The 13th Warrior

In 1999, Touchstone thought they had a surefire hit in the works. They had source material by the author of ‘Jurassic Park’ and the director of ‘Die Hard’ behind the camera! But soon things fell apart so spectacularly that ‘The 13th Warrior’ would become one of the year’s biggest box office bombs. This week, Chris and Lizzie unpack how a power struggle between author Michael Crichton and director John McTiernan doomed the film from the start. Find out why making this movie was a battle worthy of Beowulf himself, full of injuries, near death experiences, and pure unadulterated treachery. Don’t worry, Antonio Banderas still comes out looking great! *CORRECTIONS: Chris has the chronology of the score for 'Legend' reversed - Jerry Goldsmith composed the original score (included in the European release of the 'director's cut'), Tangerine Dream was hired to re-score the film for the American release at the behest of the producers. Thanks to Brian McVickar for the correction! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Winterbauer?

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• 0:31Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:15Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:52Chris Winterbauer?

  And action. There you wolf, come out to play! It's not that, warriors! It's the 13th Warrior! Lizzie, did you ever see Warriors? No! Nope? Okay, that joke's gonna work for about 10% of our audience. Welcome back to What Was... What Wrong, your favorite podcast, full stop, that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone a friggin' awesome one. As always, I am one of your hosts, Chris Wunivar, joined by Lizzie Vassit, who has selected for us a movie that I think we've talked about doing since we literally incepted this podcast. And in fact, Lizzie, I was meeting with a producer friend this morning to discuss something completely unrelated. And when I said I was going to record, he said, what are you recording?

• 2:37Chris Winterbauer?

  I said, The Thirteenth Warrior, and he said, I love that movie. So I'm sorry to have stolen the announcement from you, but please, take it away.

• 2:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, Chris, I think we're all dying to know, what was your experience with The Thirteenth Warrior prior to today? Had you seen this before? Did you see this in theaters? This came out in 1999, so we were about 10 years old.

• 2:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 2:58Lizzie Bassett?

  So in theory, we could have seen this in theaters.

• 3:00Chris Winterbauer?

  I definitely did not see it in a theater.

• 3:01Lizzie Bassett?

  No one did.

• 3:05Chris Winterbauer?

  I remember watching it on VHS a lot. It was one of a number of VHS films that we just wore to a nubbin just over time. Just the cardboard jacket has fallen apart like an original Honus Wagner baseball card. It was, I mean, I remember Danny Naylor, shout out Danny Naylor, we watched this movie all the time together. I thought this was one of the best movies ever made as a kid. You know, when we talked about Braveheart before and how we thought like Braveheart, oh my God, like this is the peak of sophistication.

• 3:37Lizzie Bassett?

  I think maybe holds up in some ways a little bit better. I don't know. They're similar. They're very similar.

• 3:42Chris Winterbauer?

  They are very similar. I think Braveheart is the better movie.

• 3:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, I agree.

• 3:45Chris Winterbauer?

  I think The Thirteenth Warrior is better than people have said it is, or critics said it was. And Braveheart, I don't think is quite as good as critics said it, or you know, the Academy said it was at the time. Anyway, this movie is a blast. Is it good? I don't know. Really? It is insane. It's got great production value. The production design is outstanding.

• 4:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 4:07Chris Winterbauer?

  The costumes are great. I mean, they basically said, look, let's do seven Samurai, add six more Samurai, and remove all character development. And that's this movie. And if you can just kind of meet it on those terms, it's a lot of fun. It's a very fun movie. I texted Lizzie because I knew this movie had problems, but I didn't know what they were. And I don't know the answer to this. Lizzie's convinced this is not the case, but I am like, the woman who is the queen, the first time we see her, as we like pan past her, I am convinced that is a completely different woman than the actress that plays for the rest of the movie.

• 4:41Lizzie Bassett?

  No, no. So Chris did, he was like, this is a different woman. And I was like, it's not Chris. And he was like, look at the hair. The hair is curly and then it's straight. And I was like, Christopher, there are curling irons. And he was like, no, you can't do that to hair.

• 4:52Chris Winterbauer?

  No, no, no, no, no. I, to be fair, I did admit there are curly irons. I didn't fight you on that point.

• 4:58Lizzie Bassett?

  It is a good point. And I will acknowledge, I thought the same thing when I was watching it. They do look different enough, but that, I think, is a big tell that the styling of her was so different across two different scenes.

• 5:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes.

• 5:10Lizzie Bassett?

  It might be a little clue that perhaps the same person was not at the helm for all of the shoots.

• 5:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, especially, it was like her eyebrows looked so much thicker, for example, in the first shot. Anyway, but point is, this movie started, I was like, I can't pay this close attention as I'm watching.

• 5:25Lizzie Bassett?

  You gotta let it wash over you. Yeah, that's right. Like a bowl full of Vikings, son.

• 5:28Chris Winterbauer?

  And it's really fun. It is. And, I mean, it look, it falls very short on character development. I really couldn't tell one Viking from another, aside from our, they're the two blondies, big blonde and little blonde, I'll call them, like.

• 5:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Boulevier and the other one played by Dennis Storey, who I literally can't remember the name of.

• 5:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Happy Guy. Happy Guy. Also Tony Curran, because he's just Scottish, just like recognizable. But it also, it doesn't really matter. Antonio Banderas is a movie star. It's fine. He said Alec Guinness, hold my beer. I'm gonna play an Arab in this movie.

• 5:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, we're gonna talk about that. I don't think we can equate it quite to Alec Guinness, but we will, we'll get there.

• 6:04Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I agree. You can't. It's a little nuanced. But my point is, it's a really fun movie. It's a really silly movie, but that's a very. Serious movie, but also has some great elements and some really great set pieces. I thought, for example, the whole cave sequence was

• 6:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's great.

• 6:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Like very cinematic and really shows a lot of scope. The waterfall looked amazing when they're falling off the waterfall. It really visually holds up, in my opinion, almost, what, 27 years later that we're watching it now? So five severed Viking heads to the 13th warrior.

• 6:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Amazing.

• 6:33Chris Winterbauer?

  How about you, Lizzie?

• 6:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, first of all, I just want to say that this episode is a bit of a gift to a dear friend of mine, Nick Nakazono. This is one of his favorite movies. He is

• 6:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Is this the Nick whose basements you were watching movies in all the time?

• 6:45Lizzie Bassett?

  No, no, no. There was no Nick there. This is Nick who is the drummer in the band I was in for a while, who is an extremely talented drummer and also a super fan of the 13th warrior. So this is for you, Nick, and I'm

• 6:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, great. Write that song.

• 6:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 7:00Lizzie Bassett?

  So when this movie came up, I was like, I completely forgot about that movie, but I had the same experience that you did. I did not see this in theaters. We owned the VHS and the DVD eventually of this, and I watched it so many times.

• 7:13Chris Winterbauer?

  It's super watchable.

• 7:15Lizzie Bassett?

  It's so watchable. Between the ages of probably like 11 and 15 or something, I must have watched this movie probably at least 10 times.

• 7:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 7:25Lizzie Bassett?

  And yet I really didn't remember it very well.

• 7:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Didn't remember the story. Certain moments, shots.

• 7:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 7:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Beowulf, whatever the version of his name is.

• 7:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Bulvai.

• 7:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Bulvai, like him like sitting on like his like pseudo throne at the end in the rain.

• 7:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 7:39Chris Winterbauer?

  I will remember that as much as Rutger Hauer in the rain at the end of like Blade Runner, you know? Certain moments.

• 7:45Lizzie Bassett?

  You know, the scene that I remember the most clearly, which I know some people think is goofy, but I actually think is really cool and very well done, is the language learning scene.

• 7:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I know. I think it's fun.

• 7:55Lizzie Bassett?

  I think it's excellent. It is fun. Like, I understand that it takes a leap of faith to go along with the fact that like he's learning this completely foreign language this quickly, but they're doing so many things at once. They're showing a passage of time.

• 8:07Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 8:08Lizzie Bassett?

  They're showing the way that he's hearing repeated phrases over. I just, I think the way that they do it is really smart. And it also lifts the, you know, it takes the pressure off of them to deal with accents or foreign language. Languages like from that point forward because they've established, okay, now he can understand. And also him having an accent at that point actually makes sense because they're all speaking their native language and he's not.

• 8:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 8:31Lizzie Bassett?

  So I think it worked really well.

• 8:33Chris Winterbauer?

  That his accent is from Malaga, Spain? Maybe doesn't make as much sense, but that's fine. No, I agree. I like that scene. There's always movie mumbo jumbo that we need to do to figure out certain logistical shortcuts and whatnot. And that to me is a great example of good creativity and I, I like it.

• 8:51Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. He did it fast and he did it, I think, very effectively. All to say, I'm with you. I think the visuals in this movie are great. The production design is insane as we are going to get into more so than I think you can even recognize when watching it on the screen. And yet it feels like there is something just under the surface here that could have been truly remarkable. And it just didn't quite get there because to your point, there is so little character development. And there's so little time spent on really anyone other than Antonio Banderas. And even his character is paper thin. It just feels like we're moving from lopped head to lopped head and we gotta keep lopping to get to the end of this.

• 9:31Chris Winterbauer?

  By the time he turns toward Mecca at the sunset, I was like, what? He has skipped his prayers this entire movie.

• 9:37Lizzie Bassett?

  He sure has.

• 9:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Right now.

• 9:39Lizzie Bassett?

  He sure has.

• 9:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. It was like they remembered on the last day of shooting, they're like, oh shit. Yeah.

• 9:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. All right. Well, there's a lot to get through here, so I do want to get into it. So Chris, as we enter into today's battle, this mano a mano behind the scenes, let us recite the completely made up Viking prayer. Lo, there do I see my father. Lo, there do I see my mother and my sisters and my brothers. Lo, there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning. Lo, they do call to me. They bid me take my place among them in the halls of Valhalla where the brave may live forever. Great. Now they got that out of the way. How about a real Viking proverb that maybe sheds a little more light on today's story? Praise not the day until evening has come. A woman until she is burnt. A sword until it is tried. A maiden until she is married. Ice until it has been crossed.

• 10:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Beer until it has been drunk. Nor a film until it has been made, released and then re-released on home video.

• 10:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Might we just rewind to a woman until she is burnt?

• 10:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Was that the one?

• 10:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 10:46Chris Winterbauer?

  You didn't bat an eye. I just wanna mention, Lizzie was like, yep, checks out. Keep going.

• 10:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's fine.

• 10:53Chris Winterbauer?

  All right.

• 10:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, they do burn them on the funeral pyres with some frequency across this movie. They liked it, Chris. They liked it.

• 11:01Chris Winterbauer?

  At the end, when Bulby dies, I thought they were gonna throw Antonio's girlfriend into the pyre with him.

• 11:07Lizzie Bassett?

  And he was so mad.

• 11:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 11:09Lizzie Bassett?

  No, at the beginning, they explained, that's the old ways. You won't see that again.

• 11:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 11:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Very convenient. Now, the details, as always. Thirteenth Warrior is directed by John McTiernan. It's written by William Wisher Jr. and Warren Lewis, based on Eaters of the Dead. That's the shortened version of the title by Michael Crichton. It was released on August 27, 1999, and it starred Antonio Banderas, Vladimir Kulich, Dennis Storhoy, Omar Sharif, coming back, and many, many more. Tony Curran, as you mentioned. Now, our main sources for today include a ton of interviews, articles, a making of documentary from 2011 that was re-released on French Blu-ray, which you will hear a couple of clips from. They are in English. And Michael Crichton's A Factual Note on Eaters of the Dead, which was an essay added to the Eaters paperback at the end of the book later on.

