FH Mini #69 - Gnome Named Gnorm Gnews, with Parker Bennett

[0:00] Hey, hey! Thanks so much for joining us! That's right, you have tuned in to The Peach Pit,

[0:09] and this is a special Peach Pit. This is the Peach Pit Pocket Edition, where we review

[0:13] a mini-episode of the Flophouse Podcast, one of their Flophouse Minis. As always, I'm your

[0:18] host Stuart Wellington, and today we're going to be talking about Flophouse Mini 67. We're

[0:24] doing a little special here. We're talking about a subsection of that mini-episode, where

[0:30] they talked about a little movie, A Gnome Named Norm. And joining me, I have some amazing

[0:35] guests. That's right, I have two of the hosts of the Flophouse Podcast, Dan McCoy, Elliot

[0:40] Kalin, and returning Flophouse featured guest, Parker Bennett. Thanks so much for joining

[0:46] me in the Peach Pit! Truly an honor. Yeah, it was. It's always a pleasure to discuss

[0:53] and discover that that's what we're doing. Now, should we refresh our listeners' memories

[0:59] about Parker, about our previous encounter with Mr. Bennett? Sure. So, one of the...

[1:08] Take us on a ride, take us on a ride. One of the... Listeners, buckle your seatbelts.

[1:13] One of the credited screenwriters for Super Mario Bros., starring Bob Hoskins and John

[1:21] Leguizamo. The movie, not the Nintendo game. Yeah. And Parker popped up in our live show

[1:29] for Super Mario Bros. in the chat, and we were shocked and a little bit scared that

[1:37] a writer of the movie we were ragging on showed up. But he joined us, talked to us a little

[1:44] bit. Could not have been nicer. Talked to us again on a mini about more Super Mario

[1:48] Bros. tales, but now it turns out... I feel like you slightly misrepresented the way we

[1:54] talked about Super Mario Bros. because you said that we ragged on it, but I think we

[1:57] all kind of liked it more than we expected to. No, no, no, that's true. It was fortunate

[2:02] that it was a movie that was wild in all the right ways. I don't know if I'd say all the

[2:08] right ways. It was wild in a few ways. All the right ways. No, I don't know if I'd say

[2:12] all the right, you know. I will say that a gnome named Norm makes Super Mario Bros. look

[2:18] like Citizen Kane. Wow! Now... So on the box, on the box, makers of Gnome Named Norm,

[2:26] just put dot, dot, dot, looks like Citizen Kane, and then say Parker Bennett. Now, I

[2:33] know, Stuart, I'm sorry. I don't want to take over the reins of the Peach Pit. What is this?

[2:40] The Peach Pit Returns? Pocket Edition? Pocket Edition. I don't want to... Stuart's referring

[2:49] to the famous fact that Peach Bits have pockets in them. And there's a pocket dimension inside

[2:54] of every peach. Now, I don't want to steal your job, but... You know what? That's part

[3:03] of the joy of the Peach Pit, is that everyone, like, we're a communal table. Everyone can

[3:07] eat, paying quotidian, you know, that kind of thing. You, uh... Again, this is directed

[3:14] to Parker, not Stuart, host of Peach Pit Pocket Edition. Thank you. Parker, now, you contacted

[3:21] me and let me know that you had a connection to a gnome named Norm. Now, how, what connection

[3:27] is this? What part did you play in this? Did you play the part of Norm, the titular gnome?

[3:35] I was involved... So, I am an uncredited punch-up writer on a gnome named Norm. So

[3:45] my writing partner, Terry Runte, and I, right after our first spec script sale of Mystery

[3:53] Date, we're looking for our next job, and our agent said, hey, there's a movie that's

[4:00] going into production. Would you guys be interested in doing a punch-up, doing a joke punch-up?

[4:05] It's being directed by Stan Winston, and we went, yeah, Stan Winston. He's, like, he's

[4:11] amazing. He's the, you know, guy who did all of our favorite effects. One of the handful

[4:16] of greatest special effects artists in the history of movies, I would go as far as to

[4:21] say. Name the others. Rick Baker. Rick Baker, sure, gotta be there. Ray Harryhausen, gotta

[4:27] be on top of that. Tom Savini. Douglas Trumbull. Yeah, Douglas Trumbull, Dennis Murin. Rob

[4:33] Poutine. Did you say Rob Poutine? Rob Poutine. Rob Poutine. The inventor of Poutine. Bob

[4:39] Botten. I don't know how. I'd say Steven Kostansky, director of Psycho Gorpion. Of course, our

[4:47] listener Todd Vaziri. Sure, yeah. And we're barely scratching the surface. There's, anyway,

[4:53] there's also, I forgot the name of the guy who did the special effects for The Invisible

[4:56] Man in the 30s, although I was just reading about him recently. That's an amazing movie

[5:00] to watch again. So, anyway, Stan Winston's directing it. You said this Hollywood legend,

[5:04] he's going to be directing this film. Director of Pumpkinhead. Yeah, well, this was exactly

[5:08] when Pumpkinhead had yet to come out, so we didn't, we weren't forewarned in any way.

[5:15] It's hard, well, Pumpkinhead took a while because it's hard to pass a pumpkinhead through

[5:18] the birth canal. It's an incredibly large head. It takes a lot of time. That's a C-section

[5:23] you're asking for. I gotta say, I like Pumpkinhead. Pumpkinhead has its qualities. Yeah, one of

[5:29] those qualities is named Lance Henriksen. I knew it. I knew Stuart was going to point

[5:33] to the Henrik. I got to introduce Pumpkinhead at the Alamo one time, and I was like, I really

[5:41] want to talk about how great Lance Henriksen is, but at the same time, like, I'm very nervous

[5:46] to look up any of his modern political beliefs, because he is an old man, and he looks like

[5:51] he might be crotchety and have problems, but I did not look up anything. I love him. I'll

[5:56] keep my head in the pumpkinhead sand, if you will. It also stars the dog from Gremlins,

[6:00] Pumpkinhead. It's Mushroom's other role. Stars? Well, he's a featured player. It says Lance

[6:07] Henriksen and Mushroom in Pumpkinhead. He's above the title on the poster. It says, and

[6:12] Mushroom as Benji at the end. How do you get into uncredited punch-up work? Because that

[6:18] sounds ideal to me. As someone who would also love to do that. You can get paid for it,

[6:23] but you don't have to take any of the blame for a gnome named Norm. How does one do this?

[6:28] I'll try to give you the advice that I give everyone, which is, you just have to get lucky.

[6:35] Yeah. You know, when you sell your first script and all your friends go, well, how do you

[6:40] do this? How do you get in to break into Hollywood? It's like, well, if you follow our path, we

[6:45] stumbled into an agent who was a book agent of one of our bosses in advertising, and he

[6:51] agreed to represent us on some rewrite job of a thing she was pitching. And then he wound

[6:59] up going to try at artists in LA from New York. And we kind of went along in his back

[7:05] pocket and we wrote a spec script and he and another agent. So this is Todd Harris and

[7:10] Bruce Kaufman managed to sell our spec script. But kind of again, stroke of luck, we had

[7:18] this Writers Guild strike that, you know, went on forever. And so there was this huge demand for

[7:23] material. This is the big Writers Guild strike in the late 80s. The real big, yeah, 88, 88, I guess.

[7:28] Okay. Yeah. And so after that happened, they went to work going, you know, here's the new

[7:34] pot advertising, you know, John Hughes. These are the, these are similar to John Hughes. You know,

[7:42] Harold Ramis, these guys are from Chicago and there's two of them. So two for one, it's a,

[7:49] it's a partnership. You can get two for one. That's some salesmanship right there. I like that.

