Episode 7: Some Tales About “Tales”

[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. Welcome back to the how not to make a movie podcast, the making of Bordello of Blood. This is episode seven, some tales about tales. That's tales from the crypt, of course. As I hope this podcast has demonstrated, life, like the making of Bordello of blood, is utterly filled with unexpected twists and turns. This podcast's very existence is one of those twists or turns. I'm not sure which yet. Whatever the point is, doing the podcast produced a ton of unexpected results, pretty much all of them wonderful. Just getting back in touch with these terrific people was worth the price of admission and every bit of hard work making this podcast has entailed in this episode. I thought I'd just put you, the audience, in the room with us while we hold a little tales from the crypt reunion. Some of us haven't seen each other in a long, long time. [00:01:14] Speaker B: God, you keep getting skinnier. [00:01:18] Speaker C: Alan does. [00:01:19] Speaker D: No, Todd, I'm going to try to get to Alan's sides. [00:01:26] Speaker E: I'm not sure you want that, man. [00:01:29] Speaker B: We might have to chop you off at the knees. [00:01:32] Speaker E: You'll end up looking like Gollum. [00:01:34] Speaker D: Hey, he made a lot of money. Very well in Hollywood. [00:01:39] Speaker C: Good to see you guys. Oh, my God. [00:01:42] Speaker F: Great. [00:01:43] Speaker E: I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to see all of you in one place at one. One place at one time. [00:01:49] Speaker F: Yeah. [00:01:50] Speaker A: Before we got started in earnest, Victoria Burroughs, our casting director, mentioned that one of our team, Victoria's casting associate, Jean Scottiamaro, just passed away. [00:02:01] Speaker C: So I don't know if I told you guys not to be Debbie Downer, but remember Gene Scott Gamaro, who worked with us? [00:02:08] Speaker G: Yes. [00:02:08] Speaker C: She died. [00:02:10] Speaker D: Oh, wow. [00:02:12] Speaker F: Well, I mentioned her in the last podcast. [00:02:14] Speaker A: That's wardrobe supervisor Randall Thropp. [00:02:17] Speaker F: How much I appreciated Victoria and Jean. She was just incredible. She was such a doll. She was such a nice person to work with and so accessible. [00:02:26] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:02:27] Speaker F: I really have nothing but the highest remarks to make about Gene. [00:02:31] Speaker E: How long did you and Gene work together, Victoria? [00:02:34] Speaker C: Oh, years and years. We must have known each other over 25 and worked. I can't remember exact amount of time, but, you know, with crypt and then Walker, Texas Ranger, but, you know, she was one of my besties for many years, and she just went to sleep on the 30 march, and her roommate found her dead at 02:00 p.m. the next day. [00:02:56] Speaker F: Oh, gosh. [00:02:57] Speaker E: Wow. [00:02:57] Speaker C: Yeah. So they think it was just, you know, her heart stopped. So. [00:03:03] Speaker G: Wow. [00:03:04] Speaker C: Yeah, it was a surprise to everybody. So, anyway, I'm just was. You know, I just was thinking about her because she was with me, with you guys on in our pale, and. [00:03:15] Speaker F: The two of you set such a great atmosphere, and you were so accessible because, you know, you and I and Jean would sit down and go through. It's like, okay, Randall, who do you want for background? And we would have. But it was just like, okay. I knew specifically, like, especially that carnival episode. I remember how much fun we had piecing together. The background for that 1930s carnival episode, which looked beautiful, was with Joan Chen. Oh, my God. [00:03:41] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:03:41] Speaker F: What a great looking episode that was. And a lot of that had to do with the casting of, you know, all of us collab. But again, it was this collaboration, and that's what I've stressed over and over again, what a great collaboration. Hails from the crypt was because we all liked each other and we all depended on each other, and it was just. It was. [00:04:02] Speaker E: If you remember, Randall, that episode, the circus one, was required more collaboration than almost any other episode I can remember, because we fired the director not too long. I forget who the original director was, but I think we ended up getting. I think Rodin Flender stepped in as the last minute person, but he was not the original director. [00:04:26] Speaker F: Oh. [00:04:27] Speaker E: And so I. My memory is of a. We fired the director because they. Whatever their vision was, it wasn't. It was someone, I think, that Joel brought in. It might have been. And we had an emergency meeting on a Sunday at Gill's house to talk about how to do that thing, and we decided we would do the whole thing in studio. That we would create the carnival grounds. [00:04:56] Speaker G: Yeah. [00:04:56] Speaker E: Greg would create our carnival grounds, and we would play the whole thing, really, within this confined space, because, you know, again, I think we were also. We had a time issue as well. I think we had to do this in fewer than five days, if I recall. [00:05:13] Speaker F: Yeah. But it was a beautiful looking episode, as far as, you know, like Greg did with the art direction and the production design. I mean, it was a beautiful episode. And Joan Chen. I still have photographs of Joan Chen, which is. [00:05:26] Speaker D: Oh, my God. [00:05:27] Speaker F: I mean, breathtaking. [00:05:29] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:05:29] Speaker C: And it wasn't. It Joan Chen. Ernie Hudson. [00:05:33] Speaker F: Yeah, Ernie. [00:05:33] Speaker C: And John Laughlin. And what we were so happy about is that we were able to make it diverse. It wasn't written that way, but we were able to create it that way. And everybody loved the idea. So, again, I'm with Randall. I just. The collaboration and how much we all adored working together. It was just every day was a pleasure to come to work. It really was. Truly. [00:05:57] Speaker F: It really was. [00:05:58] Speaker D: We gave Ernie Hudson the John Wayne Gacy clown makeup. [00:06:04] Speaker A: Detail, special effects maven. [00:06:06] Speaker E: Todd Masters things that Donna Anderson took it over with. [00:06:09] Speaker D: I love it. [00:06:10] Speaker F: Disturbing. Loved it. [00:06:13] Speaker E: It's funny. Rodman did a second episode for us a bit later, but it was more problematic. It was 199 and 100% pure something, which was not a good script. It had the whole payoff at the end was kind of, I'll be delicate and call it bullshitty, having to do with melting someone down into soap and then the acid in the soap, melting the wife. [00:06:45] Speaker C: Like, what? [00:06:48] Speaker E: On what planet does chemistry work that way? [00:06:51] Speaker F: That's right. I forgot about that one. [00:06:56] Speaker B: I also remember from that episode that Rodman wanted to do a lot of crazy camera shots. [00:07:01] Speaker A: That's Ed Tapia. [00:07:03] Speaker B: And Gill had to keep telling Gil, and I think Lee Webb had to say, no, we don't have time for that. No. And then he would come up with an even crazier one, and Gil would say, no, we don't have time for that. [00:07:13] Speaker E: I think he saw us as the means to some other end. [00:07:16] Speaker G: Yeah. Little did I know that he was my preparation for Brian Singer. [00:07:21] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:07:22] Speaker D: I always loved the way that you brought directors in right before a shoot and you kind of put them on the spot and asked for a shot list, and some of them were great with it, but many of them were not prepared to actually, like, stand and deliver. [00:07:37] Speaker E: And for direct, period. [00:07:40] Speaker D: Well. [00:07:43] Speaker B: I've taken. I've taken with. Yeah, I've taken what Gil did and stole it. I mean, I bring directors in and I ask them not for the whole script like Gil used to do, but if we have some sequences that are going to be a little complicated, I always ask the four questions that Gil used to ask them. Where does the camera. Where are the actors? What's the camera doing? What are the actors doing? And I do it over and over again, and I make them tell me that just the same way that Gil used to tell. Ask the other directors to just answer those four questions. [00:08:12] Speaker D: Can we? Can we. [00:08:13] Speaker F: Where's the camera? [00:08:14] Speaker B: Where the actors. What's the camera doing? What are the actors doing? And it's surprising when I tell them ahead of time that that's coming. It's amazing how prepared they are for it. [00:08:22] Speaker D: If we could have an episode of shit that we've stolen from Gil, I would really like. It might be a two parter. [00:08:28] Speaker G: Well, you remember Billy. I don't know if you ever. Guys, remember John Frankenheimer? [00:08:32] Speaker A: Gil Adler? [00:08:34] Speaker E: Yeah, I'll forget. [00:08:36] Speaker G: All of these directors brought something very different, and they. And their methodology of working was very different from each other. It was a great class for me in terms of learning how to deal with all these different kinds of directors. Like with John Frankenheimer, we thought he was a good guy, and we went to his house. We spent some time. We talked about him being with Robert Kennedy the night of Robert Kennedy's assassination and all this kind of stuff. And then we get to the show, and I hear from the set that we're way behind. And so I go down there and look around, and I see we're way behind. So