June 7, 2019 • 33 mins
Why do movie theaters limit their audiences to 299 seats? Did dishware really save the movie industry? And why is Lara Croft: Tomb Raider considered a Hollywood masterpiece? (spoiler: it has nothing to do with the plot!) Grab your popcorn and turn off your ringers as Will and Mango head to the movies.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Part Time Genius the production of I Heart Radio.
Guess what, Mango? What's that? Well, all right, over the weekend,
I was doing a little reading up on Peter Segal,
because you know, I think you know this about me,
but that's what I do every Saturday, and I don't
know how people have been there Saturday nights. But one
(00:25):
of the facts that I saw this week, and I
had actually not seen this before, was that he wrote
a screenplay. Did you know this? I had no idea. Yeah.
It's called Cuba Mine, and it's based on a real
story about a fifteen year old American who moves to Cuba.
And this is right before the revolution. So he writes
this serious script and it's in the nine nineties when
(00:45):
he's writing this, and it's got executions in it and
real politics, but it's also kind of a romance too.
So he writes it and it just sits on the
shelf for over a decade, like so many scripts do.
But two thousand four somebody finds it, dust it off,
and finally the movie gets made. Now, the movie's title
Dirty Dancing to Havana Nights. So you're saying, Peter Sagel
(01:09):
wrote Dirty dancing too, I know, but this is true.
I mean, it's kind of like one of those things
in Hollywood where even though Peter Segel wrote the movie,
they cut out all the words he wrote. In fact,
he was quoted is basically saying this, like he claims,
there isn't a single line of dialogue left from the original.
They also stripped out all the political stuff, but you know,
they had to put something there, so instead they just
(01:30):
filled it all with dancing, which you know, because stays
true to the name, and so it makes sense. That's
pretty funny, you know. It does remind me of those
poor writers in Hollywood who make like two hundred or
three hundred thousand dollars and they live in fancy houses
and and dry fancy cars, but their parents are super
suspicious of what they do because they only work on
the fourth or fifth draft of bad movies, and these
(01:51):
movies never ever get made. It's crazy. Yeah, it is
very very strange. But anyway, thinking about Peter Segel made
me wonder, like why, I or movie economics so weird?
How does so many terrible movies get made? And of
course why is it so hard to make a movie
with lions? I know, we both wondered this for a year,
so we're finally going to answer that today. So let's
(02:14):
dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius.
(02:38):
I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my
good friend Mangesh Ticketer and sitting on the other side
of the soundproof glass. This is one of my favorites.
Mango dressed today as Dwayne the Rock Johnson from his
favorite movie, The Tooth Theory, of course, and such a
good movie, such a great actor. But that's our friend
and producer Tristan McNeil, So Mango, I know. We wanted
(03:00):
to talk about movies today, like little secrets about how
they get made, and what makes a one star movie
a masterpiece and other funny stories from movie sets. But
before we get started, you know, one of the things
I love to tell people is that you used to
work in a video store, because, especially for the younger
generations today, it kind of feels like nobody knows what
(03:20):
a movie store is anymore. I know, it's from like
a different era and and I honestly loved video store
so much like going there as a kid. You've spent
so much time looking at movie covers and deliberating over
which movie you'd want to watch, because you don't only
get to pick one, and and then finally picking it
out like and as a clerk, I actually really loved
recommending movies that I thought people would dig. But you
(03:41):
know that this is a side. The best part of
the video store I worked at, which is called Vizar
and Durham, it was that it was this really fun
and welcoming place. But everyone who worked there except for me,
was a lesbian. And it was perfect because, like, I
didn't know how to date or talk to girls, and
and this woman joy Like she'd give me great advice
on that my car broke down all the time. She'd
(04:01):
helped me fix it all the time, and when she
wasn't solving all of my life problems, we were just
watching movies and talking about movies and it was so good.
It's a good thing here, part time genius. We never
deal in stereotypes. That's great, that worked out for you.
But you know, the funny thing to me was that
even at like an artsy movie store like that one,
like and it was one of those places where movies
(04:22):
were organized by director by country of origin, you'd still
find so many terrible movies on the shelf, and you know,
Jerry and I would would often flag them with these
little post its that they head around. Um, so I
think there was a terrible one of Pam Anderson and
this really horrible movie and we put like a sn
on PPS on the cover. Or there's this like horrible
(04:43):
low budget adaptation of the Bible and it just looked
so bad and we put better than the book on
the cover. You know, just really super helpful stuff. I'm
guessing you probably had at least a couple of frustrated
customers over the years, but it was such a great store.
I remember it really well spending time there. But just
to be clear for all of our listeners, were we're
not snobby movie watchers, like we love terrible movies. And
(05:07):
in fact, I know you want to talk at some
point about why tomb Rads considered such a masterpiece. But
before we do that, there was something I've been collecting,
just some quotes here. I wanted to read you a
few of these quotes from Roger Ebert, and specifically about
movies he hated. So I've got a few of them
written down, but here are a couple examples of just
(05:27):
how brutal Roger Ebert could be when he talked about
these quote alleged comedies. So trying to decide which ones
to share here, So here's one from Freddie got fingered.
So here's what he says. This movie doesn't scrape the
bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of
the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in
the same sentence with barrels. I don't really know exactly
(05:49):
what that means, but it's still just such a great quote.
All right. And here's one about Spice World. Here's what
he has to say about it. Spice World is obviously
intended as a rip off A Hard Day's Night, which
gave the Beatles to the movies. The huge difference, of course,
is that the Beatles were talented, while let's face it,
the Spice Girls could be duplicated by any five women
(06:10):
under the age of thirties standing in line at Duncan Donuts.
I love that Dunkin Donuts is the players that you
need to find talent like that, that's obviously where you
find it. But man, he could be brutal when he
didn't like a movie. Yeah, So So obviously, being a
movie critic comes with its downsides and being forced to
review movies you might not want to watch. But you
know what, one of the things I think is funny
is that Roger Ebertt loved Laura croft Tomb Raider. He
(06:33):
gave it three stars, and and that's despite the fact
that it was almost universally panned. So I also found
some quotes like that, this is from the Washington Post
and they called it quote remarkably joyless. The Wall Street
Journal called it quote flavorless, drab, violent and a bloodless way,
and sexy in a sexless way. And the Austin Chronicle
said the game is great fun, but the movie should
(06:55):
be taken out back and shot. So obviously people had
some pretty strong unions of it. But whether you loved
or hated this movie, what's fascinating is that it's considered
a total masterpiece in Hollywood. And that's purely because of
how the movie was financed. So I got this from
the writer Edward j Epstein, who discussed why and and
basically he showed that executives at Paramount only spent nine
(07:17):
million dollars to finance the movie, like this was a
massive production. It's a total popcorn movie. It cost around
nine million dollars to make. But before the camera started rolling,
Paramount actually signed away the distribution rights to six European
countries for sixty five million dollars, and then it decided
to shoot part of the film in Britain, which I
guess allowed it to qualify for some sort of tax relief.
