name, so it's like Coltrane was like, who's gonna fall for us? It's like, geg, I'm with you.
I actually did get a little bit of a chuckle out of that, but you're right, because it was still sort of awkward in that, like this joke sure, I chuckled a little bit, but yeah, it could have done better because then it could have been done better because then it does raise.
The question of who was that guy? Where did he really come from?
Where'd he come from, and where'd he go? And could I follow him instead for a little bit?
Yeah, yeah, and it is like, well, why isn't he her partner and what happened to her partner?
You mentioned novelizations like plural.
Were there a lot and were they more accurate to what script was?
Well? I didn't look through everything, but there were three novelizations that were done, and they were done for different age groups. I mean, they were really going to town with this. So they had one which was basically a story book with pictures and a little bit of text, like maybe a paragraph at the bottom, that was maybe like twenty four pages. Then you got the more intermediate
one where it's like, you know, Eddie flashed awake. I was reading the first pages of all these to make sure that they were different, and that one starts with him waking up, and then the next one is the older one, and that's like one hundred and twenty four pages, and that one starts with the murder. But it's played down, So I mean, really, we keep talking about how this is a kid's film, but I don't think it was
supposed to be a kid's film. I think it just kind of turned into a kid's film because it's pretty adult in different parts of it.
I want to compliment the writer as well, though, because the script is really well written. If I was reading, I'm like, this is evocative, and it's this is somebody who's got to grasp on what they're doing.
It's not.
It's not inept or clunky or poorly put across. And I did really like the Last Start Fighter as well. He's got chops. It's just that for whatever reason, and it seems like it was an absolute mindful of a production that he just he wasn't set up to succeed and directing his own material didn't really help him. He's a good writer, it's just I wouldn't class them as a good director based on this film.
Well, I wonder how many how many sacrifices he had to make, Like.
How many all the times did did he die and have to come back and try to make this into something, because yeah, it just it's really rough, And yeah, I agree, I liked that script, and I really wish that we.
Had had that script as the film that we saw, because this film it's not good.
Joe Dante would have had a field day with this.
Oh yeah, used the same. Was it rab Boteam that did this better effects? For Explorers? Was that the one where it's like those creatures were amazing?
In this one, it did always feel like it had the tone of a kid's movie the final product of it. Like, to me, it never felt like I was sitting there going, this is a kid's movie, because even when there is like a murder or something like that in it, it's always acted like it's a kid's movie. It never really feels like it switched tones that dark, Like even when a guy is being tortured for information, I mean, Theodore is just breathing nasty breath on him and belging in
his face and stuff like that. Whereas I might have gotten some like unintentional laughs if if suddenly it was like a dark thriller, or again, if it was like the script and that was the tone of the of the whole thing, then yeah, that would that would make it far more fascinating.
I not a genuine compliment they're gonna pay the film is I think. I thought the score was really well done, and it's Robert Folk, who did a sventchour before this, so it's not a shoddy sound the like kind of orchestration. It was actually you know, it started off and I thought, ought, I've put some f behind this. This is a real composer work here. That was good. Unfortunately, just didn't have the material to support the music, but I like to work there. I like the music well done.
Theodore Rex did it ever have trailers play in movie theaters? Because, like I said at the beginning, I swear I saw a trailer.
For this in the theater.
That's a really good question. I imagined that they did at some point, because I think that dumping it on video was really a last minute decision. Well it was last minute, but then it took a few months. That's why I was talking about the was it ninety five to ninety six or ninety four to ninety five, because I think the film was done and ready to be released as a Christmas release and then it got delayed and dumped on video in February of the next year.
And yeah, it was such a scandal that this big budget movie was getting dumped on video and that just wasn't done at the time.
But no, no, that's just Netflix.
Yeah, exactly how people are just like, okay, yeah whatever, you know, well, yeah, oh, you're not going to show that theatrically okay whatever.
Did it make its money back?
I don't think it did?
Yeah?
How could it look here?
Yeah?
I mean because it was thirty three point five million to make this thing?
Did this even end up on DVD?
I I want to say.
Yes, how many copies do you have? For all of the reasons provided in my answer, which is incorporated herein in its entirety, I declined to answer the question.
The whole thing's available for free on YouTube, and when you finish it, it does say if you liked this, check out prehysteria was prehysteria?
Was that the same little shitty kid from h from Last Action Hero In?
Ye?
Okay, That's why I never watch it because he was on the cover and I was just like, fuck that kid, I fucking hate last night.
We're not there.
On an opening weekend of My Girl.
Too, I was not.
No, does he die from bees in that as well? Does she keep just going out with that have Oh wow, tell McCauley, I did this.
It was me.
You guys are actually making me want to see this movie now. I also wasn't there on opening weekend for My Girl too.
There's that weird thing where it sounds like he's gonna spit a loogie and he's just like over the dead dinosaur and making all these horrific noises, and then he finally just reaches into the into the nostril and brings out the little piece of butterfly that's there. These butterfly bombs are kind of wild. And that whole scene of them going to what do they call them, the Toymaker.
His name is like the Silver Samurai and in the script, but the toy Maker, And and that scene with the Kyoto brothers doing puppetry and voices, Holy shit, does that go on forever?
That was so strange. It just it shifted into puppet Master, and I was like, what is going on now? This is bizarre. This felt like we're there were probably viewing dailies and thinking we've got to yuck it up here. This is just not fun enough. And you could just tell Woopy just didn't give a shit. She's sitting there looking at at a medical kit bag and talking to a puppet, and it's like, what a hat on a hat on a hat and a hat on a hat. It was.
She got a raise for it, Yeah, didn't they pay.
Her extra in order to convince them to do it? So you know the thing about this film is that the low behind the making of it is genuinely far more interesting than the film itself. That if you come to the film wanting to see what they made a result of, like all that tortured negotiations and stuff, it's such a letter and you're better off just reading up about the film and looking into the behind the scenes and documentaries. Film is just softunately dull, like really dull.
My wife said that too.
When my wife got home from work that day, I was like, oh, I had to watch Theodore Rix earlier.
Her reaction was just you.
And then she mentioned that she and her sister they also like watching bad movies like this all the time. Like I was with them once where we were all watching Gooby together, you know, that kind of bad movie. So this when she mentioned her and her sister tried watching this, I was like, yeah, that makes all the sense in the world. But She said they only made it like fifteen or twenty minutes in because they just weren't even getting any genuine or unintentional laughs out of it.
They were just kind of bored.
And I said to her, it's one of those bad movies where your opinion of it either way, is not going to change beyond ten minutes of the movie. Whatever you think of this movie at first, it's going to be that through the rest of it, and.
You opening ten minutes best ten minutes of the whole film. I think explosions and kind of demolition man vobes on a budget, and then it's like the more that you're told what's going on, the less you care.
This movie has such an opportunity to go to this extinct species club and have like a dance number or something like. I was like, where is Walk the Dinosaur? Where was not was in this movie and us doing a whole thing of Walk the Dinosaur? Come on, There's an opportunity right there, and nobody took it.