• 11:58Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, Chris, how familiar are you with the legend of Beowulf?

• 12:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Very lightly. Isn't, I mean, it's Beowulf, hero, guy, goes to the aid of a king.

• 12:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 12:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Much like this movie. They're being attacked by Grendel.

• 12:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Uh huh. I'm just gonna tell you what it is. So, let's get some background on Beowulf first.

• 12:17Chris Winterbauer?

  It's Friday the 13th, though, because it's really Grendel's mother. It's really Mrs. Voorhees. That's what I'm gonna get to.

• 12:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, it is. It is. It's always Grendel's mother.

• 12:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes.

• 12:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay, so Beowulf is an epic poem that's thought to be written between 500 and 1,000 C.E. or A.D. Most likely written in Anglo-Saxon England, even though it takes place in Viking Scandinavia. It is basically considered the hottest shit ever written in Old English, which is notable for a few reasons. One, it's really old. And two, it is one of the earliest languages that normal, everyday, you know, dirty pores in Europe actually spoke, not Latin, which For example, was reserved for really a pretty small percentage of the people.

• 12:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Dirty rich.

• 12:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Dirty rich.

• 12:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Everybody was dirty.

• 12:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Technically correct, yeah. So we're talking minimum three to 400 years prior to something like the Canterbury Tales. I think when people think, oh, Old English, they think something like that. Nope, that was Middle English. And you can barely even read that if you try to read it without a translation.

• 13:12Chris Winterbauer?

  I did try to read it in college.

• 13:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 13:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Got about middle of the way through.

• 13:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. So no one knows who wrote Beowulf. They don't even know if it was told orally for decades or centuries prior to it being written down, which means they don't know if it was the work of one person or many, though there are arguments to be made for both cases. They do know that even though there doesn't seem to be any record of a real person named Beowulf, there are records of some of the other characters and places that appear in the text. It's believed that it heavily blends myth, legend, and obviously like complete fantasy with some early pagan Scandinavian politics. And it basically contains two parts. Part one is the one that most people remember. It's the one that you were beginning to recite so eloquently.

• 13:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Right. Lo, I see Beowulf. Lo, he walks here. Right.

• 13:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:57Chris Winterbauer?

  As the Vikings.

• 13:58Lizzie Bassett?

  As they did. This is the one I remember reading in high school. King Hrothgar essentially parties too hard in his meat hall and wakes up swamp monster Grendel, who decides to retaliate by carrying off Hrothgar's men and eating them. Beowulf, prince of the, I think, Geats, I don't know, it's southern Sweden now, shows up and offers his Grendel extermination services. Beowulf then rips Grendel's arm off with his bare hands and Grendel sort of slugs off and then dies in the swamp. But of course, he forgot to kill the big bad, which is Grendel's mommy, who shows up the next night, kills more people. Beowulf goes out, kills her. Everyone celebrates. Beowulf returns home to his king, King Higalak. That's the part that I think most people remember. But there's also a part two where we kind of fast forward. Beowulf is a lot older.

• 14:40Lizzie Bassett?

  His king and then the next in line to that throne, they've both died, so Beowulf now gets the crown. And then a big scary fire-breathing dragon shows up, causing a ruckus. An old-ass Beowulf has to drag himself out there and fight it.

• 14:52Chris Winterbauer?

  So old for the time.

• 14:54Lizzie Bassett?

  He's at least 30 and it's just, his bones are dust, you know?

• 14:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Looking like Ray Winstone in a Robert Semecus version.

• 15:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 15:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 15:04Lizzie Bassett?

  All of his men but one abandoned him. He does eventually kill the dragon, but ultimately dies from a bite in the neck. So part two is a bit of a bummer. That's why I think most people only read part one. Fast forward a millennia or so, and a guy named Kurt Villetson was planning to teach a college course on the great bores. Now, the idea was to teach a whole class on all the classics that are supposedly crucial for everyone in Western civilization to read, but no one wants to because they're such snoozers.

• 15:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, bores, B-O-R-E-S.

• 15:30Lizzie Bassett?

  B-O-R-E-S, yes.

• 15:31Chris Winterbauer?

  I thought you were saying like the Dutch in South Africa.

• 15:34Lizzie Bassett?

  No, no.

• 15:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Got it. It was like, I don't know how this is gonna connect, but I'm excited.

• 15:39Lizzie Bassett?

  It's not. And he told his friend at the very top of the list of bores was a bore so boring, it could kick off the whole semester. And that was the legend of Beowulf. Now, I think this is interesting because we read Beowulf in high school, and I do not remember thinking it was boring at all. Granted, we only read the arm ripping off, slugging through the forest part, but I thought that was pretty fun. And Kurt's friend, a published author, seemed to agree and took personal offense on Beowulf's behalf. He was like, you're wrong and dumb. Beowulf is exciting and fun, and I'm going to prove it. Also, I'm six foot nine, and I'm Michael Crichton.

• 16:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Is he six nine or six eight?

• 16:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Six nine, Chris. It's too tall.

• 16:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Did I tell you my dad met him when he was writing Disclosure?

• 16:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Really?

• 16:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, he was meeting a different lawyer, another labor employment attorney. And I think this other lawyer wanted to like show off basically and invited my dad out. And my dad's tall, he's six three.

• 16:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Not tall enough.

• 16:30Chris Winterbauer?

  And Michael Crichton proceeded to like unfurl his giant thunderman body over him.

• 16:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 16:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Anyway, yeah, so my dad has a signed copy of Disclosure somewhere at our house from that meeting.

• 16:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 16:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 16:41Lizzie Bassett?

  All right. Well, if you're not familiar with actual human giant Michael Crichton, he was the certified smarty pants behind mega hits like The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park, of course, and Disclosure. He was born in 1942 and grew up in Roslyn, New York. He went to Harvard and graduated with a degree in anthropology, which he then took and taught at Cambridge University in England before returning to Harvard for medical school. Just a real moron. But during medical school, he started publishing thriller novels under different pseudonyms. And of course, he did great at that as well. He did well enough that he decided maybe it was time to use his real name and give this writing thing the old college try while he's still in college, by the way, because in 1969, the same year he graduated from Harvard Medical School, he released The Andromeda Strain, which became an instant bestseller.

• 17:25Lizzie Bassett?

  And so Crichton told the medical community, "Lose my number." It should also be noted that he's like, pretty handsome. So he's a six foot nine-

• 17:34Chris Winterbauer?

  He's a good guy.

• 17:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Pretty handsome, double Harvard graduate who has just succeeded at literally everything he's done. I wouldn't say he was lacking in confidence.

• 17:42Chris Winterbauer?

  But I heard he couldn't draw blood. This may be a fake story. What I'd always heard was that he had a hard time drawing blood and so the nurses would always do it for him. He was uncomfortable with it, was what I had heard, but that may be inaccurate.

• 17:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Turns out, he didn't need to be able to do it. In 1973, he directed his first feature, which was what?

• 18:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Was it Westworld?

• 18:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Westworld, yes.

• 18:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 18:03Lizzie Bassett?

  We have to cover this at some point. And in many ways, I feel like he kept revisiting this idea across his career in different ways. Jurassic Park is the obvious correlation. The monsters at the park, you know, go haywire.

• 18:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Absolutely.

• 18:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, he would go on to direct five more features over the course of his career, or should that number be six? We'll decide today. But, back to 1974 and Beowulf. Crichton started with the idea that many epic poems and legends were at least loosely based on real events. We understand this. This is sort of the idea of like, a true story being passed down orally over centuries and decades, and then it kind of becomes this fantasy, but somewhere there was a kernel of truth in it. So he started playing around with the idea of uncovering the true story behind Beowulf. But as we discussed at the top of the episode, no one knows who wrote Beowulf, and Crichton realized that if even the best scholars in the world couldn't figure this out, he would just end up making up a whole new story and trying to pass it off as history anyway. So he decided to flip the script.

• 18:58Lizzie Bassett?

  What if an eyewitness account already existed? As he wrote in the factual note, quote, "The concept of a pre-existing manuscript bypassed the logical problems which had earlier impeded me, because a found manuscript would not be my creation, even though I would create it. Of course, such thinking is absurd, but it happens all the time." I bet he's fun at cocktail parties.

• 19:19Lizzie Bassett?

  I just imagine if I had to be in a conversation with Michael Crichton at a cocktail party, I would fully be Renee Zellweger in Pritchett Jones' diary with Salman Rushdie just going, do you know where the toilets are?

• 19:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Also, you would have neck problems just from like looking up at this man as he talks to you.

• 19:35Lizzie Bassett?

  So he figured that the most common kind of eyewitness would have been somebody who's just like kind of boring and describing battles, most likely because they're not from the same culture. They've come along for the ride. He said, I concluded the most useful account would be written by an outsider, someone not part of the culture who could report objectively on the events as they occurred. But who would this outsider have been? Where would he have come from? And then it occurred to Crichton that the outside observer he needed already existed. Because there was a very real Arab man named Ibn Fadlan, who had traveled from Baghdad north into Russia in the 10th century. There, he came into contact with Vikings, and his manuscript provided some of the best and earliest eyewitness accounts of Viking culture. Crichton said Ibn Fadlan had a distinct voice and style. He was imitable. He was believable.

• 20:19Lizzie Bassett?

  He was unexpected. And after 1,000 years, I felt that Ibn Fadlan would not mind being revived in a new role as a witness to the events that led to the epic poem of Beowulf.

• 20:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Somebody ask him.

• 20:30Chris Winterbauer?

  I think that's fair.

• 20:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I agree. I think it's a really cool idea.

• 20:32Chris Winterbauer?

  I do, too.

• 20:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, apparently, this manuscript had been translated into pretty much every language except for English. There were only a few fragments in English that existed. So Crichton combined those with some very minor changes into the first three chapters of his next book, Eaters of the Dead. And then he wrote the whole rest of the book in the style of the existing manuscript, taking Ibn Fadlan along the rest of his now mostly made up journey. Now, Crichton began with the intention of making it clear which parts were real and which he had added or embellished. But, quote, "Within a few years, I could no longer be certain which passages were real and which were made up. At one point, I found myself in a research library, trying to locate certain references in my bibliography, and finally concluding, after hours of frustrating effort, that however convincing they appeared, they must be fictitious. I was furious to have wasted my time, but I only had myself to blame."

• 21:18Lizzie Bassett?

  He was literally looking for scholars that he had made up years earlier and didn't remember that he had made them up.

• 21:23Chris Winterbauer?

  He's turned into ChatGPT. That's what's happened here.

• 21:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, yes.

• 21:31Lizzie Bassett?

