September 30, 2025 • 44 mins
This week, Jason and Dee dive handlebars-first into two of the quirkiest cult comedies of the 1980s: Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985) and UHF (1989)! In Part 1 of this two-part showdown, the guys explore the wild and wonderful origins behind both films.Join them as they trace Paul Reubens' journey from the improv stages of the Groundlings to the creation of his iconic alter ego, Pee-Wee Herman, and how a stage act morphed into a beloved Saturday morning show—and ultimately a big-screen debut.They’ll also rewind to the rise of Weird Al Yankovic, unpacking how his music and parody fame led to a shot at movie stardom with UHF.Plus, Jason and Dee break down the unforgettable cast of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, and the legendary creative collaboration between Reubens, Tim Burton, and Danny Elfman that brought Pee-Wee's surreal world to life.Grab your bowtie and your secret word of the day—this episode is too weird to miss!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
He's Disney John and he's Dayton, and we're from the
Docking Base seventy seven podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Friendly Nerds discussing what they're listening to, watching and reading.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
But we're not here to talk about us. Oh heck, now,
we're here to talk about our friends, Jason.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Indeed, today the guys are diving into two of the
most gloriously oddball comedies. The nineteen eighties ever gave.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Us Tim Burton's Pee Wee's Big Adventure and Weird Owl's UACHEF.
One's about a man and his beloved bicycle, and the.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Other is about a man and his beloved UHF station,
which is basically the same thing, right.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Well, except one gave us Lark smart and the other
gave us Gandhi with a machine gun.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
One taught us how not to chain up your bike.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
And the other taught us that, yes, you really can
open a store that sells only spatulis.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
So put on your red bow tie court grab a
twinky Wiener sandwich, because Pee Wee and Weird Al are
about to get weird. Wait, surely you can't be serious.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Okay, boys and girls, Today's secret word is weird. All right,
we are here to talk about a couple of weird movies.
We have got two incredible icons of the eighties who
(01:23):
are famous for being quirky and different and changing the
way that we view things. We're here today to talk
about pee Wee Herman's Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Yes, and
we're here today to talk about weird Al Yankovic's uh F. Yes. Yeah,
(01:43):
we're gonna have to call him Al or we're going
to be screaming the whole show. That's right, that's right.
We are comparing these two movies. Pee Wee's Big Adventure
came out in nineteen eighty five. UHF came out in
nineteen eighty nine. Both of them are cult classics. One
of them did well in the and one of them
did not. And we're gonna kind of explain why and
(02:04):
just a bit. But this is just gonna be a
fun little ride. I talked to Jason. He's been bugging
me to do Pee Wee's Big Adventure four years now.
I have, and I never I had never seen the
movie all the way through. It's seen bits and pieces
of it. I remember seeing Pee Wee's Playhouse a bit
when I was young. I remember seeing Peewee at the
Big Top. Is that what it was called? Peewee Big Top? Peewee,
(02:25):
that's it. I saw that one in the theater. Thought
it was great. Apparently I was one of the few
people who thought it was great.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Yeah, did not do well. But I got to finally
watch it all the way through for the first time.
You kind of dragged me kicking and screaming so anxious
to hear what you think. I'm excited to talk about it.
I had a good time to you know, no spoiler,
but yeah, I had a good time watching this movie,
even though I had a lot of reservations about watching it.
And we're talking about UHF, which I listened to our
(02:55):
weird episode which came out back in twenty twenty too,
almost this time back then, and we had talked about that.
We had bumped UHF to cover that movie, the biopic
starring Daniel Radcliffe. It was interesting, you know, it's three
years ago and we have talked about doing UHF every
single year since then, and then finally it just it
(03:18):
dawned on us as we were trying to figure out
what to compare Pee Wee's Big Adventure to UHF was
the obvious choice. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
So for the longest time, I've had kind of a
special connection with UHF because it was filmed in my hometown.
The Outsiders was filmed in my hometown.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
But I was a little kid. I was like nine, right.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
So I couldn't have gone anywhere, you know, But UHF.
I remember on the local radio station the guys saying, Hey,
they're shooting a scene at sixty first in Peoria today.
They need extras. It's weird Al. Everybody, come down. You
want to be in a movie, come on down. And
next song on the countdown is Sweets Out of Mine.
So that was summer of nineteen eighty eight. Yeah, so
(03:59):
weird Al was in town. I knew where he was staying,
like the place, you know, the Kingsington Mall allowed him
to It was a hotel connected to a mall, so
you could stay and shoot kind of all in the
same spot.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
All right.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Yeah, and then just a few weeks ago, you and
I took a day trip to Tulsa made a video
with all the UHF locations we could find, plus a
few extras. Yeah, go to our YouTube page, check that out.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
It's really cool. It's very fun. We had a great time.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
We had a great time doing that, and then little
did we know, but weird out was playing.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Yes, he was playing at the.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Brady Theater like a couple of days after we were there.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Which is across the street from Cooney's Karate School. So
you gotta gotta go check out that video to find that.
I mean, it was it was serendipitous. We just happened
to We were like, oh, let's go shoot something at
the Brady Theater and there we saw weird Awl's name
as the only name on the marquee. It was just
pretty spectacular.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
It meant to be Cooney's Karate School and the Brady
Theater share a parking lot.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Yeah, it's crazy. So all right, to get.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Us started, I guess we got to kick this thing
off with Peb's Big Adventure because that's the first Movie's a.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Lot of things about me.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
You don't know anything about that.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Things he wouldn't understand, things he couldn't understand, things you
shouldn't understand.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, so obviously we'll start with Paul Rubins case you
don't know, that's the actor who plays Pee Wee Herman,
which I didn't know for the longest time, like until
he got arrested. I think was when I was like, oh,
his name is not pee Wee Herman, right, which was
kind of by design, like he had specifically he had
decided this was going to be he was going to
(05:36):
keep this as his public persona. Just he was doing
multiple interviews because the character is really what made him famous,
and he was doing interviews where he would have to
be both people, and finally he's just decided, I'm just
not going to be Paul anymore for interviews for the
public life, I'm only going to be pee Wee. So
where did pee Wee begin?
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Well, he was born and kind of raised early in
New York, So while he was still a kid, his
family picked up and moved to Sarasota, Florida, Yes, which
that was actually the off season home of Ringling Brothers
and Barnum and Bailey Circus. And so he got to
go to like circus camp and started becoming like a performer,
(06:16):
almost took an interest in becoming maybe a circus performer.
Well after he graduated from high school, he had an
interest in wanted to discover the artistic side of himself,
and so he moved out to California and enrolled in
cal Arts and in his cow Arts class was David Hasselhoff.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
David Hasselhoff of night Rider fame and.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
And like Europe's greatest singer of.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
All time off yeah huff.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
And then also Katie Segal was in his class. She
goes plays Peg Bundy and so he starts to kind
of grow and expand as a performer there at cal Arts.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yeah, he's he was wanting to be a serious actor.
I mean, he did serious stuff at that time, and
I think it was just he was very popular at
the school and a school full of artists. He was
still kind of the guy that everybody admired, and she
stood out. Yeah, he stood out. So ultimately he after
college he joins the Groundlings, that's.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
Right, and the Groundlings are kind of a improv group.
It was kind of a class. It wasn't really a
thing until people started to become attracted to him and
wanted to get involved. And then they're like, well, we
need to like come up with a name for ourselves
and put on shows and so yeah, from the Groundlings,
like Edie McClure, the secretary from Ferris Bueler's day Off.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yes, freaking hilarious. Yep.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
She works the counter and planes trains and auomobiles.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yes, and so she's in it. And of course you
have Paul Rubins, Lorain Newman, Lorain Newman, one of.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
The earliest members of Saturday Night Live. Yep, Cassandra Sandra Peterson,
there you go, who played Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Yes. So Cassandra Peterson talks about when she first came
to the school, she was still just barely developing the
Elvira character, and she saw two guys talking to each
other and it was Paul Rubins and John Paragne and said,
I immediately said, I'm going to make friends with those guys.
Like they just had such a great chemistry. She could
just tell that they were the guys that she wanted.
(08:08):
And she was like, it's a little Stockerish, but I
wanted to be with those guys because they knew they
had such great ability to improv and riff off of
each other. Now, if you don't know who John Peregrine is,
you might know him as John by the Genie in
Peewe's Playhouse. A High mech A, Heidi ho Now everyone
at home, Mecca Leca High, Mecca, Heiney Ho, Mecha Heney Ho.
(08:33):
And as a connection to these two movies, he is
Fletcher Junior. He's the I'm sorry, did I do that?
You blew my mind when you send that to me
this week. Yes. So John Peregrine, who doesn't have a
whole lot of other stuff to his to his name,
is a major player in both of these, both of
(08:53):
these scenarios. Right, he's not in I don't think he's
I don't think he's in pee Wee's Adventure? What is
he where?
Speaker 4 (09:00):
He is one of the guys on the Warner Brothers lot.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Okay, it's a very small, small part like breeze by
a part, but a major player for not only pee
Wee's Playhouse later on, but his stage show, the pee
Wee Herman Show, which we'll get to here in just
a second. Right, that's right, that's right. So at the
ground links, Paul Rubin realizes he's like, you know what,
I'm funny, Like I'm good at being funny. I don't
know why I'm so focused on all this serious work.
(09:25):
When I enjoy being funny, I get laughs. And so
this may be my road to success. And so he
develops this incredible character that is a lounge singing Native America.
You know what.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
I saw him talk about this. He said it wasn't
just racist, it was blatantly incredibly racist. And he's like,
I didn't really realize that it's.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
A different time. And he's late seventies, early eighties. I mean,
he's watching The Village People, and.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
He thought this is my ticket out, Like this is
the character that I've I'm gonna be make famous with. Yeah,
and he's like, thank god that didn't come true because
it was so racist. But you know, he created like
dozens of.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Characters, dozens, and anybody else who's in these comedy troops
who has these dozens of characters. He goes to audition
for Saturday Night Live and he thinks he's got it,
Like he's at the top of his game, he's got
all these characters. He's raring to go, and.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Everybody else is telling him you're shoeing, you got it.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
And he gets there and he's watching this guy perform
and he's like, who is this guy? And they're like, oh,
that's one of the producer's best friends. And he's like,
oh no. He's like he's the nerdy guy. Like there
you have a select group of people in Saturday Night Live.
