Demolition Man (1993)

Speaker 1: You're listening to an airwave media podcast, Christopher Media. Let's make some noise. Sylvester Stallone: At the end of a century ravaged by violence. A society of perfect order will arise.

Criminals will be frozen and reprogrammed in cryogenic prisons.

Chris Bricklemyer: The prisoners are ice cubes. Their criminal instincts are being reprogrammed as they sleep. Sylvester Stallone: Aggression and deviant behavior will be totally eliminated is a criminal. The likes of which you have never seen in a bad time.

He was the worst. LAURA HELEN MARKS: I'm gonna love running this place. Sylvester Stallone: But in the year 2032 this morning, Simon Phoenix escaped from this Cryo facility and we are quite frankly not equipped to deal with the situation amidst a world of peace and calm. We're police officers, we're not trained for this kind of violence.

How was the fiendish? Simon Phoenix apprehended back in the 20th? In the end it took just one man, John Spartan. You mean the Demolition Man?

The conditions of your parole are full reinstatement into the sapd. An immediate assignment to the apprehension of Simon Phoenix. Two mortal enemies just drop in and say hi from another time passes over time. Time for something new and improved will be unleashed on a future that isn't big enough for the both of them.

Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes Demolition Man. MIKE WHITE: Mellow greetings Projection Booth listeners. I'm your host, Mike White. Joining me is Mr Chris Brickle Meyer.

Hello. Also joining us is Professor Laura Helen Marks. Hi, how are you? This week?

We are looking at the 1993 sci fi action film Demolition Man, directed by Marco Brambilla, the film star Sylvester Stallone, hot shot super cop John Spartan when he's set up to look like a mass murderer by his nemesis Simon Phoenix played by Wesley Snipes. The two are sent to a Cryo Prison where they're put on ice until the distant future year of 2032 where Phoenix breaks out of jail and the Namby Pamby cops of the future have no idea how to handle. Of course, it's up to John Spartan to bring Simon Phoenix to justice.

Once again, of course, we're going to be getting into spoilers about this 25 year old film. So if you haven't seen it, go watch it and come back, we will still be here, Chris, when was the first time you saw Demolition Man? And what did you think I saw this opening weekend in the theater? And I hated it when I saw it.

Yeah, I wasn't sober, I guess would be the good word to say. And I was expecting something completely different. I did not get the action movie that I thought it was and then I watched it like a couple of months later, once it hit home video and I thought, wow, there's some really brilliant social commentary there. I was totally wrong.

How about you, Laura? LAURA HELEN MARKS: I was 12 when this came out. So, but I watched it on video. I think it was a rated 15 in England.

So we were able to watch it on video and I went to like a sleepover and watched it there and I thought it was great. MIKE WHITE: I saw this movie opening day first showing. I was working at a movie theater at the time, so I had passes and I went to see it. I liked this movie so much that, that same night I came back and saw it a second time.

I think this is the only movie I've ever seen twice on the same day at a movie theater. If that doesn't tell you how much I loved it, I guess you're just not paying attention. I really like this movie. And the thing I liked about it so much was that it had the sci fi, it had the humor, it had the action and not only was it just regular old action, but this was 1993 and seeing Sylvester Stallone fly sideways across the screen in slow motion with two guns blazing.

I was like, this is finally echoing Hong Kong action. We are finally getting some Hong Kong action in the United States. And when Sandra Bullock name checks Jackie Chan instead of even Bruce Lee, I almost stood up and applauded. I was so happy about that.

So this kind of, I thought was opening up a whole new world to, you know Hong Kong style action in the US. We kind of got that here and there. Not as much as I would have liked, but that's one of many reasons why I like that getting into the movie. One of the things that I do like any movie that opens up on a burning Hollywood sign, such a great image and really just goes from there just to show the shit show that Los Angeles is in what this isn't supposed to be 1993 right?

We're supposed to be like 1996 or something, right? So it's not present day but it's near present day. I don't know how we get to Simon Phoenix as a Crime Lord within three years, I guess, you know, he probably watched New Jack City a whole lot of times because he has taken over everything. LAURA HELEN MARKS: Postman figured it out.

Policeman figured it out, but the goddamn bus drivers just wouldn't listen. MIKE WHITE: So now John Spartan has to go in and rescue all of these hostages and it sets up this great kind of James Bond opening. That's my favorite kind of movie opening is to give you an idea of what they're capable of, I think the first Bond movie I saw in the theater was, a view to a Kill. And that's always stuck with me is, that's how you open a movie.

LAURA HELEN MARKS: Makes me think. Lion Heart. I'm a big fan of someone screaming someone's name. And at the beginning of Lion Heart, he screams his brother's name while he's dying in the burns unit.

So that was my connection. MIKE WHITE: And this is probably where you're at in your altered state. The first time seeing this, Chris is, this is the Sylvester Stallone. I want, this is the action film that I want.

And then it takes this tremendous right turn and becomes something completely different. But that opening, this is the Sylvester Stallone movie to end all Sylvester Stallone movies. And then you've got Wesley Snipes there just hamming it up and we are what four years north of the first Batman film and he's channeling the joker so much like he is almost Heath Ledger style joker like he just wants, you know, he is as Michael Caine would say, he wants to see the world burn. He doesn't care about anything.

Yeah, he really zeroed in on that character and just played it for all it was worth. LAURA HELEN MARKS: It's kind of shocking I will say. But I mean, surely at the time, it was shocking right the way he looks and how he delivers all his lines. I mean, I don't even, I was very confused at the time and I remained, I always thought it was Dennis, the menace, the American Dennis, the menace don't like the dungarees.

And the I thought that that's what they were going for like a kind of a cheeky reference to Dennis The Menace. But then my husband said, Mario Brothers and sure enough, there's a connection. MIKE WHITE: Never would have gone there just to put this in historical context for the younger listeners such as one of our guests. This is Pre Dennis Rodman.

This is we haven't seen necessarily the black guy with the white hair, the blonde hair kind of thing. And then he's got the David Bowie multicolored eyes going on. So he's, you know, even without looking below the neck, Wesley Snipes is very striking in this movie. And then of course, he's a 1993 Wesley Snipes, one of the most handsome men in the world just looking great.

And then yeah, just chewing on this scenery like it's nobody's business and you're there just wanting more. At least I was like, he's, he's not quite ruby rod level, but he's getting close. LAURA HELEN MARKS: I mean, can you think of another black villain in a, in a mostly white movie? I can think of any my answer was Birth of a nation.

But I mean, it's a interesting decision I've never seen. I don't think I can't think of any other black villain in like a majority white cast. MIKE WHITE: I mean, my mind immediately went to something that Sam Jackson would play, like even thinking of the white hair in like jumper or even as the villain in unbreakable. But I like that, we don't necessarily know that he's the villain in that, but he does have that crazy haircut going on in that one.

But yeah, I can't really think of, you know, when I think of black villains with white protagonists, I mean, my mind goes also to another James Bond film Live and let die. But that's not majority white cast. And I like that we get kind of setting up the characters that we're going to get later on. You know, having Grandel Bush as the one character and then having the young William Smithers, not Whelan Smithers, by the way, every time he would say his name, I was like, is that the guy from the Simpsons?

No. Hello, Little Smithies. You're quite good at turning me. Not only do we get the prisoner, we get the bad guy being frozen, but then we have the good guy being frozen as well after he's been set up by the bad guy.

And then the way that we reveal the future I think is really nice. And then the way that we switch from having Sylvester Stallone as our protagonist to having Sandra Bullock as our protagonist. And I know at the point I had seen Sandra Bullock maybe once or twice before, but she was not the known quantity that she would become even with a Speed or the Net or any of those other movies that really came in. Quick secession right afterwards.

LAURA HELEN MARKS: I love her in this film. I just think she's great. I mean, when was the time to kill? Because I feel like that's the first big kind of big movie I saw her and I'm pretty sure that was after.

But she's so charming in this film. I love her. MIKE WHITE: I don't want to like put down Laurie Petty. I mean, who isn't a fan of Tank Girl?

But I just can't picture Laurie Petty in this role. Like Laurie Petty has always got that kind of like scrappy thing. Like I could see her as one of the like underground people or something, but I can't necessarily see her as like this apple pie kind of thing that Sandra Bullock has and just like Sandra Bullock can play comedy and action so well. And she just has that like, oh, I really wish there was more excitement in my world kind of thing in the way that she'll kind of like flip her hair around and stuff.

She just plays it so well. And you just, you like Lenita Huxley immediately when you see her, I feel like the Huxley character at that point would have been, she would have had to have been totally different, like more, maybe just attitude wise, just embody what she felt. The nineties were because, yeah, I don't see her much different from, kit in a league of their own. And Tank Girl, she's, she's got that type that she plays.

Maybe she's got like the shaved eyebrows, like Robert Van Winkle or something, you know, really embodying nineties culture and it's great that she loves old pop culture, which is our pop culture from right then in 1993 or maybe a couple of years earlier. Now, this isn't as, it's not as ridiculous as Ready player one where kids like things 50 years before they were born and there's no, necessarily the reason that they give is a really healthy reason. I like that. She likes these things because they're kind of Taboo and it gives her this a little bit of a bad girl edge to her, you know, that she's got all of this contraband inside of her office at the police station kind of gives her a little bit of an edge, you know, not a whole lot of it.

She's not the girl in the PG movie. She's the girl in the PG 13 movie. The one you like sure about, she tries to be bad. Yeah, she wants, I'm glad that she didn't screw up phrases at this point.

Like the phrase mix up is really nice later on when it comes, especially when she seems to get more excited and more into the action. She's not just dropping those right here to impress Benjamin Bratt. He was so innocent in this. He was just like wide eyed, like a puppy.

He really played that well, got to dress up as one of the underground guys at the end to and yeah, we like this character and then we follow her and it's like, I was thinking that Stallone is like Chekhov's gun. It's like we know he's going to show up at some point. We just don't know when and it's nice. It's a tension builder.

You know, we know he's out there. We don't necessarily know when that's going to happen. And then when Simon Phoenix gets reintroduced to the world, it's like, wow, we now, after we've traveled with Huxley and we've seen the world through her eyes and we've gotten to know what this utopian and dystopian utopia is. We now know that Simon Phoenix is the Fox and the hen House.

You know that there's nothing that's going to be able to stop this guy and even his reintroduction. The Wesley Snipes reintroduction is so great. I love what he's there repeating everything that warn Smithers is saying in Spanish. It's so silly, but it works so well.

It's just such arrogance and superiority that they don't, they don't know how to react to that kind of stuff. It's, it works really well just on a, on a level where you don't even have to acknowledge it as a plot movement. It's just he's an asshole. You get it.

It's like right there. LAURA HELEN MARKS: I also like that spot is, at least for the majority of the film we think he has killed a lot of people through his reckless behavior. So he's not a good guy in the sense of, he's not innocent, he deserved to go to jail. So I always appreciated that aspect and then the kind of build up to them unfreezing him and the outrage and the overlaying of all of that kind of making a mockery of action films.

I just find, I appreciate that so much, but the tone is really difficult to pass for a long time. I wondered, you know, is this intentional? But I think it is. MIKE WHITE: Well, I always complained in movies about the new guy, like the new guy on the ship that they then have to take around and introduce to all of the other characters and give us that thing and talk about, you know, hey, you know, Martinez, did you fix that thing on the forward deck yet?

Or blah, blah, blah and just the way that they introduce that guy around. Like I think I just kind of saw that same thing like in Pacific Rim Two where it's like, ok, John Boyega is going to take that little girl and show her around and introduce her to everybody. And in this, we actually get that role being played by Sylvester Stallone when he's unfrozen, he's unfrozen caveman lawyer. He comes back in and Sandra Bullock gets to be the way that he enters into the world, which is a really nice thing that we take this character who is supposed to be such a bad ass and put him in this position of, you know, being a lesser person that he doesn't understand what's going on.

He can't even figure out the three seashells. He doesn't know how to use the three seashells. I can see how that could be confusing. Yeah, they basically neuter his character with that exposition.

The great thing about the exposition too is you wanna hear what happened and you wanna know why the world is like that and it's not just useless. Here's this character, that character, you already know how they operate. So you wanna know what went wrong that led to that. And I thought the exposition in this, it didn't feel like an info dump.

It felt like, ok, now what, what's next? Keep talking. LAURA HELEN MARKS: They never revealed the information at the moment where they would give you the like the visual of him knitting. It's like happening incidentally where he's finding the yarn on his arm.

And they, it takes a while for them to tell you the joke. Like the punch line comes a couple scenes later when he has sweater. MIKE WHITE: As his sexual frustration gets worked out in knitting, which is great. LAURA HELEN MARKS: But I like that.

You say he's neutered. It's kind of surprising how they play it the moment where he wants to drive. And you kind of assume. Oh, yeah, he's the man, he's the tough guy.

He's going to drive. He can't figure it out. So he hands the wheel over to Sandra Bullock so she has to drive and it's not like a emasculating thing necessarily. I don't know.

I found it kind of a, it's like a sweet role for Stallone. That's my favorite role. Like Rocky is essentially kind of, you know, soft. MIKE WHITE: Even though he doesn't belong in this world.

And even though he's kind of taken aback by a lot of things, at least he doesn't go off on stuff. It's not like when they're singing commercial jingles in the car and enjoying themselves. He doesn't turn around and tell them that they're stupid for like that. And yeah, he's kind of sweet about it.

He just, you know, rolls his eyes or whatever. It's living, that's a really interesting point because it shows that I would think his character is. Spartan is smart enough to realize that things change. It's been 60 whatever years things have changed.

He's not going to change that back by complaining about it or going on a tirade rant yelling at them for singing commercials. There's a, there's a little more depth to his character than, than, an initial first view would give you. LAURA HELEN MARKS: I mean, he makes a sweater for her. He could have hidden that and been embarrassed but he shows up and hands her a gift.

MIKE WHITE: That's a good point. Yeah. And I like what you were saying as well, Chris, as far as that, you know, non info dump, info dump where we just get real thumbnail sketch of there was a quake. We were in chaos.

Mr Cocteau, Raymond Cocteau came along and he put things the way that they are now. So there are questions to me of like, well, what's happening in other cities is this all, is this cock's ST angel. This as there are other things going on in other places is everything like this. But, you know, I don't necessarily worry or start writing fan fiction to fill in those gaps.

It's just like, OK, there are things going on and I don't have to know how Raymond Cocteau came to power. I don't have to know how assistant Bob got his job, those kind of things. I just, you know, and to hear, you know, some of the things behind like, you know, the director's commentary where he's saying like, oh well, now the, you know, the way that the ozone layer was growing at the time when we shot this, we decided that there would be more sun than there is right now. So people are wearing these kind of kimonos to cover up more of their bodies and stuff.

I was like, oh that's interesting. And he's World Building without having to telegraph that and just treat us like we are idiots. It's like this thing is here and you can accept it and move on. You can fret about it.

Yeah, there's World Building and then there's bragging. Let me tell you exactly how the machine on the wall that hears swear words works and the algorithm of swear words and where those credits come from that they keep finding that swear machine is one of the funniest fucking things ever. And especially when he is, those, those few moments I was talking about where he does go off and does start to, you know, try to make them realize what a madman. Simon Phoenix is and you've got the machine just going off in the background.

