Xanadu: Everything You Didn't Know

Jordan and Alex kick off their Olivia Newton John tribute week by exploring one of the biggest, splashiest, most notorious films in Hollywood history. It may have been a box office bomb, but it’s also the only movie that combined disco, Greek mythology, Gene Kelly, roller skating, an abandoned LA landmark, bargain basement special effects, and our beloved ONJ. Learn about how this bizarre project came to be and hear all the crazy behind-the-scenes stories — including the time Olivia Newton-John literally busted her butt on skates, producer Joel Silver (reportedly) locked a screenwriter in a room for days, and Gene Kelly had a hilarious beef with the director. You’ll also learn why Electric Light Orchestra front man Jeff Lynne blamed the movie for his band’s nosedive in the charts and find out why John Lennon had a soft spot for the soundtrack.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too much information is a production of I heart radio.

(00:09):
Hello everyone, and welcome to too much information, the show
that brings you the secret histories and little known, fascinating
facts and figures behind your favorite TV shows, music, movies
and more. We are your electric Light Orchestra of Ephemera.
I'm Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan. Run Talk. Yeah, you
like that one bit Jordan's. We're kicking off Olivia Newton

(00:31):
John Week here at t M. I a thing that
we didn't know. Yeah, Oh yeah, points. This guy pours
one out. What should I pour out for her? Foster's
I mean, I'd say champagne, because she deserves it. I
Love Olivia John, I know you do, Buddy. Well, does
your love with stand Santa Do? We'll see. I only

(00:57):
ever knew about this film from like Coffee Table Books
My parents got me about twentieth century American pop culture
and vh one's buzzfeedlistical presaging, full court press. Of I
love the seventies, eighties and Nineties Talking Heads Extravaganza hosted
by how sparks, sparks, whither how sparks? Yeah, this was

(01:18):
one of the first movies that low showed to me
really yeah, yeah, you're now wife. This was one of
your first dates. Yeah, yeah, I think we. I think
she actually made me double feature this and sergeant. No,
I didn't watch sergeant peppers with her. She tried to
make me and I said no, I put my foot down.
The last relationships, I'm told. Yeah, Um, it's exactly as

(01:41):
bizarre as everyone says it is. I don't know, you
didn't even watch it. No, I started to blow up
your spotif on the that's that's okay. You know, I
just I delayed in watching this for a long time
because I felt it besmirched the good name of my
beloved of living, Newton John. and honestly, yeah, this movie
feels like the result of someone going into a cocaine
induced fugue state. I mean to me, someone who loved

(02:04):
like bright, frothy, colorful rock and roll nostalgia. That was,
you know, grease, the perfect example. I felt like Xanda
do was kind of the contemporary world intruding into my
fifties fantasy, and I never really was into like fantastical
sci fi stuff anyway, and the visuals of Zanda do,
I just I never liked it. It looked like a
cross between a workout tape and like an early nineties

(02:27):
animated Japanese adventure series like sailor moon or something, which
just was never anything I was into. Um, I. The
SPANDEX leg warmers and the neon that we all associate
with like a certain look in the early eighties can
really be attributed to Zanna do and honestly I'm just
turned off by the aesthetic. Um, yeah, the neon in

(02:48):
the sense it just registers, is really cold to me,
whereas Greece was very warm. I mean, we've got we're
following this up with grease very soon, which y'all wax
poetic about that. But yes, I have come to a
appreciate Zanna do for the camp absurdity and also for
the soundtrack by Jeff Lynn and the Electric Light Orchestra,
which you correctly identified as a favorite of mine. But yeah,

(03:09):
if I'm completely honest, I've really only ever seen highlight
clips from this and you know, there are undoubtedly great
moments which we'll talk about. Uh, it sounds like everyone's
in agreement that the script for this is unsalvageably bad.
It's just so funny that people are just like, oh, yeah,
it's bad, like no one involved. I don't think anyone is. Maybe,

(03:31):
I don't know, maybe I a super fans. There are
definitely I know they're super fans, but I don't think
anybody involved in the making of it is still like
towing the like. It's still like the good soldier, that's
like I made a good movie. Like I think everyone
involved was like, yeah, that one didn't really pan out.
But I mean, on the other hand, I do have
to give props for just how crazy it is, combining

(03:52):
Greek mythology, swing music, Lidia Newton, John Roller, skating, disco
and Gene Kelly. I mean it it definitely sound psychotic
enough for me to want to get mixed up in,
but it's been compared to a cinematic Frankenstein. They sought
to create something beautiful by bashing together a bunch of
disparate elements, hoping to reanimate the big, splashy nineteen forties musical,

(04:13):
but instead they made a monster. They were so preoccupied
with the fact that they could they didn't stop to
think about whether or not they should. Well, from the
film's important role in the establishment of the razzie awards
to the boggling array of past and future Hollywood royalty
involved to the bid ter fight over the film's soundtrack.
Here's everything you didn't know about Zeni. Do you know

(04:43):
we never recall the plot points of anything that we
do here because we assume a degree of listener familiarity
with what we're covering. But I gotta do broad strokes
here because, as you said, it scans like a cocaine
induced fugue state of its time. Um Sonny Malone own
U is a struggling artist in Los Angeles who rips

(05:04):
up and discards a sketch which then collides with a
mural of the nine sister muses of Greek myth brings
them to life, one of whom roller skates through L
A and has a meat cute with him. Um, he
has a job. Hold on, Buddy. He has a job
painting album covers at a record store, fextimiles of them

(05:26):
for displays and sees the image of the woman he
has just met in the art that he has tasked
with reproducing and somehow tracks her down to a Hobo
shag shack across town, which we'll talk about the Pan
Pacific Auditorium, and this is Terpsichor, known affectionately as Kira,

(05:46):
and that's Newton John Not terps. That's the University of
Maryland football team or basketball team, something sunny. Makes Friends
with Danny McGuire, a construction mogul who used to lead
a big band orchestra, you know that old trope. His
heart was broken in the nineteen forties by a woman
who looked like Kira and he was left creatively bereft

(06:07):
as a result. Kira pushes the pair of them to
open a nightclub called Zena Do, and her and Sonny's
Romance Continues Apace. Just before the club's opening, Kira confesses
that she is one of the nine muses of Olympus,
sent to Earth to inspire the creation of this club.
She has to return to Olympus. Sonny is upset because
they're in love, et CETERA. Sonny somehow roller skates through

(06:29):
a mural into Mount Olympus and pleads with Zeus to
let Kira return to Earth. He is sent back to Earth, but,
nagged by both Kira and his wife, Zeus ultimately allows
Kira to return to Earth to be with Sonny for quote,
maybe a moment, maybe forever. It was the classic Um.