(07:39):
So there was this complicated scheme where they sold a
film to British investors who got this massive tax break
it was like multimillion dollars, and then they sold it
back to Paramount, so Paramount actually got another twelve million
dollars that way, And then they did the same thing
in Germany and before shooting a single frame, Paramount had
already collected ninety million dollars. Wow, I know. And once
(08:01):
they sold the TV rights to paramount sister company, they
actually netted money before tomb Rader hit theaters, Like it
was actually profitable before they released it, which is just
so insane to me, And it also kind of makes
me wonder like, why was Laura Cross spending so much
time rating tumbs when the real treasure was just finding
a good accountant. That is pretty incredible. So for all
you British investors out there interested in helping part time
(08:24):
genius find some tax breaks. You know, we could use
twelve million dollars. Yeah, yeah, let's let's look into that. Well.
You know, actually, every time we talk about tax shelters,
it actually reminds me of the episode we did a
while back. I think we titled it Where the Sunniest
Places to Hide Your Taxes? And in doing that episode,
we realized that basically every James Bond movie takes place
(08:46):
in a tax shelter. You think about Panama, Switzerland, Monico,
the Cayman Islands. It's it's pretty funny when you come
up with the list of these, But I know you
learned a few more unusual things about the economics of movies.
So do you want to share just a few of those. Yeah.
So one of the things I love is that product
placement hasn't always been worth the money. So this is
(09:08):
an extreme example of it. But in Natural Born Killers,
there's a story that Abilene Boots actually offered to give
free boots to the entire cast if Oliver Stone put
the name on a truck. So there's this one scene
where Juliet Lewis's character is driving in a convertible and
she's driving towards a truck, and to get the shot
of the logo, they had to get the car and
the truck passing each other at the exact same time.
(09:30):
But you know, Oliver Stones an artist, he wanted in
one take. So they started the shot a half mile
away from each other and then drove and use these
walkie talkies, and they were trying to get the pace
of the vehicles just right, and it didn't work out
for all of our stones I it was just a disaster.
So they try it again. They tried it again. They
basically lost a whole day or two of shooting, and
(09:51):
it cost them about three thousand dollars a day. It
was all just to get a free pair of boots.
Isn't that the same thing was just related to this
product placement. I still don't fully understand the the starting
half a mile away thing. What what what would that achieve?
I think you just want to get a long shot
of it, like you want to get a beautiful long
crane shot of it. But um yeah, I mean, and
(10:12):
now I guess there's digital stuff that you could figure
out and slip in. But at the time dollars a
day for a pair of boots is definitely not worth it.
That's I've never spent that much on boots. The other
thing that's totally crazy to me, and and this might
answer a little bit of a like why do terrible
movies get made? Question, is that director has actually claimed
that they have to water down their movies just to
(10:33):
make them suitable for teenagers. And according to Epstein, who's
you know the Hollywood Economists, that there are a few
reasons why you want to market two teens. So some
of them are obvious, like if you have product tie
ins or merchandise or fast food mentions or whatever, teens
are just much more susceptible and likely to buy that stuff.
They're also predictably clustering around the same shows, like it's
(10:53):
a less fragmented group, so you can buy ads and
kind of reliably know where they are to build awareness.
But the big reason movie studios make movies that are PG.
Thirteen and targeted teens is that they're the only demographic
that's desperate to get out of the house, Like they're
looking for any excuse to get away from their parents
or their kids siblings. So they're the group that needs
(11:13):
the least convincing to go out on opening day and
buy tickets. And apparently there's this whole marketing formula. I
think marketers try to hit you up with seven ads
before a movie comes out, like you need that much
exposure to build awareness. And I don't know. It's really
crazy to me, but but it also makes sense. Yeah,
it does make sense. And and I had a feeling
that you were going to talk about teenagers and the movies,
(11:35):
and so, you know, I keep hearing this thing from
classic directors saying that they'd never be able to make
their artsy movies today because they have to cater to
teens so much. In looking around at this there's actually
some pretty funny stuff online. But here's a little clip.
I just wanted to share it. Someone cutting up the
Ten Commandments to play like a teen movie. So just
take a quick listen to this fair why MCS was
(12:00):
the biggest player around, no doubt. But when the new
kid in school I am a stranger in a strange
lamp realized hanging with the in ground wasn't so easy,
he took a stand. Man shall be ruled by law,
not by the will of other men. Moses Mos. Now
the battle is on to see who can get the girl,
(12:23):
who will rule the school, and if a zero can
become a hero, So let the games begin. So that
was a little mash up trailer called ten Things I
Hate about the Commandments and it was by Mike Dow.
I definitely go to see that. And well, I know
you've got some great facts you want to share about
animals at the movies. But before we get into that,
(12:44):
let's take a quick break buck back to part time
Genius where we're talking terrible movies. So will I know
you wanted to tell some animal stories, which is usually
(13:06):
my domain, but I like that you're tackling it today.
But before that, can I just read you a little
list of things that you used to see that the
movies and you no longer see. Just comes from our
old pal caricaval Chick. But here a few things you
no longer see it the movie. So some of these
are obvious, like ash trays. There used to be signs
that read ladies, please take off your hats everywhere, you know,
(13:28):
just as a reminder, because that's when people used to
get super dressed up for shows. But theater is also
used to come with cry rooms, which were these glass
enclosures and soundproof rooms in the back of the theater.
And that's so that parents could take their crying babies
and still watch the movie without disturbing anyone. I didn't
know what you're gonna where you're gonna go with that.
I was just assuming like if people just got too emotional,
(13:50):
that could go somewhere without being heard. So this was
for the babies. Yeah, for the babies who also get
very emotional. Um. This one's also interesting to me. Theaters
used to be much grander, so you think about those
like red curtains that used to open up for the screens,
and and just how elaborate or in theaters used to be.
But all of that change with this Americans with Disabilities Act.
(14:13):
They actually required that newer renovated theaters with more than
two seats needed wheelchair access to all rows. So suddenly
theaters started splitting up their bigger theaters or just started
making smaller theaters to counter that. And it's crazy, but
that's also why you started seeing three or four theaters
at a place showing the same movie at similar showtimes. Yeah,
(14:33):
I've never thought about that. So my favorite old thing
about these old theaters. Was that, especially during the depression,
it was hard to get people to come to movies,
so to get people to spend their money, they'd have
these collectible dish nights. And the whole idea was that
movies where luxury, but husbands and wives could both agree
that they could spend for a ticket or splurred for
(14:54):
a ticket if they could also come home with a
gravy boat or a coffee cup and saucer, and suddenly
a made more worth it. So these have been all
across the nation. That's great. And uh, speaking of the depression,
this is the last one that that's actually part of
what lifted popcorn sales. And I didn't realize this, but
initially popcorn vendors would actually stand outside of theaters and
they were independent sellers and it sell to the public
(15:16):
who are coming in. But then theater's got greedy realized
they could sell the stuff themselves. And now popcorn is
obviously this hugely valuable thing and keeps theaters alive. But
you know, apparently ounce for ounce movie theater, popcorn actually
costs more than filet mignon. Oh wow, yeah, and they
a ton of it. Yeah. I've actually read that theaters
put things in the popcorn to make the smell waff
(15:39):
more in that that's not that surprising, but I mean
it does explain why when you're sitting there it just
fills up the theater makes people more hungry for it.
So anyway, all right, Well, on a different topic related
to just weird things and movies and funny things about movies.
I know, one of our favorite facts is is how
the Cohen Brothers complained that the cat that they used
in Inside Lewin Davis so awful to work with. Of course,
(16:02):
this comes as no surprise to me. They kind of
just had to wait for the cat to do what
they wanted. Like you'd find a cat that liked to jump,
and then you'd put in a scene start rolling, and
then you just have to wait for it to jump.
