S4E4 Not So Special Effects

[00:00:00] Speaker A: This podcast is a collaboration between Costard and Touchstone Productions and the Dads from the Crypt podcast. [00:00:10] Speaker B: You ready, Padre? [00:00:12] Speaker C: Yep. [00:00:13] Speaker B: It's like Hope and Crosby. Last call, Miss Kitty. [00:00:29] Speaker D: Hello, and welcome to another episode, the how not to Make a Movie podcast. [00:00:34] Speaker E: I'm Alan Katz. Before we get going, I want to remind you, our faithful audience, that without. [00:00:40] Speaker D: You, we'd be nothing. [00:00:42] Speaker E: And you can help this podcast be so much more than nothing just by hitting whatever like button is available to. [00:00:49] Speaker D: You on our behalf. [00:00:51] Speaker E: We're all prisoners of the algorithm. You see you telling the algorithm that you like us. God, I've turned into Sally Field. It helps the algorithm get a better sense of where we belong in its pecking order and where we are in the pecking order. That's everything. In this episode, we're going to take you on Bordello's torture journey from bad to worse. It really sucks finding out that all those giant sized bite marks on your ass are yours. As Homer Simpson would put it. [00:01:21] Speaker D: Don't. [00:01:21] Speaker A: Indeed. [00:01:22] Speaker E: Everything we did while trying to make Tales from the Crypt presents Bordello of Blood seemed to result in bad shit, stupid or stupider badder happening to us. What's worse than doing stupid? Relentlessly having all that stupid, relentless boomerang back at you? Wouldn't you know it? Every single stupid decision we made bore stupid fruit. From almost the moment he arrived in country, and despite the fact that his wife at the time was from Vancouver, Dennis Miller seemed determined to make everyone Canadian hate it. [00:01:55] Speaker D: He succeeded. [00:01:56] Speaker E: Erica Aleniac decided now that she'd taken the role of an ex porn actress in a movie called Bordello of Blood, that she didn't want to play roles like that anymore or do movies like Bordello. Angie would return from weekends in Seattle with Sly Stallone, with all her scenes rewritten and directed by Sly. But Sly, unbeknownst to Angie, was screaming around like crazy on the Assassin set. Their whole crew knew, and our whole crew knew all about it. There's a story that Stallone's never denied about a live wireless mic and a blowjob. We'll tell it here because we heard it in real time from the Assassin set. [00:02:36] Speaker D: Then, to top it all off, my. [00:02:38] Speaker E: Boss, Joel Silver, a person everyone thinks of as a monster, tells me my people skills are shit. And he might have been right. Never mind making a horror movie in this episode, we're too busy living through one. Speaking of which, it's never a good sign when your makeup special effects guy asks the producer if he knows a Recipe for making fake blood. [00:03:00] Speaker A: This podcast is a collaboration between Costard and Touchstone Productions and the Dads from the Crypt podcast. [00:03:16] Speaker D: Hi, I'm Alan Katz and this is. [00:03:18] Speaker A: The how not to Make a Movie podcast. The Making of Bordello of Blood Episode 4 Special effects with air quotes around them. Giant ones bigger than Sylvester Stallone's ego. Our story till now disappointed when the movie we wanted to make, Fear itself, got pulled at the last second by our studio, Universal Pictures, and compelled to make Bordello of Blood instead, a script. [00:03:42] Speaker D: Written by one of our superstar executive. [00:03:43] Speaker A: Producers, Bob Spanks, when he was a film student at usc. We plunged down a rabbit hole of terrible decision making that included dubious casting choices and deciding to make the movie in Vancouver, Canada, instead of our home base of Los Angeles. [00:03:58] Speaker D: Can I be honest? [00:04:00] Speaker A: Having a production company at your disposal is like the best toy in the whole wide world. You can type something out that doesn't exist except in your head. And if what you typed out gets as far as physical production, somebody is going to be responsible for making it literally happen. On Tales from the Crypt, we had production designer Greg Melton to imagine for us what the Crypt world looked like. To imagine the special makeup effects that were so essential to Crypt World, we had special effects master Todd Masters. But while we brought Greg north with us because our budget was cut to accommodate casting, Dennis Miller wanting a million bucks to be in our movie, even though we didn't want him, we couldn't afford to bring both Greg and Todd Masters with us. And so we left Todd. Back in Los Angeles, we held our breath and took our chances