Thank God.
That's why Super Mario Brothers was the better movie. They played it on the soundtrack of.
That exactly, which didn't make a lot of sense there because there is really only Yoshi in that one.
Super Mario Boarders, though, is a film where you can get a lot of enjoyment out of it because it's so extravagant and somebody effects not our great, but this is just it's a Saturday morning kids film done for Canadian TV.
Yeah, the fart jokes, there's the scene where he starts impersonating Jack Nicholson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I'm just like, where
is this coming from? This is very odd, the all of the little things where they're you know, because you're talking about alien nation, and the thing that I like about that is like this is a really thought out world and they really talk about like all right, look at you know the magazine covers on the at the news stand, have you know, the the visitors there, and like everything is kind of tailored and you see how they live in a ghetto and stuff, and it's just
like you don't really get that. Like I said, you see dinosaurs in certain spaces where they're like Okay, here's the funeral, here's the ceremony, here's the bar, But otherwise you don't really see him walking around, you know, and it's not like, oh, there's two like when they go to that little kid's restaurant, and he's just like, oh, you got to come over tomorrow and my dad's going to be there and blah blah blah. But you don't see dinosaurs walking around on the street. It's just all
extras just walking around. And then the crazy thing, and I don't get this whatsoever. The crazy thing is like this little kid is like, hey, whoop be Goldberg. My mom apparently is gone, so here's my I want to introduce you to my dad. You really need to get out more. I think you'd be really great if you dated my dad. And then at the very end of the movie, at the ceremony, his dad is there and the kid goes, that's my dad, but the audio goes.
Hey, I'm so hid you, and it's not.
That kid's voice whatsoever, but you see his mouth mouthing, Oh god, I'm.
So brawdy, you're sweetie.
They also make a really hard pivot just before the finale where they tried to tack on this anti gun message where she tells him op until he's just been knocking things over with his tail. But no, she's convincing him, use your mind to stop these guys getting away. In a cheap Give me your gun.
I can't what I can't.
Katie, Give me your gun.
This is no time to play around.
Give me it.
You might have been right. It kills me to say this might have been right.
Use something a little better than a gun.
Oh Katie, Look, all this time you've been telling me a good cop uses a gun, right, So what are you telling me now?
I was wrong?
Your brain?
Use your brain.
All right, brain's over bullets.
Yeah, let's do it. Oh, partner, Wait a minute, you said.
The P word.
Yeah I did. Good luck?
Okay, yeah you.
Too, partner?
Oh yeah, is that worked so well? In side Hackers is like, no, dude, you need a gun. You can't run, you can't drive, you're always knocking over shit.
Will be he's trying to stop the apocket. Let him shoot the guys for fuck's sake.
Well, yeah, but this is a kid's movie, like you were saying, So we can't show that. We can show Stephen McCatty crashing his car and exploding floating. Yeah, the most explosive billboard ever. And then here's Arman Mueller stall strung up and in this jeep seat. And then we just fade to the next scene, like I had to rewind it three times last night. I was like, wait a second, what just happened? I looked, did I look down again?
Like?
What happened to armand Mueller stall? We never see We just never find that out.
He got a call from his agent. He's in Shine.
I'm about to wind to Oscar. Please leave me alone.
I get the vibe as well. It was like that, not because they were cutting it to ribbons in the editing, but that I just didn't get the footage. That's the vibe. I yet, it was all masters pretty much. It was just everyone walking into white shot and standing there and exposing exposition. Okay, this is just get what you can and move on. I loved it.
Yeah, I could tell that you love this movie. I could really tell that this is probably one for the ages for you.
Yeah, like you didn't watch this movie twice because you had to.
I was watching it. I was thinking to myself, I didn't expect to be empathizing and sympathizing with Whoopy Goldberg where she got into this mess because she said yes and then felt the deed to sue the producers to get out of it. I thought, yeah, you know, I got into this mess of watching this film by saying yes to Mike, and if I had the resources, I would sue him, but I can't, so.
I don't even have an answering machine message to play back as proof.
For the moment I hit play. It was the longest three and a half hours in my life.
Any rate I think of behind the scenes of this would be wonderful to watch. I mean, you know, if those people that made that, you know, the making of the Godfather thing, if they want to start tackling Theodore Rex, I would definitely improve.
But she doesn't even speak about it. Though she wouldn't even mention the film by name.
I've seen her mention it she because that was one thing I looked up afterwards.
She doesn't mention it.
Often, but there is an episode of the View where she talked the subject came up of projects that they regret the most, and she mentioned this, and she talks about how there are people who mentioned that they like it.
She mentions, like a producer.
On the show is just like, oh, no, I love that movie or something like that, and Whoopy Goldberg was just kind of sitting there going, yeah, I'll see people say that to me. Sometimes and I don't get it. She's like that movie wasn't made for anybody.
The production designer said that he is such an awful time working with her on this film that he can no longer stand to watch her in anything. He has to turn over the channel if she pops up in a film running.
It was more than she just simply wanted to be there, which she actually like really hard to work with on the movie at times.
Some people say that she was difficult, and others say that she she came around and that her co star, the guy that played the puppeteer guy who played Teddy Rex, so she was lovely, and that they bonded and she'd
host his family and stuff like that. But she said that the crew that began the film, by the time they got to the end, it was an entirely different crew that had been so much turnover that it was like ninety nine percent of the people were no longer the same when they got to the end of it. It was really a troubled production, and she banned the producers off the set. She agreed to do the film as long as they never appeared, and one day one of the guys, Stefan turned up for some reason, and
she walked past him and went like motherfucker. That was their only interaction.
We've talked so many times on this series about what was supposed to be Bruce Willis, who was in this role. It was supposed to be this person I was in this role, and like so many times, we've had the race swap, the genders wop, you know, just so many things,
and then this one again we do. I think the idea of casting an African American just period man or woman in this role it's really interesting and really not the right thing to do because so much of this is about systematic racism against dinosaurs in this world, and to have this African American actor actress in this role, like she should be much more empathetic to their plight, but instead it's just like, oh, yeah, fuck dinosaurs, I fucking hate dinosaurs.
It should be an Irish American cop.
Well, yeah, the what was it? A Coltrane? I can't remember the guy's name from the script, and he just reminded me of like, I don't know, axe cop or one of these guys with like the big mustache, you know, and I was just like, oh, okay, well I can see him being a racist piece of shit against dinosaurs, and then eventually throughout the movie he starts to change
and it becomes a big deal. But at the end when he calls Teddy his partner, but instead it's just like, wait, what are you doing here, lady, Like you should be much more sympathetic to this guy who they won't let be a police officer, and when they do, it's a token police officer. I'm like, hello, Like at Deoi, Yeah, it's a Dei higher basically a Dino Dei source.
Wasn't it meant to be Val Kilmore? That was the name that I saw floated.
I saw Vlcomer and Kurt Russell at one point Kurt Russell I saw.
Yeah. It's similar to like Happy.
