Robert Kurtzman and Marcia King - Making Pondo

 In this episode we talk with Robert Kurtzman and Marcia King. They recently finished work on Scary Movie and Marshmallow. They share some fantastic tales of the set from their work on numerous productions over the years.

Topics range from friends at horror conventions, accidental bloodbath stories, and tales of getting lost in the desert. 

#TalkingPondo #FilmPodcast #HorrorMovies #RobertKurtzman #PracticalEffects #ScaryMovie6 #MoviePodcast #BehindTheScenes 

Transcript

Clif 0:01
Welcome to season four of Talking Pondo. Talking Pondo is a podcast where Cliff and Marty give each other a film to watch and talk about them in detail. Some episodes will include special guests. Alright, Marty, we're back.

Marty 0:19
And we're back. It's uh another episode of Making Pondo this week. Mixing it up a little bit where we talk to filmmakers about their craft. Oh, kids, we got a banger for you.

Clif 0:31
Oh boy. Grab on something. All right. On the show today, we have Bob Kurtzman and Marcy King. Woohoo! Super excited. And I got it right this time.

SPEAKER_05 0:43
Yeah.

Clif 0:45
Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, uh, our little teeny tiny podcast. We really appreciate it. We met Bob and Martsy in in at Tuscon a couple years ago. Um, got to talking to them and they they invited us to dinner, and it was uh quite a great night of just chatting and getting and getting all the like I just kind of drank in all the stories and all of the uh wonderful uh things they had to tell us. So thank you so much for coming on. We're excited to have you on.

Robert 1:09
Thanks for having us. Yes.

Clif 1:11
Um, so what uh we were just talking about before we start got started, Scary Movie Six. You guys, that's something that you just uh completed working on, is that right?

SPEAKER_05 1:18
Yes, yes.

Clif 1:20
Super excited about that. Um, so uh we were talking about Marlon and his marketing, right? So that's that's pretty amazing that he's this genius marketer, right? And I'm seeing all these posters everywhere, it's fantastic.

Marcia 1:31
He's he's honestly he's he's so incredible, he's so smart, um, just business savvy, and and um just being on set with him, I just totally appreciated honestly like the intelligence and the comedic timing and just all of that on set. He's just really good.

Clif 1:49
Fanley's been in the business for so long, it's not shocking, right? That he's just a kind of a he's like, Yeah, I know you know, I can move in all this stuff and I'm a master of it. That's pretty awesome.

Marty 1:59
Yeah, we were just looking back at I'm gonna get you sucker a few weeks ago and how well it holds up after all these years.

Clif 2:05
Yeah, so good, dude. When they when they did the Olympic the the the take on the Olympics and their the dogs are chasing the guys carrying the TVs. It's like, man, these guys they're ruthless, they're ruthless. They'll come at you with them. And of course, you get the um the kung fu dude, what was his name? Um, was it Kung Fu Zhou? Kung Fu Zhou, yeah. Kung Fu Zhou, I think it was. I love him. He's the best. Anyway, yeah.

Marcia 2:28
Uh they were they did not spare anything. When we first read the script, I probably read a few pages and went to Kurtzman and I was like, dude, they're hitting everything. Like they're hitting everything, like balls out. This is like they're offending everyone, and I love that. I mean, personally, I had a father, he just passed away a year ago. Oh, sorry who's that month away from 91, funniest guy. And the one thing is like funny is funny.

Clif 3:05
No, no, funny is funny.

Marcia 3:07
People get offended, people get butthurt, people like, but my greatest joy is when one of my kids would fall in front of people and get up and laugh about it. That's the ticket right there. You cannot laugh at yourself, then you've got a problem. And I feel like all the people that are really like, ah, like it's that offensive. I think it's just you have a problem with yourself, it's not with other people.

Clif 3:33
So people want to view everything, especially like uh it drives me crazy when when you watch an old comedy and people get offended, right? Where it's like you have to first off, like you said, funny's funny. Yeah, and you have to understand if you you can't view things through new lenses, right? Like you, you know, you're gonna filter things, and then you're gonna, of course, you're gonna be and also people just sometimes look to be offended. Why are you watching a comedy? Choo choo, that was me, by the way. Uh why are you watching a comedy if you're looking to be offended? Right.

Marty 4:01
You know, right? You're not gonna be able to do it. They weren't making it to aggravate you, they're trying to make you laugh, right? Yeah, they're trying to make you laugh.

Marcia 4:07
Our studio is about, I don't know, what do you say, 50 feet?

Robert 4:12
No, we're yeah or less. We're right right next to the railroad. So we wave to the engineers all the time.

Clif 4:20
So Bob had to go and shut the window because it was gonna, you know, big time come through the speaker, but what's why what's what was the was it just the the the size of the place that you is that why you moved so close to a railroad? Because normally people are like, I'm not moving to the railroad.

Robert 4:35
Our town is a railroad town. So we grew up with railroads running through town all the time. Yeah.

Marcia 4:40
We actually grew up together.

Robert 4:41
We sleep better actually with when we hear the when we hear the train, yeah.

Marcia 4:47
We moved to Atlanta for uh Haunting of Hill House. And the first night they're on the air mattress, and you know, in Atlanta, nobody opens their windows. There, it's all air conditioning, and I'm like, I need fresh air. They crack the window just a little bit and get on the mattress, and the first thing we heard was a train, and we just like ah we're all dead. We got trains really well that night.

Clif 5:15
Yeah, yeah, we we have trains cutting through my city, and one of what somebody came down to one of my colleagues from work came down to visit and put them up in a hotel, and she was like, What's with the fucking trains all night? I'm like, I don't even notice it, dude.

Robert 5:27
No, it doesn't keep us awake or anything like that. In fact, I mean we could go outside and sleep outside outside and watch them go by the whole night. It's like hilarious.

Marcia 5:38
Um, but scary movie six, back to that. I just want to say what a great time we had on that. It was um two months of insanity. We had so many people across the country helping us with it. We had so many crew members. Um, we literally hope that everybody gets the recognition um on the on the credit on the film because it just it a lot of people came together for for us to look great because honestly, the shit on the screen was just it was really good. So I cannot, I can't wait.

Clif 6:12
I'm definitely going to see it. I mean, the the the last the last screen was really good, which I was shocked. Um it's the seventh installment, and it was fucking good.

Robert 6:24
I liked it, I liked it better than the last two. So same year, yeah.

Clif 6:29
And so so scary movie six, let's go.

Marcia 6:35
All of the trailers went ahead of scary movie seven for you know, scream or yeah, for Scream 7. You know what I mean.

Clif 6:45
I like I enjoyed Scream 7 quite a bit. Scream 7.

Marcia 6:48
Yeah, so very genius. I mean, we're sitting there, and I'm I'm like, I want to record this whole thing. I didn't, but I was just like, it was it was great to see stuff up there, and uh, you know, of course, one of the most offensive, well, not really, but a pretty good offensive one with the uh uh they them vernacular when they're on the subway and she gets stabbed and she's like, she got stabbed, and it's like uh identify with they them, and that's it. It's like you haven't seen anything. That's just a tip of the iceberg on that particular scene, too. That's just a tip. So yeah.

Clif 7:24
It's gonna be if it if the others are any indication, it's gonna be wild. Like it's gonna be, you know, every 10 seconds, 15 seconds, there's a joke or some sort of you know ridiculousness going on. I'm looking forward to that quite a bit.

Marcia 7:36
Yeah, you have to watch it multiple times because you'll be screaming, laughing, and between anyway.

Clif 7:42
We have a we have a movie theater in my house in my hometown, and I mention it quite a bit on the podcast because I'm trying to get them to uh let uh sponsor us so I can get some free movies. Uh, but it's a place called Flicks Brew House, and it's kind of a you know, tap house, you know, food and beer and best. Yeah, yeah, really nice. It's it's really pretty swanky, and they do a thing called Flicks Picks where$5 movies and they're older movies. And so I've I've been going back and seeing like I saw Lawrence of Arabia, I saw Blade Runner, I saw The Thing, all these movies on the big screen, and they brought back fucking white chicks. And I was like, I was like, you know what? We're okay, we're I'm gonna go see it. And I brought my wife, and my wife was fucking dying laughing.

Marcia 8:24
If that wasn't said in my house while my girls were there, one time it's that a million trillion times. That's our movie. That's I I had to tell Marlon, I said, first of all, we had a Zoom, and there's like three weights on the screen. We could see Marlon, but not the other two. And I was just like, somebody brought up white chicks and the bodega guys. Well, first of all, they said the bodega guys from white chicks, you might not know that.

Clif 8:49
And I went, Oh, hold on a second.