with a small local special effects team led by a very talented, but at that point, inexperienced special effects artist named Chris Nelson. Chris really is a first rate special effects guy and occasionally an actor. He's in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill 2. He plays Tommy Plimpton, the bride's Uma Thurman's husband, to be before Bill massacres the whole wedding. He's very good. Where were we? Oh, right. The first challenge was a mechanical tongue gag. Vampire Angie swaps spit with a bordello patron. But the kiss suddenly turns horrifying when Angie's tongue slides all the way down the guy's throat and then bursts out through his chest. Yeah. Gruesome but hilarious. And we needed it to be more than just good. [00:05:24] Speaker B: You have to trust that whoever you're going to use to do X, Y or Z does it really well, especially when you get to effects. And I thought we felt he did it okay. It came off okay, but we didn't go into this knowing that it was going to be okay and we can't really afford for this, and then especially the ending not to be okay. And of course, Todd had always delivered for us on the series, and so we felt more comfortable, you know, saying, let's get Todd here. [00:05:58] Speaker A: Some movie sets are a total pleasure to be on. There's a cohesiveness, a sense of family. It's us against the world. No such feeling ever overwhelmed the Bordello of Blood set. While some of the cast co mingled and hung out together, our leads pretty much kept to themselves. Dennis kept to Dennis, Erica kept to Erica, and Angie kept to Sly. But then our production office in Vancouver began to get calls from the Assassins production office in Seattle asking us if there was some way to hold Angie for the weekends. Hold her to do what we wanted to know, study her lines, do her homework. What were we supposed to be here? Her mom can't help you. There is what we told the Assassins said. And we tried to pretend we hadn't heard what we'd clearly heard. At the same time, an issue larger even than Sly and Angie began to loom over us. [00:06:47] Speaker D: Dennis, once we got rolling, what was happening? [00:06:52] Speaker B: Well, I sort of put all that stuff aside, the problems with him and everything, and I basically tried to approach it one on one as a director to an actor trying to make a movie, trying to make a scene, trying to make a shot, and dealt with him in that way. And then when he would bring up, hey, I need to go, and I would say, no, we're finishing this. And then sometimes he would let it go and sometimes we would get into it. It was very painful. As I said, when we first started talking about maybe even doing this, I don't know if I want to do this because most of the recollection of making this was very painful until you pointed out that there were some very funny things, which I had to agree with you. But it was very painful process for me. He was probably the cause of the main amount of pain, although others participated as well. [00:07:41] Speaker D: Who comes to mind? [00:07:42] Speaker B: Erica. [00:07:44] Speaker D: We'll get there. [00:07:45] Speaker B: Stallone's girlfriend, Angie. You know, the other actors I thought was fantastic. [00:07:51] Speaker D: We cast them. [00:07:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And we had conversations before we cast them. Even when Dick Donner suggested, how about talking to. You know, we had made a tales an episode with Corey. Again, at Dick asking, he didn't tell us. He asked, yes, yes, we did that. Then, you know, I had a conversation with Corey before we did the show, before we Hired him and he was. He was gung ho. He was on board. He wanted to participate. He wanted to do the best he could do. And he was great, as was the Priest. Chris Sarandon couldn't have been better. He was a delight to work with. And we had Aubrey Morris, who was the delight of delights to work with. [00:08:27] Speaker D: Indeed. [00:08:27] Speaker B: So we did have some moments where we had fun and some great give and take with the actors. But those three made life very difficult. And unfortunately they were in most of the scenes. [00:08:38] Speaker D: Dennis was challenging because he didn't really want to be there. [00:08:41] Speaker B: Well, he wasn't often there mentally, you know, I don't care if he wanted to be there. I didn't really care if he wanted to be there or not. I knew that my job was to get a performance out of him. Regardless, I would often push him. Let's make this adjustment. Let's do another one. I never would say to him, let's just do another one. Because he would then challenge that decision, which he shouldn't have challenged, but he would. I would always say, that was much better. I want