One of them is going to be the nerdy guy.
It's gonna be him. And that guy was Gilbert Godfrey
(10:49):
Gilbert And so he was right. He did not get
cast in Saturday Night Live, and he thought his career
was over. He thought it was done, and then inspiration strikes. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
So he goes back home and one of the things
that he learned from Saturday Night Live he was so
desperate to get in that he didn't want to be
dependent on anybody else. And so he thought, you know what,
I'm going to take control of myself and control what
I can control. And so he had a character that
he had been developing that seemed to be received well
by audiences, and so he thought, I'm going with this character.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Right, And so this character is pee Wee Hermer, we Hearman, good.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
Murder, baby Boy, mister breakfast?
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Can I te cereal?
Speaker 5 (11:32):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
A pity the poor fool, don't keep my cereal. So
he develops this entire basically skit show, a stage production
called the Pee Wee Herman Show. And John Peregrin is
a factor in that, like they're literally driving around. He's like,
I want to be a genie. They're driving around and
they see a sign. I think it was like a
grocery store sign. But Jombie is it's Johnby's place, and
(11:59):
he says that's They're both like, that's the name. That's
gotta be John By, the genie, right, the genie. And
then of course the other guy that's helping out is
Phil Hartman.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
So Phil Hartman was at first kind of too shy
to join the Groundlings.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Yeah, he's a very straight laced guy. Is in advertising,
I think, and just he made like album covers. Oh yeah,
he was designing. Yeah, that's right, designing graphic art for
album covers. That's right.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
But he was drawn to them, so he kind of
hung around, but he didn't feel good enough to get
involved until he did.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Until he did, and then he and.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Paul Rubens hit it off and became really good friends.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah, and he's he was a major writer, not only
for the Pee Wee Herman Show. He performed in the
Pee Wee Herman Show. But what happens with the Pee
Wee Herman Show is that they start in the small
theater in the Groundlings Theater, less than one hundred people,
like ninety nine people. But they sell out, and then
they keep selling out and they're like, Okay, we got
to go to a bigger place than they do, The Roxy,
the Roxy, and they sell out the Roxy. And one
(12:57):
of the people that sees them perform at the Roxy,
it's the Martin, Steve freaking Martin, and Steve Martin is like,
here's my manager. You need to talk to him. And
this guy had a protege. That guy became Pee Herman's manager.
He came in like he knew what he was doing,
and he said, here's what we're going to do. We're
going to take this stage show and we are going
to make it a nationwide tour. And what we want
to do is develop enough of a following that by
(13:20):
the time we're done, that you are such a well
known name and such a draw, such an influencer at
the time before that term really existed, that the studios
won't have any way to say no to developing a
full movie for you, right, And that's exactly what they did.
And they they sell out Carnegie Hall, they sell out
every like for twenty two shows, They sell out the theaters,
(13:41):
and they make their way all the way back to
la and at their final show, it is full of
Hollywood producers and he gets a standing ovation at the
end of the show that goes on and on and on,
and their plan worked perfectly because Warner Brothers said, we
want to make your movie. It's incredible.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
So I was you in nineteen eighty one HBO, early HBO,
when they had about five things to show.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
They broadcast the when it was still called Home Box Office.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
So me and I spent the night with some buddies
and we watched the Pee Wee Herman Show, which at
that time was not directed at kids.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
It was adult humor framed in.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
It like a kid's show, and we thought it was
the freak and hilarious. It was the funniest thing we'd
ever seen.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
What is this mermaid missing?
Speaker 4 (14:31):
But you know he he hypnotizes a woman and he
makes her take off our clothes on stage and we thought,
oh my god, this is the pinnacle of humor. Of course,
that woman was a part of the Groundlings as well,
so that.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
HBO show was huge.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Party Colner Artie Colner directed that. That's right, and he
went on to do hard knocks in the White Video Guy. Yeah, Yeah,
but in the early eighties, he would go on the
David Letterman Show and like kind of the precursor to
the Larry King Show.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
There was a show on CNN that came on late.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
At night, and he would go on and be interviewed
not as Paul Rubins but as pee Wee Herman. And
he would also come on David Letterman. And he said
he and Dave kind of hit it off that out
of chemistry.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Yeah, Dave was a good straight man for his goofy
pee Wee.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
Herman, and he was a regular who came on like
every two months or so, and so he had kind
of built this thing with Letterman and his show, and
Warner Brothers is like, yes, we want to make a
movie with you.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Right, So he and Phil Hartman and a guy named
Michael Farhall get together and they start working on the
script and they've got They've got sid Field's screenplay. You know,
the boy. This is the guidebook on how to write
a screenplay. I read it whenever I was in college
doing my screenwriting class. It's I mean, it's here's how
you do it. This is the way you write. And
they followed it letter for letter, note for note. But
(15:46):
what they were trying to do. Initially when they were
writing it was they were trying to Paul Rubens's favorite
movie was Pollyanna with Hayley Mills in it, and he
was trying to write Pee Wee as Paullyanna. And they're
on the Warner Brothers a lot and he notices, like
everybody on the lot is getting around on bicycles, like
they you know, there are a few people who've got
the golf cards, but really no cars are driving around.
(16:08):
Everybody's driving around bicycles. And he keeps going like, what
do I gotta do to get a bicycle? Why can't
I have a bicycle? Right? And so after weeks of this,
he shows up and as a gift, there is just
this gift waiting for him of this vintage swim like
nineteen forties fifties model bicycle, red and white, beautiful, and
he says, in that moment, I realized this is what
(16:32):
the script has to become. We're riding the wrong movie.
We're riding the wrong movie. They go scrap everything that
they've written so far and they make it a His
big adventure is his bike gets stolen and he has
to go get it back Peewee.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Loves his bike more than he loves life itself and
it gets stolen.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Yeah, and it's it's kind of loosely based on The
Bicycle Thieves, which I think is nineteen forties forty eight
something like that. So then they they've got it, and
they've got their script and they you were telling me
that you paused it, like they've got there, they've got
their corkboard where they're putting the post it notes up,
and you said that it was it was like, how
did it go?
Speaker 4 (17:09):
So I'm looking at this picture of Phil Hartman, Michael Varhall,
and Paul Rubens in there at the writing place, and
behind them are a bunch of post it notes, and
so I freeze and I look and I zoom in.
One post it note says ghost Trucker, one note says Alamo,
uh huh, one note says Rodeo Cowboy.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
And it was just these ideas. Yeah, well those.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Ideas are weaved through the entire movie, which makes it
freaking hilarious.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
It's a simple plot structure that allows them to weave
together these vignettes, very much like National Lampoon Vacation, where
you know you've got a road trip and you can
just these things happen along the way. It's a very
easy way to string these things together, which will come
up when we talk about UHF as well, of course,
no doubt. And so they've got their script and they're
(17:55):
ready to find a director and Paul Rubins makes a
list of one hundred and fifty director Like he's like thinking,
thinking of every movie that I love, I'm going to
you know, if I was anything I liked about the
movie at all, I'm putting that director's name down. And
so he gives the studio his list of one hundred
and fifty directors and they come back with one that's
not on the list. And he looks at this and
(18:16):
he's like, what has this guy done? And he looks
and he's like, this is the wrong guy. This is
not the right guy. And so he comes to him.
He's like, I'm not going to do it with this guy.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Okay, so I sent you a video clip this week. Yeah,
he dug his heels in on this. But keep in
mind this is he's not a movie star yet.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Neither was Sylvester Stallone. That's right.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
His inspiration was Sylvester Stallone and the way he handled
the Rocky franchise. So if you'll remember Sylvester Stallone, which
we've never covered Rocky or any of the Rocky movies, which.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
We will do. Yeah, there's no question we will.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
So Sylvester Stallone had written the script for Rocky and
when he took it to the studio, they said, great,
we want to make this movie. Maybe we could have
Chuck Norris be the boxer or whatever. He's like, no, no, no,
I'm going to be the actor. And they said no,
we got to get somebody else. And he said, well
then it's not for sale basically right, and he decided
this is the criteria. I'm the star if you want
(19:09):
to make my movie. And he went all in on himself, right,
And so Paul Rubins was like, well, Sylvester Stallone did it,
I'm going to do that as well.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
And he got some advice.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
They're like, listen, the winds of change happened fast around here.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Yeah, people in the studio are gone. You're going to
get You're going to not have your picture anymore.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
And he said, I'm willing to tough it out.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Yeah. So the way that they put it to him
was if you can find a director by whatever, it
was one week. Yeah, one week. He got one week
to find a director. They have to be approvable, affordable,
and available. The three a's pretty pretty tough call, right,
I mean, if you're in Hollywood and you're a good director,
you're probably working right. And so he goes he's trying
(19:51):
to find people. He's not having any luck, and he
goes to a party that is being thrown by a
friend of his who used to be a manager at
a restaurant he worked at as a waiter or something,
you know, just I mean, and he's just like, I
can't find anybody. He's like, do you know any directors?
