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So we're going to turn our heads toward comedy.
There are new kinds of comedies that become cult,
and one of which is a picture
called "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"
is another movie that found its audience long after it was new.
One of the staples of cult films
is randy teenagers doing terrible things.
When Sean Penn comes on screen as Spicoli,
for a moment or 70,
I thought where did they get this guy?
It seemed like a non-pro.
They had found a surfer
and just threw him in this thing.
It captures a moment in time,
like L.A. at that time I think,
you know, when we were back on the East Coast.
It seems like this is what living in Los Angeles is like.
Everyone had their favorites.
You know, I was of the Judge Reinhold.
I loved him.
If those performances do live on,
along with the originality of the story
and the storytelling,
it resonates with people for much longer.
It's a slice of life of growing up.
I owe my life to Sean Penn.
I know that dude.
Mr. Spicoli.
That's the name they gave me.
"Fast Times at Ridgemont High"
is a year in the life of this high school.
Cameron Crowe, the writer,
went underground and sort of embedded in high school.
He was like maybe 20.
And he befriended a number of students
and got very close to them and wrote a book.
Really very true to life,
and you just feel like you've been in high school.
It just transcends generations.
You know, Damone,
I noticed I was starting to get a pimple this morning...
Rat, the shyness routine is really starting to aggravate me.
You know, I've got 14-year-old kids coming up to me
like, oh, my God, man, I love your Damone.
Hey, you got any tickets?
Got any Blue Oyster Cult?
No, I don't have any Blue Oyster Cult.
I ate 34 pairs last time around. Where were you?
I was that close to working at 7-Eleven, you know.
To me, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"
stands out among all the other eighties teen movies
because it has this credibility
that you just don't see in the other ones.
I mean, it's the first time you ever have a sex scene
between a young girl and a boy from the woman's point of view.
You know, she's looking up, I guess they're in a dugout.
I think they see "Surf Nazis" or something.
And we're really seeing not this romanticized nudity,
but this kind of grotty uncomfortableness.
And later the character will say, you know, I realize...
I don't want sex. Anyone can have sex.
Yeah, Stacy, what do you want?
I just want a relationship.
And it's so honest.
I really wanted to stick to that whole idea of a year
and what happens to the people and their character arcs
over the course of a year.
That was my skull.
I'm so wasted.
Don't worry, Spicoli.
You'll probably squeak by. Yeah!
I think a lot of teen movies have the sense
that nothing you do while you're in high school matters,
and therefore the film itself
doesn't think any of it really matters.
It's just fun, it's just comedy, it's hijinks,
there's like panty raids
and people getting pie in the face
and giant cafeteria food fights.
But "Fast Times" takes a kid's struggle seriously.
Like a kid wants to work at this restaurant
and not that restaurant.
And when you're an adult,
you might think that that's silly,
but for the kid, it makes all the difference in the world.
It says 100% guaranteed, you moron.
Mister, if you don't shut up,
I'm going to kick 100% of your ass.
And it has a really nice balance and sympathy
between the female characters and the male characters.
And I think that's one of the things
that makes it a mass cult movie or a universal cult movie.
The thing that strikes me about our cast
and why I think people connect with this movie
is everybody was so serious about their craft.
You know, it takes a lot of courage
to get up here and do something
that you know people will make fun of.
For me, most of the fun was going down to the set
when I wasn't working and watching everybody else.
Like sitting and watching Sean Penn do a scene,
and I'd think to myself, my God, the guy's good.
I've been thinking about this, Mr. Hand.
If I'm here and you're here, doesn't that make it our time?
Oh, gnarley.
Wait a minute. There's no birthday party for me here.
And Sean, he'd never really smoked pot in his life.
He was completely in character at all times.
Hey, Bud, let's party.
When Damone gives the five-point plan,
he tells Ratner to put on a certain album.
Now this is most important, Rat.
When it comes down to making out,
whenever possible put on side one of Led Zeppelin IV.
You know, almost every day somebody comes up to me
and says, you know when you say
put on side one of Led Zeppelin IV
and "Kashmir" comes on?
That's the wrong song.
The song "Kashmir" was so wonderfully scary and ominous
that it just felt like, oh, my God, I'm on a date.
What am I going to do? It was like, you know.
I don't know if I can hum, but...
So either Mark Ratner didn't have that album
or they already played that album
and now they're up to the next one.
it's like one of those things that's up for interpretation.
Universal Pictures presents
everything you always wanted to do in high school.
See "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."
When we first showed "Fast Times"
in a screening for a recruited audience,
what does this movie need or what would you add?
And one person wrote, more muff.
Yeah, the movie had an X rating
because of the scene in the pool house.
When I knew
that we were going to have this character lose her virginity,
that that meant naked women and guys with their shirts off.
And I thought, well, that's not right.
What if both people were naked?
I can't remember if it was frontal nudity
or side-al nudity.
And when the studio saw the cut
and sent it to the rating board,
the rating board said that's an automatic X.
Are you okay?
Uh, I think I came.
Didn't you feel it?
Yeah, I guess I did.
I think that they said
you can't have that scene and the carrot scene,
so you got to have one or the other.
You've never given a blow job? Never?
Stace, there's nothing to it. It's so easy.
Relax your throat muscles.
Don't bite.
Slide it in.
Go ahead.
So I think they cut down the pool house scene.
When Phoebe Cates comes out of the water,
I think that was every boy's fantasy
and like Phoebe Cates became this like icon
of what was beautiful in the eighties.
Oh, my God. That was like pulling teeth with her.
"You don't really need it. You don't..."
"Yes, I do."
Oh, wait just a minute.
I love Amy Heckerling.
Like a great teacher who works with the student,
she gives them what they need.
I thought this is somebody I can learn from.
When it was time for the movie to be coming out,
the studio was kind of wary.
I didn't see anything that was really so horrible and shocking
that we did in the movie, myself.
They thought, well, nobody's going to like this
except maybe some people in California.
But I did get a phone call from a friend,
who said, they might not release the movie.
So they had a release of 200 theaters
and only on the West Coast.
Just everything sunk.
I felt like my teeth must've fallen out of my mouth
or, you know, my heart fell to my ankles.
And they thought, oh, well,
we'll put it out in the rest of the country real quick
with no advertising or anything.
How could they do something like that?
And thank goodness I was right,
because now we're in the Library of Congress.
I guess when you put all the talent together
and you put Cameron Crowe and Amy Heckerling
and a little bit of mojo,
it became a lot more than that, you know.
I'm very surprised that it gets all the accolades it does
because I just remember making it,
going, oh, I hope this makes enough money
so that I could do another movie.
The fact that anybody knows it so many years later
is just shocking to me.
The thing about a Corman movie
is you'll get, you know, the lowest salary in the world
and that there's nothing else.
You have to make everything up.
Blowing up the high school.
That was the hook that made Roger really want to make it.
Hi, everybody. I'm Riff Randall
and this is Rock 'N' Roll High School.
So the plot to "Rock 'N' Roll High School?"
It's very simple.
The school authorities hate rock music and want to stop it.
Riff Randall lives for rock music.
Riff Randall is desperate to get one of her songs
to her favorite band the Ramones.
She gets in trouble with the school,
and the principal takes all their rock 'n' roll records
and burns them.
So Riff and the school authorities bump heads.
Ultimately we take over the high school.
The Ramones arrive, they have a concert,
and they blow up the school.
My character is the heroine of the movie.
Simple.
It had all the ingredients
nonconformist characters,
rebellious young people, you know.
It's like "Animal House," except in a high school.
Allan said he saw me in "Halloween."
He'd seen me in "Carrie,"
and I auditioned three times.
I was 28 years old at the time.
Yes. I don't think age ever came up.
I had the energy.
In fact, I spent all of my intended to be salary,
which was $2,100...
on my wardrobe once I got the part.
And then I said to Allan, what is your choice?
And he said P.J.
I said we're in a great situation here
because P.J. is my choice, too.
P. J. Soles' character
was just this bubbly ball of energy.
She was kind of like Sandra Dee to the nth degree.
Riff Randall.
Just the way she says, I'm Riff Randall, rock 'n' roller.
And who are you?
I'm Riff Randall, rock 'n' roller.
I just love that.
Miss Togar. Okay, let's talk about Miss Togar.
Mary was sort of an in-house favorite here.
Everybody loved her performance in "Death Race,"
and she just seemed right for Miss Togar.
She loves to be really nasty.
Oh, really?
And she knows no bounds.
skirts below their knees.
above their collar.
She could just do whatever she likes,
and she's just a horrible person.
If this school is going to get back on the winning track,
we have to start cracking down immediately.
And I know just where to begin.
So I was perfect.
I knew then, all of a sudden once I met Mary,
that she had been a whip dancer for the Velvet Underground,
which raised her beyond category
in my book of people I want to know.
And she was the funniest person.
she is the number one guest star
on the most popular episode of "Charlie's Angels" ever.
She plays the prison warden
in the episode where the Angels go to prison.
Get cute in here and you can get hurt.
Everybody just worked together so hard.
And we all agreed that the best line in the movie was,
do your parents know you're Ramones?
Do your parents know that you're Ramones?
August 12th of 1964,
and I saw the first evening show of "Hard Days Night."
Richard Lester's style
and the editing
and the attitude, the us versus them.
Are you a mod or a rocker?
Oh, no, I'm a mocker.
The sense of the younger people knowing something
that the older people didn't.
So that was a huge influence.
The idea behind it originally was to feature Cheap Trick,
who were just sort of coming into their own then.
And I'm not sure what happened.
They were touring and they were starting to break.
They wanted $50,000.
What about the Ramones?
"Rocket to Russia" is a fantastic record.
It has the thing that's Riff Randall.
She's a girl from the suburbs who wants to be a punk rocker.
And the thing that I love about the Ramones
is they are like the Beach Boys backed with chainsaws.
Allan played their music for me and said he liked them,
and I thought, these guys are great.
I agree with you.
I think I left that day
and Allan gave me a cassette of the Ramones.
He said, okay, go home, learn these songs,
and, you know, you're their number one fan.
And we had been listing to the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt
and Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell.
And I pressed play and we're like, is that music?
We were freaking out.
I was with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones
at a previous time,
but the Ramones are now my favorite group.
The Ramones?
I worked with the Velvet Underground.
Ramones?
Not at all.
As a matter of fact, I thought they were nuts.
They stayed in a room the whole time.
They only demanded a TV
and something like, you know, potato chips every 24 hours.
They were insane.
But they did whatever they were told.
They weren't very good at lines,
and Dee Dee couldn't remember...
I think the line is, pizza, I want some.
- Hey, pizza. Great. - Let's dig in.
Yeah, I want some.
I think that was like 12 takes.
They were so sweet.
Just sweet, and half of them were pretty stupid.
It was just brilliant to cast them
because they are 50%, 80% of the movie I would say.
We talked about the set,
and they basically told me they wanted to start
with "Hey, Ho, Let's Go."
And they really didn't want to do "She's The One,"
but they did because that was the story.
Love, your number one fan, Riff Randall.
When you work for Roger, you've got to be really smart.
In order to stage the concert at the Rockatorium,
we put up flyers everywhere
and we charged the extras money to be in the movie.
They did all these stings, man.
They would turn the clocks back
so they didn't have to pay overtime.
Everyone knew it was going to be the Ramones
were going to be playing all day long,
and it was only two bucks to go see them.
I'm mean, these people weren't actors.
They were just people, you know,
supposedly going to see a show.
So if you look in the audience,
it is the L.A. punk scene.
You can point them out. Darby Crash is at the front row.
And then we blow up the high school.
I remember everybody saying, do not stay near the school,
do not stay near the school.
Because Corman used to use this guy.
And this guy's name was Three Fingered Harry.
And then you heard he had a weird reputation
for like loving to blow things up.
And I had worked with Three Fingered Harry before.
And you knew that when Harry said this is going to blow up
and you'll be safe if you stand there,
everyone in the crew backed up 50 feet.
Then he blew too much up.
And the Ramones all thought it was the greatest.
That's their favorite thing.
When the school blew up,
I mean, they just thought that was so cool.
The fan base for "Rock 'N' Roll High School"
almost seems to grow.