Or you hear it like when they're in the museum and they have that, you know, that reunion of Phoenix and Spartan, this is a stupid thing. But I'll tell you one thing I really like in this movie is the whole way that we use our characters first names and last names every single time they say them. It's very proper. It's a very proper society.

What's what I found interesting is there's a lot of hints, a lot of very subtle foreshadowing with a lot of the background stuff like the sort of voce machines will name everyone by first and last name except Simon Phoenix. He's not named at all, he's a wild card. He's, once you realize he's not being named, you're like, oh, that's, that's, he's definitely gonna be, somebody did that on purpose. He's gonna be a problem.

Somebody, somebody set it up. He doesn't have his lojack. It's also interesting too because he can say whatever he wants and no one within earshot, if he swears, no one would know that he's there because it's also kind of an announcement system, isn't it? Michael White is over there swearing.

And it's, it's kind of a, of a public shaming system at the same time. Yeah. And that's one thing that it takes me a while before I even start to think about that, that there's like a real, a clockwork orange thing going on in this, this whole idea of the social conditioning and taking those, those square pegs and making them fit into the round holes. The whole idea of reconditioning John Spartan to be a knitter now rather than he's a knitter, not a hitter.

And Simon Phoenix getting programmed the other way, you know, in that you could, you could take an Alex the large and make him worse if you wanted to. And that's what they've done to Simon is that they've, they've done it kind of reminds me of what they would do a few years after this and it's almost like he's walking into the matrix and now it's like, I know Kung fu, you know, he knows everything. He doesn't know how he knows this stuff but he knows it. Yeah.

And with those two characters they show you the absolute best and worst that the judicial system is capable of. LAURA HELEN MARKS: I was reminded of that Robocop, especially the inability to kill the, creator. I guess it sort of, I guess Robocop would be Spartan and Phoenix combined. He's the bad bit softy.

But, yeah, I don't know. It combines a whole bunch of stuff. I know. One of you were saying that you did, it wasn't what you expected it to be.

MIKE WHITE: Yeah. First viewing. LAURA HELEN MARKS: Yeah. Did you know it was going to be a comedy?

No, I think no one. I know, like, anytime I ask anybody about it they just assume it's a, another hard body stupid action movie. Just Run Of The Mill. And when I tell them it's a sci fi comedy, they are mystified.

MIKE WHITE: So we can't not talk about Edgar Friendly, the underground movement because we've got, and it's weird that this underground movement of these scraps are bothering cock to so much that he has to unfreeze Simon Phoenix in order to be the instrument to destroy Edgar Friendly because it just doesn't seem like they are that much of a threat. But I guess anything that goes outside of this very carefully laid out social order that cock to has, needs to be squashed. And I guess he's going to use the biggest fucking hammer that he possibly can to squash this little threat to the system or, you know, it might not be that little because it seems like a very thriving underground community.

You know, they've got rat burgers, they've got all this kind of stuff. They've got their awesome hot rod down in this layer and everything. But yeah, it feels like a little much sometimes, but I guess that's what cocktail would do. He's going to make the perfect killing machine in order to take out that bug Edgar Friendly.

Do you think maybe it's a matter of perspective with all the time having gone by, with society getting more peaceful and polite that somebody like friendly down there that would just speak the truth of what he sees as the and that you would go after him with a missile when a fly swatter would work that he's just totally lost all touch with reason. Being reasonable, I can see that. I mean, I think that Simon Phoenix is somebody that somebody like Donald Trump would resurrect and say, you know, we're going to go after this guy with everything that we possibly can.

LAURA HELEN MARKS: It does seem like a liability like it's kind of an extreme decision to make. But I mean, Dennis Leary's character just he reveals the artifice of the promise that he's given that society. And so as long as he's spraying graffiti, you know, exposing that there are people that are left out of that utopia. I mean, I guess sending a psychopath.

I don't know, it doesn't really make much sense. MIKE WHITE: I love how upset Chief George Earl is. The Bob Gunton character. Is about the graffiti like that is such a major thing.

And I love how that's what's got him so upset with the morning that Simon Phoenix gets out is that there's graffiti going on. I just realized that Sandra Bullock worked with the two Luminary Dennis of the 19 nineties, Dennis Leary and Dennis Miller both. Can you believe that? I don't necessarily know what Dennis Leary is up to, but I know Dennis Miller is fucking crazy now.

Yeah, I think him and Victoria Jackson shared a drink at some point when they were on Weekend edition together. I think Rob Rob, what's his name? Might have been a Rob Schneider might have been drinking out of that cup too. LAURA HELEN MARKS: He's great in this though.

He's in Judge Dredd as well. I don't know. Were they friends Stallone and Rob Schneider? MIKE WHITE: I think they must have been pals.

They, when they met on the set, it was love at first sight. The Dennis Leary stuff is a little much for me like when he does his MTV bumper shtick that he was doing, that's a little much and I know that they probably just said Dennis do your thing, but that stuff doesn't age well, to me very much at all. At least he's not like doing the Bill Hicks rip off and smoking the cigarette. You know, I.

LAURA HELEN MARKS: Can't stand it. I'll be honest, I cringe during all of his. MIKE WHITE: Scenes, I remember liking it at the time when he was, when he was at his height. But now I'm like, all right, just let's get back to the plot.

Are you ready to do a fan? It yet? And the more friendly version you could call it. It's like the people that go through and cut out all of Ryan Reynolds from Blade 30 Jeez, he was my favorite part of that movie.

But yeah, that's just me. He was, he was really into that. Yeah. And he had those crazy hip bone things going on in that movie.

I've never seen Ryan Reynolds look as good as he did in that. That's true. Yeah, it's interesting to think, you know, there's a lot of, obviously Lenina Huxley is, we're coming right out of Brave New World. And then even thinking of John Savage is not the actor, but the character John Savage is the kind of man out of time outsider.

But I'm wondering if John Spartan, is that character in this or if Edgar Friendly, is that character in this? Because they kind of both have some similar aspects that they are both outsiders. But then one is really chafing under this Brave New World and other. And John Spartan seems to be kind of going along with it, even though he knows things could be better.

At least nobody hangs themselves in this movie. Right. I forgot what a downer ending Brave New World had until just a few months ago. Spoilers.

By the way, I talked about the malapropisms of Sandra Bullock earlier and she reminds me, you know, and those are very cute to me and I almost wish that there were more of those throughout the movie, But she always reminds me of the white cop from Sanford and son. Do you guys remember that guy where he would be like right off and his partner or I guess like David Ogden steers and better off dead. Come on Lane mellow off, man. It's a brand new year.

I understand there's New Years. You've danced at your school, you kids love this disco thing. You are really bringing me over, man. Laura, you mentioned Judge Dread and the Rob Steiner connection and as I'm watching this movie and they start to thaw all the other criminals, especially towards the end.

I'm totally thinking of the new judges that they're making in that his brother is making in Judge Dre. And I think between that and Rob Schneider, my mom's third husband, he used to always get Judge Dredd and Demolition Man mixed up and I was very personally affronted by that and we would start to talk about something and be like, oh yeah, Judge Dredd, I'd be like no, no, no Demolition Man. And then you know, I would say something else and be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like in Demolition Man, I'd be like, no, no, that's judge Dread so much to the point where I actually bought him both of those movies as a Christmas gift once.

Like one of the most smart ass Christmas gifts that he didn't necessarily know was a smart ass Christmas gift. So then he got that and then he sad end to the story. He passed away. Good end to the story.

I inherited his DVD S. So now I have judge and Demolition him. Wow. And I also got a real Johnny Mic vibe from this movie, especially like the scraps being very similar to me to that kind of underground that Ice Tea leads in Johnny Mic.

I can see a world where on the West coast you have San Angeles and on the east coast, you have mega city one and you have a Stallone on each coast and a Rob Schneider on each coast. And Keanu Reeves is running around with a bunch of data and I said, oh hell yes, that's the world I want to live in. But II I always kind of considered Judge Dredd and Demolition Man, like like spiritual Sequels to each other like they're not connected at all. But if you think about it for a second, you could get a flimsy connection and do a double feature.

Do you think John Spartan, like, goes extreme after this? Well, it could either lead to friendlies. People coming up from the underground could either lead to the downfall of humanity again. And then Spartan would have to start the judges or the judges have already happened.

And this is the utopia that came from it. And there's that what, the wasted land where those cannibals live. Yeah. Yeah, that's the flyover states.

Do you think that there's 10 girls out there? Yes. Absolutely. Cool.

I love it actually. No, that's Australia because the Ripper are mutated kangaroos. Oh, that's right. Also Ice Tea connection.

Yeah. So Mad Max and Tanker can all be in the same continent. They're looking for the green place. So yeah, there's my universal apocalyptic dystopian theory that it all happens all at the same time back when Ice Tea could be such a big part of a movie.

And back before Dennis Leary was the ref back when I could watch movies with Kevin Spacey in them back when I knew what Judy Davis was up to. God, that was, those are better times. But yeah, everything about this movie just works for me. Maybe with the exception of Denis Leary, everything about this movie works for me.

I love the Cops. I love their relationships with one another. I mentioned the Bob Gunton character earlier. I mean, I of him in everything that he does.

The way that those cops interact with each other. You know, Benjamin Brad is Alfredo Garcia. I didn't mention that he's Alfredo Garcia earlier is fantastic. And then, I mean, Glenn shades in full Otho mode here as associate so good and just his, like the way he holds his hands and he's got the gloves on and everything.

Just his body language in this movie is so good. Everybody seems to be really firing on all cylinders. Yeah, it's, it's, it's not a common thing for a movie that's this off center for everybody to be on board with it and get what they're doing. LAURA HELEN MARKS: It's a big, I mean, it's a cost of cameos and stars.

And, for me, the, some of my favorite scenes are the, I guess you'd call it the control room. But when they're watching the cops are watching the attempted arrest of Phoenix. That whole sequence to me is just fantastic. The be like figuring out what you're supposed to tell him and the, they figured out where he is.

So they think everything's done and when they witnessed the murders, Rob Schneider vomiting everywhere. I mean, it's just, it's just, I love it. That's all, all of those sequences are my favorites and Stallone is not even in any of them. Yeah.

MIKE WHITE: And you are such a Stallone fan. That's why I need to ask you to be on this one. Is just your Facebook feed. LAURA HELEN MARKS: Yeah, I love him.

I alienate Stallone fan. My husband used to like Stallone but not so much. MIKE WHITE: Now you turn him off. Stallone.

LAURA HELEN MARKS: Yeah. He, it's weird because I grew up in the era of, you know, Demolition Man and stop when my mom will shoot stuff like that. And I really knew him as nineties Stallone and it was really, only as I got a little older that I kind of got to know him as I guess the Stallone everyone else knows. But it was my husband that kind of introduced me to his way earlier stuff and now he yeah, it's tough.

It's tough living with me. MIKE WHITE: What I like about Demolition Man is that it allows Stallone to be funny and that he is to me, he is such a gifted comedic actor. Now we talked a lot about him when we talked about Beverly Hills Cop. And it's really tough to imagine, you know, they had to rewrite the role for Eddie Murphy because Sylvester Stallone can be a lot of things but kind of smart ass street wise cop.

Not necessarily like I can't really see him being Eddie. You know, Eddie Murphy is Eddie Murphy and Sylvester Stallone is Sylvester Stallone and never the Twain shall meet. But I can see him playing comedy. We see him playing comedy in this.

We saw him playing comedy in Oscar. We saw it in Stopper. My mom will shoot, we saw it a little bit in Rhinestone. We definitely saw it in Copland.

I mean that is a laugh riot but to be 100% serious Copland, we get to see the other side of Stallone, we get to see that really dramatic side of Stallone. To me, that's still one of my favorite Stallone performances. He can go all over the map and I like that. We are playing with his image in this movie and we allow him to be that ass kicker.

We talked about at the beginning of the movie, we allow him to be the ass kicker at the end of this movie. And in between, we actually get to see him as a comedic actor as a straight man. A lot of times he is not a bumbling idiot in this or anything, but we just get to appreciate the future through him after we've gotten a different appreciation through Sandra Bullock. Yeah, he actually signed on to a film that made him a punch line for three quarters of it.

LAURA HELEN MARKS: And he references his own films in the throughout and there were some really obvious ones, but then there's like really neat subtle ones when he's wounded. And this is after we discover he can, he's, he's a master knitter. He's wounded and Huxley notices it and he says, oh, I'll sew it up later, meaning like from first blood where he sews up his wound. But it's like because he's now a seamstress.

I was just so, I love that stuff. It's, and it's neat. He doesn't over it, like, feels more natural and I think people forget how funny he is in Rocky, in a more naturalistic way. He's always had a sense of humor about his performances.

I think that squash out with him and stuff like the specialist. MIKE WHITE: Yeah, that's a good point. That's a very joyless film. LAURA HELEN MARKS: Yeah.

To the scene was one of the most disturbing things ever seen. MIKE WHITE: You mentioned. You got to see this as the Pizza Hut movie. I didn't even know that there was a Pizza Hut cut of this until I'll be totally honest.

Like I said, I own this on DVD. I owned a dead man's version of this on DVD. Re gifted to myself, I guess you could say. And that version, you know, I've seen a ton of times I saw it in the theater, I saw it on VHS.

So now I see it on DVD and then when I went to re-watch this again recently, I was lazy and I downloaded it from the internet illegally. Hello, FCC, downloaded it illegally. And as I'm watching this, yeah, everything is normal. And then all of a sudden let's have dinner tonight at Pizza Hut and I'm just like, did I just cross into the mirror universe?

What is going on? I expected Olivia from Fringe to come knocking on my door or something. I'm just like, what is happening here. I had no idea that they had changed the product placement from Taco Bell to Pizza Hut in the UK.

And when I'm watching this movie over in Shanghai, which was weird that it was on TV. At least three times while I was in Shanghai, they're showing the Pizza Hut version. I'm like, you got to be kidding me. This is so bizarre and it wasn't just an overdub, it was full fledged.

Let's shoot two versions of these scenes. Like as soon as they started saying the words Pizza Hut, I'm yelling out to my wife, honey, honey, they're saying Pizza Hut, not Taco Bell. Sylvester Stallone: What's with this cocktail guy? Anyway, he says I save his life, which I'm not even sure I did and my reward is dinner and dancing at Pizza Hut.

I mean, hey, I like a big fat piece of pizza, but come on, your tone is quasi facetious. But you do not realize that Pizza Hut was the only restaurant to survive. The franchise was so now all restaurants are Pizza Hut. No way.

LAURA HELEN MARKS: The visual of the high, high, like Fancy dining Taco Bell food was such a great visual joke. But did they make little miniature pizzas? MIKE WHITE: I'm gonna have to go back and watch it now because I don't have that version. Yeah, because he does keep talking about, you know how I could go for a burrito and stuff.

But I think they keep the rat burger? LAURA HELEN MARKS: Oh, I want to talk about the car. Did you know it sold at the auction in 2011? There was only one of those.

Yeah, because I was, my husband rebuilds remote control cars. So he got me one. So I wanted to buy, like, build the car from Demolition Man. So I bought like a shell.

