Episode 5: “Endings Are Never Pretty”

[00:00:00] Speaker A: This podcast is a collaboration between costart and Touchstone Productions and the Dads from the Crypt podcast. Hi, I'm Alan Katz, and welcome back to the how not to make a movie podcast, the making of Bordello of Blood, episode five. Endings are never pretty. This episode also could be called how not to release a movie or life lessons from a movie nobody wanted to make. As Bordellos production went on like a rowboat ride to hell, a feeling of resignation settled over us. Resignation and frustration. Ed Tapio was Gils assistant and so much more these days. Hes an incredibly talented tv producer in his own right. As we speak, hes producing all american homecoming for the CW. [00:00:53] Speaker B: What I remember, Alan, is I remember Gil being so frustrated, because no matter the schedule that we put together, Dennis would basically blow it up, like, the first 2 hours of the day. Almost every day. [00:01:04] Speaker C: You say blow it up. What do you mean he wouldn't? [00:01:07] Speaker B: Do, you know, something that was supposed to happen, and you guys would have to try to work around it. He wouldn't hang on something or wouldn't walk a certain way or wouldn't go in an entrance the way Gil had blocked it out, and that Gil was constantly having to redo his shot list. I remember, you know, just being so utterly frustrated for him because we couldn't seem to get a day that we had planned shot as we planned it, because Dennis, every time he worked, he would blow it up. [00:01:34] Speaker D: Gil Adler, well, he didn't want to be there to begin with, and he wanted to leave as quickly as possible. So you'd think he would want to shoot as quickly as possible. But just to the contrary, we would set up a shot. We would rehearse it once or twice. We would say, okay, now we're going to release the cast, and we'll set cameras and lights. And at that point, way until that point, he would go, I don't think I like that. I don't want to walk there. I don't want to. And I would say, well, where do you want to walk? What do you see yourself doing? What is the character dictating to you? And he would go, oh, I don't know. That's your job. I don't know. So he would just tell me what he didn't want, but he could never tell me what he did. [00:02:09] Speaker C: It's quite amazing what a million dollars won't buy you. [00:02:15] Speaker A: By now, if you recall, our schedule had flipped to accommodate Dennis's HBO show, which rehearsed in LA on Thursday and shot on Friday. That meant our workweek, our Monday was everyone else's Saturday. Well, that annoyed our canadian crew, who wanted to spend their weekends with their families and loved ones, not a bunch of mercenary american filmmakers with more money in their pockets than sense. The other actors in the cast also became frustrated with Dennis because every day hed ask us to shoot him out early so he could go back to the hotel and rest. That meant wed shoot Dennis side of every scene with the full cast. But when we turned around to film the other actors, Dennis would be gone and they would have to act their scripted dialogue against Dennis's improvised dialogue being read by the script supervisor. Well, can I tell you, actors hate being disrespected like that. Corey Feldman felt especially disrespected. [00:03:08] Speaker B: Corey showed up. He knew his lines. He was professional. [00:03:10] Speaker C: You know, he was Spencer Tracy. [00:03:12] Speaker D: Corey was great. Corey. I mean, he was right on there. He was ready to do whatever had to be done and put the time in and take direction and have a conversation. [00:03:21] Speaker B: I remember he had some good ideas, and he was constantly pitching ways to make the character more interesting. [00:03:25] Speaker C: You remember how Corey's relationship with Dennis evolved? Because it did. I mean, I think Corey tried to, in being a professional, he tried to have a professional working relationship with Dennis. He tried to be friendly with him. [00:03:38] Speaker A: And I think Dennis wasn't interested. [00:03:40] Speaker B: That's a nice way of putting it, Gil. That's a really nice way of putting it, because Dennis was just a dick to him, from what I remember. [00:03:45] Speaker D: You could say that about his relationship with almost everybody. [00:03:48] Speaker B: I don't know if you guys even know this, but I was doing runs across the border to Blaine for Corey and Angie to get them both cigarettes and weed. [00:04:00] Speaker C: Oh, Ed, this is the whole point of the exercise. Start talking, Ed. [00:04:05] Speaker B: No, I mean, Corey. Corey couldn't get. Couldn't get a Marlboroughs. I don't remember. There was no Marlboros in Vancouver. And so I went over the border one day, believe it or not, to go to Taco Bell because there was no taco Bell in Vancouver. And I came across the market and I came back with a carton of smokes of Marlboros. And I brought him back for Corey. And he was like, oh, my God. Oh, my God, thank you. Because he used to chain smoke Marlboros and he didn't like whatever he was buying in Vancouver. And so for, like, four straight weeks, I would hop over the border. I'd get cigarettes for him and for Angie. And twice I picked up a couple of joints for him, too, from a friend of mine that I hadn't blamed, and the weekend that I stopped doing it, they searched my car from top to bottom. I didn't have anything in the car. That's one of the reasons Corey was so, so in, you know, in such good shape, because I was supplying him with cigarettes. I was basically his prison. I was basically his prison bitch. [00:05:01] Speaker A: The thing we were most apprehensive about as we stumbled forward was whether or not our makeup special effects would play the way we needed them to. Hiring Dennis, an actor our audience didn't really care about, forced us to cut our special effects budget, which was stupid, because makeup special effects are exactly what our audience cares about. Chris Nelson and his canadian crew were all very talented. Chris is an award winning special effects artist, but he wasn't that award winning special effects artist at the start of his career when we hired him. But then it simply isn't fair to expect expertise from people who aren't experts yet, especially when you know this about them. Not sure we could rely on our untested canadian team. We flew tales from the crypts, long time effects maven, Todd Masters North. [00:05:41] Speaker E: I think I came up twice. The first time was when you had asked me the formula for blood, and then, like, the initial assessment, and then I came up for the ending to just kind of, you know, see, because I think at that point, we knew we were going to take stuff back with us and pick it up. So I came up to kind of, you know, witness the connective tissues. And actually, I remember, I don't know if it was quite pleading, but I remember going to gil a couple times. I remember coming to you and saying, let's not shoot the final stage of Angie because she looks like witchy poo. And if we shoot it, then we have to recreate it, and that's going to hurt, because it's going to be the same thing, just as silly and costing probably the same amount, if not more, to do it over again. And so I was kind of like, if we just don't shoot it, then we can come up with a really cool finale. And, you know, it was just so chaos. So much chaos at that point. It was just like, kind of get out of here and take it back to Van Nuys, and we kind of knew that we could really get our hands on it. Chris, who supervised the makeup effects in Vancouver, ended up winning an oscar a couple years ago for suicide. [00:06:54] Speaker B: Well, also, to Todd's point, though, I don't know if everybody remembers, but at that point of the movie, when we were getting