And it drove them crazy. It's something I haven't thought
a ton about, but I can only imagine how difficult
that is when you've got animals and you're trying to
get them to do like a very specific thing, and
(16:25):
especially with cats, I know him with tight budgets and
directors wanting to play god, you know, not having an
animal act to your will. As I'm sure difficult, and
I actually love stories of animals ruining scenes. There's this
story from Raiders at Lost Arc where Steven Spielberg was
really irritated because instead of fleeing from a fire, the
snakes kept going closer and closer to it to warm themselves,
(16:46):
And at one point he was so frustrated that he
picked up a snake, looked in the face and told
him something like, you're supposed to hate fires. You're ruining
my movie. Well, I hope they listened to him. You know,
I do love the care that animal handlers use on set,
and it even extends to the smallest of creatures like
insects for examples. There was a few examples of this.
(17:09):
But of course you know the old movie Shawshank Redemptions,
such a terrific movie, and you know the old prisoner Brooks.
In the film, he fed a live maggot to his
pet crow, and it went against all animal regulations when
he did this. So the crew actually found a grub
that had quote died of natural causes and used that
for the film. But that's actually not even the craziest
(17:31):
case that I came across here. I think the best
story might be from Silence of the Lambs, where they
had over three hundred tomato hornworm moths on set, and
and they were all treated like these little divas. So first,
when they traveled the mass, all flew first class. I'm
sure this was in all of their contract riders and
I don't know why we know this detail, but we do.
And then they were put up in a room with
(17:53):
perfect climate for them, so exact humidity, temperature conditions, everything
that was ideal for them. But the craziest part, when
they were on set, they were all put in these
tiny little harnesses for those high speed stunts, and it
almost makes me surprised they didn't outfit them in these
tiny little helmets as well. But it's just pretty great.
Like Silence and the Lamps is still held up as
(18:15):
the prime example of how to care for animals on set,
because not one of those three D plus moss was
hurt on set. Plus the producers even found a retirement
home for all the moths, and that they know that
became roommates with the animal wrangler on set and lived
out the rest of their natural lives with them. So
I love that tiny harness fact. And I never would
(18:35):
have imagined that there were three moths involved in the filming.
But you know, I am curious, what is the lifespan
of a tomato moth? Well, I think it's like two
to three weeks, But but don't pay attention to that.
The key part is that they were comfortable. Mango the
comfortable for the rest of their lives. I do like that.
So what else have you got? All right? Well, I
wanted to talk for a minute about the movie Roar,
(18:57):
which is, you know, the craziest, impossible, the worst movie
that involves animals. Actually, there's some photos of the making
of this movie from Life magazine that are just bizarre
to look at. You should you should look them up online.
They're photos of Tippy Hedren looking into her fridge and
a lion peeking in. Two there's one of a lion
asleep at her feet, which just makes lion looks like
(19:18):
these giant house cats. But then there's another one of
a lion with its jaws and its paused, just kind
of gently placed around the kid's head at the swimming pool.
You've seen this before, just pulled us up. It's ridiculous.
How is terrifying? I have no idea, but this it
actually kind of ties back to the economics here, because
roors considered one of the biggest disasters of indie filmmaking. Basically,
(19:42):
Tippy Hedron, who was terrified of birds, of course, if
you remember that's Alfred Hitchcock, took advantage of this by
throwing live birds at her in the movie Birds. But
she was not at all afraid of lions, like she'd
somehow fallen in love with these creatures. On a trip
to Africa, she and her husband at the time, his
name's Noel marsh Shoal, they dreamed up this idea of
doing a movie with real lions, and the plot was
(20:05):
about a family of conservationists who go to a home
in Africa. They're told that the lions at the place
won't harm you if you just don't act scared or
something like that. I mean, the movie doesn't really make
sense and the plot isn't important to this story. But
to make the movie, Tippy and her husband actually asked
this animal wrangler to get them fifty tame lions to
(20:26):
work with. I mean, just an absurd request, and obviously
this wasn't possible. But what he did do was he
started introducing young lines to them so that they could
foster these lions and then they would be growing up
with humans. So for eleven years, and this was on
and off, but Tippy Hedren and her family actually had
live lions at their home and then they shoot here
(20:49):
and there, and they put their children in the film too.
And of course I don't know if everybody knows this,
but Melanie Griffith, whose Tippy Headron's daughter, she quit the
movie at one point because she saw two lions hustling
in the front yard, and she then told her mom
that she didn't want to lose her face to aligne
which seems reasonable. I gotta be honest, Yeah, that seems
reasonable to me. So I don't understand why that maybe
(21:10):
wasn't a little bit of a wake up call. But
you know, the filming was a disaster. Not only did
Tippy and her husband keep running out of money for filming,
people also kept getting hurt along the way. I mean,
not the animals. I in fact, I think no animals
were hurt in the process of this, but something like
eighty cast members were, which I think is probably a
(21:32):
record at least was a record at that point. And
the movie cost I think it was like eighteen million
dollars and then only made two million dollars. Now I'm
not an economist and I don't know a ton about
movie making, but that feels like maybe that was a failure. Failure, yeah, yeah,
(21:52):
but it just goes on and on like not surprisingly,
it ruined their marriage. They end up getting divorced soon after.
But there is one good thing that came out of it.
So while Tippi Hedren did come out of this experience
believing that lions don't make great house pets, her love
for them only grew and so she started the Shambala
Animal Sanctuary. This is out in California, and many big
(22:13):
animals end up there. So when Michael Jackson's home zoo
was shut down, for example, Shambala adopted his tigers. That's insane,
you know. I I heard you wanting to talk about animals,
and I just assumed you were going to talk about
Rentintin and you know, this whole story about how he
should have won the first Oscar Like Susan or Lean
wrote this in her book about Rentinton, that he got
(22:35):
more votes for Best Actor in the first award ceremony,
but the Academy thought it would set a bad precedent.
Said they rigged the awards for a human to win,
and uh, you know, the New York Times report this.
Susan or Lean said it was true, and everyone you
know acknowledged that Rentington was the biggest movie star at
the time. But what's funny is that the Academy actually
disputes this history and says Rentintin was never on the
(22:58):
ballot at all, with you know, adds a little intrigue
to this wonderful fact, but everyone keeps talking about yeah,
and it's still still a nice story either way. But
all right, Well, how about we take a little break
then come back with a few of the strangest, most
influential movies of all time. Welcome back to Part time Genius.
(23:29):
So before we get to a fact off mango, why
don't we do a little back and forth on you know,
some of the strangest movies that have I guess what
you consider surprising impacts on the world. And there's some
easy ones that people might already know about. I'm not sure,
but for example, I think before the movie Emily came out,
they were like a dozen kids named Emily and England
(23:52):
and Wells. And then after the film came out, there
were over a thousand kids a year who got the
name Emily, And you see the trend also with things
like haircuts, Like this is one of my favorite facts
as it relates to movies. But all right, there's this
famous story about how after Titanic came out, the Taliban
shut down any barber shop that was giving out Leonardo
(24:13):
DiCaprio haircuts because boys were just going crazy for them. Now,
there is not much funny about the Taliban, but I
can't help it. That is just a funny and bizarre fact.