I was trying to figure out what kind of car it was and I figured out it's a 1970 Oldsmobile is like a, one of a kind and it sold for $93,500 in 2011. At Rock. MIKE WHITE: I thought you were talking about the future cars. LAURA HELEN MARKS: At first, the car that Stallone finds and drives out of the dealership.

MIKE WHITE: That's a nice moment and I was making sure that they burst the glass right before they drove through it because I was like, you can't damage that car. Come on. LAURA HELEN MARKS: I would have bought that car if I had the money just because sliced alone. MIKE WHITE: But sweat was in it.

Oh, speaking of his butt. LAURA HELEN MARKS: The seashell joke which we kind of skipped over the seashell. Does anyone find it? Kind of?

I guess whenever I see the movie I cannot get over the fact that they force you to think about his butt hole and a signal whenever he's going to take a shift and it ends on that note, it's like kind of, it's unusual, I say that. MIKE WHITE: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess when you got to go, especially after you've been frozen for however many years, make a big display of it.

Kind of reminds me of the evacuation complete joke from the first awesome powers, which I didn't even realize until I was watching this, this recently. I was like, you know, this whole idea of these two frozen adversaries going at it because there was talk of like, oh yeah, Demolition Man was a rip off of this Hungarian story called, what was it? The Fight of the Future or something? Which believe it or not.

Yes, I tried to get the Hungarian story but I don't read Hungarian. There is not as far as I can tell an English translation of the story. I would like to read it just to see what the similarities are. But I was like, oh, well, if that's going to get, if Demolition Man is going to get accused of plagiarism, then I think Austin powers should get accused as well because it's the same idea of these two adversaries getting frozen.

And then when Dr evil comes back to earth, they unfreeze Austin powers and set him after it. And then we have the same fish out of water thing. But you know, it's interesting that they're from our past as opposed to going into our future, same fish out of water. Just different water.

All right, we're going to take a break and play a series of interviews. The first is with screenwriter Peter Lenkov. The second is with screenwriter Fred Dekker. The third, there's a pattern here is with screenwriter Daniel Waters.

And finally, we'll hear from production designer David L Schneider. Don't worry, I'll come back and do the intros to each one of those, so nobody gets lost and we'll be back with all of those right after these brief messages. It's not easy having a good time and it's not cheap either. Every week.

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All right. Welcome to the interview portion of the show. First up. We have an interview with the producer and original screenwriter of Demolition Man, Peter Lenkov.

This is going all the way back to the beginning of your career. And I'm curious first off how you decided that you would have a career in show business. PETER M. LENKOV: As a kid.

I always wrote poems and short stories and drew. And I want to do something in the arts and I liked writing the most and I used, you know, write plays for my summer camp and short stories for anybody that would read them. And, I used to love TV. So I just thought, that's something I wanted to do.

I never thought it was possible though. I didn't think that would stand in my way. I think I was so naive thinking, oh, I just buy a ticket to L A and go there and be a writer. And I think that, maybe being so naive actually helped me because I probably, if I knew how hard it was I'd probably be too terrified to get on the plane.

I just really from a kid wanted to sort of write. I just always had that desire. MIKE WHITE: When did you jump on that plane and go to L A. PETER M.

LENKOV: 30 years ago? Demolition Man is what the 25th anniversary? Right. So it's about 30 years ago.

MIKE WHITE: I know that you wrote the version of Demolition Man that I read was dated 1989. PETER M. LENKOV: I wrote 12 drafts of that script back in the day, the studio would pay you for each draft. I don't even know if you know nowadays, like there's a draft in between interim drafts.

Sometimes you don't get paid for some of them. I got paid for so many different drafts. By the time I was done writing, it was very, it was like, it was so different from the first few drafts because it was gonna be Schwarzenegger, I think. Then it was Seagal and I wrote a couple of drafts with Steven Seagal.

Then Stallone came in and I spent a lot of time rewriting it for him, the idea of the, you know, sex machine using the pods to have sex, that, you know, the head pods. That was his idea. So that was never in the original script. It just went through so many variations, you know, so many different variations with different actors over the years that it sort of changed drastically.

MIKE WHITE: If you started writing that pre 1990. Because your first credit that I know of was Parker Kane back in 1990. PETER M. LENKOV: Well, I got Parker Kane because I wrote the Militia Man.

I think I wrote Demolition Man. Took three years to get made, maybe a little bit over three years to get made. So it originally sold to a company called Carolco. And then ended up at Warner Brothers and when does Joel Silver enter the picture with that, I wrote this when I was working A P A like a production assistant for a production company in Laii.

I, it wasn't even at the studio. It was actually on Wilshire, Lasana, Wilshire. The only reason why I took the job at that place was on the bus route. And I, and I wanted, because I didn't have a car when I first moved there.

So I wanted something that was very accessible. So I got a job at this production company and I wrote Demolition Man in the mornings and at night, you know, between before IW I started work and after work. And so when I sold the script, I met an agent, sold the script to Carolco. My bosses at the time said, oh, we have to be producers on that because you wrote that while you were employed for us, even though I was an assistant.

And even though I wrote it on my own hours, so Carolco got scared because they thought that, you know, these people would sue them. So Joel Silver ended up hearing about it. He told Warner Brothers about the situation and they came in and their lawyers took care of everything and they bought the script for me. MIKE WHITE: You're writing this as a P A and one of your first scripts or what?

It was, it not one of your first scripts ends up getting picked up and produced within four years? PETER M. LENKOV: Yeah, I mean, I wrote a lot of, I probably wrote seven scripts before that. That probably was the most commercial.

I optioned a couple of them but, you know, for not a lot of money and not enough to like sort of really quit my day job. But that yeah, I was really, I was a kid. I mean, I was, I just, I dropped out of college, went to L A two years later. I sold that movie.

MIKE WHITE: So what was the original inspiration for Demolition Man? PETER M. LENKOV: Desperation when I was working as a P A net company. I lent a friend a cassette.

I forget what album it was. I lent it to him. He lost it. So he gave me one in return which was Stings.

I think it was called Dream of Blue Turtle or something. And on it was a song called Demolition Man. And I, so I had that cassette and at the time I bought a car, a salvage ca a salvage vehicle, which I don't know if you know anything about if you buy a car with a salvaged title, that means it was in an accident like a pretty bad accident. And it's really considered salvaged.

But that was the only car I could afford, didn't have a radio. So I had a boom box. So they changed to the back seat and I had that cassette in the boom box, the cassette or the boom box was broken. So whatever song was playing will repeat over and over again because it had that thing where on repeat.

So I would drive home every night hearing Demolition Man. And there was something that stood in my head, which was a line from the song called Don't Mess Around with the Demolition Man. And I kept wondering who the fuck is the Demolition Man. If this guy is.

So, you know, if you don't want to mess around with him, he must be one, you know, tough motherfucker. Don't mess around with the Demolition Man. I kept playing over my side. I kept wondering, like, who is this guy?

Also? At the time, I was sort of trying to find like, what stuff I should write and somebody said to me write stuff and I dropped out of college. I knew nothing but I knew the cop genre because I loved it growing up watching cop shows. And also I was obsessed with whether or not Walt Disney was frozen.

And back then there was a lot of national in choir stories about Walt Disney being frozen. And you couldn't, it was, it was like everywhere. And so I just decided to do a mash up of like the cop genre, something to do with Cairo Genic and call it Demolition Man, which was explain the origins of the guy that Sting was talking about even though I don't even know if he was talking, I still don't know really what the song was about. But and then I, but I, and I didn't even wanna write it.

I wanted to pitch it. So I called, there was a woman named Riley Ellis who worked for Joel Silver at the time. There was an article about her and I forget what some magazine. So I got her name and I cold called her and she was nice enough to meet with me and I didn't pitch her in that meeting, but I met with her and then she said, come back when you have a really strong idea.

So right before Christmas, I called her up and I pitched her on the phone. Demolition Man said a cop, he's in cryogenic prison. He, the guy he was after gets released and you know, they release him to go after him. And halfway through the pitch, she said, I really don't understand it.

I can't follow it. It really doesn't make sense. And but she said, thanks, keep coming back to us and I got off the phone, but I was so certain that I had something and it was two weeks before Christmas when the town shuts down. So it wasn't even a chance for me to pitch it anywhere else.

So I decided I was just gonna write it and I wrote the script and I wanted to have the script sent out. But because I was a P A like as an assistant, I didn't want, I didn't want to use my name on the script because people knew me as a, you know, as wri writing letters for, you know, for submission letters for my boss. So I sent the script out. It was said demo by two E XL 308, which was my license plate.

And I thought that also would, you know, sort of be a little mysterious like who wrote this script and it would like, it was almost, and it worked because a lot of people started calling up the age and who is this guy? I want to meet this guy and, but we ended up and we sold the script to Kol Co for a lot, a lot, a lot of money at the time. And then, which was a big deal at the time and then was sort of everything hit the brakes when my bosses said, hey, we should participate in that. And so it's stalled at Krol Co and then Warner Brothers picked it up.

MIKE WHITE: You talked about writing so many drafts of that and changing it from, you know, for Stallone versus Seagal. When was the point where you left it as a writer? PETER M. LENKOV: I think about six months, maybe seven months before it got made, they actually brought in Dan Waters to do a comedy pass on it.

I don't know how long he stayed on it. I don't think it was that long because I think he came in and did a draft and then he went off to do Hudson Hawk or something. MIKE WHITE: How much did it change? Was it still dystopian when he came in and made it utopian or had it changed to a, more of a utopian futuristic society at that point.

PETER M. LENKOV: Pretty much the same, except that we had a Pizza Hut, they changed it to Taco Bell because they made a deal with Taco Bell at the time. A lot of, a lot of humor, you know, the jingles that was, I don't know if that was Marco's idea or Dan's idea. But, you know, I don't really fo, I didn't follow like, the day to day of it but when I started shooting I to go to set, but that was it.

MIKE WHITE: Well, how was that? Seeing something that you wrote in those early days being made into a feature film? It was surreal. PETER M.

LENKOV: Because I had my family come to set and my Stallone was showing my sister his trailer and it was just like, it was surreal. Yeah, because, you know, I grew up watching Rocky. So all of a sudden I'm working with the guy and, you know, and I'm a kid basically and, you know, I'm walking around the Warner Brothers law with, you know, and they had like four sound stages for the Cryo Prison and everything for the police station and it just was crazy. And Laurie Petty actually, it's funny.

Laurie Petty had the Sandra Bullock role first. I don't know if you know that story. So they saw with her one day and then, just didn't work out sometimes it doesn't work out and they had Sandra Bullock on the contract because she had done a movie called Wrestling Ernest Hemingway. And then she came over and, picked up the role.

MIKE WHITE: Yeah, I saw that II, I still think that was kind of false advertising because there wasn't a lot of wrestling in that movie. PETER M. LENKOV: What's also interesting is, you know, the wife Stallone's character always had a wife and a daughter and that was shot. And then when they did the, in his, in the, in the finished version is what happened was his wife died and his daughter was alive, but his daughter was the same age as him.

But when we did the test screenings, there was some like sort of blowback from audience thinking that he's sleeping with a woman who's the same age as his daughter. I don't know if that would matter today. But 25 years ago, it was a, it was a comment, you know, on the in the test screenings that had them cut out the daughter. I haven't looked at the movie in a while but she is standing next to Dennis Leary in one of the scrap scenes, but she's never acknowledged the first draft I wrote, I know for sure, the first draft that I wrote was 88.

So I know that for sure, the draft that I sold was 88. I originally wanted Mickey Rourke to star in it. I love, I love Mickey Rourke and I wanted him to star in it. So I never saw anybody other than him in it.

And then as the sort of, you know, Joel sort of went through the rolodex actors, it changed, it got a little lighter in tone. And it wasn't as dark. I wa I my original draft was a lot darker. In fact, my original draft that time catches up with you.

So that was a big part of the story originally where at the end of the original draft, he ends up going home to his wife, you know, who was much older. And that was a ticking clock in a story that both him and Phoenix were getting older as story progressed and I don't think his name was. I'm trying to remember in the original draft. They, the name changed along the way for some.

MIKE WHITE: Reason I saw was like William Wade. PETER M. LENKOV: William Wade. Yeah.

Yeah. MIKE WHITE: And Duclair or something, Simon Doucet or Duclair. Yeah. PETER M.

LENKOV: Yeah. Simon Doucet. Yeah. And then it was Simon Phoenix.

I forget, you know, these things they change. I think what I, you know what actually I'm trying to remember now, I think because the whole Phoenix rises from the ashes thing. I think that was just, it was a metaphor. II I have to look back at, I still have a file with all my notes and all the executive notes on it.

MIKE WHITE: And you obviously have no problem with comedy since you've, you did son in law and chairman of the board and a few other, you know, jury duty, you know, straight out comedies. But I'm curious, were you ok with Demolition Man having that? No, I would. PETER M.

LENKOV: That's the thing. I was, that's the one thing that I, did not, I wasn't a big fan of and I really resisted it until they just said we're bringing Dan Waters on. I didn't wanna have it be a comedy, like I didn't want it to have so much comedy. I really, I felt like I wanted to do something that was more pseudo science fiction, cop movie.

And I didn't want, you know, I purposely resisted putting comedy in it. There was some comedy in it, but I didn't want it to be so sort of over the top comedy, which I find the movie has some of, but I didn't want it to be that I always wanted to be a more sort of serious film. MIKE WHITE: I know that Demolition Man probably helped open a lot of doors for you, but you went on to do so much since then. I'm curious, how did you manage to go into the producing business as well as the writing business?

PETER M. LENKOV: I think, because maybe that experience taught me that I got to have more control over the things that I do. I wasn't even considering committing myself full time to TV. But a friend of mine, an executive at Warner Brothers had asked me to come in and do an episode of the show.

He said he said they needed some scripts and Warner Brothers because they made Demolition Man. I was very fond of those people there. And so I ended up doing one script and I really connected with the showrunner, a guy named Joel Cow who became ultimately one of my closest friends. He did 24 after that, which I did with, I did a year on that.

But I did that because of, because of Joel convincing me that I should stay on after that script that I had, I had given them. And it was actually the right move because I really enjoyed the whole sort of show running and the Speed of the, of the TV world. There's stuff that's not on my resume. But, you know, I did the first draft, the Speed racer, I did the first draft, I landed a lot.

I, you know, sometimes you win arbitration, sometimes you don't. So there's been a lot of movies that I worked on over the years that are not on my resume. But, you know, the movie business is tough that way. The TV business was a lot more rewarding because, you know, the Speed of it and the amount of stuff you could actually get made.

So that's why I really stuck with it. MIKE WHITE: How did you get into writing comic books? PETER M. LENKOV: I had met with Mike Richardson who, who just said, what do you want to do?

Let's do a movie together. And I said, I really want to do a comic book and he sort of explained to me the economics of writing comic books, which you cannot make money from in any world. It's not bad, it's $200 a page, but in the film business, it's not a lot of money. So he tried to convince me to do something else.

And I just said, I've always dreamt about writing a comic book and ultimately, let me, let me do it. MIKE WHITE: So how long after you started to write R IP D, was it option to be a movie when I wrote the script for the comic book? PETER M. LENKOV: And we had the some rough artwork, Mike sold it to you to Larry Gordon in universal.

