November 21, 2025 • 55 mins
We're rewinding back to one of my favorite conversations from December 2023 — and it’s absolutely worth a replay. This episode features my chat with Eric Appel: director, co-writer, and the wonderfully chaotic genius behind WEIRD: The Al Yankovic Story.
Eric is every bit as sharp, kind, and hilarious as you'd hope, and we get into all things WEIRD — plus a few stories about the very real, very nice guys who helped bring the film to life.
I won’t spoil anything else… just hit play and enjoy the ride.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/beer-d-al-podcast--5439475/support.
Eric is every bit as sharp, kind, and hilarious as you'd hope, and we get into all things WEIRD — plus a few stories about the very real, very nice guys who helped bring the film to life.
I won’t spoil anything else… just hit play and enjoy the ride.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/beer-d-al-podcast--5439475/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hello friends, this is a very special episode of the
beard Out podcast. Because why why what's so special about it? Well,
I've got Eric Appel on the show. That's right, the
man who directed and blessed the world with Weird, the
Al Yankovic story that was streaming exclusively on Roku. Now
(00:58):
you know, you can preorder yourself a Blu ray a DVD,
or you can just like buy yourself a digital copy.
It's delightful. We He was so kind, sat down with me,
had a lovely conversation about Weird, Al, about the movie
and just about uh, you know, being cool people. I
(01:19):
think I'm gonna count myself among the cool people. Anyhow,
on the flip side of these, uh these messages you're
gonna hear is our conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I really hope you enjoy it. Well, you have my
favorite flavor of Lacroix.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Also, this is, in my opinion, the only flavor of
Lacroi there is.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I concur I concur.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, I have a generic one at the moment, but
it is still the great fruit flavor.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Have you had? Have you had coconut? That's a bad one.
I have not, or I should I should have? That
was loaded? I should have said, what's your opinion on
the coke?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Oh, no, it's a bad one. I'm sure I haven't
tried it because it's gonna have to be mad.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yeah, it tastes like it tastes like what you'd think
suntan lotion tastes like that's or like you know, sunscreen.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Because I'm not a fan of the lemon Cello or
the key Lime.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I like regular Line, but not key Lime.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Really see the lemon Cello. I was like very into,
in fact, and this relates to Weird. That was like
my drink of joints when shooting Weird, And my assistant
like had the catering people buy cases of the lemon
Cello and then hot stash them for me, so like
she would always like, that's what I would always have
(02:44):
at my at my desk. That's great at my desk
at the monitor.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
It's just it just tastes perfume.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Me.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
To me, I like like a dryer citrus. But I
get it. I understand my mom likes that one a lot.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yeah, but I bailed on it. I had too much
of it and then I like burned myself out.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
You flamed out on the lemon cellow I did.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
I did well.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Thank you for talking to me on here the beard
Out podcast where talking about sparkling water, not beer like
we usually do here.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
But that's okay, that's okay.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
So first of all, you know, I I have watched
the movie Weird the Yank of Victoria a whole bunch
of times.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Awesome.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I'm one of those.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
I'm just gonna admit what I did the day it
came out here in the US.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I made my roku think I lived in Europe.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Why wait?
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Why because it debuted at midnight?
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Oh yeah, So I had my roku thinking I was
like as far as far east as like a.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Cover, Yeah, just the UK, I guess I was.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I was in like Hungary or something.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Oh wow, okay, yeah, so I got to I got
to watch it at like seven pm or something.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
That's awesome. Ye, thank you for doing it.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yes absolutely, I.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Was like, I can't I can't wait, and if I yeah,
I had to work the next day.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
And it was just I needed to see it as
soon as I could.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
So that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, And you know, I spent a lot of time
before Weird came out fielding a bunch of questions from
people like is this going to be a real biopic?
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Like what's this going to be about? What are you
expecting from it?
Speaker 1 (04:24):
And people it was a weird mental to carry for
the amount of time that we knew about it, because
people were like, Lauren, your opinion means something on this.
So the first like real question that I have for
you is how many people got bamboozled thinking that this
was real?
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Oh? Man? I mean I I don't have an exact number, obviously,
but quite a few people, like a surprising amount of people,
I would I got obsessed with watching trailer reaction video
when our trailer came out, because this is the first
(05:02):
thing that I made that like, uh, you know, this
is the first thing I've done that made a splash
like this, and and had you know, there were people
posting their takes on what they thought it was going
to be, and a ton of these trailer reaction videos
on YouTube, you know, where people film themselves watching watching
(05:23):
the trailer and reacting to it and then discussing it
for like ten minutes afterwards, and most of those when
the trailer ended, these people still weren't sure, you know,
they were like, is that it's uh? Man? Was he
really with Date Madonna. Like that was one of I
think the week after the trailer debuted, if you started
(05:45):
typing Al's name into Google, it would auto fill with
like did weird? If you type did weird Al? Did
weird Olt? Date Madonna would like auto fill so weird?
People thought that was real. There was one I can't
remember the guy that was like one reaction video in particular,
this guy's mind was just like so blown watching the
(06:06):
trailer and he was like, I can't believe, like this
is real. He said it like five times during the
reaction He goes, this is real. Like, I mean, that's
what the trick is, you know, I guess something like
Dewey Cox, Like it's a fake guy. It's a fake
biopic about a fake guy. So like you know that
it's fake. The fact that this is about a real person,
(06:28):
even though it is weird Al. Yeah, you know you
it just tricked people into thinking that it was actually
a straight biopick.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
And that's that Actually that blew my mind so much,
you know, especially within the the weird Al community. I
was like, y'all, did you not see the complete Al
like that? I'm like, there's there's precedence for this, you know,
like this we live in a world where a mockumentary
about his life exists, do you expect a real biopic?
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Like no, oh no.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
No, but you did lead me to You know, my
brother and I are big fans of walk Hart.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
You know, the whole Dewey Cox thing.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
I have not seen. I've never seen Walkhard, And you
know what, I.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Think that's probably good for you doing this, because I
think so one of the things that scared is not
the right word, but one of the things that was like,
how walk hard is this going to be?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Like?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
How do you avoid walk harding this?
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Now?
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I just made walk hard a verb, right, you know, Like,
so I think you you literally answered my question without
because you'd never seen it, And I was like, how
did you avoid those same story beats?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Was like you just don't didn't know what they were?
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah, I didn't know what they were. Like, I'd only
seen a couple of clips from Walkhart on YouTube, and
I don't know how I missed it, Like it, I
don't know why I never saw Walkhard. I love everyone
in it and everyone involved. For some reason, I just yeah,
I just I us missed that one. I think I
was working at Funnier Die at the time, which was like,
(08:04):
I mean we were like related to Judd APPETI and
uh yeah, for for whatever reason, I just didn't end
up seeing it. I think it it landed in that
period of time where like parody movies weren't really working,
you know, they weren't what they used to be. It
was in the I think it was around the same
(08:26):
time that like Scary Movie three came out. Yeah, they
were trying to maybe bring back parody movies, but enough
time hadn't passed. Like I grew up with the Naked
Gun movies, like that's when I was a kid or
a teenager, and the hot Shots movies like that was
those were mine, you know, like around the same time
(08:48):
that I started really getting into weird al was like
when those you know, when those early Naked Gun two
and a half were out, and yeah, then like the
Scary movies came out. It just feels like parodies kind
of died. And then like Date Movie and Disaster Movie
and like all of the epic movie and it seemed
(09:10):
like the parody movies were more about just referencing as
many pop culture things as you could. When like the
classic Sucker Brothers stuff. I mean, it was just it
was like mad magazine style jokes. It was just like
how many silly, goofy things can we put in here?
And everyone's playing it really straight. And the joke of
all of those movies was like people aren't reacting to
(09:33):
the silly thing that's happening, you know, like Leslie Nielsen
crashes his car in every establishing shot in The Naked Gun,
and it's just never commented on. Where I feel like
that wave of like epic movie and it it was
all about commenting on the funny things. And you know,
like Borat was like all of a sudden, Borat comes
(09:55):
walking in in the bathing suit, and it was like
cheap jokes, cheap just referencey jokes. And and I think
maybe that's it. Like Walk Hard came out right around
the same time, and even though I knew it wasn't
going to be that, it felt like it was more
of a direct parody of like Walk the Line, just
(10:17):
based on the trailers and the artwork, and it just
felt like a Walk the Line parody. And for whatever reason,
I think I wasn't interested in.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Seeing that at the time, you know, And that is
totally fair.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And I love the picture that you painted of kind
of what parody movies were and what they became, and
your your stock references to parody movies is so clear.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
In weird like when.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
My husband and I were watching it for the for
the first time, we were like this, it's the tone
was so correct, like We're like this, this is the parody.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
I mean, I'm like your like ideal audience also, but you.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Know, thank you. You know, it's it's funny too, Like
we we also didn't want to go it kind of
lives somewhere in between a parody movie that doesn't take
itself seriously at all, and I don't want to just
say like a good movie or like a real movie
that cares a lot about the story and the emotional beats.
(11:16):
And I think that although we do have like visual
gags and we have like really silly stuff that happens,
we tried to avoid very deliberately, tried to avoid making
it feel like a naked gun movie or like Airplane,
where there were jokes that would break the reality. Because
what was very important to us was like our way
(11:41):
of parodying in this movie was to like lean really
hard into the emotional beats of the story, but like
bizarro absurd versions of the emotional beats, like can we
actually tell a story here, and can we create a
character that the audience really cares about? And can we
(12:04):
sustain an entire movie with this and have people like,
you know, how's it going to end and kind of
falling in love with this character, wanting to see him
reunite with his father and succeed at the end, and
can we do that by you know, leaning really hard
into all these like emotional story beats and and just
(12:26):
making those kind of as as silly as possible, but
like that they still work. If that makes any sense.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
It makes complete sense, because that's that's kind of weird
Al's career, you know, just from from my perspective anyway,
is that the emotional beats are there, no matter how ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
What he's doing is.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
You know, like what pops into my head immediately is
the song Melanie from even Worse. It's like you feel
the emotion in that song, but it's also totally absurd
and just out there. And I think that's why he
as a person has been able to make the connections
that he's made.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
And I think there's like it's not even a dotted line.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
There's a straight line you know between what he does
and what happens in the movie.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
That's really funny. Yeah, And it's like his brand of comedy.
