The Cotton Club

Your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it is

nearly impossible to make them let alone a good one let alone a home run, ask swing well an attempt at a home run that's nearly bankrupts you but is it worth it because it's still pretty

“amazing at the end of the day I think so as always I am Chris one of our joined my co-host Lizzy”

Bass at Lizzy how are you doing and what have you brought for us today I'm doing great Chris and I'm very very excited to talk about today's film which is the Cotton Club before we dive into this at all I want you all to make sure you have gone back and listened to the episode we dropped on Friday which was an out of frame episode that covers in detail a murder which is directly affiliated with this film it also covers the investment that was tied to that murder so we're

not going to talk about it a ton in this episode because it was already discussed in that one so

please go back and listen to that one first before we dive in here Chris had you ever seen Francis Ford

Copel as the Cotton Club before or Francis Copel actually as he was originally credited on this and what was your reaction upon watching it for the podcast I had seen the Cotton Club not for probably 20 years or so I saw this in high school I want to say or middle school oh so then you saw

“the original yes I believe I did so this movie my dad's a fan of this movie my dad's a really”

big fan of tap dancing oddly enough and so I actually saw Gregory Heinz live at the Paramount in Seattle the year before he died well I think it was in 2002 I was looking online to try to figure out when he died in 2003 yeah so I think that was the last time he came to Seattle we saw Gregory Heinz we saw seven Glover a couple times stop obviously and stuff like that like a lot of rhythmic you know dance and stuff like that and so my dad and as I mentioned my dad loved

all that jazz and so the Cotton Club to me in my mind was always the godfather meets all that jazz

and I saw this movie I didn't like it as much as either of those movies growing up the godfather or all that jazz because while there are storylines in this movie that I love there are other storylines that feel like they don't completely work for me and we can get into the specifics of

“which ones rewatching it was really interesting because we just talked about sinners I think you can see”

some interesting parallels in the worlds the music explorations of race for example the mob the time period in something like sinners it also reminded me so much of or Babylon reminds me so much of this movie the Damienches Elephant also was a weird you know sort of not nail on the coffin of his career but a big career setback just like this movie was and this movie also it reminds me that there are kind of like two frances Ford copeless especially from let's say 68 to late 80s right

you have the mobster gritty realism oriented frances Ford copeless you have things like the conversation the godfather apocalypse now but then you've got you know one from the heart you know for example yes and you've got this you know Peggy Suga Mary later on and what's interesting about this movie is the tone really skirts with magical realism and and fantasy towards the end right with the wonderful sequence at the train station intercutting with the cotton club finale but it also tonally has a

bit of a fairy tale quality too even the way that someone like only madden is presented right Bob Hoskins character who's a real person I love Bob Hoskins in this yes we're gonna talk about him yeah and like he and Frenchy played by oh my gosh that actor is wonderful Fred Gwyn we're gonna talk about him too you know they have one of the most loving relationships in the entire movie I love those two I love the size difference I think that's great fun them in the urinal

discuss it so funny because of that and so this movie is one of those great attempts at a let's just call it an attempt at a grand slam and it ends up being a triple in my mind it's reaching for so much it does not entirely pull all of it off but the dance sequences are so good Gregory Heinz and his brother Maurice Heinz right are so good the recreations like the cab Callaway set pieces are so good Lynette McKee is so wonderful like her voice is so good Richard

gear is great I heard he does a lot of the music in this movie and maybe that's true maybe it's not true I found that impressive I will say the storyline doesn't work for me so like the Frenchy only madden storyline totally works for me the sandman and his brother the Heinz brothers

percent it's the Dixie Dwyer Varacicero story I don't care about them at all I don't care about them

I don't buy the romance I also think the only person who I do think is a little miscast is James Romar I don't 100% buy him as the sort of loose cannon character that you know we will later see

“played by a you know I think a Bobby kind of Ali and boardwalk empire or I think a Ben Foster in any”

number of movies and so again that ties into the Dixie Dwyer Varacicero storyline that component of the movie is the least compelling to me and that's arguably the central focus of the movie and so as I watch this I find myself more interested in everything going on around those characters than I am in those characters themselves even though I love the like I'm assuming it's a you know it's a George Raff's Scarface sort of riff that they're doing with Dixie Dwyer and whatnot and so I love

all of that time period and I've been reading this book called a genius of the system about the rise and fall of the studio system and Hollywood that ties in nicely with this movie but I think that the big flaw of the movie Lizzy is its focus on that particular storyline of Dixie Varac and the Dutchman because that's the least compelling part. I 100% agree we are going to very much discuss that today we will find out I think exactly why that storyline is what it is and why it

doesn't make a lick a sense at the middle of this movie. I don't agree with you on James Ramara

“I actually think he's great in this I think he's very fun to watch I think he doesn't work super well”

opposite Richard gear or Diane Lane but I don't really think that that's his fault and we'll get

into that a little bit as well so I had never seen the cotton club I had only ever heard that you know

this movie was a disaster it ruined Francis Ford Cople's career which as we'll find out today that's not really the career it tanked though it did very much tank someone's career so I watched it for the podcast and I got to say I loved it and I want to be very clear the version that Chris and I and that any of you who want to watch this and want to watch it streaming the only version as far as I can tell that you will be able to find is the cotton club on core which we're going to get into at the end

of this episode it is a re-cutting of the film by Francis Ford Cople had done almost 35 years after the movie came out we will discuss why we will discuss what is different about the two versions because there's some pretty massive differences and I'll just come right out at the top and say the biggest one Chris is that in the theatrical cut you don't get anywhere near as much time with Maurice and Gregory Hines you don't get anywhere near as much time with Laanette McKee we will

talk about what specifically was cut Lawrence Fishburn as bumpy roads was almost entirely excised from that version and he's got a fun turn in cotton club on core all which is to say that Chris today we're going to discover how a film which initially intended to showcase the absurdity of the cotton clubs racial segregation and highlight its black performers became instead

“a further subjugation of their talents hmm I really think Richard gear is terrible in this movie”

and I like Richard gear I shouldn't say terrible next to everyone else in this movie he just feels like a black hole of energy hmm I think I understand why I don't blame him for it I think he's a great actor I tend to prefer Richard gear when he's playing less of a romantic lead and more of a slime ball think Chicago think primal fear he's wonderful in those roles and honestly Chicago now in retrospect feels like maybe a little bit of a redo of the cotton club for him

and one in which he actually got to finally have fun and he is wonderful in that as Billy Flynn

he kind of has to play the streetman to everybody in this movie he does he doesn't have a fun part no I mean Nicholas Cage deliver what a great dipshit brother performances he has sees very fun right up there with Donald Kaufman and adaptation so I believe he's also based on a real person mad dog Mick and he does a great job you really think oh my god this guy is a doye idiot who does not understand what he's getting into it's interesting that he ends up eclipsing gear in the 90s in a big

way as an action star it's a little unexpected based on this movie but I agree with you Lizzy and I think like even opposite you know gear is going up against haskins and even James Romar has much more personality than gear is Dixie Dwyer well there's a very particular reason for that I think it has to do with how much Richard Gears style clashed with Francis Ford Copa style so let's get the basic info out of the way because we have a lot to get through here the cotton club was of course

directed by Francis Ford Copa initially credited as Francis Copa because he was starting to doubt himself Chris and he thought the Ford was a little pretentious but don't worry he put it back in produced by Robert Evans distributed by Orion pictures you will see a lion's gate at the top of the version that's streaming that has to do with them releasing the on-core screenplay by William Kennedy and Francis Ford Copa story by Mario Rosato so that man based on James haskins the cotton club

James Romar and did you catch the breaking bad reunion in non-speaking roles yeah John Carlo Esposito

“and Mark Margley is a who plays Hector Salabonca and breaking bad yeah he's he has a brief”

scene in here as well and there's also a Malcolm X reunion to Lannett McKee plays Malcolm's mother in Malcolm X and John Carlo Esposito plays one of his assassins at the end of that film as well yes shout out to David for spotting Hector Salamanca he could still scream for about 30 seconds it's brief the same was John Carlo he's like just in the background as one of bumpy guys he's so

young yeah it's fun to see as always the IMDB log line is meet the jazz musicians dancers

owners and guests like gangster Dutch shilts of the cotton club in 1928 to 1930s Harlem yeah that sums up the fact that there's not like really a plot really well that's not true there is a plot that I would like to follow it's not really the one that the movie follows so our main sources were today are of course Robert Evans is fabulous and ridiculous memoir the kids days in the picture as well as a wonderful 23-page in-depth investigation of the movie from New York magazine

in 1984 prior to its release and of course many many articles reviews and retrospectives now Chris I would like to set the scene for this episode with a deeply relevant and informative clip from another classic film you're doing here it's called cocaine and you don't want no pot of this shit it turns out your bad feelings in a good feelings it's a nightmare I'm thinking maybe I'd like to try

me some of that cocaine can't wait to cut to do it guys one of the most fun-derated movies of the last 25 years yes indeed and you know the cotton club is truly what happens when some very talented and powerful men say as doycox once did I think I'd like to try and be some of that cocaine according to the kids days in the picture Bob Evans said quote intrigue anger blackmailed seat pussy galore macho grandstanding backstabbing and threats to life in Korea plague the five

year making and near unmaking of the cotton club Chris we today get to revisit one of the most dysfunctional relationships Hollywood has ever seen between two insanely talented men who just could not get out of each other's way it is finally time to talk about the movie that almost ended Francis Ford Copa's career and absolutely destroyed Bob Evans's because after

the cotton club the kid was never in the picture again all right so as we've said today we are

discussing two divas we've talked about at length on the podcast before Robert or Bob Evans and Francis Ford Copa we've a lot to get through today I'm not going to rehash the early careers of