Time Murders in that regard where when you look at what the cast was, what the idea was beforehand, it made way more sense than who ended up being in it. I think Melissa McCarthy's better in that than what p Goldberg was here. But when you look at other names, it's like, yeah, that makes way more sense for this kind of hard ed cop character, Like like if Kurt Russell was in this film, or if.
Bob Hoskins hadn't done quite similar in Who for a Bunch of Rabbits, you would have probably suited this, But I don't think you could. You could have saved this film by just changing the cast. I think this is the whole execution is just off, and it's too difficult to pull off this concept, you know, in live action. It had to be animation or or just don't do it.
Animation would definitely work. I can for sure see that.
I'm actually surprised that they didn't go ahead and do an animated sequel. At some point. I know that it probably made so little money that they're just like, no, this thing is dead. We're never going to do it again. But an animated sequel or even like a Saturday Morning cartoon show, for me, this that makes a lot more sense than something like Beetlejuice or Rambo or some of these other ones. Robo Cop, you know, like I said, there's some similarities here too with RoboCop.
Yeah, Dinosaurs and Cops is a great concept for a boys cartoon. If you went more exaggerated with whatever this is, I guess it would be a good double feature with like Howard the Doc, although that is a masterpiece in comparison to this.
All Right, we're going to take break and we'll be back with an interview with writer director Jonathan Betchel. Right after these brief messages.
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We spoke a while ago about The Last Starfighter, and I'm so curious as far as how Theodore Rex came about.
Well, it was a spec script that I wrote, and it was just sort of a fantasy that I thought, gee, you know, it would be kind of cool if we went against the grain of everything known in the genre at the time, mixing a dinosaur with the detective and for the science that was required you were automatically in
the future and things like that. So I wrote this was back in the golden age of specs, you know, where every week there was another script out, and you know when writers justifiably so we're getting ungodly amounts of money before being tortured to death and thrown out the bus. You know. It went out, It got some good reads, and it went to a producer by the name of rich Abramson. He had raised some money before for other independent movies, and he said he could put it all together.
He did. It took a lot longer, as they always do in these cases than you hope for pre production. We're about to go, We're about to go. We're about to go. Phase was about a year, and then came the point of the money was there, and then it was looking for a star, which is its own kind of adventure, to say the least. The investor by the name of Stefano Ferrari entered the picture. He was a brave soul. It was kind of trial by fire. The thing was with the picture, there was nothing off the
shelf about it. Mike, you know, you couldn't really just say okay, exterior windmill et cetera, et cetera, and everyone knew what it was. It just sort of, by its very nature, needed intense design. So Bill Stout, a renowned illustrator, came aboard and started doing the production boards and illustrations in the beginning. And that process is a lot of fun, frankly, because no one is attaching a number to the fantasies
on the production illustrations. Yet you kind of come down to earth when people say, well, yeah, kind of it looks good, but it's going to cost this, this and this, and suddenly your moves, everything you do is sort of cost it out by comparison. That's kind of a drag. We were out to actors during that period of time and got some interesting reads and responses.
You know.
It's kind of like, I guess these days would be going through Tinder saying who's going to fit, who likes you, and who you like and see hopefully that they wind up on the same page. But I met a guy named Larry Finch, who I believe was one of the producers on it on the end credits, and he said, we were looking at of all things, to invest in a restaurant together, and he said, what do you do, And I told him, and what kind of script you
are you doing? Now? And I told him he said, hey, you know, I'm good friends with Whoopy Goldberg and I should show this to her. And you know, it's one of these things that you hear in town and you say, right, I'm good friends.
With so and so, you know.
So I told the producer that was in London at the time, I said, I got a call saying that Whoopy Goldberg is coming to the office on Monday. I said, do you want to try to get back? He said, now, you know I'll never make it back. And you know, don't believe everything a hear. So that Monday, wood Be walked in and I said, Whoopee, could you do you mind if we make a phone call please? So we called Abramston in London and I said, hey, Rich, you sitting down, I have someone wants to talk to you.
And Whoopee got on the phone and excoriated him, said so wouldn't get on a plane for me?
Huh well, and.
That that's sort of how it all started.
I read it a draft of the script in early one and it was from April of ninety two. You were talking about how long it takes to get a project to get that green light. That sounds like a long time because it was what three years before it actually comes out.
Yeah, and you know, the scar tissue has really grown over Mike, you know, so I don't you know exactly it could be that, you know, but going out and raising money independently. I believe it was about thirty five million really for a picture that wasn't how can I say easy to typecast? Is it an action picture? Is it a drama or a romantic comedy? Well, you know, maybe it's a little of each, and it's about a
talking dinosaur. It had an identity problem in that respect for the financial people, but we got over that step by step. And you know, I think the other thing at the time that might have indvertently helped was that Barney was such a big success. I don't know if it's financial hurt, instinct or what, but I remember thinking, purple dinosaur, What what am I talking about? I got a talking dinosaur that's a police, a policeman, you know,
in retrospect. In some ways, technically speaking, the task was enormous to have a physical, nine foot tall animatronic dinosaur worked by puppeteers, all of whom were Henson graduates. In one way or another, was still an overwhelming task, especially since we live in the age of CG now. That would have really made life a bit easier, perhaps a
little more expensive. But sometimes you make it up in other ways in terms of you're not going to wait for a couple of times the eyes were off, so the eyelights were not right, and you'd go when you look at the dinosaur, and when I was this way and when I was that way, you just at some points felt at the mercy of technology way. But yeah, it did take a while. And then new Line Bob Say, buccaneer and pioneer that he was, came in and said, well,
we'll distribute it. That helped a lot. It was a medium sized shoot, sixty seventy days, and it's one of those things where it's sort of a growing experience and you kind of know how to do the movie after
you've done it. When I remember looking over and there was Whoopee standing there alone, there was a dinosaur next to her, and twenty feet away with cords and cables were ten guys pulling levers and pulleys, and it just felt like wow, kind of like the Wright Brothers, you know, just is this going to get off the ground or what. But so it was fun, you know, and the idea was to make a little comic book kind of fantasy about the Dinosaur with a green themed bad guy, you
know that thing. Arman Muller Stall was the bad guy. He was he was a blast. So, you know, it was just sort of one of these things where I think, and you've interviewed enough escaped mental patients in this business to know that you wonder a time how anything gets made, anything that gets clean lit, you know. And it's funny you referenced like the three years that it took putting
it together. I think we all went home more nights than not thinking, oh my gosh, this is never going to come through, you know, because it becomes a balancing act the finances, the design, the timing and all that. Then you get a release date and you're you're up
against a clock that's ticking. When you've got post production that's so involved with something like this, Because all the Dinosaur's lines had to be dubbed obviously, and Will we had previous commitments that had to be honored as well. So it's just sort of like a circus to say the least, you know, and that was that was that was it. I I kind of went from that wanting to do a nice small movie where you could say go,
and it just happened. At the end of the day you had something that was a finished product in a way, you know. And the other thing is it's seductive because when you write a script, it's also easy on paper.