close to the end. We'd lost about 60% of our crew. People had started moving on, and we were dealing with different people in costumes. We were dealing with different people in the regular makeup department. We were dealing with different people in grip and electric. Remember how many people had started bailing? About four weeks in? [00:07:21] Speaker D: Yeah. One of the problems of shooting in Vancouver in those days was just that as you got close to the end of a show, people didn't stay as they do in Los Angeles or in the States. They didn't stay till the end and then move on. They started looking and sniffing around for other shows. And since there was so much work coming up, they would jump as soon as somebody made them an offer. Because we had two or three more weeks of shooting, and the new job was going to be, you know, five weeks of prep and five weeks of shooting. It's ten weeks versus two or three weeks, and they would just jump the. [00:07:49] Speaker A: Movie'S climax delay ahead of us. So did a scene where Dennis's character learns that Corey's character and a few other vampires are hiding out at an old, abandoned power plant. In the lead up to the climax, we were now working nights. Rarely a fun experience unless you were completely adapted to it, which we weren't. As we settled in for the night's work inside the power plant, Dennis began needling Corey. Whereas Corey previously had held his fire, this time in front of the whole crew, Corey fired back and got huge laughs. Dennis didn't like it. [00:08:21] Speaker B: I seem to remember it was Corey doing an ad lib on Dennis's riffen. And we from weekend update, Saturday Night live. And we are out of here. And Dennis really didn't like that and confronted him about it. And Corey was like, yeah, well, I thought it was funny. We all thought it was funny, actually. And Dennis took offense, is my recollection. [00:08:42] Speaker C: Who swung at whom, do you remember? [00:08:44] Speaker B: My recollection is that Dennis was the one that was the instigator. [00:08:46] Speaker C: Dennis got all up and Corey's grill, and Corey responded, and suddenly. I don't know if fists are flying accurately describes what happened. I don't think Dennis has fists are flying in him. [00:09:01] Speaker A: Corey. [00:09:02] Speaker C: I think, Mike. [00:09:04] Speaker B: I think it was more like pushing and shoving. Keep me away from him. Absolutely. Yeah. My recollection is that Dennis put hands on Corey first, and then Corey reacted. [00:09:15] Speaker C: And the strange thing was that as Corey suddenly got the upper hand, and Corey clearly had the upper hand and was quite capable of hurting Dennis. Nobody leapt to Dennis's defense. [00:09:27] Speaker B: No, no. [00:09:29] Speaker D: What are you saying there is some justice in the world? [00:09:33] Speaker C: Yeah. My memory was kind of watching the crew cheering on Tory, and then suddenly Lee Knipperberg suddenly realizing, oh, I can't let this happen, can I? [00:09:48] Speaker A: Lee Knibberberg was our first assistant director. The adult on the set, Lee Knickerbourg. [00:09:53] Speaker C: Was the one who stepped forward and separated them. [00:09:56] Speaker B: Yeah, that's how I remember it. [00:09:58] Speaker A: A few days later, we took our shot. At shooting the climax, the word futile springs to mind. Imagine if this group of professional filmmakers had thought for 2 seconds about what the downside might be to making a horror movie, a genre that works best at night in a place as far north as Vancouver at the peak of summer, where the one thing in really short supply is night. Did I mention the word feudal springs to mind? [00:10:23] Speaker D: I remember, Alan, you and I were aging very rapidly. And I also remember that we were shooting in the summer and we were shooting nights, and we realized one night while we were shooting that the nighttime was only 6 hours of a twelve hour day and all of french hours. Yeah. And all of a sudden we were shooting, you know, at 04:00 in the morning as the light was coming into, into the building. And I remember we, you know, we just panicked and we were just shooting fast and furiously with multiple, as many cameras as we could pull out. [00:10:56] Speaker C: How many cameras did we run that night in our desperate environment? [00:10:59] Speaker D: I think we only had three cameras. [00:11:01] Speaker B: We had three. Yeah, we had three. And it got so bad that Tom Priestley was getting frustrated and he took over one of the spotlights. [00:11:08] Speaker E: It wasn't just one department's problem. It was just the whole thing just didn't have the grace of luck to it, you know? The gods of filmmaking were not shining brightly on us, so we packed up our toys and went home. [00:11:25] Speaker A: The climax was Dennis's last day. [00:11:28] Speaker D: I remember when we had his last shot. I'll never forget this. And he was done with the movie, and I just wanted to throw him under a bus. By then he came over to me and gave me a big hug and said, hey, listen, you know, I forgot his wife's name, but he said, if my wife and I invite you up to Santa Barbara for dinner, you'd come, right? And I said, no. He goes, no, no, no, I'm the funny guy. Stop being funny. I'm serious. If I invite you up for a dinner, you'll come, right, with your wife? I said, no, Dennis. I wouldn't come. I wouldn't come anywhere near you. I want nothing to do with you. And I walked away from him and he yelled after me, oh, come on. You'll come. You'll come. If I invite you up for dinner, I know you'll come. [00:12:08] Speaker C: Wow. [00:12:09] Speaker D: And that was the. That was the last I ever had anything to do with him. [00:12:14] Speaker A: Gil would be done with Dennis until the reshoots anyway, and there was plenty that needed reshooting. The last day of filming came and went. We were on location, second unit, having the cypress ski area above west van stand in for Tierra del Fuego, where at the beginning of the movie, Phil Fondicaro's character digs up Angie's character. When our first ad, Lee Knipperberg, announced that we'd completed principal photography after finishing the martini, a collective shrug went up. A few of us shook hands, but none of us felt like we'd accomplished anything. Survived, maybe. For now. Normally, the producers would have sprung for a wrap party, an important part of the whole filmmaking experience. But we knew for a dead certainty that none of our canadian crew would show up at any party that the Americans threw, not even for the free liquor. Colleen Neistat, now a Vancouver city councilor, then our production manager, as usual, came to the rescue. [00:13:10] Speaker D: I did have the wrap party at my house. [00:13:12] Speaker C: I remember because I think I was the only American who showed up. I went. I went. And it was awkward. [00:13:21] Speaker D: Well, it's just. It was such a bad show and so hard on so many people. [00:13:26] Speaker A: Bordello wasn't the first movie to finish principal photography without being finished. It just felt like we had so much further to go to actually get there. Still needing a ton more work were the water gun scene, the ballroom blitz, and the torture chamber scene. The one where Dennis complained to Joel, and Joel told me my people skills were shit. Top of the list. Our climax in the glass church was unfinished. On the bright side, though, reshoots in LA meant we'd get to work with our tales from the crypt team. And at the Van Nuys airport hangars where we'd made the first Tales feature demon Knight, Randall Thropp was tells costume supervisor. These days, he's the manager of the costume and prop archive at Paramount Pictures, his dream job. For the record, I've known Randall longer than I've known anyone else in this story over 40 years. True, we once threw