Although his you know, his music videos were full of
like silly naked gun style, mad magazine gags, there's also
like an aspect to his comedy that is about pushing
emotion really far, like getting really angry, like you know,
he likes cartoonish violence and and you know almost like
(13:34):
techs avery Looney Tunes esque, you know, just like beating
people up. You know, that's why we when when Toby
huss is beating Tom lennenough. You know, it's like that
feels like it's, uh, you know something that you've seen
pop up in Al's comedy throughout his career of just
even in the complete Al, I think there's like, yeah,
(13:56):
someone getting tossed around like a rag doll or something.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Always it's always there.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
I've said so many times that there's, uh, there's basically
two types of weird Al songs in that vein, right.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
There's the songs about like really minute stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
That it takes itself very very seriously, like no, don't
wear those shoes or you know one of those days
where like uh oh.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
They're dropping the bomb, like oops, you know, it's just Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
You know, it's either the reaction doesn't relate to the
thing that's happening, you know, right.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Right, Yeah, it's it's yeah, it's really funny, like the
movie just kind of being a I mean, Al, we
wrote it together, so obviously it's weird to like, ma
do a tribute to yourself, but it's kind of a
tribute to like Al's brand of comedy, Like every sort
of avenue that it took, you know, went down that
(14:50):
the movie touches on it at some point.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
That's that's that's so incredibly cool. And you know, when.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
When this was was happening again, people kept coming up
to me because they know the weird Al movie being
uajef right, So, you know, having written this with him
and then he you know, wrote that you know in yeah,
almost forty years ago, which.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Is I don't like that.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
So do you think like having worked with him on this,
do you think that like his experience with that kind
of like informed or affected the way that he worked
on this, because like UA Jeff didn't like hit. How
you know he wanted it to, but it it was.
It was a slow crescendo.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Yeah, it hit for me. I saw it the theater.
Yeah yeah. I made my grandpa take me to see
theater when I was like what nine years old? He
was I think he fell asleep. What is this? What
am I watching? Yeah? But uh yeah, you know, I
like early on in development, I asked Alison, you know,
(15:57):
I was asking him questions about how UHF got made,
the development process and all that, And it feels similar
in the sense that he was, you know, he was
really they were left alone when they made UHF. He
just got to do what he wanted, you know, And
that was similar to this. You know, we wrote the
(16:19):
script on spec. We just wrote it. We we came
up with like a pitch for the movie. We pitched
it all over town. Everyone passed on it, which which
shocked us. Like we spent months working on this pitch,
which I mean it's basically just walking through the plot
of the movie without you know, kind of painting broad strokes,
(16:41):
touching on some of the jokes. The Escobar stuff was
in the pitch, like yeah, getting killed at the end,
like it's all you know, it was all it was
all in the pitch and we were like, oh man,
it's gonna be a bidding war for this movie. It's
such a no brainer. We're gonna go out there, it's
gonna be great. And everyone reject it. So we were like, Okay,
(17:05):
let's maybe let's just write the script. Let's write the
script and then we'll try to get the script out there,
maybe we'll try to attach an actor and then find financing.
So when we wrote the script again, we got to
do it on our own. It's almost nice that no
one bought the pitch, because then they would have tried
to like maybe guide us towards something else or try
to tell us what they thought wouldn't work, and instead
(17:28):
of letting us just do this weird kind of experimental tone.
So we, yeah, we wrote the script and what ended
up on screen is like very very close to exactly
like what our finyl you know, draft of that script was.
And I think that, you know, the stakes were a
(17:50):
little bit lower with this than they were with UAHF.
I think UAHF had like a little bit higher of
a budget, and I mean it definitely had a higher budget,
especially you know, considering inflation. I think their budget then
was higher than our budget was now, even without influention.
But we but you know, they had the pressure of
(18:13):
debuting in movie theaters and box office and making their
money back, and we had the luxury of like debuting
on a streaming platform that had not done really anything
original yet. So the fact that they had this project
that people were even just excited to seek out and find,
(18:34):
I think that it doesn't even matter how good the
movie was. You know, they were like, all these people
are going to be downloading the Roku app or you know,
finding Roku on their TV to find this thing. It
was a real bonus that it it happened to perform
the way it did and win awards and like we
still have the Emmys coming up at the beginning of January.
(18:57):
That it's that that was a real surreal part of
this entire experience. But yeah, so I think that's I
think maybe there was a little bit more pressure on
them then. And then you know, Al was really the
like main creative force on UHF obviously and starting it,
(19:18):
so a lot more pressure I'm sure on him in
that aspect, and this was you know, we wrote it together,
and then he got to hang out on set. I
remember like day two, like our first two days of
shooting were a Thursday and Friday, and once we got
(19:39):
to shoot, once we started shooting, oh yeah, we shot
those first two days and over the weekend, Al sent
me an email that was just like you're really good
at this at like directing, which was like so nice
to get. But he was like, you're really good at this.
Like it's it's fun to just hang out on set,
(20:01):
and you know, like he would pop in with a
note every so often after every take I would I
would go over to him and say, you know that's good, right, right,
we should move on right, and he'll be like, yeah,
that's great, it's perfect, and yeah, and there I mean
there's moments where he was like, maybe let's try another
one where they do this or you know, but we
(20:23):
were both like really in line with each other. We
both find the same things funny, and you know, there
there was a lot of there were certain things that
kind of broke the tone of our movie that we
took out that were maybe we're in the script or
like the only things that Alan I would battle about
(20:45):
were jokes or silly moments that went a little too far,
like the comedy was a little too broad and a
little too pushed, and it broke like the reality of
what what we were doing. You know, there's a there's
a scene that was in the teaser trailer where three
(21:07):
accordions come sliding into frame. He's where Daniel's like, somebody
get me an accordion, and like three or does anybody
have an accordion? And three accordions come in And then
the one that's in the movie, he's just like, somebody
get me my accordion and you don't see them come in.
I like had shot that. We did one take of
him just saying somebody get me my accordion. I did
(21:29):
it to protect myself because I felt like that joke
was a little too the physics of it, the reality
of it was just like a little too silly for
what we were trying to do tonally in that scene.
So like that, those are the only things that Al
and I would kind of battle about, But it was
(21:52):
never about like is it funny or not, Like I'm
like it's funny. I think it's hilarious. When those three
accordions come in, it just takes away a little bit
of the like emotion of the scene. Like it makes
you forget what I really want people to be focusing
on is, you know, the immense pressure that he's under
(22:12):
in this moment and being laughed at by everyone, and
you know it's reminding him. I think we had a
very we had a like an early cut where it
was even flashing to like little blips of teenage Al
being laughed at at the party in that moment as
like yeah, yeah, as everyone was like laughing at him
(22:33):
when wolf Man Jack is walking away. But yeah, aside
from that, like Al and I, you know, we were
all like we're always in line on like what's funny
and what's not funny.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
That's so great.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
I love living in a world where weird Al was
the one to ground your humor. Yeah, you know, that's
like it makes complete sense.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
That he'd be like, well you know, oh no, no, no,
that was me. That was me. He wanted the accordions coming.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Oh oh okay, the never mind, I had a sorry,
it was the other way around.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
It was the other way around, man, Okay. It was like, okay,
it makes sense, but oh so.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
You still so I grounded him. So I grounded him
so and at the end and again it was like
I think this is really funny. There were like many
moments throughout the movie, which which you'll be able to
see a lot of them in the deleted scenes that
are coming out on the Blu ray that drops in December.
(23:34):
But yeah, I mean that's mostly it's mostly extended scenes,
and it scenes with like those little pieces that we
took out that were just a little too silly and
uh yeah, we just needed it to be a little
bit more more grounded.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Yeah, I mean it's just the people audience this This
episode is dropping on December first, so you get to
just pick up the Yeah, you still have time.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
To pre order excellent, excellent.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Well, I think you answered all the questions that I had.
I was like, I don't know, you've talked about this movie.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Like, my gosh, so much.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
I have talked about this movie a lot. But I
love talking about the movie. We can keep talking about
the movie. I'll talk about any What are you Yeah,
what are your favorite parts of the movie?
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Oh my god?
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Well, I mean, first of all, like I probably watched
the pool scene like twenty seven times.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Oh no, here's my question, how many twenty sevens?
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Oh? My gosh, you know I don't even know how
many of them were snuck in. You know, A couple
of them were like pretty obvious, and we'd find places
to put them, like in the tunnel, yeah, like you know,
when he's fighting with the band before the concert. But
that was like our production designer, Dan Buttz, who is
(24:51):
a longtime collaborator with Al. He's done a bunch of ols,
he did music videos and great production designer. I worked
with him on the show eagle Heart, that adult swim show.
That's where I met him. He did this show called
Making History on Fox that I worked on, and he
(25:12):
did the Pee Wee Netflix movie. He was the production
designer for that.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
That was good.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Yeah, yeah, And I reached out to him. I thought
that he would just be a perfect fit for this movie.
And he was like, you know, I'm friends with Al
and I was like, wait you are. He's like, yeah,
I've done like music videos of Al's. I had no idea.
So Al was like really excited to be like, hey, Dan,
but said that you reached out to him.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
That was a really good weird Al Hey hey.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Hey yeah. But he but Dan like snuck a bunch
of Easter eggs in Like that was once I knew
that there was someone so trusted, you know, that knew
all of the things to put in that fans would
respond to. And yeah, you know, the the little there's
like magnets on the fridge in the apartment. There's a
(26:03):
spatulist city magnet. And yeah, there's like the like karate
poster or whatever, like, yeah, yeah, there's like stuff. There's
little things that he snuck in all over the place.
I told him, whenever you have an opportunity to put
something in. Yeah, I love that kind of stuff. Oh.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
I mean, I'm sure I haven't caught anywhere near as
much as you know. I'm a grown adult with a life,
so I don't have time to keep like rewinding and
pausing and rewinding and pausing. Maybe once I get the
the you know, the blue red Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Oh yeah, yeah yeah, when you get the blu ray, for.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Sure, a little more time to do it. Oh gosh,
that's great.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
So, I mean one thing that like really super impressed me,
just because again I have no idea how any of
this stuff, you know works.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
I'm a college writing professor. I don't know anything.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
I was like, oh okay, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
So the fact that you all put this together so fast,
like what filming was.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Like eighteen days.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
I'm like, how I was falling going along with al
on social media? He posted like these random like pictures
every day too, and I'm like, oh, I.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Don't know what's going on, but this is great, Like.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Everything's happening, so fall It was really fast. It was
it was It was absurdly fast, Like nobody thought that
we could pull that off. We were supposed to. I
think when when we first talked about when we first
like got the money, when when Roku decided they were
(27:29):
going to make this and we thought twenty two days,
Like we'll make it in twenty two days, and that's
tight as well, Like twenty two days is nothing. I
think that, Like I have a movie that I'm supposed
to be shooting for some like a big theatrical comedy,
(27:50):
this Jack Black movie that I'm doing that we're supposed
to be shooting like in the summer, and that will
be forty days of shooting and it's a and it
like doesn't even have stuff in it that's you know,
we did a bio pic that like spanned years and
it's period and there's like musical numbers this is you know,
(28:12):
this movie that I'm going to do is a smaller movie.