You know, it's very manageable intellectually. But then suddenly you get up at four in the morning and you get there and it looks like the end of the world with all the preparation going on, you know, and to stay on target in terms of tone, shut out the rest of the world and focus just on what's in front of you takes a special kind of well, I guess focus, you know, to shut out the noise and
just looking what in front of you. I really had to think long and hard about writing another science fiction picture after that. There was just so many ancillary considerations to it. The process was exhausting. The days were long because you could never project when you could finish because it was technologically so difficult. If you did it now, I'm coming back to that point, you would, you know, the rule is that usually we'll fix it and post.
These days we'll make it and post, you know, because so much of it comes together. Now. I found co founded a visual effects company, Loom Pictures, and we've done a lot of big pictures and many times after the shooting it was still a blank slate, you know, it's just actors in front of green screens and things like that.
Once what becomes a board. Do you have to do rewrites? Do you change it to meet her comedic style in a way?
Yes, yes, for her delivery and to write towards her character and the way she would design it, and that that's kind of fun. I never usually write for actors, because you'll fall in love with actor that you love for the part, and invariably they are committed, don't respond or whatever, and then suddenly you know it's unrequited love. Once an actor comes on, it's very nice to have,
which is what we had. Whoopy wanting to be as much a creator of her character as as as writing, and I, you know, I always kind of welcome that, you know, because it's nice to have the actors that breed life into the characters. Because I think writers sometimes sit down and do a screenplay, and as much as they think it's well rounded, it's the actors that breathe the life into it, you know, and studying techniques of
directors and how they compose their characters. It's nice to hear when I mean, for instance, Jason Sudeikis on Ted Lasso was very much a part of making that character who he was and really making it sing on all levels. And whoopy did that?
You know?
Will Bee is kind of overwhelmingly talented in a way. She's very bright, and she doesn't like it. Just run for the hills, you know, just did and she always she's one of these people that knows the jobs of everybody on the set better than they do probably and she doesn't spare the horses when it comes to that. So yeah, she was a good collaborator and I think surprised about the movie in certain ways, you know, because again it's not something that jumps off the page. Just gee,
I will do what was it the Nun picture? She did? First, it's her act and then this it's kind of a leap, but she has the range to do that. It's too bad she doesn't do more movies these days that sometimes you can tell pictures that are just flat. You know, it's others the actors are really bringing it all together. And someone once said that if you have a gifted actor,
they bring you gifts. The trick is to don't pull so hard on the reins, let them go, to have a wisdom to know when to steer, and remind about guardrails, especially with writers. I think writers fall in love with their words, you know, because you've stared at a page for a year and a half and then now it's got to be no. I think there are many ways to say things, as long as certain key elements in dialogue that are certain plot points, like that black door has to open. I don't care how you say it.
In fact, bring your own style to it. But let's talk about the black door in a way. In that sense, it's always fun to watch your own stuff come to life. Sometimes you have to stop yourself by it. This is the biggest set of electric trains I was ever given. I'm just the guy to fuck it up, and it's like,
what's very mindful of the pitfalls. Over time I would get notes and emails from people, some of them well known people, that were very complementary saying, you know, I saw this movie just recently and I didn't see it. What the hell happened to it? What was it? This was great and this is what, you know, just fortunes of war.
You know, you had been directing since my Science Project, if not before. Had you done directing before that?
No, I hadn't. I hadn't. Just a Science Project came about on the strength of the specscript that went out for auction, I was able to say. And this was right after the Last Starfighter, which was very well received, and was able to get the opportunity through Science Project. When Starfighter came out, it was good reviews. Science Project came out and was set up almost within a week. It was amazing. One of those things that no, this
is not really Yes, it happened. And then Kim Lamasters was running Disney at that time, and he gave gave me the opportunity to do it, you know, and that was an interesting time at Disney, just before Eisner and Katzenberg came in. It was the keepers of the flame were still there, you know, Woltzkys and things. So picture kind of got lost in the shuffle between the immutable forces of nature.
You have directed things by other writers, if memory serves at least one episode of Freddy's Dead, Is that right.
I have during Freddy's I directed other episodes with other writers. But on the whole I've been the guy that, in order it is set to sea, I've got to build my own ships. And it's an interesting dilemma because I went through a long period of time where I thought, Wow, I'm getting really tired of having to chop down the tree before I can make a toothpick, you know. And then so you know, every once in a while, say to the guys I was working with, let's see what's
out there. And I would see what was out there, and that was a different layer of Dante's Inferno, you know, because you would get the script and they'd say, well, you're the first one that's seen this what in this zip code? And then suddenly you were dependent upon a submission process that you had no control over. You had
no idea who else had seen it. But now you're thinking that the barista Starbucks has passed on it already too by the time you get to see it, So you're kind of like without a compass in that sense, and not that that matters, but you know, clearly things work on the the food chain sere concept and depending upon where you are, the club you want to belong to doesn't want you. Club you don't want to belong.
To says hey, what are you doing next?
One?
You know? I mean, hell, I went back to writing scripts and I wrote another one that right after after Science Project. It was bought in Greenlit by Columbia again in a record amount of time, and I spent a year in pre production. It was called Tripwire and with Dan Melnick producing, and that was a growing experience. It was you know that Dan was brilliant, an old time
Hollywood producer and fascinating to be around. But you cut yourself on the edges in a way, you know, and you know the process makes you like that to a degree. And about four days from started principal photography, the studio changed hands and David Putnam came in, so you know, Caligula is out and I don't know, Hitler's in who knows, you know, and where it was like, yeah, and what's going on here?
You know?
So that was sort of it. But yeah, on the whole I've been writing for myself so I figure there's there's a natural synergy between writing and directing. It's different types of megalomania. But if you're just a writer, you write the script and then everyone else gets to go out on the class trip and have fun on location, and you stay home, you know, and you wonder what are they doing? Are they are they going to the
circus or what they what does it look like? You know, it's that a different kind of purgatory that was, you know, I went back to that process writing directing it. But the other thing is, I think you have to be a little aggressive more to be a director. Aggressive in the sense where you have to endure hearing yourself talk all the time, like having kids, and the kids don't listen to you, and maybe when they do the ears or cock eye they tail. You know, it's just like hey, yeah, yeah, you're yan.
You know.