I don't think about The Titanic that much, and I
certainly don't think about Leonardo DiCaprio's haircut that much. Yeah,
it's pretty great. All right, Well, what's your favorite story
about a movie that had a surprising impact on the world.
(24:35):
So I guess we're a quick one. Maybe something like Bandy,
And I know the animation style was completely different from
everything else, but I like that it might have actually
launched Stephen King's career. He often refers to Bandy as
the first horror movie he ever saw, but in a
bigger way, I actually think Borat might have had one
(24:55):
of the most surprising impacts on the country and um. Obviously,
in the movie we've got Sasha Baron Cohen, he's making
fun of Kazakhstan. Some people saw it as harmless and
nonsensical and and you know, just as a joke. But
that's not at all how the Kazak people saw it.
Like when the movie came out, Kazakhstan's president actually forced
President Bush into a meeting just to discuss how the
(25:17):
film was negatively depicting the country, and he actually did
the same thing with European leaders. But the interesting thing
is that the film kind of had a point. So
the country had at that time just fallen into corruption,
and it was kind of easy to pick on the
country because it hadn't formed much of a national identity
post leaving the USSR. But after the film, they started
(25:38):
working to bring in European businessmen. They started showcasing how
business friendly and progressive the country was. They worked on
tourism campaigns, and oddly the film actually made people wanted
to visit, and then they even invested in their first
state produced film about Genghis Khan. It was called Mongol.
I don't know if you remember that. It was actually
nominated for an Oscar, but it was all away for
(25:59):
the country to try to reclaim and celebrate its history
while showing there's a thriving and beautiful modern industry there.
And and I think it's kind of amazing that Bora
is really the thing that spurred all of this, and
I'm sure that was his goal from the very beginning.
All Right, well, I've got a couple more that I
wanted to share, you know. Of course, you know, I
(26:20):
love the movie The Big Lebowski, and it brought the
word dude back to the world, and I don't know
whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but
it also spawned a little cult or religion that was
called the Church of the Latter Day Dude. And I
mean mostly, of course, this was a joke, but you know,
it was based on things like taking long baths and
bowling and of course drinking white Russians. I guess a
(26:42):
little bit of Taoism. But you know, back at two
thousand ten, the church had over eighty thousand Judaist priests,
which I think is no small feat. But actually I
didn't want to end on that one. I kind of
wanted to end on a sweeter story, and that's about
the movie. Do the right thing, which, of course wonderful
and impoor in its own right, but it has this
(27:02):
second legacy that it's actually the first movie the Obama
saw together when they were a young couple. In fact,
according to Brock, it kind of sealed their dating status
and it was the first time Michelle allowed him to
touch her net. And as the former president told Spike
Lee when he met him for the first time, I
owe you a lot. Oh I love that. So why
don't we end up that note and kick off the
(27:23):
fact off? Did you know that Steven Spielberg opted not
to direct Harry Potter movies because it was too easy
for him. Here's what he actually said about it. Directing
those movies is quote, just like withdrawing a billion dollars
(27:44):
and putting it into your own personal bank accounts, there's
no challenge. Wow. Let's say you're in a pretty good
position when you're like, you know, the millions and millions
or hundreds of millions of dollars I could make from that,
I'm just not that interested. That too easy. Wow. Actually,
there was this this American Life a month or so
back about him and how high school inspired him to
(28:05):
direct amis thought, and it was so good. I did
you listen to this episode? I haven't heard that. Yeah,
but you should definitely listen to it for for all
our listeners if you haven't already. All right, Well, on
a completely different note, I don't think I even remembered
broccoli playing a big role in the movie Inside Out,
but apparently kids felt that it did, and so in
the Japanese version of the movie, the vegetable was changed
(28:27):
to bell peppers because quote, they are more universally hated
by Japanese children. That's crazy. So here's a fun one
British filmmaker named Charles Lyne raised nine thousand dollars to
make a ten hour movie about paint drying. And you
might wonder why why would you make a ten hour
movie of just paint drying? And it was basically an
(28:49):
f you to the British Censorship Board. He did it
just to force a couple of sensors to have to
watch ten hours of paint drying. That's actually pretty funny,
even if it is evil. At the same time, I
love that it cost nine thousand dollars as to do that.
But al right, well, did you know that the only
time White Castle has made a vegetarian burger was for
(29:09):
Harold and Kumar, so apparently cal Penn is vegetarian. So
white Castle obliged, but only that one time, which isn't
that shocking, But it is pretty funny to imagine what
this vegetarian burger looked and tasted like. I can't even imagine.
I know, now that I know they can make a
veget burger, I want to try it. Yeah, you should
demand it. So here's a little fact I love about
(29:30):
the movie Drive. A woman in two thousand eleven sued
the movie's distributors for false advertising because quote, it had
very little driving. I mean, she's got a point. So yeah,
all right, Well here's a fun When I learned about
the movie Sleepless in Seattle, there's a writer pitching a
story in Meg Ryan's office about this guy who sells
(29:51):
quote the greatest soup You've ever eaten while also being
the meanest man in America. And if you listen closely
to this part, you know they're talking about doing a
story on the Soup Nazi. And the greatest thing about
this is it was actually a few years before the
Soup Nazi became that, you know, big plot point on Seinfeld.
That's pretty amazing. I've never heard that. So here's one
(30:12):
about Quentin Tarantino when he was still starting out. At
the time, he was living on his friend Linda Chen's couch,
and she was a typist, and she had actually agreed
to do some typing for him if he just house
s at her pet rabbit. And of course Tarantino is
a great scriptwriter, but not a good bunny sitter, and
the rabbit sadly died under his watch. But to make
up for it, he named one of the characters in
(30:33):
the film for the pet. But if you remember, in
the beginning of pulp fiction, there's this robber who goes
by the name Honey Bunny, and that's actually named for
Chen's rabbit. I've never heard that. All right, Well, I
know we've done a few Steven Spielberg facts here, but
this one's got to be tough to be. So he
was filming Schindler's List, and obviously this is a very
heavy and difficult topic, and the cast would not surprisingly
(30:57):
get pretty depressed while they were filming that. So every
once in a while he would try to change the
mood for the cast. He just call up his friend
Robin Williams put him on the speaker phone and the
comedian would immediately start reeling off jokes, and that, of
course helped cheer everybody up. Oh I love that. I
actually miss Robin Williams, and I had a different story
about him. During the filming of Mrs Doubtfire. He wasn't
(31:19):
sure if the costume was believable enough, so he wore
it to an adult bookstore and just made all these
ridiculous purchases, and when no one recognized him in character,
he decided the costume was believable enough. But that's pretty great.
But I do think your fact is too good, and
you definitely went today's fact off. Wow. I don't know
(31:40):
that's pretty good fact, Mango, but you know what, You've
already given it, so I'm gonna take it. But thank
you very much, and thank you guys for listening. We
always love hearing facts from you, and I know there's
so many great movie facts out there we'd love to
hear those from. You can always email us part time
Genius at how stuff Works dot com, where you can
hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. But thanks so
much for listening, everybody. Thanks again for listening. Part Time
(32:15):
Genius is a production of how stuff works, and wouldn't
be possible without several brilliant people who do the important
things we couldn't even begin to understand. Christa McNeil does
the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and
does the MIXI mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the
exact producer thing. Gay blues Yer is our lead researcher,
with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the
(32:36):
show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you
really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave
a good review for us. Do we do? We forget Jason?