(06:51):
Is it like theat where you don't know, like what
the length of time is if she was gone. Yes,
it's like the Oh henry shorts, now the Lady of
the tiger. What am I doing here? Let me get
through the damn plot summary. Run Talk Karen. The muses
perform at the ZANTA Dou grand opening before leaving Earth
once again, Sonny is bummed, but then spots a waitress

(07:11):
who looks like Kira and begins to chat her up.
And seen. befitting its entire Bizarre Mien, Zanna Dou emerged
from the combined creative efforts of two unlikely Hollywood players,
Larry Gordon and Joel Silver. Two years later, silver would
rocket to fame with the enormously successful forty eight hours,
while the two of them would go on to make
Predator and die hard together, which is such a hilarious

(07:34):
trio of films coming off of Santa D so how
the Hell did this happen? Well, according to the extensive
press pack that accompanied Zantado's original release, Gordon said that
silver quote wanted to make an old fashioned musical. There's
an article from entertainment weekly in two thousand seven that
has making up with some of these quotes silver was, quote,
hell bent on producing a disco fied remake of the

(07:58):
seven Rita Hayworth vehicle down to earth, once claiming, and
I have seen this quote repeated in multiple places, he
was prepared to stab myself in the back to get
it off the ground. What's that mean? He's a weird guy. Uh,
if you consider Sanna do a proper remake of down
to Earth, it makes the chronology here even more confusing,

(08:18):
because down to earth was a sequel to here comes
Mr Jordan's, which is also concerned with heavenly bean's meddling
with mortals, and two actors from Mr Jordan reprised their roles.
And Down to Earth here comes Mr Jordan has been
remade twice, once in v Heaven Can Wait, starring Warren Batty,
and again in two thousand one as down to Earth,
starring Chris Rock. All of those films are adaptations of

(08:41):
the play heaven can wait. So that makes Sanna do
a remake of a sequel to a movie adaptation of
a play. Oh No, I've Gone Cross side everything you've
said in the last five minutes, from you're recounting the
plot of this movie to its origins, as whatever you
just said, the remake, of a sequel, of an adaptation
of a play. I have I have no I'm gonna

(09:03):
have to listen to this at half speed, and advised
listeners to do the same. It gets easier from here,
but this just does it the you have to understand
that Joel loves musicals. Larry Gordon told entertainment weekly I
think when he came to l a he was more
familiar with musicals than action films. So even though this

(09:26):
film arrives at the down of the eighties, Hollywood is
still very much in the thrall of the roller skating
and disco era and also the wonderfully uniquely American combination
of the two known as the Roller Disco, which is
roller skating to disco or disco dancing on roller skates.
Glasses half full, half empty. Potato, potato, tomato, tomato. Choose

(09:51):
your poison. It's all bad. The year before Xanadude came out,
in nine, there was the movie Roller Boogie, which is
also a Roller Skating Music, starring Linda Blair of the
exorcist fame, and there was also a movie called Skatetown USA,
which you mistakenly put as Roller Boogie again, Rookie Uh,

(10:13):
starring Scott Bao of Joni loves choccy and happy days
fame uh, and many others, including Patrick swayze and his
first film role. So there's a whole little mini genre
evolving at the end of the seventies, the roller disco
exploitation flick Um. And if you want a real whiplash

(10:33):
of context, you know that Larry Gordon also produced ninety nine,
the Warriors, which was also starring the male lead in Xanadu,
whose name I never remember, Michael Beck. It's so funny
he went from warriors to this, because warriors is just
like this icon of like Grimy New York City taxi
driver era x gag exploitation. It's got, you know, the

(10:57):
warriors come out and play bid. It's got all the
color aerful gangs, like the abandoned stuff in the city
and like. But there was an aura of real danger
around this movie. I mean it was made off of
soul urice book, I want to say. And then they
were so petrified that this film was going to cause
upsurge and gang violence that they were like squashing it

(11:19):
because the poster, if I'm remembering correctly, like the tagline
for this movie was like New York Street gangs outnumbered
the NYPD ten to one. It's just it's why again,
just so wild to me. I mean again, like Joel
Silver going from Zannah Dude to Predator in like five years.
Hollywood's weird. Well, Olivia and John went from Greece, which

(11:42):
is where she became a global icon, to Zanna do
and she actually suggested. A fellow Australian, a young Mel Gibson,
stars the male lead in this movie of Car. It's
types of car. A Jewish name got that? Oh yeah,
it's really it's up for debate whether or not Mel

(12:02):
Gibson would have been an improvement over this Michael Beck Guy,
who the BBC referred to in a stunning insult as
a Jim Morrison Mannequin that's broken out of Madame Tussau's
Wax Museum to pursue the acting dream truly all times.
That was a great piece. We'll quote more of it
later on. Apparently Andy Gibb another Australian, was actually initially

(12:25):
cast as the male lead and Zanna do it first,
but he dropped. Heard I've heard it either variously pinned
on his cocaine addiction or sergeant peppers. I mean both
are yeah, yeah, exactly. Um. John Travolta was also offered
the role, but he turned it down to do urban cowboy, which,
to quote Indiana Jones once more, he chose. Well, okay,

(12:48):
I mean both were poor options, but I guess I
don't know. Coming for John, teaming with Olivia, Newton John
Right after Greece for another musical. He could have minted
money like that might have been the thing to save,
but he went with urban cowboy, beginning his slow slide too,
as close to obscurity as a John Trouble they could
get until Quentin Tarantina rescued him. I've also seen that

(13:10):
Peter Frampton was another living in John Choice, but he
was also tainted by his appearance in the God Awful
Sergeant Pepper's Jukebox Movie, Uh, starring who was in that?
The bags Arra's right Erosmith were in that, Alice Cooper,
I think. I think so. Yeah, I'm starting to blend

(13:33):
it with the Tommy Ken Russell Movie. Oh Yeah, Elton
John and UH Clapton and cocaine, Tina Turner. Yeah, but
for all these fantasy castings, somebody who did wind up
in Zanna do. That as a pretty cool backstory, is
Sandal Bergman who, to me he was most famous for

(13:54):
playing the warrior Valeria in Conan, the barbarian, just after
Zanna do in two. It was her springboard. She's one
of the night. Yeah, she's one of the muses. Anyway, apparently,
Brian and Grazer, uh, he's Beautiful Mind Guy. Right, he's
done like a lot of one of the biggest producers

(14:16):
in Hollywood history. He wanted to he he was, I guess,
a Venice Beach Guy and wanted to make a roller
skating picture. Uh, and he bugged his buddy, who's one
of the like seventeen screenwriters on this film, and guy
named Mark Reid Rubel, to write a treatment which they
they took to silver and Gordon. I think silver at
the time was Larry Gordon's assistant. The character of Sonny

(14:38):
is apparently based on Brian Grazer, which is hilarious. But yeah,
as we mentioned, Michael Beck is something of a nothing burger,
so I don't know how much of the essence to
Grazer UH comes through. Uh. They took it to warner brothers,
who passed, and Gordon wrote later. Maybe Warner Brothers was
right to do so. A musical fantasy was chancey and

(15:00):
at that time we didn't have Olivia or Gene Kelly,
the eventual stars, but Joel and I still believed in
the pro in the project. Ruble made the title Zanna do.
Not from the Collor Ridge Poem Collar Yes, not from
the college poem, but from the Citizen Kane reference to
the college poem, which is uh Kane's mansion. Is Charles

(15:25):
Foster Kane overson wells's character. Charles Foster caine builds a mansion, costly, overblown,
great metaphor for Zanna do, and he calls it Zanna
do after the Holly Ridge Poem Kubla Khan, a rich
text for a roller disco movie. I might add. The
BBC wrote a great piece in called Zanna do, rethinking

(15:47):
of misunderstood masterpiece, and it includes this great line referencing
citizen Kane. Cane's Zanna do is a costly nightmare with
plenty of ambition and high concept thinking, but an empty
void were the soul and care arcter should be, just
like the infamous rollers movie fantasia that shares its name amazing.
That's the same piece. To call the lead a wax work,

(16:10):
Jim Morrison, that wandered out amount of tussas to try
standard acting. So yeah, that that writer some bangs, in
the parlance of the time. UH silver moves over to
universal pictures at that point and he takes the project
with him and then when universal picks it up, they're like, okay,
we're gonna pick up your picture, but we're gonna rewrite it. Sorry.