“either of them if you want to hear more about Copa go listen to our episode on Apocalypse now or”

Dracula if you want to learn more about old Bob Evans listen to our episode on Chinatown and if you want to refresher on how much these two absolutely hated each other go back and listen to our episode on the godfather but here's a little recap of what their relationship on that movie was like now Copa obviously co-wrote and directed Evans produced for paramount where he was the head of production and Evans was at minimum semi-responsible for bringing on Copa who was then

as I'm one of an unknown but he ended up pushing back against almost all of Copa's creative decisions including the casting of Al Pacino who he thought was a "little runt" one of their hottest

disputes was over Copa's original cut Copa always claimed Evans was on the side of people telling

him to cut way too much Evans says the opposite that he pushed Copa to add a crucial 30 minutes to the film and he also basically takes credit for the entire ending of the godfather in his memoir the kids days in the picture Evans said Francis and I have a perfect record we disagreed on everything

“now the truth is likely somewhere in the middle but it must be said Bob Evans not a reliable narrator”

very fun one but not reliable and frankly Francis for Copa same thing same thing so take everything in this episode with a grain of salt because it's coming from these two queens so let's get back to the godfather now Chris despite all of his work on the godfather and he truly almost killed himself making it what do you think bothered Bob Evans the most about the end result about the film itself has to do with how he's credited oh I mean since he's a studio executive

is he not credited on the movie that's correct he is not credited on the movie yeah which is so interesting because you know Bob Evans was basically plucked from obscurity by Norma Scherer who was Irving Thalberg's widow and Irving Thalberg famously that's what started the whole process of you know these studios executives didn't take credits on the movies he was the central producer at MGM and so he was overseeing every movie and he didn't take credits on the movies and so it's just

funny how Bob Evans is part of that legacy you know it's just interesting well he's on the other side of that legacy yes it was very upset that's true to this day right like so people at the studio

despite working on them around the clock that's what the money's for to quote on drape that's right

“so Evans left Paramount and went independent because he wanted his name in the credits and he”

got it on Chinatown in 1974 and marathon man in 1976 and to be clear while he was at Paramount Bob Evans had an absolutely insane run in terms of the movies that he produced but this time at the top while he was independent was brief because he followed these up with black sunday and players both of which were big time flappers haven't seen either of you don't need to in 1980 he was on the hunt for his next big hit and he thought surely he was on the rise again because he had already

had another movie in post-production with Paramount and Disney now he just needed a strong follow-up

and he found it the same way he found the godfather Chris a reviewer for publishers weekly named

George Wiser who moonlit as Evans literary scout George sent Evans a nonfiction book by author James Haskins called the cotton club about Harlem's legendary club of the same name and the book included

“quote unromantic details regarding the mobsters who ran it the African-American talent that made”

it famous and exciting and the troubles that brought it to a close here is a very very brief history on the real cotton club the cotton club was an iconic nightclub in Harlem and in case you can't tell by its name the whole premise was indeed a heightened high-end recreation of the Jim Crow South in which the performers were black but the audience was entirely white it was an exoticized version of segregation essentially the original iteration of the club was called club Deluxe and

it was actually opened in 1920 by Jack Johnson the first black heavyweight boxing champion who was designed as an intimate supper club none of the additional trappings were present but by 1922 it had effectively been taken over by notorious gangster Owen or O'Neigh Madden it was Madden who gave the club the racist facelift and by design turned it into the most popular cabaret in Harlem from 1922 to 1935 the cotton club was at its peak with artists like Ella Fitzgerald Louis Armstrong cab Calaway Duke

Gellington, Lena Horn and many many more becoming stars on its stage but following the Harlem

riots in 1935 the club moved locations and it then never managed to reclaim its earlier success

to Evans this was a no-brainer kind of an upstairs downstairs style drama set against the backdrop of segregation the mob the roaring 20s so he immediately said about trying to get the rights to the book but in May of 1980 Bob Evans got an unpleasant surprise he was arrested on charges of cocaine possession that's right yeah his brother Charlie and his brother in law Mike had been caught paying $19,000 for five ounces of cocaine unfortunately the gentleman they were buying

it from were federal agents I just like to imagine Paul read it for the beginning of our idiot

“brother when he gets tricked into selling the weeds to the cop and that's what Evans said Bob Evans”

brother at the beginning of the story 100% reportedly all three of them had agreed on a phone call to split the cost of the coke and unfortunately for Bob let's just hop on a quick three way call the discuss these numbers guys no unfortunately for Bob even though he had been 3000 miles away during the sale his frickin brother had named dropped him when allegedly trying to avoid jail time yeah is idiot brother yeah already a brother in his memoir Evans said quote pharmaceutical cocaine

was mythical manufactured by only one company in America murk it was obtainable to the outside world by only heist so mythical was it's a lure that it became the DEA's most effective bait to entrap schmuck buyers like my brother that's my best bob Evans by the way yeah my brother exactly as for the question of whether it was going to affect his career bob Evans said quote paramount the company I'd saved from the graveyard gave a statement to the press concerning my new

infamy Evans is not an employee of paramount and has not been an employee of paramount for four years he is an independent contractor producing pictures for us suddenly the media coined a new middle name for me bob cocaine Evans nothing travels faster than runchi gossip and on July 31 Bob cocaine Evans did indeed plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge on possession he avoided jail time but as a condition of his probation he was required by the judge to use his quote unique talents

where others have failed in this horrible thing of drug abuse by children and Chris the result I don't know if you ever seen this was an absolutely batshit bonkers anti drug special called get high on yourself oh man I would like to watch a little bit oh man yeah this is well this is probably right before the Nancy Reagan sort of anti drug campaign stuff that would come into play in the mid 80s it's the timing's great it's the 1981 get high on yourself here we go

owned and you make them up your own home and you make them up your own home and you make them up your own

“style be yourself be yourself all right that's enough it's insane I love it”

Kerber net popo be in yourself be in yourself be in yourself meanwhile Bob Evans is just sorting line after line of cocaine in the background that is Bob Evans being himself yeah that's true

after seven months of negotiations the New York Times reported that cocaine Bob had finally

purchased the rights to the cotton club for $350,000 and that same article also said that Evans had already secured private financing for the film in reality paramount was still waiting in the wings to take on the project but they were waiting because they wanted to see how that little Disney movie that they'd made with Evans was gonna do at the box office wait which one was it was it the black cauldron no it's so much worse it's a Disney in paramount movie produced by

Robert Evans Disney in paramount we've covered it oh pop by it's pop by which is the cocaine

“riddled production yes it is oh I totally forgot Robert Altman yeah the pop by production”

listen to our episode cocaine mannequins shipped to Malta very excited that's right wonder if he had some of those cocaine mannequins on set to be in your self be in his costume of mannequins and like cocaine shooting out of this yeah yeah yeah some unfortunately but they were waiting on the success of was pop by and the very same day that that New York Times article reported on the cotton club pop by opened in theaters and of course it's even more tied to pop by because Robert Altman was

on board to direct the cotton club as well oh that's so interesting Robert Altman's actually a really interesting better voice potentially maybe yeah he well Nashville yeah exactly so like he's done music and he does really great ensemble work and pioneered multi track audio recording in a lot of ways for capturing dialogue between a bunch of different actors when it's not necessarily focused on one person that's so interesting because like on the one hand couple of

feels like an obvious fit with the mob stuff but on the other hand man Altman would have been good

“I think so yeah that's really interesting so Evans was also reported to be just about to sign a quote”

tremendously important novelist screenwriter to write the script unfortunately for Evans wallet that person was Mario Puso he's like trying to peel him away from the crap stable to get him to come all right the script Evans said quote if it was going to be the godfather with music who

better to write it than my pal Puso no cheap by Mario now a million dollar ticket that is true

wow yeah yeah yeah million dollars Evans original vision for the cotton club does sound pretty good he pitched it as quote like ragtime my cotton club will be a blend of fact in fiction the white story will be fictional the rest will be a hunk of history out of America he also explicitly said he wanted to cast unknown black performers to play the cotton clubs most famous stars but unfortunately for Evans Popeye was not the blockbuster that Paramount and

Disney had been banking on and since this was now the third and a round of big time floppers for Evans Paramount looked at the cotton club and said piss just a few months later a Boston global announced that Bob Evans would be officially breaking ties with Paramount and going fully independent with the cotton club and this is because he had left Paramount but he basically had a deal in place with them where he was still working with them on movies that deal he is now dissolving

so for example like Amy Pascal leaves Sony after the Sony hack but she sets up her production company under Sony so she's still on the lot she's just not technically an employee that's exactly right but now he's going out on his own and he also referenced an $18 million dollar budget provided by a

mystery Swiss investment group that I'm pretty sure did not exist yeah of course so you never heard of them

the best Evans was adamant at this point that he wanted to retain ownership of the film's negative Chris can you briefly explain we talked about this actually very recently on our episode about centers but what does that mean well he would he would hold the copyright he would own the film outright so he would not be doing what would be called a negative pickup for example which would involve effectively the studio providing some sort of promissory note saying upon

completion of this film within a certain set of parameters duration when it's completed etc we will pick up the negative we will purchase this film for a pre agreed price that's a very common way of financing because you can use that promissory note to go and debt finance your movie by getting a loan from a bank for example because the studio's money is seen as good it allows the studio to defer that cost until the film is completed but what Evans is saying is I have an investor

that's going to allow me to own the negative and then we will find a distributor once the movie is

and not through a sale that's exactly right however he didn't really have an investor and in fact

the system that you are describing my investors live in Canada you've never met them you find

the set up you are describing was in fact quite unappealing to most traditional investors so the project kept festering and Robert Altman bailed and Bob Evans thought well you know what why don't I just direct this myself he needed to come back pretty badly it makes sense why he would try to take a big swing on this even if it would cost him financially his friend Richard Silver Dick Silver production designer said it's not about the money for Bob does not have to be rich

he has to be Bob Evans if he can't be Bob Evans he's dead he never directed anything did he