Marcia 8:52
And then he said, Hold on, because she needs a minute.

Clif 8:57
We're gonna need to give Marcy a minute here. She has some things she needs to say. That's great. I love it. I love that movie. I I was surprised, I hadn't seen it in a long time. And it when it first came out, I thought, I mean, that's fine, it was funny. And then, you know, I kind of forgot about it, but it it it it really stuck with girls, like girls like that movie. They think it's hysterical. And I went back to see it, and it was a half the audience was girls, like yeah, tons of them. And uh it was amazing, it was really, really good. Terry Cruz steals that fucking that was it. It steals that movie.

Marcia 9:29
Whenever I talk to another female about this, it's immediately we talk about Terry Cruz. That's the second thing. It's beautiful chocolate man, and then it's Terry Cruz.

unknown 9:40
Boop, boop, boop.

Clif 9:41
Oh my god, dude. His his obsession with that white girl and on all the shit he's saying and going after, oh my god, it's making your way downtown.

Marcia 9:48
Holy shit. You can't hear that song without seeing Terry Cruz doing his shit.

Clif 9:54
No, that's totally that's so true. That's so true.

Marcia 9:56
I actually got to have a conversation with Marlon about that on set later, and I was just like, dude, and he and I've seen him in interviews, it's the same thing. He said, I understand it, um, and we are not gonna make a sequel till we know it's right.

Clif 10:11
Yeah, yeah, you shouldn't don't screw that up because that's exactly, exactly.

Marcia 10:14
But he there's there's buzz, you know. I mean, and I mean buzz, not from Marlin, but just buzz so much. People want it so bad. I mean, hey, we got practical magic too coming up. Right? Yeah.

Clif 10:27
Do we?

Robert 10:30
Wow. Okay, show me watching that by yourself.

Marcia 10:33
Oh, I think not. So the trailer just dropped, I think today or yesterday. We just saw it. I I we thought it was a joke like a year or two ago. And and and then we we got the the inside of yeah, it's actually getting it's getting shot right now. Same cast? It's done. No, I'm saying when we when we knew it was getting shot, we that was last year, but I'm saying, yeah, the trailer dropped, and we're like, oh my god. Well, I am. I'm super yeah. I told him my sister and I, it's gonna be a whole weekend.

Clif 11:06
I um I took uh a friend to see, she's she's a friend, she's a fan of the Twilight films, and they had that at Flix Picks in at Flix Brews. And so and uh this was a special one because they gave you a commemorative Twilight glass with it. And I was like, all right, I'm gonna go. I collect the glasses, right? And so I got a I got a thing glass and a big Lebowski glass. I'll get a Twilight glass, right? So there's 16 ounce plank glasses for the beer. And so I go and and I walk in, and it's you know, as expected, it's two-thirds uh female, right? Groups of girls in their PJs with their blankets and long lines, you know, with their recliner chairs and shit. And I'm thinking, oh, this is gonna be rough. This is gonna be fucking rough. And yeah, and for about 15 minutes it was uh and then or 20 minutes, and then Edward in the movie, he he says one of his creepy fucking lines, you know, like creepy lines where he says something like, I just don't think I can stay away from you. I don't have the strength to stay away from you. And the girls in the audience started fucking laughing, and it turned into and suddenly it's Rocky Horror Picture Show for the rest of the movie, and people are laughing and giggling at the screen and all this ridiculous romance and shit. And I thought, this movie's gone camp. This movie has gone completely fucking camp. Yeah, this is this is how to watch this movie now. Yeah, watch it with this camp aspect, and it's fucked up.

Marcia 12:19
It's a mystery science theater, you know, kind of thing.

Robert 12:23
That's how I watched it when I first saw it.

Clif 12:27
Oh, that's great. I ran it at the movie theater. I was a gener general manager of movie theater for six years, and I ran it and and uh uh all all the system managers that that worked for me were were uh women, so they all would read the books and passed them around and were excited for the thing to come out.

unknown 12:41
Right.

Clif 12:41
It came out the first one came out on Valentine's Day, and it was packed. I was running four screens at midnight on a Thursday night. Wow. Um and I'm and this is uh this is print film, so I'm in and I don't have four prints, I have two prints, so I'm interlocking them from one projector to another, which is like a fucking harrowing thing to do if you've ever done it. You just you stand there. No, I know about it. I don't want to do it. You watch the fucking rollers and you pray. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um luckily for us, we had a flatbed system, so we we just we just um spliced all the reels together onto a flat bed, but that's a half mile of fucking film going over rollers, and I'm I'm running it 40 feet from one project to the other. Anyway, and so we're rocking, and it was just it was unbelievable on Valentine's Day of all things. So there's all these men with their girlfriends like oh yeah, they're all right.

Marcia 13:30
Torture, yeah, that would be torture. I read them I read one or two, and I don't think I ever saw the movies.

Clif 13:38
I it just was like, nah, the the books are cute and whatever, and yeah, it's for young adults, it's not for yeah, yeah.

Robert 13:46
I'm not I won't rag on them, they can have their thing. I just might not.

Marcia 13:49
I want to tell you like Mystery Science Theater, it's really cool because we've done a couple of those.

Robert 13:54
They had really yeah, well, no, no, not the show, not the show, but like the show.

Marcia 13:59
So some of the film sets in different venues. Um, we've done different things. One was really cool, it was Wishmaster, with um Devoff and Kurtzman doing the commentary over the movie the entire thing. There were people in the theater that never seen it, didn't matter. Everyone was silent listening to the two of them. It was so great. But my favorite was in Chicago. It's a Bruce Campbell story. Oh it was Bubba Hotep. I had never seen it, never seen it. So they asked Bruce to do some stuff over um Army of Darkness first.

Robert 14:45
Yeah, he did the Bruce Campbell commentary over Army of Darkness, which was pretty hilarious.

Marcia 14:49
That was insane, and then there was the like the other day that weekend was Bubba Hotep. And so the first time I got to see that, it was with Bruce Campbell.

Marty 14:58
Wow.

Marcia 14:59
And he happened to be sitting in front of me, which is amazing, right? So he's sitting in front of me, and uh let me preface this by saying our relationship's always been a little oil and water. We had, you know, we have this thing, and I and I love him to death. He's a sweetheart, and I'm sure he loves me, but we have this little weird tension kind of thing. So anyway, he's sitting in front of me, and there's a couple of scenes when he's in bed, and I am just you know, blown away, quite honestly, of his performance. Blown away. And I start hitting him in the shoulder, going, dude, you're a real actor. And and finally he turns around and he goes, Bitch, shut up in totally a joking manner, but it was just like I I goad him, he goads me, it's like a bag and board kind of thing, but just amazing. I love Baba Hotep. I just can't even performance his I just yeah, he was that guy, he was just that character, and it was just it was great.

Clif 16:09
So don't make me use my stuff on you, man. I love that. I love that. Right, I love that movie so much. It's so good.

Marcia 16:15
Like the cast, you know. Come on, that was a really uh well.

Clif 16:24
Yeah, Ozzie Smith is the baseball player.

Marcia 16:26
Yeah, Ozzy's there. No idea. I don't think it's anything.

unknown 16:29
Yeah.

Clif 16:30
Um, so we we watched uh Marshmallow before uh the show. It's interesting. I liked it. Um I like the surprise twist at the end. It's like, oh, okay, this is a kind of a cool concept. And and the idea that um playing with this idea that uh kids don't get the truth from adults and from things that they from uh that from adults and from reality, like kids are are shielded from that shit a lot of times and they don't get the truth.

Marcia 16:58
We're not gonna do a spoiler RF.

Clif 17:00
No, no, no, no, no, I wouldn't do that.

Marcia 17:02
So because we're so happy to announce that we got a second marshmallow two is getting written.

Robert 17:09
Really? Well, they touched that a few weeks back or months, a couple months ago.

Marcia 17:14
We just know it's happening, um, and yeah, we can't wait to see what what crops up with that one. So yeah.

Clif 17:20
It was good. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I thought it was uh, you know, you got the the can't stuff, so there's got a little Friday 13th in there, and there's some other I liked it. I it played with a few tropes and it had a good vibe. I really liked it.

Robert 17:34
Yeah, my my what? You got to put your kid in it. Oh well, my son plays the doctor when he's stalking the kids and stuff. So oh nice, yeah.

Marcia 17:41
He's the he's the stunty guy that that that does that. So that was fun. That was fun. Got to hang for a week or week or so. Um our our our star of that holy smokes. Hugh's done so much, y'all have to check out his career because um what's the the shooting uh the duel? The duel the duel school duel check that one out.