For instance, I was there with Allan
at a screening in the Hollywood Cemetery at midnight,
where against one wall
they played "Rock 'N' Roll High School."
And the cemetery was filled.
It was probably the most lively night
that cemetery had ever seen.
One of the things that makes the movie work
that I think is one of the things
that makes cult movies work,
that they are like albums.
You play it over and over again because you love it.
And then you play it over and over again
because as time goes on,
you remember how you felt when you first played it.
And that goes round and round.
And that's why they become cult movies.
It's a very simple plot.
It's essentially "Romeo and Juliet"
in Hollywood and the Valley.
But nobody dies in the end.
Hot. Very hot.
Which one?
If you take the "Romeo and Juliet" idea
and apply it to anything, it's just a good idea.
I mean, let's leave the party.
I'm so sure.
Well, here's what I'll tell you
about the use of Val speak in the movie.
Scarfing up everything in sight. I'm sure.
I don't know, you know like, oh, I get so fat and all.
And what happened to my zits? I get so grotty.
We made an earnest effort
to infuse it in the beginning of the movie,
sort of set that world, define that universe,
and I think the audience
sort of takes that with them throughout was the plan.
Right, and I tell everybody
I covered up not knowing Valley girl.
I did listen to Valley girls,
but I thought the way for me
to justify my character Loryn being a Valley girl
was that she had the secret,
which was that she really was from Malibu.
So like she sort of talked like a surfer chick, really.
But that's kind of like Valley, like for sure.
Your mom's so cool.
Your mom is so bitchin', Suzi.
Give me that back, Loryn.
You're too small for that.
I am not too small.
I look totally hot in this. Totally.
You know, it's like that. So it just kind of worked.
Because "Valley Girl" takes place in Hollywood
and the San Fernando Valley of the 1980s,
and we had to make a difference between them,
the film itself sort of looks at both cultures
and tries to tell us something
about how they feel about themselves.
Why don't you get out of here?
You make me get out of here.
Because the Valley people in my movie
hate the Hollywood people, and the Hollywood people
hate the Valley people more than reality.
I made that more of an important fiction.
I really started getting a little irritated
because all the guys that came in for Randy were gorgeous.
And I said, you know, let's look at some other people.
Let's look at some people
who are not gorgeous in the traditional sense.
And I went over to the reject pile,
and at the top of the reject pile was Nicholas Cage.
So I picked up the picture, held it up,
and said why don't you bring in him and people like this?
I said, he's great. That's our Randy.
One of the things that would help make the clarity
between the Valley and Hollywood obvious
was if I had a tough band playing the Hollywood band.
I wanted X
because I thought they were really different and radical,
and they were very interested.
Then we read the script
and thought this is a fucking dumb movie.
Why do we want to be in that?
I mean, I guess it's a cult thing
and, you know, Nicholas Cage is in it and all that shit.
But like...
Whatever.
We ended up going to the Plimsouls, which was great.
I mean, I was a huge Plimsouls fan,
so when they, you know, came into it,
I was really excited.
I remember Nick was like, we got Frederic Forrest.
I'm like, we got the Plimsouls.
I mean, "Melt With You" and " Million Miles Away"
which I'd heard before "Valley Girl,"
and I just thought that's an anthem.
Back then, all these movies were about getting laid.
Our movie was not about getting laid at all.
Our movie was about being in love,
and I think that's what made it a surprise success
and I think that's what's made it enduring.
We were not aware of the circumstances
that the actors were living under.
Yeah, Nick did live in his car.
Once I found that out,
I said, Nick, you can't live in your car.
This is before cell phones, too, you know,
so they'd have to just kind of trust he was going to be there.
Want a light?
Hey, fuck you, scum.
But he was so there and so solid.
You're a dumb son of a bitch, man.
Guys like that will kill you.
Fuck 'em.
Everyone dated Nick at that time.
Everyone was making out with everyone at that time.
I made out with Nick at that time, too.
Everybody did.
- Yeah. - It was just that movie
where it was like, you made out with Nick in the trailer?
So did I. I made out with Nick in the trailer.
It was like everybody was making out with everyone.
That's what happens when you do a movie sometimes.
I've got flexible hours.
Deborah and Nick were seeing each other at one point.
So I didn't find out
until the very end of the film that they were dating.
Don't tell me what to do.
You have no control over my life.
Because there was a day when she just couldn't...
Neither one of them could act.
That was it.
It was just like breaking up at the door.
They couldn't act.
I love you.
That's all I wanted to say.
So we had to close down for a sec
and I had to talk to them both and separate them
and, you know, do all that.
And that's when they said, no, we're dating,
and I suddenly realized, oh, my God,
that's not going to work out, not at all.
Just forget I ever tried to save you
from your miserable existence.
Cameron Dye was such a great guy.
He was so easy to work with, so fun, full of energy,
full of ideas, and a great bounce off for Nick.
It was a very good combo.
Come off that, man.
Hey, look, if you want this girl so bad,
why don't you do something about it?
Why wasn't Deborah Foreman on the poster?
You should call Deborah Foreman and ask her.
Debbie had said to the producers, I didn't know,
that she wanted to be paid.
The distributor was not going to pay her
to come in and do promotion
for a movie that she should be thrilled to support and promote.
But that's not the way she saw it.
And so they called her bluff and they hired a model. Sad.
I feel badly.
I mean, my leading lady of "Valley Girl"
is not in the poster, which is too bad.
Because you know what?
"Valley Girl" got out there, people saw it,
I was aware of that, and that got me a career.
So that was what, in a way, "Valley Girl" really counted as.
I wanted a film that you could get more out of
if you saw it more than once.
I forget sometimes it's a cult film, you know.
It's like a lot of people saw it.
It wasn't a blockbuster or, you know, a big budget movie.
People stop me and say, it was so much a part of my growing up,
and that's a great thing to hear.
And those pieces of that movie that were so comforting
you get to carry with you for decades
and decades after that
and share it with the people that you love.
And those to me are the movies that we all hope to make.
"Napoleon Dynamite."
Have we talked at all
about like production design in these movies,
how sometimes that actually adds to the, you know...
People that are essentially teenagers and outsiders
and you go to a movie
and you see a cool T-shirt or a cool hairdo
or someone's wearing a vintage leather jacket, you know,
you pick up upon those things.
But wasn't it insanely successful?
There is a cult aspect to that.
- No big stars, you know. - Right.
It's purely on word-of-mouth.
It's purely people who love the movie.
But that's the essence of cult is it's passed down.
Turning people on to it.
- And you can't spend money. - The advertising can't buy it.
Was Napoleon Dynamite, did he look like a nerd Eraserhead?
A little bit. Giant glasses, big curly blond hair.
Yeah, but that look then became very popular.
Everybody needed their "Vote for Pedro," you know.
And carrying tater tots in your pocket became okay.
Tater tots became very popular.
- Yeah, well, thankfully. - Re-popular.
There are people today in the rap field, you know,
that just like, man, you Lafawnduh?
Like I got to call you Lafawnduh forever.
If I have one regret in life,
it's that I didn't take those pants.
Most people either request or say what's your favorite line?
It's probably, Tina, you fat lard.
Come get some dinner.
Tina, you fat lard. Come get some dinner.
You know, the thing about cult films I think that it just...
I mean, it just takes any paradigm
and kind of turns it on its side a little bit.
The film became a piece of pop culture
because it was its own thing, and it didn't reference.
It was one of those films,
and I think what helps it to live on
through different generations,
is because there's a timelessness to it.
I think the thing that makes that film resonate is the...
That, too. The universality.
He's an underdog, and I think that type of story...
Never gets old.
I mean, there was the struggle
that everybody was having.
I mean, you know, Kip was chatting with babes online
and then deciding to go to, you know, kung fu school.
And Napoleon was just trying to figure out
where he fit in the world.
I mean, everybody was just trying to just fit.
This was really to me
capturing the essence of what a loser/nerd/geek/
really kind of underdog character.
Plus I read it, and I was like, this is me.
This is me and my younger brothers.
The side ponytail, the little fountain.
Your hair looked great today.
The crimped hair. Those hairstyles
did come from my childhood.
I think that everybody relates to him
in different ways as well,
because it's either you share qualities with him
or you knew somebody in school like him.
Jared and his wife Jerusha,
they built this perfect script
that had like every single line was a great line.
What did you do all last summer again?
I told you. I spent it with my uncle in Alaska
hunting wolverines.
Napoleon, don't be jealous,
that I've been chatting online with babes all day.
Besides, we both know I'm training
to become a cage fighter.
Have you ever heard of nylon polymer?
Napoleon, give me some of your tots.
No. Go find your own.
Would you like to look like this?
It took me like three hours
to finish the shading on your upper lip.
All the drawings in the film were done by me,
except I will give credit to our art director,
who did do the unicorn at the very beginning.
"Napoleon" draws you in
because it has a very distinctive feel to it.
And once you're in it, you're in it to win it.
You cannot turn it off.
We didn't really think of it as a comedy,
even though we were like, well, yeah.
But it's its own kind of genre.
It's just a film that captures these weird people.
It was probably the silliest funniest read of a script
I've ever read.
Basically, my manager had sent it to me, and he was like...
They were like, I don't get it.
These guys have no money.
They have no money.
We don't know who they are.
There's nobody in it.
I don't think you should do it.
Why do you want to do it?
And I was like, because it's great.
I'm coming. I'll do it.
I'll be there. Tell them I'll drive.
Jared Hess, who wrote and directed the film,
he grew up in Preston,
and the film itself was pretty much a memoir
of his growing up experiences
and the experiences of his younger brothers.
I know he knew that the nerd world should be respected.
Yeah, that they are as equally sexual and fun
and zazzy and all this other good jazz.
The dance scene at the end was, uh...
I just felt... well, this is what I do
when I mess around with my friends.
And I think that's kind of the spirit
that Jared wants to capture,
so I'll just freestyle it.
And we just did three takes,
and then they just kind of took the best bits.
And I kept the original "Vote For Pedro" T-shirt,
which I then later traded in for one of the original...
What do they call them? From Harry Potter.
The little golden snitches. Yeah.
That's pretty sweet.
After we shot the film,
we had found out that Napoleon Dynamite
was actually an alter ego
created for some Elvis Costello album.
We knew we had something special
when the whole town of Sundance, everyone came to see our movie.
And there were no spots available.
It was 11:00 at night
and people were packing in there angrily
to get to see this movie.
We knew we had something different,
and we were perplexed.
To have people receive it the way that they did,
you can't even describe it as icing on the cake
because it's so much more than that.
It's amazing,
and I know that'll probably never happen again.
- People had signs. - Lafawnduh, Lafawnduh.
I'm like, what is this?
Honestly, it humbles my spirit.
We're so thankful and so grateful.
Oh, do I have a favorite scene in the movie?
When he was doing the egg
and they were all trying to tell the guys
and they were paying him in pennies and coins.
And you didn't know what he was saying then.
Over there in that creek, man,
I found a couple of Shoshone arrowheads.
$6.00.
That's like a dollar an hour.
You know, in the script it says
that he talks like a professional wrestler,
so I think I got it all from that.
Come down today for your free trial lesson.
Break the wrist, walk away.
The other hand. My other hand.
Grab my arm. The other arm.
My other arm.
Okay, now watch this.
I'm just going to break the wrist and walk away.
Break the wrist, walk away.
Jeez.
The scene where Uncle Rico throws the steak.
Like most films, you have some prop guy, you know.
They kept throwing and throwing and missing.
I don't know, it could have been 10, 15 times.
And it just would always like maybe nick my hair
or get right by me.
Finally Jared Hess was saying,
hey, I think we should move in
and just shoot it close and just hit him close.
And I just said if you do that, you've ruined the joke.
And finally it was actually John Gries...
- Watch this. - Who said, you know what? No.
Look, I played baseball in high school and in college.
Let me do this.
This is supposed to be me anyways.
So he grabs it, and I'm riding on a bike.
He has to hit me while I'm moving.
- It was a moving target. - I said I can hit him.
I've just got to chuck that steak.
And then Heder was like, so chuck it.
And he hucks it.
Uh!
What the heck are you doing?
That's what I'm talking about.