I call over John and very quietly behind the set, so no one can hear or see, I challenge him and say, what are you doing? You know, we're not going to. And he goes, and he just gives me lip service. And I realized with John, I had to stop production, stay in my office, call him. So the set. Call him from the set to my office, sit him down, close the door. And only then would I really get his attention, and only then would he react to what I was asking him to do or not do or finish up or whatever. But it was really interesting. I tried to do it, you know, casually and on the set, on the fly. Nothing. He would just bullshit me. And only when I realized I had to sit him down. [00:09:51] Speaker E: I do remember beginning to pull your hair out, because he just. You would go down. It took a couple of times. You'd go down, you visit him, and nothing. He would not change his behavior one iota. And finally, I think it was you just, you were really angry, and you called him to the office, and it was because he responded to that that. [00:10:09] Speaker G: You realized, oh, that's the way to deal with him. [00:10:13] Speaker E: He's so old school that if you come to his territory, he's God. If you call him to your temple, you're God. [00:10:22] Speaker G: And yet, on the other hand, Billy Friedkin, who Joel was way against, I mean, he just said, you're going to pay for this. He can't do anything. In five days, I'm going to take your money. You're going to pay for all the overages. And I said, alan and I talk. We really want Billy to do one. He's a great guy. Great. Who better than Billy freakin the exorcist to do Tellson McGregor? And so Billy, I said to Billy, we're going to do it in five days, and we're not going to say to you, it's five days and you're going to say it's seven. We're going to work with you on it until we all agree it's five days. But then once we say it's five days, that's what it's going to be. And, you know, he agreed to it and he did exactly that. And we had a great relationship with Billy and it continued for years later. [00:11:05] Speaker E: It's funny, one of my memories of working. I've got two memories of working with Billy. One was, it was a show about rock and roll. And he wanted the rock, he wanted the music to be done live. We hired actors. We cast actors who were. Who were musicians first and maybe actors there. Yul Vasquez was, and Tina Carrere and Tia Carrera. And Sherri Rose. [00:11:34] Speaker F: Oh, Sherry Rose. Oh, Gary. [00:11:36] Speaker E: Sherry Rose was also in the episode. Our inclination, of course, was to pre record all the music and then have everyone lip sync to it. And Billy was totally against that. And in having the argument when Billy just. We were arguing for about ten minutes and finally said, okay, okay, Billy, you win. And the argument went on for 15 more minutes because he wouldn't shut up. And literally I had to say, billy, shut up. Stop. You won 15 minutes ago. [00:12:06] Speaker G: I don't think he believed us. I don't think he believed that we agreed. We said, okay, you can do it. [00:12:10] Speaker E: I don't think the second memory is one of the few notes I remember getting from HBO. And it had to do with the dailies from the first day. We were shooting at a place down in Venice. On the boardwalk in Venice, an apartment down there, a beach house. And there was a sex scene between Yule and Sherry Rose. And Billy was really pushing it, pushing it, pushing it. And at some point, I guess in one of the dailies when Yule got out of bed and before cut was yelled, Jules erect penis bobbed into the bottom of the frame. [00:12:46] Speaker F: I have a story. I have a story. [00:12:48] Speaker E: Well, okay. Well, when HBO saw the dailies, that's one of the few times I remember a panic call from Susie Fitzgerald because. [00:12:57] Speaker F: Oh, God, Susie. [00:12:58] Speaker E: Yeah, yeah. The whole thing was we had brought Billy in and everyone was convinced that Billy's crazy. He's going to make them do crazy things because Billy's going to overpower them. He's nuts. He's nuts. And so HBO had it in their heads that Billy was going to talk us into putting that shot of Jules erect penis bouncing into the bottom of the frame. [00:13:18] Speaker G: We didn't use it for that show, but we use it for many other shows. [00:13:22] Speaker E: Follow the bouncing ball, bouncing nuts. [00:13:27] Speaker C: Wasn't Paul hip also? [00:13:29] Speaker E: It was, yes, Paul hip, correct. [00:13:32] Speaker C: Paul hip is still rocking and rolling. [00:13:35] Speaker F: Okay, so what happened was Billy Friedkin had that scene with Tia and the Yule, remember in the bathtub in the shower with the hot water? And Warden had put yule in leather pants. And Billy kept shooting it, getting take after take after take with the hot water because they didn't want to stand in cold water in hot water. And that was towards. It was probably about five or 06:00 I remember we were on a curfew in Venice. We had to be out of there. So I wrapped everybody out of their trailers, got everybody together, and I get this, and I forget who was the ad on that one, whether it was Lee or was it Gary. And they said, randall, you need to come back up to the house. [00:14:19] Speaker G: This was. [00:14:20] Speaker F: It was dark. You know, it was like about 930, 10:00 because we were on this curfew. You got to come back up to the house. Our actor's having a problem. I'm like, okay, fine. So I go back up to that house and there is Yule in the bedroom on the bed. And I said, what's wrong? And he said, man, I can't get these pants off. They shrank to me. So because there was a lining in those pants. And then the black leather, it shrank to him. He couldn't get them off. And so you have to understand, I'm like, okay, let's get. I am on the bed and I am on top of him and trying to get him off of him. Meanwhile, the guys are rolling cable because they have to get out of that house. So there I am, on top of it. [00:15:07] Speaker D: Man. [00:15:08] Speaker F: I got to tell you something. I got to tell you something. I'm not wearing any underwear. I'm like, oh, shit. Like, I haven't seen this before. And so I'm like, don't worry about it. And talk about flopping. I'm like pulling and yanking and yanking on those pants. I mean, it was awful. Those things shrank right to his skin. Anyway, so there we were. But again, what cracked me up is nobody even batted an eye. And I am literally straddling him on that bed. And the guys, the grip and electric were all pulling all the cable and everything. But that was my memory of working with William Friedkin and Yule Vasquez. [00:15:44] Speaker B: When I hear Randall, when I hear a story like that, what I think more of anything is, thank goodness there was no social media back then. [00:15:50] Speaker F: Oh, can you imagine? [00:15:53] Speaker B: I think of some of the arguments that I heard Gil get into, and the idea of somebody. Somebody would record that today. [00:16:01] Speaker G: Oh, yeah. [00:16:02] Speaker B: You know, and gil would be. Gil would be a YouTube star. [00:16:05] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:16:06] Speaker G: I missed my chance again. Damn. You know what, billy? We became friends for a while, and he wanted me to make a movie with him at Paramount that didn't work because of warner brothers and Joel. And I didn't see him for years. And about three years ago, I'm in Los Angeles, and we go into a restaurant, and I see across the room, Billy Friedkin is with Sherry, his wife. Yeah. And they're having dinner, and jeanne says to me, I think that's Billy Friedkin. I go, yeah, it's Billy. And she goes, why don't you go over and say hello? And I go, I know Sherry, too, but I don't think billy's going to remember me. It's a long time ago. And so we just have dinner, and we're eating, and all of a sudden, I feel this hand on my shoulder, and I look around, and it's Billy, and he's hitting me on the shoulder, and he goes, hey, man, how the hell have you been? God, I haven't seen you in 100 years. He knew who I was. He recognized me, and we had a nice chat, and then Sherry came over, and we, you know, we continued the conversation, but I was. I was shocked that he would, you know, even remember because, you know, we've all changed a little bit, what we look like, and. And it was so nice of him to come over and say hi. [00:17:17] Speaker E: Oh, cool. [00:17:18] Speaker F: Yeah, he was very nice to us. I mean, I had no issues with him. He was very nice. And what I respected about William Friedkin was he didn't use a monitor. Remember that? It was all in his head. [00:17:28] Speaker G: Yeah. [00:17:29] Speaker F: And so what he shot was all in his head, and he storyboarded it out, and I was like, whoa, that's the first director I've seen at tails that did not use the monitor to, you know, look at everything. [00:17:41] Speaker E: He was great. You know, he had started as kind of a guerrilla filmmaker, and so when he took. When he took up the challenge to do the show, really, he was reconnecting with his guerrilla filmmaker roots, and. And so he was happy as could be. [00:17:52] Speaker F: Yeah. [00:17:53] Speaker D: Always tail slating, too. You remember that? [00:17:55] Speaker G: Yeah. [00:17:56] Speaker D: He had this little, like, I don't know if it was the wiggle of his ear or something, but he would tell the operator silently just to start rolling, and he would get some of that stuff at the end, you know, there's real tears going on because he would go up and he would talk to Yule in his ears and say. [00:18:14] Speaker G: You fuck your mother? [00:18:15] Speaker D: Did you? He would, like, whisper