Robert 18:09
Um my gosh, that is and then you did the one uh sketch.

Marcia 18:14
Sketch, he was in sketch. Um yeah, just have to check his career because I mean he's so good, and the really cute part was that you know, when he did marshmallow, he was 12 and he's this big, and of course he's a boy, and he just turned 15, like on Earth Day, and he's this big, and his hair is grown out, and it's so adorable, and he's just turning into this young man, and and you know, and and it's so great because like like Violet McGraw, she does not remember us, and we loved her in Haunting of the Hill House, and we worked with her in Dr. Sleep, and we'll see her at cons and stuff and take a picture, and she's like, Yeah, I don't I don't remember that's great, but but I do remind her she has one of the cutest stories. Um, we were on um uh Dr. Sleep. So again, we'd already known her, and we were sitting at lunch, and we had to do a test makeup. So Bob usually does test makeup on me, happened to be um Rebecca Ferguson's drawer gag. So she puts her hand in the drawer, it gets smashed, it comes out, it's mangled, it's all so we had to do a test makeup at lunch. We come in to have lunch, Planigan's here, Trevor Macy's over here, Violet McGraw, her mom, and there's just a bunch of friends, you know. So we're sitting next to each other, and out of nowhere, Violet just looks at Bob. She's right across from Bob and she looks at Bob and she Bob, do you ever smile? And that was it. That everyone lost it. I saw it once or twice.

Robert 20:05
I'm always too serious, especially when I'm makeup. We were waiting to show we were trying to show the hand and talking to her.

Marcia 20:11
I was get approval on. I was eating with my left hand. So you get focused, and out of the blue does it, and and um everybody died laughing, and he just calmly looks up and says yes.

Clif 20:23
For the record, he's smiling now.

Marcia 20:25
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He does get it. But um, no, she's she's so great. Again, it's so great to connect with these young actors and see them blossom.

Clif 20:35
Um we had a young girl that that was in four of our movies, yeah, four of our films. We and we we cast her when she was 14.

Marcia 20:44
Okay.

Clif 20:45
In our in our first film, and our first film was rather vulgar. And so we had her saying some very some you know, some things that maybe a 14-year-old shouldn't say, but she really enjoyed the the whole thing. Like she enjoyed, she we became very she became very close with the crew and with you know and that type of thing. Brought her back for the next one, and we've just watched her kind of grow up. She uh, I think for the second one or the third one, she changed her engagement, her bachelorette party. She was getting married, and she moved her bachelorette party to Tucson because she was coming down, she was living in California and she came down to film with us. And she's like, Oh, I'm I'm gonna be in the film. Don't you dare not, you know, miscast my part, right? That's my part, and I'll just move my engagement party to Tucson. And girls, we're having our engagement party in Tucson, and you know, and so now she's a fucking doctor. Now she's a doctor, or something like that. Oh my gosh, she's a fucking doctor, dude. And if she's like, You are a goddamn fully grown person, what happened? You know, I'm still thinking of the 14-year-old kid that you know we we shot with, you know. Right? Well, we're really, really cool.

Marcia 21:46
Well, we were on the set of um awning of Hill House. Um, they gave us a shop on uh it was Screen Gems at the time, and they gave us a shop space, and it was all the way at the back, and it was all the way like Basement level, just down, you know, it was all the way in the back. And so we were literally, we just called it the dungeon because people are like, Where are you guys? And we're like, We're at the dungeon, you know, and they eventually got it. Like they knew we were in the back. Um, very cool thing. You said 14-year-old getting to see somebody grow up. They were shooting stranger things on the wall.

Clif 22:19
So shit. Okay.

Marcia 22:37
Um, yeah, we got to see them grow up. That's amazing. It's crazy. We were back there for Dr. Sleep. And um, yeah. Um that's very cool. And and they they live in uh and they live in Georgia. She's her and um what's his face? They they have a an estate in in Georgia. So I'm sure near Atlanta, but I don't know.

Clif 22:57
Yeah, you're talking. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah, she does it there.

Marcia 23:00
The Bon Jovi guy. Yeah. That's fantastic.

Clif 23:02
The Bon Jovi guy.

Marcia 23:03
Yeah.

Clif 23:04
So one of the one of my notes about marshmallow that I wanted to share real quick. Um first off, there were a lot of waterworks in the film, and I was just curious. Uh I want to ask about that here in just a second, but um, if my kid tells me a kid he goes to school with is a dick, um, I, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna believe him. And I'm not sending that kid to fucking camp, especially if he's rooming with that kid, right? I'm gonna talk to camp counselor and like put him in a different, like separate those two and watch, you know, come on.

unknown 23:30
Right.

Marty 23:31
Doesn't his parents know that, you know, not spoilery, but you know, right, right, right, right.

Clif 23:35
Yeah, their parents know, right? So it's not to spoil it. I'm just saying. Well, and that's but yeah, but there was a lot of water works on the film. So I was curious, I was curious how that, you know, uh how that affected your your makeup, you know, how you worked with that. Yeah, it's all good.

Robert 23:49
I mean, you know, it was uh they put together obviously it was the bedroom scene in that with his nightmare sequence. Uh they built like a little set on him, you know, on a water small water tank, really small area. I mean, because it's not it wasn't a huge budgeted film, you know. Right.

Clif 24:08
Right. Well, that's why I was thinking, because the bathroom, you've got some water coming in while he's in the you know, the toilet and that type of thing.

Robert 24:14
Uh effects rigged a bunch of stuff like that.

Marcia 24:16
And we had literally tubes around and water up to my something. I don't know.

Robert 24:23
Yeah, it was really cold because of course I got in the water, but but um yeah, but we had you know the his his stomach appliance and we were pumping water out of that.

Marcia 24:32
The biggest thing is we read the we read the notes, like obviously on Dr. Sleep, we knew Mrs. Massey was gonna be in a tub, but do you want her in actual water? Yes, okay, then we have to make adjustments. So same thing with that's kind of what I was curious about prosthetic. There was a special prosthetic that we knew we were gonna shoot water out of and this and that and work with people. So yeah, we just plan ahead. Yeah.

Clif 24:56
Curious, curious, interesting, yeah. Well, you mean you guys don't make it up right there on the spot when they just ask you for stuff? Like, sure, I can make a fake head on the same time.

Robert 25:06
I mean, that's true. Things change on set all the time, but uh you just you roll with that when it happens. But uh normally you try to plan as much as you can to uh alleviate some of that, you know. You have enough uh things in your toolkit that you can uh you know you can roll with the punches if something changes.

Marcia 25:26
So a lot of blood has alcohol in it, so you get blood on prosthetics and your prosthetics cut start coming up, you're like, ah, it's the blood, yay, it gets down inside. So making sure everything's sealed, sealed, sealed when you're working with blood, same thing. It's just interesting.

Robert 25:42
A lot of prep and and yeah, all the drying blood alcohol in it, which I I like, I love a certain blood uh uh Fleet Street. And uh I remember I was doing I did that show in uh the Val Cam. Super the Super The Super, if you've never seen it, that is really so I was doing the effects, plus I was doing Valve's makeup, and um the uh I had a slip throat to do, and uh I used that blood and I squirt it out, it looked great, but it splashed the actor in the eye, and he's like, What? Uh what's up? And I'm like, oh uh oh, yeah, whatever. Yeah, you know, little alcohol, sorry.

Marcia 26:23
Right. No, or okay, so we do this movie and there's a cage that's gonna come down on this kid's neck, okay, and not really decapitate him, but he's gonna split blood, you know, of course. So of course I give him mouth blood because it's gonna be in his mouth. Well, I like to make sure they have a little flavoring, so I use peppermint. He splashes up and it comes back down, and the screaming ensued.

Clif 26:51
Oh, his eyes.

Marcia 26:54
So we of course always make sure when we have certain gags that there is a medic very close for eye wash, and so it was taken care of in seconds. But um no, that's so embarrassing on our part. We just we we always try to make sure, okay.

SPEAKER_03 27:08
We should have used cherry, yeah.

Marcia 27:10
But it's mouthblood and minty, yeah, yeah. I already mixed it up and and you know maybe a little imitation banana next time, you know.

Clif 27:18
Right?

Marcia 27:18
Yeah. I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 27:21
No pineapple.

Marcia 27:22
But the right sad part is most of those have alcohol in them. Flavoring has alcohol that carries it. So does the vanilla extract people will drink?

Clif 27:32
Oh, yeah, no, that's just basically just a vanilla bean pot in alcohol. That's all that is. Yeah, I make that stuff myself at home.

SPEAKER_05 27:38
Yeah, yeah.

