S3E24: Is “Caligula” The Worst Dirty Movie Ever?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: This podcast is a collaboration between costard and Touchstone Productions and the dads from the Crypt podcast. [00:00:07] Speaker B: What's that smell? [00:00:08] Speaker C: What smell? [00:00:09] Speaker B: Caesar, what have you been taking? [00:00:11] Speaker A: Just a medicine. [00:00:12] Speaker C: But to what off? The fever. [00:00:14] Speaker B: Did you give him medicine for the fever? [00:00:16] Speaker A: Well. [00:00:17] Speaker B: Yes or no? [00:00:18] Speaker A: No. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Gemellus, are you accusing your sovereign of being a poison? [00:00:25] Speaker C: But I never accused you, Caesar. [00:00:28] Speaker B: You took an antidote before coming to my table, which is tantamount to accusing me of poisoning you. That is logic, is it not? [00:00:37] Speaker C: Caligula? [00:00:53] Speaker D: Kyria. [00:00:57] Speaker B: Arrest Gemellus for treason. [00:01:01] Speaker D: Guards, take him away. [00:01:26] Speaker B: As if there ever could be an antidote against ceaser. [00:01:39] Speaker A: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the how not to make a movie podcast. I'm Alan Katz. Our mission with this podcast has always been to give our audience a truly inside baseball nuts and bolts view of the process that goes into making movies and tv shows, with an especial focus on what happens when all that filmmaking craft turns to crap. Its easy to be mediocre. Hell, anyone can do that. Excelling at things is much harder. It requires work, and thats regardless of whether the work product being produced is good or bad. I speak from painful experience. I worked my ass off making bordello of blood, and I knew it was going to suck even as I made it. Okay. I think it sucks. Its audience doesnt. But making that soul destroying movie was an unpleasant, unsatisfying, and unrewarding experience in every way up until the moment we started making this podcast. About, as I think about other examples of how not to make a movie, plenty spring to mind. Like I said, mediocrity is everywhere. And that's a good thing too. If everyone was excellent all the time, excellence would be the new mediocrity. And who needs to work that hard? There have been plenty of bad filmmakers who wanted to make good movies, but simply they lacked the talent or any grasp whatsoever of the cinematic language. And there have been, and are filmmakers who don't actually speak the cinematic language. Guys like Ed Wood, a man who couldn't even achieve mediocrity. He was so untalented he made nothing but bad movies. It's perfectly understandable that Ed Wood and his movies define suckage. And that's why, to me, guys like Ed Wood can't possibly count. Here. There's low hanging fruit, and then there's them. Even the bugs in mold don't want them. A year ago, we published this episode about the making of Caligula, how not to make a porno. It's been a very popular episode if you've heard it or seen it already. I'm biased, of course, but I think you'll find it's worth another listen. The story of how Caligula got made. Is that batshit crazy? If you haven't heard it yet, you're in for an even bigger treat. It's the story of a man, and a vision, and a lot of very talented people. And a disconnect. The result? A movie so stunningly bad it takes your breath away. And while you're watching it, the will to live. These days, anyone can make a movie. Anyone can make a porno. And lots do. But audiences have high expectations from movies, and that's why screwing them up is so easy. Screwing up a porno? What the fuck? Set up the camera and walk away. You'll still make a porno better than Caligula. That's why we celebrate an achievement as orgasmically bad as Caligula. Its tortured story demands to be told again and again and again. This is one of those pieces of history that no one wants anyone repeating. Please enjoy one of our most popular episodes, how not to make a porno. The story of making Caligula. So please enjoy one of our most popular episodes, how not to make a porno. The story of making Caligula. One of our big themes on this podcast is what happens when talented movie makers lose their minds, or their taste or control over their movies. You get a bordello of blood when big name talented people make a movie none of them really wants to make. Plus, an insane producer, Caligula, had the opposite problem. But with an insane producer, every big name that made Caligula wanted to make the movie. And for almost entirely artistic reasons, Gore Vidal, the screenplay's original author, had a clear vision of what he wanted. [00:05:34] Speaker D: I'm Gore Vidal, and I've written a screenplay about one of the most extraordinary, some think one of the most wicked young men