the coolest tupperware party the cobble hill section of Brooklyn has ever seen. [00:14:13] Speaker F: You guys had that office, I think it was on Kuenga, not far from universal. And Ed called and said, you got to get over here and look at this. What the editors are looking at, you've got to come over and see this. So I came over and the editors showed me that sequence with the vampire prostitutes being sprayed with holy water. [00:14:32] Speaker C: And it was unbelievably bad. [00:14:36] Speaker F: They looked like blow up sex dolls, like, melting. They didn't look like human beings melting once they were sprayed with the holy water. And one of the things that we discovered that the costume department had done for those vampire prostitutes was they put them in a polyester chiffon. You cannot do a stunt with fire in polyester because it melts. It does not catch fire. You have to use natural fibers. So that's when Warden Neil and I, we had to re shop and try to match what they had done in Vancouver with silk chiffon as opposed to polyester, which became expensive. It's not cheap. And to try to match it, but Lord have mercy. [00:15:21] Speaker A: Maybe the best part of being in LA with our team was having our american production manager, Fa Miller, back. [00:15:26] Speaker F: We were a very tight group. We all liked each other. And, you know, Fa was the one. Fa Miller was the one who really made sure that if you weren't there to have fun or to play and be nice, you were out. You know, all it took was one bad episode, and you were out the door. And all of us always felt like we were kind of cherry picked, you know, like. Cause we did. We depended on each other. I depended on Todd. Todd depended on what I could do, you know, Steve Melton, Greg Melton, you know, it was always, we always worked so well together. And I think, you know, tales from the crypt was probably the best experience of my career because it was also fun because you were basically shooting a mini movie every week. [00:16:05] Speaker B: I had a situation in Georgia where I did a really super low budget horror comedy called stand against evil for IFC, that we did very much like tails. We did three day episodes. We blew up a demon. Every episode, I blew up a car. I flipped the car for $800,000 an episode, full union. And I had people turning down other work in Atlanta on the hopes that we would get picked up for another season. And then all three seasons, we had less than ten people turn over. Because of the lessons that I learned. [00:16:35] Speaker D: From you guys, I can't give enough credit to FA. I learned so much from FA as a. In the business, not just as a producer, but just in the business. I learned so much from FA, and I learned each year. I appreciated him more and more in his subtle sort of silent way of going about doing things. He never kept things from me. When there was an issue, he would tell me the issue and then we would talk it out and figure out what to do. But Fa was such a blessing in my life in terms of my career. [00:17:07] Speaker F: As a crew member. I have to say, fa really did the idea of the open door policy. I mean, I could go in and talk to him, and there's so many times I would go in and just say, oh, my gosh, we're worn down on this one. It's like, now, darlin just take a break. Just breathe. You know, he would always. He was just. He did have that open door, and he would stop by, he would chat. I mean, he was. He was very, you know, tuned in to the crew completely. And like I said, and we all know this, if you didn't fit in, you were gone. And that was, you know, he could clean house really quick. Yeah, but that was a good thing because then, you know, things got back to normal. First, it was sort of fun to get back together, you know, for this short time. But then as the night went on, it just kind of disintegrated. And I remember Erica wouldn't come out of her trailer. Dennis was pouting, and Chris Sarandon was very nice. I remember that. But, I mean, we were all pulling our hair out. I mean, we're there until, what, two or 03:00 in the morning trying to reshoot that. And that's when I decided, I'm done. I'm going back to New York, which is what I did. That was the bordello of blood is the film that made me say, I'm not doing this. I'm done. It was my birthday, by the way, and I'm killing vampire prostitutes. I'm dealing with actors who are just jerks and fire stunts. And I just said, that's it. I'm not doing this anymore. Forget the blood. Forget everything else. I left. I moved back to New York. [00:18:37] Speaker A: In addition to reshooting and cutting bordello, Gil and I had to get the final season of Tails ready for production. And right off the bat, there was injury. [00:18:45] Speaker D: Do you remember, Alan, whose idea was it to go to UK? Because it wasn't ours. Was it Joel's or was it Warner bro? Was it HBO? [00:18:51] Speaker C: There's something in my head said there was still some. Some anger at the union, and it was just one more way to. [00:18:57] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:18:59] Speaker A: Because really, there. [00:19:00] Speaker C: There was no reason, no real reason to do it in London. It was. It was a cool idea. [00:19:06] Speaker A: It's London on someone else's dime plus per diem. But if I'm honest, tales from the crypt had grown a little long in the tooth with a fang. Whatever making the show away from LA could have revived, would it become bone weary? Alas, aside from the cool factor, the last season of Tales was a painful extension of bordello into the tales world. We didn't go to London because it was a cool idea. We went, as we did with Bordello, to piss off the union representing our crew. [00:19:36] Speaker D: Alan and I were in London setting that up, and then they said, well, you need to come back. And they worked out this schedule between Universal and Warner Brothers. They worked out the schedule that I would be in London for three weeks, New York for three weeks, not New York, LA, so I could cut the movie and then I would go for three weeks and come back and they would. And so we did that. I mean, Alan, we did that for a long time, right? [00:20:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:20:01] Speaker C: I mean, London, what we started with the feature film, that seems to be when the wheels began to kind of come off, when suddenly some of us got excluded for one reason or another, you know, neither here nor there. But I suddenly the team wasn't the team. Bordello of Blood certainly exacerbated that feeling amongst our crew because, man, we left the country. [00:20:26] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:20:26] Speaker C: And then the last season of Crip comes up and we leave the whole continent. [00:20:31] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:20:31] Speaker B: I don't know if you remember, but you guys entrusted me to go after everybody and we literally went after everybody. I mean, I remember Daniel Day Lewis calling and apologizing because he was doing a kid's play in Newcastle. I mean, they were all so nice, you know, Ewan McGregor inviting us to the train spotting premiere. Jane Horrocks, you know, inviting us to filming of AbFab. It's just so much of, you know, different than here in the States. The way the british actors approached everything, or Oasis coming and using our stage. Remember when Oasis came and used our stage for the music video when we. [00:21:08] Speaker D: Got there, first of all, all these actors who, they said, oh, we're going to get all these english actors, which we couldn't get here because we can't fly them over, and they'll work for us at Ealing Studios. We found out, no, nobody wanted to work in the UK because of taxes. When we called Lewis Gilbert, who lived in Ealing, and I got his phone number