Clif 27:38
So how do you guys how do you guys go from like out of curiosity? I've always been wondered about this. How do you go from you know, page to concept to finish product? Is it you know, is there a process? What's your you know, what's your thought process and and you know, uh are you working with are you working with somebody who's kind of creating the design? Are you creating the design? Are you are you collaborating? I'm really curious about it.

Robert 28:00
It really depends. I mean, it goes uh it depends. Yeah. Uh it depends on if you're creating it three-dimensionally, like uh uh a Z brush type of thing, which I don't do Z brush, but I'll do Photoshop designs and sketching and painting and that kind of stuff. Uh and sculpt, you know, you could also just go right into maquettes, but most of the time you'll start with sketches. Sketches. Uh usually we'll read the script.

Marcia 28:24
We read the script. Marcy breaks it down and do a whole breakdown where I I pull out all the gags that I think we can have and and maybe some we don't, but I just want to see, you know, if it's anything to do with a prop and an injury, you know, mark that up. So then we go over it together and decide how we're gonna get it, put some money, figure it out. Go to them because the biggest thing that that I like to make sure to do is to let production know we understand they have a budget. We're not gonna be jerks and and ex overblow the budget. We didn't we didn't do it for scary movie six, we didn't do it for marshmallow. You know what I'm saying? It's like two different budgets entirely, literally.

Clif 29:04
But you're working within the budget, you're making sure that's it.

Marcia 29:06
Absolutely, but we can do it. I I said, listen, we can do the expensive stuff, we can do the middle of the road, and we can do the implied, but we have all of those capabilities. What do you want, and how much do you have to budget in those things? Because they'll just be like they usually the creature needs to be the badass.

Robert 29:26
Right, we usually tell you to do like they go, they ask for the kitchen sink. Just give us the best way, and you're like, okay, and then they go, Yeah, we can't afford that.

Marcia 29:36
So, like, yeah, and I always start the conversation by saying we appreciate you have a budget, we understand that, we'll give you what we can give you under that budget. So I'm just always very honest about that. So um, that's my biggest give on that is like I just don't want to overdo it and you know, and and I also want to let us know let them know that we're not gonna outbid, we're not gonna bid ourselves out. You talk to me about what you want to see, and if we can make it in that, we'll do it. If not, we'll refer somebody, but right, you know, really.

Robert 30:12
Yeah, but usually, yeah, um sorry back to your question going if we go to then we go to a design phase, right? Uh sometimes a director might have some images that he likes and influences that he likes and gives you, or they may have nothing at all, and they go, just give me something to start with. And so you work up some ideas and you pitch him some ideas, and sometimes you might have three different designs, and he likes one thing about one and another about the other, and they get kind of morphed together. Yeah, take this from that, take that from that.

Marcia 30:47
We like this, and blah blah blah.

Robert 30:49
And then sometimes, I mean, for me, I I can like I I like doing concept work, but uh like if I'm in the ballpark, and I've done this on a couple shows, I definitely had it on. We did this movie called Fuck My Son, it's out right now.

SPEAKER_03 31:04
Uh-huh.

Marcia 31:05
Well, it's not out. Well, it is, it's already released, but it's only touring in theaters, but it's never.

Robert 31:13
Yeah. And anyway, uh, but I I my initial approach was like way too realistic. And then, you know, I did a couple versions of that trying to hone it in, and then and then it was uh no, it needs to be more of a like a cartoon character.

Marcia 31:30
Like I was having a problem because it is too real. And so I said, Listen, I need to talk to the director because I'm not comfortable. If anyone says I know somebody that kind of looks like that, I did not want that. So we got on the phone and he said, Let me tell you this, this is not a real child. Do not think of it, think of it as a mutant, think of it as a thing, because there is no way he wants anybody to relate to this thing. So as a person, we've termed it a mutant because it's not, there's not a person. And um please go see it if you can. But one of the things that we have on it, which is not real, is little patches that look like cauliflower, but we also have something that looks like skin tags, but they're not, they're little little dick tags. So we're walking around with the character, and every once in a while somebody in the crew would be like, Hey, I got one of your dick tags, and it was like, glue it back on.

Clif 32:42
But uh I'm over here shedding dick tags.

Robert 32:46
Yes. As far as that process, back to that process, it's like, you know, I'm good for it. Depends on if I'm really into it. If I I can do a couple rounds, right? But then uh sometimes it's like uh maybe I need a different perspective on it, get another artist to take a stab at it because it might not be working in my wheelhouse, or I'm not you know, I'm good at certain kinds of artwork, and other guys are better at other kinds of artwork, so it's like right, right.

Marcia 33:18
And it's and it ends up ends up being just again a collaboration and a combo because um, you know, just all of the things I'm thinking of from Tusk, because I I started working with Bob right after Tusk, all the all the other things, like the concept stuff is like involved constantly. Um, you're sculpting what you have designed, but you need to sculpt it a little bit differently and adjust that. So so there's the concept designers and the artists, and and then there's the sculptors, and everybody interprets it a little bit differently, and then you have to put it on a human. So that's gotta change because their facial structure is all different.

Robert 34:00
So the biggest issue, and I uh um we just did a film which is called it's coming out with your my friend Dave Benilok directly. I won't talk much about it at all because but it's called Autopsy of Albert Kemperin. Um the the there's uh you don't you don't know initially like who you're designing it to fit. Right. Like who the actor's gonna be. Like you usually do your designs before you even have an actor on, which is in some ways can be a little frustrating because you might design something with a certain body type and then it doesn't quite fit the body type.

Marcia 34:35
Somebody's bigger or somebody's smaller, and that doesn't work.

Robert 34:38
Yeah, you just have to readjust and redesign. Um it so it I mean, ultimately, I'd love to know who the actor is every time, and then get photos of the actor in a pose and then design that based over the pose. Which we did, we did exactly that. Yeah, yeah.

Clif 34:53
So you'd bring the actor in and do like if you were doing a face appliance, you'd bring the actor in and do a mold and all that stuff and be able to work on the floor.

Robert 35:00
Yeah, mold on the body scan.

Marcia 35:02
We've been doing scans. Oh, okay. Body scans. But generating the mold isn't necessarily faster, and then getting the mold isn't necessarily faster.

Robert 35:14
So but sometimes there's crossover with the visual effects department as well.

Clif 35:17
So it kind of helps them having them having oh, because they can use the same model and that type of stuff and look at it. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense because it's a point of reference now for multiple departments, right?

Marcia 35:27
Which actually speaking of that, there are a lot of actors now that are refusing to get scanned and only to do the mold process. So that's kind of a throwback. They don't want their digital copy, they don't want copied, they literally do not want copied at all. And and we just worked with somebody that we had to do all um plaster casts. Um, one digital, but it was it was not anything to do with the face. So yeah.

Clif 35:56
What's what's your guys' view? I mean, and we don't have to talk about it. I mean, feel free to tell me if you want to don't want to talk about it or edit it out. But um, do you have views on AI and AI usage with film and you know this gen AI shit that's coming out?

Robert 36:07
Well, of course, I mean, uh I lived through the uh the fear of CG visual stories came out, so yeah, there was you know, there was this there was this sudden, oh my god, it's the end of the world, and then it didn't quite happen that way. So it really it's yet to it it right, I'm sure it's gonna streamline a lot of workflows and certain like I the you know, I don't know if effects artists will be totally taken out, but I at the same time, uh there's gonna be uh part of their workflow is gonna be streamlined to where they don't need the amount of people they need on a project to do certain mundane things for sure. Right.

Marcia 36:48
Um my opinion, yeah, but we're we're screwed. Well, we're screwed. They've already have you seen the breaking bad um versus reacher kind of thing.

Clif 37:01
I I've seen I I mean I've I've seen so many different outputs from C dance 2.0 and some of these other things.

Marcia 37:08
They don't need a set, they don't need they don't need jack.

Clif 37:11
The problem is there's I'm not seeing any, I'm not seeing any story, right? Like I'm not seeing that.

Robert 37:16
Exactly. It's well that's they I mean, uh as soon as my my issue is soon as they figure that out, I don't want to go see a movie that doesn't have um actual people performance. Same same. Um I I just it doesn't interest me. Uh I I want to follow those stars in their career, and I'm not gonna follow an AI star as they bounce them around in different movies.

Marcia 37:39
I loved the concept of Wakanda, loved it, thought it was amazing. Halfway through the film, they're doing some kind of CG battle falling, blah blah blah blah. I almost fell asleep because it just took me out and I went, I don't care. I don't care. Then the clip scene with all the people, CG, blah, blah, blah. And it wasn't great, it just wasn't a great look. I just it took me out of it, and I'm just like, I want something better. I just they they deserve something better for that film, and I wanted something better, and it just it did not miss the mark. So if if there's something, for instance, my a cool thing that Flanagan um we talked about Haunting Hill House. Um, Flanagan loves to do hand gags, by the way. I don't even I mean he didn't even know why, it just ends up being in every single film that we've done with him.