And she's like, yes, I do. And he's like, oh who,
(20:11):
and she's she says, there's this young guy. I think
he works over at Warner Brothers actually, and he's made
a couple of little short things. I think he'd be
great for you. His name is Tim Burton. Pee. He's
never seen this, never seen any of Tim Burton's work,
but he looks and sees that Shelley Duvall is in
this movie, this small movie that Tim has made called
(20:31):
Franken Weeniye, and Shelley Duvall is a friend of his. Yes,
and so he calls her and he says, can you
tell me here's my situation, And she's like, oh, Paul,
he's perfect. He is perfect for you. So he watches
Frank and Weenie and he says, three scenes in he
knows this is the perfect director for his movie. And
(20:53):
as it turns out, he's approvable, he's available, and he's affordable,
and he wants to do the movie too. Well, that's
the thing.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Once he said yeah, Tim Burton and a lot of
people were like.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Oh, he turns down stuff all the time. He won't
ever do it. Turned down everything. Yeah, he turned He
had so many scripts coming to him and turning them
all down, and when he saw this one, he said,
this is the movie I want to make as my
first real movie. You think about it.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
They're both quirky characters. Yeah, they're both ultra creative, very
very kind of kindred spirits. That's right, they're weird. You know,
you and I were talking before we started recording, kind
of the third piece to the puzzle that may get
overlooked but is also an outsider, a weirdo and ultra
(21:40):
creative that contributed massively to the success of this movie
and others.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Yeah, is Danny Elfman? Absolutely? Yeah. So we we've talked
before when we did our Man episode about how Tim
Burton and Danny Elfman came together, and I talked about
(22:06):
the move there. Danny Elfman had composed the score to
only one movie before, and it was years before, and
it was this Wingo Boingo movie like I think his
brother might have directed it, maybe that's right, called The
Forbidden Zone, and it's just so bizarre, like I looked
at some of the pictures, just bizarre, beyond bizarre. And
of course it was a favorite of Paul Rubin's, right, yeah,
(22:27):
and so he was like, oh, this is great. Now.
They had originally approached the guy from Devo, that's right,
the head guy of Devo. Yeah, was it Mark Mothers Baw?
Is that right? That Mark Mother's Blaw. Yeah, And he
couldn't do it, but he ends up composing the theme
to the to the Playhoffs to Pee Wee's Playhoffs later on.
That's right, that's right. So they bring in Danny Elfman
(22:50):
and yeah, it's this beautiful magic of match made and
great script, great director, great composer and all on their
Virgeon run if you will at a major motion picture.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
You know you mentioned it before. I want to kind
of double down on what you said. Yeah, this script
for Peeb's Big Adventure is studied at like like script
writing classes.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Really because do you know they followed the format, right,
they followed.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
The formula exactly. So it's a ninety minute movie. The
script is ninety pages long.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
Act one is over on page thirty.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Yep, that's when the bicycle gets stolen.
Speaker 4 (23:28):
And knitting and knitting and knitting.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Yeah, Jimmy, what is this two late?
Speaker 4 (23:35):
Chip looks like a pen exactly. I bought this pen
one hour before my.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
Bike was stolen.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Why what's the significance? I don't know.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Act two is over on page sixty, and then the
movie ends on page ninety resolution.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Yeah, here's the rest of the story. Right, No, this
is this is perfect. You're gonna love this. Right. So,
this budget on this movie was five five to six
million dollars not much, not much. It's a low budget
even you know in the eighties, that's a low budget movie, right. Yes,
it grosses something like fifty million, so it's it's a
phenomenal success for such a low sleeper unexpected, Like, yes,
(24:15):
that's what they they were like, they had no anticipation
that anybody would like this movie, and it's this huge,
huge success. So that propels Peewee to have his own
TV show, which is a great thing. It propels Danny
Elfman to do another movie called Beetlejuice Justice Juice, and
Tim Burton is directing that movie. I think, I said
Danny Elfman first, those two guys together do Beetlejuice, and
(24:39):
that Tim Burton showing that he can pull off two
moved I just won, but pull off two successful movies.
Then leads to in nineteen eighty eight, him being tapped
to do Batman. Batman Now. Batman gets released on June
(25:05):
twenty third, nineteen eighty nine, amongst a handful of other movies,
including Indiana, Jones and The Last Crusade, Dead Poet Society.
You Got More Fun, You got the list, gimme.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
So it is my belief that the summer of nineteen
eighty nine is the greatest summer for movies in the eighties. Yes,
I'm going all time because so listen to this. Starting
in May, You've got Fright Night two, Roadhouse, Dead Poet Society,
Star Trek five. Now keep in mind Some of these
movies turn out good.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Some of them didn't.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
But every week you're like, oh, Man Star Trek five
is hitting the theaters, and after that Ghostbusters two is
coming out, right yeah, And then Batman and Honey I
Shrunk the Kids and do the Right Thing and Karate
Kid three and Weekend at Bernie's and leave the Weapon
two and Licensed to Kill and when Harry met Sally
and Turner and Hooch, Parenthood, the Abyss Nightmare and Elm
(25:57):
Street Part five, Uncle Buck. Week after week after week
you have an incredible movie in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Nine, named actors, named directors, Big time stuff going on.
And then in July, just four weeks to the day
after Batman is released, this little five million dollar movie
called UHF gets released.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
And it gets buried by Rigs and Murta and Batman
and Batman Batman, Tim Burton is burying UHF.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
That's true. So five million dollars budget, it's opening weekend,
it does four something. It ultimately grosses a little bit
more like they get it gets to six, right, but
not a success, not a success, not a success at all.
And it's only after people have kind of weeded through
all of these huge monumental movies that have come out
(26:56):
to really go, wait, this movie's actually good. It's like,
this is a definitive cult classic. It did so poorly
it went out of print, and yet even out of print,
people obsess over this movie. So weird Al, I don't
need to go to the whole history. And by the way,
go check out our weird episode so she can get
(27:17):
the full history, and I go into all kinds of
detail about parodies and the inspiration for weird Out to
do his parody songs. But to make the story short,
weird Out he gets an accordion. His mom buys him
an accordion from a door to door salesman when he's
a little kid. She's like, well, this will make him popular.
He learns how to play it. He goes on to
(27:38):
become a DJ at his college, where he gets the
where he gets his handle of weird Al Yankovic and
then he's playing a lot of weird stuff that he's
not really allowed to play and ultimately gets fired. But
in the process of all of this, he meets a
guy going you know, college to college who's got his
own strange show called Doctor Demento, and so he meets
(27:59):
to Doctor Demento. He's like, hey, you know, I love
your stuff. They kind of form a little bit of
a bond. And then a really popular song at the time,
song that we've covered on our Patreon episode is called
my Sharona.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
That's right, That's right, and he comes up with.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
My Bologna, My Bologna, and spoiler alert for the movie
this is true. He records it inside of a bathroom
to get the reverb effect right. He sends his tape
to Doctor Demento. Doctor Demento plays it and it becomes
a huge success. He ultimately then goes on to follow
(28:36):
this up with I Love Rocky Road. Another one rides
the bus a lot of fantastic parody songs, and his
theme you know, he won't make a song. He won't
make a parody of a song if the original artist
says no. But he says, it doesn't hurt to ask, right,
and Michael Jackson's beat it is at the top of
the charts, and weird Ow comes up with an idea
(28:59):
for a parody and it's like, there's no way. Michael Jackson, Well,
it doesn't hurt to ask, and Michael Jackson says, yes, yes,
and that's when weird Al moves from good to great.
(29:23):
When Edit came out.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
I remember at the skating rink the people going bonkers
when they'd played Weird Out Eat It.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
And then as he grows as a comedian, his fun
you know, his songs are super clever, they're funny. Plus
he can sing, I mean, plus, you know, the music's
good and stuff.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
The music is absolutely solid, yes, but he goes up
a notch with the music videos right. And so he
when he gets into this position of becoming famous for
his parody songs, he needs video. MTV came out in
eighty one, It's all happening at the same time, and
so he needs videos for his stuff. And so who
does he get to do it. He gets his to
(30:00):
direct the videos, a guy named Jay Levy, and so
Jay Levy creates these perfect parodies of the I Love
rock and Roll video and Michael Jackson Beat It video.
I mean, if you watch it, it's so well done,
Like it's literally like they I can't imagine how they
didn't go to the exact location, and maybe they did,
maybe they went exactly where it had gotten filmed, but
(30:22):
they produce it nearly frame for frame with comic elements throughout,
and it's brilliantly done.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
I think they did with the Fat video. I think
they went to the exact same spot where they filmed Bad.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Sure, yes, you know, so Jay Levy is able to
do with Fat what Martin Scorsese did with Bad, And
that's that's genuinely impressive. Like I can't go out and
recreate a Martin Scorsese video. That's that's suppressive stuff, right,
And so they.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
For those of you who are forgotten that Martin Scorsese
directed the Bad Video, go back to our very first episode.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Yeah all right, so we don't know how long Jason
was frozen and fray like mid sneezes. Sorry about that.
We weren't watching the cameras anyway. So Jay Levy and
weird Al have got have gotten together. They've made great music,
they've made great videos. They come out with Weird Al
(31:21):
in three D, which I had the tape I wore.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
The recovering Weird Al three D.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
I know, right, and it's so successful. They're like, what
else can we do? And the idea comes up, well,
what if we do a movie? And we just you know,
we've got all these crazy ideas for these parodies. Let's
let's figure out how to make this into a movie.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
So here's one of the interesting stories about this. Do
you know who Gene Kirkwood is.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Gene Kirkwood is the producer. He is a producer. Yeah, okay,
give me more. So he produced the movie Rocky. Oh
well that's something, right, Yeah, I'm speaking of spilled Sylvester Stallone.
Right about knock a Home Run? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (31:56):
Right, So, Jay Levy and weird Al have Richen in
the script. They're passing it around Hollywood. It ends up
in Gene Kirkwood's assistance hands. They read it, they think
it's really funny. Yeah, they give it to This is
the producer of Rocky. Hey, you're the producer of Rocky.
How about a Weird Al movie?
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Okay, I don't know how that works, but sure, I
was gonna tell you this. So he made Rocky.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
He also made the popa Greenwich Village.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
He also made Get Rich or Die Trying.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Remember the fifty cent movie? Okay.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
He also made a movie that we have talked about
many times but have never seen, a Night in Heaven.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Isn't this the Brian Adams. Bryan Adams made the song
Heaven for this movie. Yes, and nobody knows of this movie.
That's right. It's starring the guy from the Blue Lagoon. Right.