and I called him and I said, I love your work. I want to work, I want you to do, and he goes, oh, my boy, I love tales from the crypt. A wonderful show. I love that show. I'd be delighted to direct one. I'm going, wow, this is going to be great. We're going to work with Lewis Gilbert. And I said, lewis, I'm going to send over a car tomorrow morning, pick you up at your house and bring you over to the studio. And he goes, wait a minute, where are you? I said, I'm in Ealing Studios. And he went, oh, no, no, no, I can't, I can't work here. Tax situation. No, no. I thought you wanted me to come to Los Angeles. And we got the same reaction from Roger Moore. Roger Moore invited us to go to Switzerland. We had so many people say to us, oh, if you were only in LA and you wanted me to come and youd pay for the flight, id be there. And we couldnt. Obviously, when we were shooting in LA, we didnt have money for flights like that, so we didnt use them. But when we got to London, we found out, well, we cant get these people anywhere. [00:22:17] Speaker C: Yeah, our structure were three days in, two days out. That system did not work there because, I mean, you cant build as much there. I mean, there's a reason why they use locations so much more. They're great locations or any kind of great location you want. It's tricky to get to those locations because London's a very slow city to move around. We bumped into all kinds of problems. Our first english production manager, a nice man with some lovely credits, but he misled us repeatedly. [00:22:49] Speaker B: I don't know if you guys remember, I was the first one there. I got there three weeks before you guys and I was looking for apartments. And Gil, do you remember the where are the Makita conversations? [00:22:59] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. [00:23:00] Speaker B: We had Malcolm. Malcolm, our first production manager. Like I said, I was the first one there. I was there three weeks before everybody and I had apartments. I had like five apartments for you to look at, Alan, five for Gil. I had some for Greg. I went for Scott. When you guys all got there, you know, Greg came up with the plans to build for the first episode. And like three days into prep, the Dominic comes up, sorry, Malcolm comes to me and goes, yeah, we're having a hard time with the sets. And Gil walks on the set and sees guys hammering with nails. And he looks around and goes, where are the makitas? And the guy goes like, what's a Makita? [00:23:40] Speaker D: I remember looking at him, I was so outraged. I went, what's a Makita? What do you mean? You know, it's like a, it's like a staple gun, you know, you put. I remember them looking at me like, is he out of his mind? What's he talking about? I do remember saying, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And the sets up. [00:23:57] Speaker A: Back in Los Angeles, we were used to our construction crew arriving at our stage with their pickup trucks loaded with tools. In London, our construction crew arrived at Ealing studios having just gotten off the tube. They didn't bring any tools with them. That was our responsibility. [00:24:12] Speaker B: I remember it was such culture shock for us when crafty came out with literally tea and cookies, and that was the craft service card. And all the english people were happy. And Gil and I and Scott are like, what the. What is this? [00:24:29] Speaker A: For reference, Joel Silver used to refer to our craft services table at tales from the crypt as gum and water. [00:24:37] Speaker C: I remember Malcolm and having a conversation with Gil and I very about the first day of production, when the question was asked, do we put the tin, the biscuit tin down on the cart, or do we hand them out? If we put the biscuit tin down, the lads will take more than one. [00:24:54] Speaker A: You know. [00:24:58] Speaker B: I even. How about the conversation, Gil, with Malcolm, when we had our standard deal memo, and he looks at us like, you can't have that. It's like, what's wrong with it? Says. It says they can't drink on the job. They all go to the pub at lunch and have a beer. So we rewrote it to say, no drinking on the job except for a beer at lunch on the company pub. [00:25:19] Speaker D: Yeah. And even then, we didn't want to do that. I remember being very resistant to that, going, I don't like this. They're going to come back and they're going to be, you know, and you. [00:25:26] Speaker B: Go into the canteen and our whole crew was in there having a pint. Yeah, it was such culture shock. And. And when we did do catering, the double decker buses, you know, for food was just so odd. It was just so odd. [00:25:39] Speaker D: And the horrible. Do you remember it? I suspect you'll remember this, because I remember rather vividly that we got a phone call. We needed to bring out another bus for lunch. What happened to the bus we had? We have a double decker bus for lunch. He goes, yeah, we can't use it. They threw up in it. And I was like, what? Yeah, the crew threw up. And I go, the crew? I mean, was it one person, two people? Well, more than two people. What happened? Well, I think the food was off and I'm like, what? I mean, do you remember that? [00:26:11] Speaker B: I do. Sadly, I do. [00:26:13] Speaker D: When you were talking about the double decker bus. It just, that image just came back to me because I remember going out there and seeing throw up all over the bus going, holy shit. What the fuck is this all about? [00:26:24] Speaker B: It's funny, the little things that you remember, the little tiny snippets. I remember when Bill Malone was directing and you and Alan had gone home and you had left me to close, and you had told me that pull the plug at 10:00 p.m. and Bill needed, like, two shots left. And the first ad comes up to me and says, we're probably going to go till 1030. And I said, no, no, I'm pulling the plug at ten. He goes, no, we'll get to work, but it'll take till 1030. I said, no, we're pulling the plug at ten. And he goes, an assistant? [00:26:57] Speaker D: You can't do that. [00:26:58] Speaker B: And Bill Malone looks at him and goes, yeah, he can. Yeah, he can. He's speaking for Gil and Alan. He can do that. And Bill looks at me and Bill looks at me, he's like. He goes, I'll get it, Ed. Don't worry. 10:00 we're good. [00:27:10] Speaker C: He got it, right? Yeah. [00:27:12] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, he got it. [00:27:12] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:27:14] Speaker A: The last season of Crypt was subpar mia culpa. I took my eye off the tales from the crypt ball to focus on the new tales from the Crypt like show HBO had ordered from the crypt partners based on all the old DC science fiction comics. I'd been pitching ideas about it. With no luck, I figured we'd sort out what the show was when we got back to LA. Except that's not what happened. It turned out Joel had other plans, and they didn't include me. [00:27:39] Speaker C: Alan Kasir, our manager, called me one morning while the negotiations were still ongoing. He said, I need you to come to the office, to my office. So I went to his office in Century City. He wanted to tell me in person that Joel. He said, joel decided he doesn't want. [00:27:54] Speaker A: You to do it. [00:27:55] Speaker C: He's not going to negotiate with you anymore. And that was it. I said, I said, but Gil is still doing. He said, oh, yeah, he wants Gil. That was a really hard. That was hard. And I took it rather personally. There was a moment, I think it was a day or two later, I guess, and I don't know why, what precipitated this phone call? But for some reason, I was sitting in my house in Los Feliz, and I get a phone call, a message being left that Joel Silver and Bob Zemecks are calling me. And for the life of