I think, like on paper, you know, it's like not
as many locations and over twice the amount of time
we're gonna have to shoot it. So then I remember
they knocked us down to twenty days. We lost a
(28:34):
couple of days. It was like, do you think you
could do it in twenty and it was like, I'll
do it. I'll make it work. Yeah, I can figure
it out. And then it's like, all right, well how
about eighteen And I'm like, all right, but you cannot
take another day away from me. I won't be able
to do it if you take one more day away.
(28:55):
With that sort of condensed schedule, there was one week
in the middle of the schedule that that I called
the Gauntlet, and I'm like, I kept saying, if I
make it through the Gauntlet, then we're good, like I'll
be fine for the rest of the for the rest
of the shoot. And it was week three of shooting.
(29:15):
Week one was two days, so it was a Thursday, Friday.
Monday was a holiday, so uh so then it was yeah,
Tuesday through Friday of the following week, and then oh no, no, no, sorry,
you know, maybe it was a holiday. I think there
was a lot of holidays that happened in our schedule.
(29:35):
It was like a bunch of four day weeks.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Oh yeah, well because it was a.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
January residence day or something.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Was February February okay, so yes, yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
February March yeah, yeah, So it was week three of shooting,
and on Tuesday we had the pool party scene. So
that was that whole day and not just the pool
party scene. We shot the pool party and the scene
(30:07):
where they are in doctor Demento's home office and they're
making out on the couch where Alan Madonna are making
out on the couch. That was like at the end
of the pool party day. Wednesday was the whole concert
where he's drunk on stage, plus the fight with the
(30:29):
band in the tunnel underneath, plus the shot where they're
going down like the courtroom steps like him and Madonna,
like the jail, like the police department staircase with all
the paparazzi. That was the following day. The day after
(30:50):
that was the entire Awards show and Amish Paradise, which
a like we had to basically like build that Awards
show backdrop and set like that's the same stage that
Amage Paradise took place on. We had to then, like
(31:12):
we did Amage Paradise first, and then we I think
shot like the backstage stuff where where he's uh where
he rips off the skin and reveals that he still
has a mustache and and and has that final scene
with doctor Demento. And while we were shooting that, they
were like building the podium and the steps and everything
for the uh yeah, for the audience, and then we
(31:35):
had to bring a bunch of crowd in and shoot
all that audience stuff. It was insane. It was insane
and like insane, and and we and like we didn't
have the money to like go overtime, like these were
eleven shooting hours, you know, twelve hours with an hour
long lunch break, and yeah, it was just it was
(31:59):
really crazy. And then so I made it through the gauntlet.
And then the following week, which was by the way,
like Escobar stuff, was one day like the Jungle, Like
when we shot the stuff the Jungle stuff, we shot
on the Warner Brothers lot, So like in the morning
we took a really small crew to the Warner Brothers
lot and shot that stuff. It's like the same area
(32:22):
where in Pee's Big Adventure he like swings on the
bike over the lake. Oh, it's the Tarzan Jungle from
the Warner Brothers Lot. Yeah, So we shot that there
and then like we had to load all the gear
up and drive across town to the Van NY's Golf Course,
(32:42):
the restaurant at the Van Nights Golf Course, which is
where we shot the scene with Josh Grobin in the
phone call with Now Yeah, which, by the way, that
restaurant fun fact is that has been featured in two
Paul Thomas Anderson movies. That is the Tale of the
(33:02):
Cock restaurant from Licorice Pizza. And it is also the
restaurant in Uh Magnolia that John c Riley and Malaura
Walter's like go on a date.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
That's so cool.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Yeah, Yeah, it's just got this like real old school
like San Fernando Valley restaurant. Look, so Paul Thomas Anderson
loves using it. It's like a closed down restaurant on
the golf course that like people just ran out to
shoot in. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
That's that is so awesome. I love I'm loving all
these fun facts.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
This is why I've been talking to a bunch of people,
are like, we're so excited for all the commentary and
extra stuff on the.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Oh, yeah, we drop, we drop a lot of knowledge
on that. Yeah. We both like wrote down just pages
of stuff that we wanted to mention, and it's almost
like there's not enough time to mention at all. You
can talk for hours about you know, all the stuff. Amazing.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
I will say, I'm I'm so thankful that this movie exists.
And what so this twenty twenty two is is when
it happened. Somewhere at the tail end of twenty twenty one,
I did an episode of this very podcast about the
Funny or Die sketch.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Really you have to go back and listen.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
And in that episode, my guest Robert from the Crooked
Table podcast, and I said, sooner or later, this is
gonna be a movie. They're gonna make this into a movie.
And like, not three months after that episode came out,
you're like, guess what, We're making a movie. And I
was like, we did it. We willed this into existence,
and I firmly believe that, like in my heart.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
That's awesome. I mean, it was a real journey, Like
we started so al emailed me so like when we
made that original trailer. Al and I you know, kept
in touch throughout the years whenever he would play a
show in la or you know, at the in Orange County,
(35:01):
fair like wherever he would invite me, and you know,
you like sena gift gifts when my kids were born,
like you know, just always sort of like remained there
in my life as a friendly acquaintance. And yeah, like
(35:21):
randomly I got an email from him in February of
twenty nineteen. It was like, let's what do you think
about trying to turn it into a movie. We went
out the next day. We went out and got coffee
and started talking about ideas and the Escobar stuff came
out of that first conversation. Al was like, I'd love
for there to be a part where I just, out
(35:43):
of nowhere turned into John Wick in a Hawaiian shirt.
And I was like, great, let's do it. And yeah,
so like I called Funny or Die and I was
like me and Al, they're gonna we're thinking about doing
the movie. They're like, great, when you have a pitch together,
like to you know, bring it to us. We spent
a few months coming over with a pitch. We pitched
(36:06):
it all over town. It got passed on. We wrote
the script, so I think December of twenty nineteen we
had a finished script. We got it to Daniel Radcliffe
in January of twenty twenty. He immediately said, yes, I
want to do this. We this was pre Zoom. This
was like a month before COVID. We had a I
(36:29):
don't know Google hangout with him or like whatever or
whatever the Microsoft one is called, and he was like,
I love this, I want to do it. Like what
kind of accordion should I get? I want to start
trying to learn the accordion? And then COVID hit and
then it was just like really again, really hard to
(36:51):
get people to give us money to make this movie.
We found a couple of independent financiers, this company called
Tango Entertainment. They came in, you know, they can finance
for up to a certain point, and then had to
find financing partners to try to do the rest of it.
We're gonna make it for like six million dollars. We're
(37:12):
gonna try to shoot it in Atlanta, and then we
just like struck out over the course of the next year,
like no one would even come on board to like
pay half pay three million dollars to like make this movie.
And eventually, like I had a friend, this exec, Colin Davis,
(37:33):
who I had worked with at TBA. He was at
TBS and I wrote a pilot for TBS, and then
he left TBS and went to Quibi and he hired
me to do this Quibi thing. And then Quibi went
under and he went to Roku and I was like, hey, man, like,
what do you think about this weird out doing this
weird al movie? And thankfully they said yes. But it
(37:56):
took a really long time. It was yeah, late twenty
twenty one, I think like the late summer early fall
of twenty twenty one we found out that Roku was interested.
And then of course it took a while to make
all the deals and do all that stuff. And yeah,
it was it was It was just like a really
took these things. It seemed like they come out of nowhere.
(38:18):
You know, it gets announced, it's like they're making this thing,
and you know, we were in pre production when it
got announced, but it had been years of us trying
to just push this boulder up the hill. And you know,
I'm so happy with the way that it was how
it was received and and it's it's funny too that
(38:40):
like no one even at like Roku, I think nobody
quite understood what and this might might be why we
were having trouble selling it. Nobody really understood exactly what
we were going for with this until they saw it.
(39:00):
And I remember that I sent the director's cut. I
spent five weeks putting together the director's cut, and when
everyone saw it, I remember the response was it was
almost insulting, but it wasn't meant that way. But they
were like, Eric, this is a real movie. I was like, yeah, dude,
(39:28):
it like a real well because it feels like, you know, oh,
it's kind of like a we're goofing on biopicks, like
it's a joke, it's a parody of biopicks or something.
But I never thought of it as a parody of
biopicks as much as I thought of it as a
real biopick that just a comedic biopick that exists in
a bizarre, funny universe. You know. I always even when
(39:52):
we were trying to find financing, I had to put
together like a pitch deck to try to, you know,
get people to give us money. And and it it
wasn't like you know, naked Gun, airplane hot shots. You know,
those weren't the movies that I was referencing. I was
referencing like Anchorman and Wayne's World, and you know, comedies
(40:14):
that are like kind of ridiculous but also that have
a great story that you could track. And you know,
Wayne's World had like you care about his relationship with
Tia Carrera's character, like you know, it really works well.
And I wanted everything to work as well in this
and not just be like a sketch that goes on
(40:37):
for too long.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Yeah, And that's that's that was a real fear again
for you know, some folks is like, is this going
to be Night at the Roxbury?
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Is this going to be ladies?
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Man? Is this going to be like a thing that
should only be this long like stretched out longer?
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Yeah, should be you know, And.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
It's so clear that you were cognizant of it not
doing that that.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Yeah, it felt.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Really really real.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
You know. Honestly, that was Al's fear for all those years.
That's probably the reason we didn't try to turn this
into a movie in twenty ten, because we we had
joked about it or I at least I email. I
must have brought it up to Al, because I emailed
with Olivia Wilde and Aaron Paul like after that dropped,
and they were so stoked with like how that fake
(41:19):
trailer came out. They were like this thing is so
great and we were like, should we do this movie?
