Death and Taxes: A True Crime Podcast
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Benny, Carrie, Lizzie and Clare use their lunch break to forget about tax and discuss true crime.
Death and Taxes: A True Crime Podcast
79 - Roar (1981)
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Carrie discusses 'Roar' (1981), a film made with reckless obsession and one that has since gained a cult following as "the most dangerous film ever made".
Roar (1981) on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ulJkplyR9yg
Theme music by MVM Productions.
This podcast covers a variety of true crime, mystery, and unexpected stories. A warning that episodes will contain graphic details and may not be suitable for everyone.
CarrieI think so, and I think this is lighthearted enough that we can probably have a good giggle. Say whatever we want. Love that. Life has got us down, hasn't it? Lucky I got Ross to like proofread this today because he's like, okay, this doesn't make sense. This doesn't make sense. And I'm like, yeah, okay.
ClareI will say the other day I was talking about um I can't remember what case I was talking about, but the three of us were talking about it. And then Dave came out with a bit like this amazing one-liner. And I was like, what the fuck? And I was like, I need you to be my writer. I need you to listen in so that I can just have these one-liners like at the at the hill, like ready to go. Well he was like the he's like, that's the only thing that I would be good for on the podcast is just like throwing in these one-liners. And I was like, oh yeah, but like share the love around because I don't have a personality on this podcast yet.
CarrieI did mean to get footage about this and send it to you, Ben, because Ross was like, you also need to get footage of what you're talking about. And I haven't done that. Um might be fun to watch a little. I think you guys will know. Um it's we're gonna be doing the movie Raw, which I feel like you guys will know about.
ClareI do. Yeah. Great one. Really fun. Very fun.
CarrieMy kids think so, that's all that matters, although a few times this has been like no matter what we begin. What order are we gonna do? Welcome back to Death and Taxes. I'm Carrie.
BennyI'm Benny.
CarrieAnd I'm Claire. So do you guys remember that pesky little virus that shut down the whole world back in 2020? And the Tiger King documentary that had us all gasping in our masks.
ClareI will never financially recover from this.
CarrieSo before there was Tiger King, there was 1981's movie Raw. Today we're going to cover the story of the movie Raw.
BennyThat's R-E-W.
CarrieLike I'm a Woman Hear Me Raw.
BennyR-O-A-R. Yeah, no, I haven't seen that one.
ClareAre you gonna sing Katy Perry?
CarrieDefinitely not. Oh I'd like to keep the four listeners that are still listening for me. So I won't sing. I won't do that to them. This is the original Big Cat What the Hell Were They Thinking? A movie that's been labelled the most dangerous movie in history. There are plenty of films that advertise themselves as dangerous. Movies where actors perform their own stunts, movies where cars explode, movies where people are leaping off skyscrapers, and movies where Tom Cruise apparently wakes up every morning and asks himself, what's the most expensive way I could die today? But then there's Raw. A film so reckless that calling it dangerous almost feels inadequate. Because this wasn't a movie where danger occasionally appeared on the set, Danger was the set. Released in 1981, the film has spent decades being described as the most dangerous movie ever made. Normally that's the kind of thing a publicist would say when someone twists an ankle.
BennyThat's like yeah, they're branding for every movie. Like this is the most shocking horror movie ever made.
CarrieHere it's not a marketing slogan, it's more of a medical summary. More than 70 cast and crew members were injured during their production of Raw. And some estimates even put that number closer to 100. People were bitten, mauled, crushed, hospitalized, and one cinematographer was partially scalped. And somehow, nobody died. But before we get to the injuries, and before we get to the lions, spoiler alert, before we get to an elephant that nearly killed a leading actress, we need to answer a very important question. Who looked at this idea and thought, yes.
ClareThis movie must be made.
CarrieBecause all terrible ideas have an origin story. Have you guys heard of Raw or seen Raw?
ClareI have heard of Raw. I've only watched snippets of it.
BennyI think I know what you're talking about. Um there's two that I'm thinking of that there's one with Jodie Foster in it. Is it that's not that one?
CarrieIt's not this one, no.
BennyOkay, yeah, yeah, okay. I'm gonna assume this is not a Hollywood production. Like, I mean, no one make her insure this film.
CarrieI'm assuming this might be a privately funded or a um no one will insure this film. That is correct. Our story begins with two people. The first is Tippi Hedron. Now, if you're unfamiliar with Tippi, she's not just some random actress that stumbles into this bizarre Hollywood project. She was considered Hollywood royalty. During the 1950s, she worked successfully as a fashion model. Um, I'm not going to go too much into her history because that's a whole story on its own. Uh by her early 30s, she had been married, she was divorced, um, but she had built an impressive career in acting.
ClareThey don't make they don't have movie star names anymore. Like they don't. What a cool name. Like now everybody's just got like a normal name, like Tom Holland. Like he's a math teacher, you know?
CarrieSo while she's working steadily, everything will change for her when Alfred Hitchcock, I know we we've all heard of him, saw her in a TV ad. He basically sees her and thinks, I have to get this woman to star in my movie The Birds. Which even hearing the term birds, I'm sure will scare Claire as a hater of birds. I'm sure that's when you haven't seen.
ClareShout out to my haters.
BennyYou see the character from Birds that you that you come you know that you think of, the phone box, the you see that one from that film?
ClareYes, she is.
BennyYeah, that's it. Okay, I do know then.
CarrieSuddenly she became one of Hollywood's brightest rising stars. She was elegant, sophisticated, poised, the perfect Hitchcock blonde. But unfortunately, their successful creative partnership came with many complications. Over the years, Hedron would speak extensively about Hitchcock's controlling and obsessive behaviour. That's another story, and look, it is another story in itself, and a really interesting one if you ever have the time to research. But whether you've read every interview or only know a little about that broad outline, a pattern for Tippy emerges. Tippy spent years of her life dealing with powerful men who believed they knew what was best for her. Which makes what happens next feel even sadder. Because after escaping one deeply unhealthy situation with Hitchcock, she walks straight into another. And now we come to the second key figure in our story. A man named Noel Marshall. Noel, hmm, how do we put this diplomatically? He's a mole.
ClareNoel the mole.
CarrieNoel the mole. He's um not really a forward thinker, he's kind of someone who flies by the seat of his pants. His his life motto, I guess, would be, let's just do it and see what happens.
BennySounds like a fun guy.
CarrieHe's not a director or an actor. He's not a Hollywood creative powerhouse. He's kind of a hustler that's done a little bit of everything. He's done construction, real estate, retail. Uh he did work in a zoo as a young man. Will that be relevant later? Who knows? People describe him as energetic, optimistic. He's kind of he's one of those people that every second week he's got a new business he's gonna do. You know, those people like, oh, you know, I'm gonna open a franchise of this. Oh no, I'm gonna try my hand at real estate. Oh no, well, maybe I'll build a building.
BennyKind of envious of him to be honest. Um I wish I was I was a bit more like that, you know.
ClareBut also a little bit like the just having the like blind confidence to go like, what if this fails? Irrelevant. Irrelevant if this fails.
BennyHe's lived a full life. I like this guy.
CarrieWell, yeah, you'll say He doesn't see obstacles, only opportunities. And you know, it is something to admire. Most successful entrepreneurs entrepreneurs, I can't say that word, entreprunes, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, have that quality. The problem for Noel is that it mutates into something else. A complete inability to recognise that a bad idea has now been catastrophically taken over by his ego. In the late 1960s, Noel decides he's gonna start a new career. He's gonna try his hand at talent management. Why not? Can't be that hard. Yeah, right. Anyone can do it. Yeah. Pretty girl, get him in a movie, easy peasy. But he meets Tippi, and he does convince her to take him on as her agent and manager. They fall in love. I think he does have the gift of the gab, and they get married pretty quickly.