it this way and I want you to turn that way. Or I just need a little bit more of a whatever. And then he would do it. But if I just said, okay, let's do another one. No. [00:09:13] Speaker A: Actors improvising their dialogue is not a new thing. Hey, I'm a Groucho Marx fan. And there's a very famous story about Pulitzer Prize winning playwright George S. Kaufman standing back backstage when Animal Crackers, the Marx Brothers second film, was still on Broadway. Groucho, Chico and Harborough were famous for tossing the script entirely and making it all up as they went along. Something the Marx Brothers writers didn't appreciate. So one day, backstage at Animal Crackers, a friend is telling George S. Kaufman a story. When Kaufman shushes him. [00:09:41] Speaker D: Wait. [00:09:42] Speaker A: He says, I think I just heard one of the original lines. With Dennis, no such thing happened. One of the most important jobs on any movie set is script supervisor. On Bordello, we had a very good script supervisor named Laura Fox. [00:09:58] Speaker C: I always tell people that I'm the eyes of the camera. Whatever the camera records, I have to record it on paper for the editor so that they can edit it. Because film is shot in pieces and it doesn't. It's not shot continuously. So there has to be a paper trail. I have to watch the eye line. The actors are looking the right way. They can't all be looking in the same direction because when, if they go to cut, it won't make any sense that people be talking off screen? [00:10:41] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm sure most of the audience has no idea how critical Eyeline is just to the internal logic of a scene. [00:10:49] Speaker C: Oh, I know. And I'm not on Bordello Blood. Excuse me. I had a lot of trouble with what's his name? Tom. Tom Priestley. He wouldn't listen to me about crossing the axis. And we were in the mortuary, and it was pretty tense. And I went in to tell him that he had crossed the axe, which was on a very important piece of dialogue. And he turned to me and he said, go home and watch tv. And I was so angry, I said, oh, dear, oh, dear, yes, that's exactly where I'm going. And I turned around, walked off the set, grabbed my chair and script and headed for the parking lot. Poor Gil. And the AD came running after me and saying, please, please don't leave. And I said to Edgill, I will come back as long as I don't have to talk to him. I will tell you all everything and you can relay the message. And he said, great. [00:11:55] Speaker B: I do remember occasionally while we were shooting, I would even look into the monitor and say to Tom, should I adjust the eyeline to the left or to the right a little bit? I don't remember the specific about running after, but I probably did. I mean, if she said we did, we probably did. Script supervisors historically need to make their presence known in a very special way, in a very quiet way to both the DP and the first and to the director so that they can judiciously decide, oh, yeah, we should change this, or, no, leave me alone. I know what I'm doing. I'm going to fix it in the cut. No, it's not affecting us because. And so over the years, you know, the one thing I've noticed is with script, and I've been very fortunate, I've been able to get script supervisors that I had a great relationship with in the interview. And we actually talk specifically about how we talk to each other when things have to be said to each other that may not be terribly pleasing to one or the other. I said, that's historically the nature of the script supervisor. You're saying to me, this is wrong. And I'm saying, either it doesn't matter, or I know, but it's okay, or, oh, whoops, I got a change. Thank you. So it's very likely that we did run out after her, because I didn't want to. I was frightened enough directing the movie. I didn't want to start thinking about, you know, oh my God, I now have to be the script supervisor as well. [00:13:18] Speaker A: The script supervisor's job is complicated, fiddly and multitasking intensive to begin with. And now into the mix. Lara had to keep track of every one of Dennis improvs. If I improv hello one take and goodbye the next, they're not going to cut together. And what are the other actors supposed to do when their lines stop making organic sense? [00:13:36] Speaker C: I tried to write as much down as I possibly could, but because I timing the scene and watching the action and trying to write the ad lib dialogue down, it was very difficult. [00:13:53] Speaker D: She had experience actually with an actor notorious for improvising. She had done Jumanji with Robin Williams. [00:14:01] Speaker B: Right. [00:14:02] Speaker D: And she, she made, she made an