Should we really make this movie? And Al was like,
it's a sketch. You know, it's a sketch idea. It's like,
I don't know that he he had that same fear,
like he didn't know that it had the legs. And
if I think that if I would have made it
(41:40):
ten years ago, maybe it would have been an over
long sketch. I think it took. It took me kind
of maturing as a writer and director to you know,
try to really inject heart and story into it once
we got into the writing process, and and I mean
(42:03):
it was so great when the movie finally came out.
Al Al was like you were like you were right
to give it that heart, because I know that was
like a you know some of those things where they
weren't arguments, but there were discussions about you know, how
how important is it that this moment like really earns
(42:25):
you know, and and it's great that at the end
of the day it was like, yeah, man, that's like
that's what makes this part of what makes this so great.
And Radcliffe's and like Dan Daniel Radcliffe too, I mean
like that's he is so good. I mean everyone's good.
(42:45):
The entire cast is great. Evan ridge Wood is incredible,
Rain was amazing, Like they're all everybody's incredible. The guys
in the band are like so they're like the heart
of the movie, Like they're so nice, and like we
were all deliberately that was like we're like, let's just
make the band guys the nicest guys of the world. Yeah,
(43:06):
because and the reason we did it really is because
we're like it'll be so funny when Al's being really
mean to them, like the nicer we make them just
the uh. And I don't know if this really even
translated in the movie as well as I thought it
(43:26):
would when we were writing it. But the moment when
Tommy Bermuda is like, whoa is that Madonna? Like I
think that like we the intention and maybe I should
have had the other guys be psyched about it too,
is that they're like excited to see Madonna because she's
so famous. They're like, whoa, it's Madonna. Hey, and he
(43:47):
just immediately is like yelling at them again. But anyway,
those guys were so great, and but Radcliffe like really
carries this whole thing. And and he's just so you know,
there's just something about his eyes, you know, like he's
just so you feel sad for him and you feel
(44:07):
his joy and like, I mean whatever. For seven Harry
Potter movies, he sort of took us through that world
and like carried that story. So maybe maybe audiences are
really used to looking at that face.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
For me, maybe one of the like again, you know, beforehand,
I felt like I was like fending people off with
like baseball basket, Like, guys, don't question anything.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
This is gonna be what it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
They're like, but Harry Potter though, but Harry Potter that
I was like, Okay, but like, did you see Guns
of Kimbo like he can do weird?
Speaker 3 (44:43):
Yes? I loved Guns of Kimbo. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
I probably got like at least a dozen people to
watch Guns of Kimbo ahead of time for this, just to.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
Get like Harry Potter out of their brain.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Yeah right right, you know, but but yes, I told
everybody was like, just trust the process. I was like,
this is going to be This might not be the
movie anybody expects, it might not even be the movie
anybody once, but this is going to be the movie
that it's supposed to be and the movie that it
needs to be.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
And that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
And like it's every time a new like there's a
new award nomination attached to this or something like, I
literally get goosebumps and I had nothing to do with
it because it just makes me so happy.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
Yeah, that's great, Thank you so much for that. Yeah,
I mean, and it was like there was a lot
of just trust from you know a lot of people,
like even Radcliffe, like you know, the fact that he
trusted us, you know that he trusted me. I had
never made a movie before. Yeah, and he was just like, yeah, man,
(45:44):
down to do whatever you want me to do with this.
And I gave him, you know, I mean, really the
biggest direction I gave him was like, don't try to
be play this like you think Al would play it.
Just use the script, like you know, you know what
the scene is about, you know where how your character
is supposed to feel make it your own and just
(46:08):
like really play those emotions, like really just just like
lean hard into these scenes and play the reality, like
ground them as silly as things get, just like ground
the hell out of it.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
It's so clear that yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
Yeah, And he was a little concerned about that. He
was like when he first saw a cut of the movie,
he was he was like, oh, I don't know if
I made the right choice here. I think people might
want to see more of a weird al impression. And
I was like, dude, please, no, Like, we haven't screwed
this is before we premiered in Toronto. I said, we
(46:45):
haven't screened this movie. We had no test screenings. I
showed this movie to five friends and not even a
finished cut, you know, like earlier cuts, just to get
notes from some trust. And the first thing anybody says
when this movie ends, it's like, oh my god, Daniel
(47:07):
Redcliff was so great in that. And he's like, all right,
I'll take your word for it. And then of course
we got to Toronto and it premiered, and he was
I'm like, see, see, I told you. I told you
when we got to Toronto, you'd be like eating those words.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Man, it's so cool. That's so cool, and look at that.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
I'm like looking at the time on my recording, I
was like, do you have like fifteen or twenty minutes
to talk to me?
Speaker 2 (47:29):
And we're like forty five minutes into talking about Oh
is that?
Speaker 3 (47:32):
Oh yeah, I'm down.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
No, this was wonderful, And like the only reason I'm
even like, uh, it's because I told my husband i'd
be making.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Dinner for that. Oh no, oh no, no, it's fine.
I told him.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
I was like, if I'm in there past a certain time,
just start browning the turkey.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
I'll be there, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
So I am really not good at buttoning any of
my podcast episodes up.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
Okay, that's the hardest thing. Dude. End a scene.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Yeah, I have known you once. I'm just like, well, okay,
this is super fun.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
This was great.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
And uh, I at the very least, I'm proud of
myself for not pulling up Chris Farley on you and
being like, so, do you remember that Weird A'll movie?
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Right right?
Speaker 3 (48:14):
I love? Yes, I remember that. Remember that I wrote
with Paul McCarty's like remember the Beatles? Like, yeah, I
remember when the Beatles?
Speaker 2 (48:27):
So you remember when you made that movie.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
I yeah, oh that was that's great.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting my DVD and uh.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Yes, yeah, I hope you enjoy the bonus features. Shoot
me an email, and if you ever think of any
other questions you want to ask, please feel free to
I like knowing.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
This, I absolutely will feel free to email you. And
I'm just gonna say it, like, uh, you know, I've
I've been in Owl's presence a handful of times. The
first time, I cried amazing, and it was one of
those meet and greet things and he literally like hugged
me and asked me if I was okay.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
I'm like, I'm fun it.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
He's so nice.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
And then the second time, it was after I'd started
this podcast and he knew who I was, and I
about fell to the floor.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
I was like, oh, oh okay. Interesting.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
And then the third time, I was with my husband
and he had things to say to weird Al, and
weird Al was just like, oh, nice to see you again,
and he was like oh hi to my husband and
like he'd only paid attention to me, and I was like, I'm.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Real sorry, oh wow, that's amazing, and.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
It was great. So yeah, you know, so you know,
he knows who I am till Alex said, Hi.
Speaker 3 (49:35):
I will, I will, you know.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
And my only dream really is to get on his
Christmas card list. That's that's going to be. That's when
I'll know I've made it.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
That's a pretty cool list I was on. I was on.
I was on both the Pee Wee Herman and Weird
Al Christmas card list. Yeah, I was pretty pretty crazy.
Those are like the two Those are my two Christmas
card Yeah, I even got I went to like the
Paul Rubins like memorial friends and you know, friends and
(50:10):
family like friends of Paul Rubins Celebration of Life at
the It was at the Skirball Center in La like
a month after he passed away, And like I was
on his Christmas card list, and like I got the
birthday texts from him. Did they did you read about
that anywhere? Like? And he had done he did these
videos And I got a video he sent me, Like
(50:33):
on my birthday the year before he passed away, I
got this video. I was in Atlanta filming something and
I got this video that was, you know, five minute
long video of him just saying really nice things about me.
And I'd worked with Paul Rubins one time I got
kind of close to I almost directed the Pee Wee movie.
(50:55):
I like met a couple times on that, but I
had like, yeah, but it was just crazy to like
to go to the uh to be at this memorial
with all these you know, with all of these people
that were like close with him and stuff. Yeah, it
was really really amazing.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
That's just that's just beautiful, you know, and you know,
like what Paul Rubens did and like what Al still
does with the people that are even like inner circles,
not even the word, it's like, you know, even tertiary
circles that are like a couple you know, spheres out,
just little things to make like those people feel good that.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
You just kind of hold onto.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
Everyone feels so special. Like getting those texts from Paul
Rubins every year was like the highlight of my birthday. Yeah,
it's just it's it's uh, it's it was wild to
be in a room with you know, a couple hundred
people that of what weird Al was there to you know,
we're Alan his wife, are there with Jack White, Conan O'Brien,
(51:56):
you know, like the room full of it. It was
amazing to be in that room with all of those
people that got to experience that as well, you know,
like everyone had that in common, like not only just
like being being a fan of Paul's or having cross
paths with him at some point, but like getting those
(52:17):
special birthday messages from him. It was like, oh man,
this is a room full of people that like get it,
and it made it like extra devastating to be there.
It was like the I think, just the most like
profound sadness that I had ever felt in like my
(52:37):
adult life. Like this weird because also he was like
a childhood hero. You know, I've looked like I actually
have this sitting next to me in my desk. Is
this like lenticular that's beautiful pewee thing? And it was
the tag from like a peewee Herman pajamas I had
when I was like nine years old from J. C. Penny.
I love that and I like found it in an
(52:59):
old box and it's in my desk.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Well that's a treasure.
Speaker 3 (53:02):
Yeah, yeah it is, it is. But anyway, yeah, I
think that's.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
That's a lovely way to end the seat.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Again, you you're better at this than I am, because
like it's the kind of thing that inspires you to
be that for somebody else, you know, to be that
little bit of kindness, you know, and if we can
do that after.
Speaker 3 (53:19):
Yeah, after the after Paul's memorial, I started sending people
birthday texts. It lasted two days. I am not that guy.
Aul Rubens is that guy? Al is also that guy.
I'm not that Unfortunately, just to my ADHD doesn't let
me be that guy, you know.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
Yeah, well you know, do it randomly.
Speaker 1 (53:42):
One thing I like to do is if I see
somebody out in public and like I like their shirt
or I like their pants, Like I just say it
and like keep moving on. It's that kind of thing too.
It's just like like Kamakazi kindness.
Speaker 3 (53:53):
Yes, yes, that that is the way to live for sure.
Speaker 1 (53:57):
So well, Eric, thank you for being here and talking
to me. And this has been absolutely delightful.
Speaker 3 (54:03):
Yeah, thanks for having me. This is great.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
Thanks. Well, wasn't that neat Again? Big thanks to Eric
appeal for talking to me. You know, will old me
and I had a great time and I couldn't have
done it without the help of some very special people,
uh my husband Russ, who kind of gave me the
push to make it happen, and a friend and listener
(54:30):
of the show, Noah, for giving me some amazing talking points. Noah,
you made me sound more intelligent than I am, so
I appreciate you very much for that, And thanks so
much for listening. And if you haven't already pre ordered
or ordered your copy of Weird L. Yankovic Story with
all of those delightfully delicious bonus features that we talked about,
(54:51):
what's wrong with you?