And that's the take,
that's the shot where it just nails me.
The slap was resounding,
and everybody had to stop from laughing.
And I remember it took every ounce of effort
to like not lose it, not break character.
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to like, ow!
I'm good with the word cult for our film.
I define it for "Napoleon Dynamite"
embracing your individuality.
Cult that.
"Napoleon" will live forever.
Every time there's an adolescent who feels like an outsider,
it's a movie that's going to be their go to.
You know, everybody that lives in a small town
is going to love it.
It's something that everyone can associate with.
It's a great American movie.
Kevin Smith's "Clerks" is this black and white comedy
that's a portrait of a day in the life
of a convenience store clerk named Dante,
loosely inspired by Kevin Smith himself.
- Are you open? - Yes.
I'm not even supposed to be here today.
When you think about
what makes an interesting cult director,
a lot of what we're thinking about
is somebody who comes from outside the mainstream.
They didn't rise up through the NYU ranks,
they're not related to anybody in Hollywood.
They're a complete outsider.
And in 1994, I don't know
if you got much more outside that Kevin Smith.
Right, I came from
a lower, lower, lower middle-class family.
Like my mom's always proud of like,
we almost went on food stamps once. Almost.
So that's how broke we were.
So when I fell in love with film,
I was like, I have no money to pay for this.
I think what made "Clerks" such a cult favorite
is that it's so relatable to almost everybody.
Everybody at one point
has either worked a shitty clerking job
or they've been in a store with shitty clerks.
Well, this is the last time I rent here.
You'll be missed.
Screw you!
Hey, you're not allowed to rent here anymore!
Yeah!
When you show people in the workplace,
you're holding up a mirror to the world.
And, you know, look,
not everyone works at a convenience store,
but everybody's had a shitty job.
And everybody knows the convenience store
is the crossroads of the world, man.
The highest born and the lowest of low cross the threshold.
Everyone needs milk and cigarettes, right?
I'm stuck in this pit working for less than slave wages.
"Clerks" is, of course,
the wet dream of any independent cinema maker.
You make this film
in some hellish convenience store in Jersey for $10,
and then Miramax gives you, you know,
three dump trucks full of money and you get a career.
Kevin Smith's story with "Clerks"
is he'd been working at the same convenience store
since he was 19 years old.
And finally he's like, well, this is the setting of my movie.
If I can make a movie anywhere, I'm going to do it here.
Suddenly there were these other people giving me a notion
that like, oh, you could use credit cards
for things that aren't just like buying Star Wars figures.
You could literally finance a movie on it.
That guy bought a house on it.
That guy made a movie on it.
Maybe you could do that.
It's this great example
of what a director can do with limitations.
Because I was working at this point at RST video,
the video store that's in the movie "Clerks."
And I was the only one ever there, right?
So invariably a credit card company calls,
and they're like, we're checking
on the credit rating of Kevin Smith.
I was like, oh, our store manager.
He makes $50,000 a year.
That's all we need to know. Bam.
And they would send me credit cards.
Well, when we shot the movie, we all had real jobs.
I mean, Kevin worked at the store.
Kevin asked the permission of the owner
if he could use the store.
Now, she knew that he had gone to film school.
I dropped out of film school early.
I said, hey, man, I want to shoot a movie
here in the convenience store. Can I do that?
And they said, oh, yeah. Just come back to work.
10:30 at night we'd start making the movie,
and we'd shoot the movie until 6:00 in the morning
when the store opened again.
Or rather when I opened the store again.
Comedy really works well
if you can come from someplace unexpected,
and like a convenience store in New Jersey at that time
was a pretty unexpected place.
So there's a really filthy but very funny scene
where he's reading off the names of increasingly foul porn movies
while he's on the phone to a distributor.
Okay, I need one each of the
"Whispers In The Wind," "To Each His Own,"
"Put It Where It Doesn't Belong,"
"My Pipes Need Cleaning," "All Tit Fucking, Volume 8,"
"I Need Your Cock," "Ass Worshiping Rim Jobbers."
Shooting in black and white was pure cost consideration.
Now, when the movie went to festivals later on and whatnot,
smart people started seeing it, they would say things like,
the fact that it's shot in black and white
gives one the perspective of the video store monitor,
omnipresent in every video store.
They thought it was brilliant, and it was not.
It was necessity being the mother of invention.
But you better be sure,
I started going out there, being like,
well, we shot it in black and white
because it was meant to be the perspective
of the security store camera on our boys' lives.
So when I heard that Miramax picked up the film,
I mean, it was great, because Miramax at the time
was the kings of bringing out, you know,
new and independent filmmakers.
This is a movie that didn't have to be made,
but this figure by sheer force of will made it happen.
He makes an art-house movie
that somehow gets to Cannes and Sundance, which is insane.
They put in a million-dollar mix into the sound mix
and cleaned it up,
blew it up from 16 millimeter up to 35 millimeter.
Smoking weed, doing coke, drinking beers.
Pack her ass, my good man.
Time to kick back, drink some beers, and smoke some weed.
So it was so funny that they put in more money
than we could have made like 25 other films
with the 30,000 that we made the first film with.
Which did you like better,
"Jedi" or "The Empire Strikes Back?"
- "Empire." - Blasphemy.
When the film first got rated, it was rated an NC-17.
NC-17 is a step below rated X,
and that's usually for films that are extremely violent
or extremely, you know, explicit sex scenes or whatever,
and we had none of it.
All it was was because of dialogue.
37. My girlfriend sucked 37 dicks.
In a row?
Hey, try not to suck any dick on the way to the parking lot.
Hey, hey, you. Get back here.
You know what it is?
It's not so much that my girlfriend sucked 37 dicks.
It's the description of what snowballing is.
I think that's what got it for them.
Because even when I read it in the script,
I was like, what the hell is snowballing?
After he gets the blow job,
he likes to have it spit back into his mouth while kissing.
It's called snowballing.
Is that really a thing?
And he's like, oh, yeah, that's a thing.
I'm like, how do you know this? Oh, I've read things.
It had never been given to a movie for language before.
And so the chairman of Miramax
decided that he'd hire Alan Dershowitz
to represent the movie, to defend the movie to the MPAA.
So this became a censorship issue.
And so as we're sitting there, he's like,
it's an outrage that this movie has been rated NC-17.
Miramax like blew it up into this big deal.
They had this letter that they had a bunch of filmmakers sign.
You know, I was barely a minute and a half into my career,
and all of a sudden there was this kind of like,
we, the undersigned,
feel that "Clerks" should be R, not NC-17.
Martin Scorsese's name was one of the names on the list.
I was like, this is nuts.
But I do remember that, of course.
And it was a matter of one phrase in it
that some of the raters knew what it meant.
And we went to urban dictionary
and in fact that is what it meant,
and it was not suitable.
We felt parents would think it wasn't suitable.
It's as simple as that.
Then I got up and got to talk about it,
like, I'm a kid myself.
I made this movie. This is how we talk.
Blah, blah, blah.
We left the theater.
Three minutes later, they opened the doors
and everyone started coming out.
And some guy came up to me
and said, congratulations, man. It's sweet.
I can't wait to see that at midnight at the Laemmle.
I think the concept of being NC-17 for one joke,
I think they just felt that it was too harsh.
- We won. - We flipped the rating.
Like, you know, basically everyone in the jury
was just like, oh, yeah.
This is not an NC-17 rated movie.
We didn't have to make a single cut and stuff.
When it was overturned, I justified it in my mind,
thinking, most people who are going to see this movie
aren't going to know what it means,
so we won't look ridiculous.
"Clerks" was the greatest thing in the world
that ever happened to me.
It's 25 years since it's happened,
and I've done many things since then,
but I still fucking come back to "Clerks."
One of my favorites is "Office Space."
I do love "Office Space."
The plot itself is a little convoluted.
It's kind of set in workplace America,
a very bland version of workplace America
that sort of has all the life sucked out of it.
And it's about a guy that's not happy there.
Want to go to Chotchkies, get some coffee?
No, it's a little early.
I got a get out of here.
- I think I'm going to lose it. - Uh-oh.
Sounds like somebody's got a case of the Mondays.
What would it look like if I didn't put up with this shit?
I think that in other movies
and even TV shows before "The Office,"
people tried to spike it up a little bit
to make it kind of fun and funny,
and Mike was like, no, it's awful.
I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working.
I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too.
I'd say in a given week,
I probably only do about 15 minutes of real actual work.
It really is a movie about the new American economy.
I mean, these deadening cubicle office jobs.
This was a comedy about how going forward,
the job you were going to have was going to suck.
Why does it say paper jam when there is no paper jam?
I swear to God, one of these days
I just kick this piece of shit out the window.
If you want me to wear 37 pieces of flair
like you're pretty boy over there, Brian,
why don't you just make the minimum 37 pieces of flair?
This was Mike's first live-action movie.
Well, it started out as an animated short
that I'd done a long time ago.
And when I was doing that,
I was thinking of it more as possibly a TV show,
but just sort of a series of vignettes
about just office character types.
I finally said, well, what if Milton's a character in it?
If Sandra's going to listen to her headphones
while she's filing,
then I should be able to listen to the radio
while I'm collating. Uh-huh.
So I don't see why I should have turn down the radio.
Yeah, all right.
I'd love to say I created this character
and I started from scratch
and I wove this great, you know, invention.
None of that's true.
All of it was in the animation.
Everything down to the "yeahs" and the "greats"
and that kind of monotone voice.
So I just stole it with the director's permission.
I'm going to need you to go ahead and move your desk again.
So, well, if you could go ahead
and just get it as far back into that corner as possible,
that would be terrific. But...
That way we'll have some more room
for some of these boxes and things
we need to put in here.
I'm going to have to ask you
to go ahead and move your desk again.
So if you could go ahead
and get it as far back against that wall as possible,
that would be great.
No, no, because I just...
That way we'll have some room
for some of these boxes and things we need to put in here.
Then Fox said why don't you make a movie like "Car Wash,"
where it's just a bunch of people that work at this place.
And I thought, okay, I can do that.
And so I can't remember what the plot of "Car Wash" was.
I worked up this Owen Wilson impression,
and I was like, this is going to be great.
And I was rehearsing it out in the lobby.
And so it comes my time,
the door opens, Owen Wilson walks out.
So I go, shit.
I can't do a better impression
than Owen Wilson can do of Owen Wilson.
Hold it. This is getting confusing.
So in the doorway, I came up with the character of Lawrence,
of just a dude, you know, talks like this, whatever.
It was like literally
just what I came up with at that exact second.
Hey, she hasn't been over here in a while.
You two still going out?
Yeah, I guess. I don't know.
Sometimes I get the feeling like she's cheating on me.
Yeah, I get that feeling, too, man.
What do you mean by that?
I don't know, man.
I just get that feeling looking at her,
like she's the type of chick that would just... ugh.
I worked at Jack In The Box.
Whenever the manager would say, yeah, Mike, could you go ahead...
why don't you go ahead and change the fryers.
Like go ahead,
like I was just chomping at the bit to go do that.
And I'm just going to turn you loose on those fryers now,
so you just go ahead and change those fryers.
If you could just go ahead and make sure
you do that from now on, that would be great.
We're going to need to go ahead
and move you downstairs into storage B.
- No. - That sounds good, Peter.
And we'll go ahead and get this all fixed up for you.
The reason it works so well
is because everybody knows that guy.
He's just that annoying, passive aggressive...
He's a prick.
And I thought if nothing else,
if I can capture Gary Cole doing that character,
then I'll make this movie.
It'll at least be that, you know.
Yeah, I worked a bunch of different office jobs
and I got to see little pieces of all of them.
And I had stuff that was like mindless drudgery
and I had stuff where you see the politics.
That's really the other piece of the puzzle
as to why I got the part.
Ron was great.
The most challenging thing about that
was getting the studio to agree to make the movie with him
because, you know, he wasn't a big star.
I just thought he was a great actor.
I think by the time I had actually went in and auditioned,
they'd seen every single other actor in Hollywood,
many of whom I think would have been great in the movie,
but they couldn't meet
either the studio's criteria or Mike's criteria.
They were like, all right, fine.
You want the guy, take the guy. Go.