  We recently moved into a new house and realized that our bedding desperately needed a refresh. So I took my own advice. And before spending all our money on a luxury bedding brand, I went to Quince. And let me tell you, we now have the crispest, coolest, most beautiful, organic percale sheets and duvet covers that we've ever had. I've bought quite a bit of bedding from Quince, and it's all super high quality and has lasted for years without paying the brand markup. Now, obviously, you shouldn't stop at bedding. You should also refresh your closet with elevated everyday essentials that you will wear over and over again. Think cozy Mongolian cashmere sweaters, starting at 50 bucks, cashmere scarves, responsibly sourced down jackets, and 14 karat gold jewelry. I genuinely love Quince, and I shop here for everything. I walked out the door the other day and realized

• 22:13Lizzie Bassett?

  every single thing I was wearing was Quince, down to my socks. Did I mention their socks are great, too? Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was what went wrong. It's the best way to support the show. Today's episode is sponsored by Mars. You might not realize it, but Mars is behind so many of your favorite Halloween treats, and I'm not just talking about your candy bowl. Yes, Mars makes iconic candies like M&Ms, Snickers, Starburst, my personal favorite, and Skittles. But they also have salty snacks, easy-to-make meal options, and even treats for your pets. There's something for everyone to enjoy this spooky season. David and I are too old to trick or treat, so we've been getting creative with our Halloween movie

• 22:58Lizzie Bassett?

  night spreads for our friends. I put together a char bootery board with some classic sweets like Rice Krispie treats and peanut butter M&Ms. And because I'm a salty girl, I added some Pringles and my all-time favorite snack, Cheez-It crackers. Scary delicious. For Halloween night, I'm making a spooky seven-layer dip using Ben's Original Ready Rice, because there is nothing that my kid loves more than a rice and bean dip. And don't think I forgot about our dog, Q. Mars knows he needs a celebration, too, so I put together a special Halloween treat jar packed with Greenie's Original Pumpkin Spice Dental Chews and Pedigree Tasty Biscuits. He's agreed to share with the neighbors, because he's a very good boy. Find Mars products in a retailer near you or on Instagram at Mars Global, M-A-R-S-G-L-O-B-A-L, where you can shop everyday favorites and limited-time Halloween offerings.

• 23:46Lizzie Bassett?

  So in March of 1976, Crichton published his Beowulf fanfiction under the title Eaters of the Dead: The Manuscript of Ibn Fadlan Relating His Experiences With The Northmen in AD 922. I know what you're gonna say.

• 23:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Colon, a Beowulf fanfiction.

• 24:00Lizzie Bassett?

  It is. And also, this is basically its own genre now. It's real person fiction, or RPF.

• 24:06Chris Winterbauer?

  RPF.

• 24:06Lizzie Bassett?

  RPF, yes. That is the technical title.

• 24:09Chris Winterbauer?

  I believe you.

• 24:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Has a lot of moral gray area that is being discussed currently because you're writing fanfiction about people who are real and usually alive.

• 24:18Chris Winterbauer?

  This feels fine, though, when it's like, yeah, when they're alive, it's very different. But 1,500 years later, I think we're okay.

• 24:24Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. I'm watching Love Story, the JFK Junior, Ryan Murphy thing right now.

• 24:28Chris Winterbauer?

  I can't do it. I can't do it. I'm against it.

• 24:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Well.

• 24:31Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm against it.

• 24:32Lizzie Bassett?

  I know, I think I am too.

• 24:33Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm against it.

• 24:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Chris is against it. I think I agree. Is it very entertaining and aesthetically pleasing? Yes.

• 24:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 24:38Lizzie Bassett?

  Is it wrong? I think yes. But we're fine with this.

• 24:41Chris Winterbauer?

  I want to watch the RFK Olivia Nutzi Love Story. That's what I want to watch.

• 24:46Lizzie Bassett?

  No, thanks. Okay. Eaters of the Dead, in case you can't tell by that title, which is eight pages longer than that, did not take off like The Andromeda Strain had. Sales were pretty modest. It did garner a small but devoted group of fans, and apparently Beowulf scholars liked it, according to Michael Crichton. Anyway, so a film adaptation was put into motion, and it kind of hung around and developed in hell for more than a decade, as did Crichton's directing career. None of the films he directed ended up being big hits. And then in November of 1990, he published what, Chris?

• 25:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Jurassic Park, right?

• 25:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Jurassic Park. And it was an immediate massive bestseller. Have you read Jurassic Park?

• 25:21Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:22Lizzie Bassett?

  It's great.

• 25:23Chris Winterbauer?

  A few times. I've read The Andromeda Strain. I read Eaters of the Dead when I was younger. I read most of his books through the 90s. Sphere was always a favorite of mine as well.

• 25:31Lizzie Bassett?

  They're amazing.

• 25:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. Did you ever see The Great Train Robbery?

• 25:34Lizzie Bassett?

  No, but he directed that, yeah.

• 25:35Chris Winterbauer?

  I really like it. It's a really good movie. I think he's a good director.

• 25:38Lizzie Bassett?

  I think he is too.

• 25:39Chris Winterbauer?

  He's just an extremely talented person. It's really wild to see how wide a net he really cast in terms of his interests.

• 25:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 25:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Both professionally and creatively.

• 25:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it is amazing. Well, suddenly, Crichton IP was the hottest ticket in Hollywood. So Jurassic Park obviously gets snapped up by Steven Spielberg. That was released in 1993. We've covered it on the podcast. Massive hit. And then back to back in September of 1994, ER premiered on NBC, which Michael Crichton also created. So he is as hot as you can possibly be at this point. And producers are combing through his bibliography, looking for their next big hit. When of course, they come across Congo.

• 26:18Chris Winterbauer?

  I think that was the next movie that came out. I can't remember what year that was, but I think it was between Jurassic Park and Eaters of the Dead. We have to cover it.

• 26:24Lizzie Bassett?

  They were just covering.

• 26:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Silverback Gorillas.

• 26:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Anything.

• 26:26Chris Winterbauer?

  With lasers.

• 26:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. Anything. Anything he had written, they were like, we'll take it. How much does it cost?

• 26:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 26:32Lizzie Bassett?

  So obviously they're like, great, Eaters of the Dead, let's do it. And by December of 1996, the press release went out. Synergy and Touchstone Pictures would produce Eaters of the Dead, directed by John McTiernan. Produced by McTiernan and Crichton, and it would star Antonio Banderas. Okay, great.

• 26:47Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a hot, hot package.

• 26:50Lizzie Bassett?

  It is. Now, shortly thereafter, Synergy struck a deal with Disney over an unpaid production advance. They fork over most of their library, including this, at which point this movie moved fully underneath Touchstone and Disney. Something Disney may come to regret. Now, it seems Disney was very excited about the partnership between John McTiernan and Michael Crichton. Because the same press release announced that McTiernan would be helming Airframe for them as well, another Crichton adaptation.

• 27:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Right.

• 27:15Lizzie Bassett?

  And this partnership does seem like a great idea on paper. By 1990, John McTiernan had churned out three back to back hits. Predator, Die Hard, my personal favorite, The Hunt for Red October.

• 27:26Chris Winterbauer?

  That's your favorite of those three?

• 27:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, I love that movie.

• 27:29Chris Winterbauer?

  I think it's a great movie. I just, it's like, it would be an underdog pick. I think most people would pick Die Hard. I think it's really cool that you picked The Hunt for Red October.

• 27:36Lizzie Bassett?

  I love Die Hard 2. I really love The Hunt for Red October.

• 27:39Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a great movie. It's a sleeper. I think people sleep on it a little bit. I think it's great.

• 27:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, they shouldn't.

• 27:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Lizzie Bassett?

  And I love nothing more than 90s Alec Baldwin. But then, of course, another movie we've covered on the podcast, The Last Action Hero, came out in 1993.

• 27:53Chris Winterbauer?

  Much better than people give it credit for.

• 27:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, it is.

• 27:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Very smart movie, ahead of its time.

• 27:57Lizzie Bassett?

  It is, but it was absolutely dinosaur stomped by Jurassic.

• 28:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Park at the box office.

• 28:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Big time.

• 28:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Big time flopper. You know, we covered this movie. This was personally crushing for both McTiernan and Arnold Schwarzenegger. It really hit them both very hard. So McTiernan was looking for a hit and he had high hopes that eaters of the dead would fill that gap. And he had read the book when it came out. He liked it, but he had a couple of notes that he thought they could spice up a little bit. So Chris, let's listen to John McTiernan talk about the book a little bit. And again, this clip and all of the other clips that you will hear over the course of this episode are from the making of the 13th Warrior documentary, which was included as part of the French Blu-ray release.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  I was always curious about it. I thought it had a problem to work as a story. This is interesting. I should have paid attention to my own, my, my first intuition. I thought it had a problem because the, the monsters weren't serious enough. And in the end, they didn't do anything. The ending was kind of a, was, was,

• 29:02Speaker 02

  it was not quite serious or scary enough. So then I, I came up with this idea that wait, if I make the people that, that who are attacking them, if I make them truly not human and, and physically very scary, well then the story gets a lot better.

• 29:23Chris Winterbauer?

  He's exactly right.

• 29:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 29:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Even in this version, they don't go far enough.

• 29:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, they don't do his idea at all.

• 29:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay, good. Cause the thing I was gonna say, my biggest bump that I wrote down in my notes was, why are we seeing these shots of the quote monsters watching them, which gives it away that they're just people early in the movie? And the two touchstones that I had watching this movie, I was thinking about The Descent, the troglodyte movie, does a great job of making a terrifying monster that's ultimately just like a person, you know? And Bone Tomahawk, which is almost even closer, which does another version, basically just eaters of the dead. It's cannibals in the hills.

• 29:55Lizzie Bassett?

  I mean, even Barbarian does something similar. That's, yeah.

• 29:58Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. And he's right. They're not super compelling.

• 30:01Lizzie Bassett?

  He's right about a lot, as we will see over the course of this episode. But Michael Crichton didn't like that idea. He was very focused on it being scientifically accurate. He didn't like the idea that there could be any suggestion that these were not. Humans, he didn't even want that to occur to people as a possibility. So this idea of McTiernan's goes in the garbage. Now, when it came time to adapt the novel, McTiernan, obviously very excited. He's like, great, again, I have some ideas how we can make this translate to film better. And in fact, screenwriters William Wisher Jr. And Warren Lewis did most of their writing at McTiernan's Ranch in Wyoming. William Wisher, best known as one of James Cameron's longtime writing partners. They worked together a ton and he'd also worked as a script doctor on Die Hard with a Vengeance with McTiernan. They knew each other.

• 30:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Warren Lewis, also industry veteran, had been working as a production assistant, just had worked absolutely everywhere. And he'd been an assistant director on McTiernan's directorial debut. So both of these guys been in Hollywood forever. Now, McTiernan and the writers all felt that the ending of Eaters of the Dead was a little weak sauce, as he said there. And they had to solve. McTiernan referenced the Michael Caine film Zulu. Have you ever seen it?

• 31:06Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 31:06Lizzie Bassett?

  So at the end of this movie, Michael Caine and co, they're completely outnumbered by the warriors that they're fighting.

• 31:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, this is, is it like the 19th century colonial British regiment film?

• 31:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 31:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, okay. Maybe I have seen this movie now that you mention it.

• 31:20Lizzie Bassett?

  You might have. They're completely outnumbered. And at the very end, the tribesmen start chanting. And one of the Brits is like, why are they mocking us? And someone else is like, they're not mocking us. They're saluting us because we have put up such a fight. And so that's McTiernan's idea for the end of this. It would be the Wendels and the Vikings are fighting. Almost everyone is dead. The Vikings are still outnumbered, though. And at the very end, the Wendell start chanting. Initially, the Vikings think that it's them taunting them. But then it would be Iban, the cultured man in the group, saying, no, they're saluting you. And that would be the end. And the Wendell would retreat after recognizing the Vikings' strength. So it's still a little bit of like a, but it's a little less of a, than it is in the book. And Crichton said, no.

• 32:05Lizzie Bassett?

  So McTiernan was quickly discovering that Michael Crichton was not just a consultant. He had final veto rights on pretty much everything in the movie. And also, I said McTiernan was going to be right about a lot. Not on this. He had a very specific vibe that he wanted for the movie. And that vibe was. Comedy, Chris.