BennySo this is after the birds, like she's already kind of had some success before.
CarrieYeah, yeah.
ClareOkay.
BennySo he must have been pretty convincing then. He's bringing on someone who's already pretty doing well.
ClareFully, because he is not a looker. He is not a good-looking man. Like Tippi, what is happening? Like you're beautiful and successful. What are you doing, girl? What's happening for you?
CarrieImportant to note for later in our story, when they get married, it's a bit of a Brady Bunch situation. They're all bringing kids into the situation. So Tippi brings one child, a little girl you may have heard of, called Melanie Griffith. For our younger listeners, that's Dakota Johnson's mum. Okay. I know you know Dakota. Okay.
ClareShe was a big deal. Uh my favourite Melanie Griffiths, now and then. A highly what a classic. Excellent film. Everybody go and watch it again. Because it's so good. You'll laugh, you'll cry.
BennyI don't know if I've seen it. I don't think I've seen it.
CarrieYou'll wish you had friends just like I used to. You've never seen it.
BennyI don't think so, no. No.
ClareIt's an it's an incredible coming-of-age story, and it's got so many classic actresses in it. Melanie Griffiths' in it, Rosie O'Donnell's in it, Rosie O'Donnell, Rita Wilson's in it.
CarrieRosina Hayday.
ClareYeah. Christina Ritzy. Rissie Ritzy.
CarrieYou'll be taping your boobs and riding down the street on your little pedal bike and your little putting pudding in denim shorts, putting pudding in to fill out your bra.
BennyI do that already.
CarrieUh Noel brings three sons to the relationship. John, Jerry, and Christopher. Sorry, they're not famous. Sorry guys. A few years into their wedded bliss in 1969, the couple travel for Africa while Tippi is acting in a film called Satan's Harvest. During that trip, they heard stories that completely captivated them about the local wildlife, and on a safari of sorts, they encounter a pride of lions that have taken over and began occupying an abandoned house. So they're absolutely blown away by seeing these lions just kind of like, you know, going through a doorway, standing at a window. They can't stop thinking about it. For most travellers, this would have just been an interesting story to share at dinner parties. But not for Noel. For Noel, he's got another idea. This is gonna be his next movie pitch. He turns to Tippy and says, let's make a movie about 30 lions taking over a house and the shenanigans that will follow. It's gonna be fun. It'll be a family adventure classic. And to be fair, that idea isn't terrible. That does sound extremely entertaining, like Big Brother for Lions. Who wouldn't want to see it? And it is kind of beautiful. Because Tippi particularly thinks if they can show the world how amazing, incredible, majestic, stunning hair these lions have, people will be more inclined to want to take care of lions, give money to their conservation, help them look after their environment. So it's it is quite idealistic and beautiful on the inside.
BennyWe love to like anthropomorphise them. We love to like, oh, they're like those two we in love. We love to like look for human behaviours in these animals. Yeah, exactly. Seeing them in their house like that, you can just imagine, like, oh, people think it's so cute and so like I can totally see that that could be a successful show.
ClareThis is gonna help people appreciate the wildlife of Africa. We've gotta do it. Tippy's such a glass half full kind of gal. Like she's always seen the bright side of these terrible shenanigans of going, okay, so if we do this, if this man who has no experience in the film industry, I'm the only talent he manages, let's let him make a movie because we might make some money to help Lions. Like, good for her being just a glass half-full kind of gal.
BennyI do wonder, and I don't know if you are going to go into this later or not, Carrie, or if we can put it in elsewhere, but I I think there is some history. You talked about like how difficult Hitchcock was to work with, but the the situations that she was put in in the filming of that movie and the kind of the stuff that she had to go through, not with stunt people, like the danger involving animals that she was put in. I kind of wonder if that's sort of if there's some damage or some sort of trauma there that's kind of like affecting her decision making here, I wonder. Or like that the men who are kind of telling her like these things are good ideas and she just goes along with it. I wonder if she's kind of a little bit that's such a good point. Impacted by that? Is that something you thought, Carrie?
CarrieAbsolutely, absolutely, and basically she's going to replay those scenarios. Yeah, she's she's gonna you know what a therapist say. I mean, not that I've seen one, I've never needed help. Um totally fine, but you know, you try and relive your trauma to get a different outcome. I do wonder if Tippi's doing that here with Noel, but let's see what's gonna happen.
BennyDon't be afraid to repeat the same pattern of behaviour and expect a different result every time.
ClareThat's such a good psychology um take because is it a like she's coming into this environment with more control because Noel is somebody she trusts and loves, and like maybe she can have a voice at the table, whereas with Hitchcock, she absolutely didn't have a voice at the table. Really good points.
BennyIt could be either end, couldn't it? It could be, yeah.
CarrieSo they start chatting to the people in Africa that they've met, and and particularly some animal trainers that are in the movie business that they know. And each and every single one of them, when they hear this idea, says, Absolutely not. This is a terrible idea. These are wild animals, they are large animals, they weigh up to 200 kilos, they are predators, this would require extensive, experienced handlers. Every singular animal would need their own trainer and own handler. So if you're talking about 30 big cats in one small human house, this is an insane idea.
ClareApologies. Sorry, I can't remember if you just said this before. So Noel's an entrepreneur, but does he have money? Like, is because like he's running around creating businesses and all that sort of stuff. But does he have like uh like seed money or something like because this, to your point, this is gonna cost a buckload. So to just go, oh, we could just do this. Does he have money?
CarrieHe did have a little bit of money. I believe he had somehow kind of lucked his way into getting some kind of producer credit on the exorcist. Oh and he had some kind of money from that.
BennyAnd some prestige, and like I could see that having that under your belt as well. You probably like you probably could lure more people into a silly idea after a hit like that.
CarrieYeah, and he did make a little bit of money on the property market, so he had some properties that he could leverage, but we will get into that a little bit more later. But he's got a little money, he's got a little money. So basically, every trainer they speak to says one line is manageable. That's why you see in lots of movies like the MGM lion, one line with one trainer, you know, that can be a predictable outcome, that can be something that can be managed. But what you're talking about is an extremely um insane idea. Lions, lions are social animals, they're pack animals, they're driven by survival instincts and hierarchy. It's just not it's not gonna pan out for you. So do you think Noel, what do you think? Do we think he's gonna take this advice? Hell no. Noel is a can-do kind of man. Yeah. So as we've spoken about before, no, he just sees this as a challenge to overcome. So not only have they said to Noel, this shouldn't be done, they've said this can't be done. And he said, no, let's do it anyway. Instead of scaling back on his idea, he decides he should expand it dramatically.
ClareExcellent.
CarrieThere's one particular trainer who kind of gets the gist that Noel's not going to give up on this. So he tries to give him some practical advice and says, if you're really insisting on doing this, the only way it would work is if you take years to prepare it. So you would have to get some lion cubs and raise them with you as the humans so that they're raised to be tame and they have that human interaction from birth. Noel takes this as now I know exactly what I need to do.
ClareIt doesn't strike me as a patient man though. Like this feels like one of those, like, this is the best idea, but I don't know if at lunchtime I'll still want this idea. Do you know what I mean? Like, is he going to invest years and years into this idea?