So you say, you keep at it and you stay steady with it, and you know, then for a long period of time, I think I said before, I just wanted to do something that didn't and involve visual effects, And I wrote a small script about a little boy who builds himself a dog without thunderous waves of Because now it's CG cg's, especially having a CG company that I did for about twenty years, I understand that very well now, you know. And in any rate, we have
offers out to editors for that script now. So scripts seem to have a life of their own in a way, you know. And it has nothing to do with the fact that you finish it. When you think that's over. You know, other people reader have other impressions, and you gradually get it filtered back to you and think either why I don't think, well, I'm an idiot, but it's cocktail time,
or man, maybe we got some things right. It's funny, you know, when I talk to other writers now, having been at the game a bit, you can come up as you're writing with more more reasons not to write than to write, you know, because you're so aware of the pitfalls and what can go wrong in terms of perceptions of the script. And you say to you and I know a bunch of them they've been successful and they they don't want to go through it. It's just
like and I always felt, hey, I don't care. I'll take notes from the cleaning lady, you know, and if those notes are articulate, and something I missed absolutely. But other people are kind of like, this is a script, the imperial script. This is I've given my lifeblood to this. It's an interesting process and I always loved it because it's sort of an art form that nobody sees except on the screen. And yet when you think about it, it's the emotional core of the entire production. That's where
everything comes from. The performances, the camera moves, the music, all melds together to heighten the emotional exposure to an audience, and either it talks to them or it doesn't. When you think that the screenplay is that pebble that rolls down the snow bag and becomes something big, then again you're either paralyzed or you think, well, what the hell, let's go, let's try, you know. And I'm kind of the type of writer the writing that does like draft
after draft after draft. The first draft is just the block of marble from which you fashioned the script. And I've always been amazed at writers that will gest state and gestate, and then they will sit down and write it and that's it. I've heard that Robert town was like that, you know, and it's just fascinating read an article. On an interview with god Neil Simon, he said, dating himself, he said, I'm not a writer, I'm a rewriter, you know.
So I think in the end Teddy Rex probably had twenty or thirty rewrites, you know, and some were detours, others were I remember going on taking a couple of weeks off and producer on the show Who Shall Go Nameless at this point handed me a draft. When I got back and said, you know, my wife took a pass at the script and she worked out all the problems. I remember a person whose voice sounded a lot like
mine saying, yes, I mind. But you know, when you're in the middle of the picture, as you know you've heard it thousands of times, you kind of roll with it, listen to it, and then figure out workarounds no matter what happens, because it just hits it from all sides.
And then the other thing is that in pre production you make decisions that six months later, when you're exhausted and you've been up eighteen hours, you come face to face with and you think to yourself, oh my god, how could I have been so you know, and here it is the donkey has six legs when it shit, you know, well what am I doing? It's an amazing process. And got to really admire couple if we're going back at that age and really saying this is how I see it, and this is what I want, and I've
got the money to make it happen. These guys are nice, pudgy guys who you know in all of our classes, used to run the audio visual department, you know. But they're tough. They're tough, they know what they want, they know how to get it, and they're charming. I remember reading once, I think it was Compley who said, you know, it's a team sport, but the day the camera shows up, it becomes a dictatorship because I'm the first one that gets executed.
So you were talking about taking notes from people, even the cleaning laby, like you said, once the cameras are ruling. Are you allowing for improv? Are you precious about your screenplay? Are you open to suggestions then, or is it pretty much, hey, this is what we agreed to, this is what we're going with.
It really depends upon the context. I'm not precious about words. I'm very fluid in that respect, and sometimes getting what's the point of the scene. You know where you have to wind up, you know, on your left foot or your right foot. And sometimes, as I said, actors give you gifts and they will take you around a circuitous route that is a lot of fun, you know, And that's what I always used to look for in audition and things like that. You know who's a collaborator and
who is in you know you. The other thing is that before you begin shooting, you call other directors that have worked with the actors before, and through back channels you find out did you have to protect them? Was it do they wilt after the third take or do they get better on the fourth take? You know? And then in scenes where you've got actors that are good for one and two and fried by four and five, and you got the other actor that goes the opposite way,
so you blend and balance that. So you know, it's so many things that go into those considerations. I think that was continues to be interesting.
I think it was just so gutsy that you write a screenplay about a top and a dinosaur without probably knowing how you're going to do the dinosaur effects at that time. That must have just been like such a leap of faith.
Yeah, you know, I think what kind of carried me through that in a way was naivete, you know, whereas today you've got so many tools in the toolbox. You know there are ways to do it, ways around it. But you know, when I would look at Sesame Street and the Jim Henson guys and what they could do, the the over abiding objective was to make it look as real as possible given the fact that it's a talking dinosaur. But it doesn't mean it can't look real
in that context. And I wanted to design the world of a talking dinosaurs as much into a cartoon comic book that supported the look of the dinosaurs. So it was all sort of blended together to work like that. But it was, I would say, kind of an interesting, flashy idea, you know. I mean, it's not the one off the shelf like a Western like I said before that, or something that could be categorized an action picture or something, you know. But it was probably quite a balancing act,
and in some ways I think it worked. In other ways, I would you know, you can't look at anything like that without saying, you know, I wish, I wish, I wish I'd had more time I wish done a different direction, such as such as the game as it is really you know, at the end, I think it's hard over hardware, like you know, I think that's what conveys that really talks to an audience. I can say with my Starfighter experiences, those scenes that have continued to talk to audiences are
the scenes of the family. You know, a small town boy with a dream to leave a dusty trailer park and somehow or other, this silly talent that he has that means nothing here means a lot on far away worlds, you know. And coupled with the fact that the I believe it was the first use of CG in pictures
look really rough, really bad. Producers were oversold on what the CG could do by digital productions and those guys who were sort of lords of the digital world at that time with the great computers, you know, and so compared to ten years ago. Sure, but the problem became, it doesn't look right. There's a release date coming, and everyone surrounding us, because I was with Nick the director throughout the whole process, and they were all saying, gee,
it doesn't look great. And then you saying to yourself, really compared to what you know and so but I guess my point is that it's the heart that comes through. If the heart is crafted, it can work work, you know, on most pictures, and when you think of pictures moments, and there are moments of moments like that, enduring, relatable and warm.
When you're talking about the ten people with the servos and all those things. Plus I'm you've got I imagine a person in the suit as well. So trying to shoot around that and make sure that you are able to capture your vision while maintaining that illusion must have been very difficult as well.
It was balancing twelve disparate disciplines in your head each time that creature came on, because it was you know, these guys really knew what they were doing because they were doing with it hands and all the time, and they spoke a different language to one another, you know, and you're always looking at the ninos or moving its mouth, wondering, okay, now that going to work with so many things, you know, and so easy on things like that to get pulled
away from performance and get buried in the technical aspects of it. And that's what I was always fighting because someone always tap you on the shoulder and say, wait, we have a broken servo. Okay, how long is it gonna take. It's gonna take an hour because we got to take it out of the suit and things like that. The line producer was a funny guy. He would never say,
you know, we got to move on. Whenever I turned around and we were dragging a bit that day, he would take his wad of dollar bills and pad his forehead. You see, amen, But this has costed a lot of money. You've got to.
Be sure of this. You know, did the movie change that much during the editing or was it pretty well what you shot?
It was pretty.
Much what was shot because Whoope's performance actually she was like amazing because you could get all kinds of tone, textures and reads from her. You'd want to keep going. But the diner wasn't. Dinosaur is going to deliver a certain way, certain nuance of movements, and you know, you have I remember learning that the human face has I think forty points of emotion. The motive muscles on it, like our eyebrows mean one thing looking to the left.