Speaker 4 (32:40):
Then it's about mail strippers, right, that's right.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
I don't know how we haven't seen that one.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
So yeah, right, So he produced all those movies.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
He gets his hands on it and he's like, yeah,
let's do this, you know.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Yeah, but I mean serious, Well he had been he
had been watching the videos, and he had already had
an interest in like, Wiga, we can make this guy
into a movie star.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
So serious producer says, let's make this guy movie star.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
I've also got another name for you, okay, Gray Fredericson.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Yeah, you know this guy is. Yeah, we've talked about
him a few times before. I think maybe just me
and you. But he was a guy who he was
involved in The Godfather, The Godfather too, The Apocalypse, now
The Outsiders, every Francis Ford Coppola movie that he did
in the first ten years of his career. Gray Fredrickson
(33:29):
is a producer on those movies. Now, if you go
back to our catalog, we have covered The Outsiders versus Rumblefish,
both of them Francis Ford Coppola movies, both of them
produced by Gray Fredrickson, and they were both filmed in Tulsa.
That's right.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
So before we move on to Tulsa, if I say
that UHF was produced by the same people who produced Rocky,
The Godfather and Apocalypse, now I'm telling the truth.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Yeah, that's true. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
So one of the things that they said to where
to Al and Jay Levy say, hey, we want to
make this movie with you, but you got to make
it for five million dollars or less.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Can you pull that off?
Speaker 4 (34:09):
So all of a sudden they're like, well, we got
to we gotta do this on the cheap. Yeah, so
where can we film this.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Movie on the cheap? La is not cheap? You know
what is cheap? Oklahoma? Also Oklahoma?
Speaker 4 (34:19):
Yeah, and so Grey Friderson, who based out of Oklahoma City.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Oh, really, yeah, I think you would tell you. Oh yeah,
that's right, that's right. I remember that. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
So he says, hey, guys, you know we did The
Outsiders and Rumblefish and Tulsa.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
People were great. Everybody's excited. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
Yeah, people happy to have you there. You have everything
you need to shoot a movie there. Yeah, what do
you think so that they're like, eh, let's go cheap production.
Uhf in Tulsa.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
There you go, by the way, go check out that
location's filming locations video the Jason and I shot a
few weeks ago Super Fun and Specialist Cities spat Spat
see this. We bought it at Spatuliss City for real.
That's true.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
The last one, the Golden Spatchela.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
If you will, it was the last one, nothing says,
I love you.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
You know.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
We did buy that at the same grocery store that
they shot special City at. Yeah, that place is down
kind of a rougher party town.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
They had a cop making sure nobody was shoplifting, and
we could have pulled down his pants and pushed him
over and stolen everything in the store.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
I'm sorry if you're watching, sir, but literally, I was like,
I don't know that he would be any help at all.
Anybody did anything in that store.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
We could have tied his shoelaces together and still in
anything we wanted.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Yeah, anyway, okay, let's move on to casting.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
Let's flip back to Pee's Big Adventure.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Sounds good.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
I say, we hang him, then we kill him.
Speaker 5 (35:44):
I say we stop him.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
All right, so we have Paul Rubens is pee wee Herman.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
You don't want to get mixed up with a guy
like me.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
I'm a loner. Dottie Rebel talked about him.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
Yes, let's talk about the little pint sized smoke show
known as e G or Elizabeth Daily.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Elizabeth Daily, she plays Dottie. I'm not Dottie.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
Let's go, let's go.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Don't you want to see the rest of the movie.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
I don't have to see it.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
Dotty I lived.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Now. We've talked about her before, because she was she
was the singer. What was the movie? She was the
singer in the band doing the show. Was it The
Last Dragon? It was Better Off Dead? Better Off Dead?
That was it.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
Yeah, So she had been in the movie Valley Girl,
and of course she is also in the movie Better
Off deav She also goes on to do like some
incredible voice work.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
She takes over the job as Tommy on rug Rats
Tommy Pickles. Yeah, Kavanaugh was the name of the actress
who had done it originally, and she was also Dexter
on Dexter's Laboratory. I don't know how I came across
just a few weeks ago, but it was this very
sad thing where she died very young. I think she
died at fifty five or something. But she had voiced
all of these incredible characters. But she said when she
(37:10):
she decided she was going to take a break and
focus on her family, and she said, Elizabeth Dailey is
the perfect person to voice Tommy Pickles, and she is. Yeah. Absolutely.
Then we also have Mark.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
Holton as frances Pee Wee.
Speaker 5 (37:28):
You make me, don't you make me?
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Because I don't make monkeys.
Speaker 5 (37:32):
I just trained them.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
I saw him, and I immediately went to the stubbled
fat basketball player on teen Wolf Wolf like, he looks
like he's thirty seven years old out there at court
smoking a cigarette. That's right.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
Now, we're gonna cover teen Wolf here in just a
few weeks.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Yeah, we're gonna do teen Wolf versus Monster Squad, which
has another connection coming up here in the casting right,
talk about that here and just think it. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:57):
Okay, now, this was Peey's big adventure, was his first movie.
They got him right out of acting school, okay, hired
him right away. But do you know who they had
in mind for the Francis part?
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Nope?
Speaker 4 (38:08):
Yeah, Corey Feldman was who they asked, he auditioned, he
got the parts, and then passed on it to do
the Goonies.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
Well that was a good that was a good choice. Yeah. Yeah,
I could totally see him as the I mean, the
difference in those two people is amazing though right, like
completely different. Corey Feldman would have been a much more
believable Braddy kid who wanted the bicycle. That would have
been a great cast. Yeah, yeah, okay, keep going, all right.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
Then you have Diane Salinger. She plays Simone dream.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Yeah, I'm all alone.
Speaker 4 (38:46):
I'm rolling a big donut and the snake wearing a.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Best Simone the waitress. Let's talk about your big bet,
Simone and her dreams. Yeah, what are your dreams? He will,
I always have this dream.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
He's a snake wearing a vest and not that kind
of dream that part, Craig. I watched that movie with
Ava just the other day and he's talking about how
you know. She's saying it's my dream to go to Paris,
and he's like, well you should go. She's like yeah,
But he's like, everybody I talked to has a butt.
Let's talk about jer big butt. And Ava thought.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
That was so funny. That's awesome, all right.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
Then you have jud Omen who plays Mickey, the felon
that he picks up on the side of the road.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
Great straight man.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
When he pulls over it picks on pee wee. He's
wearing broken handcuffs. It's clear that he's a felon. You're right,
he is a great straight man. And Paul Rubins just
goes crazy while in drag playing his wife for the top.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
It's brilliant. He's a brilliant straight man for that part.
And he's a brilliant straight man in his delivery of
the line of the crime he committed. You know those
tags on the back of the mattress do not remove.
I get really angry sometimes it's brilliant, brilliant. Yeah, super funny. Okay.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
You just have kind of a cast of characters that
kind of come in and out of his life throughout
the movie. No real major players, although I do want
to point out you have Cassandra Peterson, yes, otherwise known
as Elvira, Mistress of.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
The dark YEP, who plays the biker chick. Give him
to me, I say, you're give him to me first? Yeah,
I say, you let him go. That's Cassandra Peterson. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (40:19):
You also have John Parragon, who plays one of the
actors on the lot we talked about that.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
I wanted to point out you have Jason Hervey. Jason
Hervey is the actor who has gifted the bicycle for
the movie that is being shot now. Jason, this is
nineteen eighty five, shooting in eighty four, right, Yeah. And
another movie that came out in eighty five that you
might have heard of. It's called Back to the Future
(40:45):
where he plays a young coonskin capped uncle to Marty
McFly what's a rerun? And then and then just two
three years later we get The Wonder Years where he
is Kevin's older brother. Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:00):
He also has a part in The Monster Squad, which
we're going to talk about here in just a few weeks.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
Ah. Perfect, okay, perfect.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
One of the people that I wanted to point out
to you as well. In that shot with Kevin who's
arguing with the director, She's like this kids drive me
crazy and I can't take you anymore.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
That's Lynn Stewart. Okay.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
She is in The Groundlings. Oh okay, And she plays
Miss Evon.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Oh miss yes, okay, oh yes. The fantastic. I love it.
Speaker 4 (41:26):
A lot of his friends making appearances.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
By the way, spoiler alert for the The Pee Wee Show,
he gets one wish from the genie. He wants to.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
Fly and the look as boy in the whole World.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
But Miss Yvonne wants Captain Carl, Captain Carl to like her,
to like like like her. Yeah, and Pee Wee decides
to give his wish to Miss s Evon. He wishes
for that to come true, and because he chose to
do the right thing, he gets his wish too, which
is to fly the luckiest boy in the world. Very
(41:59):
biblical right.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
A couple other people I want to point out to
you that I think are just freaking off the chain funny.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
In this You have James Brolin, brilliant, who plays p W.
P W Herman W Herman. Have you got any messages
for Room one O four? Name's Herman, p W Herman?
Speaker 5 (42:27):
No, nothing right now, mister Herman.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
And he's the guy in charge of the X one Yes.
And then of course the movie Dottie.
Speaker 4 (42:35):
Morgan Fairchild in her hottest of hottest.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Oh my gosh, yeah, yeah, I'm married to Morgan.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
You also have Milton Burrell make a cameo.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
He does.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
He's walking through which that's how Pee gets on the lot.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Yeah. In the in his entourage, he's telling a joke
and Pee was like, that's so funny, and he sneaks
onto the lot. Humber. The last time we talked about
Milton Burr, I do because he is Uncle Milty and
he's the real uncle to Marshall Burrell, who's right, discovered
Van Halen and then after losing Van Halen got a
(43:12):
little band called Rat called Rat. That's right.
Speaker 4 (43:15):
Speaking of Rat, you have a cameo of Twisted Sister.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
I was. I had no idea that was coming.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
I was.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
My mind was blown. I was like, what, oh fantastic.
Speaker 4 (43:26):
So Twisted Sister is shooting a music video on the
lot and here comes Pee Wee riding his bike right
through the middle of it.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
That's brilliant. Okay, So that does it for casting for
Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Come back join us next week.
We will do part two. We will dive in on
casting on UHF. We will talk about soundtracks, we will
talk about bits, we'll talk about tidbits, all kinds of
fun stuff. Be sure and join us for that, and
then of course, we'll give you our final judgment on
(43:54):
which of these two movies It's two weird movies are
the best. We will see you guys then, thank you
so much for joining us. What's your name? I can't
remember where you're from. I can't remember did you remember anything?