Robert 38:32
There's always a damaged hand, there's always a damaged hand.

Marcia 38:34
We haven't, yeah, we haven't figured I don't even think he knows why it's his good luck charm, right? I know. So uh Henry Thomas puts his hand in a fan and comes back and there's chops on it and all that kind of stuff. So Flanagan goes, so Henry gets this on him, he's reacting to blood flow and his hand looking like it's cut. He doesn't have a glove on, pretending and interacting with a green glove. He's got blood, and it was pumping blood. So Henry's looking at it, holding it, shaking for real because it looks so real, and he's reacting, acting is reacting. That's what he was doing. That was incredible. Just the the little thing like that, that's why practical is still important. So you're not gonna get the same, but if you don't actually have actors, yeah, yeah.

Robert 39:27
I don't know. We'll see. I don't I don't know if it'll if it'll be accepted, but at the same time, you know, look at people are accepting watching freaking movies on their telephones and shit now. Yeah, missing out on the two, three, five experiences. Never have using the widescreen.

Marcia 39:44
I never have watched a movie on a tablet or a uh phone. I won't. I refuse. I've watched one on the laptop.

Clif 39:52
Never on my phone, but my phone had to have to.

Robert 39:55
If you're stuck in a hotel with no, yeah, you're stuck in a hotel and I'm on an airplane.

Clif 39:59
That's the that's my only option. That's a bad choice.

Robert 40:02
That's just to keep you from going insane and make sure you take your mind off the fact you're in a box. That's because traveling with Artsman is like traveling with a toddler. So miles above the ground, and you're like, oh, think about it.

Clif 40:16
Just let me sit in my plane seat and fly like a god in the sky until we land. Leave me alone.

Marcia 40:22
That's it. Exactly. No, even watching us the one time I took a picture and sent it to Kevin. I was like, look at this asshole's watching. Come on.

Clif 40:33
I do, I think there's something to be said for like, like when I think of you're practical, right? Like, if you think of the first John Wick movie, if you you know, you if you watch the movie, you're like, God damn, look at how much he's going through. Look at the physicality of the movie. Look at oh my god. Now, yeah, all the headshots are all fake and CGI, and that's great. Use AI for that shit. Yeah, but but fucking keep Keanu beating the piss out of people in real life. That's why I want to see that. I do not want to see AI Keanu with the with the you know the problem with AI is that the the action and the speed is off. It's so fast, especially in the action scenes. And I think that's what you were talking about with Avengers, where it's like, it's so I'm getting lost in the blur of this action. I can't see the moves, I can't see the, you know.

SPEAKER_05 41:18
Right.

Clif 41:18
And I'm not talking telling everybody to go back to 70s kung fu where it was like, whoa, hew, you know, but but come on, it's too fast.

Marcia 41:26
But when he goes through that bar and the nightclub and all of that, I literally want to just blow it down and watch all of the incredible photographs. But you know, and they do it wide enough and follow him, it's just a beautiful thing. They could be shot.

Robert 41:42
They couldn't do by the way, they couldn't have done any of that gunshot without digital effects because because point blank gunfire like that, yeah, it's dangerous as fuck, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that was the only way to accomplish it. But my big beef right now is is how many people, and I'm just talking general public, stupid people, will go see a movie and it'll have visual effects in it, and they call it AI. Oh that movie had so much AI in it. And I'm like, no fucking I it was a no what you're talking about, and I mean it, you know, a bunch of it was a lot of visual effects in it, but that didn't mean it was AI. I know.

Clif 42:20
I I had a I had a massive argument with a guy over Godzilla minus one because he kept calling it the AI Godzilla, and I'm like, it's it's there's two million fucking polygons that were created for that fucking Godzilla, and they were all manually manipulated. Yes, there are there are um gen gen or not gen AI, but there are visual effects that guess and kind of move things for you to the next frame so that you and you adjust, right? Because that work speeds up your workflow, but it's not fucking the stuff that we're talking about now with Gen AI. It's not even fucking close.

Marcia 42:46
Yeah, it's not. They don't I don't understand why they don't understand that because they don't understand the technology, separate things, like completely separate computer program, just separate, you know.

Robert 42:59
There hasn't been that many movies since there's a few definitely good good ones in the 90s and whatever that have struck a chord when I viewed them, like like they did when I was younger, like seeing Jaws or Star Wars for the first time, any of that. And it and that includes the horror films, the early horror films I worked on that were all practical effects. They seem to be remembered and have a longer life than the ones that come out now. First off, there's one every week coming out now of everything, yeah. And and you can't even keep up, so they're not very memorable anymore, they're not an event anymore. Yeah, it's just so much so much shit to break through the screen, yeah. Right, and which is frustrating. I mean, but um well, you he was talking about fighting.

Marcia 43:43
I just want I want to go back to that. Normal. Have y'all seen more normal yet?

Clif 43:48
Oh, uh no, I'm thinking of nobody with uh same guy, same guy, yeah. Same guy. Okay, so no, I haven't seen normal yet, but nobody was fucking amazing.

Marcia 43:56
He's a badass.

Clif 43:57
Yeah, he's great.

Marcia 43:58
Who does his own shit?

Clif 44:00
Yeah, Bob Odenkirk's awesome.

Marcia 44:02
And I was like, this uh normal is so fun. Go see it. Yeah, normal is a function.

Clif 44:07
I'll definitely check. Because I loved nobody. I thought that that was just a lot of fun. When he gets on that fucking bus and he's like, he gets off the bus and he gets back on. It's like, oh yeah, that was great. This is gonna be fucking good. This is gonna be good.

Marcia 44:20
Yeah, yeah. Love it. Love it. Anyway. Um Marty, you got anything?

Clif 44:25
You got we've been kind of monopolized. Marty, you got questions or anything, buddy?

Marty 44:27
Oh, I'm just not trying to talk over everybody. I'm just uh I'm happy to see more things like uh scary movie six, because we always were big fans of things like airplane and top secret. And it's good to see that type of humor coming back out. You know, we don't get enough. And especially when it's done well, right? When it's really funny.

Marcia 44:45
Oh yeah. When we were on set and ruining takes, yeah, that happened. That happened.

Clif 44:53
People just laughing and shit. Yeah, they do.

Marcia 44:55
Am I allowed to no? I'm not. I can't say okay.

Clif 44:59
They're under NDAs, folks. I can't talk about certain things.

Marcia 45:02
Yes, okay, we have to wait till that comes out, and then I'll then I'll spill a couple of funny, really stupid things. But um but the best. I honestly, no matter what the production, no matter what the film, no matter what, you're always it's like having a baby, you're always gonna remember all the good stuff. And so I will never work in Morocco again unless they pay me three times what they do for cherry.

Robert 45:29
I just saw that on the travel list. You're not supposed to go, there's too much like in fighting criminal activity in the five years.

Marcia 45:35
Okay, in Morocco. So we go to Morocco to do cherry with Russo Brothers, and we're just doing like war scenes, and you know, we were six miles from the Sahara. Again, I will not go back unless they pay me three times that amount. That bad what I tell everyone. No, I wouldn't do it again, exactly, and all that. But I have so many stories, three weeks, so many stories. Hated it, really did not like it. It was great stories, great experiences. New Year's Eve in Morocco. They do sparklers inside buildings.

Clif 46:14
What?

Marcia 46:15
No, I'm not shitting you. Scared the piss out of me.

Clif 46:19
Wow!

Marcia 46:20
They had sparklers on cakes, they had little kids with spark, they were in, and it was like a banquet room, though its ceilings weren't tall, and it just yeah.

Robert 46:29
There's no OSHA over there.

Marcia 46:30
It was no OSHA. But anyway, yeah. Oh, actually, my birthday had my birthday over there. Umce in a lifetime experience, birthday in Morocco. I got a hamam, you'll have to look that up. Me and the um the costumer, uh, she's awesome, Sarah. Um, incredibly talented person, but we became friends and we went and got a hamam for my birthday.

Clif 46:59
Oh, it's a it's like a bath, right? It's a like a spa type of thing, kind of close.

Marcia 47:03
It's like a massage, but it's not, and it's like somebody getting away.

Robert 47:07
They take a layer of skin off your body, basically.

Clif 47:09
Basically, it's a scrub, so it's a Russian spa. It's a where they beat you with birch branches and shit.

