Site created 12/15/97.		page created: 7/16/00 DVD and the Filmmaker (transcript - Page 3) back to page 2 Maltin: Now have you worked, aside from Kentucky Fried Movie, have you done any preparation with any of your partners on any of your films? Zucker: Ah... we did The Naked Gun Trilogy, which is coming out July 15th - is that right? No August 15th. Maltin: Did you do commentaries for those? Or create some material to go along with that? David Zucker and John Landis Zucker: We didn't restore any footage from The Naked Guns - it just didn't come up. It's just the theatrical version. But on Kentucky Fried Movie, I had taken a home movie on the set with my 8mm sound camera, and we included that on the DVD. I think we brought in some old pictures that were taken on the set, and they threw that in. So it's a nice record of that. Landis: [laughs] It's too much information, actually. Romero: You know, I guess sometimes a work has its streamlined best. But it's so difficult in the filmmaking process to find that. And we go through the preview process, which basically serves the studio more than the filmmaker. I'm never quite certain, so I'm happy to have some of the missing material back and look at it and make a new judgement about it. Waters: Sometimes it works best if you put that material at the very end, where you don't have to put the whole plot that you cut out back in. That's what we did on Pink Flamingos - I didn't want to have to put it back in. But people have seen these films for so many years, they would like to see other scenes and parts of other scenes even if they aren't part of the final film. So we put it at the end, like an epilogue. And that made it much easier to watch, rather than torturing everyone with it. Actually, the plot of the film was torturous as it was. [audience laughs] Landis: You know... Starship Troopers - I'm the only one I know who liked that movie. I just watched the DVD. I remember I went to a big screening - like 1,100 people in this theater - and when the film ended I was like... [he starts clapping excitedly, then slowly stops looking around him embarrassed - audience laughs]. What can I say you know? I liked it. Paul's an interesting guy. But at the end of the DVD, they show deleted scenes. [to Waters] And that's how they did it - you could go to this section of deleted scenes. And it was interesting to see. But they should have been deleted. Maltin: I know there's an objection by some directors who don't have control over their films, to some of the archeological digs that have been done. I know the great Stanley Donen, who did so many of the great MGM musicals - he said the same thing about so many of the musical numbers that have been restored on laser and now on DVD. And he doesn't like airing his dirty laundry, so to speak - he'd rather keep it all in a vault. But as a buff you know, especially for those films, I'm hungry to see every frame. Are there things that you would want to keep hidden away? Are there segments that you think, "No... no one should see this." Landis: No. There's stuff I wish I had. I mean, the scenes that were cut out of Animal House - I had a part in the movie. And it was so traumatic to cut my hair to do it, but I thought the movie was long, so I cut me out of it. And I'd love to have all those scenes, just for sentimental value. But they're all gone. And I'd love - you know, in The Blues Brothers there were two songs that were just thrown away - finished numbers, cut negative. Maltin: Who was in those? Landis: John, Danny... the band. One was Sink the Bismark and the other was ???? [Editor's note - someone coughed on the tape at this point, and I couldn't make the title out. Which of course, being a huge fan of this film, is absolutely driving me nuts. Sink the Bismark is the only song mentioned as lost in the DVD liner notes. It sounds vaguely like Landis said Plutonium Women... any ideas?] And those are just gone. Maltin: That's a shame. Maybe some private collector will come out with it... Landis: No, they're gone. They were trashed. You know, studios used to throw everything out for a reason. One was to get back the silver out of the film. You know the incredible Ted Turner story... when they bought the MGM library, they went into the MGM lab - and this is absolutely true - they saw stacks of cans of negative. Here's the Gone With the Wind negatives - three stacks of cans. Here's The Wizard of Oz - three stacks of cans. But someone said, "Well... we only need one negative." So they threw all the other two away! It was three-strip Technicolor! And they just destroyed all this original negative - and this was just in 1970 something. It's all gone forever. So the good news about digital technology is that you can sort of restore that stuff and save it. Maltin: Well, they've been working hard at all of that. And again, that's something else that DVD is bringing to film. And that disc of The Big Sleep - have you seen that? With the alternate versions? And the explanation as to why that was changed - that's neat stuff. DVD is helping to save that. [to Minkoff] What about your Disney work, Rob? Have you seen any of the home video versions of those things? Minkoff: The home video? Or the DVD? Both actually. It's interesting, because when I started at Disney, that was before home video was popular. And I remember that there was a huge controversy about whether they should release the animated features on video at all. There was this sense that one of the ways that they kept those films alive was that they released those films in theaters again every