(16:31):
So that's the first knife, that's the first incision to
this film, and there's something that comes up again and
again when you hear about the making this movie. It
was originally supposed to be a low budget, no star movie,
basically half a notch above a quickie exploitation flick, and
then all of a sudden Living Newton John, the biggest
female star in the world at that time because of Greece,

(16:52):
became interested and it just sort of took off and
they snagged gene Kelly, the icon of movie musicals, and
in this context just the bizarre stylistic mishmash makes a
lot more sense, because this whole movie just kind of
grew up and around the producers and they started throwing
everything they had into the mix because they had these stars, everything, apparently,

(17:13):
except the script. It's like the emperor has no clothes right.
Like there they get some point. You would have thought
there would have been an adult in the room to
look around and go like, let's play on this, guys,
what are we doing? And they're like no, we have
gene Kelly and Olivia Newton John, like just keeps, just
just roll, stretch, stretch vamp. We'll fix it in post Um.

(17:36):
I'm just really proud of this heading. I called it
much ado about xena Um. The film made it to
production without a proper script, which does show h Robert Greenwald,
who is the director. He got a forty page outline
and he says when I got the forty pages I thought, well,
this is strange. Maybe there's a plan here that I'm

(17:57):
not aware of. Maybe there's another version of the script someplace.
For sure the script will be improved. Unfortunately, that never happened.
Yet even the people intimately involved with this movie have
nothing nice to say about it. The outline that he
saw never turned into a real script. I believe Oliva
Newton John signed on after reading an even shorter outline.

(18:20):
I have read that her. The one she signed on
was twenty pages. So an outline of between pages was
all it took. Michael Beck was talking to USA Today
and he said half a dozen writers were hired and
fired and brought into so called fixed the script. So
it was difficult from an acting point of view, and

(18:40):
I was a fairly young actor. Then I would get
revisions that had nothing to do with the story I
thought I was filming and I would go well, what
am I supposed to be doing now, which is, to
be fair, kind of his stick. He's also like a
cardboard man and the warriors. He just looks really good
in the leather vest. Anyway, I just love that thing
out Robert Greenwald to direct this, because pretty much everything

(19:02):
else on his resume are these super left wing documentaries
where he like does expose s on the Koch Brothers
or Walmart or the war in Iraq and Rupert Murdoch.
He even did a movie with Vincent and Afrio as
the sixties radical Abby Hoffman called steal this movie. Um,
I have to wonder if Xanadu scarred him, just kind

(19:23):
of ruining Hollywood decadence forum for life, one of the
just top tier anecdotes from the making of this movie
which you've been unable to confirm, but I choose to
believe it. It was a rumor that was printed in
the nineteen seventy nine issue of Premier magazine and said
that Joel Silver the producer, locked writers in a room
at one point until they came up with pages. According

(19:46):
to IMDB, one writer who's locked in a closet for
three days and Silper said the son of a bitch
wouldn't deliver, so I locked him in. I love that.
It's one of those things I want to I don't
want to. Somebody says it's not true, I won't. I
just won't believe them. Um Gordon says, in going back
to Zannado, the documentary accompanying the film's release, that they

(20:09):
poached green rolled from a competing roller disco movie in
development to sandbag that production the cutthroat world of also
greenwold's dad was a Broadway choreographer named Michael Kidd Um,
but that's a big deal, like in the birdcage when

(20:29):
Robin Williams is doing the famous like Michael Martha Graham,
but keep it inside. Yeah, and uh, I guess he
was sadly going through divorce at the time. He told
the L A times in two thousand two that it
was a time in my own life when retreating into
a fantasy world was a highly desirable and necessary thing

(20:50):
for me. I will say that there's a making of
documentary for this. That a contemporaneous one, and it is
the Batan death march of behind the scenes documentary. Everyone
in here looks like the bizarre middle ground of being
like coked out of their Gourd and also desperately unhappy.

(21:12):
Those are not mutually exclusive things. Well, that's true, but
like there's like like Greenwald is like talking, he looks
like Marty Scorsese. He's like he's got this like rapid
fire like kind of pattern thing, but he also has
this like thousand yards stare or just like what have
I done that he must know. Yeah, it must have
been like oppenheimer watching the atom bomb for the first time,
like I have become death destroyer of worlds, careers, destroy careers. Yeah, Um, Oh, yeah.

(21:39):
So this is really funny because these two films are
kind of the two roads diverged in a wood Um Olivia.
Newton John turned down the village people musical biopic. Can't
stop the music to be in Xanadud so either. I
guess it's not diverged. I mean either. Yeah, I was
gonna say either one would have. Yeah, can't up. The

(22:00):
music was the brandchild of Grease producer Alan Carr so
that must have felt like a big betrayal for him.
I think it was. I think it soured their relationship
for a while. I read that she also apparently turned
down a bit, I would imagine, a bit, part in
the Blues Brothers. I don't know what she would have
been in that, but probably the Carrie Fisher role. Right,
like that's the only problem female role in there, which

(22:21):
is weird because they were looking at Carrie Fisher to
be sandy and Greece initially holy. But at least she
met her husband of eleven years, Matt Latanzi, on Zanna
do it was. Yeah, he was the guy who played
the young version of Gene Kelly's character, right. Yeah, and
he's super cheated on her with I think they're nanny. Yeah,

(22:43):
didn't end well. Uh. But, expounding on the film and
her autobiography, don't stop believing Olivia wrote. It did sound fresh,
entertaining and intriguing. I also like that Zanna do would
take audiences into a mesmerizing fantasy world, and I appreciated
that there was no violence in it. More than anything,
I identified with the message about dreams coming true. Ah,

(23:07):
sweet girl, she she's wonderful, just such an adorable hippie.
I guess when she and her husband Split, it was
supposedly because friends close to them sighted the disparity between
her spiritual interests and his more earthly ones. As a
key fast, which sounds like you have him, isn't for cheating.
But yeah, I guess she got tired of all the

(23:27):
show bizz stuff in the late eighties, probably as a
result of the stalker that we'll talk about later in
this episode. She moved to like Australia and like lived
on a farm and, yeah, she's so great. We're going
to take a quick break, but we'll be right back
with more, too much information in just a moment. Getting

(24:00):
Gene Kelly to appear in what would become his final film.
I think he plays like a I think he starts
as himself in something from the nineties, but this was,
for all intents and purposes, his last dramatic role. A
little more difficult. Greenwald at the INN making of I
was talking about, he says, number one, gene doesn't have
to work. Number two, yeah, number two. He's very particular.

(24:24):
So when we talked about doing a musical, it was
a very tough thing. Uh. The often repeated stipulation that
Kelly had upon accepting this role was that he wouldn't
touch one toe. You know, this is also not long
after he lost his wife, Gene Coyn in UH and

(24:44):
so he was a single father at this time and
the film was shooting close to his house, in the
time honored tradition of movie stars taking roles that are
geographically convenient for them, moving the mountain to him. Kenny Ortega,
one of the film's choreographers. Oh, I love this story. God,
this is a good one. I forgot where we were. UH,

(25:05):
Kenny Ortega, one of the film's cooreer. I blacked out.
One of the film's choreographers. Were called that. He got
a call after he had gotten the Gig to the
effect of you need to come down to the studio.
You're meeting Gene Kelly. He's not gonna Dance in the movie,
but he won't do the movie if he doesn't like you.
And when they met, and I guess Jean took him

(25:25):
into a side room, just him and Kenny Ortega, and
locked the door, leaving the producers outside, which I love.
So it's just man, the man, Gene Kelly and Kenny Ortega.
Jeane's gonna do a little soft shoe on your kneecaps,
I guess. Gene Kelly told him if I were to dance,
and I'm not saying I'm going to dance, but if
I were to dance, what would you have me do?