(44:15):
I remember the album
He's Disney John and he's Dayton, and we're from the
Docking Base seventy seven podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Friendly Nerds discussing what they're listening to, watching and reading.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
But we're not here to talk about us. Oh heck, now,
we're here to talk about our friends, Jason.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Indeed, today the guys are diving into two of the
most gloriously oddball comedies. The nineteen eighties ever gave.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Us Tim Burton's Pee Wee's Big Adventure and Weird Owl's UACHEF.
One's about a man and his beloved bicycle, and the.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Other is about a man and his beloved UHF station,
which is basically the same thing, right.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Well, except one gave us Lark smart and the other
gave us Gandhi with a machine gun.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
One taught us how not to chain up your bike.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
And the other taught us that, yes, you really can
open a store that sells only spatulis.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
So put on your red bow tie court grab a
twinky Wiener sandwich, because Pee Wee and Weird Al are
about to get weird. Wait, surely you can't be serious.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Okay, boys and girls, Today's secret word is weird. All right,
we are here to talk about a couple of weird movies.
We have got two incredible icons of the eighties who
(01:23):
are famous for being quirky and different and changing the
way that we view things. We're here today to talk
about pee Wee Herman's Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Yes, and
we're here today to talk about weird Al Yankovic's uh F. Yes. Yeah,
(01:43):
we're gonna have to call him Al or we're going
to be screaming the whole show. That's right, that's right.
We are comparing these two movies. Pee Wee's Big Adventure
came out in nineteen eighty five. UHF came out in
nineteen eighty nine. Both of them are cult classics. One
of them did well in the and one of them
did not. And we're gonna kind of explain why and
(02:04):
just a bit. But this is just gonna be a
fun little ride. I talked to Jason. He's been bugging
me to do Pee Wee's Big Adventure four years now.
I have, and I never I had never seen the
movie all the way through. It's seen bits and pieces
of it. I remember seeing Pee Wee's Playhouse a bit
when I was young. I remember seeing Peewee at the
Big Top. Is that what it was called? Peewee Big Top? Peewee,
(02:25):
that's it. I saw that one in the theater. Thought
it was great. Apparently I was one of the few
people who thought it was great.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Yeah, did not do well. But I got to finally
watch it all the way through for the first time.
You kind of dragged me kicking and screaming so anxious
to hear what you think. I'm excited to talk about it.
I had a good time to you know, no spoiler,
but yeah, I had a good time watching this movie,
even though I had a lot of reservations about watching it.
And we're talking about UHF, which I listened to our
(02:55):
weird episode which came out back in twenty twenty too,
almost this time back then, and we had talked about that.
We had bumped UHF to cover that movie, the biopic
starring Daniel Radcliffe. It was interesting, you know, it's three
years ago and we have talked about doing UHF every
single year since then, and then finally it just it
(03:18):
dawned on us as we were trying to figure out
what to compare Pee Wee's Big Adventure to UHF was
the obvious choice. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
So for the longest time, I've had kind of a
special connection with UHF because it was filmed in my hometown.
The Outsiders was filmed in my hometown.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
But I was a little kid. I was like nine, right.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
So I couldn't have gone anywhere, you know, But UHF.
I remember on the local radio station the guys saying, Hey,
they're shooting a scene at sixty first in Peoria today.
They need extras. It's weird Al. Everybody, come down. You
want to be in a movie, come on down. And
next song on the countdown is Sweets Out of Mine.
So that was summer of nineteen eighty eight. Yeah, so
(03:59):
weird Al was in town. I knew where he was staying,
like the place, you know, the Kingsington Mall allowed him
to It was a hotel connected to a mall, so
you could stay and shoot kind of all in the
same spot.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
All right.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Yeah, and then just a few weeks ago, you and
I took a day trip to Tulsa made a video
with all the UHF locations we could find, plus a
few extras. Yeah, go to our YouTube page, check that out.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
It's really cool. It's very fun. We had a great time.
Speaker 4 (04:23):
We had a great time doing that, and then little
did we know, but weird out was playing.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Yes, he was playing at the.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Brady Theater like a couple of days after we were there.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Which is across the street from Cooney's Karate School. So
you gotta gotta go check out that video to find that.
I mean, it was it was serendipitous. We just happened
to We were like, oh, let's go shoot something at
the Brady Theater and there we saw weird Awl's name
as the only name on the marquee. It was just
pretty spectacular.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
It meant to be Cooney's Karate School and the Brady
Theater share a parking lot.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Yeah, it's crazy. So all right, to get.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Us started, I guess we got to kick this thing
off with Peb's Big Adventure because that's the first Movie's a.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Lot of things about me.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
You don't know anything about that.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Things he wouldn't understand, things he couldn't understand, things you
shouldn't understand.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, so obviously we'll start with Paul Rubins case you
don't know, that's the actor who plays Pee Wee Herman,
which I didn't know for the longest time, like until
he got arrested. I think was when I was like, oh,
his name is not pee Wee Herman, right, which was
kind of by design, like he had specifically he had
decided this was going to be he was going to
(05:36):
keep this as his public persona. Just he was doing
multiple interviews because the character is really what made him famous,
and he was doing interviews where he would have to
be both people, and finally he's just decided, I'm just
not going to be Paul anymore for interviews for the
public life, I'm only going to be pee Wee. So
where did pee Wee begin?
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Well, he was born and kind of raised early in
New York, So while he was still a kid, his
family picked up and moved to Sarasota, Florida, Yes, which
that was actually the off season home of Ringling Brothers
and Barnum and Bailey Circus. And so he got to
go to like circus camp and started becoming like a performer,
(06:16):
almost took an interest in becoming maybe a circus performer.
Well after he graduated from high school, he had an
interest in wanted to discover the artistic side of himself,
and so he moved out to California and enrolled in
cal Arts and in his cow Arts class was David Hasselhoff.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
David Hasselhoff of night Rider fame and.
Speaker 4 (06:37):
And like Europe's greatest singer of.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
All time off yeah huff.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
And then also Katie Segal was in his class. She
goes plays Peg Bundy and so he starts to kind
of grow and expand as a performer there at cal Arts.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yeah, he's he was wanting to be a serious actor.
I mean, he did serious stuff at that time, and
I think it was just he was very popular at
the school and a school full of artists. He was
still kind of the guy that everybody admired, and she
stood out. Yeah, he stood out. So ultimately he after
college he joins the Groundlings, that's.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
Right, and the Groundlings are kind of a improv group.
It was kind of a class. It wasn't really a
thing until people started to become attracted to him and
wanted to get involved. And then they're like, well, we
need to like come up with a name for ourselves
and put on shows and so yeah, from the Groundlings,
like Edie McClure, the secretary from Ferris Bueler's day Off.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yes, freaking hilarious. Yep.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
She works the counter and planes trains and auomobiles.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Yes, and so she's in it. And of course you
have Paul Rubins, Lorain Newman, Lorain Newman, one of.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
The earliest members of Saturday Night Live. Yep, Cassandra Sandra Peterson,
there you go, who played Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Yes. So Cassandra Peterson talks about when she first came
to the school, she was still just barely developing the
Elvira character, and she saw two guys talking to each
other and it was Paul Rubins and John Paragne and said,
I immediately said, I'm going to make friends with those guys.
Like they just had such a great chemistry. She could
just tell that they were the guys that she wanted.
(08:08):
And she was like, it's a little Stockerish, but I
wanted to be with those guys because they knew they
had such great ability to improv and riff off of
each other. Now, if you don't know who John Peregrine is,
you might know him as John by the Genie in
Peewe's Playhouse. A High mech A, Heidi ho Now everyone
at home, Mecca Leca High, Mecca, Heiney Ho, Mecha Heney Ho.
(08:33):
And as a connection to these two movies, he is
Fletcher Junior. He's the I'm sorry, did I do that?
You blew my mind when you send that to me
this week. Yes. So John Peregrine, who doesn't have a
whole lot of other stuff to his to his name,
is a major player in both of these, both of
(08:53):
these scenarios. Right, he's not in I don't think he's
I don't think he's in pee Wee's Adventure? What is
he where?
Speaker 4 (09:00):
He is one of the guys on the Warner Brothers lot.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Okay, it's a very small, small part like breeze by
a part, but a major player for not only pee
Wee's Playhouse later on, but his stage show, the pee
Wee Herman Show, which we'll get to here in just
a second. Right, that's right, that's right. So at the
ground links, Paul Rubin realizes he's like, you know what,
I'm funny, Like I'm good at being funny. I don't
know why I'm so focused on all this serious work.
(09:25):
When I enjoy being funny, I get laughs. And so
this may be my road to success. And so he
develops this incredible character that is a lounge singing Native America.
You know what.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
I saw him talk about this. He said it wasn't
just racist, it was blatantly incredibly racist. And he's like,
I didn't really realize that it's.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
A different time. And he's late seventies, early eighties. I mean,
he's watching The Village People, and.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
He thought this is my ticket out, Like this is
the character that I've I'm gonna be make famous with. Yeah,
and he's like, thank god that didn't come true because
it was so racist. But you know, he created like
dozens of.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Characters, dozens, and anybody else who's in these comedy troops
who has these dozens of characters. He goes to audition
for Saturday Night Live and he thinks he's got it,
Like he's at the top of his game, he's got
all these characters. He's raring to go, and.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Everybody else is telling him you're shoeing, you got it.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
And he gets there and he's watching this guy perform
and he's like, who is this guy? And they're like, oh,
that's one of the producer's best friends. And he's like,
oh no. He's like he's the nerdy guy. Like there
you have a select group of people in Saturday Night Live.
One of them is going to be the nerdy guy.
It's gonna be him. And that guy was Gilbert Godfrey
(10:49):
Gilbert And so he was right. He did not get
cast in Saturday Night Live, and he thought his career
was over. He thought it was done, and then inspiration strikes. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
So he goes back home and one of the things
that he learned from Saturday Night Live he was so
desperate to get in that he didn't want to be
dependent on anybody else. And so he thought, you know what,
I'm going to take control of myself and control what
I can control. And so he had a character that
he had been developing that seemed to be received well
by audiences, and so he thought, I'm going with this character.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Right, And so this character is pee Wee Hermer, we Hearman, good.