interesting observation. [00:14:05] Speaker C: The statement the way with Robin Williams, he would give the director the script and then he asked, would ask, can I do my versions? And so I had a tape recorder that I had attached to my headset and I recorded all his dialogue for the subsequent scenes that we were. That he employed. [00:14:37] Speaker D: The master scene, right. This was on Jumanji. So. So you, you had experience with working with an actor very well known. I mean, Robin Williams was. I mean, improv was. That was where all his genius lay. [00:14:49] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I was warned about that. And so I. That's why I got this little, little portable tape recorder I put on my belt and then. But the thing with Robin was once he said in the scene that he was improving when we went to close ups, he was letter perfect. [00:15:12] Speaker D: Doing the same improv. [00:15:14] Speaker C: Yes. [00:15:15] Speaker E: Wow. [00:15:17] Speaker C: From the master to the close ups. He was letter perfect because I started typing it out because I typed my notes at the end when we were lighting. [00:15:31] Speaker A: Sure. [00:15:32] Speaker C: And his close up dialogue matched the master perfectly. [00:15:37] Speaker B: We obviously made the wrong move. We should have gotten Robin Williams. [00:15:40] Speaker D: Robin Williams, you know. So the problem with Dennis is that it was different each and every time, which of course made cutting anything together really, really hard. [00:15:50] Speaker B: He couldn't remember. He couldn't remember what that, what he did the previous take. [00:15:54] Speaker D: No. And Laura would be furiously scribbling what she could remember of him, saying, hey, she's also gotta be timing the scene. She's gonna be looking over here, looking over there. She really does not have time to be trying to remember what Dennis is adding or subtracting from our script. [00:16:10] Speaker B: Yeah, Erica. Well, what can I say? I mean, Erica. Erica should never have accepted the role. She didn't want to be what the part called for. She had a very strange analysis of her own self at the time. She was a Playboy centerfold, but didn't want to do nudity. Didn't even want to do anything suggestive. It's like she became, you know, the church lady. She did the movie for all the wrong reasons because she wasn't thinking about the performance. She was thinking about everything else. [00:16:42] Speaker D: It was a good payday for her. We paid her more. We paid her more than we had in the budget. [00:16:48] Speaker B: Yeah, but I mean, she. She once said to me, we were. We were setting a shot and we're all set to go. And I think she said to me, is the camera looking at my skirt? I looked at the monitor and I said, absolutely not. Are you sure? And I said, no, I want you to be sure. Come here. I'm going to go sit in a chair. I'm going to sit in a chair the way you were sitting. Can you see up my. Can you see anything? Like, if I had a skirt on. Well, it's different. And she looked and then she came off. Well, that's. It's different. I can't tell. I said, well, I can. And I'm telling you, I'm not interested in that. I don't want that in my movie. And we're not doing that. And then she was okay for that moment to get me to get the shot. But that's what we were dealing with. [00:17:26] Speaker D: Having exploited. Having certainly suddenly realized when you realize that you've been exploited, that's got to be horrific. Horrific. How you thought about yourself suddenly, wow is a problem. And how you're thinking about yourself is now in crisis and transition, and how are you going to think about yourself tomorrow? [00:17:46] Speaker B: Yeah, but that's okay. Then don't do the job. Don't take on the role that you read and you said you'll do it. And then the first thing you say is, I won't do it. [00:17:54] Speaker D: Yeah, I want to give the benefit of the doubt. But then you took a gig with a movie called Bordello of Blood, Right? Come on, come on, come on, come on. Everyone's got to be a little responsible for their own shit. All right? [00:18:13] Speaker B: Angie tried to be a team player. Angie tried to. Because she wanted to be an actress in her own right, surely. And she wanted to convince us that she could do that, and she would do that. But then what happened was, you know, she would go visit Stallone every weekend in Seattle, and she would come back on Monday, and most of Monday I would have to spend trying to undo what she had rehearsed with Stallone. Because she sounded a little bit like Rocky. All of a sudden. She had a Brooklyn accent. Most of Monday, I would have to say, no, no, no, no. Let's go back. That's not your character. Yeah, but this is