[7:53] Yeah. And they, you know, they wrote, hey, Mystery Date, they wrote that in like three weeks. So you

[7:59] imagine what they could do for you and they're cheap right now. Yeah. Get them, get them while

[8:05] they're cheap. So we'd come out to LA to take a bunch of meetings and this wasn't one of them. So

[8:13] later on, we got a call, hey, you want to do this thing? And I had been a huge special effects nerd

[8:21] for the, you know, forever. Like I read Famous Monsters of Filmland and then Fangoria and then,

[8:27] you know, the big boys Cinefex. And so Sam Winson was, you know, like a hero. He at that point had

[8:34] done The Thing and, you know, Aliens and he'd done, oh, I can't even remember. You know, lots,

[8:44] lots of amazing stuff. He hadn't done T2 yet. Is The Thing the best monster effects of all time?

[8:49] I don't know. It's up there, right? It's right. You can't qualify. It's the spider legs. Oh,

[8:54] it's so gross. Certainly up there. It's still fucking gross. That's pretty impressive. Yeah.

[9:00] So we said, yeah, sure. And they said, you know, that'll be, you know, this is great. Two weeks of

[9:08] work. At that time, it was 12 grand, which, you know, was just like, oh my God, I would have paid

[9:15] them to do it. Yeah. And they flew us out. I'm glad your agent stepped in and stopped you from

[9:20] doing that. Yeah. Yeah. He stopped us from taking out a loan to pay them for a job.

[9:27] Stuart, I just want to pause for just half a second and let Stuart know that

[9:35] Winston's first Oscar nomination was for Heart Beeps. Oh, yeah. The Paul Schrader movie. No,

[9:42] again, not a Paul Schrader film. Oh man, I'll have to zip over to Facebook and see

[9:47] what Paul has to say about this. He's busy talking about why it's wrong to have any

[9:52] movies in the in the top 10 list of all time that aren't 100 years old. But I at this point.

[10:00] Stuart, I start believing that Paul Schrader made heartbeats.

[10:04] You've said it so many times now.

[10:07] And I'm like, I guess did he go straight from like American Gigolo to working on pre-production on heartbeats?

[10:12] I guess he did.

[10:13] Guys, I am a perfect example of just manifesting your wish, you know.

[10:20] Your wish is that he made heartbeats, okay.

[10:24] But sorry, I interrupted.

[10:25] Have you guys ever gone down the road of like, what if Paul Schrader had made heartbeats?

[10:29] No, and that's a very good question.

[10:31] That's a very good question.

[10:32] That sounds like the worst, like most specific 80s standup comic.

[10:37] You ever wonder if Paul Schrader made heartbeats?

[10:40] I think it would go something like this.

[10:42] It would go a little something like this.

[10:44] I'm a robot being faced with temptation.

[10:50] So they offered you this job.

[10:52] It's an amazing amount of money.

[10:53] They offered us this job.

[10:54] It was our first, you know, it was our first thing to work on that would actually be filmed.

[11:00] Because at the point, you know, when you make a spec sale, you have no idea.

[11:04] And Mystery Date actually took two and a half years of rewriting before it was turned into sort of a muddled mess.

[11:10] We'd written Mystery Date and we forgot to add a mystery.

[11:14] So we'd written this dark comedy.

[11:16] It was basically after hours for teens.

[11:19] And it was just this chaotic, you know, descent into nightmares.

[11:22] This guy is trying to make his date go well, but he's being mistaken for his psychopathic older brother.

[11:28] And so we made this really dark comedy.

[11:33] And they – Orion wouldn't cop to the fact that they didn't want to make a really dark comedy.

[11:38] So we kept asking, you know, well, is it okay that it's this dark?

[11:43] And our producer would keep saying, well, if you can make it work.

[11:48] And we kept believing her.

[11:50] Oh, no. That's code.

[11:53] For about two years.

[11:55] And then we finally gave up and sort of made it all a wacky misunderstanding about the dead body in the trunk because he took the car without permission, et cetera, et cetera.

[12:03] Ethan Hawke, early Ethan Hawke role.

[12:05] Yes.

[12:06] Recently on a podcast, disowned.

[12:10] Speaking of Paul Schrader.

[12:12] Speaking of Paul Schrader, who made one movie with Ethan Hawke.

[12:16] The famous duo of Ethan Hawke and Paul Schrader.

[12:19] Do you think on the set of Moon Knight, Ethan Hawke and Oscar Isaac talked about Paul Schrader?

[12:25] I bet you they did.

[12:27] I bet you they did.

[12:28] Because what else are they going to talk about on the set of Moon Knight?

[12:30] Not Moon Knight.

[12:31] That's for sure.

[12:32] Certainly not.

[12:33] I don't think anyone was talking about it on the set.

[12:36] I feel – like here's the thing about Oscar Isaac.

[12:38] Then we'll get back to this story, which is more interesting than what I'm going to say.

[12:40] Oscar Isaac has now played two different Marvel characters, and I feel like he is deserving of a better vehicle for him playing a Marvel character.

[12:46] He was Moon Knight and he was Apocalypse, and both – those are – and both times I feel like he was not super well served by the material.

[12:53] So who should he play?

[12:55] Interesting enough, the meeting where Oscar Isaac convinced Ethan Hawke to do the project over beers was at the Brooklyn Inn, and my friend was bartending that day and complained that Ethan Hawke didn't pay for his beer.

[13:09] Burn – he can get away with it.

[13:14] You know, whatever.

[13:15] Come on.

[13:16] He's the Oscar.

[13:17] So Oscar Isaac, who should he play?

[13:18] He's OK.

[13:19] Yeah.

[13:20] Now let's get back to the story.

[13:21] OK.

[13:22] Well, listeners, write in.

[13:23] Tell me who should Oscar Isaac play in the Marvel universe.

[13:25] I don't want – and don't tell me like Morth the Dead Teenager.

[13:28] Don't give me the super Z-list characters.

[13:30] Give me a solid character.

[13:32] Let's give the card counter himself the proper respect.

[13:36] Wait a minute.

[13:37] What if Marvel introduced a character called the card counter?

[13:39] The card counter.

[13:40] Yeah.

[13:41] Yeah.

[13:42] So Mystery Date is taking forever.

[13:43] Stan Winston is going to direct a gnome named Gnorm, and you're going to – and you're going to be brought into the project to give it that Bennett sparkle.

[13:51] Right.

[13:52] Bennett Runtay sparkle.

[13:53] I think at this point – well, I'm steadfastly –

[13:56] You can take all the credit.

[13:57] He's not here.

[13:58] I've managed to put off talking about a gnome named Gnorm.

[14:02] I guess it's probably time.

[14:04] So we showed up in L.A. to do this work, and Pumpkinhead was premiering.

[14:13] So we got to meet Stan at the premiere of Pumpkinhead at the Cinerama Dome.

[14:18] Oh, cool.

[14:19] Oh, man.

[14:20] Think of that red carpet.

[14:22] All the celebs.

[14:24] The sky was dark.

[14:25] All the stars were there.

[14:26] And we were not – we were not knocked out by Pumpkinhead.

[14:33] We were not big fans.

[14:34] We were a little perturbed by Pumpkinhead walking out and kind of wondering, you know, what are we going to say to Stan?

[14:42] And Terry's like, you're going to have to lie.

[14:45] Like that was not a good movie.