So it wasn't even a published yet, I guess in the publishing world they call it like the galleys, you know, when you're in the galleys of so we were early days like that. MIKE WHITE: So obviously, I imagine that you enjoyed it because you've written other stuff as well. PETER M. LENKOV: In fact, I've been desperate to try to get back and write another comic book.

But it's just a matter of finding the time, but I loved it. The one great thing about writing comics that I realized is that you don't have to worry about budgets. You don't have to worry about any of that stuff. You just, if you want a train to crash, you can write a train crash and it'll happen.

You don't have to have somebody down the road, tell you that, you know, that's too expensive. And I found that very liberating, which is why I, probably, to, this day has been, it's been the most rewarding and less least stressful sort of thing I've done. MIKE WHITE: So, these days you've got quite a few shows that you're working on right now with Hawaii 50, and macgyver. And then you've got Magnum P I coming up and is it too early to talk about magnum?

Has that been picked up? Yeah. PETER M. LENKOV: Yeah.

Yeah. But we could reconnect and a little bit down the road we could talk about. MIKE WHITE: Ok. That'd be great.

I do have one question for you though. Being someone from Detroit, I have to ask, does he wear the Tigers cap? Good. Perfect.

PETER M. LENKOV: Yeah, I look, I was a massive fan of the show, so nobody is going to watch that show and not think that we really honored the original. MIKE WHITE: So fantastic. Thank you so much Mr Lenko for talking to me today.

For sure. PETER M. LENKOV: Thank you. Thanks for your time, man.

I appreciate it. MIKE WHITE: Come on. All right up next. We have a very quick interview with our good friend, Fred Dekker.

I really wanted to ask you a little bit about how you got involved in what you brought to Demolition Man because I was looking at a draft of the script and your name is listed as one of the many writers on the project. FRED DEKKER: Well, I was approached by Joel Silver, who I worked with many times, who I think very highly of. And he approached me about taking a crack at rewriting the script that had been written by one of my dearest friends, Robert Renaud. And I think Peter left Court does that.

First of all, he called me and he asked me to take a crack at a rewrite. There was, there were only a couple of drafts by Bob and Peter and my first instinct was to not do it just out of deference to my friend Robert. I called him. I said, listen, I can't do this.

I don't want to rewrite you. And he said it doesn't, you know, it's, it's fine. I'm not on the project anymore and, you know, go with God. So, but I still had misgivings about it.

And then Joel called me and he's very persuasive fellow and he called me. He said, we're going, we're going to Italy, we're gonna go to Rome, we'll put you up in all that. But in Rome and you know, my, you know, she's a playmate, you know, Lisa, she's, she's beautiful. Let's go.

And I was OK, I guess I can't say no to that. So we went myself and Joel and Lorenzo De Bono Mantua, who was the executive on the movie. We went to Rome to hang around, hang out with Sli Stallone, who was making cliffhanger with Rennie Harlan. And so we went to sort of pow out about how he saw the movie and you know, what, you know, what his expectations were and I found him to be very smart and really kind of delightful to hang around with, you know, it was kind of a paid vacation in Rome for two or three days.

And we had great food and we talked about the script and I, and I, we came back to L A and I went off and took a crack at it. I think I did, I think I may have done two drafts, maybe, maybe only one at the end of the day, I brought two things to the movie. I brought the opening of the movie and I brought a line of dialogue about midway through the opening of the movie was originally in the original script credits playing over Stallone's character in cryogenic sleep, having having already been arrested for some crime and put under for however long.

So Spartan was frozen and much like the credit sequence in the movie as it exists. It was showing him in this cryogenic chamber and establishing that he'd been frozen for many years. So that when he came out, we would realize, OK, he's from another era. And the first thing I said to Joel was, why don't we show how, how we got here and what happened.

And Joel was convinced that the audience would make the mental leap that this is essentially a AAA kind of conglomeration of all of Sly's action heroes. So he just sort of thought, well, we've all seen the movies that, that flies in and that's kind of the preamble. And I said, well, let's, I don't know if that's a persuasive argument. I understand what you're saying, but what you've essentially done is you've, you've created Oz, but you've left out Kansas and he seemed to understand what I was saying.

So I wrote, the sort of pre credits taser which features a, you know, crime ridden, you know, one step from dystopian future, Los Angeles. So that when Spartan is frozen and comes out years later, you know, we see the difference when we see the distinction of this sort of shiny happy future from what it was before, which was filthy and gunfire and fire and all that kind of stuff. So I wrote that, the final version, I don't know whoever replaced me and took over rewrote it, but the idea of that was mine. I think they also wanted to introduce Wesley's character which, I'm not sure it was necessary, but, you know, that worked out fine as a, as a kind of, tee off for the whole, for the whole movie.

So that was my one contribution. And then my only other contribution was a piece of dialogue where Sandy Bullish character is, you know, enamored with all these eighties wise cracking, Shane Black type action movies. So but she, but she kind of gets it wrong sometimes. So at one point, they're all, they're pissed at the bad guy and she says to Stallone, you know, let's go out and blow these guys and then I had to.

And so that was my line and then, you know, Spartan's response is away, blow them away. That, that is really pretty much the totality of my contribution to Demolition. That it was it was good money for the amount of time I spent on it. I went to the set a few times, hung out with Marco and Rem, the other director and Sly and Joel and, you know, it was really quite a pleasant experience, but I can't say that I brought much to it and in all Candor, I really always had a bit of a hard time with the humor in the movie.

It feel, it felt a little forced to me. It had a kind of a, it just, it felt very Dan Waters to me, which is why I said to Joel, you know, you really want Dan Waters to write this because that's the tone of the movie if you want it's not a straight action movie. DANIEL WATERS: It's a kind. FRED DEKKER: Of a, not a spoof but there's a, there's a parody element to it.

There's a, there's a sense of humor about it and I think that's really what you want to go for and I think that that's what, you know, that's what C Bullock brings and that's kind of what Sly wanted to do at that time. And so eventually he listened to me and he hired Dan Waters and that, I think it's really his, I think it's Dan Waters. MIKE WHITE: Vision when you started working on. It was there much humor because I read an early draft by Peter Lenkov and it was very much just a straight action film and there was this whole thing of when the characters are defrosted, their like biological clocks go into overdrive and they start getting really old really fast.

FRED DEKKER: I don't remember that. That's actually a pretty cool plot point. But you're right. I think it was initially a very much, a straightforward sort of futuristic action movie.

By the time I came to it though, they had already started embroidering it with this slightly sort of arch, sort of tongue in cheek. Let's make fun of the eighties in the future. And the characters are very kind of, you know, Lewis Carroll a bit and I think that was already there. I don't know who brought that there may have actually, now that I think about it been an interim draft, Dan may have actually come in and done and done a pass.

And Joel felt that that went too far in the, in the comedic realm and it brought me in to sort of, to try and pinpoint the action beats and make it a little bit more of a straightforward action movie with humor, which is Joel Strong Suit. I mean, that was Lethal Weapon. That was die hard. That's what all, all sort of his biggest successes are.

That bl I don't remember it being sort of a flat out comedy, which I kind of think the movie is at the end of the. MIKE WHITE: Day, writers always have such an interesting career in so far as your name is nowhere on the finished version of that other than running across an errant script, what are some of the other films that you might have rewritten that we wouldn't know that your name was attached to at some point? You know, I haven't done a lot. FRED DEKKER: Of script doctoring.

I had a deal with Fox for a period in the nineties when my career was sort of in a foul up point. And they asked me to try and develop films, a short lived arm of Fox called Fox Family, which Chris Milo Andre, who, you know, create blue sky animation and dominions and all that stuff. But before that he wanted to do, family films. And we were at this sort of strange, crossroads in movies where, you know, Disney was kind of the only game they made one movie, they made a movie called Dunstan Checks In.

And when I had a bunch of pitches, I wanted to revive the time tone and I wanted a long form, I think, ill advisedly revise, revamped the plane of the Apes. I wanted to, I wanted to escape Planet Apes as a rebate because I think it's a great way into that mythology that you can do for a price. You know, in present day, they said no, but I did work on a thing they made called, it was basically based on Treasure Island. And then Disney made Disney made Treasure Planet a few years, but it was an, it was an animated film and I can't actually remember the name of it, but I worked on that a little bit.

I worked under their Anastasia animated film. The only other doctoring I can think of is Joel asked me to cut on the weapon four and come up with some stuff. And I came up with a set piece for that movie which is rigs and MT or in a chase on a freeway and they shoot up a ramp of a, of an auto transport and smash through the window. They drive on the eighth floor of an office building and then the, and then the car explodes out the other side.

And that was, Dick Donner just loved that. He thought that was great. So that was, that was the best money I ever made. Actually, that took me about five minutes and they ended up filming it about three weeks late.

But I was on the movie for about two weeks coming up with action beats and character stuff. And, but again, my name is not on it. I don't, I don't consider that I really had that much of a contribution except for that one set piece and that's pretty much it. I'm, I'm not happy being a gun for hire writer.

I never have been the movies that I've, that I've written that have been sort of, that have gone in other directions like, like House or, if Looks could kill or ricochet, which I briefly was gonna direct for Joel. And, you know, once, once other writers come in and start tinkering with it and I sort of lose my sense of ownership and I'd rather, I'd rather either be the guy that shepherds it through to the end on like the films. I just sort of wash my hands of it and say, you know, good luck guys. Not that I wouldn't do it, not that I wouldn't do it.

But, I just don't get that. There's there haven't been that many, you know, people think of me as a, as either a intellectual property creator or a writer or who writes my own things or, you know, less so as a director, but I'm just not considered AAA script doctor. MIKE WHITE: I know you probably can't say very much at all about the predator. But I'm curious, did you have fun working on that?

FRED DEKKER: One of the highlights of my career actually, you know, I basically gave Shane his first job as a screenwriter, which was asking him to write the Monster Squad, which he wrote the first draft and then I came in and sort of tinkered with it to make it, you know, suitable and then I directed it. And so this is really going back to its old home week, it's going back to square one. We just did it the other way around as I wrote the first draft on The Predator. And then Shane has been tinkering with it and directed it.

But he's allowed me to con to continue to tinker with him. So I was on the set for most of the shoot and really learned a lot, you know, we have a wonderful cast and Shane is really, he's, he's sort of the Anti Aaron Sorkin more than happy with a talented cast to let them, you know, create a play and improvise it. So, the final script is really a collaboration between me and Shane and the, and the cast. It was a great, great time.

MIKE WHITE: I have to say, I'm so excited to see Jake Busey coming back and kind of being his father's son in this. FRED DEKKER: That was Shane's idea. Jake is a great guy and wonderful act. MIKE WHITE: He had fun with it.

Predator two is one of my favorite, guilty pleasure. So I'm really glad to see that you guys are working that into the overall thing. FRED DEKKER: Yeah, I mean, we wanted to do a sequel instead of like a reboot, you know, instead of just sort of a remake, we wanted to, you know, create a story that takes place in the, in the mythology of the existing movies that we like, which are the first two. Really?

DAVID SNYDER: I happen to like that. FRED DEKKER: Is the best of the two for all of its for all of its assets. It's, it's a little, it's a fairly goofy movie. But anyway, so yeah, we don't acknowledge the A BP movies, but we do acknowledge the others.

MIKE WHITE: Can I ask what are you working on now, Shane. FRED DEKKER: And I are doing a pilot for a reimagining of ST and Mrs Peel the Avengers from the sixties spy series. I'm just almost done with the first draft on that. And it's for Warner Brothers.

We don't have a, we don't have a home for it. Yet. But, I'm very excited. It's my favorite thing I've done in years and years and then, you know, we got the movie coming out in September.

So there's a lot of stuff on our plates and, it's, it's actually quite a, quite a nice position to be in. I hope you like the movie. It's strange. I just got to warn you.

It's an odd, it's, it's, it's, it's very strange and, interesting, movie. I don't think it's what necessarily, what people will expect it to be. And I think we're with the fact that we could just bring ourselves to it. Here's the, here's the predator we want.

MIKE WHITE: To make, I don't think anybody who saw the second one would ever think that that's where it went after the first one. So I think this is only fair that the third or fifth would go that same way. Well, you also. FRED DEKKER: Have the director of the nice guy.

So you have to really bear that in mind. Six. MIKE WHITE: Come on fire. Now is the time in the show when we hear from screenwriter Daniel Waters?

Was this your second time working with Joel Silver? DANIEL WATERS: It was the last, my third time working with Joel Silver. You're not keeping track like we've done, we've, we've talked about all of my Joel Silver films. MIKE WHITE: Hudson Hawk.

Yeah, I forgot he was with Hudson Hawk. What was he like to work with? DANIEL WATERS: Oh, my, he, you know, he was, he was a, I mean, I look back and I go, did, I have to do three with him? But, you know, I'm glad, glad I did one, you know, I mean, you know, he was such an entertaining force of nature and he was somebody who loved movies.

Like I never, sometimes when I hear Jerry Bruckheimer speak and other big producers, I don't get a sense that they love movies as much as Joel does. And it was always entertaining working with him and de definitely he, you know, he was larger than life. And you know, you, I just remember like, just like he's just funny to talk about movies. We ended up on a group of us, ended up going to the premiere of Alien Three and he would just come back and like he just ran off on his rant.

Like, you know, it was like, ok, you got, you got 12 British guys and then you got a black guy wears glasses. Can't one of the British guys wear glasses, can't one of them have a parrot help us tell, tell these people apart and he's like visual facts. You got those people the visual credit. I want, I want to pick out a name, put him against the wall and say, ok, what did you actually do?

Come on but it was kind of like that 2024 hours a day, which you know, yeah, I mean, it's funny looking Demolition Man was kind of the last, like, I mean, when I look back at my career, my quote unquote career, it was bizarre and that, you know, I hear I, as a, you know, guy in a video store from Indiana writes Heathers get some acclaim. And then I got on this merry go round and, you know, I call it a failing upwards vantage where, like, I just kept working. You know, I went from Ford Fairlane and before Ford, you know, before Ford Fairlane came out, I made to get, make sure to get a job doing Hudson Hawk.

And then oh, got to jump off that. Then Hudson Hawk, I got my job on Batman returns before Hudson Hawk came out, then Batman returns. I got a job on Demolition for and Demolition Man was Demolition. Man was kind of like the last, ok.

You know, I'm, I'm doing well in that. I keep getting another job before my other job comes out that way people keep hiring me. But at the same time it's like, wait a minute, what, what happened to the guy who wrote edits? And so like I after Demolition Man, I kind of got off the merry go round and then, then you have this other thing where like, ok, when you do write, write or per personal movies, they don't get made.

And some suddenly like, I'm in the wilderness for 10 years. Making these more arty movies that never get made. And, like, sometimes when I think about, like, what I loved about Demolition, man, it's like, jeez, I shouldn't have abandoned Joel completely or I shouldn't have abandoned that kind of filmmaking completely. Like, you know, like, why would still be calling me after this?

Who knows? We have left. MIKE WHITE: Because we have to work on Happy Campus next. DANIEL WATERS: Oh, jeez.

Somewhere for people, I think. FRED DEKKER: Yeah. MIKE WHITE: Can't wait. DANIEL WATERS: Yeah, people are clamoring for it.