that ever lived, the roman emperor Caligula. [00:05:46] Speaker A: Caligula's original director, Tinto Bras. He also had a clear vision. The problem was his vision for the movie didn't match Gore Vidal's or Bob Guccionis. And Bob Guccionis vision mattered more than anyone's, because all the money was his. The result is a spectacular fiasco. It's not just bad, it's epically bad. Almost unwatchably bad. That's harder to pull off than it looks. And I know from experience, Caligula calls itself the most controversial film of all time. It might just be right. Can we be honest Caligula is not an easy movie to sit through. That's regardless of which of the various cuts you watch. For clarity's sake, I watch the uncut edition that clocks in at 156 minutes. And if I never see another naked body so long as I live, I'll die a happy person. That's one of the movies odd effects on me, at least. There's constant nudity, fairly constant hardcore sex, and yet it never feels sensual or erotic or even remotely sexy. The producer in me keeps shouting at it, no, no, no. Nudity doesn't work here. It isn't needed. Why are all these people naked? To be honest, I find Caligula's nudity downright oppressive and inexplicable. In fact, the whole movie feels, I don't know, ill at ease. Like it. It knows it's going places. It probably shouldn't. A lot of people have thought about this movie and why it is the way that it is. They've written books and shorts and academic papers on the subject. Academic papers. Most of the criticism has landed squarely on Bob Guccioni. Rightfully so. This movie is pretty much what Guccioni wanted it to be. But Caligula wasn't his first time at the movie making rodeo. In fact, Guccioni had helped finance quite a few movies. China, longest yard, longest yard, day of the locust. The man had solid cinematic taste. He had a dream, too. In an interview he gave to Penthouse, his own magazine, Guccioni stated, I certainly didn't set out to make a pornographic movie. But then he says, it's a question of definitions. To him, porno was a work of bad art as opposed to good art. Guccioni wanted to make a serious statement with Caligula, his final word. We've done with cinematic images what so many authors and historians have done with words. When Guccioni says we, he means he. Like I said, Guccioni paid for Caligula all by himself. Every penny in was his. Now, the idea of doing a movie about Caligula started with one of the gods of italian cinema, Roberto Rossellini, on a crypt. Related side note, Roberto Rossellini was the father of Isabella Rossellini, one of the stars of the you murderer episode. Roberto Rossellini wrote a treatment in his version, Caligula doesn't start out a monster at all. Irfan Shah, writing in Cineast in 2019, describes the Caligula in Rossellini's original treatment as a self aware rebel trying to subvert a corrupt political system. Rossellini focused his lens on the gritty realities of postwar life in Italy. Before Rossellini, though, Albert Camus had written a play about Caligula in the 1950s. Camus Caligula is intellectually sophisticated, cool, but also sentimental. Irfan Shah argues that Rassellini's Caligula starts where Camus Caligula left off. He's a republican with a small r who wants to shock the status quo away from imperial lunacy and back to being a sensible republic. Those are some fantastic ambitions for this story. It makes where it ended up that much more excruciating. This movie might have could have been something. There are flashes of a really good movie trapped inside it. [00:10:16] Speaker B: I have existed from the morning of the world, and I shall exist until the last star falls from the night. Although I have taken the form of Gaius Caligula, I am all men, as I am no man, and therefore I am. [00:10:31] Speaker A: A God. Alas, Rossellini couldnt get any traction with his Caligula project, and he put it down. But his nephew, Franco Rossellini, picked it up. He turned to a friend for help, Paul Morrissey, who had just made two films in Italy for Andy Warhol. Morrissey turned Rossellini onto the idea of Gorvidal. The problem, Gore Vidal would cost $225,000, a shit ton of money for a script back then. And Italy had a law against paying any foreigner that kind of money for an italian production. So Rossellini needed a foreign partner to pay Vidal. Now, Gore Vidal, it turned out, owned a property in Manhattan. He had a tenant living in it, a guy named Jack Silverman, who, it turned out, was the president of Penthouse Films. And Penthouse Films, it turned out, was looking for a prestige project for its owner, Bob Guccioni, to produce. And that is how Caligula ended up with Bob Guccioni. When Gore Vidal finally turned in his first draft, Guccioni hated it because Vidal's script leaned heavily on gay sex scenes and not too heavily on