how I rehearsed it with Stallone. [00:18:50] Speaker D: I have a memory. Once Dennis began improvising, and I'm sure that got to Seattle before the trips to Seattle stopped, she would come back with some new dialogue. If Dennis doesn't have to worry about the script, why do I have to worry about the script? [00:19:06] Speaker B: We started off, she was a sweetheart. We started off, she was very responsive to direction, and we had conversations and discussions, and she understood what I was saying, and I understood what she was saying. And then we would come up with how to resolve it so that it worked for both of us. It was great. And then when she started making the trips to Seattle, it became much more confrontational. And I'll never forget, there was one. You may remember this as well. We were. The trailer. I forgot where the trailers were, but her trailer was, like, on the other side of a little park where our trailer was. And I was outside my trailer, and I could see she was outside her trailer, and she was on the phone, and it was very. An animated phone conversation. And then she hung up and went into her trailer. And then about five minutes later or less, my phone rang, and it was Joel. And Joel was giving me, you know, a lot of shit about Angie. And I. I said, wait a second. You just were on the phone with her, weren't you? You just got off the phone with her, didn't you? And he. And he said, no. I said, no, you're lying. You're full of shit. I just watched her, very animated, talking to somebody, and it had to be you. And, you know, I knew. I knew. I knew she had called him to complain about me. And, you know, I just listened to Joel, and I basically told me, go fuck himself. I said, I'm directing a movie. You're not here. You're my producer. Supposedly absentee, because Donner needs you so terribly much in Seattle, Okay? So I will do what I do. I'm the producer. I'm the director. I'm going to do what I do. And I think I hung up on Joel. And, you know, we never really discussed it after that, but it was. I'll never forget that moment when I saw her animated, so animated, talking on the phone and knowing in my head she called Joel, and I bet you she's complaining about me. And then sure is shooting within five minutes. The phone rings. I see her hang up. She stomps into her trailer. Bang. Joel's on the phone to me. I wasn't going to allow that to happen. I just have had it, you know? If you wanted to fire me, go fire me. It's okay. [00:21:10] Speaker D: A little disappointing to hear, but in Angie's defense, she was in Stallone's thrall. She had no idea at the time that Stallone was betraying her. [00:21:21] Speaker B: Yeah, no idea. [00:21:23] Speaker D: If you look at the scene and you see all the levels of onion. [00:21:28] Speaker A: Among the layers of onion, we became concerned that all of the fake blood we were using looked too thick in the dailies. It looked like pancake syrup. So I called Todd Masters, help. [00:21:39] Speaker F: I remember you calling me up for one. I was sort of surprised that everything went to Canada. [00:21:46] Speaker D: You know why that happened? [00:21:48] Speaker F: Right, right. [00:21:48] Speaker D: And bad reasons all the way around, whatever it was. [00:21:51] Speaker F: But it was. It was kind of funny, my perspective, because I'm Canadian and I'm like, well, I could go. I could legally go. But it was just like, you guys are already there, and then all of a sudden you're calling up and you're going, hey, how do we make blood? [00:22:04] Speaker D: I know you're Canadian and I've known this recently, but I did not know you were Canadian. [00:22:09] Speaker F: When I'm a really bad Canadian, I'm a terrible Canadian. [00:22:13] Speaker D: You gotta be more obvious. [00:22:17] Speaker F: I, you know, I look like maple syrup or something. Ask me how to make blood. I'm just like, how to make blood to the fucking title of the blood's terrible. That's the question you're asking. What else is going on? And so that's when we said, well, you know, why don't I just come up and see for myself? [00:22:33] Speaker A: Having Todd back really helped a lot. One of the scenes for which we really needed Todd's reliability was the torture chamber scene. And Todd got right to work on a terrific special effects gag that Gil wanted to do. [00:22:44] Speaker D: I had said yes to Dennis every day. Every day he wanted to, you know, to. To be shot out early, say yes to him every single day. [00:22:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:52] Speaker D: And then this was the day the torture chamber set, and he was going to enter. So there was a cut because there was a stunt as he went over the railing, landed into the well of the torture chamber. Then