CarrieOh, he is. Amazing. So it's now 1970. They're back in California in the burbs, and the acquisition phase of Raw begins. The acquisition of what? You guessed it. Baby line cubs. He gets some line cubs from various zoos around the world, from circuses that don't want them anymore, from private collectors. More arrive, then more. But one of the most famous lines associated with this production was a lion named Neil. If you've seen photographs from this period, you've probably seen Neil. He is huge. Um, I mean, Jennifer Aniston, you didn't have the hair we we die for. Neil does. It's stunning. Huge, magnificent, photogenic. He's the perfect publicity animal to pretend was their live-in pet. Yes, you heard that right. Oh god. They have enlisted Neil, who he's a professional actor, is Neil. He like if you've probably seen a line in any movie around that time period, it was Neil with his trainer. So they decide they're gonna enlist Neil to live with them and pretend that he is their pet. Um, I found a photo of Neil with I guess Melanie Griffiths. Yes, and we'll get into these photos. So whilst publicly they're pretending Neil's their pet, he's not actually their lion. He belonged to a trainer named Ron Oxley. The intent was to use Neil for two purposes. One that we've covered is to shoot some friendly line content. They think if they pretend Neil's their pet and they get some fun family photos with Neil, this will give them some buzz for the movie that they're gonna make and get people really excited to see Raw. But number two, you know, Neil's an old hand in the Showbiz game. Surely he can teach the young cubs how to act on set. Neil's gonna show these young cubs how to be Hollywood starlets. So Nepo Cubs. Nepo Cubs.
ClareNepo cubs.
CarrieJust what the world needs. And because Neil was, he's not tame, but he's certainly been around humans, he's worked with humans, he is calm around people and cameras and lighting and all that stuff that goes on around films.
BennyLike yeah, he's very used to it, I suppose. Yeah, it's a good idea.
CarrieSo this increases their confidence with their little plan. So now we can talk about the famous photographs. Um I'm sure you guys have seen them. Claire has just looked some up for us. Life magazine does a whole spread about look at Melanie Griffith and Tippy Hedron and their really beautiful pet lion that just lives with them in their house. So there's Tippy Hedron sitting with the lions. Melanie's lying on the carpet with the lions. There's lions inside the home just chilling by the fridge, waiting for a little snack. The lion's swimming in the pool. They're spitting water into each other's mouths. The lion and Tippi, poolside. The lions loun lounging on the furniture. Lions are beautiful, they can just be like household pets, like little puppies.
ClareThis one's wild, sorry. Look how big he is. But look at that hair. Beautiful hair.
BennyYou mentioned someone's gonna get sculpt in the story. I mean, I would sculpt my I would rip my hair off and put on Neil's any day. Try to staple my hair. It's gorgeous.
CarrieYeah, I don't think Neil's crying at night rubbing rosemary oil into his scalp like some of us.
BennyI wonder if they can do like follicle transplants.
CarrieVery I'm not jealous. No.
BennyI could see myself with like a little red bow like in Wizard of Oz. You know, the curls get a like a perm.
CarrieThe public is besotted and fascinated. And who wouldn't be? The pictures look impossible, but they also create a powerful illusion. The illusion that these animals can be tamed. And in reality, they weren't and they can't. Just like Miley.
BennyThey can't be, they won't be.
ClareWe really need to end it. Sorry. Be tamed! When you said it gave the illusion of tamed, and I was like, but Miley can't, and I just sat on it too long. Sorry guys. I'm trying to be a little bit more than a little bit.
CarrieYou should have learnt from from Noel. They can't be tamed. They can't be tamed. So whilst the public think again that this pet's just living with them, that's not the case. These photographs are carefully staged. There's professional trainers nearby, literally just outside of the frame, all precautions were existed and were taken. But the audience only seized the finished image. Here's where the story takes another turn, because the family will need to move out of the suburbs. If you hadn't guessed, importing wine cubs is kind of illegal.
BennyI was gonna ask, what state are they in? Where are they?
ClareThey're in California. That's mentor. So all these photos are like just at a suburban house? Yeah.
BennyLike I imagine there's ones there for film and stuff. I imagine like I'm sure you can hire and there's certain like certain provide like but I wouldn't have thought you'd be able to bring any in legally. I mean, have them in a house in a suburb.
CarrieLook, you can get a lot of things on Amazon, but lying cubs should not be one of them. It is illegal.
ClareWhere are they keeping the cubs currently? Like at this house in the city. Yeah, just in the backyard, just chilling.
BennyLike is no neighbor like calling this in? Yeah. Like Florida, I can understand. Florida has all the crazy pets, isn't it?
CarrieSo that's exactly what happens. There's some kind of fire, and some of the lions and the cubs escape in the neighborhood. So just a touch of hysteria in the burbs. Um, in the end, three of the lions will be shot while local authorities are trying to rein them back in and bring them home. So that's pretty devastating.
ClareIt's crazy that the police round them up and go, here you go. Like instead of going, no, you guys can't have these.
CarrieSo they can't continue like this, right? I mean, this is a disaster. They'll learn their lesson, don't you think? And and stop and stop this film? Wrong.
BennyEven this making the news doesn't put an end to the plans.
CarrieNeil's like, more and more lions. It's hard because there's Noel and Neil.
ClareNoel's just about Noel? Noel is the man. Neil is the hair.
CarrieWarning listeners, they will be interchangeable. We can't keep track. We're hair blind. We're doing our best. Noel's like, no, let's just move. Let's let's let's get some property and move. And that's what they do. They pour all their cash into building, and they don't even call it a home, building a set. They call it the compound. They build a big movie set to make this grand movie they're gonna make in North California on some massive property, and they'll just live there while they're doing it.
BennyI mean, this makes sense. This is a better plan. If you can raise them, raise them in the house, have a house specially built for this purpose. Uh they really should have started this way, but I think I mean that's a good thing.
CarrieSo now they need to come up with the movie's title. And look, uh we have spoiled it, it will be raw, but what do you think the original working title that they came up with would have been? Do you want me to spoil it for you?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
CarriePussy galore. That would have been better, yeah. Ready? Lions, lions, lions!
BennyWith like exclamation points.
CarrieAmazing.
BennyIt delivers what it promises.
CarrieSo this title, it leaves no ambiguity. You know exactly what you're getting with this movie, right? Lions, lions, lions. But do you know what Noel thinks might be missing? Lions tigers. There is a slight issue with this. Just a tiny, tiny detail. Because the movie's gonna be set in Africa. There's no tigers in Africa.
ClareIsn't there?
CarrieTheir inclusion makes no sense. Wait, don't put this in, but is that right? Is that true? I googled it.
ClareIt is true. Oh shit. Where are they then? The jungle.
BennyIndia?
ClareAsia?
BennyIndia.
ClareCrazy.
BennyMiddle East. I don't know, but I I wasn't gonna say anything because I was like, oh yeah, of course there's not. I would have thought there was, but I never really thought about it.
CarrieWell that's amazing. And this is probably why he thinks he can get away with it. Yeah, well, that's true. As we've shown, no one knows where tiger goes. This is exactly like Africa. 100%. So what's he gonna do? He's gonna get some tiger carbs.
ClareJesus.
CarrieThis kind of wets his appetite, so he thinks maybe they need some more animals. They get some cougars, some leopards. Then he just feels like lions, lions, lions. It needs more lions. So they get a lot more lions. Like it's up to it's over a hundred lions at this stage. Uh flamingos living on the compound. Yep.