(25:48):
And Kenny says he said, well, why don't we just
start with some of these steps that you've already done,
which to me are classic and timeless, because I guess
Kenny Ortega grew up like watching, like hero, learning to
dance from the gene Kelly movies and Um, so he
starts get doing some of these old moves and Gene
Kelly says, oh, that's the old Nora Bays and that's

(26:08):
gaming his old movies. Yeah, he's like, that's not right.
It's this way. And they're just dancing together in a locked,
windowless room. Oh that's so. I mean, can you ever tell?
It must have been freed, because I watched some interview
with him and he was saying like yeah, I didn't
prep anything, like I didn't think Jeane is gonna Dance,
so like, I didn't. He was just going off his pure,
like childhood passion form and recalling these movies that inspired

(26:32):
him to want to do this. So that's so cool, man.
That's like if I got to like play Bass with
Paul McCartney on the fly and just remembered his early
Beatles songs, not because I knew I was going to
see him, but because that was the stuff that made
me want to make music. That's that's so cool. I
love that. This whole story is so cute. They were
going for like half an hour just dancing together, breaking

(26:52):
a sweat, and then suddenly gene Kelly stops, opens the door,
goes to the producers who were just waiting breathlessly in
the hall, and only announces I'll do the picture. I
love that. Yeah, Ortega was talking to NPR in. He
said Jean mentored me and when the movie was over
he continued to. He would invite me to his home
and we would look at his films together and he

(27:14):
would talk to me about how he designed choreography for
the camera, which was the greatest education I had received
up until that point. He even, I don't know if
he gave him or let him use, his viewfinder from
singing in the rain. That was like engraved with Jean's
name on it, and I guess they sat and watched
all of his old movies and broke them down together.
I just I love this so much. Yeah, or taking

(27:36):
is a big name as far as Hollywood choreography goes.
He got the GIG through the being a choreographer for
the San Francisco band the tubes, who will talk about
in a second. He also worked with share Bett Midler,
Ethel Merman and kiss, who I I no way this
is possible, but I imagine Ethel Merman and kiss in
a room together just gacked out of their boards dancing.

(28:01):
It's a huge deal. Yeah, he did the dance scenes
from dirty dancing and all the high school musical movies
and Hocus pocus and newses, and he also did the
choreography for the final Michael Jackson tour. That never happened.
This is it. What are the tubes doing here? I
guess we'll get to this, my friend, don't put the
cart ahead of it. Don't put the skate ahead of

(28:22):
the disco. Um. There were a few nons to Kelly's
career in Xanadu. The name of his character, Danny McGuire,
is directly lifted from the character that he plays in
the film cover girl, which, like down to Earth, also
starred reading Hayworth. Kelly, despite all of his protestations, ended
up choreographing his dance number with Newton John, and it's
basically a cover version of the routine he did with

(28:45):
Judy Garland in uh two. For me and my Gal
I think there were also elements of anchors away, which
is the one where he's dancing with a cartoon mouse.
I think he's a little of that too. He's a
retired widow. Word, dude. He's he's gonna just go back
into the well for you don't you're not getting. You're

(29:05):
not getting new gene for a roller disco picture. He
must have been pushing seventy. Yeah, he was pushing seventy.
He was like sixty eight years old, still still feather yeah, Um,
and this that may have been because the dance scene
was a last minute picture. The film was done and
then when they started like, I guess, putting the press

(29:26):
materials for it together. People were like, Oh, well, do
gene Kelly and Olivia Newton John Danced together, and they
were all they like all looked at each other and
we're like wait, we forgot. We got we got disco,
we got gene Kelly, we got Greek mythology, we got
we got this abandoned like theater in the middle of
L A. Oh, we forgot. We've got that. They were

(29:46):
supposed to dance together. Yeah, so Kelly's contract was complete
and he was dead set against returning, but he agreed
on the condition that he would get to direct this
scene and that it would be shot on a closed
set with only himself, Olivia Newton John, Kenny Ortega and
the technical crew, like, you know, the DP and sound

(30:06):
guy and so forth. Director Robert Greenwald was explicitly banned.
In interview, Gene Kelly gave in. He basically played it
like he didn't want to disappoint Olivia. He said I
had already decided, about a year and a half before
I did Zanderdo, that I was through with dancing. But
several journalists told me that Olivia Newton John kept saying
how sad she was she wouldn't get a chance to

(30:27):
dance with me, so I finally said, all right, throw
in a number, but I'm through with dancing. Uh. One
of the performers in this film tells the story of
the scene where Gene Kelly is the roller skate through
a line of jugglers tossing pins back and forth behind
him as he goes. And, as is often the case
in any situation where a bunch of people need to

(30:48):
perform something perfectly in order, someone would always screw it up.
So they, which is all these like twenty year old jugglers,
would be like sorry, Jean, can you get back on
your marks? Sorry. I just love imagining a surly gene
Kelly on roller skates surrounded by clowns juggling pins. It
was like a Proto breakdancing crew in this chain breakers,

(31:10):
something like that. I just loved him being like what
the hell are you kids doing? She tended to be robots,
and they're like take thirty six GEEN, get back on
the damn skates. I guess he was also really pissed
that they didn't show his legs to prove he was skating.
And the roller skating scenes they're all like tight shots
from his chest up, and he did all like he
was a really good skater. I mean skating since he

(31:30):
was a kid, and I don't know anytime that you
don't show gene Kelly's footwork seem like a big miss.
So maybe that's why Jeane Kelly banned the director from
the set. Um there's a similar scene where there's some
tight rope walkers walking and they were genuinely really far
off the ground, but they shot the scenes so that

(31:51):
you just like at the bottom of the frame you
see the edge of the rope. So like for all
you know, the rope is like six inches off the
ground and all the type rope walkers when they saw
the finished movie, we're like Wow, I wish we didn't
have to do that because I was really stressed about
made doing that eight feet off the ground or whatever
it was. Yeah, you know, this was his first theatrical

(32:15):
I think, Green Bald. Yeah. Well, again it gets back
to like this was supposed to be a nothing movie. Yeah,
he got Emmy noms for basically the movie Munich, but
he did a documentary about Munich, about the massacre. Uh,
that was seventy seven. So he went from doing a
movie about the Munich Olympics massacre to a roller skating
picture where Gene Kelly hated his guts. Holly Weird. Kelly

(32:40):
did not like Santa Do. Sadly, he wrote in his autobiography.
I have to admit it is a terrible movie, but
I must say it was fun working with Olivia. For
that reason alone I don't regret the experience. It's the
last time you'll see me dancing in the movie. So
in that respect I guess Santa do occupies a special
place in my career, but only in that respect. I
hastened to add. Oh, I love the fact that he

(33:04):
lived into so he had enough time to like absorb
how much of a disaster this was. Um Kenny Ortaga
worked mostly with Geene Kelly, but there was a choreographer
named Jerry Trent who worked mostly with Olivia. Um. Originally
he was hired on a five week assignment to just

(33:24):
teach her how to do some steps. He ended up
choreographing six of the film's numbers, including suddenly uh, the
number in which Olivia and John fell and broke her cock. Six,
she says. They put me in an ice donut in
between takes, which I presume she means like an inner
tube filled with ice that they would like let her

(33:44):
sit in. That's damn. That's a tragic mental image. Uh Yeah,
she refused a stunt double for the rest of the movie.
She's a good soldier and John Literally busted her ass
for this movie that got universally pans. It's just heartbreaking,
but at least she got to dance with Gene Kelly. Uh.