Jason who
Welcome to Part Time Genius the production of I Heart Radio.
Guess what, Mango? What's that? Well, all right, over the weekend,
I was doing a little reading up on Peter Segal,
because you know, I think you know this about me,
but that's what I do every Saturday, and I don't
know how people have been there Saturday nights. But one
(00:25):
of the facts that I saw this week, and I
had actually not seen this before, was that he wrote
a screenplay. Did you know this? I had no idea. Yeah.
It's called Cuba Mine, and it's based on a real
story about a fifteen year old American who moves to Cuba.
And this is right before the revolution. So he writes
this serious script and it's in the nine nineties when
(00:45):
he's writing this, and it's got executions in it and
real politics, but it's also kind of a romance too.
So he writes it and it just sits on the
shelf for over a decade, like so many scripts do.
But two thousand four somebody finds it, dust it off,
and finally the movie gets made. Now, the movie's title
Dirty Dancing to Havana Nights. So you're saying, Peter Sagel
(01:09):
wrote Dirty dancing too, I know, but this is true.
I mean, it's kind of like one of those things
in Hollywood where even though Peter Segel wrote the movie,
they cut out all the words he wrote. In fact,
he was quoted is basically saying this, like he claims,
there isn't a single line of dialogue left from the original.
They also stripped out all the political stuff, but you know,
they had to put something there, so instead they just
(01:30):
filled it all with dancing, which you know, because stays
true to the name, and so it makes sense. That's
pretty funny, you know. It does remind me of those
poor writers in Hollywood who make like two hundred or
three hundred thousand dollars and they live in fancy houses
and and dry fancy cars, but their parents are super
suspicious of what they do because they only work on
the fourth or fifth draft of bad movies, and these
(01:51):
movies never ever get made. It's crazy. Yeah, it is
very very strange. But anyway, thinking about Peter Segel made
me wonder, like why, I or movie economics so weird?
How does so many terrible movies get made? And of
course why is it so hard to make a movie
with lions? I know, we both wondered this for a year,
so we're finally going to answer that today. So let's
(02:14):
dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius.
(02:38):
I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my
good friend Mangesh Ticketer and sitting on the other side
of the soundproof glass. This is one of my favorites.
Mango dressed today as Dwayne the Rock Johnson from his
favorite movie, The Tooth Theory, of course, and such a
good movie, such a great actor. But that's our friend
and producer Tristan McNeil, So Mango, I know. We wanted
(03:00):
to talk about movies today, like little secrets about how
they get made, and what makes a one star movie
a masterpiece and other funny stories from movie sets. But
before we get started, you know, one of the things
I love to tell people is that you used to
work in a video store, because, especially for the younger
generations today, it kind of feels like nobody knows what
(03:20):
a movie store is anymore. I know, it's from like
a different era and and I honestly loved video store
so much like going there as a kid. You've spent
so much time looking at movie covers and deliberating over
which movie you'd want to watch, because you don't only
get to pick one, and and then finally picking it
out like and as a clerk, I actually really loved
recommending movies that I thought people would dig. But you
(03:41):
know that this is a side. The best part of
the video store I worked at, which is called Vizar
and Durham, it was that it was this really fun
and welcoming place. But everyone who worked there except for me,
was a lesbian. And it was perfect because, like, I
didn't know how to date or talk to girls, and
and this woman joy Like she'd give me great advice
on that my car broke down all the time. She'd
(04:01):
helped me fix it all the time, and when she
wasn't solving all of my life problems, we were just
watching movies and talking about movies and it was so good.
It's a good thing here, part time genius. We never
deal in stereotypes. That's great, that worked out for you.
But you know, the funny thing to me was that
even at like an artsy movie store like that one,
like and it was one of those places where movies
(04:22):
were organized by director by country of origin, you'd still
find so many terrible movies on the shelf, and you know,
Jerry and I would would often flag them with these
little post its that they head around. Um, so I
think there was a terrible one of Pam Anderson and
this really horrible movie and we put like a sn
on PPS on the cover. Or there's this like horrible
(04:43):
low budget adaptation of the Bible and it just looked
so bad and we put better than the book on
the cover. You know, just really super helpful stuff. I'm
guessing you probably had at least a couple of frustrated
customers over the years, but it was such a great store.
I remember it really well spending time there. But just
to be clear for all of our listeners, were we're
not snobby movie watchers, like we love terrible movies. And
(05:07):
in fact, I know you want to talk at some
point about why tomb Rads considered such a masterpiece. But
before we do that, there was something I've been collecting,
just some quotes here. I wanted to read you a
few of these quotes from Roger Ebert, and specifically about
movies he hated. So I've got a few of them
written down, but here are a couple examples of just
(05:27):
how brutal Roger Ebert could be when he talked about
these quote alleged comedies. So trying to decide which ones
to share here, So here's one from Freddie got fingered.
So here's what he says. This movie doesn't scrape the
bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of
the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in
the same sentence with barrels. I don't really know exactly
(05:49):
what that means, but it's still just such a great quote.
All right. And here's one about Spice World. Here's what
he has to say about it. Spice World is obviously
intended as a rip off A Hard Day's Night, which
gave the Beatles to the movies. The huge difference, of course,
is that the Beatles were talented, while let's face it,
the Spice Girls could be duplicated by any five women
(06:10):
under the age of thirties standing in line at Duncan Donuts.
I love that Dunkin Donuts is the players that you
need to find talent like that, that's obviously where you
find it. But man, he could be brutal when he
didn't like a movie. Yeah, So So obviously, being a
movie critic comes with its downsides and being forced to
review movies you might not want to watch. But you
know what, one of the things I think is funny
is that Roger Ebertt loved Laura croft Tomb Raider. He
(06:33):
gave it three stars, and and that's despite the fact
that it was almost universally panned. So I also found
some quotes like that, this is from the Washington Post
and they called it quote remarkably joyless. The Wall Street
Journal called it quote flavorless, drab, violent and a bloodless way,
and sexy in a sexless way. And the Austin Chronicle
said the game is great fun, but the movie should
(06:55):
be taken out back and shot. So obviously people had
some pretty strong unions of it. But whether you loved
or hated this movie, what's fascinating is that it's considered
a total masterpiece in Hollywood. And that's purely because of
how the movie was financed. So I got this from
the writer Edward j Epstein, who discussed why and and
basically he showed that executives at Paramount only spent nine
(07:17):
million dollars to finance the movie, like this was a
massive production. It's a total popcorn movie. It cost around
nine million dollars to make. But before the camera started rolling,
Paramount actually signed away the distribution rights to six European
countries for sixty five million dollars, and then it decided
to shoot part of the film in Britain, which I
guess allowed it to qualify for some sort of tax relief.
(07:39):
So there was this complicated scheme where they sold a
film to British investors who got this massive tax break
it was like multimillion dollars, and then they sold it
back to Paramount, so Paramount actually got another twelve million
dollars that way, And then they did the same thing
in Germany and before shooting a single frame, Paramount had
already collected ninety million dollars. Wow, I know. And once
(08:01):
they sold the TV rights to paramount sister company, they
actually netted money before tomb Rader hit theaters, Like it
was actually profitable before they released it, which is just
so insane to me, And it also kind of makes
me wonder like, why was Laura Cross spending so much
time rating tumbs when the real treasure was just finding
a good accountant. That is pretty incredible. So for all
you British investors out there interested in helping part time
(08:24):
genius find some tax breaks. You know, we could use
twelve million dollars. Yeah, yeah, let's let's look into that. Well.