seven years. But they ultimately ended up releasing them on video, and it completely changed the business as far as animation was concerned, because of the success of them. So one of the things it did was to actually drive the animation business - once all of the classics were released on video, there weren't any more left to release, so they had to make a bunch more. Ultimately, that started a renaissance in animation and kept a lot of people working. Rob Minkoff Maltin: And then there's all the direct-to-video sequels Disney's done. They did a Lion King sequel... Minkoff: [laughs] That I haven't seen. Maltin: It was your baby and you weren't involved, so it must be hard... Minkoff: Yeah, exactly. It's a little bit like you have a baby, and then suddenly it's been adopted. You get visitation rights but that's it. [laughter] Maltin: I should ask everybody what they're working on now - what other projects you've got in the hopper. [to Minkoff] Stuart Little I know was considered a big risk, monetarily as well as just building a whole digital studio at Sony just to do it - then it was successful beyond anyone's wildest dreams. So what's next? Minkoff: Work is being done on a sequel... Maltin: Will you be involved in that? Minkoff: Ah... ask my agent. It's still up in the air. I'm also working on a couple of different projects that are either live-action or have some kind of combination with animation. Maltin: Are you ready or willing to forsake animation now that you've had your first taste of live action? Minkoff: Wow... strange question. I suppose if you're asking whether I want to do just a completely live action movie... yes, I do. But I don't think I would consider that forsaking animation, though. Maltin: [to Waters] John, I know you have one film about to open, Cecil B. Demented. Tell us about that... Rob Minkoff and John Waters Waters: It stars Melanie Griffith and Stephen Dorff, Patricia Hearst, Mink Stole. It's about an insane underground film director [Romero cracks up] who kidnaps an A-list Hollywood movie star and forces him to be in his underground movie and they become terrorists against the movie business. [big audience laughter] Landis: [smiling] John, who does Patricia Hearst play? Waters: She's the mother of a terrorist. [huge laughter] Maltin: How many of your films as she been in now? Waters: She's been in Cry Baby, Serial Mom, Pecker and this one. Four. She's... I think she's a very good comedienne and a really great friend. Maltin: And have you got something else beyond that? Waters: Yeah... I'm beginning to write it. It's sort of a science fiction comedy movie about sex addicts called The Dirty Shame. [laughter] Maltin: We'll all be waiting. [more laughs] George? Romero: I just finished film called Brusier, which is a little personal film - European financed by Canal. It's a thriller - not a horror film, but I love it. It's a thriller about a guy who's a good soldier and he's just slogging through life, and he just gets shit on by everybody. And he loses his face one day - his identity and becomes this sort of phantom character in the fashion world, where faces are important. We just delivered it so we're waiting to see what will happen with it. I know it has a fall release date in Europe. And I'm working with the same studio and Steven King again on The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. [audience reacts excitedly] Maltin: I'm sure there will be a lot of anticipation for that. Romero: I hope so. It's not an obvious Steve project, but we're pretty excited about it. Maltin: When did you first work with Steven King? Was it Creepshow, or before that? Romero: Yeah... Creepshow was the first time we got a movie made. But we were hanging out for a while. We had all these plans. We were gonna do The Stand. I used to have this little public company called Laurel, and we had rights to several things - The Stand, Pet Cemetery and all that. And I wound up leaving the company and I lost those gigs. I've known Steve for a LONG time. Actually, Warner Bros. put us together. I had made a little film called Martin, and in the studio's logic, they said, "Well, that's about a vampire in a small town - we have this book that we just bought called Salem's Lot about a vampire in a small town. We should put these guys together." Landis: And they couldn't be more dissimilar too - Martin and Salem's Lot are totally different. [laughs] Martin's a really great movie, by the way. Maltin: [to Zucker] David? Zucker: Ah... I've been writing a couple of movies with Pat Proft, who I worked on all the Naked Guns with. And we just finished writing a movie called FBI Man 2000, which is about a Washington D.C. beat cop who dreams of being FBI, and ends up uncovering a plot by Milosovic to assassinate all the leaders of NATO at an ice show. [huge laughter from the audience] There's one exciting incident where he discovers a body lying face down in a park, and he rushes in and rolls the body over to see who it is and unfortunately the body is on top of a hill, so it rolls all the way down. [more laughs] And then we just finished that - so we're trying to cast that now - and then we're writing another one called The V.P., which is about a character that's Dan Quayle and Gerald Ford combined into one. About the Vice President of the U.S.. [even more laughter] Maltin: [laughing] Is it a docu-drama? Zucker: [nods, smiling] A docu-drama slash whatever. Landis: You know we're making a film of Dan Quayle's Vietnam experience, did you know that? It's called Full Dinner Jacket. [crowd laughs] Zucker: [deadpan] I