(34:05):
In a interview with the daily Harold Olivia said that
she understood what an honor of that was. She said
he was lovely. I still can't believe I danced with
Gene Kelly. How lucky I am that I've been in
movies where I've danced with two of the greatest dancers
of all time, Gene Kelly and John Travolta. I never
would have thought that because I had two left feet
growing up. AH, sweet girl. Um another heading. I'm proud of. Zeusicle.

(34:31):
The Musical Electric Light Orchestra came in and Jeff Lynn.
Is that? Are they an actual band, or is it
just like jobbers that came in to Support Jeff Lynn?
You would know this. I you know what I don't know?
I would imagine it's mostly just the Jeff Lynn show.
All Right, UH E. L O and Jeff Lynn came
in at the behest of Joel Silver. The band was

(34:53):
writing high on discovery, which debuted at number one on
the UK charts and stayed there for five weeks. Is
that Mr Blues Guy? I don't know about L O.
I think Mr BUSCO was earlier. I think that was
they did evil woman. Yeah, I mean my main thing
about Jeff Lynn was that not only was he in
the traveling wilberries, but he produced the closest thing we

(35:15):
ever had to a Beatles Reunion, when Paul Georgia Ringo
finished off two of John's Demos for the Beatles Anthology.
So that's I don't know why they didn't get George Martin.
It might of just I think George Martin was losing
his hearing at that time, so that might be why
they didn't get him. Probably too many cooks to Jeff
Lynn doesn't really seem like a team player. All due respect. Anyway,

(35:38):
he said he took this gig solely because of a
living Newton John. Well, yeah, I took it because I thought, well,
I like Olivia, she's Great. It would be nice to
meet her, but he seemed to regret it immediately. In
the aforementioned making of documentary there is an extremely awkward
clip of him sitting there with sunglasses and I think

(35:58):
the bucket had on. He's sitting next to Liva Newton,
John and the guy that wrote all of the songs
for her half of the soundtrack, her producer and Co writer,
John Ferrar, and the interviewer goes what do you think
of John to Jeff and he says I don't know,
I'm still trying to work it out, and all three
of them laugh like it's a scene from the office.

(36:20):
It's ridiculous. Um, there was all kinds of drama going
on behind the scenes with his stuff. Lynne was supposed
to contribute both songs and the film's score, and Greenwald
at some point, I guess, scrapped Lynn's score and asked
the composer named Barry Divorson, which sounds like a Battlestar
galactica character. That's amazing, to contribute one. Um. And then

(36:44):
I guess this whole thing was such a you know,
Babytown frolics that Lynn submitted demos and was like, okay,
I'm gonna Finish these later and production took the demos
and just cut all the scenes of the movie to
those demos. So rather than green lighting the songs based
on the Demos then waiting for the finished version of

(37:05):
these tracks to choreographed the movie too, they just did
it to the rough version of these songs. So then
they had to do the final version of all of
these songs for the soundtrack and it caused all these problems.
The Drummer, Bev Bevan. There's no way that's that guy's name.
That's that's a Typo. I think that is actually Bev Bevan.

(37:29):
God the English. Uh, he told Martin Kinch. When we
came to record it for real, we had to keep
in time with the demo and the demo was not
in time, so it was a bit of a nightmare
to actually record the thing. We were at music land
studios in Munich and it became a very frustrating experience
which should have taken a couple of hours took about

(37:49):
three or four days. Good Lord and Jeff Lynn's deal
mandated that if the film didn't include all of the
songs he submitted, they couldn't use any of them. So right, yeah,
I mean is that a normal thing? Like, I don't
even understand. Is that just to give you all the
power you must be? Yeah, UH, so production had to

(38:11):
make space for the song. Don't walk away at the
very last minute in order to not have to start
all over again. Jeff Lyn later told rolling stone I
wrote half the songs, though I've never seen the thing.
Referring to the movie. I don't suppose anyone else has either.
It was supposed to be really bad. I don't think
I'll ever see the movie after reading the reviews. And

(38:33):
he even blamed Zena do for stalling yellow's career, saying
that radio stations wouldn't play the band's follow up to discovery,
which again was a huge album, because of the taint
of that movie. UH, he said it's because of that film.
He's talking to the L A times rock radio programmers
were saying we don't want to touch them after that
bloody film. It's because the film was so bad and

(38:55):
it's a failure and we're associated with it. WHO's like? Who?
What are all the careers that this movie is tanks
living in John's for quite some time. It's Michael Beck,
Guy Yell O, movie again, Robert Greenwald, Robert Greenwald, trail
of blood, of moved on to left wing expose documentaries.

(39:18):
Oh my God, poor guy. Yeah, anyway, the band playing
that bizarre forties big band, eighties rock and roll scene,
San Francisco Proto punk band, the tubes, mentioned earlier, best
known for a hit called White punks on dope, which
I believe was like a sort of scathing critique of Um,

(39:40):
like white hipster culture on sort of the drug scene
in San Francisco. And they were brought on board by Ortega.
They were really a fascinating band. They were kind of like, Um,
really like multi media experience. They had choreoslography. Yeah, I
was just about say, yeah, they have like choreography, they
had visual aspects, they had coordinated costumes. Take it. Work

(40:00):
with him for like a dozen years. Uh. They have
never once performed this song live, at least as of
uh again, another person shoveling dirt on the coffin. UH,
Michael Cotton, who played keyboards for them. Totally Entertainment Weekly.
The film was a disaster. I wasn't surprised how bad
the reviews were because I mostly agreed it was a

(40:22):
train wreck, a big giant colorful train wreck. On the
flip side, the story behind the song suddenly is actually
kind of sweet. It's obsensively Sung in the movie by
Michael Beck, but that guy is, despite his resemblance that
Jim Morrison, is not a singer. So Olivia and John
brought in Sir Cliff Richard to sing the duet with

(40:43):
her as a way of paying it back. Cliff Richard was, uh,
he's a huge star in the UK and the fifties
he was kind of like positioned as England's answer to Elvis.
He was this kind of teen idol figure and then
he transitioned into all around adult entertainer mode and uh,
I don't even know what the American equivalent would be.

(41:04):
But Olivia and John got to start singing for him
on his British TV series in the sixties and she
later said after clip had been so wonderful to me
earlier in my career by introducing me to English audiences,
I had the opportunity to return the favor, which is wonderful,
and she wrote the center onto biography. So that was
sweet and you know, torture Genesis, but hard to argue

(41:25):
with results. Um. The soundtrack was a huge hit. It
was the fifth most popular soundtrack of the year. There's
some great tracks on it, magic and Zanna Dou we're
both number one hits in the US and the UK,
and in one of John Lennon's last interviews before his death,
he identified magic as one of his favorite songs of
the moment, which I'm sure it's just a dagger in

(41:49):
your heart. I'm gonna see you. The other one he
mentioned was L Ow Song. It was also from Santa Do.
What the it was really into the B fifty two
is too, because he thought that was like Yoko's sound

(42:11):
and suddenly, like the stuff that Yoko really wanted to do,
the kind of like you know, yodeling type sound, was
now becoming mainstream and that was one of the things
that made him feel like he was ready to come
back into the recording business after taking a bunch of
years off to raise his son. Yeah, Newsweek. Well, quite
a thing that. As you meditate on that, we'll be

(42:35):
right back with more, too much information, after these messages.
Santa do has to well, aside from Venice, has two
historic shooting locations from l a that are featured prominently

(42:58):
uh the shopping montage. The Gene Kelly outfit montage is
the FIORUCI Boutique in Beverly Hills. That Boutique was Beverly
Hills first movie theater, the beverly. I didn't know that.
You know, I don't know anything about fashion. UH, fiorgi
popularized camouflage prints in the eighties before Um inventing stretched

(43:19):
jeans and, I guess, with them, you know, skin tight
denim in the eighties. Anyway, that the theater of the
beverly became a clothing boutique in which was something of
a new wave Mecca in L A. Clouds no me
worked there along with Madonna's brother for Christopher, just Christopher.
It's just just Christopher. Are they still feuding? I hope so.