BennyLions, tigers, cougars. Oh my bears. It writes itself.
CarrieYep, they've got some flamingos, some swans, they got some ostriches. As you can imagine, things are about to get worse. Noel brings home another purchase. Timbo. Timbo the elephant. No. So if you're keeping score at home, we've now gone from we really just want people to appreciate the lions to let's build a private zoo with all the animals we can get. The scale of this operation has exploded. Everything is bigger. More ambitious, more expensive, more complicated.
BennyBut just do the zoo at this point. I mean it's but it would be probably successful.
ClareThey could have just been filming this whole time as well. Like this whole enterprise and made this like a doccio series type of thing.
CarrieMeanwhile, Tippi and Knoll's children are now pushed into becoming the stars of the film. Why, you ask? Well, as Ben alluded to earlier, no union will let actors actually work on this film. No one will ensure this film. And no no one actually wants to work on this film. They can't get anyone else to do it. So they make their kids do it.
BennyWho are also not allowed to be in film. Who also have standards of when and how much they're allowed to work.
CarrieSo who else can they get for this movie? A writer, a director, a star? Well, no. So who do you think's gonna take that on? Who do you think would love all those roles, even though they have no experience? It's gotta be Neil. It's gotta be Neil.
ClareThere's no one it's Noel, it's Noel. Noel. Oh god Noel is happy. Neil is the face and the hair only. Yeah. Noel's gonna be the tap. Noel says, hold my beer.
CarrieI've got this.
ClareI can do all of those parts. Of course I can. What's Tippi doing at this point? Like, is she like, sweetie, you don't have the experience for this? Spiraling. She's she's going along with it.
CarrieJesus, Tippy. So Melanie Griffith at this stage is only 13 years old. Noel's sons are also teens, they're all pretty young. And despite all the advice they were given at the start of this process, the wild animals living on the compound don't have adequate training. They don't train them properly. They don't have support. And Neil the Lion, the hare of the operation, he hasn't been the brains of the operation. He hasn't been able to teach these hundreds of other animals how to be actors. He's failed. They're not compliant. He's just a pretty face. That's it. That's all he's got. That's all he's got going for him.
BennyI wouldn't train on my replacement. Smart.
CarrieAnimal injuries are already happening regularly, and they're just living in the same space. They haven't even started the filming that's about to happen. As they're about to begin, Melanie Griffith is having doubts about being made to do this film and says to Tippi, I don't want to do this movie, mum. I don't want to leave this movie with half a face. This would be an alarmingly prophetic statement. Is that how you say that? You know, like prophecy? I don't know.
BennyProphetic, yeah.
CarrieListeners? Wait if. Wait a minute. Please don't. So by the time filming begins, which is not until 1976, so they've already been doing this. Like they had the idea in 1969. We are now seven years into this. Okay. That's insane.
ClareAnd the project means that all of those line cubs are now teenage teenagers, right? Yeah. Witness. Yeah. No training. Okay.
BennyAnd as you said, Claire, like this could have been the movie. Like this is like preparing to do this movie probably could have been actually could have worked and been more successful than the movie itself.
CarrieThe project has evolved far beyond its original conception. This isn't now just a movie about lions. It's a movie happening inside a wild animal enclosure, and it's a big difference. A lot of films try to create the illusion of danger, but Raw was doing the opposite. It took real danger and tried to create the illusion that everything was under control and then make that into a story. The thing most people don't understand about Raw or misunderstand about Raw is that the animals aren't performing. They're not trained, there's no script, there's no choreography, no carefully rehearsed scenes. It's just wild animals on a compound living as wild animals do. And Noel throwing himself, Tippi, and their children into various situations of what's happening on the day, filming that, and then trying to build a story around it. Because you can't say to an untrained lion, sit over here or walk through this room. They're just filming whatever's happening and then trying to be like, okay, well, this lion walked through this room, so let's add that into the story. Oh my god.
BennyIt is very like reality TV, very big brother, or any of those, like you know, Vanderpump, it's all that, or Housewives, it's like what stories to create around what you know when you edit this to look like certain things are happening or people are reacting to certain things. You could I see how it could work.
CarrieOne of the recurring themes you hear from people that worked on the film is that Noel genuinely believed that the animals weren't dangerous. Not in the traditional sense. Dangerous things happened constantly on the set. There were scratches, bites, animals were pouncing on their much smaller human counterparts, and the animals were fighting each other between takes. But Noel interpreted this differently. A lion tackling someone wasn't necessarily aggression to him. He would just say, oh, they're playing. A bite wasn't necessarily an attack. It was just enthusiasm for the project. And the problem with that logic is that a lion weighs hundreds of kilograms. A playful house cat might knock a coffee mug off a table, and that's fine. But a playful lion can send you to hospital. One of the first major warning signs arrived before filming had even properly settled into a routine. The animals were starting to establish their own territories on the compound, which is perfectly normal wild animal behavior. But unfortunately, they were trying to establish those territories on a movie set. So movie sets use a lot of sandbags to hold down equipment, cameras, microphones, lighting. Lions don't care about that. They thought the sandbags were their toys, and they became quite possessive of particular sandbags on set. When a lion would choose his sandbag or her sandbag, that was their prized possession. Which sounds funny until you picture 30 lions arguing over one particular item. Suddenly your lighting equipment isn't the most dangerous thing in the area anymore. The good news for Noel though, and he's quite happy about it, is that no one's having to create realistic animal behaviour for this film. He's just filming all this craziness happening. But the bad news is that nobody could stop it either. Then there were the fights, not between people, but mainly between lions. So as you were saying, Claire, these lions are getting older. They're hitting an age of maturity. Oh gosh. They might want to dabble. I mean, there's no lion tinder and they're stuck on this combo together. You can imagine things that are happening. I'm not gonna go there. We're not that kind of show. But you can feel the love tonight.
BennyThis does sound like that other raw movie I watched. I'm not really mad.
CarrieWe can all use our imagination. So the lions are establishing hierarchies, territories, trying to build relationships, there's mating, there's fighting. The cast, which remember are just their children being forced to be the caste, are sharing a space with wild predators.
BennyWhen you say, can I just imagine what this is like? Is it when you say movie set, are we talking about like it's a big kind of warehouse and they've just built like a fake house in it? Or is it just is it really a house that's like they they're living in it as well, are they?
CarrieThey're living in the house as well. Um the stuff isn't a proper house, is it sort of like within a contained building or something, or it's all just like I I don't know too much about how it how it looked, but it was certainly designed to be more of a film set than a home.
BennyI'm just trying to imagine in my head, is it kind of like a friend's set where it's like just a few fake walls and then the rest of it's kind of like a pen or something, but it's it's actually an enclosed house, really. It's yeah.
CarrieAnd then you've got basically wide open spaces in which the animals are just roaming. And animals that that wouldn't normally live together, um, particularly in Australia.
BennyI think these birds and things like in there, like that terrifying living in this house, and I mean you said territories and stuff like that. These poor things will be like forever distressed.
ClareIt looks like they built this house themselves as well.
CarrieYeah, and I think they did. I think it's all it's all a DIY situation here.
ClareOh my god.