• 32:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh.

• 32:23Lizzie Bassett?

  And that's because he had someone very specific in mind for the lead role, a natural fit for the material, Michael Keaton.

• 32:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Uh, well, you know, when I'm, uh, reading the Quran at night and, uh, it's, uh, just hanging out with my friends. Uh, yeah. I mean, look, Michael Keaton's amazing.

• 32:39Lizzie Bassett?

  He is amazing. Not for this.

• 32:41Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't think he makes sense in this as a Viking. Like, he's just a really fit to me in this. I don't want to sell him short. Maybe Michael Keaton could do it. It doesn't make sense to me on paper.

• 32:48Lizzie Bassett?

  No. So the way McTernan was picturing it was, quote, basically an urban Jewish guy who goes off with these crazy barbarians. But then Michael did a movie just before that didn't do very well. So now the studio suddenly didn't want him.

• 33:01Chris Winterbauer?

  It's like describing like city slickers.

• 33:03Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 33:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, what? Yeah, this is so different.

• 33:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. So he has like completely diverged from the source material here. So I will give Michael Crichton some credit. If somebody came and pitched me this idea, I'd be like, what?

• 33:17Lizzie Bassett?

  So I think, you know.

• 33:19Chris Winterbauer?

  And then he's kvetching the whole time. He's like, what are we doing?

• 33:23Lizzie Bassett?

  He's supposed to be Muslim.

• 33:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 33:25Lizzie Bassett?

  It does make sense that they didn't want Michael Keaton for those reasons. And also he'd had a string of clinkers before this that had done very poorly at the box office. So I think that they were scared off from a financial perspective as well. Now, this is confusing though, because according to Warren Lewis, the Islamic faith of Ibn Fadlal was always going to be central to the story. And they wanted to present it respectfully. So I don't know if the screenwriters were in a totally different.

• 33:49Chris Winterbauer?

  They can both be true. You know what I mean?

• 33:51Lizzie Bassett?

  I think they are true.

• 33:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. The screenwriters could have had one directive and believed it. And then at the same time, McTernan's like,

• 33:57Lizzie Bassett?

  I want Michael Keaton.

• 33:58Chris Winterbauer?

  What if we did it with Keaton?

• 33:59Lizzie Bassett?

  And he's Jewish. Yeah. Okay.

• 34:01Chris Winterbauer?

  You don't know.

• 34:01Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't know.

• 34:02Chris Winterbauer?

  I didn't mean you. I meant the collective. We don't know.

• 34:04Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't know, but I could still write real person fiction about it and maybe I will.

• 34:08Chris Winterbauer?

  We should, we should write the book of the making of this movie, but it's Michael Keaton.

• 34:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Great, let's do it.

• 34:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 34:15Lizzie Bassett?

  So Antonio Banderas was either filming or had just filmed The Mask of Zorro.

• 34:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, man.

• 34:19Lizzie Bassett?

  And it seemed pretty clear that he was poised to be quite a big star at this point.

• 34:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Love that movie.

• 34:24Lizzie Bassett?

  We will cover The Mask of Zorro. I love that movie so much.

• 34:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 34:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, I just want to give a shout out to Antonio Banderas because

• 34:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 34:32Lizzie Bassett?

  he was a bigger star in Spain, obviously. He was trying to break into Hollywood, but the earliest roles that he took in order to break into Hollywood. I mean, do you know what some of his first English language roles were? Philadelphia!

• 34:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Philadelphia, yeah.

• 34:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, where he plays the partner of Tom Hanks's character.

• 34:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Which was, I just love him.

• 34:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I think it makes sense. I mean, he came from like the school of Pedro Almodovar and like interesting Spanish sex comedy world, so.

• 34:58Lizzie Bassett?

  I know, but it doesn't mean that.

• 35:00Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I agree with you. I'm just saying it's consistent with who he seems to be.

• 35:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 35:03Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, but also Desperado. I frickin' love

• 35:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's great.

• 35:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Desperado. That movie's awesome.

• 35:08Lizzie Bassett?

  It's great. So according to Antonio, they sent him the script for Eaters of the Dead and basically said, who do you want to play?

• 35:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh.

• 35:14Lizzie Bassett?

  And he was most interested in playing Herger, the character eventually played by Dennis Storhoy. Now, does this make any sense? No.

• 35:22Chris Winterbauer?

  But can you give me the archetype of which one that is?

• 35:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Dennis Storhoy is the main, other than Beowulf, he's the main one, like little, little brother, that one.

• 35:30Chris Winterbauer?

  But you know what? That, to me, knowing Banderas is, because Banderas is very funny.

• 35:34Lizzie Bassett?

  He is very funny.

• 35:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, that does make sense, like a little bit more of a court gesture approach.

• 35:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Except there's 0% chance you could have him play a Viking.

• 35:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure, but I'm just saying like from a personality perspective, if they said, take your pick.

• 35:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 35:46Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, sure.

• 35:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally. My guess is they were doing that as a courtesy because they expected him to just say, I want to play the lead.

• 35:52Chris Winterbauer?

  And then they handed it back and they're like, no, one of the highlighted names is just Yvonne is the only one.

• 35:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Basically. So he does come around to playing Yvonne Fadlon, and according to McTiernan, quote, "It became a very different movie with Antonio Banderas because he was more serious. I had intended it to have a comic edge, this very urban, basically modern guy among these creepy guys, and then he would use that sense of humor all the way through. Antonio is very good with humor, but it's a different sort of humor. He doesn't do that wise-ass stuff." That's true. Antonio Banderas is very funny, but in a very different way from Michael Keaton. Although, I will say, having seen The Mask of Zorro, I think he's quite a bit funnier than McTiernan is giving him credit for.

• 36:27Chris Winterbauer?

  He's very funny, but here's where I think the difference is. Antonio's funny when it feels like he's in over his head, right? That's where I find him very funny is when he's like in Desperado, right? When he's like, hey, guys, let's slow down. And then the guitar pops open and all the guns are there. He's like, oh shit. You know, like that. Whereas Keaton's, I think, funnier when he's more in control reacting to things. So.

• 36:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Which actually, in this scenario, Banderas makes more sense.

• 36:49Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. He's supposed to be a fish out of water. I think he's perfect.

• 36:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Right. Now, you might say, but Lizzie, Antonio Banderas, like Michael Keaton, is neither Muslim nor Arab, and you would be correct. However, I think there is a much stronger case for Banderas to play this role than there ever was for Michael Keaton. Let me explain. Banderas was born in Malaga in southern Spain, and he has spoken at great length about his own identification with Arab culture, because, quote, "The Arabs were in Spain for eight centuries, and that is a part of me." This is, of course, true. A lot of Spain was under Arab rule for almost 800 years. And yes, that timeframe does coincide with when Beowulf was probably written. The dominant language in the region was classical Arabic. Arab architecture, literature, and culture were all extremely prominent, especially in Al-Andalus, the region we now call Andalusia. All of which is to say, is this the most appropriate casting?

• 37:35Lizzie Bassett?

  No, definitely not. Is it technically possible that this character could theoretically have been from Spain? Yeah, maybe.

• 37:43Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't think so.

• 37:44Lizzie Bassett?

  So all I'm saying is Michael Crichton's making shit up left and right. You know, this is not the worst thing they could have done.

• 37:49Chris Winterbauer?

  No, but.

• 37:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Obviously, you should cast an Arab actor in the role. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I don't think this casting deserves quite as much shit as people give it for this.

• 37:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, I think like three things can be true at the same time. I think, yes, you could do some mental gymnastics to say.

• 38:03Lizzie Bassett?

  You can flip yourself around.

• 38:04Chris Winterbauer?

  You can kind of, sure. But I think the truth is, and I was looking at a Reddit post about this, and somebody emailed about like, you know, take it easy on Alec Guinness in Lawrence of Arabia. This movie never would have been greenlit, you know, without him, blah, blah, blah. That's, hey, that's a fair point. But also, you know, they made a choice in that movie to cast an unknown in the lead, Peter O'Toole, and therefore they would need like an Alec Guinness, you know, so that was our point on that film. But in this movie, you're gonna need a big name in the lead role, and the 13th Warrior is the lead role. And there were very few, if any, Middle Eastern. Or North African actors working in Hollywood to your point at the time. And so I think part of it, though, is that Michael Keaton, if you were to say he's an Arab, we wouldn't believe it as a Western audience.

• 38:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 38:42Chris Winterbauer?

  But if you say Antonio Banderas, we believe it because we've been used to seeing Hispanic actors play these types of roles, going all the way back to Anthony Quinn and stuff, you know, back in the day.

• 38:53Lizzie Bassett?

  All I'm saying is, I see how they were justifying this way more than they would ever have been able to justify Michael Keaton in this part.

• 39:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, of course.

• 39:00Lizzie Bassett?

  But again, should you cast an Arab actor? Yes.

• 39:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure, I think they would now, probably.

• 39:05Lizzie Bassett?

  I hope so.

• 39:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Who knows?

• 39:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, for the role of Bulvi, the studio also had someone very specific in mind, Stellan Skarsgård.

• 39:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, sure.

• 39:14Lizzie Bassett?

  He's the only one.

• 39:15Chris Winterbauer?

  And was he that well known? He was in The Deep Blue Sea around this time.

• 39:19Lizzie Bassett?

  In terms of like, large blond Scandinavian actors, there's probably one name.

• 39:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, it's like him and Rutger Hauer.

• 39:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Yeah. Rutger Hauer is too old.

• 39:26Chris Winterbauer?

  I was like, where is Rutger Hauer? Yeah, I think he was, but maybe it's the king.

• 39:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, Skarsgård was unavailable. So they were forced to run down their list of literally every giant blond man they could in America, Canada, Europe, until they came to pretty much the last choice, Czech-Canadian actor Vladimir Kulic.

• 39:40Chris Winterbauer?

  He's great.

• 39:41Lizzie Bassett?

  And he still had to wait four months to get the part because the studio didn't want him. Michael Crichton didn't want him. The only person who thought that he could play Bulvi was John McTiernan. And eventually they ran out of blondes and they said, fine, cast him. Now, the other Vikings were cast, a lot to do with the way that they looked. You've got Dennis Storhoy, he is Norwegian. Tony Curran, of course, is Scottish, who did League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Richard Bremer is English. Um, you got the idea. They're large. So McTiernan and Crichton seemed to be mostly focused on physicality for the rest of the Vikings. This does make sense. They wanted big guys to contrast against Antonio Banderas. I have met Antonio Banderas in person. He came into the IMDB studio at TIFF for an interview. He was so unbelievably lovely and graceful and generous. And he's a pretty slight guy.

• 40:24Lizzie Bassett?

  And according to Kulic, he also didn't have any problem with the film playing up their size difference. He had zero ego about it.

• 40:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 40:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Banderas said, quote, "For me, it was like making a movie with the Los Angeles Lakers. These people were enormous."

• 40:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. I mean, The Mask of Zoro, he and Anthony Hopkins seem around the same size, you know, when they're shooting that movie.

• 40:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 40:43Chris Winterbauer?

  It works and there's something very balletic about, you know, the way that he moves.

• 40:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, he's beautiful. Yeah.

• 40:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 40:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Actually, to be honest, I think they didn't do enough to show the size difference in the finished product. It could have been way funnier, especially when you realize Vladimir Kulich is 6'5". Antonio Banderas is 5'8", tops.

• 40:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, you don't see them next to each other. There's not a lot of like two shots.

• 41:02Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 41:03Chris Winterbauer?