You know, actually, every time we talk about tax shelters,
it actually reminds me of the episode we did a
while back. I think we titled it Where the Sunniest
Places to Hide Your Taxes? And in doing that episode,
we realized that basically every James Bond movie takes place
(08:46):
in a tax shelter. You think about Panama, Switzerland, Monico,
the Cayman Islands. It's it's pretty funny when you come
up with the list of these, But I know you
learned a few more unusual things about the economics of movies.
So do you want to share just a few of those. Yeah.
So one of the things I love is that product
placement hasn't always been worth the money. So this is
(09:08):
an extreme example of it. But in Natural Born Killers,
there's a story that Abilene Boots actually offered to give
free boots to the entire cast if Oliver Stone put
the name on a truck. So there's this one scene
where Juliet Lewis's character is driving in a convertible and
she's driving towards a truck, and to get the shot
of the logo, they had to get the car and
the truck passing each other at the exact same time.
(09:30):
But you know, Oliver Stones an artist, he wanted in
one take. So they started the shot a half mile
away from each other and then drove and use these
walkie talkies, and they were trying to get the pace
of the vehicles just right, and it didn't work out
for all of our stones I it was just a disaster.
So they try it again. They tried it again. They
basically lost a whole day or two of shooting, and
(09:51):
it cost them about three thousand dollars a day. It
was all just to get a free pair of boots.
Isn't that the same thing was just related to this
product placement. I still don't fully understand the the starting
half a mile away thing. What what what would that achieve?
I think you just want to get a long shot
of it, like you want to get a beautiful long
crane shot of it. But um yeah, I mean, and
(10:12):
now I guess there's digital stuff that you could figure
out and slip in. But at the time dollars a
day for a pair of boots is definitely not worth it.
That's I've never spent that much on boots. The other
thing that's totally crazy to me, and and this might
answer a little bit of a like why do terrible
movies get made? Question, is that director has actually claimed
that they have to water down their movies just to
(10:33):
make them suitable for teenagers. And according to Epstein, who's
you know the Hollywood Economists, that there are a few
reasons why you want to market two teens. So some
of them are obvious, like if you have product tie
ins or merchandise or fast food mentions or whatever, teens
are just much more susceptible and likely to buy that stuff.
They're also predictably clustering around the same shows, like it's
(10:53):
a less fragmented group, so you can buy ads and
kind of reliably know where they are to build awareness.
But the big reason movie studios make movies that are PG.
Thirteen and targeted teens is that they're the only demographic
that's desperate to get out of the house, Like they're
looking for any excuse to get away from their parents
or their kids siblings. So they're the group that needs
(11:13):
the least convincing to go out on opening day and
buy tickets. And apparently there's this whole marketing formula. I
think marketers try to hit you up with seven ads
before a movie comes out, like you need that much
exposure to build awareness. And I don't know. It's really
crazy to me, but but it also makes sense. Yeah,
it does make sense. And and I had a feeling
that you were going to talk about teenagers and the movies,
(11:35):
and so, you know, I keep hearing this thing from
classic directors saying that they'd never be able to make
their artsy movies today because they have to cater to
teens so much. In looking around at this there's actually
some pretty funny stuff online. But here's a little clip.
I just wanted to share it. Someone cutting up the
Ten Commandments to play like a teen movie. So just
take a quick listen to this fair why MCS was
(12:00):
the biggest player around, no doubt. But when the new
kid in school I am a stranger in a strange
lamp realized hanging with the in ground wasn't so easy,
he took a stand. Man shall be ruled by law,
not by the will of other men. Moses Mos. Now
the battle is on to see who can get the girl,
(12:23):
who will rule the school, and if a zero can
become a hero, So let the games begin. So that
was a little mash up trailer called ten Things I
Hate about the Commandments and it was by Mike Dow.
I definitely go to see that. And well, I know
you've got some great facts you want to share about
animals at the movies. But before we get into that,
(12:44):
let's take a quick break buck back to part time
Genius where we're talking terrible movies. So will I know
you wanted to tell some animal stories, which is usually
(13:06):
my domain, but I like that you're tackling it today.
But before that, can I just read you a little
list of things that you used to see that the
movies and you no longer see. Just comes from our
old pal caricaval Chick. But here a few things you
no longer see it the movie. So some of these
are obvious, like ash trays. There used to be signs
that read ladies, please take off your hats everywhere, you know,
(13:28):
just as a reminder, because that's when people used to
get super dressed up for shows. But theater is also
used to come with cry rooms, which were these glass
enclosures and soundproof rooms in the back of the theater.
And that's so that parents could take their crying babies
and still watch the movie without disturbing anyone. I didn't
know what you're gonna where you're gonna go with that.
I was just assuming like if people just got too emotional,
(13:50):
that could go somewhere without being heard. So this was
for the babies. Yeah, for the babies who also get
very emotional. Um. This one's also interesting to me. Theaters
used to be much grander, so you think about those
like red curtains that used to open up for the screens,
and and just how elaborate or in theaters used to be.
But all of that change with this Americans with Disabilities Act.
(14:13):
They actually required that newer renovated theaters with more than
two seats needed wheelchair access to all rows. So suddenly
theaters started splitting up their bigger theaters or just started
making smaller theaters to counter that. And it's crazy, but
that's also why you started seeing three or four theaters
at a place showing the same movie at similar showtimes. Yeah,
(14:33):
I've never thought about that. So my favorite old thing
about these old theaters. Was that, especially during the depression,
it was hard to get people to come to movies,
so to get people to spend their money, they'd have
these collectible dish nights. And the whole idea was that
movies where luxury, but husbands and wives could both agree
that they could spend for a ticket or splurred for
(14:54):
a ticket if they could also come home with a
gravy boat or a coffee cup and saucer, and suddenly
a made more worth it. So these have been all
across the nation. That's great. And uh, speaking of the depression,
this is the last one that that's actually part of
what lifted popcorn sales. And I didn't realize this, but
initially popcorn vendors would actually stand outside of theaters and
they were independent sellers and it sell to the public
(15:16):
who are coming in. But then theater's got greedy realized
they could sell the stuff themselves. And now popcorn is
obviously this hugely valuable thing and keeps theaters alive. But
you know, apparently ounce for ounce movie theater, popcorn actually
costs more than filet mignon. Oh wow, yeah, and they
a ton of it. Yeah. I've actually read that theaters
put things in the popcorn to make the smell waff
(15:39):
more in that that's not that surprising, but I mean
it does explain why when you're sitting there it just
fills up the theater makes people more hungry for it.
So anyway, all right, Well, on a different topic related
to just weird things and movies and funny things about movies.
I know, one of our favorite facts is is how
the Cohen Brothers complained that the cat that they used
in Inside Lewin Davis so awful to work with. Of course,
(16:02):
this comes as no surprise to me. They kind of
just had to wait for the cat to do what
they wanted. Like you'd find a cat that liked to jump,
and then you'd put in a scene start rolling, and
then you just have to wait for it to jump.