“he had never directed any and yeah okay that's what I thought and there was something else scaring”

off investors Evans very explicitly wanted to make a movie featuring predominantly black actors the recent underperformance of the whiz seems to have given investors an excuse to say that a film with a lot of black faces and it wouldn't make money but Evans was undeterred he would later tell New York magazine quote gangster's music and pussy how could I lose but you can't make a movie on hoodspa alone Chris you also need cash and so begins Bob Evans's journey into more door to find

funding first up ad non kashogi he was a Saudi arms dealer one of the richest men in the world and dubbed the Great Gatsby of the Middle East Evans met kashogi through Melissa Prophet and actress and former Miss California on a flight from LA to New York she had somehow become friends with kashogi who had naturally offered to finance a film for her when she came across Bob Evans and he told her about the cotton club she's like bing bang boom match made in heaven so she went off

“met with kashogi in Vegas pitched in the cotton club in the next morning she was woken up by”

his assistant who was like hey go get on this private plane go get Bob Evans bring him back here in time for dinner and she did it she got to Bob Evans house he was not happy when asked to imagine he was swanning around in his signature silk pajamas but he did get on the plane and he took the meeting though as one does when buying a car he walked out before accepting the deal and as he's flying on the same private plane this time to New York because he wanted to squeeze

an extra flight out of kashogi Evans was served champagne by a beautiful woman presumably originally dressed as a stewardess but all of a sudden he noticed she was wearing a negligee a yawning and saying it's time to go to bed to which Bob Evans says goodnight and then she asked if he was coming with her and he's markedly said nope the next day Melissa profit revealed to him that she had heard the whole exchange because it had been recorded and played for her oh wow they're trying to

“honeypot him and blackmail him yes also I believe there's a weird like addon kashogi sold his”

yacht to like the sultan of brunei who sold it to Donald Trump who then sold it to somebody else like 40 years ago so there's a funny collection to our own president great yeah but despite all

of this Bob Evans did come back and close the deal of course got two million dollars on April 30th

of 1981 provided he did not disclose who his investor was to anyone and also that Melissa profit would get an associate producer credit on the film this meant that Evans could officially bring on one million dollar man Mario Puso to write the script so kashogi threw a massive party in Vegas for Puso and Evans and I bet Puso loved that and the next day he offered to add another ten million dollars to the pot which would have given Evans enough to make the film

basically completely outside the studio system or at least so he thought but kashogi was like and I'm gonna put my brother as a sum on the case to evaluate the deal and make sure that it's staying on track and as a sum little bit more practical little less pion sky and to him the numbers were not adding up and he was very concerned about making such a bet on a first-time

director when interest rates were at a record 22.5 percent that's right he also got a peak

at the script that Mario Puso had been working on and he did not like what he saw in fact to call the script might have been generous so as I'm trying to renegotiate the deal Evans tried to put his house up as collateral but they couldn't make it work most likely because Evans refused to give up control of the negative at this point now as some said the kashogi's canceled the deal Evans says he canceled the deal because he didn't like being quote Arabed down yikes bob

but Melissa profit would remain on board for the rest of production so at least he got a loyal AP out of it now Evans also managed to woo some Texas oilmen and this seemed like this was the deal that was gonna make it I'm an oilman one of them who seemed like a vibrant young Daniel plane view type of guy agreed to finance the film and then died of a heart attack the next day nice as one does more committed to financing the film after this but then the bottom fell out of the

oil market and the deal was off meanwhile bob Evans went to can to try to drum up international support for the film which as a reminder doesn't really have a script but he did have Mario Puso his name at least I was going to say I actually think it's a pretty good package because you have

you have a IP technically which Hollywood did care about at that point in time and I do agree it's a

“great people like high-low stories they like class stories yeah it's incredibly visual you can”

that's a great idea it's a great idea you're murder you have sex you have music I can see the appeal outside of bob Evans directing that is where it gets really sticky you don't have a star and you also have a first time director and that starts to get messy oh but Chris he did have a star oh he had Silvester Solone and okay as as Dixie Dwyer Dixie Dwyer didn't really exist because again we don't really have a script at this point right but Silvester Solone would have played a gangster

he could have been good as mad dog as the Nick Cage character yeah he could have been great in this world in this movie yeah bob Evans certainly thought so and the creative force behind an Oscar winner and in Rocky as well that's right now he thought he had still unlocked up but while

they were at can he found out that Silvester Solone wanted 4 million not 2 million and Evan said

we can't do that so he's now shown up at can without a script without a star because Silvester Solone is out but he does have a poster let's take a look at it oh he's doing the full solkine superman treatment at this point he says we got nothing but we are going to send a plane through the sky dragging a banner saying superman's coming next year the cotton club and can you read the slogan on the poster Chris it's violence startled the nation it's music

startled the world all right okay it's a cool poster very art deco it does evoke the final film in a lot of ways you can see the vision but it feels dated relative to what's happening in Hollywood in the 1980s in my opinion you're really coming into you know Star Wars ET Indiana Jones I'm not sure where this fits in exactly in the landscape it is also interesting to me that the two white characters are at the foreground of this poster and the black musicians are not even

with the certainable faces at the back so but that's a Bob Evans trying to set like he's selling it can for example you know I could believe that he would try to sell it this way even if his intention was to forefront the black performers eventually I agree and I think that that was his intention I could totally see Bob Evans doing a bait and switch yes Bob Evans is a bait and switch basically yeah so it's great as we said but to quote his longtime friend an eventual cotton club

production designer Dick Silbert quote terrific Bob but you can't sell tickets to a poster except

he kind of did because he got eight million dollars in international backers at the festival

“because he's Bob Evans that's what I'm saying yeah do you do the pre-sale foreign markets”

and all the sudden you got some money you got some cash in hand that's right now despite this win deal after deal kept falling through and it was becoming well known around town that Bob Evans was hard up for cash now the exact date of what happened next is a little unclear but at some point amidst all of this chaos Melissa prophet again brought Evans an unusual investor Melissa what are you doing in your free time this is where we meet Ed and Fred do money they were the sons of a

Lebanese immigrant who had gone from running a fruit cart managing hotels and motels in Las Vegas and the brothers had taken over the family business and absolutely skyrocketed it but after their father's death they'd put up both the Tropicana hotel and the El Morocco casino at the end of the 70s for sale and had gone into the oil business with a Denver insurance magnate named Victor Siyat the dummies were well known around Vegas and they had been heavily linked to several major mob

figures over the years before they sold the Tropicana it was under investigation for a massive

skimming operation by the Kansas City mob though the dumonies were never directly charged in this

so Evans presented the cotton club to the dumonies in Siyat as a sure thing that could be made for 18 to 20 million dollars now the brothers were new to the film industry but they still wanted to read the script and according to Ed do money quote my impression was it had a lot of potential not that I knew what I was reading so in January of 1983 the dumonies and Siyat officially agreed to partner with Evans and finance the film together for 30 million dollars in exchange for 50%

ownership of the film this just shows me how desperate Evans has gotten that now he has given up 50% and that's not all he gave up Chris but it also shows me how green and desperate like the

“dumonies are to find maybe a new area to enter into because I think that's a bad deal given that”

they're negotiating against nobody well it's not all Evans put up he also supplied collateral by mortgaging his Beverly Hills mansion liquidating his savings and selling all of his golf and western stock paramounts parent company all of this while the dumonies were under a corruption review by the Nevada gaming control board so you're getting in bed with some interesting guys here Bob I just love how you know behind the scenes we have casino and Siyatna and all of these

other movies happening as Bob Evans is globetrotting trying to finance this it's insane and by the way when he actually managed to get some financing he did say that some studios were kind of starting

them away he's like I don't want it I don't want it I'm doing this independent with my shady

“loss vigs hotel managers mm-hmm now while Evans was running around getting that money he also”

had already been spending major production dollars that they didn't even have yet he had tried to get Richard prior on board that didn't pan out Evans had gone to great lengths to try and get him to the point where he actually had tried to reconcile Richard prior with his estranged wife setting up a dinner for all of them to try and get them back together it didn't pan out but Richard prior was extremely grateful to Bob Evans and initially he was like you know what it's

okay that this didn't work you really went the extra mile for me I will still do the cotton club

mm-hmm but then shortly thereafter a familiar situation popped up he asked instead of two million

dollars for four million dollars Evan said again I can't afford that and he had to let Richard prior go it turns out Richard prior had been advised by his lawyer not to do the film because anything with Bob Evans was going to be a disaster and when he asked how to get out of it the lawyer said simply ask for more money good lawyer yeah so at this point after blowing through stars like

“Al Pacino the runt he hated in the godfather who he did try to get on board for this who basically”

was like I'm not doing this it's just another you know another godfather yeah so best just alone of course allegedly Harrison Ford was considered at one point Evans had now spent months wooing the latest hot ticket in town the star of an officer in the gentleman Richard gear and Chris he had literally moved Richard gear into his pool house at his mansion and was giving him constant presence and parties at one point Evans gave him a custom vest and when Richard gear said oh no

please don't give me anything else Evans threw it at him so he's basically doing the Dutchman on him and he's captured and kidnapped Richard gear and said you gotta do it kid I'm your Dutch uncle now basically great and by the beginning of 1983 Richard gear had been hired Gregory Heinz on the other hand had not required any wooing he was at this point one of the most celebrated tap dancers of all time but he was not a household name and he'd found the script on his agent's desk he grabbed it

slipped it under his shirt and told the agent secretary that he was going to be in the bathroom for a while he said quote I sat there for 45 minutes I'm lucky I didn't get piles he then begged for a meeting with Evans which he eventually got but Evans told him look you look perfect you are perfect for this part I can't cast you because I need a bigger name but Gregory Heinz did not take no for an answer he called and pestered Evans every day for weeks until eventually Evans gave in and

gave him the part you what's interesting do you know who Gregory Heinz replaced him in history of