this, like, really dark fucking shit into his ear and then back out of shot and let him just kind of take it from there. And I literally watched him break down in front of camera, and Billy got it all. And it was. And then it was like, dale, say, that's so fucking brilliant. [00:18:34] Speaker G: I thought Billy only did that with Alan and me. [00:18:38] Speaker D: Well, yes, there was a time. There was a time where I got. We had to take one of the actors off to change a whole chess prosthetic on him on a dead man's chest. [00:18:50] Speaker A: The episode in question was about a strange haitian tattoo artist played by the rapper heavy D, whose tattoos literally came to life. [00:18:58] Speaker D: And I heard over the radio, I think it was from Patricia, Billy Friedkins heading to the makeup effects trailer. And I'm like, oh, fuck, he's coming to kill me. Because he had a reputation that, you know, he had given people heart attacks. And he was, you know, this is pretty intense. You know, he was an intense guy. You could just feel the energy out of him. And here I am, like, taking his. His lead, gluing rubber on his chest while I don't think they were doing much in there. He comes into the makeup trailer. I'm going as fast as I can to glue this shit on. And he sits down like, as calm as can be, and tells me Dick Smith exorcist stories for the remaining time. You know, just like, you do whatever you want to do, my friend. You know, it's going to look great. And it was just like, okay. And Friedkin, you know, totally changed in my mind. He was just this independent filmmaker that was there to make the best five days he could. [00:19:56] Speaker F: I think a lot of the directors that we worked with, especially for me, were all really very good and great to deal with and open to suggestion. I mean, I keep thinking about Bill Malone and Mick Garris and those folks who were really terrific to work with. [00:20:13] Speaker E: Bill Malone is so talented. What a talented man. [00:20:16] Speaker F: Yeah, I mean, I think we had some really great directors. You know, all in all, we were lucky and great actors, thanks to Victoria. I mean, we had terrific talent that came through there because I think you had said to me once before, you always ask people if they want to come play. And that was the whole fun of coming to tales from the crypt, was, are you willing to play? Cause you're gonna get dirty. You're gonna get bloody. You're gonna have your heart ripped out or your head taken off. And are you willing to play? And you and Gene did such a great job of, you know, getting the actors to agree to do this, you know, thank you. [00:20:52] Speaker C: Thank you was a challenge, but it was also fun, you know, when you're going scale plus ten, do you remember. [00:20:58] Speaker F: Do you remember the Randy Travis thing? [00:21:00] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:21:01] Speaker A: When we went to cast the episode Doctor of horror, directed by Larry Wilson, co writer of Beetlejuice, among other movies, we cast two country music stars, Travis Tritt and Randy Travis. Unaware that at the time, the two Travis's were at war with each other. We had to choose one. [00:21:18] Speaker F: And Gene came down to my office and said, can you please come down right now and talk to Randy Travis and get all of his measurements like he's going to do this episode? And I said, what? She says, no, just come down and get all of his information. So I went down there, and he was there with his wife manager, and, I mean, he was so. He was a nice guy. Very, very nice guy. And I. So I got all of his information, and then it was. It didn't happen. But I mean, again, that's the kind of relationship we all had, that we could do stuff like that, you know, and not be intimidated. [00:21:51] Speaker G: That was. [00:21:52] Speaker B: That was a strange dynamic, though, between he and his I manager. [00:21:56] Speaker F: Yeah, well, and then what? He would. He wouldn't work with Travis Tritt. Wasn't that it? [00:22:01] Speaker E: Right? [00:22:01] Speaker F: Yes, Travis Tritt. And wasn't Austin Pendleton in that? [00:22:05] Speaker E: Yes. [00:22:06] Speaker F: I just remember going to Victoria and Jean's office and sitting down with Randy Travis and having this nice conversation. But yes, it was a strange dynamic between the wife manager and Randy Travis. It was. I don't know. It was very odd, but he was very sweet, very sweet guy. [00:22:22] Speaker B: I remember, too. What I remember also from that episode is that Travis worked three of the five days, but came in both days. He wasn't working. Cause he liked hanging out. And on the last day, he brought all sorts of swag. He bought boxes of cds and t shirts and hats for the crew. [00:22:41] Speaker F: Oh, Travis Tritt was a delight to work with. [00:22:43] Speaker D: Yeah, he was great. [00:22:45] Speaker E: Randy Travis wouldn't have done that, but. [00:22:49] Speaker G: His wife may have forced him to do that. Well. [00:22:52] Speaker B: And slash was the other one who came in on his day off. [00:22:54] Speaker A: Ed Tapia. [00:22:56] Speaker F: That's right. We're like, you don't work today. [00:22:58] Speaker E: So. [00:22:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. I just like it here. [00:23:00] Speaker D: Well, he loves makeup effects. Slash is a huge horror and makeup effects fan. [00:23:04] Speaker B: Yeah, Todd, I don't know if you've ever heard. I don't know if you ever heard the story about how he ended up on the show. He was a friend of one of the grips, and the grip came up to me and said, hey, slash is a buddy of mine, and he's a huge fan of the show when he wants to do the show. And I literally said to that, get the fuck out of here. He goes, no, seriously, seriously, he's a fan. He's going to call you. I gave him your number. And I go into Gil, and I say, gil, a grip just told me that slash wants to do our series, and Google's if it's true, let's take a meeting. And so ten minutes later, literally ten minutes later, I get a call, and a guy answers. I answer the phone. He's like, hey, man, this is slash. I'm like, yeah, right. [00:23:43] Speaker D: Hung up. [00:23:45] Speaker E: It's like a t shirt. Five minutes later, he called back, literally right back. [00:23:49] Speaker B: And he goes, no, seriously, this is slash guns n roses. My buddy Rick told me that you're the guy I need to talk to. I get on the show. I said, well, that's not actually true, but if you're really interested, you know, why don't you come on in for a meeting? So I told Gil, I told Alan, and he called, like, you know, half an hour later, he goes, I'll be there tomorrow, like at 530. It was late in the day, and I get a call from Dorothy the next day. Like, Ed, there's a really strange guy with a top hat and dark sunglasses and with this really beautiful girl next to him. And I'm like, okay. So I went out there, and sure enough, there's. I brought her back into Gil's office. [00:24:27] Speaker G: Remember, we had a meeting. [00:24:27] Speaker B: We didn't have a role for him. You guys met with him. We figured out what to do. [00:24:31] Speaker E: I remember. [00:24:32] Speaker B: And we put him in. [00:24:34] Speaker G: I remember it very vividly, especially Ed, when you first came into my office to tell me about this slash connection. And I'm like, it's not that. Come on. And I said, sure, let's get him in here. If he said, yeah, he wants to do it, sure, let's bring him in for a meeting, figuring we'd never hear from him again. And then the next day, he's walking in with the hi hat. [00:24:54] Speaker B: Yeah. And here's the other part that I think Gil might remember this. But about ten minutes after we tell him we want him to do the show, I get a call from Geffen records. Hey, man, this is so and so, so so from a and r. We understand you're going to do something with our client, Slash. Can you tell me about it? Ten minutes after that, another person, like, from CAA, called, hey, you're doing something with our client, slash. Can you tell me about it? And another manager, like, ten minutes later from, like, the record company. I got, like, four calls within half an hour, all of them saying the same thing. When we sent Slash's schedule, I remember Gil told me, make sure he got it. Make sure he understands. And I remember coming in to tell Gil the story. It's like I just called Slash. And here's how the conversation went. I called, hey, Slash, it's Ed. [00:25:40] Speaker G: What are you doing? [00:25:42] Speaker B: Just eating Cheerios and watching cartoons. It was three in the afternoon. [00:25:48] Speaker G: By the way, somebody from one of our shows just walked into my office that you guys haven't seen in a while, and I'd like her to come over here. She was in one of the shows that Alan and I wrote and just come over here and say hi to all our old buddies. [00:26:03] Speaker E: How are you today? [00:26:05] Speaker A: That would be Gil's wife, Jeanette. It's a reunion, isn't it? [00:26:08] Speaker F: Hi, Jeannie. [00:26:09] Speaker E: Good to see you. Hi. [00:26:10] Speaker F: It's that Jeannie. [00:26:14] Speaker B: You look the exact same since the last time I saw you ten years ago. [00:26:17] Speaker F: You look great. [00:26:18] Speaker C: Yeah, fabulous. They don't change. [00:26:22] Speaker B: Oh, you look fabulous. Both of them. [00:26:25] Speaker E: You look terrific. Oh, thank you. [00:26:27] Speaker B: You're very welcome. [00:26:28] Speaker D: Well, I'll call you all this time tomorrow then. [00:26:31] Speaker G: For an ego boost. [00:26:35] Speaker E: We can be hired. [00:26:38] Speaker G: Yeah, we can be had. [00:26:41] Speaker