CarrieThere will be over a hundred people that work on this film, it's around 140. People always ask why did they keep coming back? But people by now have invested so much time into this project, so much money, particularly Noel, that I don't think they felt turning back was possible. Like they've sunk their whole life into this project now, they have put their kids at risk, and I don't think anyone feels like they can actually say we need to stop now. So But Noel's kind of like a human a human trait in us is that the more we invest in something, the harder it becomes for us to abandon that. Even if you think it might be the wrong decision.
BennyAnd a lot of crew who probably aren't being paid yet or being paid very little, that are probably um working on promises, maybe like there's probably some IOUs, I imagine.
CarrieYeah.
Benny140 people, and how long is this perfilmed over?
CarrieThere is kind of a theory that some of these people joined this movie because they wanted to be in Hollywood, they wanted to be in movies. This was this was a door to like a foot in the door to that world because no one legitimates working on this movie, right? So people that are starting in the industry, they know they've heard of Tippi, they know she's a she's a famous actress. Oh, I can work with Tippi Hedron. Of course I'm gonna take this this opportunity, this starts, and then I'll like yeah.
BennyThis it's a it's a foot in the back door if you if the real places aren't getting you then you're getting you in. I can see why you would go for it.
CarrieYeah, so they are they being exploited, really? You could argue that for sure.
BennyNon non-union, I don't know that union's. I was gonna say that, yeah.
CarrieYeah, somewhere on the along the way, this project becomes Noel's identity. That's how it seems to me. He's so invested, this is not just a movie anymore. This is, you know, he's invested almost a decade of his life, all his money, his family into this movie. So Raw is Noel, and Noel is Raw, and he's not gonna give it up. So any criticism he takes really personally, he put he just pushes back harder, and you know, he just wants to proceed. So that aside, they should really make a promo for this movie now that they're filming. The goal seems simple enough. They're gonna get some exciting footage of Tippi interacting with the lions. This will build anticipation, generate publicity, and get people really excited to see it. But unfortunately, the lions don't receive that memo. They're filming and one lion pulls out of the pack and charges at Tippi, like charges directly at her. It pins her to the ground and it bites the back of her head. Do they stop the camera rolling? No, this is great footage. Noel is thrilled.
BennyImprovise Tippy. Keep it rolling.
CarrieThey do continue this footage. But another challenge is on the way. There's a virus sweeping through the compound. So the animals start getting sick, they don't really know what's happening. By the time they get a vet in there to treat the animals, 14 lions have died.
ClareOh, that's so sad. They're really they're really neglecting these animals. Like it's not just they're putting that their kids at risk. That's such terrible animal cruelty by way of the city.
BennyI mean, they've only built this to be a set, they haven't built this to be a place that's a habitable thing, like place for these poor creatures.
ClareAnd then injuries Ivory Tower as the Hollywood star, but all these extras just out on the compound.
CarrieInjuries are piling up, scratches, punctures. Wounds and bruises, but the incidents are happening so often now they've kind of stopped being remarkable. It's not like out of the ordinary, it just becomes really normalized. Now that filming's underway, they're hemorrhaging money. What? They are, they are, yeah. We're not shocked, are we? For all the reasons that we've kind of touched on. So just feeding the animals is one of the major um money pits here. They are averaging a $4,000 spend, and this is in the 70s. So I looked up what that would be in today's money, and this is a week to feed the animals. So that's about $23,000 in US money and $33,000 in Australian money today to feed the animals. That's per week. They also have the cost for the facilities for veterinary support, and they've had to hire security because some of the animals keep trying to escape.
ClareOh my god.
CarrieCosts are just blowing out. Not to mention like equipment, the animals break the equipment. It's gonna cost a lot of money. But Noel convinces everyone think about this idea. People are gonna go crazy for this. We are gonna be billionaires, people are gonna love this movie. We've just gotta get through it.
ClareEven in the face of absolute failure, he's like, not today. Akuna matata.
CarrieSo we're talking about these these injuries kind of becoming normalized. So when I say normalized, people talk about it now and say when they're talking about lion injuries, particularly maulings and bites, that it was just kind of like an office worker saying, Oh, I got a paper cut or I tripped over with a coffee. Everyone kind of laughs it off. They come back tomorrow. There's no kind of sense of fear or this isn't kind of right what we're doing. Did they have any trainers on set? So whilst they had a couple, some people claim, and I can't verify it, but some people claimed they weren't real trainers. They were just said they were kind of trainers or like had worked at a pet shop or had worked at a zoo once, and there was no one stable that kind of stayed the course. Yeah.
ClarePeople were on the street. And like you said, there's no choreography or no plan of how they're gonna use the animals per day or anything like that.
CarrieAnd like the trainer had originally told them they'd need one trainer per animal, they now have over a hundred and thirty to a hundred and forty just big cats. That's not the elephants, the cougars, the panthers, the birds. So there's like 200 animals here. And they there might be like on a good day, maybe five trainers.
BennyAnd that's the thing, even no matter how good the trainer, it takes weeks and weeks just to get them to do kind of one simple thing in a certain scenario that's very controlled, like it takes a lot of repetition, and they're improvising, they're not like they don't have a story or they're an idea of what they're filming. They're just kind of the trainers are really just there to kind of keep them comfortable around people, but they're not really actually you know training them to do things. I don't know.
CarrieI might go into detail on some of the injuries now, but before we do, I think we need to call out that we don't blame the animals for these injuries. These animals aren't malicious, they are behaving as a wild animal should. This is absolutely because humans exploited them and did the wrong thing.
ClareEspecially for the cubs, right? Like if anybody's watched Tiger King or Chimp Chimp Crazy Crazy, that like all these little cubs, like so. Yes, they're acting like wild animals, but they've been built, they've been bred in captivity. So it's not like when this is over, they can let these animals free, and those those animals will thrive in in the wild because while they've been living wildly, they're not free, and they're having food supplies and like yes, they're not being looked after, but that's almost more dangerous because there's nowhere for these animals to go when this is over.
CarrieSo we might start with the star of the show, Noel. So Noel suffered injuries that would have convinced most people, I think, to stop the project. When filming starts, he's in one of the first scenes, he's actually bitten through the hand. And when I say through the hand, you can see a hole through his hand. It's bleeding profusely. They keep the cameras rolling, and this footage is used in the film, including his blood kind of pouring out. He was bitten through the leg, he suffered puncture wounds, deep puncture wounds to the chest. He um had so many vi bites at one stage, he developed blood poisoning. He also developed um severe gangrene, which is like an infection that you get. Jesus because he'd been mauled so much. Um, accounts differ slightly on the exact number of serious um injuries that Noel had, but most accounts say there was at least 11 times that he'd had to be hospitalized and was out of action for weeks at a time because of these injuries. So, Tippi, what about Tippi? Whilst we think of injuries on this film and kind of associate that with lions, Tippi's worst injuries came from the elephant we talked about earlier from Timbo. So there's a scene where Tippy is riding Timbo, she does the wrong thing while she's riding him and spooks him, he throws her off and falls on her to some degree, so she's crushed by Timbo. Uh, she almost loses a leg from this crushing incident. Crazy. She does break several bones.
ClareBecause how heavy is an elephant, like an average elephant? Are we talking like oh god? Um, a ton?
CarrieI don't know. A lot. So I think I don't know which part of him fell on her, but she was certain her leg was certainly crushed.
ClareA typical adult, a typical adult elephant weighs between 2,000 and 7,000 kilos.
BennyLike if it's stood on you, you'd it's you'd pulverise.
ClareLook, I gotta say, guys, I was really rooting for Tippy at the start, but I have serious questions about again, like acknowledging that she'd been through trauma, but like this is terrible parenting, but also just personal safety. That she's still going along with this ride is so crazy.