“the world part one Richard prior oh because I believe if I have my history correct that's when”

Richard prior accidentally set himself on fire oh yeah that was terrible the free basing accident and so he had to I don't I think he couldn't do the job because of his burns and so Gregory Heinz replaced him on that movie that's my understanding wow I love Gregory Heinz it's interesting because their energies are so different they are but Gregory Heinz is really funny like have you seen running scared with him in Billy Crystal no oh it's a fun buddy cop movie or

I've been seeing it a long time but they have a good comedic energy together I like Gregory Heinz a lot

he's amazing I think he's amazing in this movie and so is Maurice Maurice is great they're

obviously amazing tap dancers they can also both sing and they have great I mean they're incredible performers I didn't really tell good they are they're such good actors really good Evans also found Lawnette McKee singing out a club in New York asked her when her show ended she said Sunday and he was like great you're in rehearsals starting on Monday and she's like four what meanwhile Mario Puso was doing what he did best and turned in draft after draft of a completely

bonkers script the actors attached at this point particularly Richard gear were very unhappy with what they were seeing it seems like the biggest complaint was that it did not balance the gangster storyline with the tap dance narrative at all and I have to wonder if Puso was spending more time in the tap dance world because it was more interesting and Richard gear probably wasn't thrilled about that and speaking of Richard gear he was slated to start filming a movie

for Paramount at the end of the year so Evans was really pressing everyone to get started ASAP he promised constantly it was all going to work because they were going to quote plan this like the invasion of Normandy but Dick Silbert who had just come on as production designer new better I said to myself be ready for the worst said Dick and he was right because they still did not have a usable script so in February of 1983 Evans did the unthinkable and he called up

his arch nemesis Chris who is it franny copula franny copes he needed a script doctor staff and wondered if Fran had any advice so a little bit of background a more frances for copula was at this point poor he was poor his money had gone by by thanks to apocalypse now and a series of very expensive purchases including his nap at home and the old Hollywood general studios lot and he had also suffered a financial blow from a movie you mentioned earlier Chris

won from the heart which cost twenty seven million dollars to make and pulled in one point two

a re-release or two I had always heard that it was under a million initially like it's initial run

“maybe that's wrong it's a huge flop a huge flop the biggest time flopper I think the outsiders”

did okay and then but then rumble fish flopped I can't remember what the order is so I don't think those had quite come out just yet he had finished shooting both those are 83 yes and he shot them basically back to back right he didn't the mid west yes he had finished shooting both the outsiders and rumble fish at this point I don't think they had come out and he was over twenty million dollars in debt at this point I think he's just like get me movies so I can pay off my

debts it's literally what he's doing yeah so copula and Evans hadn't spoken since the godfather and now according to copula the call went something like this the script by pozo was a disaster Richard gear refused to play a gangster and was insisting on playing a coordinate player

which made no sense in the context of the film since there had never been a white musician at

the cotton club so where the fuck was he going to play the coordinate Gregory Heinz was great and everything else was a mess I'm editorializing but that is the gist of the situation according to copula Evans quote sounded very morose his voice was worried he said to me

“Francis you have to help me with my child and copula literally thought he was talking about his”

actual child ever so but I don't care about that child this is the one he cares about and this of course is the crux of the issue I think with the whole movie and it does come from Richard gear he was insisting that he had to be a coordinate player a musician he would not play a gangster he absolutely refused it makes no sense in the context of the cotton club and it makes it so difficult to work him into this world and make it make sense

as to like where he fits in could I make the argument that I agree with you in execution in theory it actually should be a lubricant I feel like it should be helpful he is the only white character who bridges the two worlds right he becomes an entry point into both the music and the mob but why is he at the cotton club well I think they kind of tried I'm not saying it's successful they try to explain it as he came up in Harlem right he's the one white guy obviously

that ever played there I know it confuses things ultimately but I could see a world where the argument is we have a high-low situation and he is the only person who has given permission to transcend actually law net McKee becomes his parallel in a sense she ascends as he descends so to speak

“right because she can pass as white and so I don't know and I think with a better screenwriter”

maybe that actually could work but I do agree with you that ultimately it falls apart yes maybe it could work it is more difficult than it needs to be I think yeah and then he's like kind of george raft but he's like also not george raft you know what I'm saying it's like the it he's quite your gear which is what he wants to do so although the screen test scene is so funny it's so fun it is funny it's good here is Bob Evans's version of the call so we just heard

Francis for a coplas here's Bob Evans on a hunch I called Copla and Napa Valley who's the best script doctor I can get need a quick rewrite me thanks but I called for advice not your pen can afford it how's nothing sound get the script to be by tomorrow we'll speak over the weekend five days later needs major surgery don't panic I've got the key can you fly up to frisco tomorrow have gear hands and level come up to give us a few hours alone for see if we agree then we'll present it to them

we'll start at 10 have them here by three cook dinner at the house stay the night

Bob Francis work Copla as he never said don't panic I've got the key in his wife there's no way

but it is fun now Copla did indeed offer to help out for a few weeks and write a free treatment but according to him it was Evans who begged him to write a draft and he agreed thanks to the $250,000 fee that Evans offered him which Evans coughed up out of his own pockets now Copla as we discussed had a major problem to solve honor the black tap dancer storyline with Gregory Heinz while somehow resolving Richard Gears baffling request to play a musician and not a gangster

and Copla did ask Evans to send gear in Heinz to San Francisco to help figure things out while Copla rewrote the script realistically it kind of seems like Evan had promised actors some crazy things and just sort of figured that they could write the script around them because it was already such a mess and according to Evans Copla had a brilliant pitch for how to fix it all but six weeks later when he turned in the script on April 5th of 1983 it was nothing like what they had discussed

in fact it more closely resembled quote a history lesson that read like a PBS documentary Evans hated it Richard Gears hated it in fact Evans put on a party at his house for the international distributors Richard Gears showed up arm around Bob saying I can't wait to make the movie but in private once they were alone he told Evans he still hated the script and he wasn't going to do the movie at all apparently the more everyone hated this the more Francis loved it

on April 11th the day of the Oscars Evans flew to Las Vegas to meet with the du monies and present

which was signed F it read well after 22 days here is the blueprint now let's get down to writing a script

“as we've said before background makes foreground now let's get to the foreground you always use the word”

magic we're gonna touch it again Chris how do you think wrote that note Bob Evans yeah of course Francis Ford Copla doesn't give a shit about the finance series he's like gonna write them in now Francis Ford Copla's note would say it's perfect I don't care what you think it's so funny yeah no Bob Evans wrote that and I love how he says why didn't technically lie just wrote F right it's me F missed F so the du monies are like what the fuck is this they look at the script

and they're like no and they suspended future further investment all while pre-prote was ongoing in New York Chris and it was costing over a hundred and forty thousand dollars a week wow Richard Silver at a wonderful production designer who has worked on many films we've covered

on this show had started building a one million dollar recreation of the cotton club at

Astoria Studios Academy Award winning costume designer Melena Kananero was moving forward with

“costumes music producer Jerry Wexler was selecting music and it's somewhere around this point”

as Evans is bleeding money and the du monie tap had seemingly dried up that Evans was introduced to a woman named Laney Jacobs of booking.com boosted an Fiery in house ganz einfach but when the Les Manderer Plainer had had his debut lighter moment Mark and Tim come yet it's too flexible oh super what's wrong with the phone booking.com booking point yeah

now Laney was a cocaine dealer who was interested in getting into the film industry and she would lead Evans to a Vaudeville promoter named Roy Raiden who would in turn lead Evans

to the government of Puerto Rico in a thirty five million dollar investment

but at all fellow parts sooner than it had come together and if you haven't again go back and listen to our out of frame episode that aired on Friday because that will catch

“you up on everything you need to know about Laney, Roy and their ultimate very bloody demise so”

Evans knew what he needed was a great script or at least one that worked and he also knew Copelo was not going to listen to him so according to New York magazine he enlisted the help of an actress he had met a few months earlier named Marilyn Matthews to be clear Marilyn Matthews as black Evans sent her in to talk to Copelo she read the script and he asked what she thought and she said well I think you're a good writer and I really like it but it seems like there's a

lot of history here can you have a little more story and a little more about the people you can really get into great note but Copelo said nope this is how it's going to be and Evans then pops in and is whispering in her ear comes to me after talk to you later so she left and she went to Evans townhouse and at this point he revealed to her that the cotton club was not going to happen unless Copelo changed the script and he was flat out refusing and Marilyn was pissed

because to her this was an unusual opportunity for a large number of black actors it was a chance to tell the stories of the black performers of the cotton club and in her mind Francis Ford Copelo is stopping this because he's just being a baby about the script it's especially frustrating because he's a hired gun right look if this was Francis Ford Copelo's thing right that he'd conceived from the beginning and he's actually sure you don't want to do mega-lawpless until you're

ready of course I completely understand that but dude you can't hold this project hostage you know you were brought in at the last minute but I'm sure Copelo is I don't know maybe he'll tell me I'm wrong I'm thinking Copelo's thinking the same thing as Evans which is this is my way back in yeah right like I've taken a couple blows this thing just landed on my lap you know the reason I'm sure he said to Evans oh sure I'll do a pass you know for free or treatment for free