So I was sort of imagining
this like a young Charles Grodin vibe,
and Ron was one of the only people that played it that way.
And the other thing that happened, too,
that I'm really grateful for
was that when Jennifer Aniston agreed to do it,
it took a lot of the onus off of me
being a name that people would know, which I wasn't.
I want to take you out to dinner
and then I want to go back to my apartment and watch "Kung Fu."
Do you ever watch "Kung Fu?"
I love "Kung Fu."
Channel 39. Totally.
When I was working an engineering job,
one day we just said let's go try this TGI Fridays place,
and, God, the waiter, he was in the referee's shirt.
His voice just kept getting higher when he'd talk.
Like, what can I get you today?
It would be like...
So can I get you gentlemen something more to drink?
Or maybe something to nibble on,
some pizza shooters, shrimp poppers, or extreme fajitas?
Just coffee.
Okay. Sounds like a case of the Mondays.
It's just a nightmare come true.
Like a year later,
I hadn't thought about the movie since because it bombed.
And these two dudes are in like a pickup truck and they go...
they're looking at each other and they look over at me.
I'm like, hi, you know.
And they go, hey, what would you do with a million dollars?
I looked at them and I went...
Two chicks at the same time, man.
Two chicks at the same time, dude.
And they go, right on!
My favorite scene in the movie
is still the assault of the printer
in an open field to rap music.
One of the oddest complements we got on that scene
was a very, very scary looking individual
approached Dave Herman and just raved about that scene,
and at the end said, because that's exactly how it goes down.
You know, I was in Blockbuster
and I see this girl and her friend pick up "Office Space."
She goes, oh, my God, have you seen this?
Then I kind of followed them around
to see if they were really going to rent it.
And they did.
The 10th year reunion in Austin, we did a screening,
and then it was like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."
Everybody knew every line
and the peals of laughter pouring down.
I was like, oh, okay.
Now we're talking.
It was great. That was my journey.
There's something in that movie
that doesn't have anything to do with an office,
doesn't have anything to do with the workplace.
It really just has to do with the idea
of like what it is to be a human being
and seek enlightenment, you know.
And in a weird way, we were making...
Peter was a guy who we were making fun of him
as he was finding his version of enlightenment,
which was a really goofy version.
Here we are at the Mayflower Dog Show.
They come to the Mayflower with their crates,
their kibble, and their cookies.
And most important, with a will to win
that only a fellow dog can truly appreciate.
The Christopher Guest mockumentary "Best In Show,"
which is a comic masterpiece,
represent the triumph of the improvisatory style.
What's with the little plumber butt thing
happening on the hips there?
These pom-poms are keeping Butch's hips warm
from the cold water, the hip joints.
It's very important.
Chris Guest finds the insanity
behind what looks like ordinary things.
Get up. Get up, Jerry. No, no.
I kept saying, no, I can't dance.
I've got two left feet.
I thought he was kidding.
But when they tell me they love that movie,
I always ask, are you a dog person?
And the answer is usually yes.
She's fine. You know what? She's feeling chuffed.
She's feeling full of herself, aren't you?
And I think that comes from
knowing how you are about your dog, which is smart,
and how others are about their dogs,
which is really dumb, you know.
So it's that one more little kick of superiority
that we like.
What do you see in front of me?
You see a big blue ribbon.
It's right here in front of you.
You want it, you come and you grab it.
She's not listening to you. She's freaking out.
Well, get the Busy Bee.
What's more wonderful than loving dogs and raising them
and putting them into the Westminster Kennel Club,
and it's all elegance in its way.
And, of course, he goes back underneath it and reveals
that everybody who is involved in this thing is nuts.
I think anything is ripe for satire
if it takes itself very seriously.
You know, people say, oh, but he so much older then you.
And you know what?
We both have so much in common.
We both love soup.
Well, there was an outline of a script,
so you know the whole story.
He tells you what your character's going to be.
And I called the office,
I say, there's no lines in here for me.
They said, oh, it's just you and Jim are going to ad lib.
Stewardess, can I take a shih tzu on my carry-on
or does it have to be stowed?
Yes, that's an old joke,
but a good one nevertheless, yes.
It's a crowdpleaser.
So we filmed it in about four hours, our version of it.
I went to one of those of obedience places once.
It was all going well
till they spilled hot candle wax on my private parts.
And you don't know if the thing is going well
until, you know, Chris yells, all right, cut.
And then you hear laughter.
Fred doesn't use his turn signal.
So he's liable to go off this way,
and you better follow him.
Joe Garagiola was the actual color guy,
so Christopher had sent me a video.
It was a good ballclub.
We lost 112 games that year.
And suddenly I was in this temple of Joe Garagiola.
Oh, my God, he jumped on that woman
like she was made out of ham.
Oh, right around here. Let's try again.
This does not look good.
No, he went after her like she's made out of ham.
So at one point I repeated a joke twice on a second take.
He said, you said the same thing last year just inadvertently,
and it worked wonderfully because it meant
this was not the first year I'd worked with him.
And you'd imagine, he says,
oh, I've got to be stuck with this guy again.
And so it worked out great.
I don't think I could ever get used
to being probed and prodded.
I told my proctologist once,
hey, why don't you take me out to dinner
and a movie sometimes, you know.
Yes, yes, I remember you said that last year.
Oh, Jane Lynch, I think one of my favorite subtle lines.
She said her parents had a wonderful happy relationship
for 20 years until my mother committed suicide.
You know, she was there for the unconditional love.
And it worked for my family, you know,
until my mom committed suicide in '81.
Chris's character in "Best In Show,"
that's a lonely sack of shit, that guy.
Hey, Judge, look at me.
I mean, he's not a dog that's going to talk,
but his mind is like telepathy.
God bless Christopher Guest, because he hired you.
He could've got anyone, and let you do your own thing.
And you create your own character,
so if it doesn't go over, you don't say,
well, I wasn't really quite right for this role.
You have no one to blame.
Show it to somebody who's got a dog
and they'll see that movie over and over again.
Aah!
To this day, it's like mind blowing
that it had this kind of impact on people
and became a cult movie.
Yeah, it's a bowling comedy
about a bowler who could have been the best bowler of all time
and was struck down tragically early in his career
and had to come back and redeem himself later on.
It's basically "The Natural."
Conceptually, the whole notion
of this dimwitted ex-professional bowler
who's down on his luck and on the skids,
and he encounters this kind of Amish naif,
who it turns out has these gifts that he wants to bring
as his ticket back
in to the wild and prosperous world
of professional bowling.
Like, really?
It's both over the top and under the radar at the same time.
I think "Kingpin" was totally overlooked in the theaters.
I don't think it did very well,
and I think people just realize it's a very funny film.
For whatever reason, people just didn't go.
Roy Munson, a man child.
If he strikes, he's the 1979 Odor-Eater's champion.
He's got one foot in the frying pan
and one in the pressure cooker.
I can't say specifically why the movie became a cult movie.
If the movie had opened big like we had hoped it would,
then we wouldn't be sitting here
talking about it as a cult movie.
But the fact that it flopped so badly when it came out,
and then found an audience later.
It was number one on video four weeks in a row.
Yes, yes. No. No!
Hey. No way.
So it kind of happened fast, the cult status.
It was like six months later,
all of a sudden, everybody's watching "Kingpin."
I don't know what happened.
"Kingpin" had such heart,
and at the core I think was this human struggle
that I think everybody can relate to.
But he's also going through this internal struggle,
where he really I think wants to be a better person
and wants to make better choices.
And you see that journey from beginning to the end.
We are going to do what we set out to do.
We're going to win that tournament.
Yes! I knew it.
I knew you were a champion
the minute I saw you bowl, Ish.
I'm not going to bowl. You are.
The people who really get "Kingpin"
get that part of it as well as the funny.
And the combination of that is just kind of rare.
Woody Harrelson was my roommate when I moved to L.A.
I had known Woody for years before we did the movie.
We got Woody, we got Randy,
and we had not cast the Big Ern McCracken role.
We were talking to those guys
and said we'd like to get Bill Murray,
but we don't know how to reach him.
And Randy said, I have his number.
It's an 800 number.
He had already made a movie with him, so he said, call him.
See what'll happen.
We called him, we sent him the script.
Like two days later, he said, yeah, we'll do it.
Tanqueray and tap.
Keep 'em coming, sweets. I got a long drive.
Do me a favor, will you?
Would you mind washing off that perfume
before you come back to our table?
We're like, you're kidding.
He said, no, he's going to do it.
We said, well, what do we do?
He says, he's going to be here on the 23rd.
It's like, why?
Because you start shooting on the 24th.
Well, what about working out a deal?
He'll work it out when he gets here.
It was like that.
And we just had to take our chances.
But it's worth it, because, you know,
Bill Murray might come in the door.
And he did. He walked in the door
at exactly 11:00 in the morning
when he was supposed to be there on the 23rd.
He had plans.
He had brought his own bowling clothes.
He had the idea for the hair, you know.
He had thought the thing through,
and basically the producers got together with him
and cut a deal in about a half hour and he did it.
I had been following Vanessa Angel for a while,
believe it or not from the TV show "Weird Science."
She was on that, and I just thought she popped.
I didn't want to, you know, go with somebody
who just naturally looks like they're a ball breaker.
I wanted somebody who looks sweet
and could be a ball breaker, and so we got her.
And she came in and she was sensational.
Couldn't have been better.
Look, your act is about as fresh as a Foghat concert.
It really bites, Roy.
Bill Murray showed up
and we gave him the sides, you know,
which is the stuff you're going to shoot that day,
like five pages of what we're shooting that day.
And he looked at it and he goes, yeah, yeah, okay, I got it.
He threw it on the floor and I thought, oh, cripes.
This isn't good.
And he went on to nail everything
so much funnier than what we had written.
Oh! Watch the door.
Everything he did was ad libbed,
and it's the only time we've ever had that.
Jim Carrey sticks to the script, you know.
Everybody sticks to the script and then goes off.
Bill never stuck, and it was always better.
Hi. Hello.
Not you.
Hi. Hi.
We learned very quickly not to yell cut at the end of a scene
because, you know, normally, you know,
you let it roll a little and then you yell cut.
But Bill, you really got to open it up.
You got to yell cut when Bill gets up and leaves the set.
I think my favorite scene probably
when we're sitting in the car
and I kind of just, you know,
tap down the comb-over,
and I say, you know, you look really sharp.
How do I look? I don't know.
There's just something about that moment
that is just very real
and you can sort of see both their vulnerability
and it's very poignant.
Real sharp.
I do love the fight scene.
You've been rubbing your tits in that kid's face
from the moment we hooked up
so that you could steal him from me.
What?
Don't give me that "what" crap.
So I remember Peter came up to me, and he said,
we're going to build this like mechanical breast thing
that's going to move this way and that way
and he's going to like pummel it
and it's going to be really funny.
And I was like, really?
I just took a leap of faith
that it would look funny
and it would work and it did.
That was literally a mechanical thing,
where it had a wire
and the guy kind of made it move
from side to side and up and down.
Yeah, it was literally like a little machine.
Hello.
Oh, my God.
Claudia?
You two know each other?
It's a small world when you've got unbelievable tits, Roy.
When we got to the final, you know, match
and Bill gets up,
and he has to roll three strikes in a row.
I need you now. More than ever I need you.
Bill takes the ball, boom. Strike.
Place goes crazy.
Takes his time, comes up again, shoowp.
Strike. Place goes crazy.
I'm thinking this can't be happening.
Gets up again, third one.
The place exploded. It was like a real tournament.
People went crazy. They went nuts.
The crew was going, oh, my God.
And Bill was so proud of himself.
He was truly like, oh, oh, oh, you know.
It just couldn't have worked out better.
I'm Big Ern! I'm the greatest!
Roy's bigger victory is he gets self-esteem, pride,
you know, integrity, and his character back.
Woody was a horrific bowler. He was horrible.
We had him work with a couple of pros on form
and, you know, how to look like a bowler at least,
because he was just awful.
So we could film him and say, okay, you know,
this guy, he could possibly be a bowler.
He never got better. And we used to always...
whenever we're doing setups for the next shot, we'd bowl.