Marcia 47:15
Yes, it's horrible, but it's scrubbing your entire body. Um, and literally head to toe, like all of it and everything. No, it was really great, but after we did the hamam, I found out that there was a glamping trip planned, and we were invited. Um, of course, Tom Holland wanted to go glamping.

Robert 47:34
The first thing in my head, she's like, Hey, you want to go glamping with everybody tonight? And I'm like, fuck no. Whoa, it's a fucking desert. I for me, I was like, no, no, going to the desert and stand in a fucking tent.

Marcia 47:48
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. He doesn't know, he didn't understand glamping at the time, so I had to explain it. And then I went, oh wait, it's my birthday. So guess what?

Robert 47:56
So you're going glamping.

Marcia 47:58
Yes, we're going glamping because it's my birthday. Um, that was a whole thing. I have a million things with that.

Robert 48:06
It'll take too long if she talks about it.

Marcia 48:08
It was take too long, but wait, but but it was beautiful and there were rugs stacked this high. They had electric and pipes. We had showers, yeah, and everything. Shower, bathroom, sink, huge monster bed, um, heaters all over the place. This was in probably nicer than where you were staying previous, right? It will go down to 32 at night and go up to 70 something during the day.

Robert 48:33
So everybody had to dress. Needless to say, without going into big detail on it. The uh the uh driver uh got us lost in the desert. That's just and we flipped the fuck out. We were like, oh my god, we're gonna disappear in the fucking desert.

Marcia 48:48
We were in the desert for two and a half hours. And we don't know driving for two and a half.

Robert 48:52
No, no, this guy's I kept thinking, oh, it's just like a situation.

Marcia 48:57
He we see lights in the distance. Somehow he figures out where to go to get to that light. Because we are literally not on roads anymore, we're just in the desert. And so there's a guard there that tells him he's in the wrong spot, he's got to go back. And I'm translating. The one guy's talking to the other guy. He's like, Well, basically, you go up here and you go left at the tree, and then you go right at the rock, and then this dune you want to scoot around. That was my translation. And I'm kidding, guy gets out, and the other guy he sees a tree and he goes to the right. He sees a rock and he goes to the left. It was it was weird. We finally get there, and I refuse to get out because I don't recognize the name on the building. I'm like, I don't know what that is, I don't know where we are, and I recognize no one, no one's names. I'm not getting out of this vehicle.

Robert 49:50
It said the teddy twister.

Marcia 49:54
So guy comes out and says, Mom, I I assure you, duh, duh, duh. And he goes, Look at the sign. So there was a sign above where I couldn't see, and it said Jaluka, which was the place there was the hotel, okay.

Robert 50:08
So they're affiliated with the hotel, and we went okay.

Marcia 50:10
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Robert 50:11
And everyone, give us a glass of wine fucking stat. Now fucking stat.

Marcia 50:15
And it's my birthday, damn, and I just spent two and a half hours in the desert for no reason.

Clif 50:19
Make it two glasses of wine. Yeah. Oh, well, one is mine.

Robert 50:23
We went through more than that that night.

Marcia 50:25
Yeah. Anyway, there's lots of stories. The next morning, I didn't do it because I've ridden on every kind of animal. I did not need to go ride a camel and sunrise with Tom Holland. Everybody went but us. We didn't go.

Clif 50:39
Tom Holland's got enough people around him. He's fine.

Marcia 50:42
It's enough. I said I'm sleeping in. I got, I yeah, I don't need a camel spitting on me. I got a lot of pictures with camels over there and stuff, so but um no, so that I have my birthday there again. Hated it. Horrible place.

Robert 50:57
Plus, don't don't camels have carry syphilis?

Marcia 51:00
What I don't fucking know. That's disgusting. No, are you serious? You're lying.

Robert 51:06
I I heard it was something like that.

Marcia 51:07
That's weird. I don't even know. He makes shit up. I don't know.

Clif 51:10
Armadillos carry leprosy, they can. It's possible.

Marcia 51:14
What?

Clif 51:14
Armadillos can carry leprosy. Yeah.

Marcia 51:16
Can carry.

Clif 51:18
Yes. They don't all have it, but they can carry it without killing them.

Marcia 51:21
Wow.

SPEAKER_03 51:22
As long as you don't eat them, you'll be okay. Staying away from them now. I wouldn't eat them. Yeah, I wouldn't eat. It tastes like chicken, but I wouldn't I wouldn't eat it.

Marcia 51:32
I'm good. Again, I've had alligator and snake and crickets. I'm good. I don't need to have that. Yeah. Alligator's the best, though. Anyway.

SPEAKER_02 51:42
I've had it in Gumbo. It's actually not bad.

Marcia 51:45
We don't let them ask the question. I was just trying to think of the recent stuff that we have. Marshmallow, fuck my son, which you have to look for. And the stuff that come out.

Clif 51:55
So scream six, yeah.

Marcia 51:57
That's true.

Clif 51:58
Yeah. Bob, you're at uh you're at uh I checked your INV, you're at 299 credits. That's one more credits on IND. That's just what not, yeah. Right, right. I was gonna say one more, and you get a free uh you get a free meal at Cheesecake Factory. So they'll hook they'll hook you up. Just let them know you got 300 credits.

Marcia 52:15
Okay. He's at like 500 because we have to do commercials, oh okay, wow, yeah, none of that's all there, really. TV series, movies, like all you know what I mean. I mean, during the strikes, we did um uh we we uh remastered a mastodon bone for a museum piece.

Clif 52:37
That's cool.

Marcia 52:38
Cleveland Natural History Museum, yeah. Wow, they reached out and they wanted touch me stuff, you know, for the kids and the people to see and the real ones are in the case, and then we made the fake ones to go with it.

Clif 52:52
So yeah, we have something like that at our natural history museum in here in town.

Marcia 52:56
That's that's fun, you know, something to do during the strike.

Clif 53:00
Something different. You guys seem to be all over the place with your like I mean, you know, TV film, hey, we'll do commercials, we'll work for a museum, whatever. That's pretty cool.

Marcia 53:08
Yeah, we're gonna be open. I loved well, we did commercials over in uh the UK. We didn't we went to London and did um uh swinton insurance. You have to look at it. It's it's called the Nagging Doubt, and it's a mechanical little nagging doubt, it's a furball thing, and um uh so we designed that, and Bob ran the mechanic servos, and I actually had to physically puppeteer a little bit, so um she's more contortable, so she was able to get in like tight spaces like a trunk or a grocery cart, under a bed, under a table, in a garbage can. Um but yeah, the buggy and the boot of a car, that was crazy.

Clif 53:54
That was a little I still remember you um you told a story uh at the um there was that panel you guys did at Tuscon, right? Where everybody was talking, all the all the people working were talking, and and you told a great story about being trapped in a house. You were working and you were in this house doing something, and here comes fucking Nicolas Cage. Uh you know, and in comes Nicholas Cage, and you're like, fuck, okay, uh fuck, I gotta get out of here. Somebody come get me. And then here comes Willem Dafoe, and you're like, okay, now now nobody can know I'm in this fucking house. And because they're talking about, they're talking back and forth about you know, personal actor type shit. You're like, I can't be overhearing this right now, I have to leave. It was I fucking love that story.

Marcia 54:32
I was I was I was literally making a phone call behind a curtain. I'm not a kid, I was hiding. It was one of my first times on set, and Kurtzman's telling me, don't let anybody see you, don't disrupt anybody, keep the phone low, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He says, Find a room that nobody's at. It's like no one was at. Big huge curtains, big huge windows. It was a it was a mansion. Um, and uh just gorgeous pool table room kind of thing, but sofas. And I go to the furthest corner, I go behind the curtain, I start making a phone call. I hear these French doors open and shut, and I hear plop. And I was like, Oh my god, I'm not, you know, I I slide the curtain and I was like, this. And Nick Cage goes, Oh, it's okay, honey. And I was like, Oh, oh my god, oh my god. So I start texting him, which of course we're not supposed to have phones on set. I'm texting him, like, get me out of here. Oh my god. I'm not supposed to be, you know, but Nick Cage said it was okay. Um, so I go back to my phone call, they're rolling again, doors open, shut. I look over, and it's Willem Dafoe on the other end of the couch with Nick Cage. But then think about it. These voices are like iconic.

SPEAKER_03 55:53
Fuck yeah.

Marcia 55:54
We have Nick Cage's voice and and Willem Defoe's voice, and I'm like, don't come get me. This is amazing. And I wanted to like never mind it or something, but you know, like I literally had to keep standing by the curtain. And as soon as they rolled cut and I could like run out, I I did. I ran out and people came in, and it was just like, Thank God, let oh my god, let me out of here.