And it drove them crazy. It's something I haven't thought
a ton about, but I can only imagine how difficult
that is when you've got animals and you're trying to
get them to do like a very specific thing, and
(16:25):
especially with cats, I know him with tight budgets and
directors wanting to play god, you know, not having an
animal act to your will. As I'm sure difficult, and
I actually love stories of animals ruining scenes. There's this
story from Raiders at Lost Arc where Steven Spielberg was
really irritated because instead of fleeing from a fire, the
snakes kept going closer and closer to it to warm themselves,
(16:46):
And at one point he was so frustrated that he
picked up a snake, looked in the face and told
him something like, you're supposed to hate fires. You're ruining
my movie. Well, I hope they listened to him. You know,
I do love the care that animal handlers use on set,
and it even extends to the smallest of creatures like
insects for examples. There was a few examples of this.
(17:09):
But of course you know the old movie Shawshank Redemptions,
such a terrific movie, and you know the old prisoner Brooks.
In the film, he fed a live maggot to his
pet crow, and it went against all animal regulations when
he did this. So the crew actually found a grub
that had quote died of natural causes and used that
for the film. But that's actually not even the craziest
(17:31):
case that I came across here. I think the best
story might be from Silence of the Lambs, where they
had over three hundred tomato hornworm moths on set, and
and they were all treated like these little divas. So first,
when they traveled the mass, all flew first class. I'm
sure this was in all of their contract riders and
I don't know why we know this detail, but we do.
And then they were put up in a room with
(17:53):
perfect climate for them, so exact humidity, temperature conditions, everything
that was ideal for them. But the craziest part, when
they were on set, they were all put in these
tiny little harnesses for those high speed stunts, and it
almost makes me surprised they didn't outfit them in these
tiny little helmets as well. But it's just pretty great.
Like Silence and the Lamps is still held up as
(18:15):
the prime example of how to care for animals on set,
because not one of those three D plus moss was
hurt on set. Plus the producers even found a retirement
home for all the moths, and that they know that
became roommates with the animal wrangler on set and lived
out the rest of their natural lives with them. So
I love that tiny harness fact. And I never would
(18:35):
have imagined that there were three moths involved in the filming.
But you know, I am curious, what is the lifespan
of a tomato moth? Well, I think it's like two
to three weeks, But but don't pay attention to that.
The key part is that they were comfortable. Mango the
comfortable for the rest of their lives. I do like that.
So what else have you got? All right? Well, I
wanted to talk for a minute about the movie Roar,
(18:57):
which is, you know, the craziest, impossible, the worst movie
that involves animals. Actually, there's some photos of the making
of this movie from Life magazine that are just bizarre
to look at. You should you should look them up online.
They're photos of Tippy Hedren looking into her fridge and
a lion peeking in. Two there's one of a lion
asleep at her feet, which just makes lion looks like
(19:18):
these giant house cats. But then there's another one of
a lion with its jaws and its paused, just kind
of gently placed around the kid's head at the swimming pool.
You've seen this before, just pulled us up. It's ridiculous.
How is terrifying? I have no idea, but this it
actually kind of ties back to the economics here, because
roors considered one of the biggest disasters of indie filmmaking. Basically,
(19:42):
Tippy Hedron, who was terrified of birds, of course, if
you remember that's Alfred Hitchcock, took advantage of this by
throwing live birds at her in the movie Birds. But
she was not at all afraid of lions, like she'd
somehow fallen in love with these creatures. On a trip
to Africa, she and her husband at the time, his
name's Noel marsh Shoal, they dreamed up this idea of
doing a movie with real lions, and the plot was
(20:05):
about a family of conservationists who go to a home
in Africa. They're told that the lions at the place
won't harm you if you just don't act scared or
something like that. I mean, the movie doesn't really make
sense and the plot isn't important to this story. But
to make the movie, Tippy and her husband actually asked
this animal wrangler to get them fifty tame lions to
(20:26):
work with. I mean, just an absurd request, and obviously
this wasn't possible. But what he did do was he
started introducing young lines to them so that they could
foster these lions and then they would be growing up
with humans. So for eleven years, and this was on
and off, but Tippy Hedren and her family actually had
live lions at their home and then they shoot here
(20:49):
and there, and they put their children in the film too.
And of course I don't know if everybody knows this,
but Melanie Griffith, whose Tippy Headron's daughter, she quit the
movie at one point because she saw two lions hustling
in the front yard, and she then told her mom
that she didn't want to lose her face to aligne
which seems reasonable. I gotta be honest, Yeah, that seems
reasonable to me. So I don't understand why that maybe
(21:10):
wasn't a little bit of a wake up call. But
you know, the filming was a disaster. Not only did
Tippy and her husband keep running out of money for filming,
people also kept getting hurt along the way. I mean,
not the animals. I in fact, I think no animals
were hurt in the process of this, but something like
eighty cast members were, which I think is probably a
(21:32):
record at least was a record at that point. And
the movie cost I think it was like eighteen million
dollars and then only made two million dollars. Now I'm
not an economist and I don't know a ton about
movie making, but that feels like maybe that was a failure. Failure, yeah, yeah,
(21:52):
but it just goes on and on like not surprisingly,
it ruined their marriage. They end up getting divorced soon after.
But there is one good thing that came out of it.
So while Tippi Hedren did come out of this experience
believing that lions don't make great house pets, her love
for them only grew and so she started the Shambala
Animal Sanctuary. This is out in California, and many big
(22:13):
animals end up there. So when Michael Jackson's home zoo
was shut down, for example, Shambala adopted his tigers. That's insane,
you know. I I heard you wanting to talk about animals,
and I just assumed you were going to talk about
Rentintin and you know, this whole story about how he
should have won the first Oscar Like Susan or Lean
wrote this in her book about Rentinton, that he got
(22:35):
more votes for Best Actor in the first award ceremony,
but the Academy thought it would set a bad precedent.
Said they rigged the awards for a human to win,
and uh, you know, the New York Times report this.
Susan or Lean said it was true, and everyone you
know acknowledged that Rentington was the biggest movie star at
the time. But what's funny is that the Academy actually
disputes this history and says Rentintin was never on the
(22:58):
ballot at all, with you know, adds a little intrigue
to this wonderful fact, but everyone keeps talking about yeah,
and it's still still a nice story either way. But
all right, Well, how about we take a little break
then come back with a few of the strangest, most
influential movies of all time. Welcome back to Part time Genius.
(23:29):
So before we get to a fact off mango, why
don't we do a little back and forth on you know,
some of the strangest movies that have I guess what
you consider surprising impacts on the world. And there's some
easy ones that people might already know about. I'm not sure,
but for example, I think before the movie Emily came out,
they were like a dozen kids named Emily and England
(23:52):
and Wells. And then after the film came out, there
were over a thousand kids a year who got the
name Emily, And you see the trend also with things
like haircuts, Like this is one of my favorite facts
as it relates to movies. But all right, there's this
famous story about how after Titanic came out, the Taliban
shut down any barber shop that was giving out Leonardo
(24:13):
DiCaprio haircuts because boys were just going crazy for them. Now,
there is not much funny about the Taliban, but I
can't help it. That is just a funny and bizarre fact.
I don't think about The Titanic that much, and I
certainly don't think about Leonardo DiCaprio's haircut that much. Yeah,
it's pretty great. All right, Well, what's your favorite story
about a movie that had a surprising impact on the world.