Although it's funny you look on IMBD about anything there. Every movie is somebody's favorite movie. FRED DEKKER: It is very funny. MIKE WHITE: I've seen him parodied in other things.

Like, I think Saul Buben was trying to channel him in true romance. Have you ever seen anybody come close to capturing the silver energy there? DANIEL WATERS: I mean, well, there's a, there's a sketch on SC TV, where basically Rick Moranis is doing Joel and it's like, there's a talk show. It's like, and like he just moving his legs and yelling and it's in a bad, bad posture and like, you know, and he's bringing out crew members and shouting, they don't know what you do, they don't know what you do these people.

And it was like, pretty much like the Joel Silver playbook. But like, no, nobody can really find it as much. But, you know, I think nobody does Joel like Joel does but like, even his little bit in who frames Roger Rabbit, you know, like, get a sense of Joel. But yeah, and I feel like he's like, even The Matrix was a great, amazing film.

But it was a, you know, that's not the Joel. I know, I like the trashy Joel, like, you know, and it's funny, like, just, you know, hearing him talk about die hard, which is a masterpiece is that, like, you know, a lot of that was done on the fly and like, you know, talking to Steve De Sousa, it was just like, I can't believe that what I thought was is a perfect machine. Even that was done with the J silver style of chaos, which is like, which is like, wait a minute, what if the power goes out and the power is what turns it makes the safe open, like, you know, it's come out, they came up with that on the set and here I'm like thinking here, I'm thinking it's a well oiled screenplay.

But yeah, I still, I still, yeah, I still remember we, I was watching Lethal Weapon with my family at Christmas when I first got a call from Joel Silver saying like, you know, come to Fort Fairlane, which, you know, is the Ford Fairlane. Probably not. I think there wasn't Rotten Tomatoes back then because there's probably a bit of an elevator drop. But you know, yes, like I say, I look back fondly probably should have done two of them, you know.

But, you know, cer certainly, certainly, like, you know, us working together, we enjoyed each other personally and we had a great, like, but I feel like it ended up being, I would put, you know, I was a giraffe and he was a rhinoceros and our movies ended up being a rhinoceros with the draft's ad and like, you know, there's gonna be certain people like that. Very few people, you know, like, hey, you don't see that every day. So like, I think that, you know, to make, you know, because I can't, you know, to me, I can't take, I can't play an action movie straight, you know, and Joel knows that and Joel, Joel loves action movies.

He loves comedy. He just, he just wants the audience to be constantly entertained. And we both have kind of a way of looking at plotting where, where it's just like, why can't the climax be the next scene where like, you know, everything's so obsessed with third three act structure. And I'm like, well, why don't we just make the climax the next scene?

That way we can have a new climax 15 minutes later that you just keep pushing the story, you know, so it's just an entertainment machine and sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't work. MIKE WHITE: Where was Demolition Man at? When you came to the project?

DANIEL WATERS: I had already made that decision that I had talked about my big Noble decision to like, I'm gonna go back and do a serious movie like after Batman. But then Joe basically came to me and said, because, you know, they were, they were, they were in production, you know, this was not like, you know, you know, pre-production kind of like, you know, way in the distance of what we're thinking about doing it. And basically, they Stallone was already hired. I don't think Wesley Snipes was hired.

But, he was in, they were in negotiations with Wesley Simson and basically, they had a script, Peter Lenko wrote it. Guy hates my guts. I don't, I don't know why. I mean, I guess I know why because I turned his movie into a comedy but he's, and he's still pretty angry with me.

But, we met each other briefly in a laser disc to tell you how far back that was. But, you know, and everything is everything in Demolition Man, like the bones of it was in that first script of basically a good guy is frozen. A bad guy is frozen. The bad guy breaks out in the future and they, you know, it is much more specific to the character, but the character, only this character from the past could really catch this guy.

So they, you know, set him out and he's chasing after a guy. But, you know, and I'm reading like, yeah, it's all right. It's so, you know, it's a science fiction action movie. But like, and, you know, and Joel thought it was kind of live there.

Like, you know, we're actually making this movie, you know, you gotta, you gotta give it life and I'm like, well, if I did it I would, you know, there's so much, there's so much like Woody Allen Sleeper comedy that's dormant there right now. And I, you know, and it was basically, I would go completely extreme. Like, like the future was not the future. It is in the actual movie where it was, it was kind of not really distinguished, like I say, you know, completely, you know, I had gone to, you know, I'd gone to City Walk in Universal City, which had just opened around the time, which was kind of like this, if you're not familiar with it, a big kind of shopping center up on the hill that keeps all the homeless people away and it's shiny and everything's like neon and, you know, it's, it's, it's, you know, there's everything's clean and beautiful and I'm like, what if all of L A was City Walk?

And like, what if, you know, you had these rules and you could make fun of political correctness and like, you know, and literally there was no guns and like, I, you know, just what if the only gun was in a museum? And that's where he had to get it. And so I just completely made it completely extreme and let's bring in the comedy and like, you know, and so, you know, so, but, you know, but at this point, I still didn't want to do it like, you know, I'm just, just throwing things out like, you know, but then this is back in the day where, you know, I always, this, this is gonna make me sound like a jerk.

But, you know, back in those days they actually paid the screenwriters a lot of money and like, and when you don't want to do something, it's amazing how the, I mean, but if you can't play that, you, it's like you can't play hard to get, you genuinely got to not want to do it. And then that's when they're like, throw these, just insane sums of money at you. And probably this is getting in why people, like, off hates me because I only really was paid to work two weeks on Demolition Man. And I won't even tell you how much he got paid a week.

It's, it's even in, even in those days and today the dollars, I don't even want to think about it, but it was a lot of money and it was an offer I couldn't refuse. And, you know, this is getting off topic, but it was, it was the, it was the, Johnny Carson's last episodes that Johnny Carson was taping his last episodes of The Tonight Show and I figured out that the only way I could get in is if I got in line in the middle of the night for a show that didn't start 530 the next day. And so it was like, well, jeez, what am I going to do for all that time?

And I go my God, I'll do the index cards for Demolition Man. So it's like I almost took the job just because I had to wait in line for 20 hours and I did like end up, you know, working out the beats and the plot of, you know, and, you know, it wasn't a lot of change, believe, spot beats and plot wise, but it was like this extreme kind of comic vision and I just, you know, went crazy on that. It wasn't even a good episode. Like everybody remembers the Robin Williams Bette Midler episode.

That was the night before, which was Roseanne Barr and Richard Harris. But, you know, it's because of that episode, the Demolition Man got written. But I packed a lot of those two weeks as far as like a really changed, you know, and it's, and if, you know, I'm a good writer of WG A arbitration letters, but I didn't think I was going to get first credit. But you can tell the spirit of my letter was the spirit of the movie where it suddenly had this comic sensibility.

So I'm sure people had all these charts, pulleys and beakers of why he should get so credit. But then they could tell by my voice that it was my voice that kind of won out even though I worked on the project for two weeks. MIKE WHITE: I love the idea of you standing in line for Carson just working on the screenplay. Yeah.

DANIEL WATERS: Yeah. And I had a, I had a friend with me that I ended up having to give some money because I ended up bouncing all these things off him and he, and he was kind of more of a science fiction person. So like, we, you know, and then of course, probably skipping ahead to one of your most famous questions. I ended up calling a friend of mine who's a fellow screenwriter, Larry Kazuki wrote Ed Wood and People versus Larry Flynn, people versus OJ Simpson.

Basically, I called him and I said, dude, I'm trying, I'm trying to think of some future stuff here. I got like, you know, pound out this Demolition Man. But you know, I'm trying to make it more of a comedy like, like, you know, and he's like, dude, I can't, I gotta call you back. I'm taking a shit and like, I'm, I'm going to the bathroom and like, and like, oh wait before you go, like the Yeah, let's, let's come with something in the bathroom.

It's just like, I don't know, I in the bathroom and I said, ok, bag of shells, I'm gonna do something with the bag of shells. So that is the ignominious origin of the three seashells which, which you know, which I don't have a defined way of how the three sheels are used. But it was kind of like from there that, that, you know, just having a friend saying I got a bag of shells next to me in my toilet, but I ended up, you know, creating that thing and that thing is hilarious and that just when people find out I write Demolition, man, it's like they, you know, it's like the Rosebud, they're just obsessed with what, how to use the three C shells and like, you know, I, you know, it's heartbreaking to tell them I didn't think in that, that in depth and that far ahead and like I went, I was on jury duty and I had basically, I, you know, the judge was judge, you know, I was curious and asked me my credits when I met Demolition and the bailiff came up to me afterwards, like, well, you have to tell me, sir, the three seashells, like, like just like, come on, man, the names that you came up with or I'm assuming that you came up with Nina Huxley, Simon Phoenix, all these names, you know, and this is the Hudson Hawk rule too.

If it's it says other credited writers. It's ridiculous. It's mine. Like, you know, anything that's silly.

Like, that's a change in tone. That, that's, that's, that's mine. Yes. Yeah.

Lenina Linna Holey, like, really lazy of like, you know, hey, the lead character for Brave New World and the writer Brave New was the last name. Let's, let's, let's, let's make some sausage here, but kind of like catwoman and Batman turns. Who is the, you know, she was my main focus about our turns. Like, you know, I could care less about Batman and Penguin, but I, you know, I love riding catwoman.

You know, Lenny Huxley became my favorite character of Demolition Man where like, you know, you got these macho guys fighting it up but it's, you know, her and all her, all her like, you know, Miss misremembered lines from eighties action movies herself of there's a new shepherd in town and he's finally matched his meat and he really likes his ass like that. That was my favorite stuff to write. And then, and Sandra Bullock who, you know, you know, sad to say terrific actress Laurie Petty was cast in the role and then Joel just on a whim woke up allergic to her one day and then just fired her and brought this woman that hadn't really done a lot, Sandra Bullock who, who just thrived and thrived with the comedy and just like, you know, she really popped in that movie and we ended up like Joe, ended up showing Jan De Bont scenes of her when they were casting Speed and, you know, Sander to this day will give credit for like Demolition Man getting her Speed and Speed.

God of the rest of the world. Well, yeah, it. MIKE WHITE: Was so refreshing to have such a strong female character and somebody who, even though she's kind of the butt of some of the jokes is still so out there and like can take care of herself. DANIEL WATERS: Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's like, you know, and you know, and like, sometimes I make fun of what I call strong female roles because it's just a man's role and they just change the name and like, oh my God, you're a lawyer, you're a woman. Oh my God, you must be strong female role. Like, you know, to me, like having somebody deliver comedy that can deconstruct the macho guys around her.

That, that, that, that's a more interesting character than just somebody who kicks ass. But yeah, I mean, I thought she was just terrific down the line. MIKE WHITE: No. So you write this in two weeks approximately?

Are you sticking around once the shooting starts? DANIEL WATERS: Yeah, I dropped in from time to time. I had, you know, I like, I mean, you know, poor Marco Rambla, the director was kind of much, much more from in our world and, you know, he could intellectually talk to talk with you about like, you know, you know what he was doing with, you know, the architecture and the designs and like things like that. But I think he was a bit of a babe in the woods with Joel and the action department and like, this is the way you make an action movie.

And so I felt like, you know, I had to be there his translator to work with Joel. So kind of like, yeah, I definitely dropped in from time to time and yeah, it was, it was a, it was definitely seemed like a fun shoot. I mean, I remember going to like bringing my friends to the, there's a building that blows up at the start of the movie and like just bringing all my friends and we're, we're sitting on top of another building across, across from the building that blows up. You know, we thought we'd be safe and we were safe.

But I just remember when the thing blew up, we were, it was, you could feel the heat and it was, it was just like, OK, that was interesting that probably would have gone to a far further building. If I knew when Wesley Snipes was cast there was suddenly this inner turmoil among everyone. Like, ok, what do we say? And you know, you probably couldn't do it today, but we were sensitive back then.

Oh, so you're saying the one black guy breaks out of prison and he ruins the future. So this is like, oh God. But you know, the way Wesley like we and Wesley was, he was so relaxed about that. Like, he's just like, then there's, there's no racism here.

Did you see how much they're paying me for this role? That's not racism. And I think, you know, and he took, he took joy in the performance that I think it deflected and he, like, we were all worried about these things. And then I think once you see him and he wants you to see how much he's enjoying himself.

And it's so sad. Like overnight, it seemed like Wesley Ss became so self serious that, you know, you almost forget in this movie. He's having a great time and, you know, and it's contagious. MIKE WHITE: A lot of times it almost feels like he's the joker in this movie.

DANIEL WATERS: Well, yeah, I mean, I think there's always that archetype of the villain having more fun, especially when, especially when Stallone is the lead. And, you know, and I love Stallone's performance and I think a lot of time when he tries to do comedy, he like, he puts on his comedy hat, like, look, I'm doing comedy, I'm being silly and this one, the comedy works because he completely lets himself be the straight man and underplays everything. And I think, you know, I think it's a great performance. MIKE WHITE: Well, yeah, just the cast for this movie is amazing.

They have Nigel Hawthorne as Raymond Cock. I mean, it's like, how on earth did that happen. DANIEL WATERS: Since Dole put Alan Rickman and die hard, who wasn't really well known to American audiences when he was a die hard. Now, he's always like trying to, you know, he always became obsessed with.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna put the British, I'm gonna put the amazing British actor that everybody in England knows into this American movie and it's going to class it up and it's gonna, you know, make it different. But yeah, Nigel kind of looked down on the affair a little more than I would have liked. But, you know, he was, he, again, he put him in the mix and it is, it makes the gumbo that much more interesting. MIKE WHITE: Now, I've heard that Wesley Snipes did a little bit of ad libbing on set.

But I imagine that Dennis Leary, you guys just kind of let him do his act almost. DANIEL WATERS: Yeah, I was, you know, the, if you look at the credits, there's a guy who I've, I've since become befriended Robert Renaud that I said he brought in much more of the underground element of like, you know, a lot of that was his. Yeah. But yeah, it was definitely, there's a character in one of Philip K Dick's books called Buster Friendly.

It was kind of an entertainer. And so we you know, we named this guy Edgar Friendly. I guess he did write some, I did write Edgar Friendly. I guess he did write some of this.

But, yeah, so we kind of wanted him to be almost like, sure the leader of the leader of the underground movement and all that. But we didn't want it to be like, too, too pretentious. We wanted to be like, he was also a comic sounding board and yes, you know, we did write some stuff but he, you know, Dennis Leary definitely did do some adlibbing and even lines that we wrote, felt like Ed Laing in a, in his mouth in a good way. I think he took like, I think, you know, at the end, he's just like, ok, you're gonna get a little dirtier, you're gonna be a little cleaner and it's like he's kind of rushing through the theme of the movie, but in a way that makes it unpretentious, thought it worked.

MIKE WHITE: Can you tell me a little bit about some of the cut scenes because I know that there was more to this film before it ended up coming out. DANIEL WATERS: The mother of cut scenes and the mother of cut elements has to be the daughter that, that, that Stallone is, you know, ostensibly spending the movie looking for his long lost daughter that he, when he was put in the cryogenic prison. He had a daughter and now he's looking for her here and I can tell you I've been in audiences and has, and everybody thinks, and nobody talks about it really now.