[14:49] You're going to have to lie a lot better than that.

[14:53] But our agent was with us, and he said, no, no, no.

[14:56] You don't have to lie.

[14:57] This is how it works.

[14:58] In Hollywood, you have to master the 100 percent noncommittal phrasing after something that you don't want to comment on.

[15:07] So you walk out and you go, what a movie, or something like that.

[15:10] Yeah, he gave us a lot of those examples, like only you.

[15:16] It's all up there on the screen.

[15:22] It certainly is.

[15:26] If people showed her their babies and she thought the baby was ugly, she would go, it's a baby.

[15:34] She couldn't bring herself to say, oh, what a cute baby.

[15:37] It's a pure factual statement with no value judgment.

[15:43] But luckily for us, we didn't have to master the 100 percent noncommittal noncompliment because Stan was – he was surrounded by swarms of supplicants.

[15:54] And we just waved and went our way.

[15:58] We met with him in his cool north – at this point, it was in Northridge.

[16:03] He had his workshop.

[16:06] I think it was Northridge.

[16:08] That sounds awesome.

[16:10] Yeah, and it's designed to impress.

[16:12] Like you walk in and there's the power loader from Aliens and the giant alien queen hovering over it.

[16:21] That's amazing.

[16:23] It's a fog machine to start any minute.

[16:26] Yeah, and there's a big sign that's like, come inside, you bitches.

[16:32] Various predators are spaced around and the thing – the head from the thing.

[16:41] Now, when you say predators, you mean living – you mean living big cats that Stan Wilson likes to have to keep his workers on their toes.

[16:49] They get this ready and a jaguar might leap at you at any moment.

[16:53] Or do you mean the predator, the special effects character?

[16:56] They seem docile, but no, I meant the special effects from the movie Predator.

[17:00] It's a framed copy of the Ice Cube album Predator.

[17:04] Multiples, multiples.

[17:06] Predator is a movie that Stan Winston basically saved because – I don't know if you guys have ever seen the footage before of the early alien costume that they were going to like mat out.

[17:15] And it looks so goofy.

[17:17] It's like Big Bird is taking down the mercenaries one by one and then they had to reshoot it with a much better costume.

[17:23] Now I got to look it up.

[17:25] It's worth looking into the history of Jean-Claude Van Damme in his one day playing the predator with this goofy costume on.

[17:33] I got to break in for the traditional – of course, this will be peppered with Stan Winston facts.

[17:39] Oh, as always.

[17:41] In 1983, Winston designed the Mr. Roboto face mask for the American rock group Styx.

[17:46] I forgot he did that for their album movie that they made.

[17:50] Yeah, so look out for another one.

[17:52] Not a design that really – not a design that holds up well.

[17:54] It's kind of a racist caricature.

[17:57] I do have to say I just googled original Predator costume and the first image is a sexy Velma costume.

[18:05] Yep, that's the thing.

[18:07] Originally it was a sexy Velma who was taking down the mercenaries.

[18:11] Probably should log out of my account before I do these things.

[18:15] So Stan Winston's workshop it sounds like is an amazing wonderland of our favorite film monsters and creatures.

[18:24] So this is – as anybody who has been involved in the entertainment industry, there's – it's sort of a bipolar experience where there's very – there's highs and there's lows and they sort of whiplash between them.

[18:38] So kind of a high like we're in this workshop and there's all these great things and the workers are working and then Stan wants – is so excited to show us the work in progress, the maquette of the gnome.

[18:53] And he's very, very, very excited because he's going to design something that is so unhuman-like that it's impossible that it could be a guy in a suit.

[19:06] So he's very excited about this work.

[19:08] It's going to be this million-dollar articulated animatronic puppet thing and it's going to be very convincing and nobody will – the body is going to be super skinny and the head is going to be kind of long and extended and there's no way that anybody could mistake this for a guy – a little guy in a suit.

[19:27] So that was his motivation.

[19:29] And then he showed us this thing and it looked like a drowned rat.

[19:35] It was this sort of elongated – yeah, ratty face.

[19:42] But was there any thought in your mind that it could be a guy in a suit?

[19:49] Yeah.

[19:52] Because it sounds like the mission was accomplished.

[19:56] Yeah.

[19:58] It had this weird, uncanny –

[20:00] I don't want to say valley, but because it was bigger than a valley, it was like a blast

[20:07] radius of uncanniness that was like the eyes were not real, but the teeth looked like they

[20:14] were just dentures that were put in and it was big ears.

[20:22] It was not cute.

[20:23] I was a little worried right away that this was not going to be a character that endeared

[20:27] itself to the audience.

[20:28] You're saying Sam Winston was so focused on whether he could do it, he never asked whether

[20:31] he should do it.

[20:32] Yeah, I think that's it.

[20:34] And then when you look at the movie, there's plenty of like guys in suits, like you got

[20:38] a lot of this close ups of, of, you know, of, of, of gnome feet and it's not clearly

[20:45] some person in a suit walking around.

[20:50] I haven't seen a gnome named Norm.

[20:52] I have, I definitely checked out some of the trailer and scenes after we discussed

[20:58] it, uh, on the flop house.

[21:01] And I was struck by how defiantly uncute it is.

[21:05] Like Stan Winston really just like, even though this is kind of ostensibly a family film,

[21:11] he's like, okay, I'm going to make a real creature here.

[21:14] It was just going to be living next to Anthony Michael Hall.

[21:17] And it was very disturbing.

[21:19] I would say it's a, it really seems like the, he took the gelflings from Dark Crystal

[21:25] and was like, how do we make them scary?

[21:28] Like how do we make those something that if a kid saw it under their bed, they would die

[21:31] of a heart attack?

[21:33] Well, I think this has always been the, the, um, the, the tension I think of our dark sensibilities

[21:42] and our wanting to do something more adult.

[21:46] And the fact that the source material sort of bends itself into kid territory, uh, is

[21:52] also present in Super Mario Brothers.

[21:53] So we, you know, we did this weird, dark, twisted thing that was, you know, this parallel

[21:59] world where everything's really, uh, violent and, and, uh, reptilian.

[22:05] And here we, we added a lot of things that shouldn't be in a kid's movie.

[22:09] We have like a chase with our hearse and a, you know, guy, a dead body falls out of

[22:15] the casket.

[22:16] Someone tries to give it mouth to mouth.

[22:19] Looking at the cast list on Wikipedia, it does mention that there's an actress who just

[22:21] plays Stripper, which is not usually something you see in a kid's movie.

[22:25] Yeah.

[22:26] I mean, it was, you know, I should go back to talk about this.

[22:29] It's also amazing.

[22:30] Wait, I should mention from the cast list, there's a character named Zadar, but it's

[22:32] not played by Robert Zadar.

[22:34] Robert Zadar plays a different character.

[22:36] So it seems like a missed opportunity.

[22:38] Robert Zadar plays Reggie, but sorry, but you're saying, so, okay, this, um, what was

[22:45] I saying?

[22:46] Well, I wanted to, I wanted to mention it.

[22:47] So we, we didn't write this script.

[22:49] This is a script.

[22:50] I was curious about that.

[22:51] How much, how much of the script was written when it got to you and what shape was it in

[22:54] and that kind of thing?

[22:55] Yeah.

[22:56] What were, yeah.

[22:57] So this was, this was ready to go.

[22:58] They were, you know, they were filming, they were building, you know, sets and designing

[23:01] gnomes.

[23:02] And, uh, they had yet to cast it at this point when we came in.