Robert 56:19
She got she got outright before it erupted into a face-off shootout between the two of them.

Marcia 56:24
And I was like, that was um dog eat dog. Dog eat dog, yes. It's actually really good.

Clif 56:30
Yeah, no, I I went and watched it after your story. I went and I was like, okay, what would be what would be the release two in? I'm gonna go find up there it is, and I went and watched it.

Marcia 56:38
Yeah, I enjoyed it. Do you remember? Okay, so spoiler on that one, but whatever.

Clif 56:42
Um I'm pretty sure I saw the scene where you got trapped behind the curtain.

Marcia 56:46
Right. So what happens is I mean, at least the room.

Clif 56:50
I mean, the room.

Marcia 56:51
Willem Dafoe, sawed off shotgun. They're in a nursery. So it's Willem Dafoe right up front, and then Nick Cage, and then another actor, sorry, I can't remember. Um, we're blowing the head off this guy because he's taking a sawed off shotgun and he's blowing it up. So Nick comes into the room and he looks at one of our crew and he goes, Hey, where's that blood going? And she goes, Oh, just straight up. Straight up, because that's where do you see the plastic? Yeah, we had to protect it's going straight up. Well, we can never predict where blood's gonna go. A million percent, we can never, ever, ever, 100% predict. She didn't say that because she was just like, I'm not saying that's Nick Cage. So Paul Schrader of all I can do.

Clif 57:35
Paul fucking Schrader, man. Yeah, it's a Paul fucking Schrader movie. That's amazing.

Marcia 57:38
Paul Schrader says to the guys, this is what's gonna happen. The two guys in the back, he's gonna blow his head off. You're gonna be disgusted because it's gross, and then you're just gonna go, fuck that. And it's like badass, right? So again, Nick Cage asks about the blood. So head goes up, blood right across Nick Cage's face. The disgust on his face, I think, is real because it was just a moment of oh my freaking god. And then he gets the badass look, they call cut, and he runs out of the house.

Clif 58:15
Trader's like, fucking print. That's the one. Print that one. We'll we'll take that one.

Marcia 58:19
Oh, there was no going, there was no two takes on that. We told him there was one take on that. Blowing a head up.

Robert 58:24
We had a fun uh so and let me say talk it.

Marcia 58:28
I will. Let me talk it.

Robert 58:30
Let me let me tell you this story. Okay, so because she didn't know who the fuck he was.

Marcia 58:36
Oh, because I do.

Robert 58:37
So so Schrader's in Cleveland, right? And uh, and we're doing, I don't know what show we were doing at the same time. We were getting we were getting ready to go to set to get something out the door for a shoot somewhere. And and the producers call about the movie Dog Eat Dog, and I'm like, Yeah, yeah, what oh, it's shooting in Cleveland? Uh uh okay, whatever. Don't talk.

Clif 59:01
And and uh and you if you can see them, folks, Marcy is Marcy's trying to contain herself to not talk.

Robert 59:10
I said, I can't drive up to Cleveland tomorrow. I'm I gotta get this show out of the door, you know. And she's so she tells him, like, no, he can't come up, but uh you know, if he's welcome to come down, yeah. So the director's welcome to come down here, you know, blah blah blah. And then like, I don't know, it was late, late a couple hours go by, and I go, so and so oh, the director's coming down, and I go, Who the fuck's the director? And she goes, Paul Schrader. I went, You call Paul Schrader to come up to fucking see him? And she goes, Well, who is Paul Schrader? Oh my god, he's Paul Schrader.

Marcia 59:46
It just didn't click, okay. I know people, I know, believe me, but yeah.

Robert 59:51
Well, he's coming down here, and I go, Well, go in the other room and get out all my Paul Schrader laser discs and when he gets here.

Marcia 59:59
Get all the get get more than one Sharpie. So Paul Schrader shows up at the front door. We walk through the little reception area, big huge conference area with displays and big huge conference table, and there's all these laser discs with pens. And he goes, Is that for me? And I go, Yep. He goes, Okay. So we walked in, but here's the thing that we found out later. The people who I were talking to said, you have no idea how excited he is to go to Kurtzman's studio and see all his shit and meet him. So it honestly was banning out at both we're banning out of each other, and it was very cool for me to witness that.

Robert 1:00:44
He was just really bored with Cleveland. He just wanted to get the fuck out of there.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:49
Well, according to Drew Carey, Cleveland.

Marcia 1:00:53
Yeah. Anyway.

Clif 1:00:55
That's great. Uh that's hilarious. Um, the yeah, uh my favorite one of my favorite movies by him is Light of Day. I it's a not a great film, but uh I I like its grittiness. And uh uh, you know, you don't see a lot of um Michael J. Fox and um and her Joan Jett together in movies. I thought Joan mid eighties late eight for mid to late eighties movie. I thought Joan was pretty good. Uh a lot of fun. You've got it's even got uh Jenna Rollins in it. So she's she's fucking.

Marcia 1:01:21
Oh, I will definitely check that out. Yeah, that's cool.

Clif 1:01:24
Yeah, a lot of fun on that one.

Marcia 1:01:25
I see.

Clif 1:01:26
Nothing beats a cat people for me. No, that's a good one. That's a great one. Yeah, yeah. And to hear that you're my favorite thing about the uh when I meet people in the business is of people who are fans of other people, right? Like, you know, that those are the ones you can tell really give a shit and kind of are really invested in what they do and in the in the in the business and and in sort of the art of making movies, right? Or the people who are like, oh shit, I gotta go meet so-and-so. He's here, like I'm gonna get my shit signed, you know. And it's like, dude, you you have 300 IMDb credits. What are you talking about? He's like, Well, I still gotta get my laser disc signed, get out of my way. Absolutely.

Marcia 1:01:59
The horror guys are the biggest genre fans, junkies to each other. It's the best thing to see at a convention.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:10
I love it.

Marcia 1:02:11
Just for instance, Pallissa Rose and I I call the I call us convention buddies because every time she's there, I'm there, we're looking for each other, and you know, blah, blah, blah. Um, and a little side note there, uh, talking with Dave Sheridan on Scary Movie Six, uh, he says, Hey, I got a friend that's gonna come visit. You think that's gonna be an issue? And I go, You you can have people, come on, you know? And he goes, Okay. I go, Who's coming? And he goes, Well, maybe Felissa Rose. And I was like, shut the front door. I am so excited. You need to warn me, you need to tell me when she's coming. Of course, he doesn't, he's a dude, right? So we're doing the Artie Claus, by the way. His name is Artie Claus, not anything else. We're doing the Artie Claus makeup and that whole scene. We've got him in makeup. We're we're at the mall that we're shooting at. Um, and Dave comes walking in and he's got two people and um Levy, Michael Levy, I saw first, and then I saw Felissa behind, you know, and Felissa does the little the little heels and little dress, and and we're literally opposite ends of this mall. And I start running towards her, she's running towards me. We might have blown a shot, I'm not sure, but we squeal like little girls. Um, but I was just like, Are you coming to be to be on set? And she goes, Oh, no, no, no, no, no. She goes, Michael, Michael says, Oh, I have a I have a um I have a background, you know, thing I'm gonna do. And I go, we need to get Felissa in. So I immediately took her to the producer and I said, This is Felissa Rose. She's on Sleepaway Camp and tons of other things. She's amazing. Oh, wait, she was in Terrifier 3, so it's kind of a little thing. And and I said, We should put her in. And she goes, Heck yeah, let's get her in. Got her to costumes, right? Like you and Michael did the same thing. And Michael was his was the husband, which was cool. She was the wave and she was the husband.

Robert 1:04:12
Yeah, the producer of terrifier during the terrifier scene that we're doing.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:17
Yeah, that's great.

Marcia 1:04:18
He was blown away, like uh our makeup, he was just blown away. And um, again, it's on Faeda or Steer, we were talking about prosthetics, completely different face from David Howard Thornton. So we could adjust it a little bit, and it was that part was so much fun, and yeah, yeah.

Clif 1:04:35
That's interesting because you've still got it, because you still gotta make it, you know, it's a completely different face, but you've still got to make it the art, the the the so the blah blah blah the clown face, right?

Marcia 1:04:44
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. We had to get the the cheeks, the definition of the cheeks just right. That's exactly it, yeah.