(43:43):
I don't know. Gives it? Ah, they were one of
the first places to sell Betsy Johnson stuff and Keith
herring's art, and Andy Warhol Launched Interview magazine with a
party there. Eventually it became a bank before and the
well before it was wiped off the face of the
earth altogether for a luxury hotel, because that is Los Angeles.

(44:06):
That all over the world. Number that they shot there
is great. That song whips. I love that song. I
remember one of the only times I ever like tried
the roller skate of my adult life. It was at
one of the track Roller Disco Nights and the first song,
as I'm out there like bandby on the ice trying
to move, was that song. And they're all these fantastically
dressed people in like Shimmery gold, Lamy spandex flying past

(44:32):
me as I'm like holding on for dear life to
the wall, and that song was playing. I love that
song so much. Do you know what the singer Brenda Lee,
you know, of rocking around the Christmas tree and, I'm sorry, fame?
She was a cameo in that musical number that they
shot there. I guess she was just at the studio
that they had to tape something else and walked by.
Did it also tank her career? I think she. Well,

(44:55):
I name a song she did after this. As we
enngtioned earlier, the Hobo Sanctuary, the Pan Pacific Auditorium, all
the exterior shots of Zanna do, what beautiful, beautiful building,
Um but incredible. Notably, only exterior shots of that are

(45:15):
are used. In fact, Um Sonny says at one point
what a dump and he also says they used to
hold wrestling matches here, and they did. Uh. The Pan
Pacific Auditorium was built by promoters named Philip and Cliff Henderson,
the latter of whom's wikipedia page delightfully notes that he
was a member of the quiet birdman, a male only

(45:39):
aviators social club. Draw your own conclusions, folks. The building
was designed by Los Angeles Architects Wordman and Beckett, who
I was unable to find anything else from. Um, I
don't know, but it was historically important. It was an
early example of the streamline darn style, which was architectural nerds,

(46:04):
I think, getting their first shout out. No, we did
the whole deep dive on the we did the building
in Roral Tenem bombs, I was gonna say the first
architecture moment in t m I. Anyway, the streamline mdern
style was in the thirties. America was trying to get
back at Europe, as we always are for art deco,
so this was our rejoinder to art deco. Yeah, Disney

(46:26):
heads will know the Pan Pacific Auditorium as the entrance
to the MGM Theme Park. Disney modeled like the whole
ticket turnstyle area after this. It's very distinctive looking building. Yeah,
and the auditorium was open. It was L A's main
indoor venue for decades. A lot of names passed through there.
The Ice Capades, the Harlem Globe Trotters, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon,

(46:49):
Elvis Pressley. Sadly, The Los Angeles Convention Center opened in
one which was the death knell of the Pan Pacific Auditorium.
It closed in two UH, and quit. They just did
nothing with it. They literally just left it open and
people were squatting in there and, you know, lighting fires.

(47:12):
And Anyway, there's an l a district supervisor who wanted
to have the city by the property from the current
owner and turned it into a park and l a
was like no, so they just shoddily padlocked it and
the unhoused population of l a moved in and uh,
it just kept catching on fire. Basically nature took its course. Um,

(47:36):
there were some fourth of July fireworks that went awry
and damaged part of the building and then a series
of smaller fires charred a lot of it and then
finally in nine, almost a decade after it appeared in
Santa Do, a fire allegedly set by a man living
in the building, burned out of control and engulfed the
entire thing. The wooden structure went up in what the

(47:58):
papers dubbed a spectacular fire that could be seen all
throughout the L A basin. Uh. The man was arrested
but released for lack of evidence, and thus ends the
sad story of the Pan Pacific Auditorium. Perhaps because of
all of what we just mentioned, city officials would not
grant the filmmaker's permission to shoot inside. Like do not

(48:21):
go in there, uh, and instead a costly set with
mirrored walls, rising floors and waterfalls was built on stage
four at Hollywood general studios to replicate the Interior. According
to a November article in international photographer, that was a
two story, hundred and sixty three by ninety foot set.

(48:44):
At the time it was the largest ever designed by
a guy named John Corso, who did the sets where
coal miner's daughter Storry, my beloved leave on helm. They
started making that in September nine, continued for three months,
costum million dollars, and that finale that you mentioned earlier

(49:05):
took two weeks to film featured two hundred and thirty
seven performers, including the aforementioned tightrope walkers, jugglers, roller skaters
and dancers. Uh, moving right along. The extremely visual effects
for this film. Uh, we're handled by she got named

(49:27):
Richard Greenberg. But the bigger vfx story in the film
is Don Louth. As we mentioned earlier, the animated sequence
for don't walk away was added to the film at
the last minute because Jeff Lynn was being a big
wet asked baby and refused to allow any of his
songs to appear unless all of the songs that he
wrote for the film appear. So the simplest and quickest

(49:49):
solution was to insert an animated sequence. Does Not seem
like the quickest story. Well, you know what's really interesting
to me about this is this is right around the
time that photoscoping was just coming into food and you
can actually see one of the earliest examples of rotoscoping
is Um, of all things, that Tom wait's music video. Yeah,
if you looked this up, rotoscoping, for the for non dorks,

(50:12):
is when you Um, you actually paint or animate directly
over the film cells. As I repeat constantly and without prompting,
he was the technology utilized by Martin Scorsese in the
last waltz to paint out Neil Young's visible coke booger.
Uh that appears all throughout, helpless and an uncredited cameo,

(50:33):
the coke booger Um. Anyway. Yeah, I don't know why
they didn't rotoscope it, but anyway, so bluth had. I
love this. Don bluth retired from his first job at
Disney to work on a Church of Latter Day Saints
Mission in Argentina for two years. Anyway, he's at Disney icon.