[23:07] Uh, but they were like, they had a start date.

[23:10] So, uh, I think they might've had Jerry Orbach, uh, already cast.

[23:16] And I think he, he might've been excited to go.

[23:18] He plays his first, possibly his first villain.

[23:21] I don't know, but he's like, you know, he's the standard cop.

[23:24] He's kind of a villainous character in, in the original off Broadway run of the Fantastics,

[23:30] I guess.

[23:32] He's a con man.

[23:33] So I don't know because it's an out and out villain, you know, there's something kind

[23:35] of whimsical about him and in the end he does help bring the lovers together.

[23:39] But you're right.

[23:40] Yeah.

[23:41] This is more of a, more of a villainous role than that one.

[23:43] The credited writers, uh, have credits, uh, on, uh, Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves as a

[23:49] screenwriters.

[23:50] Well, they went on to write and produce Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.

[23:52] Yeah.

[23:53] Yeah.

[23:54] I think Backdraft was maybe they were involved with that.

[23:57] Oh yeah.

[23:58] And now I'm looking at this now.

[23:59] Jerry Warbuck, his character name is Captain Stan Walton.

[24:01] I wonder if that was confusing on the set to have a Stan Winston and a Stan Walton in

[24:05] the same place.

[24:06] And a Zadar and a Zadar.

[24:08] There's so many, the movie should be about all the, the goofy mix-ups on the set of a

[24:12] gnome named Norm.

[24:13] I'm sure if you scroll down and look at the goofs, uh, you know, imagine if Robert Zadar

[24:21] showed up to Zadar's trailer, like imagine opening the door and Robert Zadar's there.

[24:27] That's wild.

[24:28] Yeah.

[24:29] And he's bringing Zabars with him.

[24:30] Well, that's just because he was so thoughtful, you know, he had a, he had a heart as big

[24:35] as his face.

[24:36] So, so I think it's hard to remember cause I didn't want to dig into the box that's,

[24:44] you know, four layers deep in an attic somewhere to find a script.

[24:49] We appreciate that for this episode of the Peach Pit Pocket Edition, you didn't go into

[24:53] your archives.

[24:54] I think that would have been too much.

[24:57] But I have a feeling that I vaguely in the back of my mind, cause it was 30 years ago.

[25:02] I think Penn Densham had written sort of a serious minded, you know, like it was, he

[25:08] took it very seriously.

[25:10] Penn Densham was there and John Watson are both British and Penn is a little bit Elvin.

[25:20] He's got a sort of, he's got a sort of that, that Elvish quality to him.

[25:25] And I think he related a little more seriously to creating the backstory of this gnomes world

[25:32] and they needed to get the lumen to bring it to the surface, to gather the sunlight,

[25:37] to bring down to the world.

[25:39] So we were brought in to basically undo all of that and make it jokey.

[25:44] And probably for the better, given that the gnome was not very convincing.

[25:50] Yeah.

[25:51] So your, so your first, like when you first approached a screenplay, you were, you were

[25:55] brought in to punch it up.

[25:57] Was it like a joke free or were the jokes just not working?

[26:01] What's going on?

[26:02] It was, uh, as I recall, it was pretty joke free.

[26:07] It was like joke light at any rate.

[26:10] So the first thing we do with that, that, you know, in that era, the first thing you

[26:13] do is you turn your lead character into Bill Murray.

[26:16] So we, we did that.

[26:20] It's like the way, the way now pretty much every lead character becomes Chris Pratt at

[26:24] a certain point in the process.

[26:25] Yeah.

[26:26] Yeah.

[26:27] That makes sense.

[26:28] Exactly.

[26:29] Again, the Super Mario connection.

[26:30] Well, cause it's just natural casting.

[26:32] Yeah.

[26:33] All roads lead back to Bowser's castle.

[26:36] Well, he built them.

[26:39] It makes sense.

[26:40] It's true.

[26:41] Yeah.

[26:42] So, so we, we wrote it sort of like, you know, like a wise, wise acre, wise cracking, you

[26:48] know, laid back kind of smooth talking detective, young detective.

[26:54] And uh, about a, I guess maybe three or four days into our process, they'd cast Anthony

[27:00] Michael Hall as the lead.

[27:03] And we were hopeful, but dubious.

[27:06] Yeah.

[27:08] We had actually met Anthony Heichel Hall.

[27:11] We were trying to get jobs at Saturday Night Live a few years, like maybe five years before

[27:17] and had visited the set and it was the year that it imploded essentially like, like they,

[27:25] this was the year they, they wound up firing everybody in the cast.

[27:28] So it was good.

[27:29] We didn't get the job because, and Al Franken stole some of our stuff.

[27:34] It was not a good experience.

[27:36] Stole some of your material or stole like things like your stuff out of our car.

[27:41] It was, it was, uh, I don't know that maybe, maybe that's too broad a word, but we had,

[27:48] we had come up with a sketch idea called that black girl that we wanted Denitra Vance to

[27:52] do.

[27:53] Cause she was a fellow Chicago and a fellow as someone from second city that we knew.

[27:58] And, uh, we pitched this idea to her and like maybe three weeks later it was on the

[28:05] air that she and Al Franken decided that that was a good idea.

[28:10] That's cause I was, he was a guest on the daily show once when I was a production assistant

[28:14] and I made a remark backstage that then he used a variant of in the interview and I was

[28:18] like, wait a minute.

[28:19] Really?

[28:20] Yeah.

[28:21] Wow.

[28:22] Wow.

[28:23] And he went on to a political career with no issues, right?

[28:27] He is now a very successful, continues to remain in the Senate.

[28:31] No issues at all with boundaries that had to, that he had to deal with this, uh, by

[28:35] the way.

[28:36] I mean, there are no goofs for a gnome named Norm or it's a perfect movie goofs, but there

[28:42] is no good news, but there's trivia filmed in 1988 received limited release in 1990 pulled

[28:50] from circulation and re-released in 92 I assume like the Manchurian candidate that was because

[28:55] of the Kennedy assassination, but yeah, they remembered, they remembered the Kennedy assassination

[29:01] and then they wanted to re-release it on the 29th anniversary.

[29:09] You probably already have a favorite animal.

[29:12] Maybe it's a powerful apex predator like the tiger or a cute and cuddly Panda.

[29:17] And those are great.

[29:18] But have you considered something a little more unconventional?

[29:21] Should I perhaps interest you in the Greenland shark, which can live for nearly 400 years

[29:27] or maybe the jewel wasp who performs brain surgery on cockroaches to control their minds?

[29:32] On just the zoo of us, we review animals by giving them ratings out of 10 in the categories

[29:37] of effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics.

[29:39] Listen with friends and family of all ages to find your new favorite animal with just

[29:44] the zoo of us on maximumfun.org or wherever you get podcasts.

[29:51] Hello, I'm a scuffing gouger countess.

[29:54] Travis?

[29:55] I'm judging everybody's manners.

[29:57] Oh no.

[29:58] Schwanners isn't judgy.