We're in a bowling alley.
We were in bowling alleys the whole time.
So as they're setting up down here,
we're down at the end, we're having bowling matches.
I actually threw a 233 one day,
and I had another game 213, I had a 207.
We're bowling all day long for two months, you know.
You get better.
I swear to you, Woody never broke 80.
But Bill Murray was excellent. Randy was a superstar.
Randy has a great curve, left-handed, big hook.
He was great.
You know, we'd only had one movie,
and that was "Dumb and Dumber," which did great.
And then "Kingpin" came out,
and we thought that it would do great.
We love that movie.
I thought if you did a movie that's good,
it's going to do great, and that's just not the way it is.
Sometimes movies fall through the cracks.
That's why you're doing this thing.
This is all cult movies that were great movies
that didn't do great.
Well, you're always afraid when a movie doesn't do well
that that's the end of your career, without question,
and that was a moment, yes, that was one of those moments.
Six months later, it came out on DVD or, you know, video
and started finding an audience,
and then we were allowed to do another movie.
I had an interesting thing happen.
About six months later when it came out on DVD,
I got a call from Geffen.
I don't know Geffen, okay.
He calls me at home,
and he says, hey, listen, I saw your movie "Kingpin."
And my buddy brought it over to the house
and he said he wants to play this bowling movie.
I told him, no way.
I'm not watching a bowling movie.
No, you've got to watch this.
He goes, I'm not watching a bowling movie.
You're watching the movie.
So we played it last night.
He goes, hysterical. Unbelievably good.
Yet I never, ever would have bought that movie
if you had pitched it to me.
So whatever you want to do next, I'll do it no matter what it is.
I said, awesome. Thank you, man.
I really appreciate it. Hung up.
About six months later,
we figured out we wanted to do "Something About Mary" next,
so I called him up, I pitched it to him, he passed.
That's how hard the movie business is.
We were five very close friends,
and we really wrote that movie together.
You want to take this one, Rob?
Hell, yeah. I bet you do.
Oh!
Wahoo!
It takes place on the Vermont/Canada border,
and it follows five Highway Patrolman
who patrol that area.
But there's so little crime and so little traffic up there
that they kind of make up games to amuse themselves.
How about Cat Game?
Cat Game? What's the record?
Thorny did six, but I think you can do 10.
10? Starting right meow?
Hurry up meow.
Sorry.
Is there something funny here, boy?
No, no, no.
Well, then why are you laughing, Mr. Larry Johnson?
All right, meow where were we?
I'm sorry. Are you saying meow?
Am I saying meow?
Last night I was at some fancy event.
They were in a tuxedo. I was in a tuxedo.
And they said, you know, essentially...
it goes some normal conversation followed by meow.
And you're just sitting there going, all right, okay.
Don't think, boy.
Meow, do you know how fast you're going?
Meow what is so damn funny?
I could've sworn you said meow.
Do I look like a cat to you, boy?
When someone would do the meow thing to me
where I would be like... like I would just think,
oh, this person smokes a lot of pot.
Because there was like this generation of college students
that didn't see it in theaters, but would consume the movie
and watch it over and over again.
Am I drinking milk from a saucer?
No.
Well, do you see me eating mice?
Now you stop laughing right meow.
But it was fascinating
to see the impact
and just how the impact didn't diminish.
But... No butts meow.
That's the law.
Not so funny meow, is it?
Meow.
You know, there's indies where like,
hey, there's someplace for you to sit down.
And then there's indies
where they're like we didn't think you might need a chair.
You know what I mean?
So it was one of those indies where they're like,
can you just stand over here
while we figure out what we're going to do?
We come up with the idea, and then we sit in a room
for about, you know, a month I'd say.
And, you know, we smoked joints.
Eventually you get towards what will be a story.
We shot the film near Poughkeepsie, New York.
And we lucked out
because there was a seven mile stretch of highway
that connected two other roads.
The Highway Patrol showed up
and the local police showed up at the same time
to shut down the exit.
And I was standing there,
and they're arguing over whose jurisdiction this was.
And the highway's like, this is the highway,
so we control the exit onto the highway.
The local guy's like, no, no, this is part of the town.
That's the highway.
It does? Oh, my God.
You want to go up there, fine, but we're shutting down this.
And so these guys are arguing and I'm like, that's our movie.
Back it up, Brady. I'm serious.
What's the point?
Didn't you guys get shut down already?
Oh, yeah, that's next week.
You've got to be careful what you write.
One, two, three.
Because you're going to have to do it.
Do it.
In the original syrup chugging scene,
we bought iced tea and we made it very, very thick.
But when you look at it on film,
it just looks like thick iced tea.
It doesn't have the viscosity that we needed.
We sent a production assistant to Kmart or something
and they came back with like 12 bottles of maple syrup.
I am all that is man.
You know, I drank 2 1/2 full bottles,
and because I'm the director,
I'd made Eric do more takes and I made him drink 3 1/2.
You know, if you ended up the day
and you had diabetes at the end of the day,
you're like, I get it.
After the scene, you know, I tried to go throw it up,
but Eric was coming out of the bathroom already.
He goes, it's not coming out. It's too thick.
We went to my trailer and we turned out the light
and we just laid on the ground and shivered for all lunch.
Just laid there shivering.
Because there's a reason
maple syrup is part of the master cleanse.
And, you know, I'll spare you the details,
but, I mean, I shat like a fossilized bird.
Like, you know, like a stick with a fully intact leaf.
You know, things
that I definitely don't remember eating,
but they came out whole.
I'll never do that again.
These boys get that syrup in them,
they get a little antsy in their pantsy.
You just can't keep them under control.
We had a laser disk of "Blade Runner."
There's that great scene
where Harrison Ford is like using that computer
to kind of dig deeper and enhance,
so we thought that would be a funny little gag.
Enhance.
Just print the damn thing!
I think what made "Super Troopers" a cult film favorite
is that we put energy into every second of it.
Dan Blocker, do you need assistance?
We just made a movie where we were cops.
We didn't expect it to go anywhere,
let alone go to Sundance and sell it.
We didn't think anything like that would happen.
All right, come on.
Oh, what is it now?
Oh.
Strange tattooed creature.
It broke every convention
while on the surface being very, very conventional.
It's so out there.
No one could have predicted
"Monty Python & The Holy Grail"
because the Monty Python we knew from television
worked in little bursts,
kind of one joke surreal sketches.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
No one thought they could string together
an entire feature.
The first thing people...
if you want to understand "The Holy Grail"
is that we had no idea what we were doing.
I mean, the plot is almost nonexistent.
The plot of "Monty Python & The Holy Grail"
is based on the Arthurian legend of finding the Holy Grail.
Arthur, King of the Britons.
Oh, don't grovel.
The one thing I can't stand is people groveling.
Sorry. And don't apologize!
I think "Monty Python & The Holy Grail"
changed movies because it was sort of the first movie
that was unabashedly silly
while taking itself incredibly seriously,
which is what their show did so well.
They do a whole movie where it's mostly just the five of them,
six of them, playing all the characters.
No more, no less.
And we just kind of go with it.
We're not like, but he was playing...
like you just kind of go with it.
They're all playing completely different people every scene.
I'm Arthur, King of the Britons.
Behold your humble servant, Sir Lancelot of Camelot.
Sir Galahad.
"Monty Python & The Holy Grail" is a cult classic
because we know it's funny,
it's satirical, but the movie's smart.
Look, my liege.
Camelot.
It's only a model. Shh.
Yeah, the coconut scene was absolutely crucial.
If Michael Palin had not written that,
there wouldn't have been the film
because the first draft,
we threw away the 90% of it.
It was scenes about King Arthur walking around Harrods
and going to the pet department to buy an ant as a pet.
I mean, we just threw out 90% of it.
But what we realized was solid gold
was this scene that Michael had written with the coconuts.
And that obviously because we couldn't afford horses.
We couldn't afford one horse.
So once we realized that that was the gold there,
the gold dust, then we sort of built around that time period.
But at the beginning, we didn't have that as a starting idea.
And they're showing you
the absurdity of politics and religion, the hypocrisy.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords
is no basis for a system of government.
Visually resourceful gags,
linguistically resourceful gags.
"The Castle of, argh..."
What is that?
He must have died while carving it.
Oh, come on.
Well, that's what it says.
Look, if he was dying,
he would bother to carve "argh."
Eric Idle's, which I later found out was an ad libbed line,
when he's being the "bring out your dead" guy.
Bring out your dead.
King Arthur walks by and he goes...
Who's that then? I don't know.
Must be a king. Why?
He hasn't got shit all over him.
They somehow or other made space in this movie
for every single bit of surreal silliness they possibly could.
Jesus Christ!
- Crimey! - Ow!
And I think it kind of showed
it could follow a very, very well trod formula
of like the King Arthur story
or the epic kind of medieval evil movie,
and yet have these insane cartoon cutaways into it.
By the time we started it,
we thought we had some really funny material.
And also, the two Terrys had directed it together.
They've got tremendous energy and dedication,
whereas Eric and I are lazy bastards
and get away with as little as we can, you know.
So the Terrys deserve a lot of praise
for actually getting it done.
Not a lot of people know this,
but the movie was actually funded by three rock bands.
Somebody discovered that the British government
had just brought in some legislation
to encourage British filmmaking,
which was basically a kind of tax dodge.
Led Zeppelin,
who was the biggest band in the world at the time,
Pink Floyd, who was cruising from "Dark Side Of The Moon,"
and then Genesis,
and they were all just super fans
of "Monty Python's Flying Circus."
And so they were like, yeah, you guys want to make a movie?
We'll put up this money.
We would love to see a movie like that.
I fart in your general direction.
The taunter came out of the fact
we discovered that there actually were taunters
in these medieval battles.
Your mother was a hamster
and your father smelled of elderberries.
Terry Gilliam believes
that the more difficulties there are,
the more people are squabbling and the worse the conditions,
then the better the art is.
I don't know how he came to that conclusion,
but he is quite batty.
What is your favorite color?
Blue. Right. Off you go.
Oh, thank you.
Comedy requires relaxation
because that's when people's timing gets better.
But we were young. We were young.
But we found this one castle, Doone castle.
D-double-O-N-E, I think.
And we use that at different angles,
so it played the part of several castles.
One of the things
that sometimes makes a cult movie take hold
is a scene of extreme gore.
And, of course, the Black Knight encounter,
that was the thing
that kids came out of that movie talking about,
that everybody was so shocked by.
They couldn't imagine slapstick and gore
paired together like that.
Now stand aside, worthy adversary.
'Tis but a scratch.
A scratch?
All right, we'll call it a draw.
The reason people love it so much
is that the first 50 minutes
is really funny, really funny.
And then I don't think it's so good after that.
I think it goes off a bit.
I love the scene where Michael
tries to tell Graham Chapman and Eric Idle
to keep his son in the room and not let him out.
That's one of my favorite scenes.
Wonderfully performed.
Make sure he doesn't leave.
The Prince?
Yes, make sure he doesn't leave.
Oh, yes, of course.
I thought you meant him.
You know, it seemed a bit daft,
me having to guard him when he's a guard.
Is that clear?
Oh, quite clear. No problems.
Right.
Where you going? We're coming with you.
The word we used more than anything else was silly.
If anything was really silly, we thought it was hilarious.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot.
It is a silly place.
Well, I think the reason you picked "Holy Grail"
is that you've made the same mistake
that American audiences have been making for decades.
You think it's much, much better than it is.
Right, sonny, that's enough. Just... Christ!
You want to start from the beginning?
"Beyond the Valley of the Dolls"
is beyond anything.
It is still almost the perfect movie if you watch it.
It never goes bad.
It gets better like a fine wine.
Every year it gets more and more jaw-dropping, you know.
Yeah, it's got everything.
It's got music, fast editing.
It's very modern, really.
Transgender, beheading, Manson, it has everything.
"Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," when it came out
was quite a scandal
because, you know, this was an X rated...
This and "Myra" came out around the same time
and both X rated and they were both from a big studio.
And hated by critics.
"Beyond the Valley of the Dolls"
exists in a very unique time and place in cinema,
and that is the very early seventies.