F: Now, remind me, what was the story with Greg Allman? Remember that episode? [00:26:47] Speaker E: That was Billy's episode. [00:26:49] Speaker F: Okay, that was. [00:26:51] Speaker E: Yeah, because we had a couple of rock and roll guys. We cast a couple of rock and roll guys for the background. Greg. Greg was another. Who else was in that? [00:26:58] Speaker F: Because he showed up. Right? And then he walked off. [00:27:01] Speaker E: Yeah. And Jonesy. So Jonesy from the Sex Pistols replaced him, I think. [00:27:07] Speaker F: God, I just remember. I just remember him being in the trailer and nobody saw him, and then suddenly he walked off and that was it. [00:27:13] Speaker C: We don't know why. I don't remember why. [00:27:16] Speaker F: I don't remember why. [00:27:18] Speaker E: I don't know that he was entirely sober at any moment that he was amongst us. [00:27:23] Speaker C: And then the Tim Curry episode was the one that I loved. Just him playing all three characters. That's an episode. I sat down and just watched a lot of the shooting as he was mesmerizing. [00:27:39] Speaker F: So nice. Such a nice guy. [00:27:41] Speaker C: Yeah. I asked him why he did the show, because I was so impressed that he said yes for us. And he said, because I was afraid of all the characters. And so I knew I had to take them on. [00:27:54] Speaker G: Yeah, well, the story with that is we called his manager. We wanted him to do it. Alan, I had this idea, let's get Tim Curry. And I had seen him in the original Rocky horror in London 100 years ago. And she said, no, no, he's going to Rio. He goes to Carnivale every year. The dates you're talking. I said, well, I can switch the dates. No, no, he's not going to do it. And I think I called her two or three times, and the third time I said, listen, could you just see if he'll have lunch with me? I just want to meet him. I really just would love to meet him. And so she arranged a lunch, and I met him at Chaya Brasserie in Santa Monica. [00:28:27] Speaker C: Good memory. [00:28:28] Speaker G: And we sat down and the first thing he said is, he says, you know I'm not doing the show. Right? I said, I do know that. He said, okay, because you're not going to convince me to do this show. And I said, I'm not going to try to convince you to do the show. I just really wanted to meet you. And I'll tell you a little bit about the show, but I'm not trying to convince you to do anything. By the end of lunch, he threw his napkin down on the table and he said, well, you've really done it now. And I. And I got really a little panic because I went, I don't think I. What did I do? And he said, okay, I'm calling my manager. I'm canceling my trip to Rio. I have to do this. I have to do this. The way you're talking about the characters and the way we just had this great lunch, we got to do the show together. And he did it, and we became very good friends. And years later, after the stroke, the Tony Awards has a show in Laden, usually at the theater up on the top of Mulholland in the 405, the Skirbal center. And they have a dinner, and they were honoring Tim. And I hadn't seen him for a number of years. I spoke to him, I think once after the stroke, and it was really hard to hear him. And it was really, really difficult. [00:29:41] Speaker A: Tim suffered a major stroke in 2012. [00:29:44] Speaker G: And this person, come from the, from the Tony Awards, said that they were going to do a dinner and they were honoring Tim Curry and that Tim had asked if I would sit next to him. And, you know, Jimmy and I went and we sat with Tim. And again, his voice wasn't very powerful, so it was really hard to talk to him. But we were, you know, we stayed in touch for a while, and. And I think about him often. I really do think about him often. [00:30:14] Speaker B: My wife, Michelle. Michelle works for the Ed Asner family Center, doing therapy for them. And every year they do a Christmas reading of the Dickens play that they do every year. And Tim Curry was part of it this past year. [00:30:31] Speaker G: And was he able to project. [00:30:35] Speaker B: Some of the actors covered for him for his part. [00:30:37] Speaker G: But he was in a chair, right? [00:30:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, he was in the chair. Yeah, he was in the chair. And he was able to hit probably 60% of his lines. Ed Begley junior covered for him a little bit, and so did Jason Sudeikis. It's a zoom thing they do for charity every year. [00:30:54] Speaker E: How nice. Did Ed and Tim were working together again? [00:30:57] Speaker D: Yeah, totally. Tim's going to be in Pasadena for the monster palooza this year in early June. [00:31:03] Speaker B: Yeah, Michelle. Michelle wanted to go to that just to see Tim. [00:31:06] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:31:07] Speaker F: Yeah. [00:31:07] Speaker D: So actually, there's gonna be a small tales from the crip reunion. Looks like Fleischer's gonna be there. Billy Zane's gonna be there. [00:31:14] Speaker A: In death of some salesmen, Tim Curry plays three members of the same country bumpkin family, the father, the mother, and the hideous daughter Winona. Tim is brilliant. He got nominated for an Emmy award. [00:31:29] Speaker D: There was quite a bit of a drama trying to get those makeups together because of, you know, classic tales from the crypt fashion. [00:31:36] Speaker E: You might as well tell it again because it didn't make the cut. [00:31:39] Speaker D: Well, you know, I thought I had mentioned it, but. I know. [00:31:41] Speaker E: I know you did. [00:31:42] Speaker D: Can we just run that tape? I don't know. [00:31:44] Speaker E: You should tell the story again live, because there was a moment where I think Gil wanted to kill you. [00:31:51] Speaker G: Go ahead, Todd. [00:31:52] Speaker D: Which one of us that kind of leaves the house open? What are you talking about? That. The vacuum cleaner man that I got pulled over with. [00:32:00] Speaker G: No, we were. You were talking about something else just before that. [00:32:03] Speaker D: Well, yeah, I was talking about the development of the three characters, which. Randall, we had tons of time to develop those together with Tim. What? I think, like, the morning of everything, it all finally just came together. I don't think there was ever a test. I did find a Polaroid. [00:32:20] Speaker F: I don't remember that being a test. [00:32:21] Speaker D: Yeah, I seem to remember we threw them together because the mother character, uh, I recall being, like, the last one on the schedule. So we pushed it, you know, down the line in terms of building the prosthetics. [00:32:36] Speaker G: Yeah. [00:32:36] Speaker D: And, um, you know, to do three extensive prosthetics with accoutrements plus a bunch of dead people, uh, you know, for, for what, four days or whatever we had back then was, was even for our quick team, was really high order. So I went to Lee Webb, and I said, lee, we're going to push mom down the schedule a little bit because we got to focus on the ones that are going to be shooting. It's just we don't have any time. I just want to confirm there's not going to be a rain cover day or you're going to move the schedule. Oh, no, you're never. And I'm like, are you sure? And he confirmed it. [00:33:16] Speaker E: And, of course, sounds like a best laid plan. There. [00:33:19] Speaker D: It was. It was the stupidest thing to ask. I mean, why even ask, right? But, of course, that's the plan I went with. Then a Friday late afternoon, and I get a phone call. Well, looks like we're gonna be going to raincover whatever it was. And we, we switched the makeup around, and all of a sudden we're needing mom. And so we, we just had to, like, hammer it out. And those are the days where we were cooking the foam rubber, and we needed, like, 4 hours to bake it. And come Monday morning at, like, five in the morning, four in the morning, whatever. My phone rings, and it's Patricia yelling at me, where the fuck are you? Because I had slept through my alarm, and because I had just worked all weekend, and I literally, like, I don't even know what the excuse. I think Gil was like, that was, like, the third time he wanted to fire me. And I had to go to the office, get the molds out of the oven, drive to Santa Monica with the pieces still in the molds, and I was, like, taking the molds apart in the parking lot, pulling out the foam prosthetics that thankfully were good. And fortunately, Tim was so good about it, I kept him waiting for probably about an hour. And fortunately, we hit it off really fast, and the makeup came together really well, and the character just came together. Like we had just added water, and poof, we had mom. And, you know, Tim was so much a part of the success of those makeups. I mean, they're just pieces of rubber. And he brought those characters to life. [00:34:58] Speaker E: Oh, no, no. [00:34:59] Speaker D: Off each other. It was just amazing. So he was a joy. He was a real joy to work with, and that was. I. Thank you for not firing Miguel. I probably should have been fired, but I needed a half hour's sleep. It was just. It's. I don't think I've ever done that type of craziness before, and I'm certainly. [00:35:17] Speaker G: I actually thought that the first two shots that. That day were you. [00:35:23] Speaker D: I wasn't the show. I'm actually in the show. I do a cameo. Are you kidding? What do you mean? [00:35:30] Speaker G: No, that was Yvonne DiCarlo. I'm sorry. That wasn't you. [00:35:34] Speaker D: She and I never were at the same parties together. You're correct. [00:35:40] Speaker G: It's true. But Yvonne DiCarlo was in that