So you learn that language pretty quick. So you're giving direction to the dinosaur. Okay, make his eyes go to his right, now roll them around that kind of or ripple his lips, because each of them conveys something, you know, and that was learning a lot.
I didn't even think about that as far as directing a human performer versus directing a dinosaur, and you're really directing all the people around him.
Yeah, I mean, think about just crinkling your nose, what that means, some smelling, snapping with your tip. All these things that we take for granted are visual cues that we respond to. The more I got into that, I thought, oh my god, and thank god whoopy knewer stuff cold because I was directing the dinosaur a lot too, and that was a chore onto itself. Truly.
I hate to ask this, but I have to what happened with Whoopee during the production, because I've read so many things and I don't know what is true and what's not.
Whoopee agreed to the picture to do the picture, and she then got two other pictures shortly thereafter the I'm told that the producers know this better than I do. That the deal she made on this picture was a vast amount of money for a small amount of time, which raised her price considerably for the next two pictures that they signed up for it like within the next couple of months. So the pre production period was long
because the dinosaur had to be built. So in the meantime they came to Stefano Ferrari of the car family and said, do you mind if Woopy did a picture before we start up? And he said, no, no, not a problem. And because you know, in a picture, her involvement would be two months, maybe you know, sixty days or whatever. And we were putting the dinosaur together and getting everything organized. Then they came again and said, she's got another picture. Okay, it's Stefano very graciously said sure.
Then we were getting ready to start and they came to us again and said she's got one more picture, and Stefano said, no. Now we have to we have to assert our our line in her schedule because it's costing money. Hold money, you know, if you have production money set aside, they they don't stop charging you if you don't, you know what, So it gets really expensive. And there were there was a meeting that came about and I don't know, Hollywood attitude was sort of put
forward from her manager at the time. Keith Addis, who basically said, well, you know, we think that we're going to do this movie and if you don't like this, basically sue us. Not in so many words, but Stefano, who truly a gentleman that had never been through any anything like this, whereas Abram said, and myself, if the tarantula bid us, the tarantula dies, he said to Keith, Keith, that's not right. We gave you a fortune for this,
you know, you just please honor. And they said no. I don't think they knew that that he was a guy of his word and he would take it to the end. And and he did, you know, And that's that's how nothing from our side was released about what was going on. But you know how the everyone talks, everyone knows, and your gardener comes in with credits. Hey, I work on Warren Batty's house or something.
You know.
Okay, Finn, you know that that was that was a rough ride through that. It doesn't help to get into a lawsuit with your star.
Did that sour her relationship with you? No?
No, he had the Frank and working meeting. After all, the smoke cleared. But it took a while. It took a while to loosen up a little. It was a lesson on so many levels. Mike, you know, I hope that answers your question about that.
Do you think that the negative press that had been focused on Theodore Rex is that what help sink the picture? Or were people just not ready for a cop dinosaur partner movie.
I don't think the press helped, because, you know, I think it became a curiosity for the wrong reasons in a way. You know, Oh, this was a troubled set and all that. You know, I think that was part of it. I don't know about audiences being ready for things. I think if something is done with humor, style and so many of the sort of lightning in a bottle aspects of putting a picture together and making it work,
they're always receptive. They're always willing to go out when the lights go off, and believe you know, so I don't. You know, it's hard to figure and then you know, there's so many, so many moving parts, distribution, timing and all these things. It's not it's just like in Starfighter. Starfighter became the first movie that used see cg So in the inter views. That was a guiding light of a lot of questions and that it just changes the complexion of the conversations and.
Way you mentioned the whole comic book ness of the movie, and I did find it interesting that there are so many bright colors throughout the entire palette of that film, but then Whoopee is all in black throughout. I think almost all of it was that kind of a purpose to here's the human and they're boring, and here's the dinosaurs and they live in this colorful world.
Whoopy's idea was, if this is a cop. The concept was that law enforcement at that time is expedited, so you're calling a crime a cop with the assistance of an HAI unit implanted in them is judge, jury and executioner at the same time. And she felt, well, it would be appropriate for a black uniform, and I thought, yeah, yeah,
that would be a logical thing. And I did want to keep the palette to primary colors otherwise, you know, so it wasn't so you know dystopian future bleak that we see all the time is how are you going to do that with the talking dinosaur anyway? You know that has a tweed jacket on, I can't do it.
You mentioned the armand Mueler Stall a little bit earlier. How was he to work with?
It was very nice, very courtly, very total professional and in the sense that I could do this way, this way, this though is that? What? What? What? What?
What?
Wait a second? It's just so versatile, you know, and then really puts your back on your game to think about it, you know, because you're just He had a great presence in a way, you know, and the stories he would tell. It's one of these people like with
Robert Preston and Starfighter. He'd start talking and suddenly in a half hour would go by him when he'd start telling you worries about, you know, inadvertently not boastfully, about the movies you'd been on and the old Hollywood, and it was just fascinating.
I thought the castling of Stall was very smart because he gives off that kind of friendly grandpa energy, So to have him play the villain I thought was very smart.
The point was exactly that to have a very buncular, warm presence that wants to own the world. You know, there are you know, the crazy ones are really like that, you know they don't the crazy stupid ones come off like that if you know, first off, in the script, but gradually you get into the whoa Grandpap's out of his tree? It was? It was fun, oh and all
it was fun. There were points at which felt like it took too long, and probably like every every movie has points at which you think, oh my god, why is this taking so long? You know, and I think, pay since it is a great virtue in this business. Nothing happens when you think it's going to happen. And if someone says they're going to get right back to you, that's a Hollywood get right back to you, that means three weeks, so you adjust accordingly.
So what do you do immediately after Theodore Rex drink heavily?
You just take a deep breath, you know, and you go over it all the time. What else?
What?
What? What's been missed? What's here? And you know that kind of thing, you know, because by then the boat is sailed, you know, as a movie gets close to completion, as you're on sets and locations, you know, before you move to another center, I've I've gotten everything I need here before we move on, because coming back is so
ghastly expensive. That's why I had an editor that I always like to look at the editors that would stay up to camera, so they put rough assemblies together as you were shooting each scene, so they would know what fit what else, maybe gets something else before you move on that kind of thing. I think you go through a period where you're did I get everything? Is where you start second guessing yourself because you've been doing that for so long and the whole experience of shooting is
not normal. You know, you get up and everyone's got walkie talkies and it's like you don't have one? What because I am the wrong line and everyone you know, So that takes getting used to, and afterwards takes getting used to not having that. It's nice, you know, but I think that I think everyone just kind of should be forced to with DGA rules to go watch three days of nothing but waves rolling into the beach.
How soon after Theodore Rex do you co found the Special Efects Company?
That was about two years later. I had written this script about a little boy who builds himself a dog, and it was very manageable, and I met my partner at the time. We had nice samples and not connections at studios, so I had sort of been through that. So we decided to see what we could do. That took a lot longer because that's a different tribe, different club. In order to get into that, you have to have had already samples. He didn't have those from working movies.