But at the time, especially when you watch in a theater, everybody thinks Sandra Bullock is going to be revealed to be Sylvester Z's. So like when you watch the sex scene there, at least a lot of the audiences I was with, there's this creepy moaning like, oh no. Oh This is gonna be crazy. Oh no, it's gonna be his daughter.

They're gonna some sort of tattoo is gonna give it away and, but that doesn't happen and then you're waiting for the daughters shoe to drop and it just never happens. And the thing is we did shoot an elaborate of her, him finding his daughter underground and his daughter is older than him. It was played by a great New York actress Elizabeth Ruscio RSR us Cio who is in a, an amazing getting off track here, an amazing Showtime mini series called Home Fires. That was the first time I ever saw Julia Lewis.

That is an incredible piece of work. But that's another thing. But she, unfortunately she got caught out of the movie because it was kind of, it was a sudden burst of Maline this that and so we just kind of avoided the issue I think, you know, and the great thing is that this is the Demolition Man did fine domestically, but it really did well Overseas. So of course they get a call from Joel.

What do you think of this? Meryl Streep is Stallone's daughter for the sequel. What do you think? I'm like, ok, you got me on the set, I'll come out but like, you know, but that, that was definitely a biggie, you know, obviously the seashells was a bit of a runner, but there was a whole scene of Snipes talking to Stallone about like, hey, those three seashells.

So what's the deal like? You know, and it was funny, it was like in the middle of an action scene and, you know, he's asked about the seashells and, you know, it was just timing and everything and we cut it out. But I was like, and you heard me scream in the editing room. The editor of the movie, it was a real bad ass some Stuart Baird who's kind of, I jokingly referred to as like doc.

He ended up directing a lot of movies himself, but I always thought of him as Dr Smith from lost in space. He was always like very villainous and sniveling and but I, but I would like put up a fight like you don't understand, you can't do the C cell joke at the end where Stallone says, and what about those seashells to Sandra Bullock? And nobody's gonna laugh if you don't have one more mention, you know, a half hour after the fir the last mention, then nobody listened to me and premier packed audience audience really digging the movie.

And then at the end and how about the seashells? Dead silence, dead silence. Joel comes up to me, you know, as people are finding out a theater and just like, and he's like, shut up, don't say it. And, but then he's like, hey, do you think we could just put a laugh track in it end?

And like, people will assume that other people are laughing like, you know, you think we could do that? Like, he was totally serious. MIKE WHITE: Of all the bad guys that get defrosted at the end. We've got Jesse The Body Ventura who at this point is not a nothing.

So it's like, well, what happened with this guy? DANIEL WATERS: Well, I, yeah, I can't say he had a huge justice league backstory. And yeah, I mean, I think, you know, that, that, that they, the number on their checks was as if they did have a big supporting role, but I don't think they really had like a great role. I was like, wait, Jesse Ventura is one of these Schmos in the back.

Like, you know, it's like, it's like, you know, it's like, and I guess Jesse had done predator with Joel, is that right? And, or one of the predators with Joel, like just said, hey, you want to come out and hang out with Stone and hang out with Wesley Wesley Stein and get paid a lot of money. And it's like, you know, Jesse's not gonna say no, he, you know, he's not gonna say or he could have said, but he certainly didn't say, well, I need my role to be bigger, like, you know, he's just like, so I certainly, I di I didn't write anything for him.

I mean, we had another writer who wrote on the, wrote on the mo on the production side, Jonathan Ln, who I, you know, I've read, read one of his drafts and I don't, you know, I'm not sure how much more he added, but he was, but he was a very good, he was one of my favorite rewrite writers coming in after me. Like, because I think he really did some great complimentary stuff for instance. I think it's his joke when after the three seashells mentioned, he goes, he goes over to the, he goes over to the cussing machine that charges that, that finds you every time you cuss and he starts cussing in the machine and getting the, getting all these papers and all these violations and using his toilet paper.

That was Jonathan, which I thought that was like a great spin on something I had. MIKE WHITE: Come up with. Is there any truth then to the rumor that the daughter does survive, like, kind of hanging out in the background because I don't see Elizabeth Ruscio listed at all in the credits. DANIEL WATERS: Oh, she's not listen in the credits.

This is mean. Yeah, I certainly don't, I mean, I certainly don't remember seeing her in the movie, like, that's for sure. And I had a friend, I had a friend who, Ma Matt Patterson. Shout out to my friend who, who worked for weeks in that underground thing because he had developed this like drum machine that you could walk around with and like, and like, he was going to be somebody in the and they did these elaborate tracking shots with him.

And I'm like, I'm so I was so excited for my friend, like, oh my God, because he invented this thing. It was going to be amazing for your invention. And like, and then you know, the huge tracking shots got cut too. MIKE WHITE: So, yeah, you mentioned working with Marco Barbri and it seems like the, it was his first movie, like the first thing that he directed and how on earth do we know how he managed to pull that off?

DANIEL WATERS: Joel is an art lover. He's an art collector. I know Marco had done some art work and you know, and you got to remember that Joel gave for better, for worse, Robert Longo, a much more famous artist, a movie to direct him Johnny Mnemonic. And like, so like, you know, he was, he was always willing to, I think Josh, I mean, J Joel always thought he brings the movie making.

He bring, he's like the Louis B Mayer. He's the guy that brings it and like, so he can bring in like more people from other realms. Like he doesn't need a meat and potatoes director. He thinks that he can guide them, doesn't always work out.

But I think he was willing to take a chance. But it is funny to think about it because Mark Marco is a much more soft spoken guy and I think he was in over his head, you know, and II, I would say a similar thing about Michael Lehman who was kind of like, you know, like, you know, directed Heathers and, you know, comes from a background of directing more like low budget, you know, subversive comedies and like, and Joel's like, come to the circus, you know, and, you know, you'll have fun and like, but I think both Michael Michael Lehman and Marco Brambilla just don't have that actually personality that I would say Rennie Harlan who I did Ford Fairlane with and Rennie Harlan knows he's got to be a bit of an asshole, like he knows he's got to walk in the set and might be a little over the top and bombastic something kicked in on Marco and Michael Lehman were like, and it's like Jesus, this is ridiculous.

This is, this is insanity. But, you know, I think, I think, you know, a lot of times you have to revel in the insanity. MIKE WHITE: I know right now you're kind of putting the finishing touches on. Is it hashtag Fashion Victim?

DANIEL WATERS: I think we're losing the hashtag but it is called Fashion Victim. Yes. The shorthand of it is, it's the Dexter wears Prada where it's the woman in the fashion industry becomes a serial killer to help like get rid of the idiots who are in the fashion industry. You know that although the film, the show is very pro fashioned.

But, yeah, I mean, we just did the pilot. We're just, I mean, we're literally turning it into the network tomorrow. And we'll see if we get picked up. Hopefully we will and you know, and hopefully we'll get to shoot in New York City.

But yeah, amazing lead actress named Willa Fitzgerald who was on the TV show screen, but I think she's going to become a big star on every level. But, yeah, it's, it's definitely the most me thing I've written that's been produced in a long time. MIKE WHITE: Are you back to working with your brother on this? DANIEL WATERS: Yes.

But I think we, you know, we, you know, we another Mike White production that will never happen is Vampire Academy because I think the, that I did with my brother. But the ingredient in the stew that we don't have this time was Harvey Weinstein. So, you know, we weren't sexually harassed but we were, we were certainly harassed in other ways. Well, it's, it's funny at the time when I would talk about working with Harvey, I would refer to him as like he, I would just the way I would have heard him.

He's a rapist who wants to be told how good he is in bed. And then, so then when, you know, the actual stuff started coming out, I was just like, oh well, I was speaking metaphorically but you know. MIKE WHITE: You weren't doing one of those Seth Macfarlane in jokes. Did I read that Ginny Grisha is in fashion fiction?

DANIEL WATERS: Oh yes, she's in it too. She's well, you know, we had this kind of boss character. We were afraid that was going to be too much like Hannah Wintour or Meryl Streep and Devil wears Prada. But you know, just, you know, you cast Gina Gershon and become something completely different and you know, we lost our fear of those comparisons right away cause she's let me just say that we all had to do a sexual harassment seminar, you know, the week a week before shooting.

And if you want good comedy, do a sexual harassment seminar with Gina Gershon where she's like, so if I see an extra and say that extra is hot, I want to fuck him. Even if I don't want to fuck him, I can't even say. MIKE WHITE: It she seems like she would be a lot of fun. Is she down to earth?

DANIEL WATERS: Oh, yeah. I think so. I think so. Yeah.

Yeah. I was a little, I was a little, I was a little afraid just because she could go either way with, like, her kind of raunchy over the top performance. But she's very fun. She's very funny.

She really enjoys this. Yeah. MIKE WHITE: It almost seems like she could be doing, like a Janice Dickerson type role in this. Yeah.

DANIEL WATERS: But she gets to run the magazine. Yes. So she gets, I think she gets to speak Chinese and be professional at the same time being very genius. So I think she's having a good time.

MIKE WHITE: To let you in on a little secret. I'm a huge fan of like, Project Runway and America's next top model. DANIEL WATERS: So, hey, you've been keeping a secret. I mean, I watch those shows religiously and never miss one.

So they split the focus groups into two categories, men and women and the women were very positive and very excited. Then we happen to get just the Beavis and Butthead, Pete Davidson sat live, focus group of all time for, and it was just, it was miserable. And I'm like, there's gotta be some, there's gotta be some guys out there who, who, who are going to get there. So we just get them, any of them in that room.

Like, I mean, obviously we'll appeal more to women. But still, I know there's men out there who love fashion and love Dan Warner's comedy. Come on. MIKE WHITE: Well, when I saw that, Andre Leon Talley was in, I was like, oh, that's awesome.

DANIEL WATERS: Well, can you turn the mic off for a second? No, I'm kidding. I mean, but I think, yeah, I mean, obviously don't put this on the radio or put it on a podcast. MIKE WHITE: But how is it working with your brother as a collaborator?

DANIEL WATERS: He's definitely much more of a left brain straight. A student loves math kind of guy while I'm just the complete right brain crazy. Like, you know, it's like, you know, I've directed a couple of movies in my time, you know, I never met a lunch penalty. I didn't like and kind of the whole make your day thing was not big with me.

And I think he actually loves the shooting. He loves, like, to me, to me, I love pre-production. I love the editing room, but like going out there having to direct every day was like, you know, a caveman having to get pelts for the winter and like get advice on me. You know, it was, it was tough for me.

So it's great to have somebody actually doing the directing and he said, you know, I just, just now I just got this email from him, all these changes he wants to make that are so like decibels and my things that I didn't even notice. You know. So I definitely, definitely like that. Although there is some resentment in that, you know.

You know, I saw Jaws when I was a teenager and knew right then that I wanted to make movies and write movies. He didn't go see Jaws, he didn't go see Star Wars. He didn't see why people would go to a movie theater when it's summer out and you can play, didn't care about the film industry was gonna be a doctor. Then he saw that I had some success with Heathers and he said, oh, well, I didn't know anybody could do it then, like I paid for him to go to film school and now he, now he's much more, yeah, he, you know, I make little Heathers and then he makes mean girls which makes more money.

And so it's just like there is something unfair. I'm like, wait a minute, you didn't want to be in this industry. MIKE WHITE: If it makes you feel better. I didn't like House of.

Yes. DANIEL WATERS: Whoa. That was, that was before he sold out. I mean, usually GS of girlfriends pass is the one that people come, come down on and I.

MIKE WHITE: Do own DVD copy of just like heaven. I don't know why I own a DVD copy of just like heaven. But I do. DANIEL WATERS: Oh, well, you know, you know, you know, he's quietly.

My brother's biggest fan is Tarantino where he loves, he loves, just like heaven loves girls. The girlfriend's past he thinks like Mark is George Cooper. Like, it's very funny. MIKE WHITE: Well, thank you again for your time.

It's always good to talk with you. DANIEL WATERS: All right, man. Great to talk with you. I do the tracks and the trains to the way is one.

MIKE WHITE: Hey, and last, but not least we'll hear from production designer David Schneider. In the early nineties, it seems like you weren't getting too much sleep. There are just so many movies that you worked on one after another after another. Or it looks like you did Super Mario Brothers and Demolition Man.

Back to back. Which one did you end up doing first? Which one? Did you work on first?

Because I know you never know with the way production schedules are what happens first when a movie comes out second or later. DAVID SNYDER: And Super Mario Brothers, I went to interview and I met with Rocky Morton and Annabelle Jenko, the directors, husband and wife at the time. And now they're they have a top commercial company. I mean, really top commercial called MJZ as in zebra.

So they don't make movies anymore, but they're really successful commercial. So they called me in and I met with Roland Joffe, you know who he is, of course, he directed the Killing Killing Fields amongst others. I had a good meeting and then I had a call from Fred Caruso who, since that time is a AAA lifelong friend, a really close friend. And they said we don't want him because we're afraid that the movie will look too much like a combination of Blade Runner and theory's big adventure.

So they hired a guy named Wolf Kroger who did a picture that I like very much that I turned down. You're the Dragon with Mickey Mickey Rourke. So it was a Dino De Laurentis picture. And I had met Michael Cimino on it and I thought he was a little crazy, but he was very, very nice to me, but he had just done Heaven's gate.

And I didn't know if I wanted to be, you know, beaten up again after, you know, my time on blade, which is very tough. The director said they didn't want me. So they hired Wolf Kroger who's a wonderful designer who's he lives in France and in Montreal, French Canadian European, they had a meeting with him and he was sitting at his table drawing, Wolf Kroger was and Rocky and Annabelle who had been animators took out a pen, a ballpoint pen and started writing on his drawing and he was so infuriated that he quit the show.

He said, I don't tell you how to direct and you don't write on my drawings. I quit. They called me back again and I went back again for another meeting with Roland Jaffe after they fired Wolf Kroger and had, they had to pay him off, by the way, you know, he had a pay or play deal. I met with Roland Joffe who was really upset because he had already fired the first director, who was the guy who did mom and dad save the world.

They fired him. Then they fired Wolf Kroger and Roland was fired, paying people off. So I sat up with him in a meeting and he was very aggravated in the meeting that he was meeting with me because he was upset, not with me, but he was just so tired of it all. He said, OK, so then Fred Caruso called me and said, OK, you got the job and he said, do you know why?

And I said, why? So because Rocky and all said he's the guy that did Ply and Blade Runner. Let's get him. And I said, oh man, oh man, what, what am I in for?

So the making of that film with a lot of my, you know, my team, it was very difficult, constantly changing. The cement plant where we shot the film in Wilmington, North Carolina in the summer. It was always over 100 degrees, it was always humid. The cement plant was filled with probably carcinogenic material left over for manufacturing and it was difficult.

They fired the first cameraman so that Roland wouldn't have to fire the directors. So he wanted to fire the directors, but he'd already fired one director and being a member of the Directors Guild Of America, he didn't want people to think that his ego was what was generating his firing of directors. So they decided to stick with them and they fired Peter Levy who, who went on to have a great career. Last thing he did was House of Lies, which was a beautiful television show on the I think HBO or Showtime.

And so they brought in Dean Semler as a cameraman who had just won the Oscar for Dancing with Wolves. So again, we had this high profile team with directors who had only done one feature, but who were noted for max headroom and they were from England and they had a certain way of working. They didn't agree all the time. I wanna say that they're very nice people, but the script changes, the set changes, I would start building something and one would say to the other, hey, I didn't approve that.