[30:00] about teaching you to be your best self and be a little more confident when you enter social

[30:04] situations that you don't understand and maybe also teach you a little bit about history you

[30:08] didn't know or give you interesting things to talk about at parties yeah like the secret life

[30:13] of emily post or like why wrist watches are the way that they are we can talk about table manners

[30:19] from the victorian era sure or what it's like to attend a regency ball yeah uh you can find all

[30:25] that and more if you listen to shmanners on maximum fun or wherever your podcasts come from

[30:32] i guess manner shmanners get it so you've probably heard about microdosing probably on this podcast

[30:40] if you're listening to this podcast you're a listener of this podcast you've probably heard

[30:45] about microdosing from me dan if not just know that all sorts of people are microdosing daily

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[31:44] that is microdose.com code flop and also the flop house is sponsored in spart in spart

[31:52] well in sparta maybe let's look at let's look at the map see what whether we're sponsored in sparta

[32:00] no we're sponsored in part by squarespace what is squarespace well my friend it is the all-in-one

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[33:23] first purchase of a website or domain so i did want to mention dan that i envy you that you have

[33:32] not seen a no name norm i tried to watch it again and uh really couldn't make it through it it was

[33:39] that's not a good i mean i'll tell you out of the the three of us i'm the one most likely to go out

[33:45] and seek it out so i haven't escaped yet but that's my own fault that's well i urge you and

[33:52] all of the listeners to just know it ahead of time this is a bad bad movie okay and this not

[33:59] no amount of no amount of convincing people is going to work elliot has done a presentation

[34:04] on the movie nuki like 40 times and every time i see him do this fucking thing people come up to

[34:10] him afterwards and they're like i can't wait to watch it and the whole point the whole point of

[34:15] the presentation is don't watch that movie is that yeah it's a it's the second worst movie i've ever

[34:20] seen and but i used when i used to every time every time people are like yeah yeah that's going

[34:25] to be hilarious i'm like no it's the good stuff that's the that's the pure stuff i used to i used

[34:31] to host a screening series in new york in a movie theater there and i would be like this is a great

[34:37] movie you've never seen it it's really fantastic you're gonna love it and i'd get minimal audiences

[34:41] but if i was like this movie is trash it is the worst thing i would sell out and it was just like

[34:47] there's a certain type of line around the block yeah food fight food yeah yep if we we could i

[34:56] bet we could sell out a screening of food fight oh of course we could i mean we routinely sell

[35:02] out shows that we do so i think hopefully becoming more for us yeah you added food fight to the mix

[35:09] yeah yeah stoppable otis and uh yeah madison square garden we're selling it out

[35:14] finally so so no name okay they had put us up we were in a we asked to be put up near the ocean

[35:23] because we're from chicago and they put us in the shoddy holiday inn in santa monica so they were

[35:30] like technically you're near the ocean and do you see it did you look at it and you went that's the

[35:34] biggest lake i ever seen and then and then the bellhop had to be like no no it's not a lake it's

[35:40] actually an ocean you went wow well i don't know if you have experienced this but coming from

[35:47] chicago the first time you hit la it's like it's prehistoric like there's these huge palm trees

[35:54] and spiky plants and there's it's very alien looking coming from the midwest where you have

[36:00] i feel like even coming from the east coast yeah like i've lived in la for five years now and when

[36:06] i'm driving it'll suddenly hit me that these enormous mountains are everywhere around me

[36:10] and it just strikes and i'm suddenly i'm like what is this am i am i in the bronx is there

[36:14] gonna be a rumble but like that but it's just just the fact that i'm surrounded you're surrounded by

[36:19] this this topography that is constantly reminding you how small you are which really helps the

[36:24] studios when they're dealing with us as writers that that the very geography is reminding us

[36:29] that we're nothing we're less than nothing but yeah it's a i i know exactly what you're talking

[36:33] about it just it feels like a different world when you come into it yeah and also if you're from the

[36:37] east coast or chicago it's like there's architecture there and things that were built before 1950

[36:44] so it's there's it's a very it was very alien place that it actually took us a long time to

[36:50] consider moving out here and terry never got the chance but i did and uh did it too late don't for

[36:58] all of you listening who want a career in hollywood come to hollywood don't try to do it

[37:02] from chicago only we were convinced like oh well you know there's harold ramis and john john hughes

[37:10] and tim kasarinsky there's people doing it from chicago and we thought we could do it but turns

[37:15] out not uh anyway we stole your stole your chance maybe yeah we uh started in on uh bill marying up

[37:25] the character and uh putting a little romance in and between uh between him and the the gnome

[37:32] right between him and yeah i think there's sort of some implied you know you don't tension yeah

[37:41] it was pulled from circulation because the sex scene was deemed too graphic

[37:46] that's it that's why it was pulled from 1990 to 1992 they had to wait for they were like it's not

[37:52] technically the 90s yet people aren't ready for it and then the culture culture hasn't caught up

[37:56] yeah so we we wrote a bunch of things in that we're just supposed to be in succion and you know

[38:04] have a the character would come in like when he's introduced he would come in sort of you know breeze

[38:10] in he's everybody's late and he's going to miss this mess up this big gig and and they're going

[38:15] to hand it over to his rival kaminsky um and he like shows up at the very last minute and sort of

[38:22] walks by kaminsky and kaminsky's grabbed a candy bar out of the vending machine and and he's supposed

[38:29] to pluck it out of his pocket with you know flair and say oh good my zagnut bar and so first of all

[38:38] stan stan wanted us to change it because he'd never heard of a zagnut bar

[38:42] uh so we weren't we weren't aware that this was a midwest thing and not a west coast thing

[38:50] um and so he was like you know this i've never heard of this thing and i don't we don't even

[38:55] know where to get them and you should change this to a snickers and terry and i were like

[39:02] no no no no no let us teach you about comedy snickers despite being actually a word that

[39:10] means laughter is not a funny word even though it has the hard k sound it sounds like product

[39:17] placement yeah but zag nut that's a that's a goofy candy bar so we called the uh he said na na and we

[39:27] terry called the leaf candy company in chicago and told them what we were trying to do and they

[39:33] sent two cases of zagnut bars nice now he's got no excuse i was hoping they wanted those reese's

[39:40] pieces money they'd seen the et thing go down yep sorry i was hoping you were gonna say that

[39:47] that he called the supreme court and and and justice thurgood marshall was like no

[39:52] zag nut is funnier i i rule

[39:57] but so so did so did it get it did the bars get

[40:00] in now that they have the cases there?

[40:01] Well, we got the cases and then we went around,

[40:04] because we were pranksters at that time being young,

[40:07] we put them in various spots where Stan would like

[40:12] stumble over them for days.

[40:15] So they were in his desk drawer and in his coat pocket

[40:18] and in his script binder and in the bookshelves.

[40:21] And so he would literally for days

[40:24] be running into Zagnut bars.

[40:27] And they've got a bright orange wrapper

[40:29] with a big Zagnut thing on it.

[40:32] And he finally relented.

[40:34] And yes, not only did it make it-

[40:35] I didn't realize this is a naturally occurring candy bar.

[40:37] It's everywhere.

[40:40] Not only did our beloved Zagnut bar make it into the movie,

[40:44] it's actually the last shot of the movie,

[40:46] which today would have been a mid credit sequence,

[40:49] but it's the rival character

[40:52] with like a pile of Zagnut bar wrappers at his feet.

[40:56] And the cleaning lady is like annoyed picking them up

[40:59] and he's stuffing another one in his mouth.

[41:02] So yes, Zagnut bars.

[41:04] Yeah, and of course they got that huge bump

[41:06] from a gnome named Norm.

[41:08] The Zagnut bar became the biggest-

[41:10] Inspired a bit in Beetlejuice, I believe.

[41:14] That's true.

[41:15] When we were all done,

[41:17] there was still like an entire case of Zagnut bars

[41:22] and we had driven.

[41:23] So this is the other thing when you're a young screenwriter

[41:27] we had worked into the deal.

[41:29] We get unrestricted first-class plane ticket out to LA.