straight sex. Sure, Guccioni wanted to make a serious movie, but a serious movie with lots of mostly straight sex in it. He hired a great and expensive cast of serious actors. Malcolm McDowell, Sir John Gielgud, Peter O'Toole, Helen Mirren, and Maria Schneidere. The problem was, as his expensive cast began to show up in Rome, there was still no director. Guccioni had heard about a guy named Tinto Brass and screen Brass salon, a World War two erotic war drama. Now, depending on who you ask, Tinto Brass is either a hack or a genius. Most of the world says hack. But german documentary filmmaker Alexander Tuscinski says genius. Tuscinski wrote his film school thesis on Tinto Bras and his original intentions for Caligula. So Guccioni hires Brass, and right off the bat, Brass declares Vidal's script to bourgeois, the work of an aging arteriosclerotic. In response, Vidal tells the press, directors are parasites. Brass bans him from the set. Vidal, in response to that, takes his name off both the script and the movie itself, which was originally going to be called Gore Vidal's Caligula. Gosh, isn't movie making fun? Now here's an interesting story. According to John Hedenry in his book what wild the rise and fall of the Sexual Revolution. This happened on day one of principal photography on Caligula. Brass announced that the one thing banished from the set would be sexual inhibition. Then, with his wife, an astonished Guiccioni, and cast and crew members looking on, he proceeded, with the help of a female extra, to demonstrate the proper way to perform cunnilinguse. Wow. Ive heard of giving line readings before, but thats nuts. Shortly thereafter, Maria Schneider quit. She resented how sexualized the script had become, and she really resented how her wardrobe seemed designed to expose her breasts. Every time she moved, Brass replaced her with a more compliant actress, Teresa Ann Savoy. Filming began in earnest in August 1976 at Dear Studios in Rome. Danilo Donatti, a world class designer, stepped in as set and wardrobe designer and created 22 gigantic sets, including a huge dry dock, gold leaf boat, a monstrous man decapitation device, and palace interiors that resemble artificial theater sets. As Irfan Shah points out, these were a world away from the project's original, grittier, neorealistic conception. Guccioni wasn't happy either, and for his own reasons, Guccioni wanted an erotic epic. But Ras kept hiring odd looking extras that seemed to shit on the eroticism. Actress Helen Mirren described the experience as being an irresistible mix of art and genitals. So what was it like on the set? I chatted about that with tales from the crypt alum Malcolm Igdahlite. I'm sure when Caligula called, it wasn't the thing that it ultimately became. It had something of a pedigree. The screenplay was developed from an unproduced television miniseries by Roberto Rossellini. [00:14:58] Speaker D: Well, that's news to me. [00:15:00] Speaker A: It started out with best of intentions. [00:15:02] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, you may be right. Forgotten that. You know, to be honest with you, I've forgotten a lot about it. I was going to do a sort of one man show about it and sort of come out in a toga. Oh, smoking a cigarette or something with jeans on. I have a lot of funny stories about it because honestly, the only way to get through it was by laughing at it. [00:15:30] Speaker A: But, I mean, what did everyone think? As you all said? Yes. You all agreed to sign up? [00:15:37] Speaker D: Well, you know, of course, we hadn't seen, seen a script. So I kind of got. As soon as I. I was in it and got the script, I thought, wow, this is terrible. I was so shocked at how, you know, this. Such a great writer produced such rubbish. And, you know, I immediately tried to. I said, you know, and then they'd cast the director. You know, it was going to be Nick Rogue. [00:16:08] Speaker A: Was it really? [00:16:10] Speaker D: Yeah. Oh, Nick Rogue came up to me in San Lorenzo's restaurant and said, he looked over to me and he looked down. He said, so I'm not to be your master. I mean, he's such an arrogant fucker, you know. And I went, well, Nick, not on this one, by the way, if we ever do work together, you will still not be my master, but we'll happily work together. Of course, he was a wonderful director, and he would have. It would have been a very interesting. [00:16:45] Speaker A: Oh, his don't look now is one of my favorite movies ever. [00:16:50] Speaker D: Incredible movie. Incredible movie. And really not a great book. I thought he made so much more of it than was in the book. [00:16:59] Speaker A: If Caligula had had that sensuality, you know, the. The lovemaking scene between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland is a. Oh, yeah, it's a wonderful