episode. You know, that was the last. I think it was the last thing she's ever. She ever did. [00:35:49] Speaker F: Yeah, I remember. Well, I think I told. I think I told you the story. Uh, we were shooting, what? We were up at the old Paramount ranch, or we were out Lake Piru somewhere. [00:35:59] Speaker G: Yeah. Yeah. [00:35:59] Speaker F: And because I had dealt with Yvonne, just talking to her about what she should bring and, you know, and she was coming from Ojai and how to get to. Because we were. Our base camp was in Santa Monica, I think, at that point. And she brought all of her stuff, blah, blah, blah. I kind of pieced it together for her, for the character. And it was raining. I remember it was drizzling rain out there, muddy. And I was walking by her trailer, and she opened the door and said, oh, honey, come in and talk to me. Nobody knows who I am. Just come in and talk to me. [00:36:31] Speaker E: I. [00:36:31] Speaker F: And so I sat with her for about an hour, and she was reliving all of her days at Paramount. And now that. Since I am at Paramount, I wish now I could sit down and talk to Yvonne. But she was just going. She really wanted to just talk about the old days and how everybody thinks I'm Lily Munster. But I had a whole career before that, you know, and just a sweet, sweet lady. But, yeah, she passed away not long after that. [00:36:56] Speaker G: Oh. [00:36:56] Speaker F: She sent me an autographed photograph, but it was taken in about 1955. [00:37:01] Speaker G: I have the same photograph. I think I have the same photograph. Yep. [00:37:05] Speaker F: But, oh, my God, he was great. [00:37:09] Speaker D: So many great cast members throughout the seasons that I'm with you, Randall. I wish I knew a little more about film history like I know now. [00:37:19] Speaker E: We were actually the last performance for Cleavon Little, and that was entirely an act. That was you, Victoria, doing something so, so generous. [00:37:27] Speaker G: Yeah. [00:37:28] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:37:30] Speaker E: Can you tell that story? [00:37:31] Speaker C: What I remember is just him being a, you know, longtime friend and it just came about. And wasn't that with Superman? Were they in the same one together? [00:37:44] Speaker E: No, this was. This will kill you. Robert Longo directed Sonia Braga, Dylan McDermott, and that was okay. [00:37:51] Speaker C: And Cleveland, I'm blending two of them together. [00:37:55] Speaker E: That happens. [00:37:56] Speaker C: Yeah. It's just, you feel like, you know, they're all together in the same. It was just one of those things that I was inspired to bring to him. And you guys loved it. And he said yes, even though he wasn't feeling that good. [00:38:11] Speaker G: No, the reason. The reason. The reason I loved it was when you came in and you said, you know, Cleveland, little do you know who he is. And I was like, you don't mean. You don't mean the guy from Pearly, do you? The guy from Pearly. I think he wanted to tell me. I think he wanted to tell me that he was in the Mel Brooks movie. This is the guy from Pearly. From Pearlie on Broadway, right. I was, like, blown away when. When you said he wanted to do it, because I'm like, pearly, Pearly's going to be in a grip. Holy crap. I was so excited. [00:38:43] Speaker F: I'd worked with Cleavon in New York at the Phoenix Theater, and he had done an off Broadway play there. And he was. But he was. He was feeling good. He was really healthy. And I remember walking into the fitting, and he was kind of ash colored. He just didn't look quite like himself. But he remembered me from being at the Phoenix theater all those years ago. But he was such a nice guy. Oh, my gosh, Cleavon. Even back in the. I mean, he was just a nice guy. [00:39:08] Speaker C: When I first got into casting and I was an assistant in 1978, we were working on a movie called Scavenger Hunt, and that's when I first met him. And he was just lovely and just had a great sense of humor. And that's where our friendship began. [00:39:25] Speaker E: We got to work with the most amazing people I can think of. The two or three people who, to me were, wow, I can't believe I'm getting to. It's not meat. To me, it was. Working with them was the exciting thing. Meeting's cool, but working with them was cool. I will reserve mine for last. But, yeah, there were one or two people whom, for me, it was, wow. Who comes to mind? For anyone else, it was, wow, we're going to get to work with this. [00:39:53] Speaker D: Person, Douglas, come on. I mean, Spartacus. I mean, I worked with Spartacus Kirk. That kind of blows me away that, you know, I mean, obviously, that, that, that. I'm talking about the episode yellow. [00:40:07] Speaker G: Yeah. [00:40:08] Speaker D: And it was, every episode was so chock full of amazing, detailed casting, you know, bravo. Victoria and team. [00:40:16] Speaker F: Yes, absolutely. Victoria. [00:40:18] Speaker D: Exactly. It's what makes the show live on so well is that, you know, you saw a lot of these actors, you know, sometimes at the very beginning or early in their careers, and then just see some of them met the. Just the last show. I don't know how many shows did after that. But, you know, it's kind of amazing in terms of a little half hour television show to have this kind of. [00:40:45] Speaker G: Legacy and to do it week in and week out, week after tomorrow. Victoria. [00:40:55] Speaker B: It's funny for me. For me, it was working with people years after I'd had massive, massive crushes on them. Sherilyn Fenn comes to mind. [00:41:04] Speaker F: Oh, that's right. Sherilyn Fenn. Oh, yeah. [00:41:06] Speaker B: Elizabeth. Elizabeth McGovern, who worked with us in London. [00:41:10] Speaker E: Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. [00:41:11] Speaker B: And reconnecting with Emma Sams in London. Same thing. I mean, I was just, like, getting to work with them. Like I said, I had a huge crush on Sherrilyn Finn in my early twenties, and getting to work with her in my thirties was awesome. You know, she was very sweet. You know, she was great. You know, they say never meet your idols, but she was awesome. [00:41:28] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. There was a lot of fun ones. Yellow was my first show that gil. Yeah. Introduced me to Bob, who is directing, and he had taken the name of tales from the crypt off the script. He said, just read this little script. And I said, oh, I love it. It's all about men, you know? And he goes, well, now I want you to be meet Robert Zemeckis. It was like, oh, okay. And that's how it all started. And then to kick it off with Kirk Douglas, you know, and his son was wonderful. And then you guys offered me all of the other episodes, and I was in heaven. So I'm ever so grateful to start with, you know? [00:42:13] Speaker F: Yeah, absolutely. [00:42:14] Speaker D: So such amazing, inspired casting on that. [00:42:17] Speaker B: One, by the way, I emailed all of you a photo of Victoria and I from, I think, 1986. My mother's been on a kick lately, sending me all these old photos that she's digitized. Oh, it's pretty funny. It's me, you, and Patrick Warburton from playing softball. [00:42:35] Speaker C: Oh, my God. [00:42:36] Speaker B: So there has to be 85. [00:42:37] Speaker F: 86. [00:42:38] Speaker D: Yeah, there's this. [00:42:40] Speaker C: I'm just looking over. [00:42:42] Speaker D: There's this tracking shot at the beginning of yellow that kind of introduces the whole world war one scenario. Mechis wanted to get sort of at magic hour, and Lance Henriksen were kind of following him on a technocrane. All through pyro and stunts and flips and just the most insane tales from the crypt shot ever. And of course, it has to happen now because the sun's setting and the first take, Lance goes all the way into this little foxhole where there's this sergeant that lifts up his hand and his hand gets blown off. And we had actually hired an amputee person and we made him an arm that we blew off on cue. But what had happened in the first take is the dog tags that Lance Henriksen was wearing just as he jumped into the foxhole. Just about, you know, one in a million chance hooked around the hand and bent it and completely broke the mechanism. And Zemeckis is like, okay, take two, let's go. And we're like, broken. We just had a incident there, and I don't know what we did. The magic of tales and the crypt, we did it before that sun went down, but it was frickin tense, and I'll never forget that one, because we wanted these shows to be big and something. You had, you know, the mantra for HBO. It's not tv, it's HBO. And, you know, we're tales for the fucking crap. We wanted these things to be great. And so we were all just like, you know, really pushing it as hard as we could to the point where things were breaking. And, you know, we had to rely on a little behind the scenes magic that make. [00:44:19] Speaker E: I never thought of our little tv show as a little tv show. Never. Never thought of it that way, you know. [00:44:27] Speaker G: You know, you mentioned, I. You mentioned Bob and the technocrane, which I got. The hair on the back of my neck went crazy because I remember one day Bob saying to me, you know, I need a technocrane for the whole show. I do everything off the technocrane. And the technocrane was very expensive. We never, ever used it once during the whole. All the seasons. And yet here Bob was saying, no, no, I need it for the whole thing. And I think I remember running his. Alan's office, closing the door and saying, alan, how the hell are we going to get a technocrane? Not only for one day, he needs it