did not know that. Maltin: And John, what's next for you? Landis: Well... I was gonna make a movie called FBI Man 2000 too, but I don't think... I mean, now that David's doing it... [more laughs] Actually, I just had for the first time a film fall apart, which I was doing with Joe Dante. So I'm depressed. [laughter] But actually, I got a script delivered to me on Friday - just as I was leaving for the airport to come here - so I'm gonna read it and if it's good, that's what I'm gonna do next. It's called Rules of the Road. Maltin: Some years ago, you were gonna make - and it sounded so great - a feature film of The Lone Ranger. Whatever happened to that? Landis: This is a true story that you will not believe. Which is that - you know when you're making a movie, you're very hot. And if it's a hit movie, you're very hot for that ten minutes. And you know the old quote that nobody knows anything? Well, the proof of that is that when there's a hit, suddenly they run to you like you know. So after Animal House, there was a man named Jack Rather - do you know Jack Rather? He owned Rin Tin Tin, Sky King, he owned the Queen Mary... Maltin: Sergeant Preston... Landis: Sergeant Preston of the Yukon - exactly - The Lone Ranger. He was the head of the Kitchen Cabinet for Governor Reagan. He was a Nazi, Jack Rather. [laughter] And I wanted to make a movie of The Lone Ranger so bad. And I went and met with Jack Rather - and this was after Animal House. And unfortunately, he saw Animal House before I met him. [more laughter] And I come in with long hair... it was like, forget it. It was a horror show. But what happened was, Jack Rather eventually sold everything he owned to Universal. And so I called Sid Sheinberg years later, and I said "You own The Lone Ranger - can I make it?" And he said, "Yeah, absolutely!" So I had George MacDonald Fraser, who wrote a couple of the James Bond films and the Flashman books - he wrote a brilliant screenplay for the film. Probably the best script I've ever had in my hands - I'm so excited. And then I get a call from Sheinberg who said, "This is the most embarrassing phone call I'll ever have to make. But guess what we don't own?" The studio had spent a million dollars... and they didn't own The Lone Ranger. So Universal owns this terrific script of The Lone Ranger and the Valley of Gold that no one can produce. And the rights went through several home video companies. And the people who own the rights now are Fox Family Films, who want to make a contemporary Lone Ranger. [many in the audience groan in dismay] So I'm not involved in that. Maltin: If there's a Heaven, someday you'll get to dig out that script and do that film. Landis: It's a great script. And I just - you know, 70mm Lone Ranger? I'm there. But oh well... Maltin: I'm gonna close with this. What film is there, that any of you guys would love to see on DVD, that's not out yet? Landis: Any film that's not in release I'd love to see. Abbot and Costello Meet Captain Kidd. I saw that on TV when I was a child and I love it. It's in litigation and you can't get it. That's the same with a lot of stuff. Any movie you can't get right now, I want to see. Waters: There's one movie that I tour film festivals with - it's never even come out on video it's so hated. But it's sort of my favorite failed art film. It's called Boom with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, directed by Joseph Losey, written by Tennessee Williams. It's one of the most staggering movies you've even seen in your life. It's quite a movie is all I can say. Maltin: So we should have a Boom: Special Edition with commentary by you... Waters: Yeah - I'd love to. I show it at film festivals and with all my praise, it still doesn't have a video release. So much for my clout. Romero: Who owns it? John Waters and George Romero Waters: Universal. And there's one print of it in the world. And I know where it is and I show it at film festivals a lot. And it goes over insanely. I mean like Rocky Horror Picture Show! Landis: You should call Anchor Bay. [audience applause] Maltin: [to Minkoff] Rob, anything you'd like to see? Minkoff: Yeah, I think if the collected shorts of Chuck Jones would come out on DVD, I'd be really happy. Maltin: Oh, that would be neat. I'm sure Warner is working on it. [to Romero] George? Romero: That's tough. Again, it's hard for me to remember what's on laser as opposed to what's on DVD. Maltin: You have a pretty large video collection? Romero: Pretty large, yeah. Waters: [to Romero] Is Monkey Shines available? I love that movie you did. Romero: I think it is yes. Landis: I have that laserdisc - love it. Maltin: [to Zucker] David, how about you? Zucker: You know, I'd love to see them do a collection of the most hilarious serious movies. Like Sincerely Yours with Liberace, The Corsican Brothers, Zero Hour - there are some wonderful serious movies that are just a riot. Maltin: There's an idea - put out Zero Hour with Airplane, because that's the movie you were spoofing... Romero: How 'bout Johnny Guitar - is that out? Maltin: Now, that's a good one too. I don't think it's out yet. Landis: Shlock is gonna be out on DVD from Anchor Bay. And that'll be in focus. [audience laughs] Maltin: [to audience] Well... I told you these guys were film buffs as well as filmmakers, and it's great being able to talk with them. So thanks for being here to share in our discussion. [to panel] And thank you all for being here today. [audience applause] --END--- The panel concludes. (back to VSDA 2000 menu)
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