me, in retrospect, I can't imagine why I didn't. [00:28:37] Speaker A: Pick up the phone or return their call, but I did not. [00:28:41] Speaker C: Now I know why I was so angry. I was beyond any reason. But I would be willing to bet if I. If I picked up the phone and had an adult conversation, I would be willing to bet that I would not have been completely cut off the way that I was. Scott Nimmerfro told me a couple years long after the fact, that I kind of took it the wrong way because it wasn't the intention, wasn't to cut me off, that there were a couple of those horror movies that you all did where Joel had been would have been quite open to me working on them, but I never returned a call. Now, that's not what he said. That's what I'm saying. I don't know. I don't know. [00:29:25] Speaker D: I don't know either. To tell you the truth. [00:29:27] Speaker C: I don't know why suddenly I was singled out as the problem, but it must have been because I was the one who was sent package for me. It presented a problem. All my produced work, hey, everything I'd written over the. For a decade had two names on it. And going out into the marketplace, suddenly I was nobody and nothing. And the problem with having two names on a script is when you hand it to someone, the first question they're going to ask you perfectly good question. Well, how much of this did you write? And so I was stuck literally having to go back to square one, in a sense, because Alan Kasira was, I think was he tried to get me to do really the one thing that I should have done in that moment. Hey, Scott. Nimmer fro in a moment like that, I know what Scott would have done. He'd have sat down, and he'd have written the script. You want to know who I am as a writer? I'll show you. But I was experiencing the very beginning of a writer's block, because unless I was being paid, I had no interest in writing. And I was interested in writing whatever the man wanted. Hey, what do you want me to write? So I put myself into a really dumb place. The shortest answer to solve my problem was to sit down and write a goddamn script. When I approached you and I said, I need to take your name off our scripts, that was a problem, and I can understand why that was a problem. I think that might have been part of why we might became acrimonious. I think you resented me asking to do that. [00:31:14] Speaker D: I can't remember that that was what it was. I just remembered being very disappointed and just being very, like, I don't understand why. Why did this happen? And if it did happen, why don't we continue on? [00:31:30] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:31:30] Speaker D: And to tell you the truth, you know, I wish I would have known that Bob and Joel called you, because I would have. I would have jumped in there, you know, because I had conversations with Joel which were not, you know, very nice, to the point where I was convinced, you know, he was going to throw me out of the office as well, because I said, what the fuck are you doing? You know, what does this got to do with you? This has nothing to do with you. Why? And he never gave me a real answer that answered the question satisfactorily or even unsatisfactorily. You know, my relationship with Bob got stronger and stronger. I used to always say to Bob, I don't understand. I just don't understand. Steve de Sousa and Peter Eiliff became really good friends of mine along the way. I used to talk to Steve more than I would Peter. His story is about writing or rewriting die hard. Die hard. His stories about that are just, I mean, unbelievable. And his relationship with Joel in that writing process and the pressure and all that, and even. Even talking to him didn't really help me any because he didn't understand it. I never quite understood what was motivation, what was the purpose? And I would often ask Bob, and Bob didn't want to deal with it because he would just blow it off and say, well, you know, Joel. It's Joel. You know, he likes to divide and conquer. He likes to do this. He likes to do that. [00:32:46] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:32:47] Speaker D: I never really got to the bottom of it with him. [00:32:49] Speaker C: Divide and conquer is. There's something to that. I. In retrospect, as I look back at Joel, Joel tried repeatedly to offer me things. Joel handed me his copy of the Sandman graphic novel. He put that into my hands personally. He said, you should read this. Now, when Joel Silver hands you a piece of material, hes saying, read this and get back to me. Yeah, thats what hes saying. Why would you not read that and get back to him? And I did nothing. Now, in part, I thought, because, why are you offering this to me? Gil and I are a team. And so I saw that as no, but I think there is some truth to that that I think Joel just thought differently, and I think Joel didn't care. You guys think you're a team. I'm not here or there, to me, I'll use you as I need to use you for my own ends, which is perfectly understandable. I, you know, that's. [00:33:49] Speaker D: Yeah, because also, I've seen also after that, I would see him do stuff like you just said, offer it to one guy, only to have it come back, and then do it together after the fact that when he came, when they came up with an idea or pitched the story, and he went, oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:34:07] Speaker C: I heard from Nimafro that Joel didn't have a particular problem with me. He's a disrupter by nature. [00:34:14] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:34:15] Speaker C: And, you know, he just throwing a monkey wrench. There was nothing more than that in it. It's not like there was an idea he had that was better. He just. He's disruptive. [00:34:25] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:34:25] Speaker C: And, hey, man, that's who he is. For better and sometimes for worse. [00:34:31] Speaker D: The thing that I sort of missed terribly was just getting together every day and doing the work. You know, that's. That's the thing I miss the most. And I. A lot of it. I blame myself, because, you know, why didn't I pick up that phone and call you and say, what the fuck? What's going on here? What's going on between us? Forget Joel. Forget everybody else. Who gives a shit about anybody else? And I didn't. And I don't know why I didn't, except I know I got very busy with work, and I was very worried about working. [00:35:03] Speaker C: Sure, sure, sure. [00:35:04] Speaker D: But even I can't blame it on that, because I go, no, you're bigger than that, and you're better than that, and why didn't you? And I don't have an answer for that. [00:35:17] Speaker A: And so the crip team went one way, and I went the other. [00:35:21] Speaker D: Joel called me one day, and he said, you got to go have lunch with Bob. So you guys talk and come up with a show. So I called Bob, and Bob was over at Universal. I said, listen, bob, I don't know what to tell Joel. What are we going to do? And he said, I tell you what. Just come on over. Ill get deli from jerrys. Ill get chocolate chip cookies. We both like that. And well have lunch and well talk, and then ill call Joel, and ill say we had a nice talk, but we didnt come up with anything. I said, great. Thats good. Okay, lets do that. So I go over, have lunch with Bob, and while were talking, were talking about our youth and what we liked and what we didnt like, and I was saying, like, well, you know, I kind of liked outer limits. The gallery. [00:35:58] Speaker C: Night gallery. [00:35:59] Speaker D: Yeah. And he said, yeah, yeah. And he said, I like this and that. And I said, yeah, yeah. And why do. Why do we like that? Why did we like that as kids? I said, well, you know, it was. It was different. It was weird. It was quirky. It was, you