he picked up an ax, and then he was going to bury it in Angie shoulder. So then there was a lock off on the other side for a process shot. We had three different pieces, and if we screwed up any one of those pieces, of course we could take the whole day's work and throw it in the toilet. Per usual, Dennis would send his assistant to my office first thing in the morning. And she'd say the usual thing. Oh, Dennis is so tired. Can we sleep? Shoot him out. And every day I go, yeah, yeah, sure, sure, I'm sure. She was expecting me to go, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I said, no, not today. She was like, what? I said, no, no. I said, look, and I will grant you I was not. I didn't say it that nicely. I said, no, I can't. [00:23:48] Speaker E: Not today. [00:23:49] Speaker D: And I was beside myself. I was not doing it in the kindest, most zemeckis way possible. I said, look at a stunt here, he's going to have to go there. Then he got pick up the ax, and I got a lock off shot on the other side. And I said, exactly what I just said to you. If we screw up any one of these elements, I can take the whole day's work and throw it in the. I said, no, no, no, no, no. She said, dennis isn't going to be happy. And then I think triggered a little something in me. And I said, I don't care, I don't care. And she went, okay. And she went out to the trailer and gave Dennis the bad news. Now, I had no idea that Joel was going to be visiting today. Not that it would have changed what I said, but Joel visited that day. And of course the first place he went was to go see Dennis, to go see his star. His star. As soon as Joel walked in into the trailer, the first thing that you know, he said, how are you doing this? And Dennis said, I'm horrible because Catsy won't let me go. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Cassie won't let you go? What do you mean you won't let you go? Well, I'm tired, you know, I'm doing my show and you gotta shoot me out. And Joel said, what? [00:24:48] Speaker A: You want to go? [00:24:48] Speaker D: And Catsy won't shoot you out. I'll take care of Cats. And then he walked down onto the set and he found me in one of his big Joel voices. He said, cats, Cats. And I was standing on the other side of the building. [00:24:58] Speaker B: I think, I wonder where I was. [00:24:59] Speaker D: You were working. You were setting up a scene, right? We're doing what you're supposed to be doing. So now, of course, everyone who's not on the set working with you has now turned to watch me walk across the stage to my boss. Okay, now I'm walking fast. And as he approached him, he Said, I got to tell you something. Your people skills are shit. Oh, my God. I've just experienced the most ironic moment of my entire life. Joel Silver has just told me that my people skills are shit. [00:25:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:39] Speaker D: To Joel's credit. Really? Really. And I. I will give Joel full credit at the end of this story. He saw that he had. He had broken me down, and now he needed to fix me. And he said, you're start. You've got to do whatever you start want. And he talked about Bruce Willis. Unfortunately, I'm so sad for what's happened to Bruce Willis and his just the aphasia. But he told a story about working with Bruce Willis on the Die Hard movies. Bruce Willis was a pain in the ass, but you got to do what your star wants. And he sees that. That's not making me feel any better. And then he tells me another story. Michael Jackson story about Michael Jackson being on the set of a music video. And everyone in the crew is told, do not talk to Michael. If you talk to Michael, you get fired. Everyone agrees. [00:26:26] Speaker B: Cool. [00:26:27] Speaker D: The set assistant, set dec has a broken arm. He's got a cast on his arm. And Michael walks up to the assistant and says, hey, what's wrong with your arm? Set this. Oh, yeah, I broke it. They fired the set deck. The next day, Joel's telling me this story. The next day, Michael shows up to work with a cast on his arm in Sympathy. [00:26:48] Speaker B: And he didn't know the guy had gotten fired. [00:26:49] Speaker D: Of course he knew the guy had gotten fired. But that was his reaction. It wasn't. He didn't go to the producers and. [00:26:55] Speaker A: Say, give him his job back. [00:26:57] Speaker D: He let the guy be fired. And he came in with his cast on a cast in Sympathy for the guy who got fired because of him. And so Joel's point was, they're crazy. They're all crazy, you see? And Joel said, you know, so he's going back to the hotel. You got to let him do whatever he wants. I went, okay. And the day's work did not turn out okay. We pretty much had to scrap that day's work