(24:35):
So I guess we're a quick one. Maybe something like Bandy,
And I know the animation style was completely different from
everything else, but I like that it might have actually
launched Stephen King's career. He often refers to Bandy as
the first horror movie he ever saw, but in a
bigger way, I actually think Borat might have had one
(24:55):
of the most surprising impacts on the country and um. Obviously,
in the movie we've got Sasha Baron Cohen, he's making
fun of Kazakhstan. Some people saw it as harmless and
nonsensical and and you know, just as a joke. But
that's not at all how the Kazak people saw it.
Like when the movie came out, Kazakhstan's president actually forced
President Bush into a meeting just to discuss how the
(25:17):
film was negatively depicting the country, and he actually did
the same thing with European leaders. But the interesting thing
is that the film kind of had a point. So
the country had at that time just fallen into corruption,
and it was kind of easy to pick on the
country because it hadn't formed much of a national identity
post leaving the USSR. But after the film, they started
(25:38):
working to bring in European businessmen. They started showcasing how
business friendly and progressive the country was. They worked on
tourism campaigns, and oddly the film actually made people wanted
to visit, and then they even invested in their first
state produced film about Genghis Khan. It was called Mongol.
I don't know if you remember that. It was actually
nominated for an Oscar, but it was all away for
(25:59):
the country to try to reclaim and celebrate its history
while showing there's a thriving and beautiful modern industry there.
And and I think it's kind of amazing that Bora
is really the thing that spurred all of this, and
I'm sure that was his goal from the very beginning.
All Right, well, I've got a couple more that I
wanted to share, you know. Of course, you know, I
(26:20):
love the movie The Big Lebowski, and it brought the
word dude back to the world, and I don't know
whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but
it also spawned a little cult or religion that was
called the Church of the Latter Day Dude. And I
mean mostly, of course, this was a joke, but you know,
it was based on things like taking long baths and
bowling and of course drinking white Russians. I guess a
(26:42):
little bit of Taoism. But you know, back at two
thousand ten, the church had over eighty thousand Judaist priests,
which I think is no small feat. But actually I
didn't want to end on that one. I kind of
wanted to end on a sweeter story, and that's about
the movie. Do the right thing, which, of course wonderful
and impoor in its own right, but it has this
(27:02):
second legacy that it's actually the first movie the Obama
saw together when they were a young couple. In fact,
according to Brock, it kind of sealed their dating status
and it was the first time Michelle allowed him to
touch her net. And as the former president told Spike
Lee when he met him for the first time, I
owe you a lot. Oh I love that. So why
don't we end up that note and kick off the
(27:23):
fact off? Did you know that Steven Spielberg opted not
to direct Harry Potter movies because it was too easy
for him. Here's what he actually said about it. Directing
those movies is quote, just like withdrawing a billion dollars
(27:44):
and putting it into your own personal bank accounts, there's
no challenge. Wow. Let's say you're in a pretty good
position when you're like, you know, the millions and millions
or hundreds of millions of dollars I could make from that,
I'm just not that interested. That too easy. Wow. Actually,
there was this this American Life a month or so
back about him and how high school inspired him to
(28:05):
direct amis thought, and it was so good. I did
you listen to this episode? I haven't heard that. Yeah,
but you should definitely listen to it for for all
our listeners if you haven't already. All right, Well, on
a completely different note, I don't think I even remembered
broccoli playing a big role in the movie Inside Out,
but apparently kids felt that it did, and so in
the Japanese version of the movie, the vegetable was changed
(28:27):
to bell peppers because quote, they are more universally hated
by Japanese children. That's crazy. So here's a fun one
British filmmaker named Charles Lyne raised nine thousand dollars to
make a ten hour movie about paint drying. And you
might wonder why why would you make a ten hour
movie of just paint drying? And it was basically an
(28:49):
f you to the British Censorship Board. He did it
just to force a couple of sensors to have to
watch ten hours of paint drying. That's actually pretty funny,
even if it is evil. At the same time, I
love that it cost nine thousand dollars as to do that.
But al right, well, did you know that the only
time White Castle has made a vegetarian burger was for
(29:09):
Harold and Kumar, so apparently cal Penn is vegetarian. So
white Castle obliged, but only that one time, which isn't
that shocking, But it is pretty funny to imagine what
this vegetarian burger looked and tasted like. I can't even imagine.
I know, now that I know they can make a
veget burger, I want to try it. Yeah, you should
demand it. So here's a little fact I love about
(29:30):
the movie Drive. A woman in two thousand eleven sued
the movie's distributors for false advertising because quote, it had
very little driving. I mean, she's got a point. So yeah,
all right, Well here's a fun When I learned about
the movie Sleepless in Seattle, there's a writer pitching a
story in Meg Ryan's office about this guy who sells
(29:51):
quote the greatest soup You've ever eaten while also being
the meanest man in America. And if you listen closely
to this part, you know they're talking about doing a
story on the Soup Nazi. And the greatest thing about
this is it was actually a few years before the
Soup Nazi became that, you know, big plot point on Seinfeld.
That's pretty amazing. I've never heard that. So here's one
(30:12):
about Quentin Tarantino when he was still starting out. At
the time, he was living on his friend Linda Chen's couch,
and she was a typist, and she had actually agreed
to do some typing for him if he just house
s at her pet rabbit. And of course Tarantino is
a great scriptwriter, but not a good bunny sitter, and
the rabbit sadly died under his watch. But to make
up for it, he named one of the characters in
(30:33):
the film for the pet. But if you remember, in
the beginning of pulp fiction, there's this robber who goes
by the name Honey Bunny, and that's actually named for
Chen's rabbit. I've never heard that. All right, Well, I
know we've done a few Steven Spielberg facts here, but
this one's got to be tough to be. So he
was filming Schindler's List, and obviously this is a very
heavy and difficult topic, and the cast would not surprisingly
(30:57):
get pretty depressed while they were filming that. So every
once in a while he would try to change the
mood for the cast. He just call up his friend
Robin Williams put him on the speaker phone and the
comedian would immediately start reeling off jokes, and that, of
course helped cheer everybody up. Oh I love that. I
actually miss Robin Williams, and I had a different story
about him. During the filming of Mrs Doubtfire. He wasn't
(31:19):
sure if the costume was believable enough, so he wore
it to an adult bookstore and just made all these
ridiculous purchases, and when no one recognized him in character,
he decided the costume was believable enough. But that's pretty great.
But I do think your fact is too good, and
you definitely went today's fact off. Wow. I don't know
(31:40):
that's pretty good fact, Mango, but you know what, You've
already given it, so I'm gonna take it. But thank
you very much, and thank you guys for listening. We
always love hearing facts from you, and I know there's
so many great movie facts out there we'd love to
hear those from. You can always email us part time
Genius at how stuff Works dot com, where you can
hit us up on Facebook or Twitter. But thanks so
much for listening, everybody. Thanks again for listening. Part Time
(32:15):
Genius is a production of how stuff works, and wouldn't
be possible without several brilliant people who do the important
things we couldn't even begin to understand. Christa McNeil does
the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and
does the MIXI mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the
exact producer thing. Gay blues Yer is our lead researcher,
with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the
(32:36):
show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you
really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave
a good review for us. Do we do? We forget Jason?
Jason who
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