for five days. And he's, like, not giving up. I mean, he's not compromising. He's saying, I need it for. That's what I do. I do. And so we had to figure out how to get that technocrane. And I remember that? That was our first experience with technocrane, and we used a lot after that in other things, but I remember that being so. Such a dramatic moment when we were thinking, oh, my God, what are we going to tell boss? [00:45:22] Speaker E: What are we going to do, our boss ones bigger than we can do? [00:45:26] Speaker D: Well, you know, we always pulled out the stops for Bob's episodes because he made us better. He actually commanded a better show because we were all, like, sweating bullets working for Zemeckis. And there was a point, and I've heard this is, like, on every one of his shows, there's a point every morning on Bob Zemeckis show where he says, I got an idea, and the whole crew just moans. [00:45:57] Speaker C: Kathy Moriarty's episode. I remember her being impressive, and she ended up winning an Emmy. [00:46:04] Speaker F: Yeah, Kathy was great. [00:46:07] Speaker B: I thought of another one that was a big deal for me, was a meeting, getting to work with Bob Hoskins because he was so nice. [00:46:12] Speaker E: Yeah, lovely man. Lovely man. [00:46:15] Speaker B: I was such a fan of the movies he had been in and then getting to work with him and have him come into the office, and you and he developed a friendship. Didn't you yell? [00:46:23] Speaker G: Yeah, we became really good friends. However, it didn't start out that way. It started out as. So he was very resentful of me because I came to the set, it was so cold and damp, and we were shooting in this castle, and he would come in, and he was wearing, like, a jacket, you know, sports jacket. I had my woolies on, my hat on, my scarf on, and it was freezing. And I would say, bob, bob, you can't. You can't dress like that. I'm going to get you a coat. And I think I had wardrobe bring in a coat. And he came over to me and he said, gil, I'm not going to wear this coat. I don't need this coat. I'm not cold. I said, I don't want you to get sick. You're going to get sick. You get sick. I can't shoot. I can't shoot. I'm going to lose a fortune of money. So how about looking at it that way and just wear the coat? He goes, no, no, I'm not wearing the coat. And we used to get into this thing every day about him wearing the coat or not wearing the coat till, like, the third or fourth day became a joke. And that sort of, you know, put our relationship on a. On a friendly basis. And then we would meet in London for a coffee or a drink, and I would kid him, about where's the coat? How come you're not wearing a coat? And he would laugh at me because I had a big, heavy coat on. He was. He was great. [00:47:31] Speaker C: Was also a wow. [00:47:35] Speaker E: We worked with Whoopi the days after she won her Oscar. I have a memory of Whoopi. We were at the globe a one pasta. And she came into the executive offices and she said, do you have any copy of any details on the crypt? Id like to read some. Of course. In our boardroom, we had them all bound. So I said, oh, I'll send the whole bunch over to your traveler. She said, no, no, it's a count. I'll read them here. So I said, oh, I'll put them out in the boardroom. She said, no, right here is fine. We were standing in the corridor. So I, hey, I did what she wanted. I got her the comfiest chair we had. I put a stack of them of the bound tales from the crypt next to her and Whoopi Goldberg, that was three days after winning her Oscar. Sat there in our hallway quietly reading tales from the crypt as everyone walked past her. [00:48:29] Speaker G: Whoopi was the best. Whoopi was the best. Toby directed that one. [00:48:32] Speaker A: That would be Toby Hooper, director of the original Texas Chainsaw massacre, spontaneous combustion, and Poltergeist. [00:48:40] Speaker G: And then, you know, when we did Bordello, I got a call one day from Whoopi, and she said, congratulations, I see you're going to direct the movie, and Alan and you wrote it and so excited for you. And she said, so just let me know what day you want me. And I sort of laughed and made light of it. And she said, no, no, I'm serious. I want to be in the movie. It's your first movie. I want to be in it. Just write a little cameo, like one day. And I said, are you serious? And she said, yes, absolutely. And so I ran into Alan's office, we gotta figure this one out. And then, of course, the phone calls started coming from her management. And the guy says to me, you know, Whoopi is going to do this and she's not getting any pay, so you've got to use your time very wisely with her. You can't have her there for a whole day. I know she's told you a whole day, but you got to shoot her out. And I think she'll be fine if you get her out in 8 hours. And then I said, oh, okay. And then a few days later, it went to 6 hours, and then it went to 4 hours, and then I think it went to three or 2 hours. And so everything I said, when Whoopi gets here, get her in makeup and get her in hair. As soon as she's ready, bring her to the set. We're going to drop whatever we're doing and we're going to shoot Whoopi out. And it's only a few shots. And we did that and we literally got her out in like two and a half hours. And I think the two of us, Alan, you and I were like really nervous about it and really frightened that she's going to walk off the set. And we got it done and then we went back to what we were doing, even though we reorganized everything. And Whoopi got out of wardrobe and came over to me, she said, you know, I'm a little surprised at you. I said, what? And she said, well, why did, why am I finished? I mean, I planned on being here all day. I'm gonna stay. I said, what? No, no, no, you have to go. You gotta go somewhere. And she said, where do I have to go? I said, I don't know. Your management told me I had to shoot you out. And first it was 8 hours, then it was 6 hours, then it was like 3 hours. And that's why, you know, as soon as you got here, we dropped everything. You notice we dropped the whole scene and we just went right into your stuff. She says, yeah, I knew you did that. I wasn't sure what the hell is the matter with you? And, you know, I never forgot that experience with her. It was just a nice guilt. [00:50:59] Speaker B: I have an additional memory to that, Ed Tapia, that may not be true. So that's what I'm putting out there. I seem to remember that after you had your initial conversation with Whoopi, her manager called and said there was a painting that she wanted that was about 30 grand. It'd be great if the show bought it for her. [00:51:18] Speaker G: Yeah. [00:51:19] Speaker B: And that's when the hours started getting cut down. He said, we can't afford that. [00:51:24] Speaker F: Remember that, right? [00:51:25] Speaker G: Yeah, absolutely right. [00:51:26] Speaker B: Okay. [00:51:26] Speaker G: Absolutely right. Yeah. [00:51:28] Speaker B: That's when the hours started going down when we wouldn't buy the painting. And that's why Whoopi never knew about it. [00:51:33] Speaker G: Yeah, I guess. I mean, she never knew about it. We knew that, but we didn't know about it until it was after we finished shooting around. [00:51:39] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:51:40] Speaker B: Because I remember the manager called and said, there's this painting she really likes. [00:51:43] Speaker G: Yeah. [00:51:44] Speaker B: And I don't remember how, but I found out the price and I went into you and you were like, wait, what? We can't do that. [00:51:53] Speaker G: Right, right. No, that's true. That's a true story. [00:51:57] Speaker E: My favorite, the person that I was just thrilled with meeting was Buck Henry. [00:52:03] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:52:04] Speaker E: Now, Buck Henry, you know, to me, he was godlike because he wrote the screenplay for the graduate. [00:52:11] Speaker G: Graduate. [00:52:12] Speaker F: Yeah. [00:52:12] Speaker E: And, you know, he'd been on SNL a bunch of times. Just some of the best SNL episodes in the early seasons were Buck Henry episodes. But, you know, he was just one of the best screenwriters ever, and he played the MC. It was an episode called Beauty Rest, and I think Stephen Hopkins directed it. Mimi Rogers. [00:52:33] Speaker G: Yes. [00:52:34] Speaker E: And it was about, there's a beauty contest, and so she kills her roommate because her roommate's going to win the beauty contest, and it's at a mortician's convention. And the whole deal is that the winner is going to be dead by the time he's done. And Buck Henry was the master of ceremonies. [00:52:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:52:57] Speaker E: And we wrote a song, and I wrote the lyrics to the song, and nothing gave me more pleasure than having put those particular words into. Because I didn't write this, we didn't write the script, but I got to write the words to the song, and I put words into Buck Henry's mouth. And to me, that was maybe the proudest accomplishment of my professional life, putting words into that writer's mouth. [00:53:25] Speaker F: Yeah. [00:53:25] Speaker E: Tales gave us a chance to touch Hollywood royalty, almost going back to the beginning, and that was really thrilling. Like when we talked about earlier, getting to work with Donald O'Connor was also. [00:53:37] Speaker F: One of my favorite. Donald O'Connor. [00:53:41] Speaker E: It's Donald O'Connor, for fuck's sake. [00:53:43] Speaker F: I know. I'll never forget that. And what a nice guy. What a nice guy. [00:53:49] Speaker E: Lifeful. [00:53:51] Speaker G: Yeah. Just the greatest guy. You know, I once. I once got a call from Joel late in the seasons, and he said, you know, if you could work with anybody star, who would you want to work with? I said, you know, there are a lot of people. No, no, just. Just tell me who. Just tell me one. And I said, well, you know, I'd love to. I'd love to do something with Liz Taylor. Is it Liz Taylor? You want her to do a crypt? And I said, yeah, yeah, that'd be great. Click. Just hung up on me. Right? Calls me up later in the day and says to me, I'm going to write this number down. I'm going to give you a phone number tomorrow. 