(50:54):
He worked with the what do they call him? The
nine old men, the nine great old men or whatever,
like the big I've never heard that. I think they
call him the grand old man or something like that.
It's like the first crew of like Disney animators. He
worked on Robin Hood, we need, the Pooh and tiger,
to the rescuers, Pete, Dragon, Fox and the Hound. And
then he resigned from Disney in ninety nine, at forty two,

(51:17):
to start his own animation studio and, crucially, took ten
other Disney people with him, which did not endear him
to Disney. But he was hard up for work when
he's launching his new company, so he took on a
job working the ZANTI due production wind up being his
first mainstream work post Disney. DOUB BLUTH was given twelve

(51:38):
weeks to complete two minutes and seven seconds of full
animation totaling three thousand images. That is for non animation
dorks as not a lot of time. But Blues Animation
Studio was also two months into their first animated feature
in two is the secret of Nim so bluth did

(51:58):
much of the work himself. Is All of his employees
were busy working on their actual movie. And in a
two thousand eight documentary, Don Bluth recalled his conversation with someone,
we assume Joel Silver, some producer working for Zanna. Do
this is Dun blue saying I told him we were
really busy and I couldn't do it. He said, yeah,

(52:18):
you can, and I'll pay you this much money and
more money whatever. Just do it. Don Blue is, uh,
just a gem. All of his interviews are hilarious. Asked
about his work on the film at one point later
in the eighties, he told the interviewer no one could
possibly be interested in hearing anything about that film. That's amazing. Um, yeah, man,

(52:41):
I mean this is just spectacularly bad. Timing with this movie,
greenlit in the late Seventies. Production, as we mentioned, once
it got Olivia and Geane on and the whole thing
sort of snowball really straddled the time period during which
America turned on disco. It was released in August of

(53:02):
eighty and the infamous disco demolition night at Chicago's Comiskey Park, which, again,
for those of you who are not for those of
you who have had sex um, that is when they
trucked like a boatload of disco records onto the field
and ran them over with a steamroller. Didn't it like
turn into like a mini riot? People are just like

(53:23):
in the field, like smoke bombs and stuff. I think. Yeah.
So that was in July sevente so a year earlier. Meanwhile,
can't stop the music which started the village people and,
as you remember, was the film that a living in
John turned down in favor of Santa due, had come
out in June, two months earlier, and flopped. which all

(53:45):
of which means the writing was on the wall for
this movie even before it came out. And it's bizarre,
considering what happened with this movie, there's so much promotional
material around this the original press packets are like huge
laugh ish her Britz, who is like the sort of
arty porn photographer, and this documentary I just mentioned. So

(54:06):
there's all of this promotional material finning, there's this big
press push and the retail tie ins. They made clothes
tied to it. But Um, they dropped in August, which
was like a dumping ground at that point, and only
opened it in two hundred theaters, which is, you know, nothing. Um,
the other films that opened against were raised, the titanic, uh,

(54:28):
smokey and the bandit too, and Peter Seller's last movie,
the fiendish plot of Dr Fu Manchu. These are all
enormous box office bombs, and all deservedly so. They're all
terrible movies. Yeah, they also, I guess, canceled press screenings
for this. I guess after the first few the writing was,
as you said, it's kind of on the wall like, Oh,

(54:50):
this isn't Kinda go well, let's let's let's tamp it
down a little bit. Well, the reviews, Oh boy, just
the whole sidebar and reviews variety did not mince words,
calling it truly stupendously bad. Roger Ebert said it was
mushy and limp, and perhaps the most famous review was esquires,

(55:10):
which equipped, in a word, Zenna don't that's good, that's
medium funny. That's not bad funny. There was another that
said where else can you have a living Newton John
as a roller skating light bulb with rags around their ankles?
That's pretty good. One of the studio executives called the director,
Robert Greenwald, and said they love it in St Louis.

(55:31):
What he didn't say was that they hated it everywhere else.
It's playing well in Peoria. I guess the film made
its money bag. I mean, yeah, well, you know they
always lie about this, Greenwald said. He told E W
is made between nine and thirteen million. It's a budget
and gross twenty two million domestically, but they never include

(55:53):
marketing and that. So I assume it was closer to
twenty mile all told. But you know, still made its
money bag. At least didn't lose money. But now we
come to one of the more lasting legacies of the film,
the Golden Raspberry Awards, an awards show dedicated to bad movies,
colloquially known as the RAZZIES. Hollywood publicist by the name

(56:16):
John J B Wilson, whose job involved cutting trailers for movies,
saw a ninety nine these two movies, man, they just
keep coming up together. UH, saw a nine nine cent
double feature of the aforementioned village people musical biopic can't
stop the music, and Zanna do. And UH. That year
he turned his annual Academy Awards potluck dinner into an

(56:38):
informal ballot party for the worst films of the year.
He hated both those movies so much it was double feature.
He tried to get his money back and failed. Apex Petty,
can't stop the music one. Incidentally, Zanna do couldn't even
win at the RAZZIES and Brookshields. In the a gross

(57:01):
and weird teenager like nature smut movie the Blue Lagoon,
she beat Olivia and John for worst actress, directed by
the director of Greece, Randall Kleiser. I believe I have
a bitch. By the fourth annual Golden Raspberry Awards, CNN
and other major wire services were covering this and Wilson

(57:23):
had his, arguably his bigger stroke of genius than even
having the awards show period, because he scheduled them the
night before the Oscars, because he reasoned that you couldn't
get any coverage the night of the Oscars, but the
night before the Oscars all the journalists and personnel would
be in town and, in theory, have nothing better to do.

(57:44):
And they've become kind of a beloved industry joke. I
mean the big famous examples. Halle Berry accepting her Razzie
for catwoman with her Oscar for monsters ball in her
other hand. Um, a number of people have scepted their
razzies as a kind of like, sort of you. You You,
Um friend of the pod Alan Mankin won for one

(58:07):
of his songs from news ees and, uh, the same
weekend he won two Oscars for Aladdin and he then
made a show of formerly accepting his razzie like almost
thirty years later. News is what's wrong with newsies? This
is gonna soundstrack, Buddy. You know what people think of

(58:28):
newsi loves newsies. Are you talking about? People love Newsies,
not critically, people love it. Uh. Paul Verhoeven, I think,
was one of the first people to accept his for
worst picture and worst director for show girls classic. He

(58:51):
was given two standing ovations for his accept his speech,
in which he said he had been driven out of
the Netherlands for being, quote, sick and perverted and disgusting.
Ben Affleck was surprised with his during a two thousand
four appearance and Larry King Live, and he proceeded to

(59:11):
rip the thing apart with his bare hands, commenting on
how cheap it was by it. I didn't know he's
surprised by it. I spring that on him. Oh, Larry
Larry King, that is cold. Got Your Journalism, Baby. Um
The resis, I guess, somehow wound up with their hands
back on the shredded trophy and uh, auctioned in onto ebay.

(59:37):
They've made a big log line about how these statues
only cost them like four ninety five to put together,
and the thing fetched nearly a grand at onto Ebay,
and they put the proceeds towards renting las famed Ivar
Theater for next year's Resi awards. I mean now, I
I want a piece of that. Now. Let's see, let's

(59:57):
see you read this next part. I'll Google, I'll see
what Sonny Bay Zanta Dow was also honored, slash disgraced
at the now defunct stinkers movie awards for quote, least
special special effects. And Yeah, these sets are literally made
out of cardboard in some cases. And, as one retrospective

(01:00:17):
critic noted, this was the year that the empire strikes
back was made, so it wasn't a case of like
lacking technology. I mean Zanta do, looking back at the
trail of bodies in its way, has really been held
responsible for killing off live action musicals for the next
two decades, really, until Malone Rouge in two thousand one.

(01:00:38):
The film did essentially kill off both Michael Beck and
Olivia Newton John's film careers. Hers limped along for longer
than he did. It was really her three much bally
hood reunion with John Travolta, a little flop of a
picture called two of a kind. Do you know too?
Of A kind Jordan's. But you do know is that

(01:01:02):
the baby movie where they talk. Let's look, he's talking. Oh,
that's luck, he's talking now. Hell is two of a kind,
romantic fantasy, crime, comedy drama film. Jesus Christ, that's too
many hyphens. Travolta plays a cash strapped inventor, while Newton
John Plays the bank teller whom he attempts to rob.