Absurd, satirical tragicomedy
about a group of naiïve girls.
They're part of a rock band called the Carrie Nations.
And come to California.
It really is an artifact of its era.
It really captured
what was going on in that particular moment.
I think it was destined for cult classic, you know.
I think Roger Ebert, the writer, even knew at the time
it was going to be something like that.
A lot of people in hot tubs
and a lot of people, you know, doing the frug and the shag.
Oh, they just banned my last film in Cincinnati.
Groovy town.
When I'm with you, pussycat, who needs grass?
You have to see it to believe it.
Of course, I nearly choked.
It's pretty cultish to begin with, isn't it?
And at this point, the old studio guard is falling apart.
They no longer really knew what the kids wanted to see.
The production code, which had been in effect from 1934,
was woefully out of date, and there's just really a sense
that you know, we had to push the envelope,
and in a counter cultural forward time,
that if you pushed it rightly, you would get this audience.
Giving an X rating to "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls"
was certainly the ticket.
It opened the doors for Joe Normal to go to an X movie
and not have to hide in a raincoat.
But in today's horrifying world,
it wouldn't have gotten an X rating.
He would have gotten an R rating.
Probably that helped to make it a cult classic
because when someone can't get something, they want it.
And it became a cult movie because it was discovered again.
I always wonder what it was like
for Roger Ebert in 1970 to be this famous film critic
and then to release a movie that is an X.
Roger Ebert, to put his name on a film that crazy
takes so much courage.
And Russ always used
some sort of theme running through his films
that was the social topic of the time.
I mean, in "Vixen," it was the Communist hijacking the plane.
And then "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,"
of course, it was the Manson.
That sort of ran through, you know, especially at the end.
I mean, it's hard not to see that.
What makes the movie fascinating to me
is that it's making fun of its time,
which is the late sixties, early seventies,
but it's actually being filmed during its time,
which makes it kind of one step ahead
or smarter than the films that it's spoofing.
And adds a very cautious layer of social satire.
No, in L.A.
- Where is that? - We'd get crushed.
- Not us. - Smog.
- Climb a tall tree. - Lousy traffic.
- Love to walk. - No culture.
- Grooves a lot. - Cold and cruel.
- Swimming pool. - Phony city.
- So pretty. - Religious nuts.
Not only a satire of Hollywood, it's a musical.
But it looks so much like, oh, cool.
This is going to be like a sixties
kind of like rock 'n' roll movie,
and it goes nuts almost immediately.
You're a groovy boy.
I'd like to strap you on sometime.
They just loved it
or thought it was a piece of trash.
If I could pick one actor from all of cult film history
and anoint him into leading man status,
I would absolutely do John Lazar.
- Ronnie Barzell? - You mean Z-Man Barzell?
I read that script and I just loved that character.
I mean, how about starting at the top?
This is my happening and it freaks me out.
Oh, it's a stone gas, man.
- Pray, we must make haste. - My time is not my own.
Before the clock strikes 12, I must be back at Forest Lawn.
When Z-Man gets a little testy, you know,
"you will drink the black sperm of my vengeance."
You will drink the black sperm of my vengeance.
When you look at what John Lazar
is pulling off in that movie,
he is running around in tights and quoting Shakespeare
and murdering people and being dangerous and sexy
and scary and powerful and charismatic.
I mean, that is a guy who I think could have done anything.
Or he at least could have had the best career
playing brilliant villains.
And indeed, it is not a game we play.
I am Superwoman.
I mean, I'm running around with tits and this sword
and there's drugs, rock 'n' roll, sex.
Oh, my God, no.
You've been a broad all along, right, Barzell?
A goddamn broad!
A goddamn ugly broad, Barzell!
An ugly broad!
No, Ronnie! No!
The scene that most people remember
was the scene where my head gets blown off by Z-Man.
Yes, it was a tough scene to shoot
first of all because the gun,
it was scraping the roof of my mouth.
The makeup man that won the awards for "Planet of the Apes"
is the one that made the mask
that they had tubes running through.
And they pushed down on the tubes
and then blood would squirt out my nose my mouth and my eyes.
Aah!
The outfit that Z-Man ends up giving me
when we take acid or whatever it is
was the original Julie Newmar Catwoman costume.
Casey, Cynthia, was given the Robin outfit.
- What? - A Ancient potion
by Merlin the magician, Boy Wonder.
Just add one part peyote and some other benign goodies.
It's only a small dose, Casey.
You know how Z-Man is.
That costume was carrying a lot of vibrations.
Russ was a very harsh director.
As I said, he was like a big teddy bear.
That he was very caring.
That he had a sense of humor.
You never said no to Russ ever.
I mean, the more hot the conditions,
the more terrible everything is,
that's what Russ thrived on.
That pushed him forward.
I think that came from his army days.
This was his big chance
because it was with 20th Century Fox.
"Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" from 20th Century Fox.
I'm very sensitive, and he would say,
I could replace you, you know.
One of his pet peeves is when actors blink.
He says, you blink, I cut away.
There was one scene at dinner,
and I'm eating like this and my eyes are like saucers.
And he's got these reflectors on you,
and you're like, hey, you know, like squinting your eyes.
And he's like, nope, cut.
You blinked again.
And then Russ wanted me to have an orgasm on screen,
and I'm like, Russ, it's hard to have an orgasm offscreen.
Just when I was supposed to be at that crucial moment,
then there's a scene
of somebody dripping pancake batter on a hot...
I am honored to be a part
of one of the greatest cult movies of all time.
And I would have never thought
that that would be sort of my legacy.
And here it is.
It's pretty good, right?
It's "all about Eve" set in Vegas, I always kind of...
But not as good.
That's terrible. That's a terrible thing to say.
I took a history of world cinema class in college,
and the professor for that course showed us "Showgirls"
and had written an essay about how the world will owe
everyone involved with it an apology
for trashing it when it first came out.
Paul Verhoeven's "Showgirls."
Written by Joe Eszterhas. What is the plot?
A young woman coming to the city trying to make good.
It's sort of sinful the way chocolate is sinful.
You can sit a little bit closer if you want.
The whole idea of "Showgirls" was an alluring thing.
There hadn't been anything done like that prior.
This brain-dead girl who goes to Vegas
and every cliché happens, including, you know,
getting laid in the swimming pool.
The satirical aspect to "Showgirls," you know,
it had some very biting moments to it.
My name's Penny.
- They want class, dumb - dumb.
They don't want to fuck a Penny.
They want to fuck a Heather or a Tiffany.
Honestly, when I first read the script,
it didn't seem as intense
as how the movie turned out in the end.
It's provocative.
This rag to riches girl,
you know, wanting to succeed.
I just hope that I can be as good as the show.
And then also taking them into a world
that they hadn't experienced from behind the scenes.
That's always interesting to see.
There's a message in the ravioli.
It fills you up.
There's still a lingering message,
a cautionary tale.
I don't know how good you are, darling,
and I don't know what it is you're good at.
But if it's at The Cheetah,
it's not dancing, I know that much.
You don't know shit.
When I first met Joe Eszterhas,
I think he thought I was crazy
because I was so into the part that I'd broken it down.
I'm like, I know what you did.
I was really into that Aphrodite myth.
I'm like, I'm Aphrodite,
she's Psyche, he's Cupid.
And I'm going into the whole mythology,
and he's looking at me, he's like,
I have no idea what you're talking about.
"Showgirls" became a cult picture
because it was failed seriousness,
but on a grand scale.
I mean, it was Paul Verhoeven with big production values.
He made "Basic Instinct," and this was like big time.
What makes anything a cult classic?
It's the fans.
You know, secretly in the back of my head
I thought, okay, the drag queens.
If I succeed in this part,
they'll want to dress like me for Halloween,
which they did, so I felt like I did my job.
I actually think that "Showgirls"
is sort of half camp and half a good movie.
I really like Elizabeth Berkley in it.
I think she has a genuine fury in that role,
and that's what makes the movie work.
Oh!
It kind of took on
a "Rocky Horror Picture" vibe
because all of a sudden
they were showing midnight viewings of "Showgirls"
where people would dress up and say the lines.
"Showgirls" being probably
the greatest example of a misfire by a studio
and then finding a devoted crowd in these repertory cinemas
that saw the film in a totally different way
than it was originally made.
You know, they kept calling me back and calling me back,
and I knew I was kind of nailing the audition.
And, you know, I'm in my character
and dressed up and all that,
and as soon as I did the kick,
I literally heard this like crrrrk!
And I thought, you know, oh, no.
If you show that you hurt yourself, you lost the gig.
And I don't know why I just like pulled
a total like Cristal diva moment.
"I just don't feel it. I'll come back and dance."
And they're like, what? And I'm like, yeah.
I'm not feeling it. And I just left.
It worked. I got the gig, you know.
I want you to meet Hope.
Like we were playing it so serious
instead of playing the comedy that's actually in the script.
They take it out, cum all over you,
call the bouncer unless he gives you a big tip.
If he gives you a big tip, it's okay.
Okay.
When I got the movie, I was really excited
because I was a huge fan of Paul's European films.
You know, I'm thinking,
oh, I'm going to go be in this Wagner concert,
you know, this Wagner-like opera, you know.
So I made Cristal pretty intense.
When I got to the set,
it was more kind of like a Britney Spears concert.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Stardust proudly presents
Miss Cristal Connors.
It was like Technicolor, you know.
And so I basically just did a 180,
and I changed my character.
You see, darling, you are a whore.
Bitch!
I just thought it was like kind of kitsch
and over the top and kind of funny and weird.
And then when it was very seriously, you know...
You can't take that movie too seriously.
I'm kind of dancing naked a little bit
and, you know, I'm hanging on by a rope in an S&M outfit
looking down at all these dancers
thinking, wow, like how did I get here?
Like I studied the classics.
Like I was supposed to do Chekhov.
I'm doing Tennessee Williams, you know.
I want to do Greek tragedies.
It's like, shit.
Do you like my nails?
People choose their friends
according to if you're in the "Showgirls" culture
and you understand the dialogue
and you can rattle off the scenes.
So I want my nipples to press,
but I don't want them to look like their levitating.
It has a whole new life now.
Dennis Miller, on one of his HBO specials
had said there are two great lines in all of film history.
There is "frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
"I could've been a contender."
Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront."
And "it must be weird not having somebody cum on you."
Thank you, Bobby Davi.
It must be weird not having anybody cum on you.
I wonder if in 1995
if anyone was going to review "Showgirls" fairly.
It's an NC-17 movie, so people feel dirty going in.
It's a film that's very extreme.
It's a film that's very bright.
It's a film that's very forward.
And I think it really didn't get a fair shake
because I think critically,
people were extremely afraid
to really deal with what it was.
I have to say, like to this day I cannot do an interview
without some of those same critics
saying, so what about "Showgirls?"
And it's like, wait a second.
Weren't you the guy who panned it?
Like if you hated it so much, why are we still discussing it?
I think the critics
want to have it both ways on "Showgirls."
I think they really... a lot of people do like it now,
but they don't want to admit it,
so it has to be a guilty pleasure.
It has to be so bad it's good.
There are a few of those Joe Eszterhas lines
that are definitely over the top.
If you want to last longer than a week,
you give me a blow job.
First I get you used to the money,
then I make you swallow.
At the box office, it wasn't number one
and it didn't make all the money back.
But it made how much? 100 million?
$100 million for the DVD sales and VHS.
It made a lot of money.
To me, the real tragedy
is that America could not really embrace "Showgirls"
in September of 1995 as the masterpiece that it is.
I was just hoping that it would launch my career,
and I didn't know it was going to stick around
and get stronger and stronger after 20-something years.
But then it turns out that...
that is my career.
Even no matter how much I work, it's always "Showgirls."
The "so bad, it's good" thing
really sort of came to a head with Ed Wood,
who was a filmmaker
who no one saw his movies except us kids,
who would watch "Plan 9 From Outer Space" on television.
But you have to admire the fact
that he was able to personalize something for himself
and turn it into these threadbare movies
that he actually got made and got released.
A lot of them.
- And a lot of them. - Yeah.
And he thought no one knew who he was,
which they kind of didn't while he was alive.