Hello friends, this is a very special episode of the
beard Out podcast. Because why why what's so special about it? Well,
I've got Eric Appel on the show. That's right, the
man who directed and blessed the world with Weird, the
Al Yankovic story that was streaming exclusively on Roku. Now
(00:58):
you know, you can preorder yourself a Blu ray a DVD,
or you can just like buy yourself a digital copy.
It's delightful. We He was so kind, sat down with me,
had a lovely conversation about Weird, Al, about the movie
and just about uh, you know, being cool people. I
(01:19):
think I'm gonna count myself among the cool people. Anyhow,
on the flip side of these, uh these messages you're
gonna hear is our conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I really hope you enjoy it. Well, you have my
favorite flavor of Lacroix.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Also, this is, in my opinion, the only flavor of
Lacroi there is.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I concur I concur.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, I have a generic one at the moment, but
it is still the great fruit flavor.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Have you had? Have you had coconut? That's a bad one.
I have not, or I should I should have? That
was loaded? I should have said, what's your opinion on
the coke?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Oh, no, it's a bad one. I'm sure I haven't
tried it because it's gonna have to be mad.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yeah, it tastes like it tastes like what you'd think
suntan lotion tastes like that's or like you know, sunscreen.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Because I'm not a fan of the lemon Cello or
the key Lime.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I like regular Line, but not key Lime.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Really see the lemon Cello. I was like very into,
in fact, and this relates to Weird. That was like
my drink of joints when shooting Weird, And my assistant
like had the catering people buy cases of the lemon
Cello and then hot stash them for me, so like
she would always like, that's what I would always have
(02:44):
at my at my desk. That's great at my desk
at the monitor.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
It's just it just tastes perfume.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Me.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
To me, I like like a dryer citrus. But I
get it. I understand my mom likes that one a lot.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yeah, but I bailed on it. I had too much
of it and then I like burned myself out.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
You flamed out on the lemon cellow I did.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
I did well.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Thank you for talking to me on here the beard
Out podcast where talking about sparkling water, not beer like
we usually do here.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
But that's okay, that's okay.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
So first of all, you know, I I have watched
the movie Weird the Yank of Victoria a whole bunch
of times.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Awesome.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I'm one of those.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
I'm just gonna admit what I did the day it
came out here in the US.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I made my roku think I lived in Europe.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Why wait?
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Why because it debuted at midnight?
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Oh yeah, So I had my roku thinking I was
like as far as far east as like a.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Cover, Yeah, just the UK, I guess I was.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I was in like Hungary or something.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Oh wow, okay, yeah, so I got to I got
to watch it at like seven pm or something.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
That's awesome. Ye, thank you for doing it.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yes absolutely, I.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Was like, I can't I can't wait, and if I yeah,
I had to work the next day.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
And it was just I needed to see it as
soon as I could.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
So that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Yeah, And you know, I spent a lot of time
before Weird came out fielding a bunch of questions from
people like is this going to be a real biopic?
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Like what's this going to be about? What are you
expecting from it?
Speaker 1 (04:24):
And people it was a weird mental to carry for
the amount of time that we knew about it, because
people were like, Lauren, your opinion means something on this.
So the first like real question that I have for
you is how many people got bamboozled thinking that this
was real?
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Oh? Man? I mean I I don't have an exact number, obviously,
but quite a few people, like a surprising amount of people,
I would I got obsessed with watching trailer reaction video
when our trailer came out, because this is the first
(05:02):
thing that I made that like, uh, you know, this
is the first thing I've done that made a splash
like this, and and had you know, there were people
posting their takes on what they thought it was going
to be, and a ton of these trailer reaction videos
on YouTube, you know, where people film themselves watching watching
(05:23):
the trailer and reacting to it and then discussing it
for like ten minutes afterwards, and most of those when
the trailer ended, these people still weren't sure, you know,
they were like, is that it's uh? Man? Was he
really with Date Madonna. Like that was one of I
think the week after the trailer debuted, if you started
(05:45):
typing Al's name into Google, it would auto fill with
like did weird? If you type did weird Al? Did
weird Olt? Date Madonna would like auto fill so weird?
People thought that was real. There was one I can't
remember the guy that was like one reaction video in particular,
this guy's mind was just like so blown watching the
(06:06):
trailer and he was like, I can't believe, like this
is real. He said it like five times during the
reaction He goes, this is real. Like, I mean, that's
what the trick is, you know, I guess something like
Dewey Cox, Like it's a fake guy. It's a fake
biopic about a fake guy. So like you know that
it's fake. The fact that this is about a real person,
(06:28):
even though it is weird Al. Yeah, you know you
it just tricked people into thinking that it was actually
a straight biopick.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
And that's that Actually that blew my mind so much,
you know, especially within the the weird Al community. I
was like, y'all, did you not see the complete Al
like that? I'm like, there's there's precedence for this, you know,
like this we live in a world where a mockumentary
about his life exists, do you expect a real biopic?
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Like no, oh no.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
No, but you did lead me to You know, my
brother and I are big fans of walk Hart.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
You know, the whole Dewey Cox thing.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
I have not seen. I've never seen Walkhard, And you
know what, I.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Think that's probably good for you doing this, because I
think so one of the things that scared is not
the right word, but one of the things that was like,
how walk hard is this going to be?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Like?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
How do you avoid walk harding this?
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Now?
Speaker 1 (07:27):
I just made walk hard a verb, right, you know, Like,
so I think you you literally answered my question without
because you'd never seen it, And I was like, how
did you avoid those same story beats?
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Was like you just don't didn't know what they were?
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Yeah, I didn't know what they were. Like, I'd only
seen a couple of clips from Walkhart on YouTube, and
I don't know how I missed it, Like it, I
don't know why I never saw Walkhard. I love everyone
in it and everyone involved. For some reason, I just yeah,
I just I us missed that one. I think I
was working at Funnier Die at the time, which was like,
(08:04):
I mean we were like related to Judd APPETI and
uh yeah, for for whatever reason, I just didn't end
up seeing it. I think it it landed in that
period of time where like parody movies weren't really working,
you know, they weren't what they used to be. It
was in the I think it was around the same
(08:26):
time that like Scary Movie three came out. Yeah, they
were trying to maybe bring back parody movies, but enough
time hadn't passed. Like I grew up with the Naked
Gun movies, like that's when I was a kid or
a teenager, and the hot Shots movies like that was
those were mine, you know, like around the same time
(08:48):
that I started really getting into weird al was like
when those you know, when those early Naked Gun two
and a half were out, and yeah, then like the
Scary movies came out. It just feels like parodies kind
of died. And then like Date Movie and Disaster Movie
and like all of the epic movie and it seemed
(09:10):
like the parody movies were more about just referencing as
many pop culture things as you could. When like the
classic Sucker Brothers stuff. I mean, it was just it
was like mad magazine style jokes. It was just like
how many silly, goofy things can we put in here?
And everyone's playing it really straight. And the joke of
all of those movies was like people aren't reacting to
(09:33):
the silly thing that's happening, you know, like Leslie Nielsen
crashes his car in every establishing shot in The Naked Gun,
and it's just never commented on. Where I feel like
that wave of like epic movie and it it was
all about commenting on the funny things. And you know,
like Borat was like all of a sudden, Borat comes
(09:55):
walking in in the bathing suit, and it was like
cheap jokes, cheap just referencey jokes. And and I think
maybe that's it. Like Walk Hard came out right around
the same time, and even though I knew it wasn't
going to be that, it felt like it was more
of a direct parody of like Walk the Line, just
(10:17):
based on the trailers and the artwork, and it just
felt like a Walk the Line parody. And for whatever reason,
I think I wasn't interested in.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Seeing that at the time, you know, And that is
totally fair.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And I love the picture that you painted of kind
of what parody movies were and what they became, and
your your stock references to parody movies is so clear.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
In weird like when.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
My husband and I were watching it for the for
the first time, we were like this, it's the tone
was so correct, like We're like this, this is the parody.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
I mean, I'm like your like ideal audience also, but you.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Know, thank you. You know, it's it's funny too, Like
we we also didn't want to go it kind of
lives somewhere in between a parody movie that doesn't take
itself seriously at all, and I don't want to just
say like a good movie or like a real movie
that cares a lot about the story and the emotional beats.
(11:16):
And I think that although we do have like visual
gags and we have like really silly stuff that happens,
we tried to avoid very deliberately, tried to avoid making
it feel like a naked gun movie or like Airplane,
where there were jokes that would break the reality. Because
what was very important to us was like our way
(11:41):
of parodying in this movie was to like lean really
hard into the emotional beats of the story, but like
bizarro absurd versions of the emotional beats, like can we
actually tell a story here, and can we create a
character that the audience really cares about? And can we
(12:04):
sustain an entire movie with this and have people like,
you know, how's it going to end and kind of
falling in love with this character, wanting to see him
reunite with his father and succeed at the end, and
can we do that by you know, leaning really hard
into all these like emotional story beats and and just
(12:26):
making those kind of as as silly as possible, but
like that they still work. If that makes any sense.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
It makes complete sense, because that's that's kind of weird
Al's career, you know, just from from my perspective anyway,
is that the emotional beats are there, no matter how ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
What he's doing is.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
You know, like what pops into my head immediately is
the song Melanie from even Worse. It's like you feel
the emotion in that song, but it's also totally absurd
and just out there. And I think that's why he
as a person has been able to make the connections
that he's made.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
And I think there's like it's not even a dotted line.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
There's a straight line you know between what he does
and what happens in the movie.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
That's really funny. Yeah, And it's like his brand of comedy.