And the other spouse would say, yeah, but I did. And then there'd be an argument about that and it went on and on and on and on and on. And at the center time frame of the film, Jeffrey Katzenberg came down to see the sets and Joe Roth and R and Roger Birnbaum, who I think at the time were with 20th century Fox, every, all these jets flying into Wilmington to see the sets because it was a big buzz about the Nintendo movie because of the theme park aspect, there were so many aspects of it that made Disney pay for the movie.

So once they bought the movie, which was a very dark kind of movie at the time that I started on it, well, they threw out the script and tried to make it like a family friendly movie. It was a disaster in some ways, but in other ways, on the film which I worked on and my wife worked on and my daughter was a of artists. All of those positive things about it were great. I met Bob Hoskins on it who, who became a lifelong friend until he died.

And we were brought to England to do a picture with him. I did four or five movies with him and I would have done more, hadn't he passed on? So the benefit of Mario Brothers was that it's a cult favorite because it's a goof. People like it.

I've been asked to go to screening midnight screenings of it to explain what happened. And so we all look at it as a big goof, but it did get the Blu Ray treatment and, you know, it's talked about quite a bit. So, you know, something you can do AAA cult movie and have that be popular. Even though it failed at the box office, if Jeff Katz and Disney hadn't bought the film and someone else may have it could have succeeded because the original script was great.

But as I said, it was Tim Burton dark like Batman, that kind of dark. It was a much better film. So they try to make it friendly for kids and it was gonna be theme park rides and all that and all of it disintegrated when the film failed. So as I was working on that, at the same time, Joel Silver was doing a Coen Brothers movie in North Carolina in Wellington.

At the same time when I finished Mario Brothers and I got back to LA. I had a call from Joel Silver who somehow had heard all the great things about Super Mario bros, how fabulous it was. And plus Joel's a huge Blade Runner fan. So I went in to meet him at his office and I was hired on the spot to the Demolition Man to replace a guy who was not getting along with the director, Jack De Goa.

I was hired immediately to start immediately because they were already in pre-production for me. II, I had as good a time as one could have on another giant movie. The sets cost about $7 million. It's quite a bit of money in 1994 93 II, I had a great crew.

I must have had 30 people in the art department. I mean, more than Blade Runner because at the time, Blade Runner was kind of like, you know, one big giant set on the back lot and all the other sets were on the stage. But on that coalition then went into the future. It was all over L A and Orange County.

You know, there was a lot to do. Plus plus the Cryo Prison set alone was 55 tons of steel. It was an amazing set and all all the props that were that we designed like we call them the hockey pucks. You know that everyone was encapsulated in the Cryo Prison.

We brought in another Academy Award winning team just to do that. We brought in another team just to do the vehicles. We brought in another team just to do all all the monitors and the ipads, we had ipads that were hardwired through the costumes. I don't know if you remember that.

All, all the people in the government walked around with ipads before there was an ipad. If you look at the film, you'll see it. And then we use the same technology when they had in the conference room with the leader of the city where we had built the set up on a platform and down below the, all the led screens were programmed to move around and choreographed ahead of time with the actor. So that as he walked around the room, the faces would be following him around.

So I thought technologically it was closer to the future in some ways than Blade Runner was, you know, but it was 13 years later. So technology had advanced. So the costumes, you know that Bob Ringwood did were amazing. There was one meeting that I remember.

Well, because at some point, you know, Joe and I had to have words because the amount of money that was being spent and Joe would walk through a set with all of his friends and I'd be standing around and he wouldn't recognize me at all to be part of his tours of his sets, not my sets, same directors and actors and producers would be taken to the sets. II, I got to the point where, you know, it was very tough on me. And yet I just, you know, kept going with the work and working with Marco. And I brought along the assistant director, a friend of mine Luis De Esposito from Mario Brothers.

I got him the job on it and today he is the head of production at Marvel Studios. So I could see that Luz the esposito was gonna go places and it helped to bring as many people as you can that you like ee even not in your department because you know, that they'll help you know, they'll protect you, they'll watch your back. So Lewis took care of me and I took care of Lewis and, you know, I felt in some ways I helped him get his job at Marvel by working on all these science fiction films. We had a production meeting and in the production meeting, we were talking about all, all the frozen aspects of the show.

How are we gonna make it look like it's freezing. How are we gonna do this scene where the entire Cryo Prison is frozen when he breaks the vial before the, you know, after the big fight during the big fight. And so I started telling Joel about, I had to do this and I needed this and that. So Joel in a meeting of about 40 people in a Warner Brothers conference room.

He said, what Joe used to do is when he get really excited, he would shake, he would like bounce up and down in his chair and his whole body would shake like he was having a spasm when he got excited. As a matter of fact, Ri Rick Moranis did a great impression of him on SC TV because he had worked with Joel on Streets of Fire. So he had a great impression on him. He started rising out of the chair and screaming.

David, he's the kind of money you're talking about. It would be cheaper to build a time machine and take the entire cast and crew to the future. So by the way, II, I thought that Joel Silver was brilliant. I thought he was cruel.

I thought he was brilliant. I thought he was funny. He's a, one of a kind guy and I'm glad I actually had one experience no more than one working with him to see what all the talk was about. And, you know, some, sometimes, you know, you know, like he'd walk through the set with Joel Schumacher and all, all of the people, all, all, all the great people to show off his sets and then as he's walking off the set as an offhand remark without looking at me, he, I don't see any Blade Runner here, David, where's Blade Runner?

I paid you for Blade Runner. I don't see any Blade Runner. Where's the Blade Runner? And his voice would drift off as he would walk off the stage with Joel Schumacher.

It was quite an experience and I would say that with Joel the way I can describe him and I don't think he can hurt me anymore because he's sort of like, you know, on the outs at the moment, he's not doing well at all financially or otherwise. The best way I can describe it is when he would have a moment, I can call it because I've seen him like at least a half a dozen times do that. After he was finished with a rage, he would be completely calm and serene as if he had an orgasm. He had an a, he would have an anger orgasm and then he would be very serene and he would be nice.

And do you want a coffee? Can I get you a coffee? It's really bizarre to see. He would have moments where the director Marco Brambilla would he would disagree with something that the art department was doing.

Instead of coming to me to talk about it in the beginning, he never did it again. He would go to Joel and complain about something he didn't like like a chair, a simple thing like a chair that he could have come to me and I could have given him 20 chairs and he would walk over with Marco and then he would scold me and the set decorator Bobby Gould. And then when Joel was finished complaining to us, he would look at Marco as if he was alone in the room with him and he would say, what are you complaining about? He said, what are you complaining about?

What if they were working with a real director like Joel Schumacher instead of a piece of shit like you and Marco would just, you know, smile, you know, li li like a Cheshire cat smile and take a beating because it was his first movie and he couldn't do anything otherwise he'd quit. And by the way, Marco only did one movie after that and never did another because I think the experience with Joel and oo one more instance, we were in Joel's office, Marco asked for a couple extra days of shooting. So Joel and his bungalow starts going up and down his chair, screaming and screaming and yelling.

So the two producers and I got up and walked out of the bungalow and we're standing outside the bungalow and it was kind of like California winter time and the smoke was coming out of the chimney of his Spanish beautiful Spanish bungalow. And so Jim Herbert, the line producer and I were standing outside and Dick Donner, whose office was next door came, came out and said, hi, how are you guys doing? What are you doing? And Jim Herbert said, we're looking up at the chimney to see what color smoke it is to see if there's a new Pope.

I thought that was really funny from, from Jim Herbert, especially who had no sense of humor. I mean, there's so many stories about that the first day of shooting it rained. So the Cryo Prison was still under construction because it took so many people to put that together. I mean, you've seen it and you can imagine the amount of work that went into that set.

I thought it was pretty fabulous myself. We're supposed to shoot exteriors where the helicopter is above the hostage building with, Wesley Snipes. It rained so I couldn't do the helicopter shot. So Joel sold me up.

I was at home because I didn't need to be there for that that night. And he said, we have to go to cover set, we have to go to the stage. I said, ok, so I got up from my bed and went to the stage and it was the scene, the only scene we could shoot with the doors closed to the crier prison was the corridor that went to the crier prison. So they got Stallone in wardrobe and they put the gown on him and those slippers that you wear like, you know, when you're going to a spot.

So they got Stallone there and they got the f the four or six guards that were supposed to walk him down the hall and the audience is supposed to think they're gonna take him and electrocute him or take him to the gas chamber. You know, because no one knows what it is yet because they haven't seen it. So all of a sudden everything stops and Sly goes over and talks to Joel. Joel comes over to me and to the wardrobe department and says, ok, because Sly was not wearing his Cuban heels, the four guards were taller than him.

And so they lined up the crew, you know, the grips and the electricians and everybody and the crew like 100 people. And then Stallone walked down the line with you all and they picked out four people from the crew and they sent them to a wardrobe and makeup and hair and put costumes on them so they could walk down the hall with Stallone and he would be taller than them. That that took about, I don't know, three or four hours of the first day of shooting. Oh, yes.

The day that they hired, Wesley Snipes, it was a pouring night and Joel came down to my office in the art department at stage 15 with Sly and with Wesley Snipes to show them all the beautiful artwork on the wall because it was, we had like really great people like Patrick Patrick Tatopoulos who's like a director now. And so Wesley Snipes is looking around at all the pictures on the wall and Sly was just kind of hanging around talking to Joel. He didn't much care about it. And all I can remember is Wesley Snipes repeatedly saying to Joel Silver.

He said, oh, this is good as long as I get to kill a lot of white people because I want to kill a lot of white people in the movie and he kept, he kept saying it over and over again in his whole agenda for doing the movie getting to kill a lot of white people. So we know what happened to Wesley Snipes events. They went crazy, you know, you know this, that when we started shooting on the stage, it was time to shoot the character played by Laurie Petty was cast as the lead in that movie. So we shot about three or four days.

And after looking at the dailies Joel Silver said she's gotta go. There was no chemistry at all between her and the cast and especially Stallone. And so they fired her and on the lot at the time was a person named Sandra Bullock who was only known for a movie called Love Potion number nine. I think she was in that maybe and a few other things, but she had been on the Warner Brothers lot because she had just done a film about Ernest Hemingway.

01 of the reasons why she got the job and the executive at the studio at the time was Lorenzo Di Bona Ventura who is a very, very famous person. Now he does all the Transformer movies. He's done a whole ton of movies since he left Warner Brothers, very fan and a very nice guy, a very friendly guy. He suggested her and one of the things that was a priority was the costumes that, that were designed on the film.

It came to tens of thousands of dollars. They were quite expensive because it's all in the future. And you've seen her costumes, you know, aside from the police uniforms and all that. And so, Bob Ringwood, who had designed all the Batman movies and continues to design movies, she had to fit in the wardrobe.

So as lovely as Sandra Bullock is and as famous as she got to be, and I'm sure she got the bus movie because of Demolition Man, she had to fit in the wardrobe and she did with some minor adjustments and that's how she got the job and she was fabulous in it. She's actually one of the best things in the movie and Laurie Petty who I've worked with since is a wonderful actress, but not in this, not in this movie, you know, and to the point where Joel said some very unkind things about her that were published in the, in the press which I, which I'm not gonna repeat, he had that side to him, you know, but at the end of the day, he's like working with AAA cartoon character, you know, the other thing, because I work with Sly about five times and, you know, he's actually married to my daughter's high school girlfriend who used to come to our House and have sleepovers and all that.

So, it's his new wife. Who's lovely. I knew her Jennifer since she was a kid. There were lots of things that had to be looped in the movie because Sylvester Stallone has some sort of speech challenge which I'm sure it is common knowledge.

So, and it's, it's probably cruel of me to talk about it. He's a guy that, you know, I'm, I'm sure he can take it. But every day I would go to the set and spend my time and then go and do my, you know, running this gigantic crew. We had General Motors give us million dollars, millions of dollars worth of cars, you know, concept cars that came from Detroit and air conditioned trailers.

I think it was quite amazing. After Joel Joel Silver and I had a meeting with the President of General Motors Oldsmobile Division and the reason that they insisted a car that we use in the movie would be an Oldsmobile was to tell the public that in the year 20 whatever it was that Oldsmobile would still be around and of course, is gone, along with Pontiac gone, we would watch the dailies and they would come in VHS cassettes, they'd be delivered to my office in the seat. And by the way, you know, the VHS cassette, audio and video is not good.

So it's hard to hear, hard to watch. It was from the first days of shooting. And it's the scene where Stallone comes into the building that we would eventually in reality blow up. We actually blew that building up and he's got the hostages in the building.

I had the script with me and I had my art department in my little office at Warner Brothers. And we're looking at the D and Stallone runs into the room in full commando regalia with a gun and he screams out what I thought was, where are the sausages? I looked it over. So did he just say, did he just say where's the sausages?

And we ran the tape back and again, it's like, where's the sausages? So we looked at the script and we finally realized he was, he was saying, where's the hostages? And throughout the entire movie, it was a tagline that everyone repeated repeatedly throughout the film. And every time he said, where's the hostages in the movie?

At the screening, the entire arts department would burst into the laughter and no one knew why. II I it was a pretty good experience but you can imagine going back to back on the Super Mario Brothers and on Demolition then because I actually, I only had a few days off and the other sad part of it is Jack De Goa, who was fired this whole art department that had been working on the movie out of loyalty to Jack De Goa quit. So, in one way it was ok. In another way, I brought all my people and there's sort of a rule in the art director's Guild where if you're going to be replaced, like, like I've only been fired once.

Thank God, it was not a good movie that you stick around for a week or so to pass on the mantle to the next guy. See, but Jack De Goa being sort of a politician with the art director's Guild and he may have even been a president. He decided that he would not extend that courtesy to me, which always made me think that he's not really a good guy because it's just not done. You know, you just don't walk away in anger and fury and not help one of your brothers or sisters and the art directors deal.

So I've never spoken to him since I've seen him around at the annual Art Directors Guild Awards Ball and I've always felt kind of bad that he took that stance about it, not, not closure at all. MIKE WHITE: Well, I want to know what you're working on these days right now. DAVID SNYDER: I'm in development on several projects that are all based in Canada, China or New Zealand, a fantasy adventure about three teenage kids living in New Zealand somehow make contact with a Rainbow. And there is some science behind this, not all science fiction.

But there is, there are studies going on now, weather studies about rainbows and rain and tornadoes and hurricanes. U using them as like a weapon. Sean Connery made a movie about that, you know, weather, weaponry, you know, like causing storms and causing these kinds of things. So we did all the research on that and decided to do sort of a fantasy film about it.

It's called into the Rainbow. And the Chinese title is The Wonder Chasing Rainbows. It's gonna be released on 32,000 screens in China. I'm taking it to the Savannah Film Festival and it's gonna have its US premiere.

And Willow Shields is gonna be awarded the rising star of the year award. And also in the cast are a guy named Julio who's one of the biggest teenage stars in China, like, like Beatlemania, large star with millions of social media followers. And a young woman named Jacqueline Joe, who is the star of the Elizabeth Moss television series Top of the Lake. The film was shot in 3d by one of Peter Jackson's 3D DPS.