know, wasn't. It was unexpected. Yeah. Yeah. I felt the same way. And so we finish our lunch, we finish our cookies, and I go, okay, Bob. I'm gonna go. Don't forget to call Joel. And he goes, no, no, I'll take care of it. I'll take care of it. So I go home, and that night, about 830 in the evening, the phone rings, and it's Joel. He goes, what the fuck is the matter with you? I go, what did I do now? He goes, why don't you tell me what's going on? And I go, I don't know what you're talking about. He goes, I got off the phone with Bob, and I had to call Bob. He didn't call me. And I had to say, what happened to you and Gil? And he said, well, I want Gil to tell you, so tell me what it is. So I go, what? What are you talking about? He goes, tell me the idea. Bob said you had a really good idea. Tell me the idea. So I go, well, Joel, we had a few of them. So let me check with Bob, and I'll call you back. Let me just call Bob. And I call Bob, and I go, Bob, are you out of your mind? I got Joel calling me, asking me, what's the idea? We don't have an idea. There is no idea. And he starts to laugh, and he goes, well, why don't you tell him? It was like what we said about our youth. We like this and we like that. It was twisted. It was this and that, and it was funny, but it was scary. And then you say, we're working on it, and then he'll leave us alone. So I go, Bob, I thought you were going to talk to him. Just call him back. Call him back. So I call up Joel and I tell him. And there's a silence after I speak. And he goes, I love it. I love it. Let's do it. What do you mean? He goes, I'm going to call Chris Albrecht and set up a meeting for you, me and Bob. And I went, Joel, Joel, Joel. Click. I call Bob back. Bob goes, don't worry about it. It'll go nowhere. It'll die of. Two days later, I get a call from Joel, you, Bob, and I have a meeting with Chris albrecht at NHbO to pitch this new show. And I go, Bob, there's no show. You and I know there's no show, so how are we going to pitch? So he goes, Chris has always been a big fan of yours. He'll understand what you're saying. He'll see that there's no show, and he'll probably say, we should work on it some more and come back. Don't worry about it. So now we go over to Chris Albrecht's office, and it's the three of us, and Chris is waiting for someone to start the meeting. And so they go, tell him. I go, tell him, yeah, Bob, tell him. Tell him. So I go, well, you know, it's this idea, and it's. And I tell him. And Chris Albrecht gets up from his desk, and he's on the 41st floor in Century City. He looks out the window towards the ocean and pauses for a minute and turns around, and he goes, let's do it. And I'm like, let's do what? And he goes, that the show you just told me? I go, well, what do you mean, let's do it? And he goes, we'll do ten. And Joel goes, yes, that's terrific. Yes. And everybody's congratulating everybody, and I'm, like, sweating. I have no idea what we're talking about. And I take the elevator down with Bob, just the two of us, and I go, Bob, what are we going to do? I mean, you and I better get together and talk about what this is, because I don't know what we sold, and I don't know what their expectation is. And Bob looks at me and he goes, Gil, I'm going to be busy for a while. I'm making this movie contact, so you're kind of on your own. And I said, but, bob, but there is no show. I mean, be candid with me, Bob, you know, there is no show. And he goes, yeah, you'll figure it out. And that's how perversions happened. [00:39:27] Speaker A: Bordello missed its Halloween 1995 opening. Instead, Universal dumped the movie the following August. The doldrums, where unloved movies go to die. [00:39:37] Speaker C: I don't know what the rest of you all did, but I put together a little theater party. It was me, my wife, Aubrey Morris, and one or two other friends, and we went to a movie theater in Burbank for the premiere of Fort Delaware Blood. And there was nobody in that movie theater. That was so sad. I went out to the ticket booth and I said, has it been like this all day? And she went, yup. [00:40:08] Speaker B: Janet and I went on Sunday, and it was kind of the same thing. We saw it at the plant in Van Nuys. It was a pretty big theater, and there was probably ten of us in there, unfortunately. [00:40:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:18] Speaker D: I was the only wise one who didn't go to any screenings of it. I remember saying to Jeanne, you know, we gave it the office. I can't give anymore. [00:40:28] Speaker A: Soon enough, Bordello appeared smaller and smaller in everyone's rearview mirror. These are talented people. They never stopped working. And Randall didn't stay in New York all that long. [00:40:39] Speaker F: Six months later, I got a call to do the remake of the shining, and, you know, in Colorado. And so I was like, okay, fine, I'll come back to LA. [00:40:48] Speaker B: I worked with Gil until house on Haunted Hill. And then, you know, when my late wife died, I left. I actually went and lived with Glynn's family in England for four months after that. And Gil got me to come back into the business in 2004 on Starskin Hutch. He called me out of the blue and said, I got a really, I shouldn't say this. I got an assistant that I need to replace, and would you come work for me? And I wasn't doing it. I said, absolutely, gil. I'd love to. And we did dad and Constantine together, and then he went off to do Superman, and my dad was sick, and I couldn't leave at the time, and my dad ended up dying. And then he went off to do Superman in Australia, and that was the last time we actually worked together. [00:41:29] Speaker A: Side by side of everyone on the crip team, Greg Melton came out the healthiest by a lot. [00:41:34] Speaker G: Kind of goes back to even, like, the almost the studio system. I think there was a lot of people making movies they didn't want to make. They were stuck in contracts, and they just. [00:41:43] Speaker C: They did. [00:41:44] Speaker G: I remember, like, with dead easy, I'm like, we're doing dead easy. Oh, we're not doing dead easy. We're doing bordello blood. I just switched over. Like, that's just where we're going. I didn't really stop and go, is this the right thing to do? It's way above me. This is where the train's moving. I've got to stay on the train. I'm the easiest person to replace. [00:42:04] Speaker C: And yet the hardest in so many ways. [00:42:07] Speaker G: I look back on it all, and it's all just sort of, like, was wonderful. I had fun up there. I was getting to build a lot of stuff I was working with people that were very supportive and creative. We were getting things done. [00:42:21] Speaker C: How dare you have a good time on that movie, Greg. [00:42:24] Speaker D: I'm sorry. [00:42:25] Speaker G: I'm sorry, but I'm just saying that I just look back on it. I obviously had a much different experience. You were really in the trenches, you know, of like, I know what goes on. I read the emails that Frank would send AMC that got him fired. [00:42:41] Speaker A: That's Frank Darabont, another crypt alum, getting fired from the Walking Dead, the show he developed and executive produced. Greg was Walking Dead's production designer from 2010 to 2012. He helped create the show's look. He's a real big part of its success. [00:42:54] Speaker G: I'm so glad I don't have to deal with any of that. I'm just down. I've got my little department. We'll do this. I'll pick some colors. Everybody will be happy. [00:43:02] Speaker C: I'll pick some colors. [00:43:04] Speaker A: Oh, my God. [00:43:05] Speaker C: You're making me realize I've done this all wrong. [00:43:07] Speaker A: Colleen Neistat's perspective, I had never, ever. [00:43:11] Speaker D: Experienced, and I've been around extreme personalities, but Joel stands