But then as soon as he passed away, just like Orson Welles,
as soon as he passed away, oh, we loved him.
We always loved him.
But the sensibility of the movie
is that what's funny about it is its attempts to be serious.
But is it outsider art? It almost is.
It is outsider art.
It is outsider art in a way.
It's like something that he didn't do that
to be in any way arty or humorous or anything.
He was dead serious about it,
but unhinged enough to not understand
that the rest of the world
didn't quite think the way he did.
Single-minded cluelessness.
That's right, that's right, that's right.
Greetings, my friend.
We are all interested in the future,
for that is where you and I
are going to spend the rest of our lives.
And remember, my friends, future events such as these
will affect you in the future.
Ed Wood should be remembered as sort of
one of the groundbreaking indie filmmakers in America.
The insanity of the whole thing.
I mean, he's trying to make an epic sci-fi movie.
Paper plates are spinning around pretending to be flying saucers.
I mean, it's just hilarious that he would do that.
I think "Plan 9 From Outer Space" is infectious.
"Plan 9 From Outer Space"
is Edward Wood's sci-fi invasion picture.
But last night I saw a flying object
that couldn't have possibly been from this planet.
A bunch of aliens show up on earth
and they use their powers to re-animate the dead,
who then start stalking the earth
and turning into kind of quasi-vampire sort of things?
I don't know. It's a little confusing.
They refuse our existence.
What plan will you follow now?
Plan 9.
Ah, yes, plan 9
deals with the resurrection of the dead.
You have the fact
that it went into the public domain rather early,
and therefore it's a free movie.
So one of the reasons people know it
is because people programmed it on television a lot,
and that added to its cult.
And what draws people to that movie,
I think there is the sort of Halloween,
do-it-yourself homemade-ness.
Either the dialogue is so ridiculous it throws you out.
Suppose that saucer or whatever it was
had something to do with this?
Your guess is as good as mine, Larry.
One thing sure.
Inspector Clay's dead and somebody's responsible.
Or the dialogue is so ridiculous
and the actors are so inept.
You see? You see?
Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
That's all I'm taking from you.
Get back here, you jerk!
What do you make of that?
You got me.
Didn't look that way a minute ago.
You know, so many people want to be filmmakers,
but they wait for someone to give them permission.
And that's part of the dilemma of being a filmmaker
is you need someone to give you money.
Ed didn't wait.
Ed went out and if he had 500 bucks,
he'd go shoot a day with Bela Lugosi coming out of his house.
There's no narrative there.
It's just Bela Lugosi coming out of his house.
Five years later, he'll turn that into a film.
The ever beautiful flowers
she had planted with her own hands
became nothing more than the lost roses of her cheeks.
What makes it a cult picture, it was Bela Lugosi's last film.
Watching Bela Lugosi
and knowing that he died before it was done.
All of us on this earth know that there's a time to live
and that there is a time to die.
And that there was a stand-in pretending to be Bela Lugosi.
And then when you have the information
it was actually Ed Wood's dentist,
who he dragged into the thing
because the guy just was so starstruck.
That kind of captures how Ed Wood
was probably the worst filmmaker of all time,
but in part because he was one of the most passionate.
He was trying to make great movies.
"Ed Wood" was the first biopic that Scott and I had written,
so we were insanely proud of the movie.
Cue Dr. Tom.
Now? Yes, now.
Lurking.
Be sure and keep your face covered.
Isn't it wonderful?
There was no way of knowing
when cinema was invented
that you and I would be able to connect in our brains
the idea of a shot over here, a shot over there cut together,
that we would make sense of it.
Well, thank you, Ed Wood,
for reminding us by virtue of his genius for ineptitude,
that this shot over here might not match this shot over here.
He breaks the continuity.
If an audience goes and sits down
and they're seeing a flying saucer movie
and you can clearly see the string of the flying saucer
dangling over the town,
that will make audiences roll their eyes.
It will make them check out of the movie.
And cut.
All right, friends, prepare for scene 32.
Mr. Wood, where's the cockpit set?
Your standing in it.
Trouble? Take a look for yourself.
What in the world?
That's nothing from this world.
You always hear these wacky things
about how he put together these horrible films,
but there was always this heart underneath it.
We always saw that the movie that we wrote, "Ed Wood,"
as a love story between him and Bela,
about what happens when you meet your hero.
Fuck you!
Karloff does not deserve to smell my shit!
That limey cocksucker can rot in hell for all I care.
And we thought that was something
that really gave "Ed Wood" a soul,
as opposed to just being a, you know,
a commentary on a guy who made bad films.
What we like to ask about our characters
is why will they be remembered?
And the two reasons why Ed Wood would be remembered
is one, is his relationship with Bela Lugosi,
and two is he made quote/unquote the worst movie of all time.
It gave us an ending, which the ending was
he makes the worst film of all time.
But according to Ed, it's the film he'll be remembered for,
and that's exactly what he is remembered for.
So it's that kind of epic cheapness
and the fact that there was
a genuine Hollywood legend involved in it
that makes it an irresistible kind of cult movie.
Well, you know, you can complain
about whether it is the worst film of all time
or is that unfair, but the bottom line,
that's what put him on the map.
And, so, you know, I think at the end of the day,
at least people are watching it.
And I think if people are watching it
and getting some enjoyment out of it,
it's not the worst film of all time.
Can you prove that it didn't happen?
"Glen or Glenda," his first film,
I mean, it's his expression
of what it was to be a cross-dresser in the 1950s
before anyone knew what this stuff was.
People.
All with their own thoughts, their own ideas.
One might say there but for the grace of God go I.
In some ways in the trans era,
that movie looks more and more bold and ahead of its time.
Glen is engaged to be married to Barbara,
a lovely, intelligent girl.
The problem? Glenda, Glen's other self.
He's not had the nerve to tell her.
Should he tell Barbara he's Glenda now before the wedding
or hit her between the eyes with it after,
when it might be too late for either of them?
I don't think it's fair
to call Ed Wood the worst director of all time.
I don't even think Ed's a bad director.
I mean, I actually think Ed's a very weird, strange director.
All right, everybody. Let's get set up for scene 112.
Move the crypt stage left,
and let's get Tor's makeup effect ready.
Mr. Wood, what do you think you're doing?
I'm directing.
Not like that, you're not.
There's no way to look at "Glen or Glenda"
and not see a man making a personal statement,
and almost an avant-garde personal statement.
He is starring, directing, writing this film,
and it's all about his personal dilemma
about being a transvestite in that time period.
And he's doing it with a narrative section of the movie
and he's doing it with these avant-garde sections.
I mean, it's incredibly strange,
and I actually think once you know the true story,
it's kind of impossible to laugh at it anymore.
What he was doing was totally outrageous,
but there's just this wonderful
naiïve earnest quality to that movie,
where he's saying accept me for who I am.
And there's no film technique
to get in between the audience and his plea.
So you just feel something very passionate and very pure,
and in its way kind of hilarious watching "Glen or Glenda."
It's the one Ed Wood movie
that I find I can go back to over and over again.
I guess like "Rocky Horror," we were, you know,
"Rocky Horror's" blonde headed stepchild.
I am thrilled
you can join me for the fabulous first night
of the St. Louis leg of my world tour.
A cult film has nothing to do with how good the film is,
even how popular it is, but it's how it became popular
and how strongly a certain group of people care about it.
Well, "Hedwig" is about an East German gay boy
who dreams of freedom.
He's on the communist side of Berlin in the eighties.
My name is Sergeant Luther Robinson.
My name is Hansel.
And he meets an American G.I.
who suggests a gender reassignment
so he can get married and get out of communist Germany.
You've got to leave something behind.
Aah!
He's kind of grifted and is left,
so has to pick herself up, now a woman,
not even wanting to be a woman,
write some songs, get a band together,
and try to save herself, try to define herself,
try to find out who she is.
It's a serious story about a transgender person,
and I think it appeals to people who are on the outside.
Because when it was originally done,
nobody was more on the outside.
And as times have changed and we're getting to the point
where people are actually fighting in the Supreme Court
to go to the bathroom they want to go to,
it's become more relevant.
From this milkless tit,
you sucked the very business we call show.
You know, "Hedwig" is pretty low and climbs up.
So it's about healing, healing trauma.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Why couldn't we...
Why don't you write a new song?
It's a rock 'n' roll concert at the heart of it,
so I think it combines all of those things.
It's a much more modern cult movie.
I really love when Hedwig sings "Wicked Little Town"
in a kind of Dunkin' Donuts to, you know,
four or five people who she may have tricked with.
And then you realize
that her lover Tommy is hiding behind some plant.
There's no dialogue in that scene.
I like how simple it is.
Yeah, you know, Stephen Trask, composer, and I
wanted to capture the energy of a real rock 'n' roll show.
So we did things in the film that made sense to us.
So recording live was important.
As an actor, I kind of burned out.
It was so hard that I quit acting for 15 years.
I just used everything I knew as an actor, as a singer,
as a performer, as a writer, as a director.
Our last day of shooting was 20 hours,
and we did the scene where they kiss for the first time.
Breathe through my mouth.
And Tommy says, "breathe through my mouth,"
which is something a lover said to me in the eighties.
But it was very romantic,
and the walls of the trailer part
open up like a diorama.
But things go wrong when he discovers the front of her,
which is her trauma, which is her complexity,
you know, the complexity of her life and gender and past.
It was too much for him.
Because he's running ultimately from the complexity of himself
as a person who could love someone that unique.
And I really do love that scene.
New Line knew...
their term was it's going to have shelflife,
so they knew to invest in a very expensive DVD
that had a ton of features.
We made a huge 90 minute "making of" thing.
There was a ton of stuff.
And they were right.
They make their money back and a profit.
We never saw a cent.
And people found it.
It also came out a few weeks before 9/11,
and many people later said
that they saw "Hedwig" on September 12th.
All the cinemas let everyone in for free that day,
and many, many people saw "Hedwig" that day in New York,
and they said it made them feel better.
And so it was connected to something that was traumatic.
It stayed alive because of DVD and midnight screenings
and the soundtrack.
The original movie will continue on, I suspect,
but "Hedwig" is very much on the money right now
because it's a huge issue.
My favorite cult films kind of shoot for the moon,
for popular success, and then they fail.
But then a certain group of people rediscovers it.
They kind of culture it, you know, like a garden,
and it has a long life.
It was always the truism, you know,
I'd rather be 10 people's favorite thing
than a million people's so-so thing.
And I truly believe that.
And if that's cult, then I'm cult, you know.
I'm happy with that.
"Female Trouble" came out. Was not a success.
It didn't open at midnight. It opened at a regular run.
And it didn't get great reviews.
People were disappointed
that it wasn't more hideous than "Pink Flamingos" or something.
But today, of my Divine movies,
I think it is by far the most popular one.
The people that yell the lines to me when I'm, you know...
all the people when they yell my own lines to me
when I'm walking down the street in New York,
and a girl says, I'm glad I got an abortion!
And I'm like, why did she just say that to me?
Oh, I wrote that. Hi. Thank you. Thank you.
"Female Trouble,"
which is his next film after "Pink Flamingos,"
in many ways much slicker, but just as sick and crazy.
I think "Female Trouble" is a true pinnacle
because there are all these great lines
like, who wants to die for art?
Who wants to be famous?
Who wants to die for art?
I do!
It stars Divine as Dawn Davenport,
and she begins as a child
in which she doesn't get her cha-cha heels for Christmas.
What are these?
Those are your new shoes, Dawn.
Those aren't the right kind.
I told you cha-cha heels, black ones.
Dawn grows up, has a family,
becomes kind of a sick individual,
having her face disfigured by acid.
I got something for your face, motherfucker!
Aah! Aah!
Divine becomes like crazier and uglier
and she's more beautiful.
Pretty-pretty?
Yes.
And ends up being electrocuted.
And she saw her death and the execution
as like being a positive experience for her.
My big moment in the electric chair.
Oh, you still think you're in a show, baby.
And she gives a little speech about...
almost like an acceptance speech.
I love every fucking one of you!
Aah!
I think "Female Trouble"
is one of the great cult films of all time
because I think John Waters
polished his act a little bit with the film.
It's a lot more professional, better sets.
Not better acting.