[41:36] And so we immediately cashed those in

[41:39] and then drove from Chicago to LA

[41:42] with Terry's 1957 Dodge Cornette.

[41:48] And so we were driving back with this case of Zagnut bars

[41:52] and we were literally Johnny Zagnut bar.

[41:55] Every truck stop, every bar, every restaurant,

[41:59] every place we went,

[42:00] we just like handed out this coconut crusted goodness.

[42:06] Wow.

[42:07] People were very confused.

[42:08] So you did a real public service.

[42:09] I was worried that you were gonna say

[42:10] you cashed in the plane tickets

[42:12] and then spend it all on Zagnut bars

[42:14] so you'd have something to eat on the drive.

[42:16] And then you get to LA

[42:17] and suddenly you're overwhelmed with Zagnut bars.

[42:19] Oh, you could have saved that money.

[42:21] And this is why there's so many Zagnut bar trees

[42:26] between LA and Chicago.

[42:30] But it has to be said that Stan, he learned

[42:35] and then he turned around and he taught us some stuff too.

[42:38] So we were young screenwriters

[42:40] and he had some experience in the business.

[42:43] So he helped us understand a little bit

[42:45] about like how to write a car chase that he could film.

[42:49] Like we'd written a really funny car chase

[42:51] with a hearse and a bunch of jokes

[42:53] about the line of cars that were following the hearse

[42:57] being turned into a police chase

[43:00] because Anthony Michael Hall jumps into the hearse,

[43:02] commandeers the hearse.

[43:03] And then all of the mourners that are following

[43:06] have to go super fast on the streets of LA

[43:10] following this hearse.

[43:11] But we'd written in such a way

[43:13] that it wouldn't cut together.

[43:16] Like we wanted the, I think we wanted the coffin

[43:21] to fall out on a bridge

[43:23] and then like tip the heater over the bridge

[43:26] and then tip over.

[43:27] And it was stuff that he basically sat us down

[43:30] and showed us like, well, here, this wouldn't cut with this.

[43:33] That sounds great.

[43:33] So it was kind of a good little learning lesson.

[43:36] We were in our twenties, we needed to know stuff.

[43:39] Yeah.

[43:40] Yeah, the gnome was not convincing.

[43:43] We weren't on set.

[43:44] So we didn't see it be not convincing.

[43:46] We were in the horrid holiday inn.

[43:52] But they asked us to stick around for another week.

[43:55] And so we said, well, we'll stick around for another week.

[43:58] They wanted us to do it for no money,

[44:00] which I was all for.

[44:02] And our agents were like, no, no, no.

[44:04] To no money.

[44:06] No with a G, just like-

[44:07] To no money, Norm.

[44:08] Yeah, to no money.

[44:09] No, it's not.

[44:11] It's amazing how Hollywood still continues

[44:14] to want people to do things for no money.

[44:16] They're like, hey, we want to do a little bit

[44:19] of extra work for us, but guess what?

[44:20] Here's the fun part.

[44:21] You're doing it for free.

[44:22] You're going to enjoy this.

[44:24] There's a little twist on it.

[44:26] Well, because filmmaking studios

[44:30] are charitable organizations, right?

[44:32] Well, according to their legislature, it's not.

[44:33] Reporting profits, it's all-

[44:35] Who was it who wrote Men in Black

[44:37] and every year tweets about his-

[44:40] Ed Solomon, is that who did it?

[44:43] Oh, Men in Black.

[44:44] Yeah, Ed Solomon.

[44:45] Co-writer of Super Mario Brothers.

[44:47] Oh, right, right, right.

[44:48] That's right.

[44:49] And every year he tweets about how Men in Black,

[44:51] according to the reports sent in by the studio,

[44:53] still has yet to make a profit.

[44:54] Yeah.

[44:58] I forgot he was also-

[45:00] You were telling us at the time.

[45:01] You were telling us when we talked about

[45:01] Super Mario Brothers about how he,

[45:03] about the stuff that he had done on that.

[45:05] Anyway, all roads lead back to Super Mario Brothers.

[45:08] This is really amazing.

[45:10] It's really the central cultural moment

[45:12] of the 20th century.

[45:13] I think it's clear.

[45:14] It's a nexus.

[45:15] Yeah, sure.

[45:19] So, we were moved.

[45:22] Our agent negotiated a little more money for us

[45:25] and we got moved to the Hotel Shangri-La,

[45:27] which is actually right on the beach, which was nice.

[45:31] Although our room, of course, did not face the beach.

[45:34] It was facing inward, but.

[45:37] And yeah, so there-

[45:38] It actually had the ice machine in it.

[45:40] The windows actually opened onto a hallway

[45:43] inside the hotel.

[45:45] They were just posters of windows.

[45:48] I keep imagining like a groucho in a night at the opera

[45:51] where everybody else has these big suites

[45:53] and he goes to his room and it's like,

[45:54] there's a cot and there's pipes going through the walls

[45:57] and things like that.

[45:59] They put you up at the Shangri-La, finally.

[46:00] The Shangri-La, on the first night there,

[46:02] Terry goes to the bar and he picks up some dancer,

[46:06] professional dancer, and has sex with her on the rooftop

[46:10] while I'm writing gnome jokes.

[46:16] The life of a comedy writer, right guys?

[46:19] Yeah.

[46:20] Yeah, so Terry's sort of like the Stuart Wellington

[46:23] of our group, more of a combination of Elliot and Dan.

[46:30] Yeah.

[46:32] Yeah, so we stayed another week.

[46:36] The office assistant we'd befriended, Kealani,

[46:40] was lovely and we hung out with her.

[46:43] She's a sort of Polynesian, Hawaiian-born office assistant.

[46:48] She had an adorable daughter

[46:49] and we would hang out at her apartment

[46:52] and then she wanted to show us her screenplay.

[46:54] So we just learned right away, like,

[46:57] let's go back to Chicago where not everyone is working.

[47:01] Yeah.

[47:02] Everyone's working on a meat sandwich

[47:04] of some kind and they're always like,

[47:06] yeah, yeah, now we're friends.

[47:07] Let me show you this meat sandwich I've been working on.

[47:09] Give me your notes on this.

[47:12] Think you showed this to the right people?

[47:14] In all honesty, that meat sandwich

[47:16] is probably more exciting than most screenplays.

[47:19] Yeah, that's a good point, good point.

[47:21] That was a good book, Notes on a Meat Sandwich.

[47:28] It's much better than that movie, Hands on a Meat Sandwich,

[47:30] where whoever holds their hand on the sandwich

[47:33] the longest gets it.

[47:34] But by that point, do you really want that sandwich?

[47:35] Just sitting out for a long time.

[47:37] Yeah.

[47:38] Hands on a hard meat sandwich, because it's Thale.

[47:41] So then the only other, I think, big contribution I made

[47:45] to the lore of A Gnome Named Norm was I wrote the joke

[47:49] that the G in gnome is not silent.

[47:52] You did?

[47:53] It's gnome.

[47:54] Yeah, that was me.

[47:55] And then there was some confusion about the name

[47:57] and then it was, no, it's gnorm.

[47:59] And Anthony Michael Hall insists it's silent

[48:02] and the gnome says, no, it's gnot.

[48:05] And that was me.

[48:08] And it's an echo of a joke I would write later

[48:11] that Mario's last name is, of course, Mario,

[48:14] because it's the Mario Brothers.

[48:17] Which became canon, yeah.

[48:18] Yeah, no small contribution, that's pretty amazing.