or even for 250 grand not because there's such good friends no he thinks this could be really good this could be great really great so you're completely correct the next morning Marilyn Matthews banged on Copelo's door and said you can't do this you can't let us down the black community will tear you apart and Copelo's like I understand but I have to show people struggles to which Marilyn said nobody wants to pay money to see that you got to have action you got to

have love you got to have sex Marilyn you're correct so finally Copelo gave in and is like all right

let's go get some coffee they started working on the script together and Marilyn was basically like look Richard Gear wants to play this stupid ass trumpet and since you don't have a story anyway let him play the stupid ass trumpet I am paraphrasing here she's far more eloquent but she was just like figure it out he's the star he's what's going to get this movie made given the coordinate a few days later Matthews Evans hines and Gear all joined Copelo at his home in Napa to keep refining and

working on the script and they all said this was a really positive experience except maybe for Copelo

but even he I think enjoyed this and of course he was at a low point creatively and commercially thanks to the failure of one from the heart so this probably felt pretty good to have this kind of collaboration now at this point Bob Evans had lost all desire to direct the cotton club and he figured

with Francis at rock bottom he might finally agree to helm the movie for him and of course Chris

if you have Francis Ford Copelo on board you can officially market this as what prestige Oscar the godfather reunion right that's exactly right you have Puso Copelo Evans all back in action exactly since 1983 so nine years since part two just in time for the ten-year anniversary so Francis says no and then no again and no again but finally after ten days in Napa with a new script in hand he's like I'll consider it and everyone's like yeah the crowd goes wild so Evans

took the screenplay back to the du monies who were still like boo hiss but Evans turned around in front of them called Francis and said quote they loved it a plus to show them look this is how

“you have to treat the talent they're like fine they read it again they liked it better this time”

and they agreed to resume funding but they were very worried about the idea of hiring Copelo an Evans said quote don't worry I can control Francis Canyon Bobby but when he sat down to meet with

Francis Copelo demanded $2.5 million a piece of the gross and final cut now according to Bob

Francis reassured him don't worry you know how close we are will work together according to Copelo he was very clear that that's not what he meant at all he said quote as a writer I would do it anyway my director told me to but if I became the director I would need to have total control and final cut I was very clear on this point because Evans is a known backseat driver a man who tends to fool with other people's work from his office or apartment Copelo is so big they both are

but to be fair he also knew the financing on this thing was extremely shady and he wanted to get paid and he wanted to make sure he was securing his paycheck finally Bob Evans agreed to the terms which is pretty shocking but you know what he was happy he had Copelo he had Richard gear he said quote I felt like I was 10 feet tall but on June 10th 1983 Roy Raiden's body was discovered in a canyon just outside Los Angeles he had been shot to death and a stick of dynamite had been

shoved into his mouth and exploded detectives came and interviewed Bob Evans for four hours and then apparently decided I probably has no involvement in the crime and they all left with signed copies of the Chinatown script don't worry they'll come back people are people you know we're

“all susceptible to being star struck I suppose I think they very much thought that Bob Evans was”

involved and continued to keep an eye on him what's getting some chance for you but Chris the cops were not who scared Evans he wasn't stead terrified that the person who had come after Roy Raiden would come after him next course or his ex-wife Valley McGraw or their son and honestly he had pretty good reason to be afraid again go back and listen to the out of frame episode to find out more but keep this in mind that this is what's going on for Bob Evans at this point he's literally afraid

somebody's gonna come blow him up so Copelo had six weeks to get the movie ready to shoot and he mostly kept the production heads that Evans already had in place including production designer Dick Silbert who I think does a wonderful job on this movie and apparently at an early kickoff meeting Copelo was like you know it's a 12 week shooting schedule everybody's gonna be home by Thanksgiving and then he turned to Silbert and was like yeah I know why you're smiling because you're the only

“person who knows Thanksgiving means Christmas and right away Silbert was I think a little taken”

a back by Copelo who was apparently prone to major mood swings on this project and seemed very easily distracted now notice I said that he kept most production heads not all he got rid of music supervisor Jerry Wexler right away who managed to get a pretty high severance fee out of the deal and he also wanted to replace cinematographer John Alonzo with Steve Burham who he'd worked with on rumble fish and this really freaked Bob Evans out because he was not a fan of what he had

seen on rumble fish so they ended up putting the cinematographer role to a vote amongst production executives and the winner was none of those guys it was a British South African born DP named Steven Goldblatt who would go on to make many many movies but at this point he'd only worked on about four including the hunger like Wexler the original DP got a very expensive buyout and Goldblatt came on for a hundred thousand dollars so the bills are definitely piling up and Chris like a raptor

in Jurassic Park Francis Ford Copelo started testing the boundaries of his cage he first went after

18 year old Diane Lane for a role written for a woman in her 20s and then proceeded to yell at her in front of Richard Deer for acting like an 18 year old poor Diane Lane I actually don't think

role but I do think she feels too young for this part and I've kept thinking you needed someone

“a little more world-weary I think of Gretchen Mall's character in boardwalk empire Bobby Barrett”

from from Madman Jimmy Barrett's wife and manager and you know similarly I don't think Richard gear is bad in this movie I agree with you his character is weirdly positioned relative to those I actually think he and Diane Lane well I don't feel they have great romantic chemistry zero I do like some of their scenes though so for example at Varis Club when he plays the trumpet as she's singing that duet that they do I actually really like that scene and as shocking as it is and I actually

kind of like it for this reason I actually think the scene where they're dancing and they slap each other is a really interesting scene it is a really interesting scene it's weird and my idea that is it doesn't quite work in the context of this movie by great own it's actually the story I would have been more interested to see between the two of them because it is so strange that's my point there

are scenes with them that I do really like but their story as a whole feels like it never comes together

yeah I agree and then Chris Copila went after Fred Gwyn who you already mentioned who was best known at the time for playing Herman Munster on the monsters Copila had seen him in a production of Kat on a

“hot tin roof thought he was great I think he loved the combo of him and Bob Hoskins again”

we did too I think he's excellent on this but Bob Evans is like you are not putting Herman Munster in this movie such a lack of vision Bob Fred Gwyn is so good sometimes he really misses it I know he did on Al Pacino too pet cemetery that's when I first met him she's my cousin Vinny that's the thing he's the judge right in my cousin's he is yeah he's wonderful he is great but it also kind of seems like Francis Ford Copila knew this was his chance to lay down the law and so he's like oh you

don't want to cast Fred Gwyn well I'll be on a plane back to California at 6 p.m. if you don't give me decision making authority on this and everything else look at my contract and though Evans wanted to tell him to take a hike he said Francis it's yours at this point it seems like Evans knew the jig was kind of up and he retreated to focus more on the investors than on the actual production Evans wrote of Copila quote how could a guy I plucked from near obscurity to start him vent his vitriolic

hatred no mistake about it this was an ingeniously conceived ten year festering comes shot a royal fucking from Prince Makiaveli himself it's so interesting how you know especially in Hollywood so many

“directors I'm sure but really producers and executives and I think back to Selznek for example”

who really felt responsible for the careers of so many the actresses for example that he feels he

had plucked out of obscurity and that phrase is always used right and they always want their

name included in everything that that person does because we're at not for me they would not be where they are right now and it all ties into that Evans credit dispute you know at the end of the day meanwhile Copila was filling out the cast and crew with his family Nick Cage his nephew of course in a starring role and I believe that this at this point is either simultaneous with or before Valley Girl even though Valley Girl I think comes out first right I love Valley Girl

Valley Girl's great we got to cover it it's so good his son John Carlo Copila was brought on as a second unit director he did tragically die in a voting accident just a few years after this yeah and his daughter Sophia came on as a child in the street I think maybe she's one of the ones took this case she's one of those he can show I know I was wondering that way saw her name I thought oh no yeah I think he made it home by Nick Cage yes Copila's such a sick bastard

he already used her as Michael Corleoon's son I know and you know what Gregory Heinz was doing the same and I love him for this he got his brother Mori Sun board and also his ex-wife and daughter in bit parts meanwhile in July amid endless fights Copila was given a copy of a book called Legs by Pulitzer Prize winning author William Kennedy about the gangster Jack Legs diamond and Copila loved it he invited Kennedy to join him and worked together on the cotton club but according to Bob Evans

quote burden with the enormous responsibility of an imminent start date Copila cried for help in the form of a 10 day script polish from Pulitzer Prize winner William Kennedy Kennedy was then brought in for a heavy green polish 10 weeks later he was still writing and still collecting heavy green now Evans wasn't just pissed because of the cost he was pissed because William Kennedy was tarnishing the godfather trio image that he had sold the movie on yeah it's not Puso Evans Copila

and Kennedy regardless Copila and Kennedy started working on the script hard according to Kennedy from July 15th to the end of August when filming began he and Copila wrote how many scripts do you think Chris how many drafts how many drafts a month and a half six weeks 42 days i'm guessing they're turning a draft around every seven to eight days they're guessing five drafts 12 what that's insane

yeah I don't know how you actually typed that fast that's pretty crazy I would love to see those scripts

“yeah by the end of production they had churned out somewhere between 30 and 40 this was almost”

certainly due to Copila's desire to keep tinkering quote one of Copila's methods was rewriting to lift the climax of real six say and put it in real two this does things to real three that you probably hadn't counted on and also leaves you with a problematic hole between real five and seven at times he would ravage the entire script in certain long dead sections of old scripts and offer up an unrecognizable new document yeah it seems like this is more like

frank and stining you know what I'm saying as opposed to completely rewriting yes well sometimes he did though no I'm sure he did I'm just saying their instances were it maybe a draft is more re-arrangement a prior draft yes and Kennedy said Copila viewed each version as raw material like the actors he and I were in rehearsal for the final product and as they kept iterating they also kept moving farther and farther away from the script that both Richard gear and the du monies had approved