I'm going to live with the Hare Krishna people.
What did you say?
The Krishnas are love, mother.
Oh, God, I would have killed you at birth
had I thought you would even entertain such an idea.
More interesting and diverse characters.
The audiences ate it up.
I remember that kind of followed "Pink Flamingos."
That run ended and then "Female Trouble" started.
Some were disappointed
that it's not as shocking as "Pink Flamingos,"
but in many ways it's stranger.
Just as enjoyable, though.
Sexually repressed couple murders swingers and eats them.
That'll make them go see it.
I mean, I had to describe that movie a lot
to get people in the theater.
It was not a hit right away.
Paul Bartel had a really hard time
getting financing for this movie.
And I always thought
that the people that he kills off in the movie
represented the people who had turned him down.
- Aah! - Bam!
Scalpel. Scalpel.
Suture. Suture.
Frying pan.
"Eating Raoul" is one of my favorite movies
that I ever made.
The funny thing is is that he is a real doctor.
I recognize him from the hospital.
The reason why is because it's so incredibly different.
And I had a big part in it
because they let me do whatever I wanted.
This world is overflowing with millions of sexual freaks.
We're so lucky we found each other.
The appeal of somebody like Mary Woronov,
who is a cult actress, is discovery,
where you just say, hey, you know, I like that person.
Where have I seen her before?
"Eating Raoul," she's the lead.
Mary's a sweetheart.
She was one of the cult queens
of the 1970s and eighties
thanks to, you know, her work with Paul Bartel.
Did you ever do any acting?
I did some in high school.
Well, that's all it is is acting.
Lick my sneakers, you little worm.
See what I mean? It's easy.
Lick my sneaker, you little worm.
See? You're a natural.
It's a cannibal movie,
people eating people, murdering people.
Mary Woronov dressing up like a dominatrix,
and there's something very polite about this movie.
Hey, mister, get off her. Are you crazy?
I told you, man, I can't wait.
Which is contradictory to the subject matter,
and I think that's part of the appeal.
There's always this little air of sophistication element
to a real B horror movie topic.
We have to come up with $25,000 by Friday
or another couple is going to take the place
and turn it into a clinic for rich fat people.
He would call me up and he would say, oh, Mary,
I think we have the money to get it together again.
Do you think... Yeah, sure, Paul.
What are we doing?
Oh, do you remember... No, I don't.
Well, it doesn't matter really.
You'll just come down and we'll tell you what to do.
Okay, fine.
Don't be afraid.
Fear is a mind trap, baby.
What we fear is the past becoming the future.
What we really have is now.
I mean, the whole crew had parts in that movie
because we didn't have the time to hire an actor.
We never decorated the set.
That apartment we were in, a nut job lived there.
I mean, he was in love
with this certain fifties thing or something.
Mary, why don't we sell your mother's collection
of fabulous fifties furniture?
Oh, no, Paul.
You know mama only loaned it to us until she dies.
Then he didn't have any money to buy film.
You cannot work without film in the camera.
You have been earning money from an evil undertaking,
and if you keep it up,
you will burn for all eternity in hell.
Hey, sister, I'm in hell right now.
Nobody went to see that movie.
I mean, nobody.
I remember Paul, you know, was dragging me to the movie
because he didn't want to be alone.
Raoul, that's wonderful.
And then he would run around buying cookies
and then go down the line giving people little cookies
so they would stay in line and go to the movie.
I don't know. It was awful.
Paul, this isn't how we're supposed to be acting.
This somehow got word-of-mouth and got put as a midnight movie.
It's not like any other midnight movie
of the era and ever.
Very nice of you to ask us,
but we're actually into St. Bernards.
Oh, really? Wow.
Certainly "Eating Raoul" was on its own
because it wasn't really a horror movie.
I mean, we did eat someone. So what, you know.
There were jokes in it.
I hope you make this a permanent item on your menu.
It's French.
No, actually it's more Spanish.
Mmm, so tender.
It's funny, it's well-written, and we like these characters,
who are not the typical lead characters in movies.
And nobody ever, ever thought
of throwing a radiator into a hot pool
and killing like 25 people.
That's ridiculous. We did it.
Well, swing on this.
So you might be wondering
what's become of the cult movie today.
We've talked about the way it used to be,
and now are going to talk about the way it is now.
The fact is that there are still cult movies
and there are still midnight shows,
although not as many as there used to be.
But in keeping the tradition alive,
there is still a bunch of movies that have come out
that have their followings.
And there are even some, like "The Room,"
that are packing the theaters at night
with people who come and talk back to the screen
and throw things at the screen
and know the movie by heart.
There was laughter from beginning to end
at the level of absurdity.
Did you watch the whole thing? Did you make it to the end?
You have to. Yeah, you have to.
Because there's no payoff.
It is extraordinarily bad,
and you know that he didn't realize it as he was doing it,
and that's part of the joy of enjoying it.
And it's fantastic that he's now coming out
to all these sold-out theaters.
He's making appearances, saying, we knew it was...
Oh, you're so full of shit.
Holy shit, this is the best/worst movie I've ever seen.
Like it's like watching a snuff film to me,
you know what I mean?
It's just like the movie going terribly wrong.
It's so bad, it's wonderful.
- Hi, Doggie. - You're my favorite customer.
- Thanks a lot. Bye. - Bye-bye.
First, let me thank you for correcting
my decades long mispronunciation of his name.
I always thought it was Wise-oh, but it's Wiz-ow?
All right. Interesting.
I met Tommy Wiseau so in acting class.
He was writing, producing, directing,
starring in "The Room,"
and he came to me and I read the script
and he wanted me to play the role of Mark.
I used to know a girl. She had a dozen guys.
One of them found out about it, beat her up so bad
she ended up in a hospital on Guerrero Street.
What a story, Mark.
Yeah, you can say that again.
I don't think I've ever laughed as hard as I laughed
from the first 20 minutes of "The Room."
It's essentially about this guy named Johnny,
who's a creepy guy.
Hi, babe.
I have something for you.
What is it?
It's just a little something.
And he has this girlfriend
who keeps taking her top off for some reason.
All I have to do is put on my party dress.
They're about to get married,
and she ends up having an affair with his best friend,
and it's sort of like how Tommy reacts to it.
How could you do this to me?
I gave you seven years of my life.
And the movie's filled
with all sorts of ridiculous dialogue, non sequiturs,
continuity mistakes, horrible boring stock footage.
It's just an awful movie.
- Come on. - No.
- Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep. - Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep.
I didn't know what the story was.
Where you really want to get invested,
but then you're like, what is actually happening?
"The Room" is a movie you can't put down.
You know, some people think
that they're like watching a train wreck, so that's why.
But I think it's the passion, man.
I think it's watching some people
who know absolutely nothing about what they're doing
try to pull it off.
And in a sense, they succeed.
But those cats are no different than me and my friends.
Yeah, the cult of "The Room"
started with two young filmmakers.
One of them was going to USC
and they were... you know, they walked by the theater
and they saw a sign that said "No Refunds."
Like, okay, let's check this out.
And so they went in there, and within like 20 minutes,
they were calling people on their phone
saying this film's incredible. You've got to come see it.
You know, I had heard so much about "The Room,"
and I didn't want to watch it on DVD.
I wanted to experience it live,
because I heard that's the way to see it.
And I'm still thinking about it weeks later.
Not necessarily about the movie,
but about the experience of seeing it with an audience.
Fans took ownership of "The Room,"
and they've turned it into this experience
that we haven't really seen since "Rocky Horror."
Early cult films like "Rocky Horror Picture Show,"
you had to go to the theater to see it.
Later cult films like "The Room,"
maybe it becomes about audiences
needing that sense of being in a room together.
Oh, my gosh, now "The Room"
seems like the most symbolic name ever.
These people are shouting out lines.
They keep walking by for some reason
these framed pictures of spoons, so people yell, spoons! Spoons!
And they throw all these plastic spoons at the screen.
I was sitting on the second row,
so I was watching the whole movie like this.
I mean, you can't put the genie back in the bottle.
It's never going to be the way it was for us when we were kids
when there was a "Rocky Horror Picture Show."
But "The Room" got very, very close.
Like I remember going to the Laemmle
and people interacting with it
and being like, huh.
These kids are trying to play "Rocky Horror."
You know, when I found out
that "The Room" had celebrity fans,
my mind was blown.
I think Jonah Hill would attend screenings of "The Room"
back in like 2005, 2006.
David Cross would show up wearing a wig,
dressed up as Tommy.
The camp/cult following
happened for years before he would acknowledge,
oh, well, I meant it to be funny, which is a lie.
I think Tommy, first of all, as a writer
I think he thinks he's Tennessee Williams.
His goal with "The Room"
was to become the next Marlon Brando.
I think his "Lisa!"
I think that's all like "Streetcar Named Desire."
Hey, Stella!
You're tearing me apart, Lisa!
Well, I appreciate that he wanted to be
our generation's Marlon Brando.
We still had Marlon Brando,
but maybe he had just seen "The Island of Dr. Moreau"
and was like, I'm going to step in here.
I was in an acting class with Tommy.
If I had to describe his acting in as few words,
I would say...
For the making of this film, he was using scenes
that he had written in our scene study class.
Confusing.
You know, scene study classes work like this.
You know, you get up there, you do your scene,
you get off so the next actors can get up there
and do their thing. Not with Tommy.
Poor. Tommy comes in.
He sets all the lights up. He's setting it up.
Off.
He like basically kept our class hostage.
Nobody else could do their scenes
because he wouldn't get off the stage.
And he finally got kicked out of our class.
But that's not all, folks.
Arthritic.
Because he got kicked out...
Mild desperation.
He bought the building and kicked us out.
If he had set the bar here and said, you know,
I'm going to be this generation's
early Shia LaBeouf.
And then, you know, he's closer to that.
My favorite scene in "The Room"
would have to be the Chris-R scene
because I feel like it encapsulates
everything that's insane about the movie.
This drug dealer shows up for 30 seconds
and you have this, you know, ridiculous fight that occurs,
and then all of the characters
end up on the roof for no reason,
and then they all walk off together.
Where's my fucking money, Denny?
Put the gun down. Where's my fucking money?
Where's my fucking money, Denny?
Get off him.
Shit!
Get back, Denny. Shut up!
What's going on? Somebody help!
Shut up! Shut up!
Let's take him to the police.
You're fucking dead!
There's too many good scenes,
and every one of the iconic scenes,
you know, are great.
You know, the I did not hit her, I did not, I did not.
Oh, hi, Mark. I mean, that one.
I did that hit her. It's not true.
It's bullshit. I did not hit her.
I did not.
Oh, hi, Mark.
Well, as an actor, I think that line
is about as juicy as a line gets.
Sometimes less is more.
Sometimes more is more, and in that case, more is more.
I remember like watching "The Room"
become like, you know, an underground sensation.
If you knew, you knew, and if you're hip, oh, you loved it.
If you were in a big city, heavens, man.
And then I remember it got so serious
that they made a movie about it.
The set of the alleyway looks exactly like the real alleyway.
That's right.
Well, why don't we just shoot in the real alleyway?
Because it's a real Hollywood movie.
No, yeah, sounds good.
Okay. Action.
I did not hit her. I did not.
Oh, hi, Mark.
James Franco, he actually read the book first
and thought it was just a very, very insane Hollywood story.
He's the perfect guy to have adapted it.
I think "The Room" is one of the greatest cult films of all time
because it's done something that no other film has ever done
in the sense that it's played now in theaters for 15 years.
It never had any really any chance of making it.
It never had any help. It never had any stars.
And it's continued to screen around the world
just by the voice of the people.
I didn't see a bad movie. I saw passion.
You know, I saw "Clerks" when I saw that movie.
Those guys are all busting their ass,
and I guarantee you
they all thought it was going to be their big break,
because that's how you feel.
And I guess for some of them, you know, they're right.
It was.
People usually ask me, do you regret doing "The Room?"
And I always think, how could I?
You know, you could be in 10 films that are good
that would have never, you know, responded with people
the way this one does.
So at the end of the day,
it's about being in a film that people love.
They had a bit of a longer climb,
but wound up getting
a movie that lives in infamy.