CarrieWell, she will also be injured by a leopard on set. She gets bitten by a cougar. Um, the bite she receives from the cougar, she ends up needing skin grafts. She also gets severe gangrene that threatens her recover recovery and leaves her hospitalized. Oh my god. Now let's talk about Melanie Griffith, Dakota's mom. This is where it becomes quite difficult to laugh about it because when I think about Melanie, I think she was a little baby child in this movie who's being exploited by adults who are her carers and her parents and who should be looking out for her best welfare. She never chooses to be in this environment, really. Um, according to several reports, she actually tried to quit the film at different stages, but ends up being drawn back in by the family. Uh Melanie is attacked by a lioness while they're shooting a scene. The lioness targeted her face and her injuries were severe. She ends up requiring more than 50 stitches to her face and head and had to have facial reconstructive surgery. And look, we'll put this out there, Melanie. Whatever they did, great job.
ClareYou look stunning. Amazing.
CarrieIt has not harmed you except for in the heart. Your face is incredible. The injuries were so bad they did think she might lose an eye. That's how severe it was. Um, do you think they used this film in the final this footage in the final cut? Yes, they did. Of course they did. Noel has traumatizing, it's diabolical.
ClareNothing hits the cut cutting room floor of this film. Yeah.
CarrieThat's not a story that really disturbed me about Melanie's experience on this film came from John Marshall, who is one of Noel's sons. And this was uh John describing Noel ignoring Melanie's pleas to stop while they were filming a risky scene. So apparently they because they know it's dangerous and they're getting injured all the time, they do have safe words that they're supposed to use if they want the filming to stop. Uh according to John, they're filming a risky scene, and the safe word they picked, guess guess what they picked.
ClareIt's got to be lines, lines, lines, or roll.
CarrieSure. The safe word is null. I mean, you have to laugh. So the safe word is null. They're filming this risky scene, and he said, uh, Melanie was down there yelling, no, no, no, no, no, and he didn't do shit. Yeah.
BennyBecause what you want is the safe word to be a word that you use regularly when you're calling out to people on set, and it would be normal in conversation. That's the pro that's the word you want to choose.
CarrieGod, they're not good at safe words, they really need some training. So then came the most infamous injury from the set, which we kind of talked about earlier.
BennyBroken heart.
CarrieNow, this was uh an injury that occurred to the cinematographer Jan Dubont. Have you heard of him? He did Speed. Great name.
BennyI was like, don't shame the man for his drug past.
CarrieYears later, he directed a movie like Speed, like Speed, and he's become one of Hollywood's best-known action filmmakers. But back then he was new on the scene and he was simply trying to catch uh capture some interesting footage. Unfortunately, these lines had their own creative vision. So to achieve the dramatic shots he wanted, DuBont worked from specially prepared positions. One of these positions was inside a concealed pit in the ground, and the idea being that he would have the camera at eye level and they would put a tarp cover over the top of him so the animals could just move overhead and he could get beautiful eye-level shots of the animals and capture something breathtaking. What could possibly go wrong? To kind of keep him safe, they tell Jorn he should wear a helmet, like just you would do if you were riding a bike and you're six years old, like a stack hat. So they pop a little stack hat on him, they pop him in the hole, he's got his camera ready to go.
BennyThat's all you need closed toed shoes and little helmets. You're right for the set. Safety.
CarrieA man after my own heart, he's he's too he's not comfy, he's feeling too hot, he can't see well enough. What's he gonna do? He takes the helmet off. So a lion apparently sniffs the tarp, sniffs the tarp, sees something underneath the tarp, reaches under the tarp, grabs DeBont by the scalp, and peels his scalp backwards, literally scalping him. So this is a quote from him The lion peeled my scalp back like the lid of a sardine can. He needed more than 220 stitches to sew the parts of his scalp they could recover back on.
ClareUgh.
CarrieYears later, he would say the worst part was not the pain, but it was the sound that he heard. And this is a quote from him.
BennyUm uncomfortable.
CarrieImagine the teeth on both sides of your skull in stereo, stereophonic sound. I wake up to this nightmare every night.
ClareOh, debont.
CarrieHe struggles with trauma after this, not surprisingly, and goes to see a doctor. What does this doctor say? He must be in Knowles' camp because he says, you know what I think's gonna help you? You need to get back in there with those animals. Stop! Yeah. Might help you feel some sense of control if you get back in there with those animals. So, in a decision that makes sense only within the universe of Raw, he goes back on set.
ClareThat's mental.
CarrieThat is crazy to me.
ClareThat's so crazy.
Benny70s therapy, or was it 80s, 80s by now? Okay, get face your fears, I get like, but not like go back to that set. No, that's different.
CarrieThen there were Noel's sons. So John Marshall suffered significant injuries after a line bit the back of his head. He also required 55 stitches to have his head uh fixed. Jerry Marshall was bitten deeply in the thigh and still has issues with his legs today. Um, this is another quote from John about the filming. Don't get me wrong, I had a wonderful time, but it was really stupid.
ClareOh my god.
CarrieBut I guess this is their dad, you know. This is their dad. This has become his identity. They want to make him happy.
ClareIt's it's actually pretty crazy that like nobody on set called like child welfare or something and was like, these people have these little kids here that are getting mauled by animals every day.
CarrieSo John said watching Raw still gives him nightmares.
BennyWhat does it?
CarrieAnd when asked about what his father put the family through, he was less diplomatic. He said, Dad was a fucking asshole to do this to his family. Yeah. Another quote from him. Both Tippy and Melanie would try and be in scenes with me because they knew only I would stand up to Dad. That's heartbreaking. Yeah, and think of him as like a younger man, like he was in his teens when they started, so maybe late teens as they're kind of finishing or 20-ish, and he's got his little stepsister and his, you know, stepmum that he's trying to protect. It's really heartbreaking. So at some point the injuries become so frequent that they decide they can't really afford to keep going to hospital. So they just set up like a mini medical tent on the set so they can just start doing some treatments there. Like a few stitches here or there, some bandaging. Let's not hold up the filming, because as we know, Noel can do any job, and he can be a doctor too. So they just start fixing it themselves. Something I find fascinating about this film, and we have touched on it earlier, is that this crew, which is you know, at times 140 people, so there's not they're not all in his family, they do keep coming coming back to work, and they obviously know this isn't safe, but it's some kind of Stockholm syndrome. It's like working on this film has changed their relationship to danger. Like this has become normalized to them, it's not unusual, and even though everyone outside this process is telling them it's crazy, they still keep coming back to complete the filming of Raw.
BennyAnd I guess we're hearing the worst of it, but there must be something majestic about these things. Like I can imagine it would be a pretty phenomenal experience day-to-day seeing these things and seeing these creatures. And I I I get that if you're an animal lover, it's like just being in that environment would be so amazing, and and the payoff, this payoff of this movie if this movie does well.
CarrieAnd I do think it's people that were like trying to get into Hollywood, yeah. So so they feel like they're part of this big historical experience. They don't want to feel like these sacrifices have been wasted, like years of work, they've already been physically injured, they've probably damaged relationships with their with their family. I mean, we'll get into that a bit later, but we can tell from John's quotes the family dynamic is not.