My mind consisted of one CG movie, you know, So it took a lot longer for it to get off the ground. Then Wen dissipated, and then you put your efforts into getting it started. I think it took like almost five years before we saw any profits from now once again. You know, it's like, I think there should be a writer, effects producer, director. All three disciplines are
so interwoven. Now, yeah, I think that the the directors that work with with effects houses usually they stay with one effects house from picture to picture, and it serves them well, you know, because so many effects houses. All right, well, that's an interview in itself.
What are you working on these days?
Working on the script about the little boy that builds himself a dog? We are out to actors now, and that's really what I'd like to do. And I am writing the sequel to The Last Starfighter. You know, it's been a long road on Starfire in the sense that for a long time I was considered the stumbling block to having a sequel made. But I didn't think I
didn't have the rights. I discovered through a series of studio skullduggery moments that when Laura mar was bought by Warner Brothers, if you know these players, someone neglected to keep abreast of the fact that they had ten years to exploit the rights to the picture, or they reverted to me. That's however, that is like having a great white shark on the hook and being in a rowboats.
I was told that no one would no one would work with me even if I did have the rights to the movie, because the studios would throw a shadow over it. And that was the case for a while until I started hiring attorneys. No law firm in LA would go against a studio. I hired a firm in New York that secured the rights, and I got the copyright. And it was a quiet victory, you know, and made much more satisfying by the fact that when you recapture a copyright, they let all the entities know that it
is now yours. So one went to warners, One went to warners that has a distribution whits for the foreign I have it on everything else and lets everyone know that there's a new sheriff in town. But it's not like that, really. It's just that I had to defend the rights at every turn of the screw, and it was expensive and harrowing, and I didn't have any guarantee that I would be able to do something with it once I won if I did. But I'm told that Cameron got back the rights to Terminator in some way.
Are you aware of that or no?
I didn't know he ever lost him, and.
I didn't need it. I didn't either, But the fact that he got them back when that's such a recognizable franchise's pretty amazing, you know, so that I think that helped somewhat so, but they're always a bumpy road, that kind of thing. I look forward to taking Starfighter to the next generation in a way, and it's going to be standalone film where you don't have to know about what came before. But hat tips to pass not get buried in it. I'm not here to defend that in
any way. Just to move on. There's so many things, but it was interesting. I'm in the middle of the script now servicing quest characters that everyone knows, you know, and as well as adding new ones. So it's an interesting balancing a story. Wise, it's been great, It's gonna be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward this time to bringing the Aliens to Earth. I don't want to go big with hardware and everything, because we've seen it. Marvel does it beautifully time after time. But the premise
is simple. What if the dad you had that you thought was a janitor in the trailer park fixing cesspools was in reality Luke Skywalker? And it's the recognition between a father and son and a student is about to become a minister. So that's what I'm up to these days.
I love the Last Hour Fighter obviously, and I will probably be first in line to buy a ticket forward to that.
You won't have to buy a ticket, man, We'll go ahead and get drunk beforehand, or go man.
I promise that does mean to add to fly La.
Come on, man here, you're probably here every other weekend, especially when it gets cold.
Please a kung fu renegade cop. I don't want to hear a come fury.
I've just pat its city Hall. You just destroyed an attire city block. For Christ's sake, I could.
Now he must defeat the most evil kung fu master in the.
World, Adolf Hitler aka Kung Fumer Hitler.
He's the worst criminal of all time.
When did he kill him?
I can hack you back your time to Nazi Germany.
Just look attention, Kung Fury. That's right.
We were back and we were talking about Theodore Rex and the other thing I mentioned how this reminded me a little bit of I Robot. You guys mentioned Super Mario Brothers. The other thing that it kept reminding me of and I had to go back and rewatch it last night was Kung Fury because of Trisarah Copp, who it's the best damn partner Kung Fury could ever really want.
But it takes a while for him to realize that because in that Kung Fury loses his partner after he sliced into by a ninja master and doesn't want to have another partner. When he gets partnered up with Trisarah Copp, gets very angry, goes out, tries to do stuff on his own, and then try Sarah Kopp is right there after, he travels through time to Nazi Germany to have a huge kung fu fight with Adolf Hitler. What a movie. Half an hour does so much more and really makes me feel for Trisarah.
Copp The scene in that short film because I watched it again because you mentioned this, when Hitler guns down the police station through the phone.
Oh, I love it.
He shoots the phone and the bulletzman you know, And it's so wildly creative and I'm wacky and insane, but that is a mini masterpiece. It's incredible.
Oh, it's so good. And I just love how awkward Kung Fury is. That he's always trying to come up with one liners and they all just suck like knack knack, who's there? Knockles. It plays into all those eighties tropes and stuff that just really work well, especially you know, fucking David Hasselhoff at the end. I love you half nine thousand.
It's so well done. It's one of those things where you can tell they're not half asking it because even like the fight scenes are just incredible, Like the athleticism of the main fellow don't hear about that? Is when I was watching it again, if that came out today, I would think, Oh, it's ai. It's like it's created that way. So in fact, did they did it. When they did it, it stands to i'd watch a feature film with that.
I was having a good time last night, like I don't tend to use AI image generators that much, but I went out to chat GTP and I was just like, Okay, give me an image of a Tyrannosaurus Rex who is a cop, and gave me a beautiful image. I'm like, all right, now the cop has a partner. Now the CoP's lost a partner. Now the cop is you know. Now it's a going out for a kill, crazy rampage. And just like did all these basically like storyboards, and I was like, this is such a better movie.
I hope one of those images had the partner writing the dinosaur, because why would you not do that?
You would think at some point what peg Goldberg would have been on Teddy's shoulders, you.
Know, get on his back and ride him into battle.
And she realized she could walk faster, she'd be using spurs on him.
Come on, takes her to saddle.
There's no raptor, that's for sure.
I guess that would kind of defeat the purpose of them been equal partners and she's whipping them and writing them no back talk Teddy.
Yeah, there's a couple of moments in the movies where the dinosaur's eye has left eye doesn't open all the way, and it just he looks so stupid.
There's a few moments where his moat doesn't move. He's talking and his mot's not moving. They're shooting over the shoulders, and I guess they thought we don't need to Puppeteerihuim. But he's he's talking back to her, He's so verbal and he's not moving his motor and I was like, oh, that's the first mistake I've seen so far.
And they dress him like they're sending him to go undercover at a school. His costume is literally the same thing as this as the stee bouchemi. How are you doing, my fellow students?
Meme?
I was part of a special task force of very young looking cops who infiltrated high schools.
How do you do?
Fellow kids?
What?
Sorry? Keep kicking this movie while it's down. I really wanted to like this movie. I really wanted to me too.
There's another thing as well that I hoped for with the film, as that Whoopy did end up like myself. Whoopy were both fellow Razzie nominees, and I thought it'd be lovely if she did actually win the Razzie because she would have been the first person in history to be a recot winner.
Oh yeah, nah, who were you up for a Razzie for?