(01:01:22):
They must come to show compassion for one another in
order to delay God's judgment upon the Earth. What Co
starring Scatman crumblers as an angel God voiced by Gene Hackman,
the devil voiced by Oliver Reed. What the is this movie? Wow,

(01:01:46):
Janet Maslin of New York Times asked. Can It really
been that difficult to find a passable screen vehicle for
John Travolta in Olivia? Newton Shawn, any old romantic fluff
should have sufficed, and yet something as horrible as two
of a kind has been yeller made for its stars.
The results were so disastrous that absolutely no one has
shown off to good advantage, with the possible exception of

(01:02:07):
the hairdressers involved. Ah Wow, I I kind of want
to watch this. Um Olivia did not need the work, though,
because physical came out and sort of washed the taste
of Xanadu out of the public's mouth. Michael Beck apparently

(01:02:28):
rebounded into voice over work, including audiobook narration. You can
hear him as the Voice of Bill Clinton's autobiography. That's
the thing you're you're interested in. Okay, yeah, alright, you, yeah.
Is this the darkest this show has gotten? Oh No,

(01:02:49):
but it's up there. The Vietnam Ghost thing. Yeah, that
was high on the list. Alright, alright, this is maybe
this isn't. This is just pressed the skip thirty seconds
thing if you don't want to hear some really um
a man named Michael Owen Perry was living in a
trailer behind his parents house in Louisiana after escaping a

(01:03:09):
mental institution in the early eighties and after watching Xanadu,
he came to the conclusion that live in Newton John
was actually a Greek goddess and communicating with him through
her eyes on camera. That like she was sending a
messages through just eye movements. That's that freaks me out.
She doesnt have beautiful eyes. Yes, he wrote her multiple letters,

(01:03:31):
one of which read, in part I heard voices, and
the voices said to me that you were a muse
and trapped under Lake Arthur. Two, he sent her a
package that included multiple photographs of her, press photographs he
wasn't actually physically near her, one of which had the
eyes scratched out for some reason. That freaks me out
the most. I really don't mean that. I maybe Google this,

(01:03:55):
but I think that is a pretty common like parinoid
schizophrenic behavior, delusion like focusing it on the eyes. Um,
go ahead, take take it away Jordan's. In July three,
Perry went on a shooting spree, killing two of his cousins,
a two year old nephew and his parents, before heading

(01:04:16):
to Washington d C. Living Newton John's name was included
on a list found at his parents House that also
included Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. For some reason. Uh,
this man, Perry, was arrested in Washington D C, where
they believe he traveled in order to assassinate Sandra Day O'Connor.

(01:04:37):
I assume the whole thing scared of Living Newton John
Enough that she left the country. Yeah, uh, this is
I mean, I don't like dwelling on this, but it
is fascinating. His case actually became a legal precedent in
prisoners rights. He was convicted and sentenced to death, but
the trial court found that his competence to be executed

(01:04:57):
depended on his being medicated, essentially being forced to take
his medication, which I think was how doll really strong antipsychotics,
and that he had to be medicated in order to
be mentally competent enough to be executed. And this was
overturned and is now like a widely cited case. That
because mental health medication is not, like, I guess, not

(01:05:21):
covered under the some of the definitions of the hippocratic
oath in terms of prisoner rights. You can't force someone
to take medication to make them be mentally competent enough
to be executed. And then again this guy's name comes
up in because apparently in Angola prison, which is like
one of the famously worst prisons in the country, he

(01:05:43):
sued the state of Louisiana with a few other prisoners,
alleging that they had been in long term solitary confinement,
in his case for over twenty years. Ah, that's a
long damn time to be in whatever. Man, let's not
get an of the politics. It's just wild that Zanna
do has took us here multiple yeah, exactly, the road

(01:06:08):
to hell is paved with Santa Do. In Happier News, uh,
Zanta Dou has gone on to become a cult hit,
particularly within the gay community. Um Douglas Carter Bean, who
wrote the Broadway musical based on the film, told E
W in a quote I will take to my grave.
Gay Men, Never Missing Joel Silver Film. He's the Judy
Garland of our generation. U Um. The film's relatively diverse casting,

(01:06:34):
albeit in the background and in non speaking roles, was
embraced by young fans who saw themselves in it, and
that's a legion of fans Zanna dudes, Zannah dames and
Muse heads were born. Uh. There's rocky horror and like
sing along of screenings. That happened to this. There was
a stage parody of this film called Zanna do live

(01:06:56):
that ran in Los Angeles in two thousand one. Uh.
The director of that was a woman named Annie Dorson,
who called this the film The queerest movie that's not
actually about being gay. And then an assistant at paramount
by the name of Robert Aaron's saw that production and
was sufficiently moved to quit his job and set off

(01:07:18):
on what would become a five year quest to adapt
Zanna do as a musical. This was not easy. Locking
down the rights alone took several years because there were
multiple people who owned the film, as was getting the
thing funded and cast. He told entertainment weekly as soon
as you say Zanna do, they either get it right
away or they looked down on you and then they

(01:07:39):
call the police. Being wrote one of my favorite cult
movies too. Wong Foo. Thanks for everything, Comma Julie Newmar AH.
He passed quickly, many times, in his words, before this
Guy Arn promised him complete creative control. He kept the
big musical numbers and the basic plot, but jettison almost

(01:08:00):
everything else, saying it has a great score but the
dialogue is bad and the plotting is abandoned. The first
time I saw it I thought that they had misplaced
a real my version has quaint little additions, like character development.
So caddy, there are actually just five lines from the
movie that are in the play. The production opened in

(01:08:22):
July two seven. It ran for a little over a year,
five or thirteen performances, including a guest run with Whoopie
Goldberg as a muse. It was nominated for four tonys,
but it wouldn't be a Zanta do adaptation if it
didn't lose all four, which it which it did. That's
thirteen pages on Zanta tube. There's a great quote from

(01:08:44):
this L A times article. Two thousand to this guy,
Ken Anderson, who was so inspired by a Zantity to
quit film school and become a dance and fitness instructor
in Santa Monica, he told the paper. I remember there
was this feeling that the eighties were going to be
very different from the seventies. Zanna Dou had the feeling

(01:09:04):
that they were going to be all these different races
and generations and music's mixing together and that it was
going to be something different. And now it seems very naive,
but there really was something euphoric about it. I love
this guy. He, in a documentary about Zanna Dowee, talks
about how this film changed the course of his life
and he waxed his poetic about it in this really

(01:09:25):
beautiful way. And then he adds, I wish it was
a more profound film that did that for me. Hey, buddy,
I get it. Big Trouble, little China is one of
my favorites. Like, come on, I don't know what this
means on a spiritual level, but Living Newton John passed
away on the forty two anniversary of Zannadu's release, on

(01:09:46):
August eight. Um, Jamie can get anumerologist in here. She's
roller dancing with Gene Kelly. Now, yeah, well said, well folks, yeah,

(01:10:06):
but I actually was touched by that. You got me
to you got me to break. Uh, this has been
too much information. Ah, I'm Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan runtug.
We'll catch you next time on Olivia, Newton John. Week
too much information. Was a production of I heart radio.

(01:10:26):
The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run talk.
The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched,
written and hosted by Jordan Runtalg and Alex Hegel, with
original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost funk orchestra.
If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
us a review. For more podcasts and I heart radio,
visit the I heart radio APP apple podcast or wherever

(01:10:48):
you listen to your favorite shows.