out. But I lived through it. I mean, this is one of the things I think, if I could live through that show, if I could survive that show, I can certainly survive a political campaign. My perspective of Joel might be a little bit different in the sense that I spent probably 15, close to 15 years of my life working with and for him. There's a part of me that's very grateful to him for giving me the opportunity, giving us the opportunity on tails, and then going further with me on the some of these other things. And then it all ended rather abruptly when he one day threatened I was coming back from ghost ship in Australia. And he said, I have our next movie to do, Gothika. And I said, well, no, I just got a call from Lorenzo Devonaventura, who was running Warner Brothers at the time, and he said, look, we want you to do bigger movies for us. I have three scripts I'm sending you. You can do any one of them. And I said, okay, well, I'm leaving Australia, but I'm going to Tahiti for a week, so I'll be back in ten days. And he said, great. Read them and just tell them which one you want to do. 15 minutes later, I get a call from Joel, and he says to me, you know, you're doing Gothika, we're doing Gothica. And, you know, if not, you'll never work in this town again. And I'll make sure Warner brothers, on and on and on, right out of Sunset Boulevard. And so I said to him, I'm not doing any more of these movies where I don't have a substantial ownership interest because he wouldn't give me ownership in the movies. And he totally blamed it on Bob. He said, well, the problem isn't with me. The problem is with Bob. Bob doesn't want you to have any ownership. And I said, are you kidding me? I know Bob better than I know you. [00:44:54] Speaker C: That don't fly. [00:44:55] Speaker D: I go up to his office at universal because he gets deli sandwiches from Al's, and we have lunch, and we just chat about stuff, shows and what we like and what we don't like. So I said, this is not coming from Bob. This is coming from you. And then finally, when I came back, I went over to his office. He was on a plane going to New York. So I said, okay, well, tell him I'm back, and I want to continue the conversation we had last week, because I said to him, joel, you know, there's no sense in arguing over the phone. I'll be back in a week, and we'll sit down, and we'll talk. You know, you're doing this movie. You're doing this movie. You don't. You call Lorenzo back, and you tell him you're never. You're not doing anything for him. You only work for me. So when I got back, he was on a plane. I went into his brand new office, which was used to be dick Donners. And then when Dick left, you know, they gave it to Joel. They redesigned it and remodeled it. Beautiful place. [00:45:45] Speaker C: They turned it into a Frank Lloyd Wright palace. [00:45:47] Speaker D: Yeah. And so they said. So I went in there. They said, oh, Joel's on a plane. I said, okay, just tell him I called. He should call me when he gets back in a week. Whenever I start walking to my car, and they come running out of the office, saying, come back. Come back. We have Joel on the phone. He's on the plane, and he just checked in. We told him he wants to talk to you right away. So I go in, and they put me in his office, his brand new office, and I'm sitting at his desk, talking to him on his phone, and he's screaming and yelling at me about how, you know, I don't care if you're back. I told you last week what it is you're doing gothica and on and on. And I said, joel, the one thing you should know about me after 15 years is don't give me an ultimatum. If you give me an ultimatum, I'll tell you to go fuck yourself. So just don't do that. You know, when you come back, we'll sit down and we'll talk it through. And he. And he kept going. He kept going there, and he kept saying, I'm not. You have to say yes before I hang up. And finally got to the point, I said to him, I said, if you keep saying this to me, I'm going to tell you to go fuck yourself. And he did it one more time. And I just yelled into the phone, fuck you. And I smashed the phone down so hard, I broke the phone. I thought I broke my fists. And I walked out of there, so heated, and went to my car and just, you know, just went home. That's sort of how it ended between Joel and myself, because then thereafter, I started doing bigger pictures with Warner Bros. [00:47:03] Speaker A: For a run of years, Gill produced Warner Bros. Biggest tentpole movies. Starskin Hutch, 170 million at the box office. Constantine, starring Keanu Reeves and Rachel Wise, 231 million. Superman returns, 391 million. And Valkyrie, which Gil made with Tom Cruise and Kenneth Branent. Good for another $231 million. And then Gil stopped. We'll get to why. Finally, there was me. In hindsight, the bordello experience set off something. It exacerbated a problem I didn't know I had at the time, bipolarity and depression. As anyone who's ever experienced that darkness knows, depression robs you above all of perspective. You can be deep into one and not even know. That's your problem. And if the deep down reason for the depression and everything that comes with it is, say, a secret you've denied, well, nothing good can come of that. For a while, I struggled. After a year of telling me to write something, for Pete's sake, and getting nothing, my manager, Alan Kassir, fired me too. I struggled some more until Scott Nimmerfrow introduced me to the guy who'd be my agent for the next decade, Nick Mechanic. Nick's a podcast unto himself, but Nick believed in me. He got me on to the outer limits, where for two years, I thrived. Now here's the thing. We made the outer limits up in Vancouver. When I returned to Vancouver in 1999 as a co executive producer, people still remembered bordello, and not in a nice way. I had to prove to quite a few of our crew that I wasn't then the same asshole I'd been on Mordello. The outer limits years were good creatively and financially. Helen and I started our family. Our son, Tristan, was born in Vancouver, and then Tristan's sister Bianca was born in Los Angeles. For a while, I contemplated getting naturalized up in Canada. That's where all the tv work was at the time. But my wife and kids weren't going to move with me to Vancouver. If. If I wanted a tv career, I'd have to fly to see my family on the weekends. I chose my family. For almost the next 20 years, I stopped being a writer and producer and became a full time dad. Best gig I'll ever have, bar none. My son loved playing soccer and basketball, which I coached. Hell, I even started a whole club team for my son to play on. Even being a dad, I still had to do things big. Also, I coached a lot of ultimate Frisbee, a great game that's entirely self officiating, this being Silverlake and Highland park. Among the players I coached in ultimate were Billie Eilish and her brother Phineas. For real, Phineas is very good. But my self loathing depression continued to feast on me. With me not working much anymore and expenses high, the money soon ran out. We lost our house, the one tails bought for us. We went bankrupt three days before Christmas 2016, a month after Trump got elected, I came within literal inches of killing myself. Here's the public service part of the podcast. Immediately afterwards, I drove straight to my GP and I told him what had happened. I'd been contemplating medication, but frankly, it scared the shit out of me. I'd done some research, and I'd found a mood stabilizer that I hoped would work for me. My GP whipped out his smartphone and concurred. He wrote the script. That night, I told my family what I intended to do. They were grateful I was finally doing something about it, because my self directed rage was doing everyone harm. And that's when I got really, really lucky. Within 36 hours