Speaker 5 (11:25):
Murder, baby Boy, mister breakfast?
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Can I te cereal?
Speaker 5 (11:32):
Okay?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
A pity the poor fool, don't keep my cereal. So
he develops this entire basically skit show, a stage production
called the Pee Wee Herman Show. And John Peregrin is
a factor in that, like they're literally driving around. He's like,
I want to be a genie. They're driving around and
they see a sign. I think it was like a
grocery store sign. But Jombie is it's Johnby's place, and
(11:59):
he says that's They're both like, that's the name. That's
gotta be John By, the genie, right, the genie. And
then of course the other guy that's helping out is
Phil Hartman.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
So Phil Hartman was at first kind of too shy
to join the Groundlings.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Yeah, he's a very straight laced guy. Is in advertising,
I think, and just he made like album covers. Oh yeah,
he was designing. Yeah, that's right, designing graphic art for
album covers. That's right.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
But he was drawn to them, so he kind of
hung around, but he didn't feel good enough to get
involved until he did.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Until he did, and then he and.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Paul Rubens hit it off and became really good friends.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah, and he's he was a major writer, not only
for the Pee Wee Herman Show. He performed in the
Pee Wee Herman Show. But what happens with the Pee
Wee Herman Show is that they start in the small
theater in the Groundlings Theater, less than one hundred people,
like ninety nine people. But they sell out, and then
they keep selling out and they're like, Okay, we got
to go to a bigger place than they do, The Roxy,
the Roxy, and they sell out the Roxy. And one
(12:57):
of the people that sees them perform at the Roxy,
it's the Martin, Steve freaking Martin, and Steve Martin is like,
here's my manager. You need to talk to him. And
this guy had a protege. That guy became Pee Herman's manager.
He came in like he knew what he was doing,
and he said, here's what we're going to do. We're
going to take this stage show and we are going
to make it a nationwide tour. And what we want
to do is develop enough of a following that by
(13:20):
the time we're done, that you are such a well
known name and such a draw, such an influencer at
the time before that term really existed, that the studios
won't have any way to say no to developing a
full movie for you, right, And that's exactly what they did.
And they they sell out Carnegie Hall, they sell out
every like for twenty two shows, They sell out the theaters,
(13:41):
and they make their way all the way back to
la and at their final show, it is full of
Hollywood producers and he gets a standing ovation at the
end of the show that goes on and on and on,
and their plan worked perfectly because Warner Brothers said, we
want to make your movie. It's incredible.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
So I was you in nineteen eighty one HBO, early HBO,
when they had about five things to show.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
They broadcast the when it was still called Home Box Office.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
So me and I spent the night with some buddies
and we watched the Pee Wee Herman Show, which at
that time was not directed at kids.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
It was adult humor framed in.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
It like a kid's show, and we thought it was
the freak and hilarious. It was the funniest thing we'd
ever seen.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
What is this mermaid missing?
Speaker 4 (14:31):
But you know he he hypnotizes a woman and he
makes her take off our clothes on stage and we thought,
oh my god, this is the pinnacle of humor. Of course,
that woman was a part of the Groundlings as well,
so that.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
HBO show was huge.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Party Colner Artie Colner directed that. That's right, and he
went on to do hard knocks in the White Video Guy. Yeah, Yeah,
but in the early eighties, he would go on the
David Letterman Show and like kind of the precursor to
the Larry King Show.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
There was a show on CNN that came on late.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
At night, and he would go on and be interviewed
not as Paul Rubins but as pee Wee Herman. And
he would also come on David Letterman. And he said
he and Dave kind of hit it off that out
of chemistry.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Yeah, Dave was a good straight man for his goofy
pee Wee.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
Herman, and he was a regular who came on like
every two months or so, and so he had kind
of built this thing with Letterman and his show, and
Warner Brothers is like, yes, we want to make a
movie with you.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Right, So he and Phil Hartman and a guy named
Michael Farhall get together and they start working on the
script and they've got They've got sid Field's screenplay. You know,
the boy. This is the guidebook on how to write
a screenplay. I read it whenever I was in college
doing my screenwriting class. It's I mean, it's here's how
you do it. This is the way you write. And
they followed it letter for letter, note for note. But
(15:46):
what they were trying to do. Initially when they were
writing it was they were trying to Paul Rubens's favorite
movie was Pollyanna with Hayley Mills in it, and he
was trying to write Pee Wee as Paullyanna. And they're
on the Warner Brothers a lot and he notices, like
everybody on the lot is getting around on bicycles, like
they you know, there are a few people who've got
the golf cards, but really no cars are driving around.
(16:08):
Everybody's driving around bicycles. And he keeps going like, what
do I gotta do to get a bicycle? Why can't
I have a bicycle? Right? And so after weeks of this,
he shows up and as a gift, there is just
this gift waiting for him of this vintage swim like
nineteen forties fifties model bicycle, red and white, beautiful, and
he says, in that moment, I realized this is what
(16:32):
the script has to become. We're riding the wrong movie.
We're riding the wrong movie. They go scrap everything that
they've written so far and they make it a His
big adventure is his bike gets stolen and he has
to go get it back Peewee.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Loves his bike more than he loves life itself and
it gets stolen.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Yeah, and it's it's kind of loosely based on The
Bicycle Thieves, which I think is nineteen forties forty eight
something like that. So then they they've got it, and
they've got their script and they you were telling me
that you paused it, like they've got there, they've got
their corkboard where they're putting the post it notes up,
and you said that it was it was like, how
did it go?
Speaker 4 (17:09):
So I'm looking at this picture of Phil Hartman, Michael Varhall,
and Paul Rubens in there at the writing place, and
behind them are a bunch of post it notes, and
so I freeze and I look and I zoom in.
One post it note says ghost Trucker, one note says Alamo,
uh huh, one note says Rodeo Cowboy.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
And it was just these ideas. Yeah, well those.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Ideas are weaved through the entire movie, which makes it
freaking hilarious.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
It's a simple plot structure that allows them to weave
together these vignettes, very much like National Lampoon Vacation, where
you know you've got a road trip and you can
just these things happen along the way. It's a very
easy way to string these things together, which will come
up when we talk about UHF as well, of course,
no doubt. And so they've got their script and they're
(17:55):
ready to find a director and Paul Rubins makes a
list of one hundred and fifty director Like he's like thinking,
thinking of every movie that I love, I'm going to
you know, if I was anything I liked about the
movie at all, I'm putting that director's name down. And
so he gives the studio his list of one hundred
and fifty directors and they come back with one that's
not on the list. And he looks at this and
(18:16):
he's like, what has this guy done? And he looks
and he's like, this is the wrong guy. This is
not the right guy. And so he comes to him.
He's like, I'm not going to do it with this guy.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Okay, so I sent you a video clip this week. Yeah,
he dug his heels in on this. But keep in
mind this is he's not a movie star yet.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Neither was Sylvester Stallone. That's right.
Speaker 4 (18:35):
His inspiration was Sylvester Stallone and the way he handled
the Rocky franchise. So if you'll remember Sylvester Stallone, which
we've never covered Rocky or any of the Rocky movies, which.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
We will do. Yeah, there's no question we will.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
So Sylvester Stallone had written the script for Rocky and
when he took it to the studio, they said, great,
we want to make this movie. Maybe we could have
Chuck Norris be the boxer or whatever. He's like, no, no, no,
I'm going to be the actor. And they said no,
we got to get somebody else. And he said, well
then it's not for sale basically right, and he decided
this is the criteria. I'm the star if you want
(19:09):
to make my movie. And he went all in on himself, right,
And so Paul Rubins was like, well, Sylvester Stallone did it,
I'm going to do that as well.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
And he got some advice.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
They're like, listen, the winds of change happened fast around here.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Yeah, people in the studio are gone. You're going to
get You're going to not have your picture anymore.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
And he said, I'm willing to tough it out.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Yeah. So the way that they put it to him
was if you can find a director by whatever, it
was one week. Yeah, one week. He got one week
to find a director. They have to be approvable, affordable,
and available. The three a's pretty pretty tough call, right,
I mean, if you're in Hollywood and you're a good director,
you're probably working right. And so he goes he's trying
(19:51):
to find people. He's not having any luck, and he
goes to a party that is being thrown by a
friend of his who used to be a manager at
a restaurant he worked at as a waiter or something,
you know, just I mean, and he's just like, I
can't find anybody. He's like, do you know any directors?
And she's like, yes, I do. And he's like, oh who,
(20:11):
and she's she says, there's this young guy. I think
he works over at Warner Brothers actually, and he's made
a couple of little short things. I think he'd be
great for you. His name is Tim Burton. Pee. He's
never seen this, never seen any of Tim Burton's work,
but he looks and sees that Shelley Duvall is in
this movie, this small movie that Tim has made called
(20:31):
Franken Weeniye, and Shelley Duvall is a friend of his. Yes,
and so he calls her and he says, can you
tell me here's my situation, And she's like, oh, Paul,
he's perfect. He is perfect for you. So he watches
Frank and Weenie and he says, three scenes in he
knows this is the perfect director for his movie. And
(20:53):
as it turns out, he's approvable, he's available, and he's affordable,
and he wants to do the movie too. Well, that's
the thing.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Once he said yeah, Tim Burton and a lot of
people were like.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Oh, he turns down stuff all the time. He won't
ever do it. Turned down everything. Yeah, he turned He
had so many scripts coming to him and turning them
all down, and when he saw this one, he said,
this is the movie I want to make as my
first real movie. You think about it.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
They're both quirky characters. Yeah, they're both ultra creative, very
very kind of kindred spirits. That's right, they're weird. You know,
you and I were talking before we started recording, kind
of the third piece to the puzzle that may get
overlooked but is also an outsider, a weirdo and ultra
(21:40):
creative that contributed massively to the success of this movie
and others.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Yeah, is Danny Elfman? Absolutely? Yeah. So we we've talked
before when we did our Man episode about how Tim
Burton and Danny Elfman came together, and I talked about
(22:06):
the move there. Danny Elfman had composed the score to
only one movie before, and it was years before, and
it was this Wingo Boingo movie like I think his
brother might have directed it, maybe that's right, called The
Forbidden Zone, and it's just so bizarre, like I looked
at some of the pictures, just bizarre, beyond bizarre. And
of course it was a favorite of Paul Rubin's, right, yeah,
(22:27):
and so he was like, oh, this is great. Now.