  I almost wanted more of like a Fellowship of the Ring shot.

• 41:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 41:05Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, where you see the halflings in front of Gandalf.

• 41:07Lizzie Bassett?

  You could, and it sounds like they were all completely on board with it. Banderas does not have an ego about this stuff.

• 41:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Just a lot of close ups in this movie.

• 41:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Obviously, he's super handsome and hot. Like, why? Who cares? So Omar Sharif was cast as Mekhizadek, a glorified translator. We really don't get enough of him on here. And he had a pretty crap time on this movie. It was so bad that he took an almost four-year hiatus from acting and basically made the decision never to take a movie because of the money ever again. He would later say that he thought to himself, quote, "Let us stop this nonsense, these meal tickets that we do because it pays well. Unless I find a stupendous film that I love and it makes me want to leave home to do, I will stop. Bad pictures are very humiliating. I was really sick. It is terrifying to have to do dialogue from bad scripts to face a director who does not know what he is doing in a film so bad it is not even worth exploring." It's a little hard on the 13th Warrior.

• 41:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Stick it on the DVD.

• 42:03Lizzie Bassett?

  But it was not a fun set in his defense, so let's get into it. And by the way, we're not gonna have any time to spend on Omar Sharif. He's barely in the movie, but there was one very sweet story Antonio Banderas told about how when they were on the camels together at one point and there wasn't any, you know, they didn't have microphones on. They were just shooting them riding. And apparently Omar Sharif looked at Antonio Banderas and said, "Akaba!" And like, you know.

• 42:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, that's great. Yeah.

• 42:27Lizzie Bassett?

  And it made Antonio Banderas so happy because he obviously was looking at someone he'd watched growing up in Lawrence of Arabia.

• 42:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 42:32Lizzie Bassett?

  So production was set to kick off in British Columbia, but a full month before any camera started rolling, the Viking cast went into training. They had to learn archery, fencing, swordsmanship, horseback riding. Some of them had never been on a horse, including Vladimir Kulich, which he admitted, "You can definitely tell when you watch him ride in the movie." They were also given Norwegian language classes and they all went, except for Vladimir. Again, Beowulf cut class and headed to the bar because he figured he'd already played a Norwegian in The X-Files, so he probably knew enough to get by. I'd like to point out that the actual Norwegian, I think, showed up. And Beowulf was like, "Bye."

• 43:14Speaker 03

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• 43:45Speaker 04

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market.

• 43:51Speaker 05

  Love the crown molding.

• 43:52Speaker 04

  Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.

• 43:56Speaker 05

  Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet.

• 44:00Speaker 04

  No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.

• 44:03Speaker 05

  No FiOS? Yeah, no, thank you.

• 44:07Speaker 04

  Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Get Verizon FiOS because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 44:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Meanwhile, the production team had an absolute nightmare building the sets. Much of this film was shot on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. And in case you're wondering, they shot three seasons of Alone on Vancouver Island, which is the show where you get dumped in the wilderness and have to survive. So this was not an easy place to set up a movie set. But that's also why McTiernan and the production team insisted on it. They needed somewhere remote with a lot of expansive wilderness and no visible civilization. And they found that that was really hard to find in actual Scandinavia. It makes sense. That's a smaller, physical area. It's much more developed, much more recently. I don't think this looks like Scandinavia. I think it looks like the Pacific Northwest, but...

• 45:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it didn't bother me being from there. Like, I was like, it's great. You know, it reminded me a lot in its scope and scale of Last of the Mohicans and the build of the fort that they do in Last of the Mohicans. The great hall really reminded me of that.

• 45:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, so they built that main structure, that giant hall, using timber they collected from Vancouver Island. And the village they built around it is insane. According to production designer Rod Quinn, there were at least 60 buildings. They built roads, they built a lake in the middle of nowhere for this. Everything was real. Much of it was built by local native tribes also who understood how to work with the local materials and in the very extreme weather conditions. Also, if you notice the pillars inside the longhouse that look quite a bit like totems.

• 45:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Very much so.

• 45:45Lizzie Bassett?

  By local tribesmen.

• 45:47Chris Winterbauer?

  That's cool.

• 45:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 45:48Chris Winterbauer?

  They look amazing.

• 45:48Lizzie Bassett?

  They do.

• 45:49Chris Winterbauer?

  They're huge. That great hall interior.

• 45:51Lizzie Bassett?

  It's real. It's all real wood.

• 45:53Chris Winterbauer?

  I know. It's one of the best looking sets you'll see in a movie. It's really amazing.

• 45:57Lizzie Bassett?

  It is amazing and they, I think they were forced to do it for real to a certain degree because the stuff was not on a soundstage. Like they were out in the actual wilderness. You have to build something that can withstand the kind of weather that they were going to have there.

• 46:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 46:10Lizzie Bassett?

  They also really did burn down the entire village at the end.

• 46:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Again, it looks amazing.

• 46:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 46:16Chris Winterbauer?

  That reminded me so much of the burning of the farmhouses in Seven Samurai. I mean, it really feels like they're doing a real callback to that movie.

• 46:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. So, once they were done building an entire Viking city, they started building the Queen's Lair, which they did on a soundstage in Vancouver. And they needed the rock to look as realistic as possible. So they studied Elk Falls on Vancouver Island. They copied the rock face. As you said, I think the cave looks fantastic.

• 46:40Chris Winterbauer?

  It looks great. They light it extremely well. It never feels like the lighting is forced. You know what I mean? Sometimes you do a cave set and you watch it in a movie and you think, good, where's that perfect moonlight coming from? You know, it really.

• 46:51Lizzie Bassett?

  No, this looks good.

• 46:51Chris Winterbauer?

  I thought they did a great job.

• 46:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, you mentioned the lighting. I think for large portions of this, they had the actors essentially lighting themselves with the torches. They didn't have additional lights and it looks really good.

• 47:01Chris Winterbauer?

  And to your point, Lizzie, with the fireside chat scene earlier, when he's learning the language, they establish that lighting style.

• 47:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Right.

• 47:07Chris Winterbauer?

  During those scenes very effectively. So, you know, we're used to that by the time we get to the caves.

• 47:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. And Ben Daras pointed out, the scope of the set is a lot grander than what you actually see in the film, which pissed producers off because they spent so much money on it.

• 47:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 47:20Lizzie Bassett?

  They wanted to be able to see it. But his point was that McTiernan wasn't cheapening the shots by showing everything. He wanted it to feel real, even in the closeups. I can see both points here. I will say, watching the. Behind the scenes footage, when you see more of what the village actually looked like, I do wish they had shown more of it.

• 47:37Chris Winterbauer?

  I think this also speaks to your point about not seeing Banderas in the same shot as his compatriots, which is this movie is almost entirely like shot on telephoto lenses. I mean, on one extreme, you have your closeups, but then on the other, I mean, these 500 millimeter shots of a child, you know what I mean, running up the hill to get back to the place. I don't know, it flattens it a little bit and it does, it limits your view.

• 47:59Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. I understand what he was trying to do, but I'm team producers on that one.

• 48:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, you can compare it to like Robert Eggers, The Northman, for example, where he takes a much wider approach to the way he shoots it.

• 48:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, principal photography kicked off on June 26th, 1997, and right away, there seemed to be a problem, which is that Michael Crichton and John McTiernan did not see eye to eye about anything.

• 48:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, Michael Crichton was six foot nine, so yeah.

• 48:23Lizzie Bassett?

  So the cast and crew are notoriously tight lipped about what happened during this initial shoot, but our researcher Laura managed to dig out this comment from Huck Caten, who claimed to have worked as a boom operator on the film, and he does have the IMDb credits to back that up as Tom Huck Caten. So I'm going to go ahead and share this. Says, quote, "Very many moons ago, I was the boom operator on The Thirteenth Warrior. Briefly, well, sort of anyway, the project was never going to be much more than a sideways take on Beowulf, but McTea's take was a much more focused and tighter picture than what was ultimately released. Crichton was a decidedly unpleasant and tall fellow, and John eventually had enough and essentially ordered him off the set and out of Canada." And that is true. It does seem that John McTiernan removed Michael Crichton from the initial set. And then, as if a six foot nine grump looming over you wasn't enough,

• 49:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Antonio Banderas dislocated two discs in his back during a fight sequence. It probably didn't help that he had jumped basically straight from The Mask of Zorro, where he did an enormous amount of his own stunt work. I don't think people realize how much of that is Antonio Banderas, and then straight into The Thirteenth Warrior. He said, quote, "I spent a month and a half working in tremendous pain and on medication, rolling around in the mud and rain, wearing chain mail that weighed a ton. So when all the arguments started, I stayed out of it. I just wanted to finish the movie." He said they were trying everything to fix his back. They flew in doctors from LA. They ended up just having to shoot him full of anesthetics. And he said it got to a point where you could have hit him in the back with a hammer and he wouldn't have felt it because he was so numb.

• 49:46Chris Winterbauer?

  It reminds me of Harrison Ford in Temple of Doom.

• 49:49Lizzie Bassett?

  It's so rough.

• 49:50Chris Winterbauer?

  He needed that chemo papain papaya extract injection.

• 49:54Lizzie Bassett?

  After having my daughter, I had my first real like serious back problems and back injury. And it is horrible.

• 50:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 50:02Lizzie Bassett?

  And can be completely immobilizing. Like I didn't understand how bad it is and how much it affects every movement that you're making. I cannot imagine doing what he's doing on this movie with that kind of injury. So this required McTiernan to kind of think on his feet and adjust their shooting schedule as well as the script of it, which led to more focus on Dennis Storhoy, which you feel, I think, in the back half of the movie.

• 50:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:25Lizzie Bassett?

  And then Dennis Storhoy almost died. They were filming the sequence where they have to swim under the cave wall to escape and they were doing this in a giant water tank on the set. And Antonio Banderas looked around at the dirty opaque water, realized that there's no way they could see him when he was under the water in that tank. So he's like, ah, I'm not actually going to swim under this wall because there's a bunch of shit down there that I could get caught on. I'm just going to take a big breath as we both do, go down, go underwater, hang out for long enough for them to get the take that they need and pop back up.

• 50:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Which is a good plan and probably what they should have done from the beginning. So he does exactly that. But here's what happened next.

• 51:01Speaker 06

  So I come out, they already caught it. And suddenly, somebody screams on the other side, what is Dennis? And he says, on the other side, he's not here. And we start looking at each other and then I feel, I see the wall of this cave, this pond there, moving.

• 51:30Speaker 06

  I said, oh my God. So I go under the water and I grab at something and I feel this hand grabbing my arm. And I pull like this and here comes Dennis. Great.

• 51:47Speaker 06

  He didn't shoot for three days. He almost died.

• 51:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, apparently Storewire came out of the water with foam coming out of his mouth.

• 51:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Jesus.

• 51:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 51:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, this is where on most tank shoots like this, especially the ones that we've covered, you would have safety divers.

• 52:03Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 52:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Even on something as shallow as this, you know, even a maniac like Cameron has the safety divers there. Now, does he punch them in the face when they save him?

• 52:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 52:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, he does, but they're there. To be fair, I'd rather be punched in the face than foaming at the mouse.

• 52:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I mean, this is really scary.

• 52:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's terrible.

• 52:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, to Benner's point, they didn't need to go underneath that wall. You know, he's saying there's a bunch of pipes and stuff down there, like there were things you could get caught on, and he did. Of their time on set, Vladimir Kulich said, "We were all really passionate about the project and we shot it in the worst conditions in Canada. When you go through something that heavy, it stays in the film." Filming wrapped November 1st, 1997, everyone went home, assuming their job was done. But they were wrong.