of taking that 1st 25 milligram dose of lamotrigine, I leveled. I literally felt the depression lose its grip on me, and I started to get healthy for the first time since. Since I was 14, it turns out, you see, I've been keeping a secret from myself, that at 14, I was molested twice by the religious director at the synagogue in northwest Balta where my family belonged. Dealing with that 45 years after the fact was damned hard. But I came out the other side. Like I said, I bounced. I became born again. Not in a religious sense, in a life sense. I started to write again. Boy, did I. Suddenly, my head was filled with stories. I started to tweet. I started my faithism project podcast with my friend Randy Lovejoy. He's a Presbyterian pastor and I'm a devout atheist. We have some really amazing conversations. You should check it out. And then one day, Ed Tapia called me. We'd been in communication all along, and Ed told me that Gil was sick. He had cancer. Kidney. And so I reached for the phone. [00:51:41] Speaker D: You know, when I was diagnosed with cancer, you called me, and that meant the world to me. I mean, you have no idea how much that meant to me after all the time that we hadn't spoken. And out of the blue, I get you. Call me. And we had a nice conversation. [00:51:59] Speaker C: We did. [00:51:59] Speaker D: But then nothing happened after that. I sort of lost life for like ten years as well because I got involved with veterans, I got involved with this one young Mandev who wrote a book called Fat Tuesday, and we were developing it and working on that. And then he flew to San Diego, San Antonio and committed suicide. So when I read in the New York Times that he had committed suicide, I just went into a tiff and just spiraled out of control and also questioned my interest and desire to help or was I really helping anybody in terms of the veteran world? And so that, you know, between the cancer and that, you know, I just sort of, I guess, spiraled out of awareness of where I was for, like, many years. [00:52:52] Speaker C: I hear you. I know how that can be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And time suddenly gets. Gets lost when you're deep inside your own head, for whatever reason that you are deep inside your head. And until you resolve it, if you can resolve it one way or the other, you can stay there. [00:53:11] Speaker D: Well, I had no interest in making television or movies. I mean, I would get these calls from Warner brothers about the tent pole pictures that I had been making for them, and I would just say, no. I mean, I wouldn't even explain. I would just say, I can't do that. I know it was a very strange experience going through that, the same as what you went through. I think what you went through was even harder. But I never quite understood. And years passed after that, and I never understood why we didn't continue from that, why we didn't build something from that. And I blame myself. You called me about the cancer. [00:53:56] Speaker C: Well, everything in its time. [00:54:00] Speaker A: So I'm working on a bunch of film and tv projects, trying to reinvent myself. My current manager, Jeff Field, took me on as a, I kid you not, a reclamation project. I think, through Twitter. I first made the acquaintance of Jason and the dads from the Crypt podcast team. They review episodes of Tales from the Crypt and give parenting advice. It's genius. Jason wanted to interview me about a crypt episode. I forget which, but the interview went great. And Jason said, hey, we're going to do a podcast about Bordello of Blood. Do you want to do another interview? And I said, well, jason, Bordello is more than just a one off interview. Bordello is more like a whole podcast unto itself. And here we are, getting back in touch with everyone. Gil especially. Well, that produced the biggest twist of all. [00:54:50] Speaker C: My mind is boggled by this podcast and how this podcast happened, the almost incidental way in which it suddenly came together and what doing this podcast has unleashed. I'm stunned, delighted I could not be happier. And to learn along the way that it's a story that really we all wanted to tell. Certain things have to happen for other things to happen. And I know in order for us to have to renew our relationship, I know I had to get past certain things. I couldn't start this until I was ready. Now I'm ready and more than ready. And look at what we're doing as a result, we slip right back into a creative relationship. It's like we never left. [00:55:42] Speaker D: It's true, and it's very gratifying. [00:55:44] Speaker C: What really surprised me is when I told other people who are part of our circle that we were talking regularly, and that just thrilled people to know that we were talking again. Other people thought, well, that's good. It's about fucking time. [00:55:59] Speaker D: We better do it now, because we don't have that much more time to. [00:56:02] Speaker C: But at our back, we always hear times. Winged chariot hurrying near. [00:56:07] Speaker D: Yes. [00:56:08] Speaker A: Life is so strange, so unpredictable. It's a lot like a really good movie. That's why it's worth sticking around. You just can't tell where it's going. And even when you think you've got it all sussed, you don't. [00:56:23] Speaker E: A couple years ago, like six years ago, I called up Gil, and I said, hey, you want to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Borneo Blood with me? And we had been invited by a local theater in Vancouver to screen it. It was actually the 20th anniversary, and I had stayed in touch with Gil, but talking about Bordeaux blood was kind of that subject we had never broached. You know, it was like one of those, like, let's just leave that behind us and have a new friendship, you know? And so I didn't talk to him about it. And then all of a sudden, this opportunity arose. The Rio theater in Vancouver, which is, like, this really amazing place that they pride themselves on. What do they call it? The experience you cannot download. And it's like, wow, they want to show the movie, and Gil lives here. We gotta do this. And so I invited Gil to come over, and I believe he did a Q and A. Didn't you? [00:57:13] Speaker D: Yeah, I did a little Q and a before and a big Q and a after. [00:57:16] Speaker E: It was pretty cool. And, you know, it's a fun movie with a crowd, especially if they're shit faced. Yeah, and the Rio does sell booze, so that helps. And I think Ed snuck us some joints over the border. But anyway. [00:57:32] Speaker A: That, believe it or not, blows our minds. Despite the soul crushing, relationship ending, career threatening process of making Wardello of blood, the audience just doesn't care. Not one iota. Hey, you remember I mentioned coaching ultimate Frisbee? Well, here's a funny twist that'll bring the whole concoction around. Like I said, ultimate self officiating. There are rules, but not a ton. And one day, I needed to look up a rule, and so I went online to do it, and I discovered something that also blew my mind, and I think it's gonna blow yours. Know who invented ultimately Frisbee? Joel silver. No shit. You can look it up. There's just no escaping the guy. On our next episode of the how not to make a movie podcast, the making of Bordello of Blood, the dads from the crepe finally get their turn. They have unanswered questions of their own, and they're gonna pose them to all the characters in this story. See you then. The how not to make a movie podcast is executive produced by me, Alan Katz, and by Jason Stein. Our artwork was done by the amazing Jody Webster and Jason. Jody, along with Mando, are all the hosts of the fun and informative dads from the Crypt podcast, followed up for what my old pal the crypt keeper would have called terrorefic crypt content.