They had originally approached the guy from Devo, that's right,
the head guy of Devo. Yeah, was it Mark Mothers Baw?
Is that right? That Mark Mother's Blaw. Yeah, And he
couldn't do it, but he ends up composing the theme
to the to the Playhoffs to Pee Wee's Playhoffs later on.
That's right, that's right. So they bring in Danny Elfman
(22:50):
and yeah, it's this beautiful magic of match made and
great script, great director, great composer and all on their
Virgeon run if you will at a major motion picture.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
You know you mentioned it before. I want to kind
of double down on what you said. Yeah, this script
for Peeb's Big Adventure is studied at like like script
writing classes.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Really because do you know they followed the format, right,
they followed.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
The formula exactly. So it's a ninety minute movie. The
script is ninety pages long.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
Act one is over on page thirty.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Yep, that's when the bicycle gets stolen.
Speaker 4 (23:28):
And knitting and knitting and knitting.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Yeah, Jimmy, what is this two late?
Speaker 4 (23:35):
Chip looks like a pen exactly. I bought this pen
one hour before my.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
Bike was stolen.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Why what's the significance? I don't know.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Act two is over on page sixty, and then the
movie ends on page ninety resolution.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Yeah, here's the rest of the story. Right, No, this
is this is perfect. You're gonna love this. Right. So,
this budget on this movie was five five to six
million dollars not much, not much. It's a low budget
even you know in the eighties, that's a low budget movie, right. Yes,
it grosses something like fifty million, so it's it's a
phenomenal success for such a low sleeper unexpected, Like, yes,
(24:15):
that's what they they were like, they had no anticipation
that anybody would like this movie, and it's this huge,
huge success. So that propels Peewee to have his own
TV show, which is a great thing. It propels Danny
Elfman to do another movie called Beetlejuice Justice Juice, and
Tim Burton is directing that movie. I think, I said
Danny Elfman first, those two guys together do Beetlejuice, and
(24:39):
that Tim Burton showing that he can pull off two
moved I just won, but pull off two successful movies.
Then leads to in nineteen eighty eight, him being tapped
to do Batman. Batman Now. Batman gets released on June
(25:05):
twenty third, nineteen eighty nine, amongst a handful of other movies,
including Indiana, Jones and The Last Crusade, Dead Poet Society.
You Got More Fun, You got the list, gimme.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
So it is my belief that the summer of nineteen
eighty nine is the greatest summer for movies in the eighties. Yes,
I'm going all time because so listen to this. Starting
in May, You've got Fright Night two, Roadhouse, Dead Poet Society,
Star Trek five. Now keep in mind Some of these
movies turn out good.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Some of them didn't.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
But every week you're like, oh, Man Star Trek five
is hitting the theaters, and after that Ghostbusters two is
coming out, right yeah, And then Batman and Honey I
Shrunk the Kids and do the Right Thing and Karate
Kid three and Weekend at Bernie's and leave the Weapon
two and Licensed to Kill and when Harry met Sally
and Turner and Hooch, Parenthood, the Abyss Nightmare and Elm
(25:57):
Street Part five, Uncle Buck. Week after week after week
you have an incredible movie in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Nine, named actors, named directors, Big time stuff going on.
And then in July, just four weeks to the day
after Batman is released, this little five million dollar movie
called UHF gets released.
Speaker 4 (26:26):
And it gets buried by Rigs and Murta and Batman
and Batman Batman, Tim Burton is burying UHF.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
That's true. So five million dollars budget, it's opening weekend,
it does four something. It ultimately grosses a little bit
more like they get it gets to six, right, but
not a success, not a success, not a success at all.
And it's only after people have kind of weeded through
all of these huge monumental movies that have come out
(26:56):
to really go, wait, this movie's actually good. It's like,
this is a definitive cult classic. It did so poorly
it went out of print, and yet even out of print,
people obsess over this movie. So weird Al, I don't
need to go to the whole history. And by the way,
go check out our weird episode so she can get
(27:17):
the full history, and I go into all kinds of
detail about parodies and the inspiration for weird Out to
do his parody songs. But to make the story short,
weird Out he gets an accordion. His mom buys him
an accordion from a door to door salesman when he's
a little kid. She's like, well, this will make him popular.
He learns how to play it. He goes on to
(27:38):
become a DJ at his college, where he gets the
where he gets his handle of weird Al Yankovic and
then he's playing a lot of weird stuff that he's
not really allowed to play and ultimately gets fired. But
in the process of all of this, he meets a
guy going you know, college to college who's got his
own strange show called Doctor Demento, and so he meets
(27:59):
to Doctor Demento. He's like, hey, you know, I love
your stuff. They kind of form a little bit of
a bond. And then a really popular song at the time,
song that we've covered on our Patreon episode is called
my Sharona.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
That's right, That's right, and he comes up with.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
My Bologna, My Bologna, and spoiler alert for the movie
this is true. He records it inside of a bathroom
to get the reverb effect right. He sends his tape
to Doctor Demento. Doctor Demento plays it and it becomes
a huge success. He ultimately then goes on to follow
(28:36):
this up with I Love Rocky Road. Another one rides
the bus a lot of fantastic parody songs, and his
theme you know, he won't make a song. He won't
make a parody of a song if the original artist
says no. But he says, it doesn't hurt to ask, right,
and Michael Jackson's beat it is at the top of
the charts, and weird Ow comes up with an idea
(28:59):
for a parody and it's like, there's no way. Michael Jackson, Well,
it doesn't hurt to ask, and Michael Jackson says, yes, yes,
and that's when weird Al moves from good to great.
(29:23):
When Edit came out.
Speaker 4 (29:25):
I remember at the skating rink the people going bonkers
when they'd played Weird Out Eat It.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
And then as he grows as a comedian, his fun
you know, his songs are super clever, they're funny. Plus
he can sing, I mean, plus, you know, the music's
good and stuff.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
The music is absolutely solid, yes, but he goes up
a notch with the music videos right. And so he
when he gets into this position of becoming famous for
his parody songs, he needs video. MTV came out in
eighty one, It's all happening at the same time, and
so he needs videos for his stuff. And so who
does he get to do it. He gets his to
(30:00):
direct the videos, a guy named Jay Levy, and so
Jay Levy creates these perfect parodies of the I Love
rock and Roll video and Michael Jackson Beat It video.
I mean, if you watch it, it's so well done,
Like it's literally like they I can't imagine how they
didn't go to the exact location, and maybe they did,
maybe they went exactly where it had gotten filmed, but
(30:22):
they produce it nearly frame for frame with comic elements throughout,
and it's brilliantly done.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
I think they did with the Fat video. I think
they went to the exact same spot where they filmed Bad.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Sure, yes, you know, so Jay Levy is able to
do with Fat what Martin Scorsese did with Bad, And
that's that's genuinely impressive. Like I can't go out and
recreate a Martin Scorsese video. That's that's suppressive stuff, right,
And so they.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
For those of you who are forgotten that Martin Scorsese
directed the Bad Video, go back to our very first episode.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
Yeah all right, so we don't know how long Jason
was frozen and fray like mid sneezes. Sorry about that.
We weren't watching the cameras anyway. So Jay Levy and
weird Al have got have gotten together. They've made great music,
they've made great videos. They come out with Weird Al
(31:21):
in three D, which I had the tape I wore.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
The recovering Weird Al three D.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
I know, right, and it's so successful. They're like, what
else can we do? And the idea comes up, well,
what if we do a movie? And we just you know,
we've got all these crazy ideas for these parodies. Let's
let's figure out how to make this into a movie.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
So here's one of the interesting stories about this. Do
you know who Gene Kirkwood is.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Gene Kirkwood is the producer. He is a producer. Yeah, okay,
give me more. So he produced the movie Rocky. Oh
well that's something, right, Yeah, I'm speaking of spilled Sylvester Stallone.
Right about knock a Home Run? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (31:56):
Right, So, Jay Levy and weird Al have Richen in
the script. They're passing it around Hollywood. It ends up
in Gene Kirkwood's assistance hands. They read it, they think
it's really funny. Yeah, they give it to This is
the producer of Rocky. Hey, you're the producer of Rocky.
How about a Weird Al movie?
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Okay, I don't know how that works, but sure, I
was gonna tell you this. So he made Rocky.
Speaker 4 (32:18):
He also made the popa Greenwich Village.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
He also made Get Rich or Die Trying.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Remember the fifty cent movie? Okay.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
He also made a movie that we have talked about
many times but have never seen, a Night in Heaven.
Speaker 3 (32:30):
Isn't this the Brian Adams. Bryan Adams made the song
Heaven for this movie. Yes, and nobody knows of this movie.
That's right. It's starring the guy from the Blue Lagoon. Right.
Speaker 4 (32:40):
Then it's about mail strippers, right, that's right.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
I don't know how we haven't seen that one.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
So yeah, right, So he produced all those movies.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (32:50):
He gets his hands on it and he's like, yeah,
let's do this, you know.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Yeah, but I mean serious, Well he had been he
had been watching the videos, and he had already had
an interest in like, Wiga, we can make this guy
into a movie star.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
So serious producer says, let's make this guy movie star.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
I've also got another name for you, okay, Gray Fredericson.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Yeah, you know this guy is. Yeah, we've talked about
him a few times before. I think maybe just me
and you. But he was a guy who he was
involved in The Godfather, The Godfather too, The Apocalypse, now
The Outsiders, every Francis Ford Coppola movie that he did
in the first ten years of his career. Gray Fredrickson
(33:29):
is a producer on those movies. Now, if you go
back to our catalog, we have covered The Outsiders versus Rumblefish,
both of them Francis Ford Coppola movies, both of them
produced by Gray Fredrickson, and they were both filmed in Tulsa.