ClareI guess also, like, if you know anything about the movie industry back then too, just the infamy of this film alone will raise like interest in it. So I guess if you're trying to get into Hollywood of going, well, this is probably the most complicated set or experience I'll ever have to be involved in. So if I can stick it out, any s anyone will hire me because I've been able to like overcome this really tricky, traumatic, dangerous scenario potentially.
BennyAnd also, I know like we've got unions and things like that, but I I also think like in this era of Hollywood, there was still a lot of like just really dodgy, unsafe stuff doing. Like, I think outside of just the animals in this situation, I think they were doing so many things in movies. I mean, we know about like the Twilight movie incident, all sorts of crazy things that should never have been done, but they do them anyway.
CarrieAnd across all industries, then, really. Like, I think if you looked at any industry back then, we'd probably be shocked by you know, lack of safety. So everyone keeps coming back to Raw. Maybe they just have that hope that after the next setback everything will finally fall into place, but it's it's not really falling into place. Money is still a big problem, this the schedule keeps expanding. So they had originally planned to shoot this money for six months, they're now into a number of years. That's now Noel is realizing causing them other problems because as they're trying to edit some of this movie together, in some of the scenes, Melanie's 13, but now she's 19. That's you know, you're changing dramatically through that time. Yeah, so the continuity is totally out with all the actors in the film. Um, the family relationships are becoming really challenging. They're wasting millions of dollars, well not wasting, but spending millions of dollars feeding the animals and caring for them, and things are about to get worse. So they had created a man-made dam on the compound for access to water. This dam fails, and it's a big deal. It causes a major flood that tears through the entire compound and causes chaos. Um, some animals are sadly lost, the sets are totally destroyed, the infrastructure to support the animals was destroyed, a lot of the filming equipment was damaged. Again, people say to Noel, it's time to call it. And he says, No, let's push screw.
BennyFor God's sake, what's it gonna take?
ClareThey're just all using the safe word, being like, No, no. But he but all he's hearing is like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
CarrieAt this particular point, they have 132 large cats, that's just the cats on set, and he has literally run out of every single dollar. So they approach some Japanese investors to contribute to the film. And how do you pitch this as an investment opportunity? Because I'm picturing this meeting, you're saying, like, how's how's this project going? Um, well, we've had some lines shot, we've had a flood, we've had several maulings, uh, we've had a disease outbreak, we're about 10 years behind schedule. But Noel has the gift of the gab and they give him a million dollars to keep the project going.
ClareThat's crazy. What year are we at? Mid 80s?
CarrieWe're in the late 70s. Oh, sorry. At the moment. So like a million dollars.
ClareA million dollars then, too, is would have been insane money.
BennyCan I just say, um, I know like you know the movie Milo and Otis?
ClareOh my god, yeah, I know what you're gonna say. Yeah.
BennyYeah. I mean, it was such a cute movie as a kid, but it's just really horrific knowing now kind of what the the animal treatment was like. It was filled, it was Japanese produced exactly for the reason that there were no standards and things like that. I'm wondering if maybe that's why this money is there, is that I guess these investors don't have those priorities or concerns or their name associated with it. I guess they're just seeing an opportunity to make bank.
CarrieSo Noel is now feeling ecstatic. He feels like he's got some money to keep his dream afloat. But really, this is now just his dream. Years later, Tippi in Tippi Hedron's autobiography, she paints a very different picture from the public image they're portraying of the movie in their relationship than what's going on on the inside. So she describes a relationship where she's increasingly pushed into situations she's not comfortable with, um, both with filming with animals she believed were unsafe, putting her children in situations she believed were unsafe financially.
BennyToo late putting into this movie.
CarrieUm and she says, really, a lot of these situations she didn't want to be a part of anymore. That in some part she was starting to realise she never loved Noel. She married him to escape and distance herself from her relationship and codependency with Alfred Hitchcock and her fear of him, that Noel was just putting distance between her and Alfred, and that he's the same thing. Yeah, she's now slowly realizing she's just gone from this kind of man to the same kind of man.
BennyYeah. It's hard because like you yeah, as you said before, like there are people like the children in this who have no say and you feel really bad for them, but there's also people here who and I can see why she did it and I can understand like the trauma and like why she's kind of got herself into this situation, but it's it's really hard to empathise with her as well just for what everyone else has gone through.
ClareFrom squawks to roars to tears. It's sad that it's all animal related to it. It's hard not to laugh about that part. I'm going, like it's not even like a far stretch. It took you like 10 years to go, this is the same scenario I'm in.
unknownYeah.
CarrieAnd it does make me wonder if that's what gave Noel the idea too. Like he's like, you've had this, you've had this really big hit with birds. Let's just do lions. Lions, lions, lions.
ClareLions, lions, lions.
CarrieSo while publicly the narrative is like, fun family embraces wildlife and conservation. In private, the reality is much more complicated. Tippy eventually describes the decision to let fully grown lions roam through their family home as stupid beyond belief. She warned that she learnt that a lion or a wild animal has no conscience or remorse genes. A devastatingly clear lesson that she learned far too late. At this point in the podcast, you might be wondering how Raw ever reached the cinemas at all. And honestly, that's a reasonable question. Due to its lack of union workers and insurance, most distributors didn't want to release it. So in the US, it never gets like a theatrical release. But guess who hosts the world premiere of Raw? Sydney, Australia.
unknownOh no.
ClareHome of Tigers.
CarrieClassic home of tigers. We're like, where are the tigers come from? We don't know. I don't think it's here, no. No.
BennyI wonder if it's because we've got like the crocodile dundee. Like, is it some sort of the wild animal image that we're trying to like cash in on or something?
CarrieThat's a good point. So whilst it gets the world premiere in Sydney, it's barely shown around the world. It has a really limited release. Um, it makes a little money in Asia, but it ends up costing $17 million for them to make, which um when it's released in 1981 is $61 million US and $93 million Australian. How much money do you think it made? Any guesses?
ClareOh, $1,000.
BennyDid it make it like half of it back?
CarrieIt made $2 million. So it cost $17, it made two. So that's that's $7.2 million US and $11 million Australian in today's equivalency. But think about how they market this film. So when they're thinking about marketing this movie, so they want it to be a family adventure, like bring your kids for the school holidays, it's gonna be a fun flick. But you have to remember this is basically a snuff film, but no one's actually died because the injuries are real. Are you gonna take your five-year-olds to watch somebody literally get scalped or mauled and see the blood and the actual fear of the person? It's it's not something many people want to see. They don't actually want to see real gore and blood. But after hearing everything they've gone through to make this movie, I mean I just assumed it'd have to be extraordinary, a masterpiece, a hidden classic, a revolutionary piece of cinema. Not exactly. Let's talk about the plot of Raw, or more accurately, the lack of one. The basic story is that Noel plays a wildlife researcher living in Africa, that his family arrives to see him, and that the animals just create chaos. That's the plot.
ClareI love that he's made himself like this like big star too.
CarrieBeing like this, of course he is the writer, the director, the star, the producer, he, the medical officer.
ClareNot his Hollywood starlet wife.
CarrieSo for large sections of the runtime, it's literally just people trying to get from one room physically to another room in the house, and animals preventing them from doing so. So to give you a rundown, it's like character walks somewhere, lions appear, character gets knocked over, more lions appear, a tiger wanders through the shot, an elephant shows up, more lines arrive. There's a bite, another lion walks through the shot.
ClareOh my god.
CarrieSo the first like five minutes are fascinating, but then you realise it's another 90 plus minutes of this.
ClareOh my god.