Clif 1:04:51
That pointed, that pointed chin, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Marcia 1:04:54
David's face is he doesn't have high cheekbones and he doesn't have a strong jaw, but Pedor does, so we had to be very careful with those particular areas as far as so you're backing off a bit of the prosthetic and stuff. Yeah, just shape it up and and get it there. I wanted to say the ironic part is Bob mentioned uh the autopsy of Albert Kemper. So we were doing a convention in Cleveland, and we happened to be doing it with David Howard Thornton. We did his body scan for the autopsy of Albert Kemper because he placed our creature in that. And then we were doing the terrifier scene in a scary movie all at all at the same time.

Clif 1:05:40
That's crazy. What an overlap. That's great.

Marcia 1:05:42
It was very cool. Yeah. So because everybody, everybody's everybody's on um uh Facebook, and they're saying something about oh, well, it's because they got the original terrifier guy to play it. And every single time I'm going, no, it's Vade or Stereo we cannot do it on G.

Clif 1:05:59
It's just how good we're. We are.

Marcia 1:06:00
That's how good we are.

Clif 1:06:02
That you think that.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:04
That's good.

Clif 1:06:07
Going back to the cons though, one of the things that I I I've been a horror fan. Marty's been a huge horror fan. I'm I'm kind of a I'm more of a I wouldn't say I'm a casual, but I I there are certain things I really like, certain things I I just the sci-fi guy. Yeah. I'm a yeah, a huge sci-fi fan. Um and um but anyway, so one of the things that I found when I started going to the horror cons was how absolutely, like you said, people are kind of in love with each other's work, right? Like there's a lot of um, there's a lot of reciprocity and appreciation for each other's work and everything, but uh more than that, everybody's fucking chill. The fans, the people that are there. Like, I mean, I mean, I I remember we we hit the floor early to we had a VIP pass and we hit the floor early to talk to um to talk to uh what was his name? Oh my goodness. Um was it Ken Fore? Yeah, Ken Free. And so we're talking to him for five or ten minutes, and we're standing there's three or four people behind us, and and we said, well, hey, look, we're you know, we're holding up other people, and he goes, No, no, they can wait, you know, tell me more about what you're doing, because we were talking about a film we were making and so on. And he was just as gracious as he could be about it, you know.

Marcia 1:07:15
And Ken's super chill. He is one of the chill ones, Bill Mosley.

Clif 1:07:19
Yeah, Bo Mosley's, yeah, really nice.

Marcia 1:07:22
Just honestly, just pretty much everybody, like you said. I mean, we're going to they're they're uh they're putting us up, and and somebody said, Listen, if somebody, if you're gonna sit at a table all day and people are gonna come up and say how much they love you or how much they love your work and all this kind of stuff, how does that suck?

Clif 1:07:44
Right, yeah. How is that a terrible thing?

Marcia 1:07:47
It's awesome. And and and oh wait, they pay you things and they buy things from you, and you're like, thank you, and they're like, Oh, no, no, no, no, thank you. Thank you. How does that suck? It doesn't suck. That's gotta put people in good moods.

Robert 1:08:00
The best part is when they bring a piece of their own art that is representative uh of something you've done, something that inspired them that you did. You know, when people bring me a wishmaster something they drew or whatever, and fan art.

Clif 1:08:18
Oh, that's awesome.

Marcia 1:08:19
Fan art.

Clif 1:08:20
Okay.

Marcia 1:08:23
The 13 ghosts. Yeah, yeah.

Robert 1:08:26
Or there's you know, there's so many different ones. Uh, you know, I had uh like right after Hill House, someone brought a uh or might have mailed that one.

Marcia 1:08:35
Yeah.

Robert 1:08:35
Uh mailed a wow.

Marcia 1:08:37
Uh is that incredible?

Clif 1:08:39
Jeez, that's incredible.

Marcia 1:08:40
Uh no, we were freaking out at that. Oh, let me go get the bent necklaid because that is a cool one.

Robert 1:08:46
Um but yeah, no, uh, so it's cool to see or actually grab that um Maxi's now running around the studio grabbing things for us to look at. The um pee-weehead. Oh, yeah.

Clif 1:08:59
That one's the pee-weehead?

Robert 1:09:01
What? All right. So we were at a convention and this, like what, I think he was 14 years old. 14 years old came up, and we were there with Ted Raimi as well. I think Teddy got one.

Marcia 1:09:12
Because Teddy got one too.

Robert 1:09:13
And he he stopped that. Wow. And I was like, Wow, that's just great.

Marcia 1:09:19
14. Now he has to be like 20 years.

Robert 1:09:23
That's pretty talented.

Marcia 1:09:24
Yeah, I think it was 10 years ago. I really do.

Robert 1:09:27
Don't drop it.

Marcia 1:09:28
I'm like uh 20, 26.

Robert 1:09:31
It's missing. Did you lose a tooth on it?

Marcia 1:09:33
Yeah, there's a tooth still.

Robert 1:09:34
There's one tooth I gotta put back in. Yeah, it came off.

Marcia 1:09:37
I can this is really cute. So the story with this is I don't know if you can see it. There we go.

Robert 1:09:43
Yeah.

Marcia 1:09:44
So the story with this is I saw this on Instagram, and this person posted it, and there's a saying in it as well. And I said, I I just wrote a message. I said, I gotta tell you, Kurtzman would absolutely freaking love that. Um, because you really did a good job and you thought about it, you know, the writing and all of that kind of stuff. Um, and she sent it, and then I made sure that he wrote a bunch of things and we we sent her a little care package.

Clif 1:10:13
So oh, that's awesome.

Marcia 1:10:15
I thought that was so that's just that that's art. I mean, that's that's people being inspired by other artists is is how we get more art, you know.

Clif 1:10:26
That's that's why we make that's why I make movies, and that's why Marty makes movies. You know, we we got inspired as kids by all this great stuff that was going around. I will say one of the things you mentioned, Felissa Rose. I respect her so much because she's like, Yeah, I'll put the fake dick on and take a picture with you. Let's go. You know, like she has no fucking problem with that. And I'm just like, that is so boss, that is such a fucking boss move.

Marcia 1:10:49
I cannot tell you how much I love her, I love her spirit so much. Just you, you like just hanging out with her anytime is a blast, and and she's just she's one of those energies, like they they they say energy cannot be destroyed or created. That energy she has, that's that's holy shit, that's a forever energy right there.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:16
Yeah, so it's very cool.

Marcia 1:11:17
Very cool, very cool.

Clif 1:11:21
Anyhow, um, Mary, anything else you want to with? We've probably kept them quite a while here.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:28
Yeah, I think we're in guys.

Clif 1:11:30
I thank you so much for taking time out of your day and out of what you're doing to come on this little eittie beatty podcast and talk to us. We are huge fans, lifelong fans. If there's ever anything that we can do, probably not. Give us a call, hit us up. You know, Marty's in Tucson. If you're down there, you know, reach out to us. We'd love to, you know, if you need to know a good place for a taco spot, we can hook you up. Plenty of things we can do. Uh yeah, Mary, anything else before we get out of here?

Marty 1:12:00
Uh, I was just gonna say, I bet Damien and David must be completely flattered by seeing you know a parody of them in Scary Movie Six. It's like if Weird Al does a cover of your one of your songs kind of. Oh, yeah, exactly.

Robert 1:12:13
Yeah, Damien was very excited. And I think when they showed it, the trailer he instantly went, I'm so honored.

Marcia 1:12:20
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Michael just said, no, this is to be to be on set and to watch it and to be part of that, you know. Michael's like, this is you know, because when we started showing them our designs and like tests and things, just the director or the producer or Marl, well, not Marlon, Marlon doesn't care. Um, the director or the producer would go, we're gonna get sued. And I'm like, Yeah, that's the idea. Yeah, that's the whole idea, but it's we know that we have to adjust it a certain way, but we also want it to look amazing.

Clif 1:12:57
And so yeah, it's parody, so it's it is parody. It's it's protected, you're good.

Marcia 1:13:03
Exactly, exactly. So, anyway, but it was a lot, it was it was interesting. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's fantastic.

Clif 1:13:10
All right, well, again, thank you so much for uh joining us again. Um, maybe you know, when you when uh some of these other ones come out, we can bring you back on and you can kind of give us some of the some of the sneaks on that. That would be great, you know. But uh you know, anyways, thank you so much, guys. We really appreciate it. Let's get out of here.

Marcia 1:13:28
All right, you're welcome.

Robert 1:13:29
Go check out fuck my son.

Marcia 1:13:30
Yes, go find out.

Clif 1:13:33
It is now at the top of my list. Just playing.

Robert 1:13:36
I think it's playing in Queens this weekend.

Marcia 1:13:38
I think it's in Queens this weekend, yeah. Yeah, yeah, interesting. So anyway.

Robert 1:13:43
All right, we'll see you. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Appreciate you.