scene because it feels so. It feels so real. It feels so emotionally. [00:17:12] Speaker D: Oh, that's why everybody thought it was real. [00:17:14] Speaker A: Indeed. [00:17:15] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:17:16] Speaker A: It's. [00:17:16] Speaker D: It wasn't. [00:17:17] Speaker A: It's. The amazing thing about it is that it's this wonderful sex scene between a married couple. [00:17:24] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. [00:17:26] Speaker A: That's the weirdest thing about it. [00:17:28] Speaker D: But it's so amazing because of what happened to the child and all that. And, you know, it's so brilliant the way the child wears that red and red, shiny red Macintosh. It's like a sou'wester or something. It's really. It's an amazing film. [00:17:48] Speaker A: A thunderous ending. Oh, my God. [00:17:51] Speaker D: Yeah, he's a great. [00:17:52] Speaker A: Oh, it will never. [00:17:53] Speaker D: By the way, I loved performance with James Fox and Mick Jagger. Mick was never better in a movie. The best thing he ever did on celluloid, in my opinion. I thought he was amazing. [00:18:10] Speaker A: I agree. And it makes it heartbreaking to hear that Nick Rogue was thought of to direct that movie. [00:18:16] Speaker D: It would have been the reason he wasn't offered it in the end, was, of course, because he was too independent and too good and would not be manipulated by Guccioni. [00:18:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:31] Speaker D: And that's why. And it's sad, but not that he could manipulate Tinto brass. He didn't. It was a cause, an almighty explosion. And, you know, the film was a total fuck up, you know, basically, you know. But I kept saying to Gore, well, it's all right Gore for you, you know, you took your name off it. I'm now stuck having to do it. [00:18:57] Speaker A: He didn't give back the money, did he? [00:19:00] Speaker D: I don't know. [00:19:00] Speaker A: No, he did not. He did not give back the money. He got paid. 225. He got paid. He got paid a nice chunk of change for those days. [00:19:08] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. [00:19:11] Speaker A: Hey, man, how ashamed of you. Really. The casting was. Became an issue. Maria Schneider. And she just passed away recently, unfortunately. Terrific actor. Yeah. She was supposed to play Drusilla. She quit while filming her first sex scene. Right in the middle of working with you. [00:19:30] Speaker D: No, she never got. [00:19:32] Speaker A: She never got that far. [00:19:34] Speaker D: No, she got as far as a costume fitting. [00:19:38] Speaker A: Huh. [00:19:39] Speaker D: And coming up to do a little rehearsal. [00:19:42] Speaker A: Oh, the stories people tell. Good God. It was. It was nothing like that. Carry on. Good, good, good. [00:19:48] Speaker D: She went down to the seamstress and, you know, we had Danilo Donati, one of the great designers of all time. He did all Fellini's movies. A genius. [00:20:00] Speaker A: Such talent. [00:20:01] Speaker D: He did the costumes and the sets and, you know, the costumes were literally one stitch here, one stitch there. That was it open. And you wore a diaper underneath it. She had went down to the seamstress and had them sew up the sides of the dress so that the scene was me fondling her breast because, you know, I'm her brother, basically. And, uh, to be fondling her breast to a modern audience is sort of outrageous. But, of course, in Caligula's time, it was quite normal. [00:20:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:44] Speaker D: And they were. The only people you could trust were your family. And that's basically who you stayed with. I tried to get into the dress and I went, wow. How did you manage to get this? And tinto brass went ballistic and he really lost it when he found out what she'd done. He lost it. And she sort of went, fuck you. And he went, fuck me. Oh, get off my satin. So whether she. I don't know whether she walked or she was fired. I think she basically walk for a little while. [00:21:27] Speaker A: They thought about Catherine Ross to replace her. [00:21:32] Speaker D: I got a call from Katherine, who said, malcolm, I'd been offered it. What can you tell me? And I went, oh, Catherine, God, I'm your America's sweetheart. I'm such a fan. I mean, I'd love to work with you, but, darling, not on this. Honestly, from the bottom of my heart, I really think you should not do this. Running around the set naked and everything. I don't. She went, thank you. [00:22:05] Speaker A: That was very, very good of you to spare. To spare her the trip. [00:22:09] Speaker D: Yeah, I wouldn't do that to her. And I was a big fan of hers, and I knew that was a terrible fit. But, you know, that was another manipulation of Gucconi, Gielgud. [00:22:21] Speaker A: You got to work. [00:22:22] Speaker D: Oh, yeah, yeah. [00:22:22] Speaker A: So you did finally get to work with John in a feature. There's a story about you and John talking about personal finances that John was complaining about having to do movies like this. [00:22:36] Speaker D: Yes. He said, my accountant, I've been told I've got to cut back. And I went, oh, dear, John, what? I mean, do you live this high lifestyle? He goes, good God, no. But I can't afford it, the taxes. I said, well, where could you cut back? I mean, you've got this beautiful house. He went, oh, yes, I can't leave the house. And I said, what about you've got this lovely Rolls Royce and a chauffeur? And he goes, I couldn't possibly do without my rose. And I went, well, I think that's what they're talking about when they say cut back. He said, well, they're not paying me very much per diem. And I hear you have a villa. I went, well, I do. And I tell you, I'd love to share it with you. You can have a whole wing of it. He said, oh, so nice. Thank you so much. And he came, stayed with me for two weeks, and it was adorable. I had a wonderful time with him. I adored him. He regaled us all these stories, and, you know, everything was. He was telling me about him and Larry when they did Romeo and Juliet, you know, and they alternative the parts of Romeo and Laertes. I'm not Laertes. Mercutio. [00:23:58] Speaker A: Mercutio. Yeah, yeah. [00:24:00] Speaker D: And he'd always say, larry was far better than me. He was much more athletic. You know, I just had the voice. And I went, yeah, but what a voice. He said, well, Aries is a pretty good voice, too, but he was so much more athletic. [00:24:19] Speaker A: You know, there's something funny about Gilgud saying, I just have the voice. [00:24:24] Speaker D: Yeah, I just had the voice. A voice. [00:24:27] Speaker A: If that's how you see yourself. Okay. At the time, the top tax rate in England was 83%. So it was pretty brutal to people, the kind of money that you guys were making. In the end, the principal, cast members, everyone, agreed to do a voiceover recording session. Only of Bob Guccioni's inserts would be left out of the final cut. Apparently, no one, you wouldn't do the, you wouldn't do the looping until. [00:24:53] Speaker D: Yes, he was sure. That's true. But they didn't pay me a big chunk of money. I think something north of $200,000 they owed me. And in those days, that was a lot of money. [00:25:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:25:10] Speaker D: They owed me, and I refused. So I refused to do anything till first I had a certified check, which they came around with the messenger, and I got, and I had my lawyer there, and I gave it to him immediately. [00:25:24] Speaker A: Oh, God. [00:25:25] Speaker D: And, oh, it was really terrible. And of course, when it came out, it was all put back. [00:25:32] Speaker A: Yeah, right. [00:25:32] Speaker D: And I bumped into Gielgud on Third Avenue. He was shooting Arthur. I didn't even know, you know, and he said, oh, malcolm, have you seen the film? And I went, no, John, I haven't. He said, oh, frightfully good. I've seen you three times, and I paid twice. Yeah. [00:25:54] Speaker A: What? [00:25:55] Speaker D: Yeah, he saw it three times and paid twice. And then somebody must have got to him to say, look here, it's an absolutely scandalous film. You can't go around saying you like it. So he then changed his tune and said, oh, frightful film. I don't know why I did it. Frightful. [00:26:19] Speaker A: Uh, legendary movie critic Roger Ebert, apparently he, he hated the film. [00:26:25] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. [00:26:26] Speaker A: He walked out after 2 hours, and his review started with him calling it sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash. And it. Yeah, yeah. And it ended with this movie. Said, the lady in front of me at the drinking fountain is the worst piece of shit I have ever seen. That ended his movie review of Caligula. [00:26:45] Speaker D: Now, tell me this. Wouldn't you go if you'd read that review? You'd have gone, I've got to see this movie. I know. It made more money than any movie I've ever done. [00:26:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:26:58] Speaker D: Ridiculous. I know, I know, I know. [00:27:03] Speaker A: There's one more little funny, funny little tidbit I'll throw in, and it's the perfect little capper to it. After the film was released, Annika Lorenzo, she. Marjorie Lee, Tom Thors, Orson in a. [00:27:15] Speaker D: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:27:17] Speaker A: She played Lena. Yeah. She sued Bob Guccioni, saying that his handling of the film, mainly his adding of the hardcore sex inserts had damaged her acting career by associating her with a hardcore porno film. She