“but of course this didn't just affect the cast but also the entire production crew who were busy”

building based off of scripts that they'd been sent but then all of a sudden they'd receive a new script and an entire new set had been added or exercised at one point Copila shared a new script with Dick Silver that included a note saying quote I haven't thought it out yet in terms of sets and settings try not to get too anxious they were six weeks away at that point yeah I mean you should have your your lumber up you know what I mean like the frames of your set are established six

weeks out I mean you think about it like you need time for paint to dry a little alone to get everything in place yeah in a 1988 LA Times interview Richard gear reflected on his time on the cotton club set by saying quote it was so bizarre working on that movie there was no script there were levels of

madness there that will never be surpassed in movie making and speaking of Richard gear it turns out

he hates improv and Copila loved it he would have these 12 hour long rehearsals where he put the actors up against a blue screen so they're just in a weird blue room and you know he's putting a jazzy's picture behind them but they can't see that and then having them do improv exercises with the quote unquote script and Richard gear was not happy it seems like he's trying to do jazz right with the acting it's exactly right which is an interesting idea yeah Richard gear is not the right

person to cast in this law net Mickey said quote he wanted it right there written the way he wanted it he didn't realize he had to make it the way he wanted it but other actors saw the opportunity and they ran with it coming up with new lines scenes arcs and pitching them to Copila in fact Maurice and Gregory Hines were really able to spin out their narrative as two brothers rising together when one decides to go solo because it wasn't far at all from their own experience

I was going to say yeah Maurice is the older brother right right they had broken out as a duo on Johnny Carson opened for Ella Fitzgerald but Gregory had dreams of being a movie star and Maurice wanted to dance he wanted to choreograph direct stay in the theater Maurice told vanity fair quote I wouldn't say there were hard feelings I understood but Gregory wanted he wanted a different kind of career and we had gotten as far as we could so the cotton club was actually a reunion for the

two of them and most of their scenes together were not scripted at all they were just the two of them going off a very basic idea from Francis Ford Copila there's some of the best scenes in the entire film my favorite moment my favorite scene is when bumpy says get up there with your brother why don't the brothers dance together and we shall also mention the Nicholas brothers right

“are the real-life dancing duo that I think they are loosely based on in this movie yeah they're”

incredible together and as good as they are on their own they play off of each other so while they

elevate each other Gregory Heinz brings so much humor to this movie that feels natural and the other scene that I love is the hotel scene with Lana McKee when it would lila when they go up to the room and he strips for her yeah and a kind of funny sexy way it feels so human it doesn't feel like a movie all the sudden I really love that moment I think both of them and Maurice Heinz were very comfortable with the way that Francis Ford Copila was working yeah it seems like it yeah this was

all very fun for them that scene that you just mentioned I think was also heavily improvised it must have it seems very improvised in a good way Richard dear though not really in the same ballpark as those people and was desperately uncomfortable with the uncertainty of the process so the big question hung over everyone would he show up to film and on August 28th 1983 when cameras started rolling they got their answer he did not Richard dear blew that popsicle stand with zero warning

and suddenly the cast and crew had to scramble to shoot scenes that didn't involve Garrett all

Gregory Heinz who was not scheduled was called in and basically pulled that tall tan terrific

number out of his ass as did dick silver who had to convert a ballroom that was intended for a wedding scene with gear into the luncheon room that that number happens in Heinz also was told to do the scene opposite Lawrence fish burns bumpy roads where he's furious with some gangster

hadn't been written yet so he had no idea what he was reacting to that's interesting that scene

“it's not that the scene doesn't work but it does feel a little off in terms of the stakes maybe”

or the reaction from Heinz that's interesting yeah it was also already a tough scene for Heinz because he is not someone who gets easily angry so he just felt completely at sea there meanwhile Evans was desperately trying to negotiate to get Richard gear back on set to which I say replace him he doesn't want to be there but gear managed to squeeze out a guaranteed three million dollars to return to the project his initial rate had only been 1.5 on gear's walkoff

Evans said Richard stayed at my house for five months then he put a gun to my head so he came back but he probably shouldn't have because he and Francis Ford Copula absolutely hated each other they had constant screaming matches including one where Copula allegedly shouted you don't like me you never liked me but let me tell you something I'm not only older than you I'm richer than you now get out of here to which I say Francis you're not richer than Richard

gear at this point you're broke that's the thing it's like yeah he's busted he busted out of the craft stable you know yeah it's crazy the script continued to change so frequently that the

first script coordinator walked off set and never came back the cast would be standing around for

hours and full hair and makeup was no idea of when they were going to be called to set according to Bob Hoskins quote I gained 20 pounds waiting around for something to happen you sort of sit around and eat and drink and philosophize and then suddenly you've forgotten what you do for a living then somebody says you're on the set and you say what do you mean I'm on Bob Osborne a veteran film critic and a newscaster on LA's channel 11 reported quote I have interviewed several

people involved in the day by day shooting of the cotton club the word that all of them used most consistently was waste waste of time waste of shots waste of money over one million dollars for example was spent just on extras for a single nightclub sequence because of insufficient preparations this is their interpretation not mine on the part of copila other accusations include nepotism also drugs one cast member told me there was so much coke on the set you wouldn't

believe it I would believe it based on what we've learned thus far Victor Sia the jumanis partner was so fed up with the process that at one point he got into a heated argument with Melissa Profit at Bob Evans's townhouse and according to Profit through her against a plate glass window and then he decided producing films wasn't for him and fucked off back to Denver so Ed Domani got on a plane to take his place to save money Domani moved into Evans's townhouse

and got an up close view of the day-to-day life of Robert Evans it turns out Bob Evans had

“handed off a lot of things like I don't know reading documents and important contracts to his”

subordinates Ed Domani said he would often sign things without reading a single word and he would sign them yeah missed to Ed meanwhile was like I'm gonna read every word and figure out what we actually bought here at which point he realized oh this is very much not a twenty million dollar film

in fact he realized it had never been a twenty million dollar film and the lie items he had seen

were all round numbers because nothing had actually been broken down or budgeted out they had just ballparked the whole thing. Domani discovered numerous instances where they were paying like $1,300 for light bulbs that should have cost $700. Some execs had been promised a $50,000 bonus if they came in under budget but they hadn't been given a budget to come in under. People cited the Francis effect which meant they had no idea what copal was going to want on any given

day so they constantly overprepared. At one point this included renting and prepping 22 vintage cars for a sequence that only required five. Ed Domani went to set and watched Francis in action which basically just meant watching his money disappear and by September it was time to shoot the dance sequences but even the Dumani's were running out of money. Ed literally had to borrow from his son's trust fund. There's so much more that went on in the production we don't even

“have time to get too copal fired a bunch of other people including I believe at one point the”

choreographer but we gotta keep moving. Well it's also interesting Lizzy that it's clear Evans thrived in a studio system position where he had the infrastructure around him to handle reading the documents and doing the budget and yes studios can be repositories of waste and profit gets spending but there are mechanisms including accounting teams in place that are designed to make sure that there is a budget and that we're not paying twice what we should on light bulbs etc.

Right well and you know it's easy to blame copala for the budget going wild but I actually don't think that's fair to the point that you just made. That is responsibility. No and according to Copala and Kennedy they were never really given a legitimate budget in the first place which matches what Ed Giovanni said when he started looking at the itemized budget is that it was phony.

The script he was asked to write would never have come in at $18 million. Copala was under

which is part of why they kept rewriting stuff. So to a certain extent he was kind of set up to fail

because there was no solid foundation to this movie ever. He was also under extreme personal financial pressure thanks to all of his debt and now a new lawsuit from his apocalypse now tormented. Mollon Brando. I can't believe Mollon Brando sued him. Francis. Hey Francis you want to watch these things? It's just such a troll.

“It's a troll. I believe it's because he had not been paid certain things so I guess he did”

deserve his money but. He was also suing the solid kinds of Superman 2 I believe at this point. Yeah. Mollon. Despite all of this, Gregory Heinz said that Copala was very focused on set. Although DP Goldblatt described that focus being broken by calls about new fires to put out that would leave Francis angry, dark, and mean for hours. By the end of October Copala still

hadn't been paid and to top it all off Evans and Dumani were trying to renegotiate his contract to penalize him if he went over schedule at which point Copala said fuck this and flew to London for

three days. Dumani and Evans were lent to paying Copala his $2.5 million fee but when he came back,

he discovered there was someone that they hadn't paid. The cast improved. So Copala reportedly paid them out of his own pocket at one point before Dumani sent an armored car full of money to cover their checks. It's like a pyramid scheme. This is just absolutely wild. It's insane. So as the cost continued to soar, the Dumani's pulled together a deal with Orion who was already the distributor at this point to put forward an additional $15 million

to finish the film. And as a condition of this deal, they cut Bob Evans out as producer and they wanted to remove his name. It's such an asshole move. On top of this, the Dumani sent out actual real-life gangster Joey Kusumano to monitor the remainder of filming and to try to intimidate Evans

“into completely giving up control. But here's the thing, Joey. It's kind of fun. Doesn't Joey have”

a credit on this movie. Yes. Didn't I see Joey Kusumano's name in the front end of the title credits? Yes. Well, I've noticed by now a little bit of time on Joey Kusumano because he's so funny. When he met Academy Award-winning costume designer, Melinda Kananero, who of course had won an Academy Award for Chariots of Fire. He asked, "How'd you get an award for shorts?" Love it. I love it. It's just like the soprano's when Chris Multisanti meets Serben Kingsley. It's so good. So ironically, he actually

ended up getting along really well with Francis Ford Coppola and became kind of a great line producer for the movie. He's like sort of what they needed the whole time. You look so funny. The mob, great enforcers of budgets, it turns out. Yeah. Oh, it's just a good enforcer of the budget. He actually ended up really protecting Coppola. He was urging the Dumani to stay away and let him work. And he would say, "Hey, give the man his space." And then he's the one who goes back