05:00. 05:00 sharp. You call this number and you'll be talking to Liz Taylor. I went, what? Just write this number down, and you call this number. So I write the number down. 05:00 the next day, I call the number, and I dial, and somebody answers it. Female voice and I go, hello, may I speak with Elizabeth Taylor, please? And she goes, Gil. And I go, Elizabeth? And she goes, yes. And I'm so glad you didn't call me, Liz, because I had heard that. No, don't call her, Liz. And she said, I hear you want me to be in entails from the crypt. I said, oh, yeah, I'd love you to do that. She said, what'd you have in mind? I said, I don't know. What would you like to do? She said, well, I would really like to. I've never been killed in anything I've ever done, so could you kill me? I said, I don't know if I could do that. I don't know if I'd feel comfortable doing that. I mean, you know, it'd be. It would. It would. I may have to call you, Liz. If I did that, I wouldn't. And she laughed, and she said, no, no, I think I would. I think I would do it if you'd kill me. Can you. Can you. Can you work on that and come back to me with a. With a. And of course, it never happened because things got, you know, we went our way, she went her way, and it never came back. But I'll never forget that phone call when I. When I called and I said, may I speak with Elizabeth Taylor, please? Very sheepishly. And this voice said, gil. [00:56:08] Speaker E: Conversations you never expect to have, right? [00:56:11] Speaker C: Ben Midler was on our set. [00:56:15] Speaker F: Well, Barr has been directing. [00:56:17] Speaker C: It was her husband directing. But I will say that was like a wow moment for me, that she was there while he was doing the work. I love her. [00:56:29] Speaker B: The shortest tales from the Crypt episode ever. It was, Martin had to write. Alan had to write, I think a seven minute crypt keeper, so he had time. [00:56:40] Speaker E: It's funny. That was one of Scott's episodes. [00:56:44] Speaker A: That would be Scott Nimmer fro. I so wish Scott was still with us. Scott was Dick Donner's head of development. He was a writer, too. A wonderful writer. Full disclosure. After Crypt, when Scott and I became friends, we wrote together episodes of the outer limits that I'm quite proud of, a screenplay we sold to Mandalay Pictures, and a couple of very cool tv series ideas. I have a feeling that Scott had had his eye on my first job at Crypt story editor when I got it, mostly because I was Gill's writing partner, Scott declared war on me. I don't blame him. In time, I came to see what an amazing asset Scott was as a writer. He wrote more crypt episodes than anyone. Ten of them. Some of the best, too. Oils well that ends well. People who live in brass hearses confession, his bowling show in London. After crypt and perversions of science, Scott wrote and produced some great tv shows. Pushing daisies, Tron Uprising, Hannibal and Once upon a Time, where he was co executive producer, Scott saw the world in such a particular way. He died of a rare form of cancer in 2016. 2016 was not a good year. [00:57:56] Speaker E: And Scott, you know, Scott. Scott was. Scott wrote some of the best crypt episodes of them all, bar none. Just terrific stuff. He. And sometimes the most disastrous things would happen to his episodes where, for whatever reason, the director assigned to it would be something he just didn't want or the actors assigned to it would be someone he just didn't want, like with that episode. And he was desperate not to have that particular director because it was a first time director, and he just didn't want that. And then I think he was reluctant when we hired Corey because corey did that episode, and that was the first time we worked with corey, and corey was wonderful. [00:58:39] Speaker G: Yeah. [00:58:40] Speaker E: But it was. It was. It was just another episode where scott's. They just had terrible luck on occasion. They. Some of them had great luck, I think. Gosh, his. [00:58:54] Speaker A: Scott's episode, people who live in brass hearses. [00:58:57] Speaker D: The ice cream one. [00:58:58] Speaker E: Yeah, the ice cream one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:59:00] Speaker G: Russell mckay, right? [00:59:01] Speaker E: Yeah, yeah, it was russell episode. Great episode. Oh, right. [00:59:04] Speaker F: Bill paxton did that. Yeah. [00:59:07] Speaker E: And. [00:59:10] Speaker C: Thank you for that, because russell mccahey ended up hiring me again after that. So it was nice. [00:59:18] Speaker D: So good. [00:59:19] Speaker G: Also, I think I have to beg to differ with you in terms of what's the shortest tales episode. If I remember correctly, you, murderer was the shortest one because I think it was like 17 minutes long. And bob said, that's it. That's it. We're not doing anymore. It was all a subjective camera. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With. With. [00:59:38] Speaker D: There was nothing. [00:59:39] Speaker G: We cut to Betty Bacall's husband. [00:59:41] Speaker F: Oh, right, right. Isabella Rossellini. Yeah, yeah. [00:59:46] Speaker E: I mean, a great cast. Humphrey Bogart, Isabel Rossellini, John Lithgow, Sherilyn Fenn. [00:59:54] Speaker D: Dunbarry. Nor like it was actually based off a noir, I think, called you murderer. That had that pov bit, which really complicated the shoot, especially for us. So. [01:00:08] Speaker G: Well, the way that happened, you know, we were. We were. Every year, you know, Bob would say, I'm not doing another one, unless it's different. And he would look to Alan and me and say, you come up with what's different? Then, you know, I'll be the judge of that. And so we were with Bob one day, and I think we were having lunch, and we were chatting about, you. [01:00:24] Speaker E: Know, we went up to his house to talk about what he might do. [01:00:28] Speaker G: Yeah. And he said, who's your favorite actor? Who'd you like to work with that you haven't worked with? And I think we said, humphrey Bogart. He goes, yeah, Humphrey Bogart would be great. He'd really be great. He said, what would you do if you could make a movie today with Humphrey Bogart? Would you be interested in doing that? And I think we both looked at each other and said, oh, yeah, that'd be great, not knowing where he was going with this. And then he said, well, you know, I think we can do it if you guys could write something that, you know, used Humphrey Bogart, you know. And then we realized, oh, he's talking about taking clips, making a subjective camera. And all of a sudden, we left that meeting totally frightened out of our minds because we. [01:01:08] Speaker E: Bob had pitched first was the idea of a single camera show from. From the point of view of a dead guy. [01:01:13] Speaker G: Yeah. [01:01:14] Speaker E: And, you know, that's when, after lunch. And you said, all right, that's my first thought. How am I going to do that, guys? Oh, let me complicate it. And I want the dead guy to be played by your favorite movie star, Humphrey Bogart. [01:01:23] Speaker G: Right. [01:01:24] Speaker E: And, yeah, from, from, you know, as usual with Bob, when he said, when he asked the question, how are we going to do this, guys? Bob had ideas in his head, but that was the, that was the trigger for. Now you have some ideas, too. [01:01:37] Speaker D: I got an idea. [01:01:39] Speaker E: The challenge was, of course, of the 18 film clips, bogart film clips that we used, we had to find a logical story, way to get in, analogical story, way to get out. And so it was, it was a Rubik's, Rubik's cube of storytelling, a puzzle making story and storytelling at the same time. It was hugely challenging to pull off. Now, I. Funny, one of my strongest memories from, from that episode is when Isabella came in for her wardrobe fitting. [01:02:16] Speaker F: Yeah. Yeah. [01:02:17] Speaker E: And that was awesome because it was another one of those moments where you suddenly find yourself in the room with something quite extraordinary. And Isabella decided that she wanted to play that character like her mom in Casablanca. And so you're standing there watching Isabella Rossellini go into and out of, you know, the. The changing room, moving into new outfits, coming out and saying, you know, do I look like my mom? And trying to sound like your mom and trying to be her mom. And. And you're watching something that. Where else are you going to see this except in this dressing room at Dell's from the grip. [01:03:03] Speaker B: I was blown away during after that session, because Casablanca is my favorite movie of all time. I watch it every year at least once. And to see her come out and look like that, I was like, right. [01:03:15] Speaker F: I remember Warden had an ordeal trying to find the correct hat. So that was the same silhouette as what Ingrid Bergman had wore. But going back to that, didn't Jerry Lacey play the Bogart part? [01:03:30] Speaker E: Robert Thatchi. [01:03:31] Speaker F: Oh, that was it. Because I know there were two guys who did Bogart