• 52:44Speaker 06

  They were wrong. They were wrong. They were.

• 52:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay.

• 52:49Chris Winterbauer?

  Bullseye, come out to play. You need to watch Warriors.

• 52:53Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't want to, based on what you're telling me.

• 52:56Chris Winterbauer?

  It's fun.

• 52:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay. Now, the initial release date was May of 1998, and early on, there were already a few rounds of reshoots. November to December of 1997, this took place on McTernan's ranch in Wyoming. They captured shots of the writers traveling. A lot of this was not the actors. This was doubles. This is fine. This makes total sense.

• 53:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 53:13Lizzie Bassett?

  January of 98, though, McTernan reshoot portions of the scene in the cave with the Wendell's mother, at this point portrayed by actress Susan Willis, who was 72 years old. Keep that in mind.

• 53:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Which also makes sense, because in the finished version of the film, whoever they use, I'm just like, there's just a lady who's here. This is no one's mother. This is just a lady.

• 53:34Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 53:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 53:35Lizzie Bassett?

  This is a young, semi-hot lady.

• 53:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 53:36Lizzie Bassett?

  More on that in a little bit. So with these early reshoots in place, McTernan screened his cut, still called Eaters of the Dead at this point, to a test audience sometime around the end of January, beginning of February 1998. And then Ain't It Cool News posted the results. They pulled 19 reviews submitted by people who had attended the screening, and these reviews- Broke down as such, five positives, eight middle of the roads and six negatives.

• 54:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's not good.

• 54:02Lizzie Bassett?

  It's not good.

• 54:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Especially for test screening. So like, you know, I remember the first time I did a test screening and I'm not gonna share the score that the movie got. It improved, but I thought it was really good. And they were like, no, you don't understand.

• 54:16Lizzie Bassett?

  This is quite bad.

• 54:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, they were like, it's fine, but it's not what we want it to be because we've pulled in people who are supposed to like the movie. Like a lot of the time, these test audiences that are pulled in, it's the demographic you're going for.

• 54:30Lizzie Bassett?

  That's actually a really good point I want to talk about for a second because one thing McTiernan was very upset about with this test screening was that they didn't listen to him about where they screened it. They screened it at the Galleria in Glendale. And McTiernan was like, this is not that movie. This is not a shoot them up, head ripping off action movie yet, even though it will be eventually.

• 54:49Chris Winterbauer?

  I was gonna say.

• 54:49Lizzie Bassett?

  He was like, this is Beowulf. This is more elevated. This is something a little bit, you know, longer, more complicated, more developed. Like, can we also screen it in New York? Can we screen it somewhere else? And they said no.

• 55:00Chris Winterbauer?

  That's the same logic I used. I said, this is elevated. This is Beowulf. They didn't believe me.

• 55:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, they didn't believe him either. I would like to actually read some of these reviews because Ain't It Cool News published three of them. So first, this is the positive one. It wasn't orgasmically great, nor was it painfully bad, not even close. It was a solid adventure film, well told and beautifully staged, and that in and of itself makes it a worthwhile film. Okay, now the middle of the road. The film was exactly as it read in the script. I have not read the book, so I can't make any comparisons, but I have a problem. The movie was okay, 2.5 stars, but for some reason, I liked it. I can't explain it.

• 55:35Chris Winterbauer?

  That's how I feel.

• 55:36Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 55:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I'm like, is it? It's not. My brain says it's not good, but my heart says, keep watching it again and again.

• 55:43Lizzie Bassett?

  And lastly, the bad. That's it. I hate to say this, my fellow geeks, but John McTiernan is dead in my eyes. A man who I once thought of as an action movie god no longer exists in my world. This guy did end his review with, I missed Frasier for this.

• 55:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Sorry, this person sucks. Like, I don't like saying that about people. He's probably a fine person, but also, come on.

• 56:06Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 56:07Chris Winterbauer?

  I hate reviews like that.

• 56:08Lizzie Bassett?

  That kind of hyperbole is ridiculous.

• 56:10Chris Winterbauer?

  It is.

• 56:11Lizzie Bassett?

  But the point is, none of those are ringing endorsements.

• 56:13Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 56:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, there are a few other clues in these reviews that I want to share. One, the score was entirely missing at this point. It was Tempt with Westworld, The Mission, The Crow, Apollo 13, and Braveheart. This is normal. Graham Revell, who was the composer attached to the film, was still working on the score. He completed it in February of 1998. That's around or after when the screening took place, so, fine. Two, nobody liked the love interest. In fact, one person pointed out that the fact that they were using Braveheart score, I'm guessing during the sequences with the love interest, really highlighted how sort of half-assed it was.

• 56:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Three, many of the reviewers were familiar with the source material, and most agreed, it kind of sucked. So their expectations for the story of the film were low. However, they came in hoping for over-the-top Viking violence, and they didn't get it here because, prior to this point and all throughout the shoot, John McTiernan had been explicitly instructed by the studio to go for a PG-13 rating.

• 57:06Chris Winterbauer?

  I feel like you can tell in the first Great Hall fight, which is so chaotic and dimly lit and fog-filled, that fight was disappointing, watching it this time around. I liked some of the other fights a lot more, but that fight, I just felt like you've thrown the edit into a blender. It's blender cutting, right? We're just cutting to random shots, and I cannot see anything.

• 57:25Lizzie Bassett?

  I know. What's so frustrating about this is, this is completely not his fault. He knew this.

• 57:30Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, of course.

• 57:30Lizzie Bassett?

  And they were telling him, you have to do it PG-13. And his point was, okay, well, PG-13 with guns is a lot easier, because you can show a gun going off and not show the person getting shot. With a sword, what are you supposed to do? You do exactly what you just described. You kind of make it a mush mess.

• 57:45Chris Winterbauer?

  And of course, two of the highest grossing films of 1999, ironically, would end up being R-rated films, with The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project.

• 57:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Because, problem number four, prior to this point and all throughout the shoot, John McTiernan had been instructed by the studio to explicitly go after a PG-13 rating. And, number five, one reviewer spotted John McTiernan and Michael Crichton whispering feverishly after the screening. It seemed clear to everyone, it had not gone well. Reportedly, it didn't help that seated only a few spots away from Crichton and McTiernan had been some guy who kept loudly exclaiming it was so bad, he could have directed it himself.

• 58:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Those people at screenings, I just...

• 58:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Hate them.

• 58:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Guys, don't.

• 58:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, inevitably, the release date was pushed back because here's what happened next. Disney brought in Michael Crichton to essentially take over the film. He would be directing reshoots as well as the new edit. But here's the thing, Chris, this wasn't just a result of the bad test screening. Reportedly, this had been in the works for months. Remember that boom operator who said Michael Crichton had been kicked off the set and out of Canada? Well, it seems actual human giant Michael Crichton was none too pleased about this, and he did not let it go. No, like Dennis Nedry, he started working behind the scenes against the production as a whole. He began pouring the poison in Disney's ear that they had a choice to make. Either honor McTiernan's vision and never work with Crichton again, or get rid of McTiernan and gobble up all the Crichton IP they could shove in their dinosaur jaws.

• 59:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, and this is what 97 is The Lost World, Jurassic Park. So Crichton's still.

• 59:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Sphere did bomb around this time.

• 59:19Lizzie Bassett?

  It doesn't matter. The amount of things he's made that are moneymakers are huge.

• 59:23Chris Winterbauer?

  I secretly love that movie. I like Sphere a lot.

• 59:26Lizzie Bassett?

  His point was which is more valuable to you? And the answer to Disney at that point was pretty clear.

• 59:30Chris Winterbauer?

  It is. I mean, on the one hand, they have, the crass way of putting it would be an aging action director who may no longer be culturally relevant in the way that he was at the tail end of the 80s. On the other hand, they have a frickin' idea machine paperback master. I mean, it's him and Stephen King, basically.

• 59:47Lizzie Bassett?

  And he's also just too tall. If that man is yelling at me.

• 59:49Chris Winterbauer?

  You can't turn him down.

• 59:51Lizzie Bassett?

  I can't say no. So I just, that song from Oklahoma played in my head. I'm just a girl who can't say no. That's an actual song. And we did that play at our high school with that song.

• 1:00:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Just Michael Eisner just singing that.

• 1:00:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, man, we do have to write fanfiction about this, and that scene goes in.

• 1:00:07Chris Winterbauer?

  We do.

• 1:00:08Lizzie Bassett?

  However, you can't get rid of a director of John McTiernan's stature that easily.

• 1:00:12Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 1:00:12Lizzie Bassett?

  He was a huge director, and obviously McTiernan pitched a fit. Now, I could not figure out whether or not he had final cut. But what Disney did was they gave both McTiernan and Crichton their own sound stages to both film reshoots simultaneously.

• 1:00:27Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow, they're doing a bake off.

• 1:00:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Here's our boom operator again with the good gossip. Quote, "Both Crichton and McT were calling the alternating shots. McT's view of the project was per- Purposely much less bloody, a major bone of contention with Crichton. So I suppose it wasn't surprising that we ended up doing a couple of weeks of stage work, featuring a whole lot of chopped limbs, squirting blood and decapitations courtesy of, quote, "director Mike." As John had to be on set, being the director of credit, it was pretty wild hearing him loudly sarcastically exclaim, "Oh, that's a great fucking shot. We certainly couldn't have lived without that" after nearly every one of Crichton's gems.

• 1:01:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Which is also weird because-

• 1:01:02Lizzie Bassett?

  So funny.

• 1:01:02Chris Winterbauer?

  In theory, the studio mandate was not to put in the head chopping off and then-

• 1:01:08Lizzie Bassett?

  They switched.

• 1:01:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Exactly.

• 1:01:09Lizzie Bassett?

  After the test screening, they realized that they had made a mistake. Michael Crichton also was like, "This needs to be way more violent." And they laid it all at the feet of John McTiernan, which was not fair at all. Now, if you ask Michael Crichton, he would say, "Oh, everyone agreed on the reshoots. It was no biggie. Only took forever for them to do because we had to wait for Antonio Banderas to be available." To which I say, "Two things can be true, sir. You may have had to wait for Antonio Banderas to be available, but you were not in agreement on this."

• 1:01:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:32Lizzie Bassett?

  So in July of 1998, this is when the massive round of Los Angeles reshoots take place, the majority of which are directed by Crichton with some shots on McTiernan's set. According to makeup artist Charles Porely, the director's helm scenes, quote, "Sometimes in turns but never together, sometimes one doing a second version of the other's just completed scene. It was very uncomfortable at times for the crew trying to maintain two different loyalties to two men who had differing visions." According to Vladimir Kulich, it got so bad that McTiernan and Crichton would tell the actors not to tell the other director what they had just been shooting. And finally, one day Kulich had had it and he was chatting with Crichton about the situation because they had become friends and Crichton told him, "Vladimir, it doesn't matter what you're doing over there because I have final cut." And sure enough, he was right.

• 1:02:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, this is due in no small part to the fact that McTiernan had to leave the set in order to start filming The Thomas Crown Affair in New York. So he threw up his hands and got on a plane. At which point, Michael Crichton essentially took complete control of the production. The first thing he did was replace the actress playing the Wendell's mother. As we said, this was initially played by an older woman, much more of a grand matriarch. And he said, "I want a young, hot witch." And reportedly, people in the test screenings didn't love Bulvai, quote, "brutally killing off an old lady." "I want to see that. That is what I want."