in part because we didn't have access to Dennis all day. And from that day onward, what little authority I had, teeny, weeny, itty bit of authority I had to tell Dennis anything was gone. Every time I looked at Dennis, you know, Dennis looked at me like. Like he owned me. [00:27:38] Speaker B: No doubt. [00:27:40] Speaker A: And meanwhile, things were still happening down on that set in Seattle. Now there's an urban legend about Sly Stallone, A live mike, his trailer and And a sex partner. Stallone, as far as I know, has never said this story never happened. The question is, where? On what film set? [00:28:00] Speaker D: There's always been a Vancouver connection to. [00:28:02] Speaker A: The story, and maybe this is it. Now, I hadn't heard this story before. I did Bordello when I heard it, it came from the set in Seattle, and it goes like. Stallone finishes a scene and heads back to his trailer, unaware that his radio mic is still live. There's a young woman waiting for him there, and she gives Stallone a blowjob. But Sly is really particular about how he likes his Hummers. And he tells the young woman to cup the balls, stroke the shaft. Cup the balls, stroke the shaft. Next thing you know, a crowd has formed around the sound cart. The whole crew, practically. The next morning, the story goes, Stallone walks onto the set to see the entire crew wearing T shirts that say, cup the balls, stroke the shaft. Did it actually happen? I don't know. Did it happen on the Assassin set? I don't know. But I do know that not long after I heard that story from Seattle, Sly ended his relationship with Angie production manager Colleen Neistat. [00:29:00] Speaker G: When we spoke last, I couldn't remember the name of the theater that we were shooting at down on Hastings Street. And it was the Luxe and it burnt down. Subsequent was been vacant and for long time and used as a community garden subsequently. But you remember a scene she was in there as well, addressed in different outfits doing her thing for Dennis Miller's character. And I. And I do recall that we were shooting there when that all went. [00:29:28] Speaker D: We were shooting at the Lux. We were on location at the Lux when the relationship ended. [00:29:33] Speaker G: Yeah. [00:29:34] Speaker D: Do you remember how he ended it with her? [00:29:36] Speaker G: No, I don't. [00:29:37] Speaker D: I wasn't partying from that point forward. Of course, she was understandably a mess. [00:29:41] Speaker B: We had to deal with the aftermath of that. And the only thing we. We knew, because initially I was like, what happened? What's the problem? And initially nobody wanted to tell me. And then I said, guys, what's going on here? I mean, Angie, what happened? What are you so upset about? I mean, there's nothing we can't fix. What? What is it? What is it? What's the issue? And then she told me, Stallone and I are no more. I mean, she didn't go into any detail. She. And then she was very teary eyed and she just said, you know, in a very tearful way. That's what happened. And I was like, fuck me. What do I do about this? How do You. How do I play this to get the. Again, I'm. I'm trying to make a movie. I'm trying to get performance. So, you know, I tried to be as kind as I could. And I said, you know, this is an opportunity for us to make something special. You're not getting any more guidance from him, which I think is a blessing for both of us, not just for me. And I said, let's just continue and let's show him and we'll make the best movie we can. What do you say? And initially, you know, she was, you know, gung ho about that. But then, you know, as the. As the day progressed, you know, she would fall into lapses of melancholy, and it was very difficult to get a performance out of her. I'd have to stop. And I remember one or two times I would take her for a walk off the set and we would just walk, you know, around a little bit, and we just chat about nothing. Meantime, you know, I'm realizing my time is being suckered away, which is unfortunate because it impacted the shooting. But, you know, there was nothing else I could do. I had to get her mind to a place where she could concentrate on character and what the task was at that particular moment. [00:31:11] Speaker D: Even when Stallone was gone, he wasn't gone. Yeah, kind of a bitch. [00:31:17] Speaker B: It was sad. It was. It was a sad situation, you know, and, you know, for. For a number of years, I think after the movie, you know, we. I would run into Angie at a restaurant or something, and she was always very grateful and also very sweet to me and to my wife. As time passed, you know, we went our own ways. [00:31:35] Speaker D: I think the very next weekend is the weekend that I decided I