impersonations, and so I'm trying to remember which one. [01:03:38] Speaker E: Fortunately, we got the lesser guy. [01:03:41] Speaker F: Okay. [01:03:43] Speaker E: I think his Bogart was terrible. [01:03:44] Speaker F: But you remember Jerry Lacy, Robert, right? [01:03:47] Speaker E: Pardon? [01:03:48] Speaker F: You remember Jerry Lacy, right? Who made a career out of playing Humphrey Bogart? [01:03:53] Speaker E: He's in Woody Allen's. [01:03:54] Speaker F: Woody Allen. Yeah. He was in the Woody Allen picture. Yeah. I couldn't remember who was it played that part. [01:04:00] Speaker E: I think we were expecting Jerry Lacey. And we got the other guy. [01:04:04] Speaker G: Yeah. [01:04:06] Speaker D: Hey, how did we, uh. How did we get Roger Daltrey? [01:04:10] Speaker E: That was another one of the awesome ones. That was. [01:04:15] Speaker D: Everybody brought their albums out for him to sign. You know, he just got the plane from London and everybody was bringing albums to. It was great. [01:04:22] Speaker F: Yeah. [01:04:22] Speaker E: Oh, God, that. That was. [01:04:25] Speaker C: He was on a list, I remember. But I know that we always like to try and get music people in where we. Where it wasn't too challenging, but it would make an impression. [01:04:37] Speaker F: Right. [01:04:39] Speaker E: Gary Fleeter directed the episode. [01:04:41] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. He still calls me by my official nickname. I have a Gary Fleeter nickname, which is fucking Todd, because that show, this is forever Ambergris. [01:04:55] Speaker E: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:04:56] Speaker D: It was another five day special where every single day we had, like, you know, under ten, but quite a few makeup effects gags that somehow we made in the time. And every single one of them was complicated and practical. We did. We did not have digital effects yet. We were trying to do everything, you know, with smoking. In fact, the whole business at the end with Daltrey missing his nose. I probably burned this story, maybe, but I don't think it's on the show. Daltrey came in right, from his flight from London and, you know, we had a little lifeguard room there on Santa Monica stages or. Yeah, it was Santa Monica. [01:05:37] Speaker F: Yeah, Santa Monica. [01:05:38] Speaker E: Yeah, Santa, Santa Monica. [01:05:40] Speaker D: And we had to do an impression of his face and somehow flatten his nose because there's that whole big moment at the ending where we have the nose in the sink and we tilt up and he's got a big missing part. And, you know, it's not like he has a small nose. He doesn't have a huge nose, but he has a significant nose and it's right in the center of the face. And so we had put a strap all the way around his head and we're, like, just gingerly trying to, like, tighten it so we could get it as flat as we could. And he just goes, wait a minute, mate. He reaches back and just reefs on it and his whole nose disappears into his face. [01:06:18] Speaker C: Wow. [01:06:18] Speaker D: And we're all just, like, looking at him like, holy crap, did he just hurt himself? And he looks at. He goes, it's all those years of rock and roll, mate. And he just was, like, so into it. And all of a sudden we've got, like, this perfect cast where we could actually make a big hole in someone's head. And it was the funniest damn moment. And, wow. Oh, man. [01:06:43] Speaker E: It's funny. My brother in law Mark worked as craft services that season and he had set up a little shop. We were doing extra food services for various. And Mark would make tea every day. [01:06:58] Speaker A: And. [01:07:01] Speaker E: When Roger did the show, he met Mark and he saw that, oh, this is another english guy. And so Roger would stop by Mark's place every day and they'd have tea. And then one day my wife, my british wife came to visit the set because Roger Daltrey was there. And my. So I learned later, Roger Daltrey asked my brother in law, not knowing that he was my brother in law, about my wife and saying, all right, that's. I'm going for that. [01:07:34] Speaker D: Timothy Dalton was also a dog around the craft service table. I don't know if you remember him. He was like, we. We should have caged him up. You know, he was already the werewolf and we hadn't even put makeup on him. [01:07:45] Speaker F: That's right. [01:07:47] Speaker E: Was Beverly. Was Beverly. [01:07:49] Speaker F: Yeah. [01:07:49] Speaker E: Beverly D'Angelo in that episode. Yeah, I remember. Didn't something go on between them? There was. [01:07:56] Speaker F: Yeah, there something. [01:07:57] Speaker E: I think she was. [01:07:58] Speaker G: She. [01:07:58] Speaker E: I think she. She was interested in him. I thought she. She. I'll put it this way. She found him really attractive and thought it would be great if they could have a relationship. [01:08:06] Speaker F: Yes. [01:08:07] Speaker B: Well, he was a nice way of putting it. [01:08:09] Speaker D: He was a stud. And I totally watched him at the craft service table. He was just hilarious. And it wasn't, it wasn't subtle. [01:08:16] Speaker B: It was the british version of. It was the british version of how you doing? [01:08:19] Speaker D: Yeah, totally, totally. There was this great moment. This is werewolf concerto we're talking about. [01:08:27] Speaker F: Yeah. [01:08:28] Speaker D: And there was Steve Perry, I think, directed that, isn't it? Right. Not the guy from journey, but no. [01:08:33] Speaker E: Yeah, he was not guy. [01:08:37] Speaker D: And so we had a moment where he was going to show us how we were going to shoot the transformation sequence, the big transformation from Timothy Dalton into werewolf. And so Steve decides to tell her, but move back, I'm going to show you what I want. And he decides to act it out. And he literally starts, like, ripping his clothes off and breaking things and, like, throwing his body all over the set and literally, like, trashing the place. It was so funny. And we all just, like, looked each other and it was like, okay, that's lunch. And it was like a, you know, I think the set deck had to, like, totally rebuild over lunch. And it was just this funny moment. But it's a good episode. [01:09:22] Speaker A: We've talked about a lot of showbiz characters in this podcast, but there's one we haven't talked about yet. [01:09:29] Speaker E: My strongest memory of working with the cryptkeeper, of course, he was a puppet. You know, we know this for a fact that he was a puppet. And, you know, as we were just discussing, I would go into recording studio a couple times a season and do all the wraparound voices with John, and that was always great fun. And then we would take that in. And the cryptkeeper, of course, was six puppeteers, some of them working animatronically, some of them were actually hands. And it was when, because Kevin directed most of the cryptkeeper segments, when he would yell, action. And suddenly the puppeteers would go to work and the crypt keeper would sit up and be alive. And of course, the beep track would be John. But I don't know, it was the strangest thing. For that couple of seconds, as the cryptkeeper was being the crypt keeper, he really seemed to come alive. And then Kevin would yell, cut. And he'd sag. He's sagging to the ground like he wasn't alive. And you'd go inside your head. Oh, yeah, that's right. He's not real. [01:10:43] Speaker G: I remember somebody, I don't know when it was, but somewhere along the way, somebody said to me, who's the actor who plays the crypt keeper? And I thought they were making a joke, and I made a joke back, and they said, no, really? Well, can you tell me the name of the actor who plays the cryptkeeper. And I went, no, there is no actor. It's a puppet, and it's run by six puppeteers. And this guy challenged me. He didn't believe me, and I'm like, no, no, no. It isn't an actor. You think an actor can be that small? There is no actor that small. And I remember having to convince him, which I never did, that the cryptkeeper wasn't an actor. [01:11:20] Speaker E: He was a remarkable character to work with, and we were responsible for reviving him and turning him into the franchise character that he really was not before we touched him. [01:11:34] Speaker G: That's right. [01:11:35] Speaker E: And as a statement of how true that is, Joel didn't give away much of anything. But he gave us a merchandising deal. [01:11:47] Speaker G: Which never really amounted to a hill of beans. [01:11:50] Speaker E: It didn't. But still, the fact was, he gave it to us because as a recognition of the fact that we had added value to the cryptkeeper as a piece of property, it was worth more when we left than when we entered. [01:12:05] Speaker G: Yeah. [01:12:06] Speaker E: Hey, sure enough, mission accomplished. [01:12:10] Speaker A: Mission accomplished, indeed. On the next how not to make a movie podcast, the making of Bordello of Blood. The dads from the crypt finally get. [01:12:20] Speaker E: Their chance to ask all the questions. [01:12:22] Speaker A: As yet unanswered by Bordello's creative team. [01:12:25] Speaker E: Can we stand the heat? [01:12:26] Speaker A: Hey, we all worked for Joel Silver. Uh, Jason, Joel Silver isn't one of the dads from the crypt, is he? I guess we'll find out next time. [01:12:36] Speaker E: See you then. [01:12:41] Speaker A: 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 Mandy, are all the hosts of the fun and informative dads from the Crip podcast. Follow them for what my old pal the Crypt keeper would have called terrific crip content. This episode is dedicated to our friend Gene Scotchimarhe. [01:13:17] Speaker D: It.