• 1:02:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Do you want more- Hagsploitation, just admit.

• 1:02:47Lizzie Bassett?

  I do. You know I love hagsploitation. So Crichton brought in Kristen Cloak, and that's who you see in the final product.

• 1:02:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:53Lizzie Bassett?

  He also reshoot the leader of the Wendell Army.

• 1:02:55Chris Winterbauer?

  You can see it because you can see him composited into the earlier scene in the movie. I just remember that shot happened.

• 1:03:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, the horns.

• 1:03:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:02Lizzie Bassett?

  The horns are composited in. Jason Glass played the role during principal photography, but Crichton brought in stuntman Vladimir Orlov, and then added horns to his headdress. This was to make him more identifiable. But to your point, they had to go back and add horns to Glass via VFX. Crichton added way more gore. This is the beheadings, head ripping off. Also reshoot the underwater cave exit, which is now at Point Doom in Malibu, and a new rainy funeral for Bulvi at Pacific Palisades. According to Crichton, he also changed the title. He said it was getting constant negative feedback from people. And he said even though the studio did not want to change the name, he pressured them into changing it to The Thirteenth Warrior.

• 1:03:43Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:04:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, according to McTiernan in 2023, too much is made of Crichton's involvement. And then in the end, only about three scenes of the film were shot by Crichton. He said the difference between their two cuts was only five to 10 minutes. To which I say five to 10 minutes could be an enormous difference.

• 1:04:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, let's just put it this way. You could say, on the one hand, 90 to 95% of the movie was directed on set by John McTiernan.

• 1:04:41Lizzie Bassett?

  I think that's true.

• 1:04:42Chris Winterbauer?

  On the other hand, a movie's tone is very much still established in the edit, which Crichton very much had control over, it sounds like.

• 1:04:49Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, I think almost complete control. And he made one pretty massive change in post-production, which is that he scrapped Graham Rabel's score. Completely.

• 1:04:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, Jerry Goldsmith, right, is the credited.

• 1:04:59Lizzie Bassett?

  He brought in Jerry Goldsmith, who he'd worked with on Koma, The Great Train Robbery, and Runaway. You can actually hear Revell's score. It leaked online, and you can listen to it in full. I did. A lot of people argue that it's far superior to Goldsmith's. I don't know if I agree with that. Obviously, Jerry Goldsmith is one of the best composers ever, but.

• 1:05:16Chris Winterbauer?

  It feels like Goldsmith's doing Hans Zimmer.

• 1:05:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:05:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, it really feels like he's doing the score from The Rock. I was actually comparing the two of them. It felt close to me.

• 1:05:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, because it was rushed.

• 1:05:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Of course. They may have temped with that score, you know what I mean? And he's trying to match that. Who knows?

• 1:05:30Lizzie Bassett?

  It's hard to know without seeing the score connected to a cut in terms of the Graham Revell one, but I will say it is definitely more varied. It features both more Nordic instruments and more Arab instruments. There's a lot more space in it. I do think I prefer it to what's in the final film. Sound designer Brian Williams, who worked on Graham Revell's original score, said the original cut of The Thirteenth Warrior had a darker, grittier, and more realistic tone. Of the music, he said, quote, "I must confess that Goldsmith's score didn't leave any impression on me at all. It was just another generic Hollywood score from what I recall." I think that's fair. Now, in September of 98, they held another test screening with Crichton's cuts in place as well as Goldsmith's score, and it didn't really test better than McTiernan's. In fact, I think you could argue it tested worse. One audience member wrote,

• 1:06:14Lizzie Bassett?

  quote, "The Thirteenth Warrior is a poor example of filmmaking. The plot is as thin as Kate Moss, and the characters are as interesting as wet cardboard." Antonio Banderas plays Ahmed Ibn Fadlan, an Arab with a Spanish accent, who is chosen by Vikings to be the thirteenth warrior in a fight against an invisible enemy who eats away flesh and may not be human. Well, it turns out there's not a lot of flesh eating, and the invisible enemy turns out to be mountain men who think they are bears.

• 1:06:37Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, one of the problems, too, is I feel like the movie gets a lot of energy when they go on the offensive and they move into the caves. And it's interesting how, if you look at the other movies, I feel like, who have done similar things, the ones I mentioned, The Descent and Bone Tomahawk, they have that forward momentum, right, of in The Descent, it's like they're entering the cave right at the beginning of the movie. In Bone Tomahawk, it's a journey to find the cannibals. Defense movies, I think, can be tough like this, right, where they're effectively just stationary for a lot of the movie.

• 1:07:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Trying to survive the night, and it can feel pretty static.

• 1:07:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, at this point, it seems the studio kind of just threw their hands up and decided to dump the film. They didn't even give it a premiere. Kulic couldn't believe that the film, which he thought would be his big break, had devolved into watching these two men behave like children. Here's Vladimir Kulic talking about what he felt like the problem with the movie was and a possible solution.

• 1:07:28Speaker 07

  The weakness is you got 13 characters that you don't develop fully. So when you start to lose them to the battles, you don't really care because you're not connected to them. And I made a suggestion, which unfortunately didn't happen, was we're on this boat. All you have to do is take a handheld camera, walk around the boat as you travel, and give each character 20 seconds. You know, like, let's say this guy is a blacksmith, you know, or this guy is an archer. He makes archery equipment or whatever. And so when this guy dies, you go, oh, that's a blacksmith. Oh, that's too bad. It's a shame. But they never got that. So we lost a lot of characters in the first battle.

• 1:08:13Speaker 07

  You didn't know who they were. And I thought that was sad because we shot for 10 months. We had plenty of time to establish characters.

• 1:08:23Lizzie Bassett?

  So the reason I wanted to play this clip is because I think this is a really good and simple idea. And it's a great example of why it can be important to listen to people. You know, I think the best directors are able to listen to their collaborators. And in this case, maybe because there was so much defensiveness, because the director position was being challenged, suggestions like this completely fell by the wayside. He's totally right. This was a simple way to at least be able to identify who was dying because you literally can't.

• 1:08:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it's the hardest thing in the, quote, like, men on a mission subgenre, right? The team mission subgenre. And the two examples that I think do this so well, the one that probably just takes too much time and would be too difficult to copy is, for example, Ocean's Eleven.

• 1:09:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 1:09:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Which in a four-minute montage, explains 11 characters down to a T, and we know all of them going forward.

• 1:09:19Lizzie Bassett?

  But it does it basically by saying exactly what he's saying to do here.

• 1:09:24Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, you get. Roughly 30 seconds with each character, 20 to 30 seconds. It's really just one beat, you know, with each character and we understand them. It's an extremely well-written movie. The other one, though, that could be a better, again, it came out after this movie, but I think it's a great example of this. Set aside any feelings you might have about the movie and it being jingoistic, et cetera. Black Hawk Down establishes all of its characters so well. These are all grunts, GIs with the same haircut, pretty much all just white guys. And you understand this guy's the typist, right? This guy's the rah rah go guy. This guy doesn't have his backplate armor on. That's Tom Sizemore. This, you know what I mean?

• 1:10:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, Tom Sizemore who only ever plays himself and does it great.

• 1:10:04Chris Winterbauer?

  But that movie does such a good job in the first 20 minutes of we know who 10, 12 guys are very specifically.

• 1:10:13Lizzie Bassett?

  I have a secret to admit. I like that movie, I think. I haven't seen it in a long time, but I like that movie.

• 1:10:19Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I like it too. I think it's an exceptionally well-made movie. I think there's a lot to grapple with geopolitically, but I think it's actually one of Ridley Scott's best directing efforts of like the last 25 years.

• 1:10:29Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. All right. On August 27th, 1999, The Thirteenth Warrior released wide and came in second place on its opening weekend behind The Sixth Sense, which had been released three weeks earlier. But something else was released three weeks earlier, too. The Thomas Crown Affair, directed by John McTiernan.

• 1:10:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Wow, it's crazy.

• 1:10:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Unlike The Thirteenth Warrior, The Thomas Crown Affair opened to good reviews and a strong box office turnout. It made its budget back and then some. The Thirteenth Warrior did not. The reviews of The Thirteenth Warrior were also not kind. Roger Ebert said, "To extract the story from the endless scenes of action and carnage is more effort than it's worth. The film seems to have been conceived from the special effects on down. Instead of beginning with a good story and then adding FX as needed, it apparently began with FX and then the story was shoehorned into the pauses in the action."

• 1:11:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Which is funny, because of course it did actually start with the story, which is it started with Beowulf.

• 1:11:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Rumors started swirling that The Thirteenth Warrior had been a very expensive mistake. The budget had been set initially somewhere around 60 million, we think, and it seems like that was inflated to over 85 million with the cost of reshoots and recuts. Some blogs started reporting the budget had ballooned to more than 160 million. This seems almost impossible, given Disney only reported an $85 million loss that quarter based on box office receipts from this film, Mumford and Mystery Alaska. Nevertheless, The Thirteenth Warrior did lose an enormous amount of money. It made something like 60 million at the box office. And it seemed doomed to go down in history as one of the biggest box office bombs Disney had ever seen, joined later, of course, by John Carter, which I think also deserves

• 1:12:04Lizzie Bassett?

  a rewatch and a different legacy, and The Lone Ranger, which we can leave where it is.

• 1:12:08Chris Winterbauer?

  We covered it.

• 1:12:09Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 1:12:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Which, though, to be fair, has some amazing set pieces.

• 1:12:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Trains?

• 1:12:13Chris Winterbauer?

  It does. Some of the last train chase shootout is fantastic.

• 1:12:18Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. But something unusual started happening when the film released on VHS and DVD. People started watching it.

• 1:12:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Chris Winterbauer kept renting it.

• 1:12:27Lizzie Bassett?

  So did Lizzie Bassett.

• 1:12:29Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Over the years, it gained a cult following where the vast majority of people who have watched it never did so in a movie theater. We all watched it at home.

• 1:12:37Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:12:37Lizzie Bassett?

  And it did garner some support from the Muslim community as well. Writer Mohamed Zahira pointed out that the film, quote, "pioneered a Muslim hero in Hollywood blockbusters and cultivated a devoted cult following, especially amongst Muslims searching for positive representation on the big screen." However, Dr. Reza Aslan wrote, quote, "As someone who has spent 20 years trying to make movies and television shows that put Muslim identities at the forefront, I think The Thirteenth Warrior probably hurt the situation because it was such a box office disaster that some people in Hollywood decided that they weren't going to make a movie with a Muslim protagonist anymore. Then almost immediately, we had the events of 9/11, which allowed Hollywood to turn Muslims into the antagonists."

• 1:13:14Chris Winterbauer?

  I wouldn't necessarily say that there was a snowball effect so much as it was 9/11.

• 1:13:18Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree.

• 1:13:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, I don't think this movie made a big enough impact. You know what I mean?

• 1:13:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, it was a box office bomb. I see his point. It's the same argument that studios have made, you know, in previous episodes we've covered against women as directors. It's like, if you made a movie that didn't do well, don't put a lady behind the camera, you know?

• 1:13:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, but I guess in this instance, with the amount of behind the scenes bickering going on between McTiernan and Crichton, I could see a lot of other reasons being point. I'm not saying they're not going to look for a scapegoat.

• 1:13:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally.

• 1:13:45Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm just saying, I would imagine it would hurt Banderas more, for example, potentially, as like a leading man.

• 1:13:51Lizzie Bassett?