“"Why are these light bulbs so pretty?" Exactly. Exactly. I think we need to come down on these numbers,”

or I'm gonna break a lot of things besides your light bulbs. That's right. It's just... You know what he said? He said, "You got to let Francis be Francis." And he was right. People on set really liked him, started calling him "My favorite gangster." So funny. Meanwhile, Coppola was convinced that a Wall Street Journal article detailing the behind-the-scenes disaster at the movie had been planted by Evans as a way of shifting the blame to Coppola ahead of release. Probably true. But back to

Joey Kusimano, our favorite gangster/line producer. He was very concerned about the money. By late 1983 or early 1984, Kusimano reviewed what had been spent in order to get ready for the final two weeks of filming, and it was not good. In the first 18 weeks of filming, they had spent $21 million on top of that. You had fees for Coppola, Puso, and Richard Gear adding up to over

$6.5 million. The second unit crew headed by Coppola's son had cost $800,000, and then you

add in the cost of insurance, extras, sets, and Joey realized they'd spent more than $47 million. Oh, no. Oh, yeah, buddy. Other reports indicate this may have actually been as high as $58 million. Was Cleopatra still the most expensive movie inflation adjusted of all time at this point? I believe so, yes. Okay. Yeah. But we're starting to get up close to those numbers. 57 is a bit disputed. I think there is reason to believe it got that high, though.

Yeah, but I'm just saying like Empire Strikes Back, which notoriously went over budget. The number I'm seeing online really quickly $31 million. Oh, yeah, we're way past that. You know, 50% over that, minimum, basically. Yes. That's crazy. So Joey figures, they've got like $1.5 million. They can scrape together to cover these last two weeks of shooting, which already were a disaster because many actors had left to start other projects, including Bob Hoskins, who had shaved his head,

and was like, "Fuck you. I'm not coming back." And they were like, "Yes, you are. Here's a wig!" They tried to get insurance money from a day lost to Diane Lane's actual teenage skin,

and filming wrapped on March 31, 1984. And as post-production kicked off, so did the lawsuits.

“In May, Bob Evans' counter sued the Dumani's saying that they had threatened him with physical”

violence, and that he's again trying to retain creative control of the project. Victor Saia filed suit against the Dumani's and Evans, saying it would be impossible for him to recoup his investment. He also alleged that the Dumani's were doing some creative accounting

with that $15 million from Orion, and that it may have been a tactic to make profit impossible

for other investors like him. He also said that they should not have edge devins out of creative control, which is interesting. In June, a judge ordered that Evans would not be edged out, and that he was the controlling partner, while Copola would legally have control of the creative. And yet, despite the court ruling in his favor, Evans seated total control of any profits to Ed and Fred Dumani in August of 1984. He retained his title, and was given a cash settlement.

In the end, it was probably financially a smarter move, but he had lost so much at this point. It doesn't even matter. The cotton club was edited by Barry Malkin, Copola's long-time collaborator,

“and Robert Q. Love it. And Evans was effectively denied any participation in the final cut.”

But according to Copola, there was still plenty of meddling with it. The financiers and distributors told him, "Films too long, too many black stories, too much tap dancing, too many musical numbers." So Copola found himself trying to retcon a movie that focused on the, as we've said, much more boring, white storylines, and excise much of the black storylines, and the result was a mess. Copola briefly kind of blamed Evans for this, but then he backtracked

and said that he didn't think that Evans was the one pushing for this, and I don't think he was, especially given what his original vision of this movie was. Maurice Heinz told Manity Fair in 2019, quote, "There was some sort of controversy, Gregory and I, our scenes were really wonderful, and they wanted to cut some of our scenes out. I don't know who it was, I can't say, because Richard gear was wonderful to us, and he was great to work with, so I don't think it was him."

But they said that Gregory and I, our storyline was stronger, and we were stealing the movie, because we not only acted, but we danced together, and it was too much. And I'll be honest, they do steal the movie. Now, as to why Copola gave in and cut those scenes, he would later say, quote, "The post-production of the cotton club was such active warfare. There were threats of seizing the print after working on three or four difficult productions.

I must say, I was starting to lose it in terms of my tenacity." I mean, he's exhausted. His health was just, he was in a constant state of poor health, from he's on a, you know, five-year run from apocalypse now to this, and apocalypse now took forever

“to shoot he had chronic back pain as a result of that. I remember in post he was doing.”

It's funny, he and Bob Evans' both were basically flat on their backs.

Right, tied to a stretcher, tied to stretchers, yeah. I mean, they just destroyed themselves to make these things. And you might say, this doesn't make sense, because legally Copola had final cut and creative control, but he told Vanity Fair story in 2019 about his lawyers meeting with some of the shadowy financiers behind the film. They laid out all the contracts on the table and said, "Look, Francis has final cut. Here are all the contracts. Look at them. To which the financiers

reportedly swept all the contracts off the desk and said, "Well, now they're off the table." You know, it reminds me of, we just, when we were talking about Terry, it's why I got off in Pat Sansa. I mean, you can have final cut, but ultimately, they can still strong arm you. Yeah, it's your ability to enforce the contract and contract enforcement requires a legal process, and that is expensive and time-consuming and--

And he's broke. And he also wants the movie to be released so he can make more money off of the back end to pay off his debts. Right. And according to his co-writer William Kennedy, the cottonclubs post-production showed the attitudes among show-business gatekeepers. We're pretty much the same as they had been in the 1920s. He said, "I mean, the fact that here was a black club and black entertainers of the highest order and black people can't get into

see it, that mentality more or less carried over into the distribution people who were telling Francis to cut it down and keep out the black tap dancing." On December 14, 1984, the cottonclub

was released. The film made $2.9 million on its opening weekend, placing fifth after Beverly Hills

Cop, City Heat, Dune, and 2010. The movie's total box office, Tally, was only $26 million, less than half of its reported $58 million budget. Assume 58 assume just 20 in marketing, which would probably be a little low. No, no, they said flat out it would have required at least $100 million to break even. Oh, no, no, no. It would have required more than $100 million to break even. I'm just saying, assume a 70 million spend. You did 26 in receipt, so you got 13 coming in after

the distributors, you know what I mean? That's you're losing at least $50 million on this movie. You're losing more. Yeah, a lot more. After the cottonclub was released, Evans and Cople up publicly fuded over who was responsible for the ballooning budget. Bob Evans would say, "I have not been blamed for the overages, and in a way, it was my fault. I was the one who hired

The movie wouldn't have been made. I got a call and took over the picture and now they're blaming me for what happened in the last five years. I have to side with Cople on this one."

Critical reviews were mixed at best with some stepping up to champion that there was indeed some

brilliant Senate, but most everyone agreed it was a mixed bag and a bit of a strange mixed bag in terms of the stories that it focused on. It was however nominated for Best Picture at the Golden Globes. It received two Oscar nominations for Best Art Direction in Film Editing. Diane Lane was nominated for Razzi as worse supporting actress. I don't think that's fair. I don't think she's that bad in this, and also she's like 18, 19 years old. Oh, I don't think she stands out at all.

“Again, I think the story lines a little weak, but she doesn't bother me. No, she's fine.”

So let's talk about where everybody went after the cotton club. For Bob Evans, after the Coke scandal and ensuing murder trial for Roy Raiden in which he pled the fifth on every answer, and the cotton clubs ultimate flop, Bob Evans never really recovered. According to the Guardian, he went for being worth 11 million dollars in 1979 to having 37 dollars, 10 years later.

According to Peter Bart, his right-hand man at Paramount, quote, "Bob always had a

premonition that his career would peak before he was 50 and fade downhill," he lived by it. He was haunted by it. Evans tried to come back in 1990 with the two jakes which bombed, marking his complete descent into financial ruin. As for Copila, in 2015, he came across a beta-max tape that contained his original longer cut of the cotton club, and he liked 20 saw. He spent $500,000 of his own money to re-cut it, restoring many of the elements that he had

felt pressured to cut back in 1984. So he actually cut, I believe, 13 minutes, out of the movie,

“and then he added 24 minutes of unseen footage back in, and that footage included much,”

much more of the black narratives. It restored LaNet Mickey's valid stormy weather, which had been cut out. It brought in a lot more and enhanced the bumpy roads storyline. It brought much more focus to the performers at the speak easy, and it brought both narratives together into a much more coherent whole, but again, did not exclusively focus on the white narrative. So you know what's interesting about that, Lizzie? I made a note about two scenes in particular.

There are a few moments in I bought the blue ray, but I'm guessing the stream ring version is the same file. There are a couple scenes in particular, I noticed where the film scan looks damaged or under-exposed or something like that. The first is the first couple shots of the mob negotiation, and the beginning of the movie between the Dutchman and the gentleman that he ends up killing, that Bob Hoskins only maddened his negotiating. The shots in the hallway

of them going to the meeting and the first couple shots of the meeting, the film just looks damaged. And then similarly, there's some coverage of Diane Lane's character as she's telling Dixie Dwyer Richard gear, and one of their first dance scenes I want to own my own club. That film also looks damaged, but what's interesting is then the scenes that you mentioned, for example, the stormy weather scene, which is an amazing sequence. That sequence looks fine.