had to get. That I had to get the fuck out of Dodge. I had to go back to LA to get a little sanity, which is nuts, which is craziness. Sly had already broken up with Angie. Everything was just going to. To hell. And I get on the Alaska Airlines flight. I'm the only passenger in first class. Three rows of two. So we were holding it for one last first class passenger. They'd given me my glass of whatever it was that I wanted to drink. Then the other first class passenger enters. It's Angie, of course. I'm surprised, delighted, surprised. And I get up and say, hey, Angie. And I hug Angie and Angie, beautiful woman. She's supermom. And everyone on the plane is now tilting their head into the aisle, see who's the shlub? The supermodel's kissing. I gotta tell you, it's really. It's so empowering. It's remarkable to realize that people are looking at you like, well, hey, you must be someone a beautiful woman is hugging you. Right, Angie. Then she sits next to me. We're the only two passengers, and she sits next to me. And she spent the whole flight back to LA lamenting about Stallone. [00:32:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:50] Speaker D: And I sat there the whole time thinking how we had betrayed her. [00:32:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:54] Speaker A: While I'm confessing, there's something else I need to get off my chest. It's the most painful irony in the story. Chock a block with damn stuff. The thing is, when Joel told me. [00:33:05] Speaker D: Cats, your people skills are shit. [00:33:08] Speaker A: The irony wasn't actually Joel Silver telling me my people skills sucked. The irony was he was right. A guy with crap people skills saw clearly that we had tons in common. All I had to do that day was act like a producer and tell Dennis's assistant, hey, you know what? Let me talk to Dennis. I'll explain it. I bet if I had done that, walked out to Dennis trailer and had a simple conversation with the man, he would have understood why just that one day, we needed him to hang around with us. [00:33:37] Speaker D: Us. [00:33:38] Speaker A: Alas, I didn't do that. But back to the airplane. As Angie told me stories about the good times with her former fiance, a line from one of Stallone's movies suddenly popped into my head like an earworm. [00:33:50] Speaker D: That wouldn't leave the lords of Flatbush. There's a scene where his girlfriend. He has a problem and his girlfriend threatens. I'm going to tell everyone that you cry when you come. As Angie is telling me story after story about the good times with Sly. [00:34:06] Speaker B: Right. [00:34:07] Speaker D: And she was missing him, but glad that it was over because she was now aware that he had not been faithful to her. [00:34:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:15] Speaker A: And all I can think is, he cries when he comes. [00:34:18] Speaker D: It was the most painful plane ride I have ever experienced, sitting beside a remarkably beautiful woman and a remarkably. A lovely human being. [00:34:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:28] Speaker D: Who I had betrayed me. A maxima culpa, Mr. Stallone. [00:34:35] Speaker A: Sly, if I may, what you do in your private life is none of my business. Unless you make it my business, which you did. That's my issue with you. I. I think your politics are stupid. But that's a whole other podcast. [00:34:48] Speaker D: You want to break it with your. [00:34:49] Speaker A: Romantic partner, that's your deal. But you made us your co conspirators in treating a very nice person like shit. Do better, please. At least grow the fuck up and don't cry when you come. Whatever. Good times, Bordello. Had coming had come and gone. The last weeks of shooting promised to be even harder, even stupider, even more soul destroyed. On the next How Not To Make. [00:35:16] Speaker E: A Movie Podcast the Making of Bordello. [00:35:18] Speaker A: Of Blood Episode 5 How not to. [00:35:21] Speaker D: Release a Movie Our special effects problems. [00:35:23] Speaker A: Mount while we literally run out of nighttime. [00:35:26] Speaker D: Corey and Dennis go mano a mana. [00:35:28] Speaker A: While the crew cheers for Corey. We head home, an unfinished movie in hand, while a whole country Canada says good riddance. And then the real problems kick in. [00:35:38] Speaker D: See you then. The how not to Make a Movie podcast is executive produced by me, Alan. [00:35:46] Speaker A: Katz, and by chance, Jason Stein. Our artwork was done by the amazing Jodie Webster and Jason. Jodie, along with Mando, are all the hosts of the fun and informative Dads from the Crypt podcast. Follow them for what my old pal the Crypt Keeper would have called terrorific Crypto.