won her case. She was awarded $4.06 in damages. [00:27:36] Speaker D: I thought she got 3 million. [00:27:38] Speaker A: No, $4.06 sense. [00:27:41] Speaker D: You know, she was a very peculiar girl and bless her, and I think she died and I think she had not a happy life. It was because Guccioni was really a very evil person. [00:27:54] Speaker A: Where Caligula is concerned, Malcolm is right. Guccioni was evil. When actors agree to do a movie, they expect the movie to be what they agreed to do. They certainly don't expect to have shots of people masturbating or sucking dick or ejaculating intercut with their acting. That's what's so disconcerting about the experience of watching Caligula. There's no other movie like it. First, it makes zero sense to intercut to the sex, where the movie intercuts to the sex. But second, the sex itself completely lacks any humanness. It's utterly robotic and impersonal. As movie critic Roger Ebert also put it in his review of Caligula, it's not even good porn. When principal photography finished, Guccioni fired Tinto bras and took over the cut. He brought back a bunch of extras he'd hired and flew in more penthouse pets. According to Irfan Shah, most of the pets thought they were to appear in a James Bond movie. After shooting 12,000ft of hardcore action in the Dear studio basement, Guccioni retired to Twickenham Studios in London, where he holed up in an editing suite and proceeded to create one of the primo examples ever of how not to make a movie. Like I said, watching Caligula is truly an odd experience. There are some very good scenes in the movie, there's some good acting, there are beautiful shots throughout, but we never feel anyone's humanity except when they're being tortured or brutally killed. Film is a language and Caligula has a strange, hard to place accent. The fact that it misses as a movie, well, that isn't just Guccionis fault, it's Tinto's fault too. If Gil and I had been sent Tinto's reel while we were doing tales from the crypt, we weren't. I'm just saying if I doubt we would have hired him. Our approach to shooting a scene was very different from his. [00:29:53] Speaker C: So you are going to marry a respectable roman lady of the senatorial class. [00:30:02] Speaker B: No, I'm not. [00:30:03] Speaker C: Yes, you are. You've got to have an heir. [00:30:09] Speaker B: Who will kill me when he grows up. [00:30:14] Speaker C: The priestesses of Isis are meeting at my house tonight. [00:30:19] Speaker B: You want me to marry one of them? [00:30:22] Speaker C: Yes. [00:30:23] Speaker D: No. [00:30:24] Speaker C: Yes. [00:30:26] Speaker A: No. [00:30:30] Speaker C: Yes. [00:30:40] Speaker A: He shoots everything with a wide master. Instead of cutting to reaction shots, he often pans to them resumes. This isn't the best use of the cinematic language. While this style of shooting and editing captures everything and feels immediate, it never feels intimate. Theres a very good reason for why we shoot things the way that we shoot them. For all its many faults and flaws, Caligula continues to fascinate. Hi, my name is Thomas Ngovin. Documentary filmmaker Tom Ngovin has been working on a cut of Caligula that supposedly will drop this year. What ive been doing then when I tell them that movie is Caligula, they always ask, isnt that a porno? In fact, a new cut of Caligula played at this years Cannes film festival. Dozens of people walked out, as they say in France, plus au change plus est la meme shows translation. Caligula simply will not go away. Heres one final its entirely possible that the real Caligula was nothing like the childish madman depicted. According to the BBC, the evidence for Caligula's monstrosity isn't quite as clear cut. Most of what we think about Caligula was written long after he was gone. A few contemporaneous eyewitness accounts of Caligula's reign, they all fail to mention any of the worst stories like incest with his sister or making his horse a consul. No roman writer ever said that he made his horse a consul. Philo, a high ranking jewish ambassador, described Caligula as a rather menacing jokester, but nothing worse. Caligula had enemies. People in power always do. Caligula's enemies assassinated him, and then they had the final word on who Caligula was. It could well be that Caligula is the victim of bad reviews that deliberately took him out of context. Been there, done that. Been there, done that, been there, done that. See you next time. The how not to make a movie podcast is executive produced by me, Alan Katz, by Gil Adler, and by Jason Stein. Our artwork was done by the amazing Jody Webster and Jason. Jody, along with Mando, are all the hosts of the fun and informative dads from the Crypt podcast. Follow them for what my old pal the Crypt keeper would have called terrorism. Crypt content.