[48:23] I like that you were directly responsible

[48:25] for people tweeting at Elliot to correct him

[48:29] that the gnome in A Gnome Named Norm

[48:33] is pronounced gnorm and gnome, so.

[48:37] Dan likes to stick his legion of followers on us.

[48:40] I don't stick anyone, I just love imagining

[48:45] that unwittingly, Parker is set into motion

[48:48] many years later.

[48:49] People tweeting at Elliot to tell him

[48:52] that he's mispronouncing the things in a movie

[48:56] that he's never seen that are mispronounced

[49:00] within the movie, so there was no possible way.

[49:02] Yeah, yeah, like Elliot was probably having a hard day,

[49:05] maybe he was dealing with some family stuff,

[49:07] some work stuff, and he's like, look,

[49:08] I'm gonna relax a little, I'm gonna turn to my refuge,

[49:11] Twitter, he opens it up.

[49:13] Oh, I have some notifications, perhaps I should

[49:16] look at these, looks at them.

[49:17] Or should I call them good notifications

[49:19] for no reason in particular.

[49:21] Yeah, not since A Sound of Thunder

[49:26] has a small incident in the past

[49:27] reaped such horrifying consequences in the future.

[49:33] That's lovely.

[49:34] So takeaways, takeaways from this experience.

[49:39] I forgot you were hosting an episode of The Peach Pit, Stu.

[49:44] If we come back to talking about this episode,

[49:47] when I come back to talk about The Thief and The Cobbler,

[49:51] are we gonna talk about this episode

[49:53] and it'll be The Peach Pit Pocket Pocket?

[49:59] This isn't a question.

[50:00] section of the podcast.

[50:02] You work on The Thief and the Cobbler?

[50:04] Yeah, I am very curious about your work on The Thief and the Cobbler.

[50:06] I saw you worked on that and that's like

[50:08] I feel like for years

[50:10] I grew up hearing about that as like

[50:12] the legendary

[50:14] missing work, basically.

[50:16] Yeah.

[50:18] I feel like I'm cursed

[50:20] in some ways.

[50:22] Yeah, I was about to say you're like the zealot of ill-fated

[50:24] projects.

[50:26] It seems like I'm almost the

[50:28] mascot of the Flophouse screenwriter

[50:30] potentially.

[50:32] Yeah, so

[50:34] The Thief and the Cobbler is another whole

[50:36] story, but basically it was

[50:38] it's a tragic story. I'm a huge

[50:40] Richard Williams fan.

[50:42] Jake Eberts, who

[50:44] produced Super Mario Brothers, one of the producers

[50:46] of Super Mario Brothers,

[50:48] asked us, kind of begged us

[50:50] like the movie had gone into

[50:54] it was taken away from

[50:56] Richard Williams. He'd kind of gone nuts

[50:58] and wasn't finishing

[51:00] it. So the Completion Bond Company took it

[51:02] over and they were

[51:04] redoing it. A Canadian

[51:06] animator was going to

[51:08] finish it up so they could

[51:10] release something.

[51:12] We should say for anyone who's not familiar with it

[51:14] we should say that The Thief and the Cobbler is

[51:16] an animated film that is

[51:18] the animation is astounding.

[51:20] It's gorgeous to look at.

[51:22] But did

[51:24] he try to do it all by himself?

[51:26] Or was it that it was just too ambitious

[51:28] the way they were trying?

[51:30] I don't know.

[51:32] He had a very

[51:36] at the time there was more experimentation

[51:38] going on in animation.

[51:40] I think he had a sort of yellow

[51:42] submarine idea where it was going to be really

[51:44] super trippy.

[51:46] His idea was there would be no

[51:48] dialogue. The character

[51:50] was named The Cobbler

[51:52] with a tack in his mouth.

[51:54] The tack would move up and down.

[51:56] I don't know if he was going to do

[51:58] peanuts trombones or

[52:00] I don't know what his thought was.

[52:02] He wanted to have

[52:04] basically this rich visual

[52:06] tapestry experience

[52:08] and it would fold in on itself

[52:10] and use all of the

[52:12] Arabian

[52:14] artwork

[52:16] sensibilities.

[52:18] He designed these amazing

[52:20] tank-like

[52:22] constructions that were

[52:24] sort of

[52:26] before steampunk.

[52:28] So he did all

[52:30] of this amazing work

[52:32] but it just was half done

[52:34] or three quarters done and he just

[52:36] kind of, I don't know, he couldn't

[52:38] get it finished and the Completion Bond Company

[52:40] took it away. We didn't know any of

[52:42] this. So again,

[52:44] we're sort of our hapless

[52:46] heroes.

[52:48] Jake, who we liked, we loved.

[52:50] He was a very kind

[52:52] gentleman. He said, you know, I really need

[52:54] somebody. We're going to add dialogue.

[52:56] We've hired the guys from Disney

[52:58] to write the songs.

[53:00] Howard Ashman

[53:02] and whoever he was partnered with. I think it was

[53:04] somebody different on this one. But anyway,

[53:06] we need to have some dialogue

[53:08] and can you help us out?

[53:10] And of course we were going to help

[53:12] our friend and we

[53:14] didn't realize we were ruining

[53:16] this vision

[53:18] of this visionary animator.

[53:20] So, yeah.

[53:22] So now I don't need to come back.

[53:24] This is great.

[53:26] No, we can figure out another reason.

[53:28] If people don't know Richard Williams

[53:30] though,

[53:32] most famously he was animation

[53:34] director for Who Framed Roger Rabbit

[53:36] but he was sort of a legendary

[53:38] animator.

[53:40] But I didn't realize this yet. It says on the trivia

[53:42] on IMDb that it holds the record for the longest

[53:44] production schedule of a completed feature movie.

[53:46] 28 years.

[53:48] Wow.

[53:50] At a certain point, I guess

[53:52] it makes sense they took away. Oh, that's too bad.

[53:54] Well, Hollywood,

[53:56] you've heard it.

[53:58] We've got to get this man on a movie that wins

[54:00] a lot of Oscars so he can come back and talk to us

[54:02] about that.

[54:04] I think what I

[54:06] take away from A Gnome Named Norm

[54:08] is that

[54:10] well,

[54:12] it was definitely a worthwhile

[54:14] experience for a young screenwriter to

[54:16] work with

[54:18] Stan Winston, to work on an actual production,

[54:20] to experience

[54:22] that

[54:24] pressure and the

[54:26] shoddy Holiday Inn.

[54:28] And

[54:30] it was a time

[54:32] that I kind of miss

[54:34] when the effects

[54:36] required

[54:38] more suspension of disbelief.

[54:40] Like you couldn't

[54:42] now, today, you could literally just put anything

[54:44] on the screen and computers could make it happen.

[54:46] And now AI will probably take it

[54:48] from here.

[54:50] And so at the time, it was like you

[54:52] had to be ingenious, and Stan was

[54:54] ingenious.

[54:56] So he

[54:58] failed in this particular instance

[55:00] to translate

[55:02] his genius to the

[55:04] gnome puppet.

[55:06] I think the character design let him down.

[55:08] I don't know if that was him

[55:10] or someone else.

[55:12] If you look at the credits, there's like

[55:14] a team of 30 or

[55:16] 40 puppeteers making

[55:18] this Norm puppet

[55:20] happen.

[55:22] At times, it's pretty convincing.

[55:24] At other times, it's just,

[55:26] Oh my God! What is that?

[55:28] Get it away!

[55:30] My eyes!