That's right.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
So before we move on to Tulsa, if I say
that UHF was produced by the same people who produced Rocky,
The Godfather and Apocalypse, now I'm telling the truth.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
Yeah, that's true. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 4 (34:01):
So one of the things that they said to where
to Al and Jay Levy say, hey, we want to
make this movie with you, but you got to make
it for five million dollars or less.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Can you pull that off?
Speaker 4 (34:09):
So all of a sudden they're like, well, we got
to we gotta do this on the cheap. Yeah, so
where can we film this.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Movie on the cheap? La is not cheap? You know
what is cheap? Oklahoma? Also Oklahoma?
Speaker 4 (34:19):
Yeah, and so Grey Friderson, who based out of Oklahoma City.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Oh, really, yeah, I think you would tell you. Oh yeah,
that's right, that's right. I remember that. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
So he says, hey, guys, you know we did The
Outsiders and Rumblefish and Tulsa.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
People were great. Everybody's excited. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
Yeah, people happy to have you there. You have everything
you need to shoot a movie there. Yeah, what do
you think so that they're like, eh, let's go cheap production.
Uhf in Tulsa.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
There you go, by the way, go check out that
location's filming locations video the Jason and I shot a
few weeks ago Super Fun and Specialist Cities spat Spat
see this. We bought it at Spatuliss City for real.
That's true.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
The last one, the Golden Spatchela.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
If you will, it was the last one, nothing says,
I love you.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
You know.
Speaker 4 (35:09):
We did buy that at the same grocery store that
they shot special City at. Yeah, that place is down
kind of a rougher party town.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
They had a cop making sure nobody was shoplifting, and
we could have pulled down his pants and pushed him
over and stolen everything in the store.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
I'm sorry if you're watching, sir, but literally, I was like,
I don't know that he would be any help at all.
Anybody did anything in that store.
Speaker 4 (35:32):
We could have tied his shoelaces together and still in
anything we wanted.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
Yeah, anyway, okay, let's move on to casting.
Speaker 4 (35:38):
Let's flip back to Pee's Big Adventure.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Sounds good.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
I say, we hang him, then we kill him.
Speaker 5 (35:44):
I say we stop him.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
All right, so we have Paul Rubens is pee wee Herman.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
You don't want to get mixed up with a guy
like me.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
I'm a loner. Dottie Rebel talked about him.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
Yes, let's talk about the little pint sized smoke show
known as e G or Elizabeth Daily.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Elizabeth Daily, she plays Dottie. I'm not Dottie.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
Let's go, let's go.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Don't you want to see the rest of the movie.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
I don't have to see it.
Speaker 4 (36:22):
Dotty I lived.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Now. We've talked about her before, because she was she
was the singer. What was the movie? She was the
singer in the band doing the show. Was it The
Last Dragon? It was Better Off Dead? Better Off Dead?
That was it.
Speaker 4 (36:39):
Yeah, So she had been in the movie Valley Girl,
and of course she is also in the movie Better
Off deav She also goes on to do like some
incredible voice work.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
She takes over the job as Tommy on rug Rats
Tommy Pickles. Yeah, Kavanaugh was the name of the actress
who had done it originally, and she was also Dexter
on Dexter's Laboratory. I don't know how I came across
just a few weeks ago, but it was this very
sad thing where she died very young. I think she
died at fifty five or something. But she had voiced
all of these incredible characters. But she said when she
(37:10):
she decided she was going to take a break and
focus on her family, and she said, Elizabeth Dailey is
the perfect person to voice Tommy Pickles, and she is. Yeah. Absolutely.
Then we also have Mark.
Speaker 4 (37:20):
Holton as frances Pee Wee.
Speaker 5 (37:28):
You make me, don't you make me?
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Because I don't make monkeys.
Speaker 5 (37:32):
I just trained them.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
I saw him, and I immediately went to the stubbled
fat basketball player on teen Wolf Wolf like, he looks
like he's thirty seven years old out there at court
smoking a cigarette. That's right.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
Now, we're gonna cover teen Wolf here in just a
few weeks.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Yeah, we're gonna do teen Wolf versus Monster Squad, which
has another connection coming up here in the casting right,
talk about that here and just think it. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (37:57):
Okay, now, this was Peey's big adventure, was his first movie.
They got him right out of acting school, okay, hired
him right away. But do you know who they had
in mind for the Francis part?
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Nope?
Speaker 4 (38:08):
Yeah, Corey Feldman was who they asked, he auditioned, he
got the parts, and then passed on it to do
the Goonies.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
Well that was a good that was a good choice. Yeah. Yeah,
I could totally see him as the I mean, the
difference in those two people is amazing though right, like
completely different. Corey Feldman would have been a much more
believable Braddy kid who wanted the bicycle. That would have
been a great cast. Yeah, yeah, okay, keep going, all right.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
Then you have Diane Salinger. She plays Simone dream.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Yeah, I'm all alone.
Speaker 4 (38:46):
I'm rolling a big donut and the snake wearing a.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Best Simone the waitress. Let's talk about your big bet,
Simone and her dreams. Yeah, what are your dreams? He will,
I always have this dream.
Speaker 4 (39:01):
He's a snake wearing a vest and not that kind
of dream that part, Craig. I watched that movie with
Ava just the other day and he's talking about how
you know. She's saying it's my dream to go to Paris,
and he's like, well you should go. She's like yeah,
But he's like, everybody I talked to has a butt.
Let's talk about jer big butt. And Ava thought.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
That was so funny. That's awesome, all right.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
Then you have jud Omen who plays Mickey, the felon
that he picks up on the side of the road.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
Great straight man.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
When he pulls over it picks on pee wee. He's
wearing broken handcuffs. It's clear that he's a felon. You're right,
he is a great straight man. And Paul Rubins just
goes crazy while in drag playing his wife for the top.
Speaker 3 (39:40):
It's brilliant. He's a brilliant straight man for that part.
And he's a brilliant straight man in his delivery of
the line of the crime he committed. You know those
tags on the back of the mattress do not remove.
I get really angry sometimes it's brilliant, brilliant. Yeah, super funny. Okay.
Speaker 4 (39:57):
You just have kind of a cast of characters that
kind of come in and out of his life throughout
the movie. No real major players, although I do want
to point out you have Cassandra Peterson, yes, otherwise known
as Elvira, Mistress of.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
The dark YEP, who plays the biker chick. Give him
to me, I say, you're give him to me first? Yeah,
I say, you let him go. That's Cassandra Peterson. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (40:19):
You also have John Parragon, who plays one of the
actors on the lot we talked about that.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
I wanted to point out you have Jason Hervey. Jason
Hervey is the actor who has gifted the bicycle for
the movie that is being shot now. Jason, this is
nineteen eighty five, shooting in eighty four, right, Yeah. And
another movie that came out in eighty five that you
might have heard of. It's called Back to the Future
(40:45):
where he plays a young coonskin capped uncle to Marty
McFly what's a rerun? And then and then just two
three years later we get The Wonder Years where he
is Kevin's older brother. Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:00):
He also has a part in The Monster Squad, which
we're going to talk about here in just a few weeks.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
Ah. Perfect, okay, perfect.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
One of the people that I wanted to point out
to you as well. In that shot with Kevin who's
arguing with the director, She's like this kids drive me
crazy and I can't take you anymore.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
That's Lynn Stewart. Okay.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
She is in The Groundlings. Oh okay, And she plays
Miss Evon.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Oh miss yes, okay, oh yes. The fantastic. I love it.
Speaker 4 (41:26):
A lot of his friends making appearances.
Speaker 3 (41:28):
By the way, spoiler alert for the The Pee Wee Show,
he gets one wish from the genie. He wants to.
Speaker 4 (41:35):
Fly and the look as boy in the whole World.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
But Miss Yvonne wants Captain Carl, Captain Carl to like her,
to like like like her. Yeah, and Pee Wee decides
to give his wish to Miss s Evon. He wishes
for that to come true, and because he chose to
do the right thing, he gets his wish too, which
is to fly the luckiest boy in the world. Very
(41:59):
biblical right.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
A couple other people I want to point out to
you that I think are just freaking off the chain funny.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
In this You have James Brolin, brilliant, who plays p W.
P W Herman W Herman. Have you got any messages
for Room one O four? Name's Herman, p W Herman?
Speaker 5 (42:27):
No, nothing right now, mister Herman.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
And he's the guy in charge of the X one Yes.
And then of course the movie Dottie.
Speaker 4 (42:35):
Morgan Fairchild in her hottest of hottest.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Oh my gosh, yeah, yeah, I'm married to Morgan.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
You also have Milton Burrell make a cameo.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
He does.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
He's walking through which that's how Pee gets on the lot.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
Yeah. In the in his entourage, he's telling a joke
and Pee was like, that's so funny, and he sneaks
onto the lot. Humber. The last time we talked about
Milton Burr, I do because he is Uncle Milty and
he's the real uncle to Marshall Burrell, who's right, discovered
Van Halen and then after losing Van Halen got a
(43:12):
little band called Rat called Rat. That's right.
Speaker 4 (43:15):
Speaking of Rat, you have a cameo of Twisted Sister.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
I was. I had no idea that was coming.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
I was.
Speaker 3 (43:21):
My mind was blown. I was like, what, oh fantastic.
Speaker 4 (43:26):
So Twisted Sister is shooting a music video on the
lot and here comes Pee Wee riding his bike right
through the middle of it.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
That's brilliant. Okay, So that does it for casting for
Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Come back join us next week.
We will do part two. We will dive in on
casting on UHF. We will talk about soundtracks, we will
talk about bits, we'll talk about tidbits, all kinds of
fun stuff. Be sure and join us for that, and
then of course, we'll give you our final judgment on
(43:54):
which of these two movies It's two weird movies are
the best. We will see you guys then, thank you
so much for joining us. What's your name? I can't
remember where you're from. I can't remember did you remember anything?
(44:15):
I remember the album
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