Although his you know, his music videos were full of
like silly naked gun style, mad magazine gags, there's also
like an aspect to his comedy that is about pushing
emotion really far, like getting really angry, like you know,
he likes cartoonish violence and and you know almost like
(13:34):
techs avery Looney Tunes esque, you know, just like beating
people up. You know, that's why we when when Toby
huss is beating Tom lennenough. You know, it's like that
feels like it's, uh, you know something that you've seen
pop up in Al's comedy throughout his career of just
even in the complete Al, I think there's like, yeah,
(13:56):
someone getting tossed around like a rag doll or something.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Always it's always there.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
I've said so many times that there's, uh, there's basically
two types of weird Al songs in that vein, right.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
There's the songs about like really minute stuff.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
That it takes itself very very seriously, like no, don't
wear those shoes or you know one of those days
where like uh oh.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
They're dropping the bomb, like oops, you know, it's just Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
You know, it's either the reaction doesn't relate to the
thing that's happening, you know, right.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Right, Yeah, it's it's yeah, it's really funny, like the
movie just kind of being a I mean, Al, we
wrote it together, so obviously it's weird to like, ma
do a tribute to yourself, but it's kind of a
tribute to like Al's brand of comedy, Like every sort
of avenue that it took, you know, went down that
(14:50):
the movie touches on it at some point.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
That's that's that's so incredibly cool. And you know, when.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
When this was was happening again, people kept coming up
to me because they know the weird Al movie being
uajef right, So, you know, having written this with him
and then he you know, wrote that you know in yeah,
almost forty years ago, which.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Is I don't like that.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
So do you think like having worked with him on this,
do you think that like his experience with that kind
of like informed or affected the way that he worked
on this, because like UA Jeff didn't like hit. How
you know he wanted it to, but it it was.
It was a slow crescendo.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Yeah, it hit for me. I saw it the theater.
Yeah yeah. I made my grandpa take me to see
theater when I was like what nine years old? He
was I think he fell asleep. What is this? What
am I watching? Yeah? But uh yeah, you know, I
like early on in development, I asked Alison, you know,
(15:57):
I was asking him questions about how UHF got made,
the development process and all that, And it feels similar
in the sense that he was, you know, he was
really they were left alone when they made UHF. He
just got to do what he wanted, you know, And
that was similar to this. You know, we wrote the
(16:19):
script on spec. We just wrote it. We we came
up with like a pitch for the movie. We pitched
it all over town. Everyone passed on it, which which
shocked us. Like we spent months working on this pitch,
which I mean it's basically just walking through the plot
of the movie without you know, kind of painting broad strokes,
(16:41):
touching on some of the jokes. The Escobar stuff was
in the pitch, like yeah, getting killed at the end,
like it's all you know, it was all it was
all in the pitch and we were like, oh man,
it's gonna be a bidding war for this movie. It's
such a no brainer. We're gonna go out there, it's
gonna be great. And everyone reject it. So we were like, Okay,
(17:05):
let's maybe let's just write the script. Let's write the
script and then we'll try to get the script out there,
maybe we'll try to attach an actor and then find financing.
So when we wrote the script again, we got to
do it on our own. It's almost nice that no
one bought the pitch, because then they would have tried
to like maybe guide us towards something else or try
to tell us what they thought wouldn't work, and instead
(17:28):
of letting us just do this weird kind of experimental tone.
So we, yeah, we wrote the script and what ended
up on screen is like very very close to exactly
like what our finyl you know, draft of that script was.
And I think that, you know, the stakes were a
(17:50):
little bit lower with this than they were with UAHF.
I think UAHF had like a little bit higher of
a budget, and I mean it definitely had a higher budget,
especially you know, considering inflation. I think their budget then
was higher than our budget was now, even without influention.
But we but you know, they had the pressure of
(18:13):
debuting in movie theaters and box office and making their
money back, and we had the luxury of like debuting
on a streaming platform that had not done really anything
original yet. So the fact that they had this project
that people were even just excited to seek out and find,
(18:34):
I think that it doesn't even matter how good the
movie was. You know, they were like, all these people
are going to be downloading the Roku app or you know,
finding Roku on their TV to find this thing. It
was a real bonus that it it happened to perform
the way it did and win awards and like we
still have the Emmys coming up at the beginning of January.
(18:57):
That it's that that was a real surreal part of
this entire experience. But yeah, so I think that's I
think maybe there was a little bit more pressure on
them then. And then you know, Al was really the
like main creative force on UHF obviously and starting it,
(19:18):
so a lot more pressure I'm sure on him in
that aspect, and this was you know, we wrote it together,
and then he got to hang out on set. I
remember like day two, like our first two days of
shooting were a Thursday and Friday, and once we got
(19:39):
to shoot, once we started shooting, oh yeah, we shot
those first two days and over the weekend, Al sent
me an email that was just like you're really good
at this at like directing, which was like so nice
to get. But he was like, you're really good at this.
Like it's it's fun to just hang out on set,
(20:01):
and you know, like he would pop in with a
note every so often after every take I would I
would go over to him and say, you know that's good, right, right,
we should move on right, and he'll be like, yeah,
that's great, it's perfect, and yeah, and there I mean
there's moments where he was like, maybe let's try another
one where they do this or you know, but we
(20:23):
were both like really in line with each other. We
both find the same things funny, and you know, there
there was a lot of there were certain things that
kind of broke the tone of our movie that we
took out that were maybe we're in the script or
like the only things that Alan I would battle about
(20:45):
were jokes or silly moments that went a little too far,
like the comedy was a little too broad and a
little too pushed, and it broke like the reality of
what what we were doing. You know, there's a there's
a scene that was in the teaser trailer where three
(21:07):
accordions come sliding into frame. He's where Daniel's like, somebody
get me an accordion, and like three or does anybody
have an accordion? And three accordions come in And then
the one that's in the movie, he's just like, somebody
get me my accordion and you don't see them come in.
I like had shot that. We did one take of
him just saying somebody get me my accordion. I did
(21:29):
it to protect myself because I felt like that joke
was a little too the physics of it, the reality
of it was just like a little too silly for
what we were trying to do tonally in that scene.
So like that, those are the only things that Al
and I would kind of battle about, But it was
(21:52):
never about like is it funny or not, Like I'm
like it's funny. I think it's hilarious. When those three
accordions come in, it just takes away a little bit
of the like emotion of the scene. Like it makes
you forget what I really want people to be focusing
on is, you know, the immense pressure that he's under
(22:12):
in this moment and being laughed at by everyone, and
you know it's reminding him. I think we had a
very we had a like an early cut where it
was even flashing to like little blips of teenage Al
being laughed at at the party in that moment as
like yeah, yeah, as everyone was like laughing at him
(22:33):
when wolf Man Jack is walking away. But yeah, aside
from that, like Al and I, you know, we were
all like we're always in line on like what's funny
and what's not funny.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
That's so great.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
I love living in a world where weird Al was
the one to ground your humor. Yeah, you know, that's
like it makes complete sense.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
That he'd be like, well you know, oh no, no, no,
that was me. That was me. He wanted the accordions coming.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Oh oh okay, the never mind, I had a sorry,
it was the other way around.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
It was the other way around, man, Okay. It was like, okay,
it makes sense, but oh so.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
You still so I grounded him. So I grounded him
so and at the end and again it was like
I think this is really funny. There were like many
moments throughout the movie, which which you'll be able to
see a lot of them in the deleted scenes that
are coming out on the Blu ray that drops in December.
(23:34):
But yeah, I mean that's mostly it's mostly extended scenes,
and it scenes with like those little pieces that we
took out that were just a little too silly and
uh yeah, we just needed it to be a little
bit more more grounded.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Yeah, I mean it's just the people audience this This
episode is dropping on December first, so you get to
just pick up the Yeah, you still have time.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
To pre order excellent, excellent.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Well, I think you answered all the questions that I had.
I was like, I don't know, you've talked about this movie.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Like, my gosh, so much.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
I have talked about this movie a lot. But I
love talking about the movie. We can keep talking about
the movie. I'll talk about any What are you Yeah,
what are your favorite parts of the movie?
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Oh my god?
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Well, I mean, first of all, like I probably watched
the pool scene like twenty seven times.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Oh no, here's my question, how many twenty sevens?
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Oh? My gosh, you know I don't even know how
many of them were snuck in. You know, A couple
of them were like pretty obvious, and we'd find places
to put them, like in the tunnel, yeah, like you know,
when he's fighting with the band before the concert. But
that was like our production designer, Dan Buttz, who is
(24:51):
a longtime collaborator with Al. He's done a bunch of ols,
he did music videos and great production designer. I worked
with him on the show eagle Heart, that adult swim show.
That's where I met him. He did this show called
Making History on Fox that I worked on, and he
(25:12):
did the Pee Wee Netflix movie. He was the production
designer for that.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
That was good.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Yeah, yeah, And I reached out to him. I thought
that he would just be a perfect fit for this movie.
And he was like, you know, I'm friends with Al
and I was like, wait you are. He's like, yeah,
I've done like music videos of Al's. I had no idea.
So Al was like really excited to be like, hey, Dan,
but said that you reached out to him.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
That was a really good weird Al Hey hey.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Hey yeah. But he but Dan like snuck a bunch
of Easter eggs in Like that was once I knew
that there was someone so trusted, you know, that knew
all of the things to put in that fans would
respond to. And yeah, you know, the the little there's
like magnets on the fridge in the apartment. There's a
(26:03):
spatulist city magnet. And yeah, there's like the like karate
poster or whatever, like, yeah, yeah, there's like stuff. There's
little things that he snuck in all over the place.
I told him, whenever you have an opportunity to put
something in. Yeah, I love that kind of stuff. Oh.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
I mean, I'm sure I haven't caught anywhere near as
much as you know. I'm a grown adult with a life,
so I don't have time to keep like rewinding and
pausing and rewinding and pausing. Maybe once I get the
the you know, the blue red Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Oh yeah, yeah yeah, when you get the blu ray, for.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Sure, a little more time to do it. Oh gosh,
that's great.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
So, I mean one thing that like really super impressed me,
just because again I have no idea how any of
this stuff, you know works.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
I'm a college writing professor. I don't know anything.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
I was like, oh okay, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
So the fact that you all put this together so fast,
like what filming was.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Like eighteen days.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
I'm like, how I was falling going along with al
on social media? He posted like these random like pictures
every day too, and I'm like, oh, I.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Don't know what's going on, but this is great, Like.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Everything's happening, so fall It was really fast. It was
it was It was absurdly fast, Like nobody thought that
we could pull that off. We were supposed to. I
think when when we first talked about when we first
like got the money, when when Roku decided they were
(27:29):
going to make this and we thought twenty two days,
Like we'll make it in twenty two days, and that's
tight as well, Like twenty two days is nothing. I
think that, Like I have a movie that I'm supposed
to be shooting for some like a big theatrical comedy,
(27:50):
this Jack Black movie that I'm doing that we're supposed
to be shooting like in the summer, and that will
be forty days of shooting and it's a and it
like doesn't even have stuff in it that's you know,
we did a bio pic that like spanned years and
it's period and there's like musical numbers this is you know,
(28:12):
this movie that I'm going to do is a smaller movie.