BennyIt kind of could have been a good plot, like the whole like, what could possibly ruin this fancy day? Like, you know, in the inspection, and someone turns up and then they're trying to hide the animals. Like I could kind of see that you could edit in a way you could have done something with that. I don't blame them. They would have been better off, as you said, just let the lions fight or do whatever, film a lot of footage and then like voiceovers and give them characters and like you know, like fighting over toy, just like characters. Give them human voices and pretend that they're a family like of lions.
CarrieLook, maybe you should get the footage off him and recut it. The one part of the film that is captivating isn't the storytelling, it's our knowledge as the audience that everything we're seeing is real, those are real wild animals. The fear of the actors, and I use actors loosely, like the family is is absolutely genuine. The uncertainty is real. Um, moments when when they nervously laugh or they're glancing nervously around them. This is all real.
ClareWhen someone gets pinned by a lion, they do look terrified in these clips. Like, yeah, it doesn't look like acting, it looks just terrified.
CarrieYeah, well, when they're getting bitten or attacked, those are real screams. The blood is real, and still somehow they tried to frame frame this as they wanted to market it as PG.
ClarePG?
BennyI'm struggling to think which ones. I know like Disney made movies like this, right? I mean, that were made in very different ways, but the whole like animals and people living with them and it had been successfully done at the end.
CarrieDo you remember Andre the Seal, Freewilly, Flipper, Dustin's Day Off? Or is that the gorilla?
BennyDunstin checks in.
ClareDustin checks in, that's it. Dunstein checks in.
BennyThere was a few of them, but the hotel one I don't think I remember.
ClareAirbnb.
BennyI I know there was a Jodie Foster film where she was grabbed and bitten, and I don't know if it was before or after this, but I'm wondering. Like, I know that there was like other incidents in that general era where I'm thinking, like, surely they were kind of they were cracking down on these things, or like even Leo the Lion, the the very one from MGM and stuff like that. Like the um there was a celebrity which which star was it? Someone was forced to be in publicity photos, and she was absolutely terrified, and but had to smile and be in these MGM pictures with it and stuff like that.
ClareYes, you're right. It was the 1972 Disney movie Napoleon and Samantha, and it was a stand-in lion. So she'd done all this training with like the proper line, and then they bring bring in a stand-in, and it grabbed her sideways in its mouth and lifted her in the air and shook her in the air. She she escaped with puncture wounds on her hip and minor injuries.
BennyI've heard her talk about she doesn't really like to talk about it, but I'm I have heard her address it somewhere and then I just couldn't remember where in the timeline it was, but I'm thinking there's enough issues around that time where surely just someone would know that lines are being worked on in a movie somewhere.
ClareYeah.
BennyUnion or not, and someone would speak up, but oh crazy.
CarrieAnd look, today this would absolutely never happen when we look on these types of films with a modern lens. We know that animal welfare rules would stop it, workplace safety rules would stop it, and child protection standards would stop it. Because as much as we're laughing at the absurdity of RAW, there are real lessons here. About safety, about the way that we treat animals, about exploitation, about the responsibility adults have to their children in their care, about listening to experts, no, about recognizing the difference between confidence and denial. And most importantly, and I think this lesson comes from Tippi's book herself, is that good intentions aren't enough. Whilst Tippi felt feels that she genuinely cared about conservation and that her heart was in the right place, she's now learnt that they didn't do the right thing and they were cruel to the animals and mistreated them and exploited them. I don't think Noel ever came to that conclusion, but he has passed away, so maybe we'll never know. So passion doesn't eliminate risk, love doesn't eliminate instinct, and wild animals don't stop being wild just because somebody wants them to.
ClareDid any of the cast or crew sue Noel?
CarrieNo, I didn't say anything about that. Um I I know Jan de Bont, if that's how you pronounce it, uh, has said it is the most harrowing film he's ever worked on. And he's now got quite a lengthy kind of Hollywood list, but yeah, he said it was the hardest experience.
BennyUm another film that was harder than hearing your skull crunch between telecoms. I mean it's pretty hard at the top, isn't it? I can't imagine any movie I ever could. Doesn't shock me that you said that. By the way, people, I I just wrote the whole movie's is on YouTube style thing. I can't believe that you've got the whole thing. It's available.
CarrieI mean, don't do it, but sure, if you want to, do it.
BennyIf you're curious.
CarrieUh so Tippi acknowledged that the central lesson that she learnt was loving wild animals didn't make them safe, and her good intentions did not make the risks that they took acceptable.
ClareOr trusting a mediocre man with your safety is a bad decision.
CarrieWell, that's a great segue because in News That Will Shock No One, Tippi and Noel divorced very shortly after the project's completion. Tippy, for her part, remained deeply committed to wildlife conservation and spoke out about the dangers of treating predators like domestic animals. What happened to the animals though?
ClareYeah.
CarrieSo the compound was turned into an animal sanctuary to look after the animals that were used in the raw movie properly until their passing. Because as you said, Claire, a lot of these animals were, you know, taken as children, as babies. They wouldn't have known how to reintegrate into actual wildlife, they wouldn't have been able to feed themselves, they wouldn't have survived. So sadly, they were kind of doomed to live there until their passing days. But Tippy raised a lot of money to make it actually properly safe for them and make sure they had proper care.
ClareI guess that's a good outcome, like the best outcome for the animals, I guess. So what do we think? What do you guys think of the story of Raw? Just because you can, should you. And this is a lesson for all creatives. Just because you think you might be creative, maybe, maybe just have somebody fact check your ideas.
CarrieAnd don't use our own feedback against us. We don't want that as a review. Thank you. Yeah, good point. Good point. But no animals have been harmed in our episode. I know you guys are both gonna go and watch Raw tonight.
BennySo I haven't I don't think I've watched it, but I think I might have seen like a brief documentary or something at some point. I don't know. I've seen certain clips, I don't think I ever have watched the film fully.
CarrieWell, there's a documentary called Raw, the most dangerous film ever made, which I could not get anywhere. Apparently Discovery made it and it's really good, but couldn't get it.
BennyMaybe that's what I watched, or maybe it was just like a other thing on YouTube or something. I remember watching quite a bit of the footage and the story in it, but I don't, yeah.
ClareWhat a fitting episode to kick off Leo season. Absolutely.
CarrieWell, to close out, I'm gonna give you the film's promotional tagline, which is actually quite funny. Raw. No animals were harmed in the making of this movie, but 70 of the cast and crew were.
ClareWow. Which is the animals were harmed, but sure. Yeah. I mean, yeah.
BennyBecause if you realise the pot's not great and it's a shooty movie and you realise like uh maybe the story behind it. Yeah, it's probably smart to say like the story is knowing how it was produced, I suppose, and just knowing the horrible things that people suffer to get it on screen.
CarrieWell, thank you for joining us uh for our time with RAW. Uh my sources for today's episode uh were several podcasts. Um the best one I think, and a podcast that we all love is called What Went Wrong, which is about movies. They do an excellent episode on RAW. Uh there was Everything 80s to a great episode on RAW and things you should know. Sorry, stuff you should know. The podcast to a great episode on RAW. There's also lots on YouTube, TikTok, you name it all about RAW, so feel free to check that out.
ClareYou know, Ben? I was trying to make a Lion King reference.
BennyI just hope when they make this movie he's prepared. Be prepared. Isn't that what he sings? Be prepared.
ClareAlso, maybe we need to work in a kuna matada. I'd really love to like stretch ourselves about how do we bring Zazu into it, which was the little bird.