That looks great. So it seemingly isn't necessarily correlated with the stuff that he has restored. There may have just been some damage sequences in the original film, but I was half expecting you to mention those scenes. You know what I mean? And not the other scenes, which I think look completely consistent. Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know exactly what happened there, but I mean, he pretty heavily re-cut the whole thing. So it's possible that he was using

damaged footage for scenes that he was moving around. Yeah. Right, exactly. Now the cotton club on-core premiered at the telly ride film festival in 2017, and then it ended up receiving a much wider release in 2019. It was critically lauded as a major improvement over the original cut. And at the New York Film Festival in 2019, Copila admitted that he had agreed to cut scenes featuring black performers back in 1984 because, quote, "I was just afraid they'd take the film

away from me." And in fairness to him, they probably would have. Bob Evans was not well enough to attend this 2019 screening and died only a few weeks later on October 26th, 2019. Upon Bob Evans' death, Copila released a statement. I remember Bob Evans' charm, good looks, enthusiasm, style, and sense of humor. He had strong instincts as evidenced by the long list of great films in his career. When I worked with Bob, some of his helpful ideas included suggesting

John Marley, as movie producer Waltz and Sterling Hayden as the police captain, and his ultimate realization that the godfather could be two hours and 45 minutes in length. Also making a movie out of the cotton club, casting Richard Gear and Gregory Hines and bringing Malena kind of narrow, George phase-on, Richard Silver, and many other talented people to work on the film,

made a kid always stay in the picture. This is like the first time Francis Ford Copila ever

said anything nice about Bob Evans and he was dead. It also kind of seems like he may be acknowledges that Bob Evans was not the one pushing to cut down the godfather, which is the narrative

“that he'd been pushing for a while. It doesn't seem like Evans was honestly involved enough at that”

point, and both Evans and Copila were fighting just to stay involved to a certain extent. They were

production. It's such a bummer that these two couldn't get their shit together and work together

“because they actually were an incredible team if they had been able to get out of their own”

butts, basically. There are so many interesting examples of this throughout history and the pairing that I've been reading about recently that I'm really excited to cover. The movie that I want to cover is Rebecca, the Hitchcock film. Oh, yeah. And Hitchcock and Selznik was his first U.S. producer when Hitchcock came over here, and they made a couple of incredible movies together, but it only worked when Selznik was actually distracted on another production. Selznik had good story instincts

for Hitchcock and was very helpful in the script stage, but then he was overbearing when it came to post production, and he needed to have something else that would take his attention away for the relationship to work. And it's too bad that they couldn't get out and Hitchcock had his own faults.

And it's again, when it was never by their own recognition, but when circumstances forced them to

pull back on their respective excesses, the synchronization of their skills, like we've seen here, and the godfather, could yield something really special. But God, the ego's involved, right now. So Titanic. Yes. But then without the ego, do you have somebody who's willing to liquidate his savings and go down to $37 to make? No, you don't. He was a crazy person. Exactly. I would never do this. And, but he really believed in it. He did, and it's such a

double-edged sword. But, and it's not a selfless belief. He also believed this would be the thing that would rock it me back to the top. Right. And it's again, at the end of the day, these men are all Mario Puso. They are addicted to going back to the table and gambling it all on another

“movie. Yeah. That's what they're willing to do. And I mean, Copa did it again with Megalapolis,”

more recently. Yeah. Well, someone who did not have a Titanic ego was Gregory Heinz. He passed away

in 2003 from liver cancer. So he never got to see the encore that he truly deserved. But his

brother Maurice did. And when asked if he thought Gregory would have been happy, Maurice said, he's smiling right now. Are you kidding me? He's dancing away. Tapping away. He's so good. He's so good. He's so good in this movie. I'm so, I feel very lucky that I had a parent who my dad's not into, he's not a dancer, anything. But he always appreciated it deeply. And I feel so lucky that I got to see, you know what I mean? Some of these people before they passed away.

Yeah. Brief fun fact before we get to what went right, Chris. You mentioned Stomp earlier in this episode. I famously fell asleep during the production of Stomp. Yeah. You told me that. How? Same. I don't know. I fell asleep. My mom looked over and was like, are you okay? It's not on me great. It's quite loud. Like, I fell asleep during the fan of the opera when I was little,

“but that stopped. Okay. There was something soothing about it. All right. What went right, Chris?”

Well, this episode. Thank you, Lizzie. This was, I love, I love when we cover movies like these. Again, I think this is a huge swing movie. I do think the encore version is really good. I really love it. Even though I do think it has some serious flaws that we discussed. So my what went right, I am going to give mine to the Hines brothers because I think their storyline is just so compelling. They're so good. I need to watch rewatch. I saw tap when I was really little and I haven't seen it

in forever, which is I think it's Greyhines. And I think it was Sammy Davis Jr's last movie. But Greyhines is wonderful. And he didn't do that much film. And I am sad that we didn't see more of him on film, but it sounds like he did everything else that he wanted to do also. So maybe there's no reason to be sad about that. So I will give him mine to them. Can I pitch? So first of all, I want to shout out Gwen Verdon, who Bob Fossie's ex-wife, right, who plays Dixie Dwarr's mother

Tisch. And this, and it's very, there's a fun moment at the end. We're showing the kid out of dance. Can I give you my pitch for who revisionist history should have played the duo of Dixie Dwarr and Varus's hero? Yes. Have you seen the fabulous Baker boys? Oh, you're going for Michelle Fyfer. Jeff Bridges and Michelle Fyfer. Oh, yeah, very good. That's my combo. Okay. And Michelle Fyfer, who had proven she could do gangster stuff with Scarface as well as music. She would prove she could

do the music with Baker boys, which was 1989. And Prince of Egypt, she sings in Prince of Egypt. And I want to make this very clear, because I don't think I made it clear enough in the episode, Richard Garer is an incredibly talented musician. He is playing the Coronette in this movie. He's

also playing the piano. Yes. He's a great musician. He's amazing. And as we saw in Chicago, he is a

wonderful performer. I just think he's not having fun here. And that is kind of the bummer of this for gear at the center of this movie. Don't you feel like Damien Chisel probably has seen this movie like 50 times? I felt like so much of Lala land and Babylon were references to the cotton club. Definitely. Maybe I'm wrong. No, for sure. In terms of my what went right, you stole it, because they are the most clear what went right across all of this. The Hines Brothers are so wonderful

in this movie. And just endlessly watchable, Launette Mickey is as well. I think she's really amazing.

He's amazing. He looks just like cab Caloay. He's so good. Larry Marshall. He's amazing. Also,

got to shout out my boy Tom Whates, who is so much fun every time he's on screen. As the MC, it's so fun. He's great. He's got his little megaphone that he would continue with for many years and Lawrence Fishburn. He has like two scenes and he's just wonderful. Bob Hoskins. I love how Stephen Graham has like taken on the mantle of Bob Hoskins energy. I feel like it's so many ways. Well, all right. So my what went right outside of all of those actors we just mentioned to

“I think are really wonderful in this movie. Which one you got a pick? I'm gonna pick both. I'm doing it.”

I'm gonna pick both and neither because I'm gonna pick the cotton club on court as what went right here.

Francis Ford Cople is decision to go back into the footage, use his own money and read it

this and restore. I think right a wrong that he had regretted for three decades at that point when he went ahead and did this. And I really appreciate that he did that. I think that the recap of the movie is fantastic and it really makes it something worth watching and worth studying. So that's my what went right. It's a great what went right. All right Chris. If anybody wants to support us, how would they do that? Just a few easy ways. You can grab that coordinate and trump it

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Yadam Flapper, take it away. Can I do it as Bob Evans? The only boy it's I can do? Do it as whatever you want. Okay. Hello, it's me,

“Kokeen Bob, Angeline Renee Cook, Adrian Peng Korea, Ben Shindlman, Ben, you have to help me with my”

child. Blaze Ambrose, Brian Donahue, Brian Bobby, you're looking great. Brittany Morris Brook, Cameron Smith, C Grace B, no cheap ticket, that's C Grace B, Chris Leo, Chris Zaka, David Friscollante, Darren and Dale Conkling, Dawn Shibor, Ellen Singleton, there are three sides of every story Ellen, your side and my side and the truth. Mzozia Evan Downey, Felicia G, film it yourself, Frankenstein, half Grey Hound, full Grey Hound, Galen and Miguel, the broken glass

kids. We're going to touch that magic again, Galen and Miguel, Grace Potter, James McAvoy, Jared pronounced again, Jason Frankle, JJ Rapido, Jory Hill Piper, nothing travels faster than Ron Shibos of Jory, Jose Imelano, Salto Del Jogio, Love the Name, Bobby, Karina Canaba, K Delrington, Kathleen Olson, Amy Elgashlager McCoy, Lazy Freddy, Lena Lj, Lydia Hounds, Lydia, I would rather be remembered than be rich. Mark Bertha, Mariposa's Humans, Matthew, Jacobson, Michael McGrath,

“Nathan Knife, Nathan Centeno, Rosemary Southwood, Roja, Sadie, just Sadie, why is it just Sadie?”

Sadie, why are you alone? Do you want me to come over? Scott O'Shida, Soman Cheinani, Steve Winnebauer, Susan Johnson, the Provost family, the O's sound like O's, there is no spoon. Alright Chris, Lizzie. Thank you so much. That was a blast, a great episode. Can you tell the fine folks or should I tell the fine folks who should tell the fine folks what we have next? Why don't you tell them what's coming up next? Next week I am a racing Lizzie from my mind,

because we are covering Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind, the indie darling romance movie that taught us all that love is not worth having. Thank you Charlie Kaufman, we are very excited to

that we started off the year with Momento. Yeah. So we look forward to seeing y'all for Eternal Sunshine

in a week. See you then.

“To support what went wrong in gain access to bonus episodes, subscribe on Patreon, Apple or Spotify”

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website when wrongpod.com for more info. What went wrong is a sad-boot podcast presented by Lizzie

“Bassett and Chris Winnebauer, post-production in music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by”

Laura Woods and edited by Karen Cropson.