I think, like on paper, you know, it's like not
as many locations and over twice the amount of time
we're gonna have to shoot it. So then I remember
they knocked us down to twenty days. We lost a
(28:34):
couple of days. It was like, do you think you
could do it in twenty and it was like, I'll
do it. I'll make it work. Yeah, I can figure
it out. And then it's like, all right, well how
about eighteen And I'm like, all right, but you cannot
take another day away from me. I won't be able
to do it if you take one more day away.
(28:55):
With that sort of condensed schedule, there was one week
in the middle of the schedule that that I called
the Gauntlet, and I'm like, I kept saying, if I
make it through the Gauntlet, then we're good, like I'll
be fine for the rest of the for the rest
of the shoot. And it was week three of shooting.
(29:15):
Week one was two days, so it was a Thursday, Friday.
Monday was a holiday, so uh so then it was yeah,
Tuesday through Friday of the following week, and then oh no, no, no, sorry,
you know, maybe it was a holiday. I think there
was a lot of holidays that happened in our schedule.
(29:35):
It was like a bunch of four day weeks.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Oh yeah, well because it was a.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
January residence day or something.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Was February February okay, so yes, yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
February March yeah, yeah, So it was week three of shooting,
and on Tuesday we had the pool party scene. So
that was that whole day and not just the pool
party scene. We shot the pool party and the scene
(30:07):
where they are in doctor Demento's home office and they're
making out on the couch where Alan Madonna are making
out on the couch. That was like at the end
of the pool party day. Wednesday was the whole concert
where he's drunk on stage, plus the fight with the
(30:29):
band in the tunnel underneath, plus the shot where they're
going down like the courtroom steps like him and Madonna,
like the jail, like the police department staircase with all
the paparazzi. That was the following day. The day after
(30:50):
that was the entire Awards show and Amish Paradise, which
a like we had to basically like build that Awards
show backdrop and set like that's the same stage that
Amage Paradise took place on. We had to then, like
(31:12):
we did Amage Paradise first, and then we I think
shot like the backstage stuff where where he's uh where
he rips off the skin and reveals that he still
has a mustache and and and has that final scene
with doctor Demento. And while we were shooting that, they
were like building the podium and the steps and everything
for the uh yeah, for the audience, and then we
(31:35):
had to bring a bunch of crowd in and shoot
all that audience stuff. It was insane. It was insane
and like insane, and and we and like we didn't
have the money to like go overtime, like these were
eleven shooting hours, you know, twelve hours with an hour
long lunch break, and yeah, it was just it was
(31:59):
really crazy. And then so I made it through the gauntlet.
And then the following week, which was by the way,
like Escobar stuff, was one day like the Jungle, Like
when we shot the stuff the Jungle stuff, we shot
on the Warner Brothers lot, So like in the morning
we took a really small crew to the Warner Brothers
lot and shot that stuff. It's like the same area
(32:22):
where in Pee's Big Adventure he like swings on the
bike over the lake. Oh, it's the Tarzan Jungle from
the Warner Brothers Lot. Yeah, So we shot that there
and then like we had to load all the gear
up and drive across town to the Van NY's Golf Course,
(32:42):
the restaurant at the Van Nights Golf Course, which is
where we shot the scene with Josh Grobin in the
phone call with Now Yeah, which, by the way, that
restaurant fun fact is that has been featured in two
Paul Thomas Anderson movies. That is the Tale of the
(33:02):
Cock restaurant from Licorice Pizza. And it is also the
restaurant in Uh Magnolia that John c Riley and Malaura
Walter's like go on a date.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
That's so cool.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Yeah, Yeah, it's just got this like real old school
like San Fernando Valley restaurant. Look, so Paul Thomas Anderson
loves using it. It's like a closed down restaurant on
the golf course that like people just ran out to
shoot in. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
That's that is so awesome. I love I'm loving all
these fun facts.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
This is why I've been talking to a bunch of people,
are like, we're so excited for all the commentary and
extra stuff on the.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Oh, yeah, we drop, we drop a lot of knowledge
on that. Yeah. We both like wrote down just pages
of stuff that we wanted to mention, and it's almost
like there's not enough time to mention at all. You
can talk for hours about you know, all the stuff. Amazing.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
I will say, I'm I'm so thankful that this movie exists.
And what so this twenty twenty two is is when
it happened. Somewhere at the tail end of twenty twenty one,
I did an episode of this very podcast about the
Funny or Die sketch.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Really you have to go back and listen.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
And in that episode, my guest Robert from the Crooked
Table podcast, and I said, sooner or later, this is
gonna be a movie. They're gonna make this into a movie.
And like, not three months after that episode came out,
you're like, guess what, We're making a movie. And I
was like, we did it. We willed this into existence,
and I firmly believe that, like in my heart.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
That's awesome. I mean, it was a real journey, Like
we started so al emailed me so like when we
made that original trailer. Al and I you know, kept
in touch throughout the years whenever he would play a
show in la or you know, at the in Orange County,
(35:01):
fair like wherever he would invite me, and you know,
you like sena gift gifts when my kids were born,
like you know, just always sort of like remained there
in my life as a friendly acquaintance. And yeah, like
(35:21):
randomly I got an email from him in February of
twenty nineteen. It was like, let's what do you think
about trying to turn it into a movie. We went
out the next day. We went out and got coffee
and started talking about ideas and the Escobar stuff came
out of that first conversation. Al was like, I'd love
for there to be a part where I just, out
(35:43):
of nowhere turned into John Wick in a Hawaiian shirt.
And I was like, great, let's do it. And yeah,
so like I called Funny or Die and I was
like me and Al, they're gonna we're thinking about doing
the movie. They're like, great, when you have a pitch together,
like to you know, bring it to us. We spent
a few months coming over with a pitch. We pitched
(36:06):
it all over town. It got passed on. We wrote
the script, so I think December of twenty nineteen we
had a finished script. We got it to Daniel Radcliffe
in January of twenty twenty. He immediately said, yes, I
want to do this. We this was pre Zoom. This
was like a month before COVID. We had a I
(36:29):
don't know Google hangout with him or like whatever or
whatever the Microsoft one is called, and he was like,
I love this, I want to do it. Like what
kind of accordion should I get? I want to start
trying to learn the accordion? And then COVID hit and
then it was just like really again, really hard to
(36:51):
get people to give us money to make this movie.
We found a couple of independent financiers, this company called
Tango Entertainment. They came in, you know, they can finance
for up to a certain point, and then had to
find financing partners to try to do the rest of it.
We're gonna make it for like six million dollars. We're
(37:12):
gonna try to shoot it in Atlanta, and then we
just like struck out over the course of the next year,
like no one would even come on board to like
pay half pay three million dollars to like make this movie.
And eventually, like I had a friend, this exec, Colin Davis,
(37:33):
who I had worked with at TBA. He was at
TBS and I wrote a pilot for TBS, and then
he left TBS and went to Quibi and he hired
me to do this Quibi thing. And then Quibi went
under and he went to Roku and I was like, hey, man, like,
what do you think about this weird out doing this
weird al movie? And thankfully they said yes. But it
(37:56):
took a really long time. It was yeah, late twenty
twenty one, I think like the late summer early fall
of twenty twenty one we found out that Roku was interested.
And then of course it took a while to make
all the deals and do all that stuff. And yeah,
it was it was It was just like a really
took these things. It seemed like they come out of nowhere.
(38:18):
You know, it gets announced, it's like they're making this thing,
and you know, we were in pre production when it
got announced, but it had been years of us trying
to just push this boulder up the hill. And you know,
I'm so happy with the way that it was how
it was received and and it's it's funny too that
(38:40):
like no one even at like Roku, I think nobody
quite understood what and this might might be why we
were having trouble selling it. Nobody really understood exactly what
we were going for with this until they saw it.
(39:00):
And I remember that I sent the director's cut. I
spent five weeks putting together the director's cut, and when
everyone saw it, I remember the response was it was
almost insulting, but it wasn't meant that way. But they
were like, Eric, this is a real movie. I was like, yeah, dude,
(39:28):
it like a real well because it feels like, you know, oh,
it's kind of like a we're goofing on biopicks, like
it's a joke, it's a parody of biopicks or something.
But I never thought of it as a parody of
biopicks as much as I thought of it as a
real biopick that just a comedic biopick that exists in
a bizarre, funny universe. You know. I always even when
(39:52):
we were trying to find financing, I had to put
together like a pitch deck to try to, you know,
get people to give us money. And and it it
wasn't like you know, naked Gun, airplane hot shots. You know,
those weren't the movies that I was referencing. I was
referencing like Anchorman and Wayne's World, and you know, comedies
(40:14):
that are like kind of ridiculous but also that have
a great story that you could track. And you know,
Wayne's World had like you care about his relationship with
Tia Carrera's character, like you know, it really works well.
And I wanted everything to work as well in this
and not just be like a sketch that goes on
(40:37):
for too long.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
Yeah, And that's that's that was a real fear again
for you know, some folks is like, is this going
to be Night at the Roxbury?
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Is this going to be ladies?
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Man? Is this going to be like a thing that
should only be this long like stretched out longer?
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Yeah, should be you know, And.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
It's so clear that you were cognizant of it not
doing that that.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Yeah, it felt.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Really really real.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
You know. Honestly, that was Al's fear for all those years.
That's probably the reason we didn't try to turn this
into a movie in twenty ten, because we we had
joked about it or I at least I email. I
must have brought it up to Al, because I emailed
with Olivia Wilde and Aaron Paul like after that dropped,
and they were so stoked with like how that fake
(41:19):
trailer came out. They were like this thing is so
great and we were like, should we do this movie?
Should we really make this movie? And Al was like,
it's a sketch. You know, it's a sketch idea. It's like,
I don't know that he he had that same fear,
like he didn't know that it had the legs. And
if I think that if I would have made it
(41:40):
ten years ago, maybe it would have been an over
long sketch. I think it took. It took me kind
of maturing as a writer and director to you know,
try to really inject heart and story into it once
we got into the writing process, and and I mean
(42:03):
it was so great when the movie finally came out.
Al Al was like you were like you were right
to give it that heart, because I know that was
like a you know some of those things where they
weren't arguments, but there were discussions about you know, how
how important is it that this moment like really earns
(42:25):
you know, and and it's great that at the end
of the day it was like, yeah, man, that's like
that's what makes this part of what makes this so great.