[55:32] Let me look not at the screen for a minute.

[55:34] I mean,

[55:36] even that could be seen as

[55:38] being too successful, maybe.

[55:40] Like you were saying with the design, like his original

[55:42] intention of, I want this to be

[55:44] impossible for anyone to think it

[55:46] was ever a human.

[55:48] Maybe that was too far

[55:50] in the wrong direction, since

[55:52] it seems like he could probably get away with a gnome

[55:54] that was just like a person with longer ears.

[55:56] No, I think

[55:58] what I'm taking from what you're saying is that

[56:00] there was a time

[56:02] where special effects required

[56:04] a lot more

[56:06] workarounds

[56:08] and some clever fixing

[56:10] and it seems

[56:12] like it required a certain art

[56:14] in order to be able to

[56:16] sell the idea of something.

[56:20] I think there's a lot of

[56:22] directors and special effects teams

[56:24] who are doing some really interesting work now,

[56:26] but there's also

[56:28] a lot of people working in big

[56:30] films who are just like,

[56:32] okay, yeah, we'll just let computers figure it all out

[56:34] and it shows.

[56:38] I think there's a lot of

[56:40] producers and directors who are

[56:42] like, yeah, yeah, the computers will handle that

[56:44] and don't realize that it means

[56:46] a team of human beings working

[56:48] very long hours up to

[56:50] the last minute to get it done.

[56:52] Whereas when you can see a physical thing,

[56:54] I'm sure a producer could be like,

[56:56] Stan, we need this done by this date.

[56:58] Or they could point to a puppet and be like,

[57:00] well, we've got to finish making this work.

[57:02] And they'd be like, okay, I can see that it's a real

[57:04] actual object that

[57:06] human hands are building.

[57:08] Whereas now it's easy to forget that it's still

[57:10] people doing the work, at least until

[57:12] the AI steps in and they can finally

[57:14] make everything look super

[57:16] smooth and kind of lit

[57:18] as if it's not quite dark

[57:20] and not quite light

[57:22] and people don't have pores anymore.

[57:24] The thing with

[57:26] the fact that computers can

[57:28] literally do anything

[57:30] given

[57:32] enough time and ingenuity.

[57:34] You say computers can do literally anything.

[57:36] Can a computer build a rock that was too heavy

[57:38] even for a computer to lift?

[57:40] That's actually a really good question.

[57:42] It can render a rock.

[57:44] Because computers can

[57:46] render whatever,

[57:48] I do think that a lot of people are just like,

[57:50] okay, because they can do whatever,

[57:52] then that's the answer

[57:54] to everything rather than being like

[57:56] a bunch of different

[57:58] techniques

[58:00] maybe is

[58:02] the way to go.

[58:04] I don't want the

[58:06] aforementioned Todd Vaziri

[58:08] to come out of the computer and slap me.

[58:10] It's too late. He's already mad at us.

[58:12] Yeah, he's already lawnmower manned into

[58:14] our podcast and he's slapping you.

[58:16] I'm just saying that

[58:18] clearly a

[58:20] grab bag of techniques

[58:22] sometimes is the answer.

[58:24] When

[58:26] directors think that

[58:28] there's a magic wand, then they can

[58:30] get into trouble because they don't

[58:32] understand what

[58:34] might look best.

[58:36] I would say that often

[58:38] the creative constraints

[58:40] help out a creative project.

[58:42] If you are restrained by a budget

[58:44] or you're restrained by it has to be a practical effect,

[58:46] you get clever.

[58:48] You can get more creative with it.

[58:50] In the case of A Gnome Named Norm,

[58:52] not.

[58:54] But it's possible. It's possible for someone

[58:56] to react in a clever way.

[58:58] I shouldn't say that.

[59:00] People work hard.

[59:02] How would the movie have turned out if the puppet

[59:04] hadn't worked like in Jaws and they had

[59:06] to just not show

[59:08] Gnorm?

[59:10] Well, we

[59:12] put off showing Gnorm as long as

[59:14] possible in the script.

[59:16] That's a standard way

[59:18] to approach your character.

[59:20] You want to have that Indiana Jones reveal.

[59:24] We don't see him in the...

[59:28] It is ironic that we're

[59:30] arguing in favor of

[59:32] practical effects on the

[59:34] Gnome Named Norm episode.

[59:36] It's a slender reed

[59:38] to hold this argument.

[59:42] Well, the special edition,

[59:44] the legacy

[59:46] effects will come and save

[59:48] this movie with post-production

[59:50] digital effects.

[59:52] You hand it to George Lucas and it's the same movie,

[59:54] but there's little robots flying around in the foreground

[59:56] and background.

[59:58] He's like, there, I fixed your movie.

[1:00:00] put on a little more stormtroopers in the back I noticed there was a scene

[1:00:04] where a character was doing something really cool so I had a Ronto walk in

[1:00:07] front of in the middle of the scene hey I'm noticing what time it is so we

[1:00:14] should probably wrap let me see up it's norm time that's right himself that

[1:00:21] would be incredible Parker I I interrupted you is it was there

[1:00:25] something last thing you want to say and also is there a plug I was I was

[1:00:28] stumbling toward a conclusion and I didn't reach it so let's let's just

[1:00:32] let's just leave it I think guys thanks so much there's been an amazing episode

[1:00:37] of the peach pit pocket edition focusing on a flophouse mini where we talked at

[1:00:42] length about a gnome named norm a movie that at the time we had not watched and

[1:00:47] it's so exciting that I had two of them host of the flophouse and Parker Bennett

[1:00:51] you've been such a treat tonight yeah I tried to ask for plugs does he have

[1:00:56] plugs of any kind well I will mention like I did last time my screenwriting

[1:01:03] partner who died Terry Ronte there's a site up that I tell the story of a gnome

[1:01:08] named norm a little bit more detail and about Super Mario Brothers and some of

[1:01:12] our other adventures in 90s Hollywood land at Terry Ronte comm t-r-r-y-r-u-n-t-e

[1:01:21] dot-com so over there and yes what about Terry please check it out

[1:01:28] Stuart continue wrapping us up so this this podcast is is temporarily on the

[1:01:35] max fund network what I'm talking about the peach pit is is a one-time thing

[1:01:43] normally the flop houses on here all the time I forgot I forgot that yeah the

[1:01:46] peach pit got purchased by Gimlet right yeah did we lose the fun from maximum

[1:01:52] yep it's just maximum so we it's actually now called maximum Bob based on

[1:02:01] a novel by James Elroy sorry by Elroy Leonard sorry Elmore Elmore oh yeah

[1:02:08] look it's late for me too I apologize I was thinking of Elroy Leonard was of

[1:02:12] course the Sun on the Jetsons mm-hmm and of course James Elroy it all you

[1:02:17] know and James Patterson so I also would like to thank our producer because he's

[1:02:24] your favorite author oh I like this I like the school of James Patterson when

[1:02:29] you buy it when you buy a book by him and it says attributed to the school of

[1:02:32] James Patterson they don't know which of his apprentices wrote it yeah so I would

[1:02:36] like to thank our producer Alexander Smith also known as Howell Doughty

[1:02:41] there's a there's a a hot contest going on to make a video out of our little

[1:02:48] music song I've been Stuart Wellington I've been Dan McCoy I've been Elroy

[1:02:55] Kaelin and joining us has been Parker Bennett we did it hooray

[1:03:01] maximumfund.org comedy and culture artists owned audience supported

FH Mini #69 - Gnome Named Gnorm Gnews, with Parker Bennett

Transcript

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