But it's a wonderful movie. The cameraman, Richard Bluck who's in a New Zealand cameraman worked on Avatar Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring, the Lord of the Rings return of the King, King Kong. I mean, amazing credits, amazing credits shot the film and it's wonderful. I'm looking forward to that premiere.

I can also tell you, I'm working on a mini series based on The Great Race between, the Natchez and the Robert E Lee steamboats that took place in 1870 in, a race between New Orleans and Saint Louis. It's a 12 episode mini series. One of the only reasons we're able to do this is because the technology is available because all the steamboats and everything else are gonna have to be CG I because it would be, it would be, it would not be cost effective to try and build two working steamboats. And with what I've seen lately, on lots of mini series, it's so simple to do it now that films that could never be done before.

Well, we're gonna attempt to do this and right now we're in pre-production with a Canadian production company called Melanie Films. I just got a script yesterday for a short film to be shot in Bulgaria. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm pretty, I guess I'm pretty busy still. Is she just so listen, while you're listening, Brazil killing this and a bit silly kids.

Did it bring it big, but we kind of did let me find a break, lay that down down. Well, it's about time you found out there's a sound lurking in between the building, sir and lead the week. But still we push. Yeah, with th and tools we plan to rule this land to shake my hand.

MIKE WHITE: All right, we are back and we were talking about Demolition, man. Now, I don't know if you guys had a chance to read the Lenkov version of Demolition, man. It's an interesting take and it's dated, the version that I managed to find was dated in 1989. So we're four years before the movie actually comes out and, you know, you can get those lines like the Joe Gillis line about, you know, oh yes.

When I wrote this, it was about skiers and then it's now set in a U boat. It's not necessarily that radical of a shift as far as skiing and U boating, but it is a radical shift between where we are at in Lenkov, 1989 version versus the version that came out in 1983. I mean, it is drastically different. LAURA HELEN MARKS: I mean, it's a completely different film.

It's bad. I mean, it's kind of amazing. It says a lot. I mean, it kind of explains, it explains why the film feels so like it's straddling genres.

It makes sense to me that it originated not as a comedy. And then what Daniel Waters says, if it's ridiculous, it's mine. I'm like, OK, I get it. I can totally see that.

MIKE WHITE: It's got to me kind of like a free Jack feel like when our criminals are unfrozen. So kind of the moment when Alex Furlong gets jettisoned into the future, that, what was it, the distant future of 2009, I think that was or something he basically gets jettisoned into dystopia. Like a real hardcore, you know, soil green type dystopia. Got Buster Poindexter running around as a greasy cabbie, those kind of things.

So it's, there's no future utopia. It's all dystopian. So, whatever was bad in the past is almost worse than the future. And so we've got this whole idea of what is it, Simon dose breaking out of prison, killing one of the guards and then his the other guard, the one guard's partner is basically the Sandra Bullock character and vows revenge upon Simon Doucet and will go after this guy and then they have to defrost William Wade to capture him.

So no, John Spartan in that one. And then the bad guy in this, there's a real tenuous connection between the bad guy and William way or sorry, Simon Doucet and the bad guy is it? I mean, we've seen this 1000 times. He's running for mayor and he used to be a bad cop, but he portrayed himself as a good cop and he set up William Wade, the John Spartan character to take a fall and made him seem like he was a bad cop.

So they sent him away. So, but now the sins of the past are revisiting and then more kind of sins in the past. The whole idea of this William Wade character, his wife and daughter are much more prevalent in this one. As you heard in the Daniel Waters version.

There was a daughter in the original, in his version of Demolition Man. But that wife and daughter, I mean they are basically they kidnap bait, right? This is like a John Wu film from after he came to America. This is, this is face off territory that we're getting into.

But the one cool thing that I liked about it and tell me what you thought of this. Laura was the whole idea of the ticking clock and that once these guys are defrosted, they have to get like shot with something or else their biological clock will just kind of kick into overdrive and they'll get older and older and older. So it kind of like the problem of Simon Phoenix or Simon Doucet in this case almost solves itself because he's getting older rapidly throughout this film and pretty much he'll become a corpse and die by the end of it.

I mean, that. LAURA HELEN MARKS: Is unsettling and sort of strikes the whole thing through with this really dark sense of mortality and just a completely different tone. I mean, I found that really interesting. I'd like to see the movie that this is that this would have been, it would been interesting, but yeah, really unusual.

It's not lighthearted, it didn't. MIKE WHITE: No, definitely not. And those, they don't call them scraps in this, they call them techno thugs, which is so 1989 I think those guys from Johnny Mic would have been more techno thugs and scraps. The whole idea of John Spartan's daughter is interesting when we think that just 86 is when aliens came out and the way that they surgically removed Ripley's daughter from aliens and they kind of surgically removed John Spartan's daughter and this one in the final version because he doesn't go look for her at all.

And to the point where you're just like, well, that's interesting. But the way that the movie moves the final product of Demolition, man, I don't ever really think about that. And then when people point out like, oh yeah, he had a daughter and some people claim that she's standing next to Dennis Leary at the end when he's giving his little, like you guys get a little dirtier and you guys get a little cleaner. I don't really care.

It doesn't seem like it's missing. To me. LAURA HELEN MARKS: I did feel like it was missing. I thought it was weird.

I mean, I can see why people think that Sandra Bullock is his daughter. I've heard people say like, oh, that's, you know, he has sex with his daughter. Like that's the whole thing. There's this really bizarre, unintentional theory floating around that.

That's what the film is really saying. But, it, they do seem it seems like they're setting it up and the way they talk about it in the car, I can completely see why people think that. And then there's that moment and at the end where there's a really brief shot of Stallone protecting somebody. I was like, who is that?

And I was reading online and I think that's her. It's like a split second. MIKE WHITE: As fast as little Eddie comes up in Hudson Hawk or not quite that fast. LAURA HELEN MARKS: No, it's just someone where I was like, I don't recognize that character.

Why is Sylvester Stallone protecting her? It makes sense. MIKE WHITE: I was convinced and it took Dan Waters to kind of talk me out of it. But I was convinced that there was a whole subplot with Jesse The Body Ventura because you don't put Jesse The Body Ventura in a movie, you know, post Running Man and Predator and you don't have him as a major, minor character.

I mean, come on. That was so weird and disappointing. LAURA HELEN MARKS: You put him in the intro credits. I was looking forward to that.

MIKE WHITE: He had so much to offer. And I liked, I like that moment when we've got Simon Phoenix's unfrozen a bunch of thugs and then he does his again to me very much a joker speech where he's talking about the one man who put us all away is here going to take him out. You know, it really felt like the legion of doom is getting together and they're going to take out Superman or Batman in this case. And all those guys just looking like a total rogues gallery.

I'm surprised they didn't all have like a gimmick, like one guy had a robotic eye or something like that. Yeah, I don't think it was the Lenkov version. I think it was an earlier version of the water script or one of the water scripts because it sounds like you got a couple of chances at this after talking to Fred Dekker Edgar friendly in that one was named Thomas Payne Payne. And that's funny to me, I know that it's actually a reference to Thomas Payne Pine, one of the founding fathers kind of thing or an influence on the founding fathers.

But of course, my mind immediately went to Thomasina Pay who is the leader of the resistance in Death Race 2000. And this is totally, that's very similar to Death Race 2000. You know, it's like this whole idea of this underground group trying to disrupt the upper echelon and stuff. But at least in Death Race 2000 again with Sylvester Stallone, we it's not very much a utopian society.

It is a utopian dystopia because they pretend like everything is ok and they have this great release by having this death race throughout the country. But we know for sure that things aren't really supposed to be this way. Whereas when we see a Demolition Man, it's like, oh, things, people think that this is nice and they seem to be enjoying it and the average guy on the street probably doesn't know that he's living in a hellscape of swear machines and, you know, robotic sex and stuff though. I would be open to having sex with Sandra Bullock with one of those, like, brain scan things.

LAURA HELEN MARKS: I don't know. It looked really unpleasant to me. It's weird. It was like, the last time I watched it for this show was the first time I realized that Stallone was meant to be, having, like, experiencing pleasure.

Is he? MIKE WHITE: I think he's supposed to be. LAURA HELEN MARKS: Yeah, I guess, I don't know. I think he's really bad at doing sex stuff.

There's only two movies apart from the soft core porn movie he made, but there's only two movies I think where he's shown in any kind of sexual way. This and the specialist I find it pleasant to watch. MIKE WHITE: Yeah, I can't really think of him being too sexy in too many things. LAURA HELEN MARKS: He kisses someone in Rambo first blood part two and then she immediately is killed.

That's, I think that's the answer right there. MIKE WHITE: Did you guys listen to the audio commentary for this? This was a weird audio commentary for me, Chris. What happened to Joel Silver?

He just, I'm thinking he got up and left. I realized at the end when he signed off and I'm like, well, there were two people at the beginning and I couldn't tell you at what point in the commentary, he stopped talking. It's early, but there are so many commentaries where weird stuff happens, like people get mad at other people and you can sort of hear it and you know, they've stopped it and restarted it with that person out of the room and just who knows, that's a commentary. I would want to hear commentary about what happened during their commentary.

I'm trying to remember there was one commentary I was listening to recently where somebody just like stopped by and it was like, oh, you know, here's this guy and they brought him in, it sounded like they were in a trailer and they brought the guy in and he talked for a few minutes. He's like, hey, I gotta go and they're like, OK, see you. I kind of almost wish that Joel Silver was like, listen, babe, I got a meeting going on across town. I got a jet and then, you know, you hear the door slam like you could almost do like the old timey radio thing of like Joel Silver like door slam.

Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it just fades out of existence. Yeah.

The commentary about the commentary, the meta commentary. I love it. And that would work even within the context of the movie I think I was talking about the foreshadowing of Phoenix and his conditioning and all that. But the other one that I forgot was, when they greet each other they do that hand out, almost touch in a circle kind of motion.

No one touches anyone else ever except for Simon. Of course. So the sex scene shouldn't really have been a surprise. But it, but it is, but then when you go back you're like, oh, everybody has their own personal space and no one violates that.

It's, it's just something, something interesting. I noticed, I noticed Jack Black. I didn't notice him this time. Where was he again?

Is he one of the scraps? LAURA HELEN MARKS: He's one of the scraps and he's literally just in the background that Jack Black and I thought there's no way and I looked it up. It's Jack Black. MIKE WHITE: I know I mentioned brain scan earlier because the thing kind of looks like brain scan.

But I always got a real strong cocoon vibe out of that sex scene. Anybody else? No. Do you know what sex scene?

The Gutenberg sex scene which I just love saying those words together. Alright, maybe it's just me then. Alright. We are gonna take another break and play a preview for next week's show Out of the Flame.

Sylvester Stallone: And Fury of the Frontier. The old West lives again as only John Ford can recreate it. People with wonderful characters who have become legend in their own time of them. All two are the most memorable Liberty Valance and the man who shot him.

That's my steak balance. You heard him, dude take care. Bye. I said you liberty, you pick it up and the man who shot him was justifiably destined to become a hero.

Yet, strangely enough, only one of these people could be sure he knew the identity of the man who shot Liberty Ball. Now you stay out of this stuff when he's been hiding behind your gun. Long enough, you got a choice dishwasher. Either you get out of town or tonight, you'll be out in that street alone.

You all heard him say he had a gun in his hand, didn't you? I didn't say that that ain't murder Mr Marshall. That's a clean cut case of self defense. Now get out of my way this time right between the eyes.

MIKE WHITE: A right? We will be back next week with a discussion of the man who shot Liberty V who shot Liberty V. He was the greatest of them all. Until then I want to thank this week's Cohos, Chris and Laura Chris.

Is that outside of the cinema podcast? Is that still going? Yeah. You know, despite my best attempts to not show up to record the show, We are going strong and next year we're gonna hit 10 years, I think.

Holy shit is it? I don't even know we passed 500 I think a while ago. I don't pay attention to what number episode I just make sure I've watched the two movies, one other plug I would like to get in my friend Frank and I have the original movie game and it's at the original movie game.com and we actually have eight trivia nights for anybody, you know, relatively local at the o'neill theater in Littleton, Massachusetts, every Wednesday in May and June at seven o'clock. So, yeah, Frank set that whole thing up.

He's done a great job now. I just have to get over my social anxiety and show up. You know, you do well behind a microphone, maybe just like wear a mask or something way too hot. You know, they could sex pistols the whole thing.

We just put up a curtain. I'll just, I'll just sit behind the curtain. What's that sex pistols? Who was that public image limited?

Probably both. Ok. It sounds like a very John Lighten thing to do regardless it is. But you know, I don't want to be a jerk so I won't do that.

Do you ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Laura? You had some very exciting news today. Can you share that with our listeners?

LAURA HELEN MARKS: My book is available for preorder on Amazon. It's called Alison Porno Land. Poco Encounters with the Victorian. MIKE WHITE: Gothic and your news today was.

You're like what number one preorder or something? Yeah. Yeah. LAURA HELEN MARKS: In porn studies.

So that's probably me and no one else. But I'm number one man. That's what that is. MIKE WHITE: That's Right.

Yeah, I love reading your Facebook feed. Not just for the Sylvester Stallone, but also because you have no problem sharing some of the great observations from your students in your porn studies class. It is fantastic. LAURA HELEN MARKS: Yeah, they're great.

I love them. They go in with eyes wide open and, it's nice to see. I mean, I've been studying pornography for so long and now I get to see these little freshmen being exposed to the weird world of porn. MIKE WHITE: If I was to look at your syllabus, what might I see on there?

LAURA HELEN MARKS: We start with deep throat obviously and then we work our way through stuff like, Devil and Miss Jones opening a Misty Beethoven and then through to Gregory Dark, he's now an MTV music video director, but back in the day he made the Devil and Miss Jones three and we also watch a bunch of, Gonzo by Mason Porn Fidelity. We kind of skipped the nineties. I'll be honest. MIKE WHITE: Now, I'd like Devil and Miss Jones three.

But if I'm going to do Greg Dark, it is going to be all about the new wave hookers. LAURA HELEN MARKS: Yeah. But you can't watch the full version. MIKE WHITE: Well, you can't, not in class.

LAURA HELEN MARKS: I did give a presentation on Tracy Lords that explained it. MIKE WHITE: Awful thing. It's out there. Yeah, I know.

Or you can go right to white chicks or is it black chicks? Ok. I thought he did both. But the great, yes, one of my favorites.

So where can people pick up your new book? LAURA HELEN MARKS: They can get it on Amazon for preorder right now. It comes out in October. They can follow me on Twitter.

I'm at Doctor Ram Bet, like Rambo but feminine. MIKE WHITE: Very nice. And Chris. Where can people pick up the movie game?

The original movie game.com or on Amazon? Wow. Sounds like an Amazon trip is in somebody's feature around here. Well, thank you so much guys for being on the show and thanks to everybody for listening.

Please head on over to the website projection dash, Booth.com where you can find out more about today's episode. You also find links over to itunes where you can rate and review the show and to Patreon where you can make a donation to the show. Donors get early access to every episode as long as I'm not running late, every donation and every rating we get, helps the Projection Booth take over the World Train if you enjoy this show and want more people to know about it.

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