And Radcliffe's and like Dan Daniel Radcliffe too, I mean
like that's he is so good. I mean everyone's good.
(42:45):
The entire cast is great. Evan ridge Wood is incredible,
Rain was amazing, Like they're all everybody's incredible. The guys
in the band are like so they're like the heart
of the movie, Like they're so nice, and like we
were all deliberately that was like we're like, let's just
make the band guys the nicest guys of the world. Yeah,
(43:06):
because and the reason we did it really is because
we're like it'll be so funny when Al's being really
mean to them, like the nicer we make them just
the uh. And I don't know if this really even
translated in the movie as well as I thought it
(43:26):
would when we were writing it. But the moment when
Tommy Bermuda is like, whoa is that Madonna? Like I
think that like we the intention and maybe I should
have had the other guys be psyched about it too,
is that they're like excited to see Madonna because she's
so famous. They're like, whoa, it's Madonna. Hey, and he
(43:47):
just immediately is like yelling at them again. But anyway,
those guys were so great, and but Radcliffe like really
carries this whole thing. And and he's just so you know,
there's just something about his eyes, you know, like he's
just so you feel sad for him and you feel
(44:07):
his joy and like, I mean whatever. For seven Harry
Potter movies, he sort of took us through that world
and like carried that story. So maybe maybe audiences are
really used to looking at that face.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
For me, maybe one of the like again, you know, beforehand,
I felt like I was like fending people off with
like baseball basket, Like, guys, don't question anything.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
This is gonna be what it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
They're like, but Harry Potter though, but Harry Potter that
I was like, Okay, but like, did you see Guns
of Kimbo like he can do weird?
Speaker 3 (44:43):
Yes? I loved Guns of Kimbo. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
I probably got like at least a dozen people to
watch Guns of Kimbo ahead of time for this, just to.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
Get like Harry Potter out of their brain.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Yeah right right, you know, but but yes, I told
everybody was like, just trust the process. I was like,
this is going to be This might not be the
movie anybody expects, it might not even be the movie
anybody once, but this is going to be the movie
that it's supposed to be and the movie that it
needs to be.
Speaker 2 (45:09):
And that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
And like it's every time a new like there's a
new award nomination attached to this or something like, I
literally get goosebumps and I had nothing to do with
it because it just makes me so happy.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
Yeah, that's great, Thank you so much for that. Yeah,
I mean, and it was like there was a lot
of just trust from you know a lot of people,
like even Radcliffe, like you know, the fact that he
trusted us, you know that he trusted me. I had
never made a movie before. Yeah, and he was just like, yeah, man,
(45:44):
down to do whatever you want me to do with this.
And I gave him, you know, I mean, really the
biggest direction I gave him was like, don't try to
be play this like you think Al would play it.
Just use the script, like you know, you know what
the scene is about, you know where how your character
is supposed to feel make it your own and just
(46:08):
like really play those emotions, like really just just like
lean hard into these scenes and play the reality, like
ground them as silly as things get, just like ground
the hell out of it.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
It's so clear that yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
Yeah, And he was a little concerned about that. He
was like when he first saw a cut of the movie,
he was he was like, oh, I don't know if
I made the right choice here. I think people might
want to see more of a weird al impression. And
I was like, dude, please, no, Like, we haven't screwed
this is before we premiered in Toronto. I said, we
(46:45):
haven't screened this movie. We had no test screenings. I
showed this movie to five friends and not even a
finished cut, you know, like earlier cuts, just to get
notes from some trust. And the first thing anybody says
when this movie ends, it's like, oh my god, Daniel
(47:07):
Redcliff was so great in that. And he's like, all right,
I'll take your word for it. And then of course
we got to Toronto and it premiered, and he was
I'm like, see, see, I told you. I told you
when we got to Toronto, you'd be like eating those words.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Man, it's so cool. That's so cool, and look at that.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
I'm like looking at the time on my recording, I
was like, do you have like fifteen or twenty minutes
to talk to me?
Speaker 2 (47:29):
And we're like forty five minutes into talking about Oh
is that?
Speaker 3 (47:32):
Oh yeah, I'm down.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
No, this was wonderful, And like the only reason I'm
even like, uh, it's because I told my husband i'd
be making.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Dinner for that. Oh no, oh no, no, it's fine.
I told him.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
I was like, if I'm in there past a certain time,
just start browning the turkey.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
I'll be there, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
So I am really not good at buttoning any of
my podcast episodes up.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
Okay, that's the hardest thing. Dude. End a scene.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Yeah, I have known you once. I'm just like, well, okay,
this is super fun.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
This was great.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
And uh, I at the very least, I'm proud of
myself for not pulling up Chris Farley on you and
being like, so, do you remember that Weird A'll movie?
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Right right?
Speaker 3 (48:14):
I love? Yes, I remember that. Remember that I wrote
with Paul McCarty's like remember the Beatles? Like, yeah, I
remember when the Beatles?
Speaker 2 (48:27):
So you remember when you made that movie.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
I yeah, oh that was that's great.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting my DVD and uh.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Yes, yeah, I hope you enjoy the bonus features. Shoot
me an email, and if you ever think of any
other questions you want to ask, please feel free to
I like knowing.
Speaker 1 (48:47):
This, I absolutely will feel free to email you. And
I'm just gonna say it, like, uh, you know, I've
I've been in Owl's presence a handful of times. The
first time, I cried amazing, and it was one of
those meet and greet things and he literally like hugged
me and asked me if I was okay.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
I'm like, I'm fun it.
Speaker 2 (49:05):
He's so nice.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
And then the second time, it was after I'd started
this podcast and he knew who I was, and I
about fell to the floor.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
I was like, oh, oh okay. Interesting.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
And then the third time, I was with my husband
and he had things to say to weird Al, and
weird Al was just like, oh, nice to see you again,
and he was like oh hi to my husband and
like he'd only paid attention to me, and I was like, I'm.
Speaker 3 (49:25):
Real sorry, oh wow, that's amazing, and.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
It was great. So yeah, you know, so you know,
he knows who I am till Alex said, Hi.
Speaker 3 (49:35):
I will, I will, you know.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
And my only dream really is to get on his
Christmas card list. That's that's going to be. That's when
I'll know I've made it.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
That's a pretty cool list I was on. I was on.
I was on both the Pee Wee Herman and Weird
Al Christmas card list. Yeah, I was pretty pretty crazy.
Those are like the two Those are my two Christmas
card Yeah, I even got I went to like the
Paul Rubins like memorial friends and you know, friends and
(50:10):
family like friends of Paul Rubins Celebration of Life at
the It was at the Skirball Center in La like
a month after he passed away, And like I was
on his Christmas card list, and like I got the
birthday texts from him. Did they did you read about
that anywhere? Like? And he had done he did these
videos And I got a video he sent me, Like
(50:33):
on my birthday the year before he passed away, I
got this video. I was in Atlanta filming something and
I got this video that was, you know, five minute
long video of him just saying really nice things about me.
And I'd worked with Paul Rubins one time I got
kind of close to I almost directed the Pee Wee movie.
(50:55):
I like met a couple times on that, but I
had like, yeah, but it was just crazy to like
to go to the uh to be at this memorial
with all these you know, with all of these people
that were like close with him and stuff. Yeah, it
was really really amazing.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
That's just that's just beautiful, you know, and you know,
like what Paul Rubens did and like what Al still
does with the people that are even like inner circles,
not even the word, it's like, you know, even tertiary
circles that are like a couple you know, spheres out,
just little things to make like those people feel good that.
Speaker 2 (51:34):
You just kind of hold onto.
Speaker 3 (51:35):
Everyone feels so special. Like getting those texts from Paul
Rubins every year was like the highlight of my birthday. Yeah,
it's just it's it's uh, it's it was wild to
be in a room with you know, a couple hundred
people that of what weird Al was there to you know,
we're Alan his wife, are there with Jack White, Conan O'Brien,
(51:56):
you know, like the room full of it. It was
amazing to be in that room with all of those
people that got to experience that as well, you know,
like everyone had that in common, like not only just
like being being a fan of Paul's or having cross
paths with him at some point, but like getting those
(52:17):
special birthday messages from him. It was like, oh man,
this is a room full of people that like get it,
and it made it like extra devastating to be there.
It was like the I think, just the most like
profound sadness that I had ever felt in like my
(52:37):
adult life. Like this weird because also he was like
a childhood hero. You know, I've looked like I actually
have this sitting next to me in my desk. Is
this like lenticular that's beautiful pewee thing? And it was
the tag from like a peewee Herman pajamas I had
when I was like nine years old from J. C. Penny.
I love that and I like found it in an
(52:59):
old box and it's in my desk.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Well that's a treasure.
Speaker 3 (53:02):
Yeah, yeah it is, it is. But anyway, yeah, I
think that's.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
That's a lovely way to end the seat.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
Again, you you're better at this than I am, because
like it's the kind of thing that inspires you to
be that for somebody else, you know, to be that
little bit of kindness, you know, and if we can
do that after.
Speaker 3 (53:19):
Yeah, after the after Paul's memorial, I started sending people
birthday texts. It lasted two days. I am not that guy.
Aul Rubens is that guy? Al is also that guy.
I'm not that Unfortunately, just to my ADHD doesn't let
me be that guy, you know.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
Yeah, well you know, do it randomly.
Speaker 1 (53:42):
One thing I like to do is if I see
somebody out in public and like I like their shirt
or I like their pants, Like I just say it
and like keep moving on. It's that kind of thing too.
It's just like like Kamakazi kindness.
Speaker 3 (53:53):
Yes, yes, that that is the way to live for sure.
Speaker 1 (53:57):
So well, Eric, thank you for being here and talking
to me. And this has been absolutely delightful.
Speaker 3 (54:03):
Yeah, thanks for having me. This is great.
Speaker 1 (54:05):
Thanks. Well, wasn't that neat Again? Big thanks to Eric
appeal for talking to me. You know, will old me
and I had a great time and I couldn't have
done it without the help of some very special people,
uh my husband Russ, who kind of gave me the
push to make it happen, and a friend and listener
(54:30):
of the show, Noah, for giving me some amazing talking points. Noah,
you made me sound more intelligent than I am, so
I appreciate you very much for that, And thanks so
much for listening. And if you haven't already pre ordered
or ordered your copy of Weird L. Yankovic Story with
all of those delightfully delicious bonus features that we talked about,
(54:51):
what's wrong with you?
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The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.