I was one of nine writers on a Parkour Aliver Twist film, the last film of Michael Kaine's career. Unfortunately. I think he retired because of that film called Twist. Yeah, I'm very proud of that fact. But none of the other writers who involved, and none of us worked with each other. We were all like replacing one another. My draft was eleven years before the film got made, but I was rooting for us to win. I just wanted that Razzie. It would have been been my Demi Moore
moment by first time winning something for writing. I fucking love it. I'd dine out on that. It would be in my bio and everything. But no, we lost to some Diana Princess Diana movie.
Oh I know which one you mean?
Yeah?
The pool? Who was who played her? Was it?
Yeah?
I think it might have been I think it might have been Watts. Yeah yeah, oh well foiled again, fucking royal family.
Yeah, I was really helping for like some more actual tropes in this movie, like when they have and I don't understand, like Teddy, you're almost crashing this fucking airplane, but when they're suddenly flying in an airplane or a gyrocopter and it's uh bud Court flying and I was like, Oh, is he gonna now suddenly become a good guy because he definitely does not like Stephen mccatty's character. But no, if anything, I think he dies in the crash.
The strange thing about this film, though, is that, aside from Whoopy's character, Teddy, Molly and the Boy, every other character is a bad guy. It's a huge conspiracy with all these bad guys.
Yeah, way too many. I mean, Richard Rowntree is pretty decent, but even then he's like, oh, I don't know if we're gonna let this cop this dinosaur be a cop. And then it takes the other bad guy what's his name Simmons to convince.
Not Tim Robbins right, Oh god.
Yes, yes the whole time dude. Seriously, I was like, it's Tim Robbins.
Right again, casting like Shaft to be a borderline racist mayor is he mayor commissioner. It feels like you're you're crossing the streams of the LEO.
Yeah. First I thought Jack Riley was going to be the police captain the way he shows up in that like hologram. But no, I guess he's just like the tech guy. Maybe I don't know. I guess that's why he's friends with Whoopee since she's part robot.
God Jesus sad roundtree right there. Why isn't he playing the main cop. You could have had Shaft partnered with a dinosaur.
That would have been fun. That would have been really fun. Oh, you just ruined the film for me.
Yeah, because before, like I said, you were in love with that going out on a high. We did an episode on Super Mario Brothers and just all of the writers. I mean I think there were what eight or more writers, and then like some writers came back. It's just amazing to me that this was one writer director. I mean, I can't even imagine how Betchel just suffered seeing what he created turning into this throughout a three year period of time.
I hope he got paid well for us.
I hope so too.
It went to Whoopee's race, which is weird.
Because she made what five million for this something like that? Seven million? Okay, And this is when did Jim Carrey start making twenty milifilm was that post as Ventura?
It went up to seven on Dumb and Dumber, and then I think he got around twenty for Cable Guy, which is ninety five. I think ninety five ninety six.
Looks like I was wrong about the release date. It looks like this came out July second, nineteen ninety six.
So summer movie.
Oh yeah, well dumped right to video though, So yeah, summer video release. If I can believe Wikipedia, I don't know if I can or not.
Wikipedia get rid of it Wkipedia? Yes, yeah, those two so no longer funny anymore. We're living in a dystopia.
I want to know, too, what did that chimpanzee do to get it thrown into jail.
I've seen the film twice, Mike, and I can't remember a chimpanzee.
I know.
Same here.
I'm like, oh, I hope you got my back on this one. I don't remember the chimpanzee.
They throw the little kid into jail and there's a chimp in there, and then when they rescue him, he's carrying the chimp and he goes, can I keep them? Yeah?
But wasn't he really rude to the chimp when he first went into the jails. It wasn't he like what are you looking at? Or something like this? I thought, why it's wrong with everybody?
Because that was another adr thing where they're walking away and she doesn't really even answer them. She's just kind of like no, like she just kind of gives a non answer she's walking away, or it's like clearly neither was saying anything in that shot.
I like it the very very end, the last shot after he gets the commendation or he gets promoted, I think, to being an actual legitimate detective, going from a mascot or a pr Hoyer to a detective. Everybody just keeps applauding the entire time, the whole time as they're talking and walking away, just clapping and clapping and clapping, and it's like, why are they clapping? The speech is over.
The bizarre wipe that they're doing as Teddy's walking and the screen starts getting black because, like you said, Brad, he barely moves and the screen just is like following him. And that real rough Matt line around him as he moves, and then the last title card that says see ya, and I'm like, oh my god, I want to die.
Man.
That shot of the cropped in black on there with like the line around him where the pixelation around him too, that looked like it would be like the final shot on like an HBO first look about the movie where then it cuts to the credits of the feature atte But you know what, I.
Can forgive it because there was intention behind this, whereas everything else just felt like it was this will do this still to keep going.
I really wanted to end on a higher note than this. But at least now, Kevin, you've got a new favorite film that you can enjoy for the rest of your life. We're gonna take another break and play a preview for next week's show right after these brief messages.
Can assume the first you will tell you excel, so's there who give.
Pro contracts? First?
Simple paras the phone post says, are you could stay this.
Or the lads Jacob a.
I've got on.
Saba ala rendi dRIT. That's right. We'll be back next week with they look at the Cuban film Death of a bureaucrat a little bit different than this one. Until then, I want to thank my co host Brad and Kevin. So Brad, what's the latest with you, sir?
My latest book, Bat Pussy is available over on Amazon. The last time I did your show, I think I was in the middle of writing it and we were talking about that movie for a little bit.
So what's it abotion.
It's based on this movie from nineteen seventy that is notoriously called the worst porno ever made, but it is also arguably the first porn parody ever made as well. And there's no credits to the movie, so no one knows who made it or who these actors are in it. So I wrote this book that's a fictitious making of the movie, like all the events that lead up to
the making of it. It's in nineteen seventy. It's about this former b director who comes back from shooting some footage in Vietnam, gets involved in this crooked theater company. Things happen and he makes bat Pussy along with a method actress Hooker.
Really great, that's a great idea.
It was a thank you.
It was a lot of fun to write, and like the reviews, of it. Of it have been really good, so I'm super excited about it, and it's available now over on Amazon instant purchase.
Sounds like a perfect gift for you and all of your loved ones exactly.
My mom did order a copy, and.
Kevin, for those foolish souls who haven't been with us every week during this whoop wary journey, what is the latest with you?
I'm over on the Best Bits. When this comes out, we'll actually be releasing our final episode. Been podcasting for four years, so best End is our last episode. Doesn't mean we're going to stop podcasting me and my podcasting partner Will, but we're coming to a close on that project, which was jumping about watching and picking our favorite film scenes based on randomly selected themes. And yeah, so if you want to jump over, you'll get the last episode
for myself from Will on The Best Bits. And I'm also writing nothing as exciting as bart Pussy. Maybe I can adapt it well.
Thank you so much guys for being on the show. Thanks to everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on. They're all available at weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot
com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth send the world into a new Ice Age where we're going to bring back all of the animals two by two because that really doesn't work, but anyway, we'll try it anyway, So enjoy that.
St Hey, I'm so proud of you.