  It didn't, which I think is good, because he came out pretty unscathed. Everybody agreed he held his own in the movie and was one of the best parts of it. As for John McTiernan, his string of clinkers would, of course, continue with Rollerball and Basic. But it was on Rollerball that he hired a private eye, Anthony Pellicano, to illegally wiretap the phone of his co-producer during a creative dispute, which he then lied to the FBI about. He would end up serving 10 months in federal prison. So many have theorized that what happened on The Thirteenth Warrior may have been the breaking point that led to something like this. He developed a paranoia so strong that he wiretapped his coworkers' phones. And after going through this story, this had

• 1:14:32Lizzie Bassett?

  to have been traumatizing. Because in this case, it was true that Michael Crichton was absolutely working behind the scenes to edge him out from pretty early on in the production. Now, does that mean that you have an excuse for wiretapping your creative co-producer's phone? No, not at all. Do I potentially understand what broke his brain and led to that? Yes.

• 1:14:54Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, and I would imagine it's almost more of a holistic breakdown. Yes, there are specific things pushing him in that direction, but I would imagine just it's really hard to come down from such a high

• 1:15:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:08Chris Winterbauer?

  of those three movies he did at the end of the 80s into the early 90s, and then all of a sudden, you're just not on sure footing anymore.

• 1:15:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Never recover.

• 1:15:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Never fully recovered, right?

• 1:15:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:16Chris Winterbauer?

  And that's extremely, that I think would shatter my brain personally more than necessarily the specifics of The Thirteenth Warrior, although I'm sure there's a cumulative effect.

• 1:15:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:27Chris Winterbauer?

  But yeah, no, it was a tough end, you know, to a very, very talented director's career.

• 1:15:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, there are still diehard Thirteenth Warrior fans who advocate for the release of the McTiernan cut with Graham Ravel's original score. According to Coolidge, Crichton wanted a really fast-moving, quick-cut film, and McTiernan wanted something much more layered. Coolidge said Crichton seemed uncomfortable with dead air. If people weren't actively telling the story, his story, he wanted to move on. McTiernan understood the importance of space and silence, and it seems he still does. When asked about the infamous director's cut, he has said, "Maybe it's better. It remains a myth."

• 1:16:03Chris Winterbauer?

  It probably does, right?

• 1:16:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. My guess is he's telling the truth, that it's not as different as people think it is.

• 1:16:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. I think having had the opportunity to, you know, make a movie where I've seen, if you were to see the director's cut of something I made versus the final one, I think most audience members would have a hard time pointing out the differences, even though it feels so drastic to me. And I think that's probably the case with most of these films as well.

• 1:16:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:26Chris Winterbauer?

  And there are other instances where the director's cut, people actually don't prefer, like Legend is one of the famous ones. I think a lot of people prefer the Tangerine Dream score that was released with theatrical version against Ridley Scott's Will, and as opposed to the Jerry Goldsmith version that was done later.

• 1:16:40Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, Chris. Well, what went right?

• 1:16:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, I have to say the first thing that went right is 1999, the year of movies with numbers in the title. Can I give you a little list?

• 1:16:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Sixth Sense.

• 1:16:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. So I was thinking about the two that came to mind when I was watching this were The Sixth Sense and The Ninth Gate.

• 1:16:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:56Chris Winterbauer?

  The Roman Polanski film with Johnny Depp.

• 1:16:57Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:58Chris Winterbauer?

  And then I was going through a list. Okay, so Star Wars, Episode One, technically, Three Kings.

• 1:17:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Which we're gonna cover.

• 1:17:03Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, Three to Tango, the Neve Campbell movie. Sixth Sense, The Sixth Day with Arnold, if you haven't seen that one, the cloning one. Eight Millimeter, Ninth Gate, Ten Things I Hate About You.

• 1:17:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh.

• 1:17:14Chris Winterbauer?

  And The Thirteenth Warrior.

• 1:17:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Wow.

• 1:17:16Chris Winterbauer?

  That's nine movies with numbers in the title from 99. So that went right. Numbers.

• 1:17:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay.

• 1:17:24Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm just kidding. For me, Antonio Banderas, movie star.

• 1:17:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:17:27Chris Winterbauer?

  He was, I still think he remains, but he was such, in an era, you know, if you go 85 to 95, let's say, an era of beefcakes, a lot of big dudes, you know what I mean? Like from Schwarzenegger, but even Willis a little bit.

• 1:17:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:17:42Chris Winterbauer?

  He was more slight than Schwarzenegger, but Mel Gibson, you know, all of these guys. And then here comes Banderas, who, as you said, is a much slighter person than a lot of these Hollywood A-listers and just embraces himself in every way. And he's so endlessly appealing, he's so charming, he's so effortless, but without, he never undercuts the drama, you know what I mean, of the scenes and whatnot. He's great.

• 1:18:05Lizzie Bassett?

  I just think he's wonderful.

• 1:18:06Chris Winterbauer?

  He's so wonderful.

• 1:18:07Lizzie Bassett?

  I have never not enjoyed watching Antonio Banderas in anything.

• 1:18:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Me, too.

• 1:18:10Lizzie Bassett?

  I think he's fantastic. And I'm very excited about him in the Anthony Bourdain biopic coming out later this year, Tony.

• 1:18:18Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, that looks really good.

• 1:18:19Lizzie Bassett?

  It does look really good.

• 1:18:20Chris Winterbauer?

  A number of folks were saying that they didn't love Banderas, his casting in Interview with the Vampire, because he's so different than the character described in the book.

• 1:18:27Lizzie Bassett?

  I loved it.

• 1:18:28Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. I think he fits so effortlessly into all of these worlds. He's such a chameleon, and yet he's always so himself.

• 1:18:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:35Chris Winterbauer?

  And that's a unique ability.

• 1:18:37Lizzie Bassett?

  It is.

• 1:18:37Chris Winterbauer?

  So I'll give mine to Antonio.

• 1:18:39Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. I love him. I'm gonna give mine to the production design team on this.

• 1:18:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Ah, yes.

• 1:18:43Lizzie Bassett?

  I think the work that they did is.

• 1:18:44Chris Winterbauer?

  It's amazing.

• 1:18:45Lizzie Bassett?

  It's amazing. I hope they know, I'm sure they do, but I hope they know what an accomplishment this was and how. Many people love this movie and love it for that. Love being able to see the scope of this and see the Viking village and everything. I mean, it's amazing.

• 1:18:58Chris Winterbauer?

  I think that's what gives it its rewatchability is actually that the world feels so lived in.

• 1:19:02Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:03Chris Winterbauer?

  So even though the story's thin, it still feels rich around it.

• 1:19:07Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. And then I want to give a little sub what went right as well to the original idea behind the book. I know we dumped on Michael Crichton a lot during this, and I think, you know, he handled this pretty poorly.

• 1:19:19Chris Winterbauer?

  He's a brilliant writer, but yeah.

• 1:19:21Lizzie Bassett?

  I love this idea. I think this is a very cool way of handling this. And I love the way that his brain worked backwards from, okay, here's Beowulf. What if it was real? Okay, I can't find the real story. I'm going to make the real story from which this legend bloomed. It's really fun. It's really cool. To your point, it's a version of, yes, essentially fanfiction or real person fiction. But that doesn't hurt anyone. And if anything, even expanded on and resurfaced this real person, Ibn Fadlun, who actually did write an extremely important documentation of the Vikings at that time. So I think the idea is really cool. He was so smart. He was such an incredible writer.

• 1:20:05Lizzie Bassett?

  And he's directed some great things as well. He didn't do himself any favors here, but those are my what went right.

• 1:20:11Chris Winterbauer?

  All right, Lizzie. Well, thank you so much. We finally got through a true, was it great or were you ate? And the answer is both.

• 1:20:19Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Lizzie, if folks are enjoying this podcast and they would like to be the 13th warrior to our dozen indistinguishable Vikings, how can they support it?

• 1:20:29Lizzie Bassett?

  You can tell a friend or family member. You can say, hey, remember the 13th warrior? No, well, you should. And here's a podcast episode about it. You can leave us a rating or review on whatever podcatcher you are listening to this on. You can go a step further and you can now subscribe in both Spotify and Apple, where you will get at least one bonus episode every month. They're usually reviews. This month is absolutely jam packed. You're not getting one. You're not getting two. You're getting three, kind of four, movies that are covered in these reviews. We covered Backrooms and Obsession at the beginning of this month. We covered Disclosure. Today, we will be covering Toy Story 5. So please subscribe so you can get those episodes. We're having a lot of fun doing them and we love writing off going to the movies as a business expense. So please keep that up.

• 1:21:11Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, and seeing your guys' comments on Patreon to see how you feel about the movies.

• 1:21:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly.

• 1:21:16Chris Winterbauer?

  Our favorite part is to see where you agree, where you disagree, where you think we're dumb.

• 1:21:20Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right. Please keep telling us. And for $5, as Chris just said, you can join our Patreon. You get everything I've just mentioned, plus you get an ad-free feed, plus you get the fan community Chris is talking about. We do read all your comments. We respond to your comments. We don't employ people. We can't afford them. It is us talking to you anytime you are talking to us on Patreon.

• 1:21:39Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, so keep that in mind.

• 1:21:40Lizzie Bassett?

  Keep that in mind. Be nicer in the Instagram comments, sir. You know who you are that I'm talking to. And if you would like to take it one step further, you can for $50 a month, get a special Full Stop supporter shout out, just like one of these. Uh, David, can I get some Viking music here to set the mood? Thanks. Lo, there do I see my fathers. Adrian Peng, Coria, Ben Schindelman, Blaze Ambrose, Brian Donahue, Daniel P., David Friskolanti, Michael McGrath, Steve Winterbauer, and James McAvoy. Lo, there do I see my mothers. Angeline Renee Cook, Beatrix Earhart, Brittany

• 1:22:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Morris, Brooke, C. Grace B., Lena LJ, Lydia Howes, and Rosemary Southward. And my sisters, M. Zodiac, Felicia G., Karina Kanaba, Kate Ellington, Kathleen Olson, Amy Elgashlager McCoy, Lousy Susan, Suzanne Johnson. And my brothers, Darren and Dale Conkling, Evan Downey, Jason Frankel, J.J. Rapido, John D. Wilshire, Nate Ashley, Nate the Knife, Scott O'Shea, Chris Leal. Lo, there do I see the line of my people. Cameron Smith, Don Scheible, Film It Yourself, Frankenstein, Half Gray Hound, Ral Juh, Somon.

• 1:23:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Chinani, back to the beginning. Lo, Galen and Miguel, the broken glass kids, Jory Hillpiper, Jose and Milano, Salto del Giorgio, Mark Bertha, Mariposa's Humans, Matthew Jacobson, The Provost Family, The O's sound like O's do call to me. The cast and crew of When a Trip to Brown Town bid me take my place among them in the halls of Valhalla, where Sadie, just Sadie, may live forever.

• 1:23:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Thank you so much, Lizzie. Next week, we are really excited because we are also going back to a 90s cult classic that has been requested so many times. And that is Lizzie, a movie that made Hollywood say, this is why you don't let ladies direct or star in movies. And we are talking about Tank Girl.

• 1:24:05Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm very excited.

• 1:24:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Incredibly creative. Talk about great production design movie that has a complicated story and legacy. And I'm really excited to dive into it with you.

• 1:24:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Great. I can't wait.

• 1:24:15Chris Winterbauer?

  All right, guys. Until next week.

• 1:24:16Lizzie Bassett?

  We'll see you then.

• 1:24:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Bye.

• 1:24:19Speaker 06

  What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom podcast, presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Laura Woods and edited by Karen Krupso.